Legacy Report of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee, Session 6

We recommend that the membership of the Committee should remain at five.

When considering their own work programme and approach the Session 7 Committee should prioritise developing a collegiate and cooperative approach to the Committee's work.

We recommend that the Committee should meet fortnightly due to the amount of work involved in preparing for each meeting to ensure all petitions get a thorough consideration.

Having published our report on the dualling the A9 we concluded our work on PE1992: Dual the A9 and improve road safety . However, a number of the issues identified in our report remain of concern. It is clear to us that sustained scrutiny of the programme will be required across both Sessions 7 and 8 to prevent a repeat of the issues of the past and ensure that dualling is completed by the new date of 2035.

While it is important for the views of petitioners to be included in all petition considerations we recommend the Session 7 Committee continue our practice of inviting petitioners to give evidence by exception only, in order to use limited Committee time as effectively as possible.

Since the start of this Session it has been the Committee's standard practice to seek a Government response and SPICe briefing ahead of the first consideration for each petition. We recommend that the Session 7 Committee continue with this practice.

We are grateful to the Scottish Government for agreeing to trial the use of a proforma for petition responses. Given the success of this approach we recommend it continue into the new Session.

The Session 7 Committee may wish to explore ways to explain the petitions process and its own role to petitioners. This could include a review of petition communications, both in terms of content and the media used to explain how the process and the Committee works.

As part of any work to provide clearer information about petitions, the successor Committee could also consider how it communicates petition outcomes. Petitions are often used as effective campaign tools and can have a meaningful impact on petitioners in a range of different ways even if the main ask of a petition is not taken up by the Scottish Government. The successor Committee could reflect on the purpose of the petitions process, communicate the benefits of petitioning and set out a clear vision of what outcomes people might achieve when they petition the Scottish Parliament.

The Session 7 Committee may wish to review the determination before the end of Session 7 .

In the 2025-2026 parliamentary year thematic sessions allowed us to hear evidence relevant to 29 individual petitions. Thematic sessions have allowed the Committee to make the best use of limited time and contributed to effective scrutiny. We recommend the Session 7 Committee continues with the practice of thematic evidence sessions and seeks to further develop this approach.

The Committee is convinced by the evidence and experience we collected over this session that deliberative democracy can be a powerful tool to support scrutiny and that this should sit within a wider ecosystem of deliberative and participative tools and engagement approaches.

Now that work on participation and deliberative democracy is moving on to a new phase of embedding it throughout the Parliament for Session 7 we believe that the remit of the Committee should return to a focus on petitions in the next session.

We recommend that the Session 7 Committee identifies those petitions or themes arising from petitions that might lend themselves to a People's Panel with a view to bidding for one of the four Panels due to take place in the next session.

We invite the Session 7 Committee to consider the issues raised in the petition. Given the Fornethy survivors continue to campaign for redress, the Session 7 Committee may wish to review what progress has been made on the issues raised by the petition when it comes to consider next steps. This might include pursuing the request for a Chamber debate, exploring whether to refer the petition to a Committee able to undertake substantive work on the issue of redress or seeking an updated view from the Scottish Government.

We invite the Session 7 Committee to consider this petition further and to rigorously pursue the most appropriate means to progress its aims. This could include consideration of whether referring the petition could be appropriate if other committees are undertaking relevant work which would allow substantive scrutiny of the issues.

As the implementation of the new model will take place in the next parliamentary session, we are of the view that the issues merit further consideration. We invite the Session 7 Committee to consider the issues raised in the petition. Given the significant ongoing work on this issue, the Session 7 Committee may wish to review what progress has been made on the outstanding issues set out in our letter to the Minister.

We invite the Session 7 Committee to consider the issues raised in the petition. The Committee may wish to receive further evidence from the SPSO, either in writing or in person, in order to inform its actions on the petition.

We invite the Session 7 Committee to consider the issues raised in the petition. We also recommend that any work to explore the issues raised in the petition should consider a range of views, ensuring the voices of islanders are heard.

We urge the Session 7 Committee to embrace their role as the voice of petitioners and ensure that the Scottish Parliament's petition system continues to be a powerful tool for accountability and scrutiny.