4 Outreach
40. One of our key priorities during this Parliament
has been to talk to as many individuals and organisations on the
ground in Scotland as possible, to understand how they are affected
by some of the policies which have been the subject of our inquiries,
and to improve the impact and efficacy of our scrutiny. In order
to achieve this, we have undertaken an extensive programme of
oral evidence and informal visits in Scotland. We have travelled
to many parts of Scotland, on multiple occasions, during this
Parliament, including to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Peebles, Dumfries,
Aberdeen, Galashiels, Dundee, Oban, Inverness, the Shetland Islands,
Orkney, Wick, Thurso, Tiree, Barra, and Lewis.[31]
We were also pleased to be able to take part in an event in Stirling,
as part of the first Parliamentary Outreach week, in which we
discussed both the nature of select committees in general and
the work of the Scottish Affairs Committee in particular.
41. Before we launched our inquiries into the Crown
Estate in Scotland and Our Borderlands-Our future,
we held informal seminars in Scotland with key stakeholders in
order to inform our terms of reference. The seminars allowed us
to identify a broad range of witnesses so that were we able to
hear oral evidence from those beyond the pool of 'usual suspects'.
We have also held informal meetings with people directly affected
by issues raised during our inquiries. These have helped us to
fully evaluate the impact of particular policies on the lives
of those people most affected by them. For example, we visited
Castlemilk and Glenrothes during inquiries into the bedroom tax,
met fishermen in Orkney during our inquiry into the Crown Estate
in Scotland, and with redundant workers in Glasgow following the
closure of City Link. During our inquiry into zero hours contracts
we met informally workers who were in different types of insecure
employment in order to learn directly from their experiences.
42. In order to further extend our reach, during
2013-14, we successfully piloted the filming of our evidence sessions
in Scotland, so that a full broadcast would be available to the
public via Parliament's YouTube channel. However, we were unable
to secure the live broadcasting of these sessions as we had hoped.
We urge our successor Committee to seek agreement from the House
authorities that future evidence sessions undertaken by the Scottish
Affairs Committee in Scotland will be recorded for broadcast and
webcast live.
43. Over this Parliament we have been frustrated
by the unwillingness of the Scottish Parliament to allow us to
use Holyrood for our formal evidence sessions, which would have
significantly reduced the cost of our public sessions in Scotland.
We very much hope that in this post Referendum period of conciliation
and co-operation, that the Scottish Parliament will reconsider
its disappointing position and will permit our successor Committee
the use of its facilities.
31 See House of Commons Sessional Returns for further
details of the Committee's visits. Back
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