Meeting of the Parliament 31 October 2024
The member takes me to my next point, which is that there are already strong channels through which organisations can communicate with the Scottish Parliament.
In 1999, I set up Holyrood magazine, in part to give the third sector and other stakeholders a voice and an entry point to engage with the Parliament, but we rapidly found out that Parliament had itself set up good mechanisms for that and that third sector groups and other organisations could engage with it.
Parliament continues taking engagement very seriously through consultations, the committee structure and cross-party groups, and by developing policies alongside and with those who have lived experience. There is also a plethora—on occasion, perhaps too many—of working groups, action plans and other forums.
After I launched Holyrood magazine 25 years ago, I went on to do something similar in London, Brussels, Asia and China, where the door is not open to external organisations. I worked through organisations such as the secretariat to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. In those places, third sector organisations struggle to get a foot in the door. Here, the door is open and all those organisations have a seat at the table. If we go down the route of using the structure of commissioners to give a platform to advocacy groups, we are duplicating an already vibrant and engaged civil society process in the Parliament.