Seòmar agus comataidhean

I agree, Mr Stewart. This committee, and its evolution into what it is now, is a perfect example of the Parliament being involved in participation. As you know, it has obviously gone from being the petitions committee to now being the key committee for all such engagement.

The Scottish Government believes that we need to work with the Parliament to ensure value for the process, which is what it is all about. If we are to deliver anything that comes from the citizens assemblies or any of those types of groups, we need to have in Parliament the processes through which we can do that. It goes without saying that we need to ensure that we work with the parliamentary authorities, of which—as I said—this committee is a perfect example.

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.

We talked about evaluation earlier on. We must ensure value for the people who are involved. It has struck me, when speaking to people who have been involved in a citizens assembly, that it is as though their eyes have been opened to a whole new world. Previously, politics and the political process were not for them, but all of a sudden their eyes have been opened. I want to keep that going.

However, at the same time we need to ensure that we can deliver something. If I am critical of how questions were asked previously—although I was not in post at the time—it is because they were massive questions, so it was difficult to distil information and deliver something, so that we could say, “You said that, and we have delivered on it.”

Mr Carlaw might be thinking that I am going back to our car sales backgrounds in saying that, but it is important. A councillor in Paisley, Jim Mitchell, used to say, “George Adam thinks it’s like selling cars all the time”, but the process is about people and we have to work with them in a certain way. The important thing is that we deliver, so that people feel that they get value from the process. As a minister, I hope to be able to move things in that direction.

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

In reflecting on those points, you raise a valid point about the inherent tension between representative democracy and participative democracy. There are inevitably conflicts. We can all sit here and notionally say, “Oh, it’d be great if everybody just agreed”—we might think that, if we just throw everybody into the process, it will spit out a harmonious outcome. In reality, however, that is very rarely the outcome. In politics, there are relationships and dynamics in conflict, and the potential for tyranny, whether by a majority or a minority.

I am keen to understand a bit more about, and hear your honest reflections on, the limitations of this approach. I will highlight one example that always strikes me—well, there are actually two. In my experience, participatory budgeting can often be an exercise in which those with the sharpest elbows win. Whoever can hustle the most people to an event—

As Doreen Grove said, we regularly look to international experience to try to find out what is best practice. I am sorry if I am repeating myself, but this is not going to happen overnight. We need to ensure that we get to a place where it is right, proper and delivers what we and—more important—the public want it to deliver. Will that always be simple? Probably not. It would be difficult to define it, but I understand why they came to that conclusion. Doreen, do you want to come in on that?

I come from a local government background. I was previously a councillor, and my first experience of such engagement was as a councillor. Local authority staff went to various groups and said, “These are our plans for the next year. What do you think?” I was one of the few councillors who turned up at every event, which was mainly because I enjoyed the engagement and liked seeing what was happening.

I can give a perfect example of that. Following the Bute house agreement, one of the subjects that the citizens assembly discussed was how to deal with local government finance. It will be interesting to see what the public come up with. Let us not kid ourselves: as politicians, that is something that we have discussed and have had various ideas about—certainly, over the past decade. It will be interesting to see what the public do when they get all the facts and everything is put in front of them. I will be interested in that. We will always work with COSLA on that area, in particular.

I am always one for considering different ways to approach things. This is not necessarily just about citizens assemblies. We can also consider using people’s panels, at which we could have engagement on a smaller scale. It is about engaging with the public and ensuring that they feel listened to.

As a politician, one of the things that I was interested in when I first came into post last year was work on the citizens assembly and Scotland’s future—it was one of the first bits of work that I read. I said to Doreen Grove then that I was, as a politician, trying to find bits on which I can deliver. That was in order to ensure—as the convener said—that we could meet the expectation that something will be delivered. I found it very difficult to pick something on which I could say, “I can deliver X, Y and Z”, because the subject is so complex.

One of the things that I have learned is that, as ministers, when we are asking questions, we should define things clearly. The question that was posed on local government finance in the citizens assembly was defined so that people could consider it. I could give examples of questions—such as on end-of-life choices—that we politicians have difficulty with, on which there are differences of opinion, and which people feel passionate about. I use end-of-life choices just as an example; I am not saying that there is a plan for a citizens assembly on that, but that considering such questions gives us real ideas about where we can go with them.

I have learned that less is more when asking such questions; you can get more value that way, from my perspective. I have gone off on a tangent, Mr Sweeney. In effect, what I am trying to say is that I believe that we should engage with local government on that example. However, we can work with local government on public participation in other ways as well.

Nothing jumps out from the recommendations as being the go-to, other than the fact that I want to get this right. I want the work to be of value to those involved in the process and I want to ensure that I, as a minister, can say that I was part of that process and that we managed to deliver something that changed our democracy for the better.

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.

Doreen Grove and I were having that very conversation as we came in. She will articulate that a lot better than I could.