Chamber and committees

We will keep the petition open and proceed on the basis that has been suggested.

To those of you who have been enjoying the proceedings so much, I am afraid to say that that brings us to the conclusion of our meeting. Our next meeting will take place on 19 March. I thank everyone for their participation and for joining us today, and I formally close the meeting.

I suspect that Police Scotland will not comment on an individual case, but we could write to the Lord Advocate or the minister to try to establish some detail and say that we have noted the wider point about the onus of responsibility being on the individual, but the circumstances of this particular case are not entirely clear to us, so we are drawing it to the minister’s attention to see whether they can give us some further assurance. Would that meet the committee’s approval?

Members indicated agreement.

We will do that.

I note that the petitioner’s previous action was to write to their regional MSPs. I do not know whether any of them took it up by way of either a written or an oral question to the minister, which might have been one way of accelerating a response.

I think that that is a very sensible suggestion. If there are no other suggestions, are we content to proceed on that basis?

Members indicated agreement.

Good morning. I apologise for the slightly late start, which is entirely down to me and not to any of my colleagues.

Welcome to the fourth meeting in 2025 of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee. We have apologies from the deputy convener, David Torrance, and from our colleague Maurice Golden. Marie McNair is substituting for David Torrance, and it is a pleasure to have her with us.

Thank you, Mr Ewing. It is absolutely correct that we should make clear that, in supporting the aims of the petition, the committee is not identifying all property factors as villains—far from it. Many people in my constituency have expressed that they are perfectly satisfied with the service that they receive and believe that the property factors act very much in the interests of residents. However, when there is an issue, there is a lack of remedy.

We might also write to the Law Society of Scotland to seek its views on the suggestion that the small claims court be given powers to dismiss property factors in those situations that Mr Ewing has described, where excessive charges have been introduced. Is the committee content with those suggestions?

Members indicated agreement.

The next petition is PE2033, which was lodged by Jordon Anderson and calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to legislate for a full or partial ban on disposable vapes in Scotland and to recognise the dangers that those devices pose to both the environment and the health of young people.

We last considered this petition at our meeting on 17 April 2024, when we agreed to keep the petition open until such time as regulations to ban the use of single-use vapes were introduced, or at least until we had a clear indication of when they would be introduced.

As members will be aware, in September last year, Parliament voted to approve the Environmental Protection (Single-use Vapes) (Scotland) Regulations 2024, which were expected to come into effect on 1 April 2025. However, commencement is now expected to take place a little later, on 1 June 2025. The intention is that that will ensure alignment with similar regulations being introduced across all four nations of the United Kingdom.

We have received a submission from our MSP colleague, Maggie Chapman, who commends the petitioner, Jordon, and others for their work on that issue and calls on us to keep the petition open until the regulations are in force. How do colleagues feel about that?

Our next petition is PE2006, which was lodged by Ewan Miller and calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to amend the Property Factors (Scotland) Act 2010 to cover dismissal of property factors or to bring forward other regulations that would achieve the same aim. That could include giving the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland powers to resolve disputes related to the dismissal of property factors.

Colleagues will recall that we last considered the petition at our meeting on 19 February when we heard evidence from the Minister for Victims and Community Safety and a number of Scottish Government officials. During that session, we heard that the Government plans to publish guidance that is aimed at helping homeowners to navigate the various options for how voting procedures should be carried out when dealing with factors.

The minister also expressed a willingness to consider new suggestions on how the process to dismiss a factor could be simplified, including a suggestion from our colleague Fergus Ewing on whether the small claims court could be empowered to determine and dismiss property factors in cases where the factor is considered to have overcharged residents.

We also heard that the Government is considering the recommendations of the Competition and Market Authority’s report into house building, with the minister indicating that her colleague the Minister for Housing may be exploring some of those issues in a proposed round-table meeting with property factors.

Having had the opportunity to reflect on the evidence that we heard at our last meeting, do members have any comments or suggestions for action? We will probably want to formalise your suggestion, Mr Ewing.

We move to item 2, which is consideration of new petitions. As we always do in advance of our first consideration of a petition—I say this because there could be people who are joining us or watching our proceedings for the first time in order to hear how their petition is being treated—we take two actions. We contact the Scottish Parliament information centre, which is the Parliament’s independent research body, to get a briefing on the substance of the issues that are raised in the petition, and we write to the Scottish Government for an initial impression of those issues.

We do both those things because, historically, when the committee first considered a petition, those would be the first two things that we would decide to do. All that waiting for that information did was delay our consideration of the petition. Taking those two actions allows us to accelerate the process.