As no one else wants to comment on that, I go back to Fulton MacGregor.

I do not think that he can hear me.

I get that, but there is a legitimate criticism that people are happy to say what they want but will not say by when they want it. This is an opportunity to hear your views, so I will push you on that. You might not want the timescale to be as narrow as six months, but that is what is in front of us. Have a go at giving us a timescale.

We move on to questions from Fulton MacGregor, who joins us online.

Thank you.

Thank you, and welcome to your role. Congratulations on your appointment—I believe that this is your first appearance before the committee.

I see that Gina Wilson does not wish to add anything for now.

Thanks.

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on any discussions between the City of Glasgow College senior management and trade union representatives regarding the on-going industrial dispute. (S6O-02639)

Thank you. I understand what my colleague is saying, but I ask him to rephrase it slightly. It is not the public that has the problem—it may be more incumbent on us to provide that education and to be more resourceful and creative in the way that we reach out.

[Interruption.]

I have been absolutely fascinated by the debate so far. Anything that considers increased participation by citizens from across the country is of great interest to me. I have felt a little fear of missing out on the world tours and day trips, but I have taken up Maurice Golden’s challenge not to have a prepared speech but to share my reflections and thoughts, as well as some experiences from another committee.

I have listened to many people talking about the pros and cons of citizen participation and about how representative certain bodies are, and I have concluded that the more varied the methods that we use and the longer we do that for, the better we can capture everyone’s voices along the way and take them with us.

That requires bravery from Parliament, which has its structures. It has taken me two and a half years to get used to how we do things here and we can get attached to that. Those structures are comfortable, but they may not be working for the public, whom we are here to serve. When I was first here and went to events, one thing that struck me was that people would stand up and say to the public, “Welcome to your Parliament.” That phrase has stayed with me throughout my time here, so I support and welcome the committee’s work.

On the Equalities, Civil Rights and Civil Justice Committee, we have been doing our pre-budget scrutiny in a slightly different way. We have worked carefully with the Parliament’s participation and communities team, who have worked very hard behind the scenes with some of our most vulnerable citizens, from across a geographical spread. People often do not have confidence, because they are in their communities and are battered down by the daily grind, but they have opinions about their housing, about how money is being spent by their local authorities and about whether their bins are being collected. They get frustrated and often do not have the skills or time to be able to feed that back to us so that we can make better decisions.

During our pre-budget scrutiny, we allowed time for the team to work with those citizens to build their confidence and to explain a little about how to make a valuable contribution, because they wanted to do that.

The environment is intimidating as well, so there has been some debate about whether people should come in or whether we should go out. Again, I advocate a mixture of the two, which will enable us to get a good-quality sample.

When the citizens came in, we also did some cross-portfolio work. My colleague Collette Stevenson, who is convener of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee, came and joined that. The public who came along—the citizens—thought that it was great, because they do not think in silos when they are thinking about policy. We have portfolios and everyone has their responsibilities, but the average person out there does not care whose responsibility something is. People are holistic human beings and many portfolio areas have an impact on their life. They should be able to question things from where they are, so we perhaps need to think about more cross-portfolio working and doing scrutiny together across committees to get a true handle on things.

From that, the citizens devised their own questions that they wanted us to ask the minister. The minister then came to the committee and we asked verbatim the questions that the citizens had proposed. They were sitting in the public gallery in the committee room, so they were right there to hear the minister’s responses to their questions.

The feedback from that was amazing. I was surprised by some of it. One person reflected that they did not understand quite a lot of the answers because politicians often speak using acronyms. I was careful earlier to say “participation and communities team” rather than “PACT”. To be fair, using acronyms is like a code, isn’t it? It is exclusive. Maybe we, as politicians, should be more mindful of the need for clarity when we speak. Anyway, that person is now going to use the public petitions process to put a petition to the Parliament and get us to look at the issue, which is fantastic.

In summary, we on the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee are leading the way. There are always early adopters of things, and I have shared a bit of our experience with members this afternoon. The citizens felt really empowered and their feedback was excellent. They thought that the Parliament as a whole had taken care of them and listened to them, and they felt very connected. They had not realised that they could see us, speak to us and hear their questions being put directly to the minister and answered.

We can all take heart that, although there is more work to be done, an amazing amount of good practice is going on. With the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee’s report, there is the good will to carry that even further.