Meeting of the Parliament 11 September 2019
I really must make progress—I am sorry. I think that I will not be given much extra time by the Presiding Officer.
During a period when the claims of competing camps are likely to increase in their vehemence, the evidence-based and balanced approach of the assembly will help to provide us with facts, considered opinions and a framework for thinking. Wherever we end up in spring next year and whatever we are debating, none of us will, I hope, wish to turn away an informed, representative and balanced contribution to our national debate.
I began by saying that I wanted to know and listen to what Scotland thinks. I will go further: we need to know what Scotland thinks, what kind of country the people of Scotland want to build, what people think are our greatest challenges and what information the people of Scotland want to have if they and we are to face up to the responsibility of overcoming those challenges.
The Brexit debate has demonstrated the discord that can arise when big constitutional questions are posed in a way that does not include a whole country, that distorts rather than informs and that allows nobody—whatever side of the debate they are on—to have confidence in the terms or implications of the outcome. It has shown what happens when there is only heat in a debate, with no light to shine into our different thoughts, fears and hopes. All parties in this chamber have spoken of the need to improve dialogue, to step back and to consider all points of view more carefully. This assembly provides us with the opportunity to relearn how to do that.
The assembly will report as it sees fit to this Parliament, the Scottish Government and the people of Scotland. Its remit and terms of reference require its report to be laid before Parliament. It expects this Parliament to consider and scrutinise the report, and it requires the Scottish Government to set out, within three months, what it intends to do in respect of the assembly’s recommendations. The assembly’s report will not replace this Parliament’s democratic function of deliberating and deciding. It is one part of Scotland’s story, but I hope that it will be a big and significant part.
This Parliament was the beginning of a new sang, to follow on from Seafield’s famous remark about 1707 being the
“end of an auld sang.”
However, a song can have many voices, and the more that those voices sing in harmony, the better they sound.
This will be Scotland’s first national citizens assembly, but not its last. The Green Party is proposing a future assembly on climate change, and this Government will be happy to endorse that and help to make it happen in this session of Parliament. Adding citizens assemblies to our civic and democratic structures is a natural step for this open and inclusive Parliament, and I am sure that the lessons of this first one will help that happen.
When Henry McLeish presented the report of the cross-party steering group in 1998, he set out the key principles to guide the design of this place. They included an ambition that the Parliament should
“embody and reflect the sharing of power between the people of Scotland”.
We have done a lot to live up to that ideal, but we can do more.
Twenty years ago, this Parliament met for the first time. Twenty years on, let us resolve to continue to innovate in the service of those who put us here and to ensure that they are more and more at the heart of what we do.
I move,
That the Parliament supports the use of deliberative democracy in Scotland; welcomes the establishment of the Citizens’ Assembly of Scotland and the appointment of its independent conveners, Kate Wimpress and David Martin; notes the principles, remit and terms of reference for the Assembly; further notes that the Assembly’s report will be laid before the Parliament; commits to the Scottish Government considering the recommendations in that report and to holding a debate to allow the Parliament to respond to those recommendations, and agrees that, within three months of receiving the report, the Scottish Government should publish a plan setting out how those recommendations that have been agreed by the Parliament will be implemented, and should lay that plan before the Parliament.
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