Chamber and committees

The next petition is PE1914, on banning school uniforms in secondary schools, which was lodged by Matthew Lewis Simpson. The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to remove the requirement for school uniforms for older school pupils. The petitioner cites a range of reasons for lodging the petition, including uniform costs for low-income families, pupil choice and the need for comfortable and weather-appropriate clothing options.

The petition was previously considered on 19 January, when we agreed to write to the Scottish Government, the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland, the National Parent Forum of Scotland and the Scottish Youth Parliament. At that meeting, we heard that the Scottish Government had committed to updating its school uniform guidance and that a public consultation on the issue was imminent. We have now received responses from the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills and all the other stakeholders that we have contacted, included the Scottish Youth Parliament, which was unable to come to a determination on the issue. I thought that that was interesting.

At this stage, we probably want to keep the petition open, pending the consultation that the Scottish Government is about to undertake. We believe that it is likely to take place during the summer.

Would colleagues like to make any comments or recommendations?

Do colleagues agree to keep the petition open and to proceed on the basis that has just been discussed?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you, David. Are colleagues content with that, or do they have any other recommendations?

I reassure Rhoda Grant that we were given to understand that the National Services Division and the Scottish Government co-ordinated the response that we received. I understood that, although we did not receive separate responses, there was input from both into the Government’s response.

Are colleagues content that we keep the petition open and write to see whether we can expedite some of the information that we are looking to receive?

Members indicated agreement.

Sorry—there was a misstep in our communications.

Paul Sweeney, is there anything that you would like to add?

Would Fiona Garven like to come in?

Fiona, you particularly wanted to come in at this point.

I will play devil’s advocate. We are not here to establish a balance sheet between the two, but I am interested in understanding what you would say. A lady who works at my local baker’s, which I get my messages from—to use the antique term—said to me that she elects me and has absolutely no interest in any discussion or involvement. She thinks very carefully about how she is going to vote for her elected representative and will get rid of them if she does not like the decisions that they make. That is how she wants to operate. Is that lady being marginalised by farming out the decision-making process to people over whom she has no democratic control? She has no mandate to determine who they are or what they discuss, and she has no control over the decisions or recommendations that they make. The process is voluntary; we cannot mandate that people participate. As politicians, we know that there is a very wide community of people who are not apathetic but who do not want to involve themselves in such a process.

I have posed this question in other forums, too. If one community is very interested in being involved in deliberative democracy and consultation and comes forward with a series of recommendations, but the community in the village next door is not interested in being involved and does not agree with anything that that group says, has that community been marginalised? The risk is that people could find that decisions that are prejudicial to them are being arrived at simply because they chose not to participate in a voluntary deliberative process.

I am not necessarily advocating that as a risk, but I am trying to articulate what I think might be an unforeseen consequential risk of the process being, in whatever sense, successful.

I am not sure whether Kelly McBride wants to have a bash at addressing that.

We come on to the recommendations in the report. Paul Sweeney will lead on that.

PE1902, which was lodged by Maria Aitken on behalf of Caithness Health Action Team, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to allow an appeal process for community participation requests under the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015. We are again joined by Rhoda Grant, who I will come to in a moment.

We previously considered the petition on 17 November 2021, when we agreed to write to the Scottish Community Development Centre to ask about the work that it is carrying out in exploring options for an appeals process. We have had a response that indicates that a working group has been set up, comprising people and organisations with a particular interest in participation requests. I understand that the group was due to meet some time between when we previously considered the petition and this month.

Our signal with Rhoda Grant has been lost, so we cannot hear from her. We will probably want to chase up any recommendations. Would any colleagues like to come in?

I am quite happy to incorporate that point into the request for information that we are seeking from the organisations that David Torrance has mentioned. Do we agree to keep the petition open and take forward the gathering of information that was suggested a moment ago?

Members indicated agreement.