Hansard

Those of us who are on the Public Petitions Committee are rather fortunate to be there. As Nanette Milne said, it is a varied committee, so it is never boring. One minute we can be talking about tropical fish, and the next about silicone breast implants. It is definitely the most public-facing committee, and our clerking team does a brilliant job of advising and supporting us and the many members of the public with whom they deal.

The committee is also innovative. What other committee has its own blog and uses Audioboo and podcasts?

I will look at an example of where a petition can lead. The petition on the availability of low-dose naltrexone on the NHS is on-going. It started out by being about the availability of that particular drug on the NHS. Many patients —and general practitioners— report that the drug makes a significant difference to their autoimmune disorder.

As the petition progressed, a wider issue emerged about the difficulty of getting research done on medical treatments if they are not particularly profitable for the pharmaceutical companies. If a drug is not profitable, however, surely it should mean a low cost to the NHS. Next Tuesday, the committee will question the chief medical officer about why that is and how we can change it. I do not know what the outcome of the petition will be, but it could lead to LDN being researched fully and widely prescribed, and to the NHS saving huge sums of money, as well as opening the door to research into other low-profit and therefore low-cost medicine.

We had a compelling evidence session with the petitioners and, when we question the chief medical officer next Tuesday, no doubt the petitioners will be there, watching and listening. However, that is all that they can do. I suggest that a future petitions committee might want to consider whether we could improve the effectiveness of the evidence sessions and speed up the petitions process by affording the petitioners the same rights at evidence sessions as visiting MSPs get. Petitioners have a responsibility to submit a written response, but I often find myself frustrated and wishing to ask the petitioner for their views on what we are hearing as we are hearing it. We have a number of options. For example, we could allow petitioners to make a statement at the end and then ask them further questions, or we could allow petitioners to question the witnesses in the same way as committee members do.

I have only 240 seconds and will have to cut out mentioning the many other petitions that I wanted to speak about. I am sure that my colleagues will speak about other petitions. However, I will talk about one more petition, on lobbying the British Prime Minister to drop the debt for Africa. That petition was lodged by Mark Buchan, who gave evidence in Fraserburgh during one of our visits around Scotland. It was brilliantly presented. I think that we have all found that all the young people who have presented in school or Scottish Youth Parliament sessions have done so incredibly well. The day in Fraserburgh was an example of how the committee truly opens up the Parliament to all of Scotland. Doing that is one of our greatest strengths. What other committee has sat in Arran, Fraserburgh and Easterhouse? The meeting in Fraserburgh was packed, lively and fun. I looked at the Official Report of it yesterday and realised that, for some reason, we even managed to compliment some of the school pupils on their hairstyles. We had lunch with members of the audience later, and the feedback was incredibly positive.

I am proud of what many petitioners have achieved and what I think they will achieve as their petitions progress. I am also extremely proud of the approach, openness and innovation of the committee and everybody who has worked with it, particularly the clerking team. I look forward to hearing about the progress on current petitions and more innovative developments in a future Public Petitions Committee. I am sure that there will be many such developments.

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