Petition 01451, Public Petitions Committee hearing

At some point you will be able to see it for yourself, if you didn't already see it (it will pop up here at some point: there will also be a transcript). It follows directly after a petition on treatment for congenital heart patients. If you go to boil the kettle, you might miss it: they dispose of it in under a minute. They decided to refer the petition to the Health & Sport Committee.

The clerk of the public petitions committee also replied to my email yesterday, saying:

At this stage, the Note by the Clerk is essentially just the SPICe briefing.  It will be up to the Committee to decide tomorrow what action to take on the petition and that will include from whom to seek views.

 Clearly nervous about considering the merits of a petition so opposed to the Government's preferred direction of travel that they have handed back the chalice to the Health & Sport Committee.

(There was a write-up today from Magnus Gardham at the Herald. He includes a reminder that the Scottish Government wishes to make Scotland smoke-free by 2030. He is downbeat at the prospects of the petition being successful – but I did point out to him that the public petitions committee looked set to call on tobacco-funded interests to speak in our favour.)