Seòmar agus comataidhean

[Made a request to intervene.]

Having pressed my button, I thought that seeing my image on the screen would be enough to halt you in your tracks, Mr Carlaw, but obviously it was not.

I have huge regard for those efforts, but a little bit of me always says that, even with the holding of people’s panels, the people that I—and, I am sure, all members—want to reach are the very ones who have never voted, who are in housing schemes and who see nothing of worth in any politicians, whatever political hue or rank we might be, and regardless of whether we are on councils or whatever. How on earth do we reach out to those people? I do not wish to undercut what is being done; it is just that, somehow, I feel that we are never going to reach those people.

Indeed, and that relates to what Oliver Mundell said about the work of panels not being a substitute for the formal processes of Parliament.

I refer members to paragraph 66 of the committee’s report, which says:

“While deliberative democracy, and participation more generally, are important tools to support the work of the Parliament, we agree ... that ‘public participation will not be suitable for or resolve every issue, and will be one of many evidence sources used to make decisions. In these situations, credibility and trust can be maintained by being open and transparent about how decisions are made.’”

That underlines the importance of making clear exactly what the panel is for. The elements that public participation brings out might be valuable, or they might not, but it certainly means that people can genuinely be part of a process of involvement.

I agree with members who have said that we must improve engagement with the wider public, particularly through our work on committees. I think that people’s panels are a modest improvement, which I support. That is not a criticism—I am simply being realistic. I will give an example of what we could do. Personally, I hold my surgeries in Tesco, with my messages and my trolley at my side, right next to customer services. I hope that, in a small way, that reduces barriers to meeting me as a politician—Ah’m jist a wumman out wi ma shopping. That small change in my approach has helped people to engage with me. If that could be expanded so that people were generally less intimidated by politicians and politics, we might get even more value from the participation process.

I will return to the report. I very much welcome the debate and assure Jackson Carlaw that I will be wearing sufficient bling tomorrow. It is not known for me not to be noticed, if that is what it takes to get a word in.

This debate is particularly pertinent and serious, given that we see less and less engagement with the democratic process. A new low was reached at the latest UK election, when just 59.7 per cent of those who were entitled to vote did so, and Labour has an overwhelming majority with just 34 per cent of that 59.7 per cent. The first-past-the-post system also distorts the voting in the UK elections. The situation with council elections is worse; sometimes, just around 25 per cent of those who are entitled to vote do so.

In passing, I say to Stephen Kerr that public engagement and accessibility is certainly better here than in Westminster. It is not perfect here, but it is a good sight better.

One looming culprit in the erosion of democratic engagement is the ever-present social media, where there is little accountability for content and where serious political issues can be, and are, reduced to a Twitter exchange. That cannot, in any shape or form, be defined as a debate. Whatever one thinks of the Beeb, it at least has to aim for journalistic standards.

I here make the pedantic distinction between misinformation and disinformation. The former is information that is inaccurate or wrong when that is not necessarily deliberate, whereas disinformation is deliberately misleading—you cannot take the teacher out of me. Let us not muddle them but, instead, call something a spade when it is one.

The report by the Parliament’s Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee—what a title—takes on the tough issue of how to engage with the public at large, which is something that we have been trying to do in this establishment for many years. This Parliament particularly does that through its committees. I have convened four committees, convening justice twice and health twice, and I know how hard it can be through initial calls for evidence, and certainly through calls for oral evidence, to avoid having the usual suspects as witnesses. I do not mean that disparagingly. It is merely shorthand, and we do need to hear from chief executives of national health service boards or from the chief constable of Police Scotland, but it is difficult to hear from what one might term ordinary members of the public.

I agree that it is best and the interaction will have most import if the focus is narrow. That can be achieved through private briefings.

Certainly, if I can just finish this particular part of my speech.

That can be achieved through private briefings, one of which I chaired when I was convener of the justice committee and we looked at the impact of the court process on victims of rape and sexual assault. It was harrowing, but it also allowed the participants to expand on the difficulties they had to overcome in giving evidence to the court. I recall one participant stating that she just wanted her day in court. She was quite taken aback when I gently corrected her and said that she did not want only her day in court but her day in court and a conviction. I gently asked her to consider whether it would be worse to have that day in court followed by a not proven or not guilty verdict. That difficult exchange could have happened only in the security of a private briefing where we could speak freely and it was a two-way street.

I will take Mr Mundell’s intervention.

Oh, I was hoping for 15 minutes, but there we go. I wonder, Mr Carlaw, what was making your face redden during that discussion.

I do not think that that is the thrust of the committee’s report. Also, those difficulties are sometimes overcome by having a round-table discussion that allows the various witnesses to interact with very little intervention by members. You can sometimes get good evidence from that, although it is very difficult for the purposes of the Official Report. That is another method and can be part of the process.

I recall something similar to what is being suggested happening when the justice committee held a light-touch, regulated discussion in which mock criminal cases were presented to different groups. It was structured to allow each group to determine the penalty to be given to the accused who was on trial, which meant that there was a narrowly focused topic. At first, there was limited evidence about the background of the accused, and the penalties given were pretty draconian. More background information was then introduced, with the effect being that the judgments about the appropriate disposal changed and were modified. What had been black and white became, if members will forgive me, shades of grey—not 50, but shades of grey. I thought that that exercise was successful because it had a narrow focus and because there was detailed discussion about what was appropriate in each case, which led to complex, not simple, judgments.

The report supports that, saying in paragraph 65 that

“Participants in deliberative processes tend to come out knowing more about the topic and are willing to revise their opinions in light of new information and opportunities to deliberate together. This is in striking contrast to much current public debate, which tends towards polarisation, fixed opinions and misinformation.”

I refer members back to the example that I gave from many years ago of the justice committee looking at the penalties for various crimes.

I also caution against giving members of the public an expectation that their views might have greater or, indeed, lesser value than those of their elected representatives, which would undermine people’s trust even more. It reminds me of the perceived effects of victim impact statements, which people think will do far more than they actually do—they will not change the conviction that is given at the end of a trial. Therefore, we must make it clear exactly what that the panel process is and is not for.

Will the member take an intervention now?

I will be extremely brief. Mr Rowley and many other members of the chamber work very hard as MSPs, as do I. They are really decent people who work for their constituents. Do you not think that the media holds some blame for the way in which we are presented given that most of us are very hard working?

A family with two children aged under 16 that is able to access the Scottish child payment will receive £54.30 a week. That makes a big difference. I advise the cabinet secretary—corroborating what she has already said—that, during my recent visit to Peeblesshire Foodbank, I was told that it has had fewer calls for its resources as a direct result of the Scottish child payment.