Chamber and committees

Langholm is one of the places that the Scottish Government should start with. A recent public meeting saw more than 300 people crowd into the Buccleuch centre there, and one of the top issues that they raised was their difficulty in getting to Dumfries and Galloway royal infirmary in Dumfries. In a best-case scenario, the journey involves a round trip of six buses and takes more than four hours. That is not realistic for the elderly, the sick and those who are unable to drive. Given what the cabinet secretary has said, does he recognise that that is an unfair ask? Will he raise these concerns with the health board and ensure that alternative arrangements are put in place? For example, could the use of technology be increased, could some clinics be re-established at Thomas Hope hospital, and could more use be made of services at Carlisle hospital, as was the case in the past?

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to ensure that residents in Eskdale can access patient transport for hospital appointments. (S6O-04810)

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I could not connect. I would have voted yes.

The funding that has been set out does not match the need. Today is another day with teachers reportedly being in tears and at breaking point. A new survey by the NASUWT shows that 70 per cent of teachers say that support for ASN pupils has declined over the past five years, with more than a third saying that they rarely receive the financial support that they need to teach ASN pupils properly. That does not come as a surprise to me. Something is going wrong. What is the cabinet secretary going to do to change that?

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to ensure that pupils with additional support needs receive consistent and adequate support. (S6O-04757)

I was coming to that point in relation to Christine Grahame’s comments. I think that there are better ways of engaging people within committees. There are some very good committee clerks and others with great experience in this building who find ways and means of doing that. I am not lucky enough to be a committee member currently, but, having been on many committees across the time that I have been in Parliament, I have seen that engagement done well.

However, it is often the MSPs who are most resistant to trying new things or doing things differently. We talk about doing things differently, engaging new approaches and following evidence-based approaches, but it is often MSPs who want to go to the usual suspects and bring in such organisations. MSPs want their moment in the sun—not literally the sun, but probably The Sun newspaper—giving professional witnesses a dressing down and capturing a 30-second clip for their social media. We could do more to ensure that we get the best evidence.

I am interested in a point that the member made during an earlier intervention. I worry about the danger of participative committees becoming an alternative to having real people taking part in the committee process. They might be an easier way to do things, but I think that we need to look at how our committees gather evidence. As she says, there are good ways of doing that. I worry that our committees might become secondary and that we might lose the chance for those who are most disadvantaged to participate in our Parliament, so we should look at other processes, too.

I had the same experience on the justice and education committees. There is a balance to be found between transparency and proper process, but we are sometimes too keen to put witnesses in front of the camera and have a formal evidence-taking process. With the expertise that exists in the Parliament, there are better ways to do that.

Despite those reservations—if members want to call them that—there is merit in proceeding with the proposal on the scale that is proposed to see how the process works in practice, to gather evidence and to see where it takes us. However, I come back to the point that I made earlier: if we are to go down that route, we have a job of work to do to explain it to the public and justify the expenditure. A figure of £55,000 per panel might seem modest to us but, to many of our constituents, it will seem like the Parliament is spending more money on something that is not one of their core priorities.

If we are going down that route, we must ensure that we make it work. As Christine Grahame and others have said, we must ensure that the input from the public is not treated with lesser respect or as having less value than that of MSPs, and that it makes genuine changes to policy and outcomes.

I hear what Stuart McMillan says. If people are checking out early to go home, that is problematic. However, many members across the chamber represent constituencies that are far away from Edinburgh, where genuine local democracy is taking place and constituents expect us to be—taking the Parliament to them, as Evelyn Tweed said. That is also part of the job of an MSP. I am worried by the suggestion that remote proceedings are being used improperly, as many members use that option to do a better job.

Will the member accept an intervention?