Written evidence

The Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee can seek views to inform its consideration of petitions.

Written evidence helps the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee understand more about the issues in a petition including:

• information about the petition
• any challenges and solutions 
• whether the petition is realistic 
• other work that might be happening to address the petition 

Requirements

Your evidence must be:

• about the action the petition is asking for
• no more than 1000 words
• accurate
• received by the deadline we give you

We cannot publish some information. This includes:

• information about a local, personal, or individual matter (like a specific complaint made to an organisation)
• names of other people or information that makes it clear who someone is, unless that person is an MSP or senior leader (like the chief executive of an organisation)
• language that is offensive, defamatory, or inappropriate (for example swear words, insults or sarcasm)
• copies of correspondence (including letters and emails) between yourself and other people – please summarise these in your submission
• copies of correspondence between other people (for example an e-mail conversation between your MSP and an organisation) – please summarise these in your submission
• copies of Freedom of Information responses – please summarise these in your submission
• photographs
• copies of legislation or statutory guidance – please send a link to these
• information that is copyright
• information about cases that are being considered by the courts or will be soon
• links to webpages with commenting sections (like news articles)

We check any views we receive to make sure they meet these guidelines before we can publish them. If we cannot publish what you send us we will let you know why and give you the chance to change what you wrote.

Petitioners’ views

If you are the petitioner, we may ask you to send your views as we look at your petition. This may be:

• to respond to other evidence
• if there is new information to share

Please make sure anything you send us is new information and not something you have sent before.

Views from organisations

If you are sending views on behalf of an organisation, the submission is published under the organisation’s name

More information

You can read the privacy notice on submitting your views which explains how we will treat your submission.

If you have any questions, including how you can make a submission in another format (e.g. large print), please contact the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee team:

email: petitions.committee@Parliament.Scot

telephone: 0131 348 5254