Seòmar agus comataidhean

That shows Mr Byrne’s years of civil service training. [Laughter.]

Doreen Grove and I were talking about that on the way here. As with all things in life, it is probably best that we step back and look at the information, at this stage. Given the public’s expectation, if we get it wrong at this stage we will not recover. The convener alluded to that earlier. We will therefore take our time to make sure that we get the process correct so that we can deliver for the people who will be involved.

It struck me, when I was talking to people who were involved in previous citizens assemblies, how enthusiastic they were about absolutely everything to do with the process and how they felt that it had engaged them politically again. For us, that is obviously important. Politicians can all fall out and discuss the various points of the day, but the public can take a step back from the process, which is one of the advantages of participatory democracy. We will make sure that we get it right and will take time to deal with the issues.

Doreen Grove might have something to add—or she might contradict everything that I said.

No, we have no timescales at this stage. We appreciate the work that the IPDD did, and we will need to consider it in detail and ensure that we get things right. There will probably be difficult things in among all the recommendations. Nothing is ever easy if you are going to do it properly but, as Government, we need to suck it up, get on with it and do it at various points. As I said in response to the convener’s question, we will step back, look at the recommendations and ensure that we create the process that will deliver what the public wants.

I know that only too well.

I agree. Sometimes, we are going to ask questions, and we will get answers that we probably do not expect, as you say. As I have already said, it will be extremely interesting to see what a citizens assembly on local government finance comes back with when its members are presented with all the facts in front of them. It might not necessarily be an answer that any of us in this room would think that it might be.

On how we deal with and manage these things, I always use this example. Again, when I was a councillor, I was on Renfrewshire access panels for those with disabilities—there were such panels all over Scotland. Initially, I went into the room and found angry people who were not being listened to by the local authority. I got to the stage of getting them involved, exactly as you say. I said, “The town hall’s being renovated and you’re part of the planning process—get in there and find out how we can make it accessible.” It is about ensuring that people can be involved and actually deliver something. That is always going to be the most important thing.

Is that easy to achieve? No. Is it challenging? Yes, but nothing good in life that is worth doing is easy. We are all used to the political process—as you quite rightly said, Mr Sweeney—and how we deal with such things, but this is a completely different animal. It is a situation in which the public may, on certain occasions, give us answers that we will be surprised by. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. Does Government need to take those answers seriously when they come in? Yes, it does. Will that be challenging as we go forward? Probably, but we need to roll up our sleeves and get on with it.

You will. It will not be the first time or the last time.

We would. As I said in my opening remarks, we thank the group for its work, which gives us an opportunity to reflect; it has given us pause for thought. You might be surprised to hear that the Government does not believe that it has a monopoly on good ideas. It is always interesting to hear what others have to say.

The short answer to your question is yes.

The perfect example comes from one of the people’s panels that we did on the lived experience of those with Covid, because it was an example of horses for courses. At that stage, we thought a people’s panel would be the best way to get the information that we needed from members of the public who lived with Covid. Politicians get caught in the bubble of Parliament, so the panel gave us an opportunity to look at how the public dealt with Covid. The long and short answer is that participatory democracy is an important part of Covid recovery and we could use it as an option to enable us to deliver the commitments and listen to people.

With your indulgence, convener, I will say a few words to start with. Thank you for the invitation to give evidence to the committee. I welcome the opportunity to talk about the IPDD working group’s report, the Scottish Government’s response to it, and our ambitions for the future of participatory and deliberative democracy in Scotland.

I thank the members of the IPDD working group for all their hard work. We value their input, which will help us to build on the range of good work that we have done so far on participatory and deliberative democracy—that’s easy for me to say, convener.

In many ways, Scotland is, among the nations of the United Kingdom, leading in strengthening our democracy. We recognise that innovation in participatory and deliberative democracy offers a range of benefits. For example, people feel listened to, their trust in Government improves, we are better equipped to take complex and difficult decisions, policies are better informed and more successful, and Scotland’s democracy is strengthened.

Scotland has so far held two citizens assemblies, both of which were established to deal with complex issues, on the basis that the policy outcomes would be improved. We know from the evaluations of each assembly that members, including the children who were involved in the climate assembly, enjoyed their experience, learned a lot, and want to take part in more such activities.

The combination of benefits is why we have committed to running more regular citizens assemblies, including a citizens assembly for under 16s. We have also committed to offering people more opportunities at a smaller scale in order that they can be meaningfully involved in decisions that matter to them. Those are big commitments, and we recognise that they represent new parts of our democracy. We know that we will need infrastructure and new processes to deliver on those commitments and to learn lessons from the previous assemblies. That is why the IPDD working group was convened in summer 2021.

We are now considering the working group’s recommendations and will publish our response in due course. As always, I am happy to take questions.

I could talk on that for five minutes, but I had probably better ask Doreen Grove, who was at the coalface, to answer.