Legacy Report - Scottish Affairs Contents


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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Prepared 27 March 2015