 Welcome everybody to the first session of the Public Petitions Committee. May I remind everybody to switch off your mobile phones so that they can interfere with the sound system? If we move on now to agenda item one, it's a declaration of interest. I have one declaration of interest myself and that is in the member's interest and otherwise that's it. Can I go around the room? I have no registerable interest to declare. I have no registerable interest to declare. Thank you very much indeed. Item two, agenda item two, is the choice of convener. I sit in this position at the moment by dint of age but there we are. The committee's next task is to choose a convener and what we have to do now is the Parliament has agreed that only members of the Scottish Labour Party are eligible for nomination as a convener of this committee and therefore I understand that Joanne Lamont is the party's nominee for this post. Is that correct? Do we agree to choose Joanne Lamont as our convener? Right, I shall vacate the seat. I've kept it warm for you. Thank you very much and thank you for doing that. It's quite nice to win an election even if there's only one horse in the race so that's something of a relief. I thank you very much for your support and also recognise that it is a real privilege to be able to convene this committee. I think that it's a particularly important committee in the Parliament. I look forward to working with you. I'd also like to pay credit to Michael MacMahon, who was the outgoing chair of the committee. He was a good friend of mine but was a very fine parliamentary as well and we can learn a lot about how to work on a cross-party basis from what he did. Thank you very much for that. Our agenda item 3 is a choice of deputy convener. We have to choose a deputy convener. The Parliament has agreed that only members of the Scottish National Party are eligible for nomination as deputy convener of the committee. I understand that Angus MacDonald is the candidate from the SNP. We agreed that Angus MacDonald would be elected as deputy convener of the Petitions Committee. The main substantive item that we have of business today is agenda item 4, the work programme. There are a number of things that we have to agree. The first thing is that it has become a normal practice for committees to meet informally for the purpose of business planning and that meetings normally take place towards the end of the summer recess. Can we agree that, subject to the agreement of the clerks in terms of timings that we meet before the new session begins in September? Is that agreed? The second decision is whether to meet again before the summer recess to consider some of the petitions that have been carried over from session 4 and some new petitions that have not yet been considered. Is that agreed that we meet the week before recess? What we want to do now is to have a list of the petitions that have been carried over from session 4 in front of you. Of course, there has been some reference to that in the legacy paper from the previous committee for which we are grateful. My proposal is to go through Annex A and really just for people who want to comment on individual petitions, not in great detail but if you feel as particular ones, you think it would be worthwhile our looking at and then we will look at the Annex B, those that have come in since the committee stopped considering petitions. If it is possible, what I would like to do is get a flavour from the committee of the issues that are interesting around those petitions. If you were able to delegate to me responsibility for the final decision around which petitions we take at the next meeting, that will allow us to work with the clerks in terms of where petitions are in the system and where we can perhaps get people in to give us some evidence. Is that agreed? Okay, so if we can look at Annex A and what I'll do is I'll just take it through page by page and if you want to make a particular comment, a particular petition, then just catch my so we're starting on page 3, 1, 2, 3. Are there any there that people want to particularly flag up? Have you caused a set of these agendas, Annex, as I apologise? Failed to get that. Is there a hard copy? So we're on page 3. I should declare an interest in relation to 1, 3, 1, 9. I actually had dealings with this petition as a constitu member in Glasgow Pollock. It's William Smith and Scott Robertson and Willie Smith runs a football club in the constituent so I'm aware of issues around that one and it's one I think that's worth us looking at further. On page 4, 5. It doesn't mean that we won't look at these, it's just if there's a particular comment that people have on page 6, 7, 9. On page 6, I have an interest, I'm a councillor for Argymbu Council and I was filing as a councill colleague of mine, so I'd have to declare that interest. Okay, okay. Thanks for that. On page 8. I should declare an interest in that I've been involved as the local constituency member with PE 1563 and I would be keen for the committee to continue to look at this petition because there are ongoing issues in the constituency and throughout Scotland that the Scottish Government should be addressing and any pressure that we can put on from this petition would be welcome. Okay, thanks for that. We've got to page 9, page 10, page 11 and page 12. 1595, shared space schemes, I've been involved in that in the constituency. Okay, thanks very much. I think that you can see from the range of petitions there that people see a place for the petitions committee for a whole range of interesting issues and it's just a question of us managing our time to deal with them timuously and with respect for the petitioners. If we want to have a quick look then at Annex B, new petitions, anything on page 13, I don't know if the clerks have any advice on any that obviously we, you know, because these are not being dealt with at all. Maybe if you can just clarify for us what the procedure is for a new petition coming in. Certainly. When new procedures come in, what has been practiced in previous sessions is just for them to be dealt with in the order that they're lodged. So, in this case, the petitions starting at 1598 were the ones that were lodged longest ago, so we're probably the ones that the committee would look to schedule first. Okay. And page 14, page 15. Okay. I know, can we have those three in from the one petitioner? From just if he were to be asked to come along to give evidence perhaps he can address all three at the one time. Yep, yep, that's an option. So, interests on PE1598, I've had dealings not directly with Gail in the Adams, but on behalf of the council in matters concerning planning permission and locative. So, although whilst I'm not directly involved, I have been assisting the applicant in this particular, not in this case but I mean just generally, but I know he's a legal advisor to the salmon side. That's right. Okay, thanks very much. We have got through all of that then. I mean, I think certainly that I would quite like to make sure that not just the public session, but if people are seeing petitions that have got particular interest in or want to flag up to me and to hang us a deputy convene of their particular issues, I think that helps the consideration of what we've got to do. If I get it right, I think that we're finished. Yep, I think that we've dealt with all of the business and can I close this formal meeting of the petitions committee? Before we go, however, I think that we've got a couple of