Special petitions meeting for young people!

I wanted to post up a quick note on the outcome of our discussion this afternoon regarding our idea for a special public petitions committee meeting to consider petitions from young people. I am really pleased that we agreed to take this forward (we highlighted the idea in our petitions inquiry report (para.33) earlier this year).
So what happens next? Well, we have already started discussions with Young Scot and the Scottish Youth Parliament about how to make this happen. It's great that we are going to work with these key bodies and tap into the skill and expertise they have. We want to encourage a number of petitions from across Scotland, which will emerge from the grassroots and cover issues that matter to young people. We will provide the forum for these petitions to be discussed and to hear from the young petitioners themselves. Provisionally we have agreed 15 June for this meeting at a venue to be agreed. It may be here at Holyrood, it may be external - perhaps linking in with a project which SYP is taking forward.
Of course I'll keep you updated on how we move forward with this.
Frank McAveety MSP, Convener of the PPC