Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning, and welcome to the third meeting in 2026 of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee. The first item on the agenda is to decide whether to consider item 3, on our future work programme, in private. Are colleagues content to take that item in private?

Members indicated agreement.

That was a fairly direct response from those two bodies. Do colleagues agree with Mr Golden’s proposal?

Members indicated agreement.

PE2018, which was lodged by Helen Plank on behalf of Scottish Swimming, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to provide financial relief to help to keep swimming pools and leisure centres open.

We last considered the petition on 7 May, when we agreed to seek a chamber debate on the issues raised by it and to write to the Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport. As colleagues will know, the debate took place on Tuesday 6 January, our first sitting day of this year. In opening the debate on behalf of the committee, I expressed my hope that the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care would engage both with the idea of establishing a national swimming pool task force and with the introduction of a statutory duty to have swimming as part of the school curricula, as was advocated by our witnesses in the evidence session last April.

It was encouraging to see so many colleagues across the chamber echo our call for the establishment of a task force. The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care seemed slightly less enthusiastic, although he suggested that he would give that further consideration. He indicated that sportscotland would continue to work with Scottish Swimming to explore the best options available to support and protect swimming pools.

Following that, on 13 January, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government announced that the Scottish Government will offer free universal swimming lessons to primary school children as part of its summer of sport programme in 2026. In response to a question from me, the cabinet secretary said that the initiative would be for only one year. However, she subsequently issued a correction notice to the Official Report to indicate that the lessons would be permanently available, which I was delighted to hear.

We received submissions from Rachael Hamilton MSP and Beatrice Wishart MSP, who highlight the impact of pool closures in their constituencies. We also have an additional submission from our petitioner, who states that

“At the start of 2026, seven pools have been in the news threatened with the prospect of closure”,

and that the situation is

“likely to worsen”.

The petitioner therefore reiterates Scottish Swimming’s call for a task force and additionally proposes that Scottish Swimming and sportscotland should be consulted on the closure of pools to help to ensure their protection as community assets.

Given that we have done a lot of work on it and made some progress on it, it strikes me that the issue might be best served by a fresh petition in the next parliamentary session. The asks could then be updated in the light of the Scottish Government’s initiatives to date, and the consequence of those initiatives will have been seen. Do colleagues agree with that?

I propose closing the petition under rule 15.7, on the basis that the Scottish Government has committed to introducing a universal offer of swimming tuition, that sportscotland will continue to work with Scottish Swimming, that the Scottish Government’s view is that it is for local authorities to decide how funds are best allocated, and that we have probably raised issues as far as we can in this parliamentary session.

In closing the petition, we can write to the cabinet secretary indicating that he said in his contribution to the debate that we led in Parliament that he was open to considering a task force, that the committee remains very committed to that—as do the petitioners and others in the chamber who express an interest in such matters—and that it would be helpful to have some indication as to whether he believes that that consideration will lead to an outcome in this parliamentary session or the next.

Are colleagues content to close the petition on that basis?

Members indicated agreement.

The first new petition for consideration is PE2191, lodged by Robin Pettigrew, which calls on the Scottish Parliament to review the legislation concerning the Scottish outdoor access code in order to explicitly prohibit camping in a vehicle outside designated camping zones, and to make the provisions of the code legally enforceable by introducing dedicated enforcement teams and fines for code violations.

The right of responsible access to land was introduced by the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 and is guided by the SOAC, which is a voluntary code of conduct. Currently, access rights apply only to non-motorised vehicle access.

The Government recognises the potential challenges that are posed by the behaviour of some road users. It states that infringements of the SOAC are a matter for local authorities, roads authorities and Police Scotland to manage. The Scottish Government considers that the creation of a new team with enforcement powers might create confusion over roles and, it implies, a less effective response to SOAC infringements.

On illegal or antisocial behaviours that fall outwith the scope of the code, the Government’s response suggests that a range of mechanisms are available to tackle those behaviours and that reviewing Scotland’s system of non-motorised access rights would not make a substantial difference to the enforcement of any such actions.

I read all that from the Government and thought that it was rubbish, to be frank. A serious issue has been raised in the context of the petition, but I am sorry to say that this is one of the petitions that I have identified for which we would need to initiate considerable work. If the committee proposes to close the petition, I hope that the petitioner will raise the issue in the new session of the Parliament when it convenes in May.

Do colleagues have any suggestions or thoughts?

PE2208, which was lodged by Joanna Kerr, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to place a statutory requirement on public bodies to collect statistics on the nationality, ethnicity, immigration status and religion of child sexual offenders, and to collate and publish the data annually.

As with the previous petition, I will begin our consideration by noting the committee’s disappointment at the Scottish Government’s delay in providing its response. The response was received only on Friday of last week, which has limited the petitioner’s opportunity to provide further evidence; therefore, all we have received recently is the Scottish Government’s very late submission.

However, the petitioner provided a written submission to the committee in December, and her written evidence highlights a similar UK public petition, which has now gathered more than a quarter of a million signatures. The submission highlights that police in England and Wales are now expected to collect the ethnicity and nationality data of individuals who are suspected of being members of grooming gangs or perpetrators of other group-based child sexual exploitation.

The Scottish Government’s response to the petition states that, given the number of public bodies in Scotland, placing a duty to collect data as set out in the petition would be difficult to implement and disproportionate to their wide and varied roles. The submission notes that, under the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2016, following arrest, a person is under no obligation to answer any question apart from their name, address, date and place of birth and nationality. The submission notes, however, that work is under way to align Police Scotland recording systems to capture ethnicity data for suspects. It also notes that criminal justice agencies record information based on operational needs or where there is a legal requirement. Therefore, agencies do not hold coded data on nationality, immigration status or religion unless the specific circumstances of the offences make it relevant for prosecution.

The Scottish Government has highlighted a programme of work that is taking place to improve data collection on child sexual abuse and exploitation. A short-life working group will bring together experts to consider a range of data sources that can be collated and analysed to build a more comprehensive picture of child sexual abuse and exploitation in Scotland.

Do colleagues have any suggestions for action?

The next petition is PE2198, lodged by Wilson Chowdhry, on establishing a standardised and fair public participation process for all Scottish councils. The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge to Scottish Government to introduce new legislation or amend existing legislation to require all local authorities in Scotland to adopt, within a specified timeframe, a set of minimum standards for public participation processes—questions, deputations and petitions—that will ensure that such processes are accessible, transparent, fair, inclusive and consistent across Scotland. It also calls on the Scottish Government to designate a new or existing body to oversee and monitor compliance with such standards and either take or recommend action when those are not met.

The SPICe briefing explains that

“each local authority publishes its standing orders on its website. These may set out how deputations, questions and petitions are handled”

and that

“It is up to councils themselves to develop, publish and update their standing orders, in line with relevant legislation”.

The Scottish Government suggests that the first ask of the petition could be feasible, but states that it

“does not have any current data to assess whether this would be practical or desirable to mandate across all local authorities.”

The Government points to a number of existing good practice frameworks for community engagement across Scotland, including guidance on participation requests for public service authorities and community councils, which is regulated under the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015. As the SPICe briefing clarifies, it is up to local authorities to interpret the 2015 act and ensure compliance with the guidance.

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The Scottish Government believes that the petitioner’s second ask may also be achievable but that it is dependent on identifying appropriate resource and budget. The Government highlights that its open Government team is considering how it could develop a national strategy for public participation as part of Scotland’s next open Government action plan in 2026-30.

The committee has had an interest in issues relating to public participation. It has always been a case of heightening awareness and extending pilots, and seeing what arises from that. That process has led to recommendations that Parliament has embraced and will be adding to its way of operating in the next parliamentary session, with people’s panels to be a fixture of interrogation.

Mr Torrance, you and I are the only two survivors from when the committee began in this parliamentary session. There are issues that the Government seems willing to explore, but I do not think that there is much more that the committee can do at this stage. It is not clear whether participation will be in the new committee’s remit, because it was an addition to the responsibilities that the petitions committee had in previous parliamentary sessions.

Do members have any thoughts?

Are colleagues content to close the petition?

Members indicated agreement.

I thank Josh MacLeod in my parliamentary office for his very forceful representations to me on the matter.

Any of us who is a parent, even if that was perhaps some time ago—well, we are always parents, but even if our children are no longer children—thinks, “There but for the grace of God.” To think that something might have been avoided if the issue had not been dismissed simply because of a prejudice against the idea that young people might have cancer is deeply disturbing.