 Welcome to the first meeting of session 6 of the Citizen, Participation and Public Petitions Committee. I am Bill Kidd, MSP for Glasgow Island, and as I told the oldest member of the committee, I have the pleasure of convening this meeting for the first two items of business. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome all members, and I look forward to working with those colleagues on this committee. Before we move to the first item on the agenda, I would like to remind everyone to switch mobile phones to silent, if you have not already done so. No apologies have been received, so we are all on board here today. Agenda item 1 is declarations of interest. The first agenda item is for each of us to declare any interests that we have that are relevant to the work of the committee. Background information is provided in the declaration of interest paper. First, I have to state that I have no relevant interests to declare. Now I am going to invite my colleagues to make their declarations, and, firstly, Jackson Carlaw. Can you make the declaration, please? Yes, I can confirm that I have no relevant interests to declare. Thank you very much, Jackson. That is Jackson Carlaw. Paul Sweeney, please. Thanks, chair. I have no relevant interests to declare. Thank you, Paul. That is Paul Sweeney. David Torrance, please. David Torrance has no relevant interests to declare. That is all item 2, which is the choice of conveners of the committee. The committee's task is to convener the paper, too. The partners of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party are eligible for nomination of the party's nominee and can ask Jackson Carlaw for the post. I would like to formally… Thank you very much indeed, minister. I am now vacating this chair for MSP convener. I am now vacating this chair for MSP convener. I am now vacating this chair for MSP convener. I am now vacating this chair for MSP convener. I am now vacating this chair for MSP convener. Can I do this conveners of this committee to show Stuart, all of whom I had the pleasure of working with in different committee? Having served on it and, I think, inherent to those two things, is the free-flowing exchange of views and what we're going to do our very best on behalf of the petitioners, whose petitions we will be considering. We have no idea what the petitions are outstanding, as a consequence of the deadline for which petitioners are in Parliament, even though some were still being tabled. What new work will come in the months ahead, I ask them to working with the next item, agenda item 3. The Parliament has agreed to draw on the members of the Scottish National Party, and I believe that David Torrance will be the nominee. Therefore, I am very pleased to be the convener of the committee. I have great pleasure in nominating David Torrance. Therefore, David, you are duly elected our deputy convener. I know that you are the continuing member of the committee previously on it, as it feels a hundred years ago now, but it is certainly an experience to bear and to the benefit of all of us. Congratulations on your meeting. I look forward to working with my colleagues. As you said, we do not know what is going to come our way, so it will be very interesting. As long as we can highlight the good work that the committee does, it is really important. As you said, this is now my first session on the Public Petitions Committee, so I am really looking forward to it. Thanks, David. Welcome to all the other members of the committee as well to it turns out, as older than me, to Paul and to Tess. I hope that we have a successful session ahead. Our fourth item this morning is to consider the work programme in outline terms. There are two or three decisions that I think would be useful for us to take. We will consider holding a business planning session. There will be an opportunity at that for us to consider the legacy report, just to consider and agree our statement of intent for the committee in the months ahead and the Parliament ahead, and also to discuss all the other relevant issues that we might wish to consider in terms of the way that we will take forward the work of the committee. I would very much like to propose that we agree to the holding of a planning session during the summer recess, and that all being equal that we aim to do this in person here in the Parliament at some point, probably in the final week of the recess. Does that meet the agreement of the committee? I won't call a division. We know from experience that that can then take half an hour, so I will take it that that was generally agreed. As a matter of course, the second item that we have before us is to consider the status of 15 petitions that the predecessor committee had referred to subject committees. Those were petitions that our predecessor committee had taken forward as far as they could, or had decided that it would be best taken forward by a subject committee. By convention, at the end of a Parliament, if those matters are still under discussion, the petition is referred back to the petitions committee, because it may well be that the subject committee that was previously considering it is disbanding or is reconstructed in a different form. We have 15 petitions in that category, and I would like to recommend that we now refer those petitions back to the most appropriate—it may in some cases be the most appropriate—subject committee that can take those petitions forward again. Are we content to do that? We are, thank you all very much. Do any members have any other matters that they would like us to consider this morning? Brief as we have been, I think we have covered the immediate items on the agenda, and I will take that as agreement that we have. We look forward to our first public meeting of the petitions committee at the start of the session after the summer recess.