Scottish Parliament Public Petitions Committee Tuesday 23 May 2000 (Afternoon)

I welcome everyone to the ninth meeting this year of the Public Petitions Committee. We have an apology from Margaret Smith and Mike Russell has indicated that he will join us later to speak to petition PE195. I welcome Patricia Ferguson, who is here in support of petition PE200. I give a special welcome to the delegation from the Petitions and Public Participation Committee of the Gauteng Provincial Legislature of South Africa, which is visiting the Parliament this week and has expressed particular interest in seeing the Public Petitions Committee in operation. Most of the committee met the members of the delegation earlier and had a tremendously interesting exchange of views. Our visitors have presented me with a gift of a model of Nelson Mandela, which will belong to the committee rather than to me.

We could take turns hanging it on our walls. I am grateful for that presentation to the committee. I hope the members of the delegation enjoy the meeting and indeed the rest of their stay in Scotland.I remind members that we will deal with 15 petitions at this meeting. To begin with, six groups of petitioners asked to speak to their petitions; that has increased by two. In addition, we have six or seven other petitions to deal with, as well as current petitions to consider. I ask members to be brief in their questioning and to try to keep to the point when we move to current petitions.