Chamber and committees

I think that the committee very much feels that citizens panels that are led by Governments and people’s panels, which is what we are recommending in the Parliament, should be there to serve the debate and consideration of the elected representatives, not to act as a separate imperative for action to take place.

Interestingly, what came out of our meetings with the people who had participated in Paris and Dublin—and, indeed, here—is that the key thing is feedback. People want to have feedback. They are perfectly prepared to be told that we are not going to do something if it is explained to them why we are not going to do it. That was very instructive. Whether we like it or not, the lesson for many people who have participated in national public consultations or initiatives such as this has been that, if they have ever come up with anything awkward, the lead authority has then buried the whole thing rather than having to discuss it. The cumulative effect of that is a sort of suspicion and a cynicism about whether there was really any genuine endeavour to consider what the people who participated in the panel actually thought. Feedback is the key, but there is an understanding that it should be the national Parliament that ultimately makes key decisions.

It is clear that asylum seekers who are under 25 and over a certain age will already be eligible for free bus travel. I do not have an issue of principle with the Government; it is an issue of practical implementation, in that the Government has to identify, in a transparent and measurable way, a cohort of individuals to extend the scheme to. I hope that the minister will be able to advance us on that. I think that we agree on the principle; the issue is the practical way in which it might be implemented.

One senior Irish politician paid a backhanded compliment to the principle of citizens panels. He said to me, “Jackson, what this is, is a method for gutless politicians to be excused the difficult decisions and to palm them off to somebody else.” However, on some of the big social change issues, that is, as I say, a backhanded compliment, because it means that the change is underpinned by citizen involvement, which then gives politicians the confidence to move forward.

It occurs to me to suggest to the minister and maybe helpfully to Mr Doris that, although the criteria for drawing people to participate would be random, the basis of those criteria can be determined if a particular panel was going to be held on a specific issue and it was felt that that would be fundamentally important to the consideration. That would be true about some issues, but not necessarily about others. The point is that we do not want the politicians to select the individuals who would participate. There should be a genuinely random representation, but that can be an informed representation if the issues so determine.

I think that I am out of time.

I, too, participated in some of those Parliament days. Apparently, in a lot of the work that was done afterwards to establish what the value of those days had been seen to be, it was felt that we had kind of landed, done our thing and gone away again, and that there was no lasting benefit. It was felt that the types of engagement that we should be seeking to take from the Parliament out into communities should be designed to leave more of a legacy with regard to appreciation of the Parliament.

It is interesting that, in the Irish Parliament, the Ceann Comhairle—the Speaker—has such discretion. The form of words is for the Speaker to say to the relevant minister that they have perhaps been a little let down by their civil servants in the comprehensiveness of the response that they have just given, and that they might like to add to it a little further. In fact, the existence of that power has meant that it has never had to be used, which is interesting. It is not necessarily the case that a Presiding Officer would require to intervene, but the knowledge that they could intervene has elsewhere led to sharper and more focused answers from ministers.

In Ireland, the key initial citizens panel was focused on the issue of the legalisation of abortion. It was fascinating to meet many of the 100 people who had participated in that. They had been on quite a journey, because there was a fact-based secretariat that underpinned everybody’s opinion, and there were no bad opinions. That led to a significant change and subsequent recommendations. It was not necessarily a budgetary consideration in that instance. In Paris, it was about issues relating to the rental sector and green spaces in the city. In Brussels, it was different again, because it was underpinning the various committees that were reporting.

We have made recommendations to the Government and we have had constructive discussions with the Minister for Parliamentary Business. Of course there are budgetary concerns. It can cost £1 million to £2 million to host a full citizens panel of maybe 100 people that is sustained over time. However, the report goes on to recommend what Parliament can do. We think that Parliament has a role to take forward in extending deliberative democracy and we recommend in our report that, within budgets that already exist, pilots take place in the balance of the current session—one on an issue of post-legislative scrutiny and one on an issue of interest that a people’s panel of about 20 to 30 people could constructively report on before going back to the lead committee with their evidence, in order for that to be taken forward.

We would not want to involve politicians in that panel—again, we would want its members to be randomly drawn from the public—but we believe that the pilots would give the Parliament a real sense of how the process could work. I believe, and I am convinced, that we would seek to embed that into parliamentary life in the Parliaments of the future. There are lots of other issues—

Michelle Thomson (Falkirk East) (SNP) rose—

It is some considerable time since I was last invited to lead a debate in what, during my salad days in this Parliament, our then chief whip David McLetchie used to refer to as “the graveyard shift” and for which I routinely had a season ticket in those early days. I am thrilled and delighted to see so many people here this afternoon to embrace the concept of the committee’s report. In those days, I used to be unrelentingly jolly as a matter of principle, if only to keep myself awake until 5 o’clock, so I will be suitably jolly throughout this afternoon’s proceedings.

I begin by welcoming to the gallery some of those who participated in the citizens panel that we held and who were witnesses to the committee or advised us during the drafting of the report. I thank the clerks, Lynn Tullis and Andrew Mylne, who is also at the back of the chamber. I also thank Alanis McQuillen, Miriam Dornan and Wojciech Krakowiak—who has recently left us—who were fantastically helpful on what Martin Whitfield and Richard Leonard called, rather ungenerously, the committee’s “world tour”, as we sought to establish what the practice of deliberative democracy was in Paris, Belgium and Dublin.

I am here on a mission to sell to you the principle of public participation in our democracy, because I believe that the implications of the report could lead to a profound change in the way that democracy operates in Scotland and to the way in which the public, in the widest sense, are able to engage in parliamentary life.

The work did not begin during this session of Parliament, although we have been working on it for 18 months, since citizen participation was added to remit of the public petitions committee, but in the previous session, because the suggestion of participative democracy arose from the then Presiding Officer Ken Mackintosh’s commission for parliamentary reform, which was adopted by Parliament at that time. It is during this session of Parliament—because of Covid and for other reasons—that the investigation into that work has been taken forward.

I will first say what the inquiry involved. Two initial surveys gathered views from the public, organisations and academics. We established a citizens panel here in the Parliament—I will say more about that. We took feedback from that panel and recommendations from the public, from focus groups, from members and their staff and from committee conveners. I remember that the conveners were able to go round the wall of a room, deciding which of the recommendations on display they liked the most and which they did not like at all. We rejected the one that they did not like at all, which was that a citizens panel should be set up to consider an MSP code of conduct. I wonder why they were so unenthusiastic about that.

In doing that, we worked out how deliberative democracy has operated elsewhere in the places where it has been quite successful. We would not be the first Parliament to adopt that. We would be one of the early adopters, but other Parliaments in Ireland, Paris and Brussels have adopted it quite successfully.

It is fair to say that the committee went on a journey. Any members who heard my contribution to a recent debate on whether the establishment of commissioners creates, almost by default, a fresh level of government in Scotland will appreciate that some of us on the committee were concerned that we might be embedding into our process something that might undermine democracy, rather than enhance it. The reasons for that may not be immediately apparent. It is just as legitimate for people not to participate as it is for them to participate, but would greater weight to be given to those who do than to those who do not, and might that skew the outcomes for communities? We went on a journey, but it is fair to say that all members of the committee became persuaded, during the course of our work, that that was a good thing for us to do.

Various themes emerged from our citizens panel. Many of its members had never participated in anything before. They were drawn randomly, by an external agency, to reflect different demographics and not to be the “usual suspects” as we sometimes, rather unkindly, describe those who participate in the work of our committees. Interestingly, for those who had never participated before, the process was also a journey for them. Many did not realise that there was a difference between Parliament and Government. I think that we often overestimate the public’s understanding of the Parliament’s role in our natural democracy.

We also wanted to see the experience of others in action, which is why we went to Ireland, where, interestingly, the subjects for citizens panels are debated in election manifestos so that they have a legitimacy if the mandate for the Government is there. Because Ireland has so much of its social legislation embedded in its constitution, the process can sometimes end in a referendum.

In Paris, the city authority has set up a citizens panel. I think that it will correct its practice, because it brought 100 people into a room and asked them what they wanted to talk about, only to find that 100 complete strangers were not very sure, so they went back to the city authority. The danger of that was that they were then debating an issue for which there was perhaps not an electoral mandate.

We also spoke to the Parliament of Brussels, which has embedded deliberative democracy in its committee processes. It brought together a committee of about 60, with 45 laypeople and 15 politicians, and they all looked at one other with great suspicion. The 15 thought, “We’re very important people. We’ve been elected. Why should we listen to you?” The 45, in turn, said, “Well, we know what we’re talking about. You don’t.” Since they got over that hurdle, it has actually led to very informed and constructive underpinning of the legislation that is going through the Parliament. I think that we saw the advantage of that.

I do not think that we went through all the different issues. What I can say is that, in anticipation of members embracing the principle in the debate, the Parliament’s participation and communications team—PACT—which has been established and is now really experienced and effective, came forward with two suggestions that went to the Conveners Group. That group has embraced one of the suggestions as being the subject that a pilot on the issue might take forward. I do not have the actual provision in front of me, but it relates to previous climate change legislation, on which the group thinks a piece of post-legislative scrutiny would be effective.

I will try to draw my remarks to a conclusion. There are lots of other recommendations in the report that I know will be brought out in the summary later on, particularly some relating to the Presiding Officer’s role and responsibilities. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, though. [Laughter.] We were slightly more reluctant to be too prescriptive on all that.

Even as someone whom members might imagine to be sceptical about such initiatives and endeavours, I say that we genuinely saw things that would allow Scotland to evolve its own model. All the different ones that we saw were quite distinct. It is not that we are suggesting that we embrace one of them. Nor are we suggesting a legislative route, because I think that what we in Scotland might want could evolve through our own experience. Let us, as a Parliament, embrace the principle of all that, have pilots and then work to see what the most effective way of involving people in Scotland in the life of our democracy would be. So many more people than ever before wish to have that opportunity. I hope that this afternoon we can begin the process of allowing that to happen.

I move,

That the Parliament notes the conclusions of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee’s 2nd Report, 2023 (Session 6), Embedding Public Participation in the Work of the Parliament (SP Paper 427), including its responses to the recommendations of the Citizens’ Panel on participation; agrees with the Committee’s recommendation that the Parliament establish two further citizens’ panels (or people’s panels) in the current parliamentary session with a view to making the use of such panels a regular feature of committee scrutiny from Session 7 onwards; endorses the Committee’s recommended principles for the future use of deliberative democracy and its recommendations for panel size, composition and participant selection, and acknowledges the work already being done by Parliament staff to develop and improve engagement methods.