Seòmar agus comataidhean

Is that a metaphor that you recognise more generally, minister?

On which note, I will suspend the meeting briefly. Thank you very much.

Good morning, and welcome to the 14th meeting of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee in 2023. We have apologies from our colleague David Torrance, the deputy convener. His substitute, Marie McNair, joins us online. Good morning, Marie, and all those following our proceedings.

Under agenda item 1 we must decide whether to take in private agenda item 6, which relates to our public participation inquiry report, in which we recommended the establishment of two further people’s panels this parliamentary session. The committee has a role in choosing the topics for the panels and item 6 allows us to consider a recommendation from the Parliament’s participation and communities team on the topic for the first panel. It also allows us to consider the topic in the context of the chamber debate on our report, which will take place on 26 October. This morning, I facilitated a Scottish Parliament information centre business breakfast about the committee’s report, so there is quite a lot of interest in and engagement on it. Are members content to take item 6 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

We have a packed gallery for the excitement of our consideration of petitions in due course, but we have two evidence sessions to take immediately. The first, unusually for the committee, is on pre-budget scrutiny. We usually resist that opportunity, on the basis that the committee does not have the same involvement in the budget as do other committees.

We welcome George Adam, the Minister for Parliamentary Business. The minister is supported online by Doreen Grove, head of open government, and by Amy Watson, principal research officer, both at the Scottish Government. Good morning to both of you. I assume, minister, that if you want your colleagues to come in, I can leave it you to invite them to contribute to our thinking. I understand that you would like to make a brief opening statement, which would be helpful. I think that you probably understand the narrow focus of our interest in relation to the budget. Over to you.

Yes. I am happy to write to the cross-party group. We might also write to the armed forces personnel and veterans health joint group, which is a separate body, seeking similar information.

PE2034, on stopping the current proposals for highly protected marine areas in Scotland, has been lodged by Stuart Chirnside and calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to halt its current proposals for highly protected marine areas and to bring forward new proposals that take account of sustainable fishing methods.

Events have slightly overtaken the petition, as we know. It was lodged on 20 June, and as members will be aware, the Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Net Zero and Just Transition gave a statement to Parliament on 29 June, confirming that the Scottish Government would not be progressing with the proposals. As noted in both the SPICe briefing and the Scottish Government response, the cabinet secretary has committed to providing the Parliament with an update on the Government’s next steps on the issue.

Thank you very much, minister. Yes, we eventually got the Scottish Government’s response to its own inquiry. We certainly exchanged calendar dates for some time about when that might be coming and, eventually, it did.

I will sum it up in short and outline the concern that underpins my question. The committee has now completed its report on deliberative democracy in consequence of the extensive inquiry that we held. The Parliament asked the committee to lead on that inquiry at the start of this parliamentary session, following the recommendation from Ken Macintosh’s Commission on Parliamentary Reform in the previous session that we look into that area. As a committee, we have been on a journey, but our report is enthusiastic about the opportunities that are presented, which are in two forms: what the Government can do and what the Parliament can do. The Parliament will debate our report in the chamber at the end of the month and we very much hope that the parliamentary aspect can be taken forward.

The Government’s response appears to accept the emerging use of citizens panels and their value and probably even the lessons learned from the experience of the Scottish Government model. Ultimately, however, the response is that “There is nae money.” I accept that, and we think that it will probably cost about £1 million a pop to hold a meaningful citizens panel on the model that we have seen in other national Parliaments.

In the first instance, I want to understand whether there has been a diminution of enthusiasm for the concept of the citizens panel as a result of the Scottish Government’s experience to date. Is money being used as a lever to suggest that the panels do not have quite the role that the Government had thought, or is it still very much the Scottish Government’s intention to find a way and a means, at some point, of embracing the concept of citizens panels as an embedded process in Scottish public life? If that is the case, is there an idea in your mind or in the Government’s mind about whether that is likely to happen in this parliamentary session, or will it most likely be in a subsequent session?

I hope that that meets the immediate hopes and expectations of the petitioners.

You may have felt that it was the right idea, Mr Adam, but I am not sure that it was the most enlightening of the options that were before you.

Thank you for that. Lots of colleagues want to come in. Mr Golden has a specific supplementary on a point that was made in the latter half of that response. You can come back to any other points that you want to make later on.