Parliament Workbench
Data: Official Report to 12 Nov 2026

Official Report · Committee

Current Petitions

Criminal Memoirs (Publication for Profit) (PE504)

Tuesday 15 April 2008 Public Petitions Committee Petitions 4 contributions · 2 speakers

Speakers

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The record

4 contributions
Frank McAveety Lab The Convener · Glasgow Shettleston
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There are quite a number of current petitions. I hope that we will get through as many of them as we can in the time that we have; we have an important evidence-taking session on two of them later in the afternoon. PE504, by Mr and Mrs James Watson, calls on the Parliament to take the necessary steps to stop convicted murderers or members of their families profiting from their crimes by selling accounts of those crimes for publication. The petition has been in the system for a considerable period of time. At previous meetings, I have expressed concern about the amount of time that some petitions have been in our system. This is a very old one: it is a six-year-old petition about an issue that has been around for a long time and this is the 15th occasion on which it has been considered. I invite suggestions on how the committee might deal with it.

Nanette Milne Con North East Scotland
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The petition has been bounced around between the UK Government and this committee. It might be worth asking the Cabinet Secretary for Justice to appear before the committee to probe him a little about what is going on between the two Governments.

Frank McAveety Lab The Convener · Glasgow Shettleston
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The petition has been around for a long period. Such a request is not unreasonable. Does that have committee members' broad consent? If so, we can move the petition on, as we need to do. There needs to be some conclusion to the matter. There is a role for the cabinet secretary and the Scottish Government, but there are also UK legislation issues. Let us see if we can cut through some of that. Are we happy to support Nanette Milne's suggestion? Members indicated agreement.

Frank McAveety Lab The Convener · Glasgow Shettleston
link

Okay—that will be our course of action.

In this meeting

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