Chamber and committees

I think that that is contained in the recommendations as we move through the report—

You also make reference to the Happy to Translate scheme and the ability of those whose first language is not English to follow proceedings. What was your feeling about that? I am interested to know whether any of the 19 panel members had any experience of Happy to Translate. On what basis did that come up as an option?

Good morning, and welcome to this special meeting of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee in 2022. I say “special”, because I am especially pleased to welcome members of the citizens panel on participation, who will discuss with us their report and the recommendations that arose from it.

We have received apologies from our colleague Fergus Ewing, who is not able to be with us today, as well as from—sadly, at the last minute—Alexander Stewart, who was supposed to be joining us remotely from deepest, darkest Bridge of Allan, where I thought communications still reached. However, he has had communications issues and is unable to join us this morning.

Agenda item 1 is a decision on taking business in private. Are the committee members who are present—David Torrance and Paul Sweeney—content to take item 3 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

The substance of today’s meeting is the committee’s public participation inquiry. We have with us around the table some of the 19 members who were able to join in that work. Paul MacDonald, Gillian Ruane, John Sultman, and Maria Schwarz have joined us in the room—and I now see Ronnie Paterson, who is joining us remotely. Mr Paterson, I take it that that is a mirror on the wall behind you and not a porthole. I assume that you are joining us from home and that you are not on board a ship somewhere.

In addition, a series of our officials, who have met you at various stages along the way, are present. They hide anonymously from the public so, led by our clerk, Lynn Tullis, they will be working quietly in the background.

In this parliamentary session, the remit of the Public Petitions Committee was extended, to the consternation of my predecessor, Johann Lamont, who was the convener of that committee in the last parliamentary session, because public petitions are, essentially, the people’s business before Parliament. Almost uniquely in Parliaments across the world, a single individual’s signature is all that it takes for a petition to come before this committee, to be considered and, potentially, to be progressed. Some very important pieces of legislation have followed that process, such as the legislation on free care for the elderly, the extension of care for people with early onset dementia, and the way in which the Government has resolved the women’s mesh scandal. All those issues have come up through this committee in recent years.

My predecessor, Johann Lamont, was concerned that we would dilute the focus, but I think that we have managed not to do that so far. I think that our looking at the whole question of deliberative democracy has been a natural coupling with this committee’s work. Much of that work was initiated as an inquiry following the work of the commission on parliamentary reform in the previous parliamentary session. That commission, which was established by the previous Presiding Officer, Ken Macintosh, very much suggested that, in this parliamentary session—or earlier, although that was not possible because of the pandemic—we should explore ways in which deliberative democracy might be extended.

That is what initiated the committee’s inquiry into public participation. We wanted to consider how people’s voices are heard, and we wanted to know how people feel that they are affected when the Scottish Parliament is developing new laws and policies. We recognise that the Parliament does not hear from some groups or communities, so the inquiry is also about how we can ensure that everyone’s views and opinions are included in our work.

We started with a consultation with people throughout Scotland, and we heard from 460 people and organisations. They told us what improvements they would like to see to allow us to engage more effectively as a Parliament that is now into its third decade.

As part of the work, the citizens panel was established. Out of thousands of people who were contacted, we were able to have 19 people who broadly reflect the demographic make-up of Scotland. They met in Holyrood, then they met online several times, and then they came together again in Holyrood. In those sittings, they heard about democracy and public participation from some of my MSP colleagues, Scottish Parliament officials, third sector organisations, leading academics, and members of the media.

Having gone through all of that endeavour, the panel has come forward with a report, which we are here to discuss this morning. That report makes 17 recommendations on how Holyrood’s work might improve and how it might reflect and meet the needs of the full range of communities that we represent. There is a particular focus on communities that have been underrepresented in the Parliament’s deliberations. Those communities were identified through discussion, but I think that many of us understood, even if only subconsciously, that they were underrepresented. As a Parliament, we can keep ourselves very busy without noticing that there are voices that are not being heard.

The recommendations that the panel came up with are wide ranging. I have thoroughly enjoyed digesting them and reflecting on how some of them might, in practical terms, affect the work of the Parliament and how, if the Parliament found favour with them, they might move towards implementation. I hope that you will make a ringing clarion call for the Parliament to embrace your recommendations and for this committee to be empowered to take forward the report and present it to our colleagues in Parliament on your behalf. As part of this exercise, it is important that the recommendations lead to additional changes to the way in which we do business at Holyrood.

I understand that, individually, you might lead on different areas in our discussion. My colleagues and I will follow up with questions in as free-flowing a way as we can.

Ronnie Paterson is the only person who is joining us online this morning. If you raise a hand or something, I will see that and know that you want to come in.

The best place to start is on your general experience of being involved in the panel and how you feel about the process that you went through. I will go to Ronnie Paterson first, as he is joining us from his living room. Would you like to tell us about how you felt about the process?

That is excellent.

Let us go through those points in turn and we will see whether any of my colleagues want to pursue the discussion on them as we do. The first recommendation is on removing the barriers to participation. It also refers to following up previous research by researching different methods of engagement, but we will come to that. First, we will look at removing the barriers to participation and addressing the consequences for those who might try to participate, including lost income and the cost of coming to the Parliament or of any other arrangements that people might need to put in place. Do any of my colleagues have questions on that?

I attended one of the informal round-table sessions that took place during the process. I was interested to know where the experience of the scheme had come from.

The second recommendation is about hearing from people with lived experience. I think that the committee can all accept that. In Parliament—in the commission on parliamentary reform, which I was on, and in the discussions that we have had—the phrase that is used is “the usual suspects”, which is not always a kind thing. However, there are easy-to-reach organisations that have almost become professional witnesses across a range of issues, and it has perhaps been too easy a default and reserve for the Parliament to go to them for evidence and not necessarily seek the wider views of people with lived experience.

Did you find any examples in which the lack of lived experience had been an issue?

That is partly what the citizens panel was doing. It had 19 people who had lived experience of their own and had not previously been engaged. I imagine that they were trying to get us to consider how to find a way to access that resource more generally when we pursue our work.

Interestingly, similar fly-on-the-wall documentaries have been done in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. They have been not about the party politics but about the clerks, the Speaker, the engineers and the maintenance and security crews. They have been about how the mechanics of Parliament operate, not about the political business that goes on in a party political sense. Even for people who are involved in politics, seeing the workings of other Parliaments is very engaging, because we get to learn how they work.

I am interested in the idea of a bus, which Ronnie Paterson mentioned. The report contains a couple of points in relation to that. I want to understand what its purpose would be. I do not want to call it a travelling museum, but the bus could be a travelling exhibit that was used as an educational tool to show people how Parliament works.

However, the report also says that the bus could be a place where the Parliament could

“talk to people about their issues”.

That presumes that there would be people travelling with the bus who could do that. Did you mean that people could talk in the sense of active political engagement and that MSPs from different parties would be part of that as the bus visited different communities, or do you see it more involving education officials from the Parliament who would be there to explain the function of Parliament and how it works? I am trying to draw a distinction between those two functions.

Alternatively, did you intend it to cover both functions? Would the bus be in a place for long enough to have some sessions about the mechanics of how the Parliament works and some sessions where it could be a focal point for the public, who sometimes find it difficult to engage with politicians, to come and do so? In the modern world, we are mindful, of course, of the need to consider the security aspects for both the public and the politicians and others who would be involved. What do you see the function of the bus being when it is out and about?