Chamber and committees

I apologise, minister, but I will have to come back in on this. I accept everything that you are saying, but can we imagine that a victim of sexual abuse or domestic violence who is in a secure unit on welfare grounds is in a therapeutic environment for recovery if she is in there with perpetrators of those crimes? They are crimes—or harms, if that is what we want to call them.

I gave you the example of Chloe. She was 14 and the boy who harmed her was 16. Is it right that they would be in the same place if she needed to be there on welfare grounds?

That is the one area of the report that made me raise an eyebrow a little, because I wondered whether it was children themselves who had said that they needed more education on the Parliament. My experience from going out to schools has been that children often know how things work a lot better than many intelligent adults in my community do, because they are looking at democracy in the round and how the Parliament works.

Will the member take an intervention?

I appreciated what Martin Whitfield was saying about the Presiding Officer intervening, and the evidence—or lack thereof—that she would have to go on for that. I wonder whether there is also a bit about personal responsibility. Each individual member is responsible for their contribution. Asking someone else to come in and referee—to use his term—does not sit right.

Democracy is not just about putting a cross in a box every five years. The mandate that is given to political parties once the votes are counted is substantial, but the folk whom we represent should feel that they have trust in our institution and a stake in the decisions that we take. Election campaigns and polling days should not be the end of our interactions with citizens on policy. With all due respect, politicians and civil servants certainly do not have the monopoly on wisdom. Despite some effort, we cannot claim to be an especially diverse bunch that is reflective of our nation, particularly in terms of class and race.

The ideas and policies that are put in manifestos—as good or bad as they might be and wherever or whoever they come from—always need a lot of further work in the Parliament. They require input from and dialogue with a wide range of people and organisations to realise their good intentions and improve things for all the citizens whom we serve. No matter how much we might wish it, the legislation and guidance that we pass in here are not always in themselves enough to make the changes that we wish to see. We have to understand better how and where the laws that we have passed have made a difference—or not—whether there have been any unintended consequences or whether there are gaps that need to be addressed. Public participation in post-legislative scrutiny would be incredibly valuable in that regard.

I congratulate the citizens panel, the members of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee and the Scottish Parliament staff who so ably supported it for the excellent work that they have done in embedding public participation in the work of the Parliament.

I agree with the committee’s recommendation that the Parliament should establish two further citizens or people’s panels in the current parliamentary session. It is right that we work towards making use of such panels in regular committee scrutiny from session 7 onwards.

In commending the work of the Parliament staff, I make special mention of the care and attention that was given to ensuring that the inquiry was accessible and that there were different ways for people to take part. As well as the main online platform, the Parliament’s PAC and education teams provided support and resources to partners and communities to gather a range of views. I have personal experience of the excellent and creative work that the teams do to ensure that voices that we can find easy to ignore or exclude are central to committee work in areas that affect them.

In this instance, the work of the teams meant that the committee received additional contributions from people with learning difficulties and autism via two discussions with the learning disability assembly, the Scottish Assembly; it heard the views of young people in collaboration with Young Scot and the Scottish Youth Parliament; and it listened to the views of school pupils in Lochgelly, Galashiels and Glasgow.

I absolutely agree. I do not think that anything should be coming out of our Parliament that is not in those formats. That would not be acceptable.

In addition, people were able to write to or email the committee in the usual way, which provided three additional submissions from Bòrd na Gàidhlig, the Scottish Election Study team and Media Education.

I am sure that committee members will talk more to the process, so I will share my reflections on the themes. Theme 2 was on growing community engagement. The committee’s report acknowledges that the traditional model of parliamentary scrutiny can tend to prioritise people who already have an understanding of how the Parliament works and the resources to engage with its structures. I very much agree with the committee that that needs to be addressed. I have witnessed just how beneficial it is to hear from a wider range of people, particularly those who are directly impacted by an issue. When we do that, we make sure that we understand and look at things in the round.

I really value the contributions that are made to scrutiny by everyone who gives evidence and assists with committee work—I am not criticising anyone here—but there is undoubtedly sometimes a tension when organisations or individuals who give evidence are in campaign mode and are for or against the particular law that is being looked at, or are involved in delivering the changes that the law will bring about and do not wish to seem unhelpful or resistant to the overarching policy aim. I think that widening our scrutiny can only help us to obtain a collective understanding of issues and to find a way through them.

We can all be inclined to be a bit binary and simple in thinking that people are either for us or against us, that there are goodies and baddies and that we must pick our team, but we all know that the world is not like that, and the complex issues that we often seek to address are not best solved through that approach. Properly engaging with the communities that we serve reminds us of their diversity and richness, not just of characteristics but of opinion, and that will help us to find a way through any challenges that we face.

Like Edward Mountain, I like the idea of letting people register interest in particular topics. I think that that is a helpful idea, because most folk do not have time to respond to individual consultations.

The Presiding Officer is telling me to close. I had a lot more to say. It has been a really interesting debate, and the committee’s report is an excellent piece of work. I thank everyone who contributed, particularly the citizens panel.

The minister described some individuals as being seldom heard. Does he agree that it is not necessarily that they are seldom heard but that, often, they are found to be easy to ignore, and that Government and Parliament have a responsibility to make it easy for them to come to us?

Michelle Thomson mentioned trust, which lets me wedge in the bit of my speech that I did not get to. Could not the whole process build trust in our Parliament and in our institutions if we get it right and, as Jackson Carlaw said, if we listen properly and reflect not what people want us to do but the reasons why we are not doing that?

Does Victim Support Scotland have any suggestions for amendments that could be lodged?

Yes. I was just going to say, first, that I know that my colleagues will want to talk specifically about information sharing. Your answers have covered how conditions might be implemented and monitored effectively. Fiona, please do come in on that.