The Scottish Parliament’s public petitions system allows individuals and organisations to submit formal requests for the Parliament to act.
The Parliament will go into campaign recess on 26 March, ahead of dissolution on 9 April and the general election on 7 May 2026. The ‘pre-election campaign period’ (the campaign recess and dissolution) will have significant implications for parliamentary business, including scrutiny of petitions. This blog sets out how petitions work, how they are scrutinised, and what happens to them at the end of a parliamentary session.
SPICe has also published a briefing on dissolution and a blog on what happens to bills at dissolution.
What are petitions?
Petitions are formal requests to the Parliament which can be submitted by individual people or organisations. They cannot be submitted by MSPs.
Rule 15.5 of the Standing Orders sets out the rules for what the Parliament can be petitioned about (‘admissibility’). These include the requirement that petitions must be about something that is in the Scottish Parliament’s or Scottish Government’s powers and relevant to the whole country.
Rule 15.4.2 of the Standing Orders and a determination by the Public Petitions Committee provide further details about the form petitions must take to be considered by the Committee.
Parliamentary scrutiny of petitions
Public petitions are considered by the Public Petitions Committee. This is a mandatory committee, which during Session 6 has been called the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee. Rule 6.10 of the Standing Orders sets out the responsibilities of the Committee:
- deciding whether a petition is admissible
- deciding what action to take on admissible petitions
- keeping the operation of the petitions system under review.
After a petition is submitted (generally through the Parliament’s online petitions system), it is reviewed to make sure it meets the Parliament’s rules.
Petitions are published on the petitions website where people can sign them to show their support. Anyone may sign a petition. Petitions can continue to be signed while under consideration by the Parliament but there is no minimum number of signatures required for petitions to be considered by the Committee. SPICe publishes a briefing on each new petition.
Rule 15.6 of the Standing Orders sets out what action the Committee may take in relation to petitions. In practice, actions taken by the Committee can include:
- asking for evidence from the Scottish Government, other organisations, or people
- writing to the petitioner for more information or inviting them to talk to the Committee about the petition
- ‘referring’ (sending) the petition to another committee
- recommending actions for the Scottish Government
- asking for a debate about the petition in the Chamber
- closing the petition.
What is the timeline for considering petitions?
There is no set timeline for scrutiny of petitions.
Petitions may be considered over one or several committee meetings. According to Rule 15.7 of the Standing Orders, the Public Petitions Committee may close a petition at any time. According to Rule 15.8 of the Standing Orders, the Committee must notify the petitioner “as soon as practicable” if:
- it makes a decision in relation to a petition’s admissibility
- it takes action in relation to a petition
- it closes the petition.
What happens if a petition remains open at the end of a session?
According to Rule 15.4.4 of the Standing Orders, a petition may be lodged with the Parliament at any time when the office of the Clerk is open and the Parliament is not dissolved. The final day that the office of the Clerk is open before campaigning recess and dissolution is 25 March 2026, so petitions can be lodged until then.
However, the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee decided in a meeting held on 24 September 2025 not to publish or consider petitions received after the cut-off date of 10 October 2025. The petitions website states:
This is to ensure all petitions currently in the system can be considered before the next Scottish Parliament election. It is also unlikely that the Committee would be able to schedule and meaningfully progress petitions submitted after 10 October before the election.
Parliament will be in campaign recess from 26 March to 8 April 2026, during which parliamentary business stops and no further scrutiny of petitions will take place. Parliament will dissolve on 9 April 2026, at which point the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee, along with all other committees, will cease to exist and all parliamentary proceedings end.
In contrast to bills, petitions lodged during a parliamentary session do not ‘fall’ at dissolution and may be considered across sessions. Parliamentary scrutiny of petitions will, however, pause until the new Parliament meets and new committees are established.
At the beginning of previous sessions, the Public Petitions Committee has re-referred all petitions that had been referred to other committees and which remained open, but this practice is not binding. The Session 7 Public Petitions Committee will be able to decide how it wants to proceed with petitions carried over from Session 6.
How many petitions are currently being considered?
As of 17 March 2026, 10 petitions remain open. This includes petitions submitted in previous sessions that have not yet been closed. A list of all petitions submitted in Session 6, as well as petitions submitted in Sessions 5, 4 and 3 that remain open, is available on the Scottish Parliament’s webpage.
17 March 2026
Annie Bosse, SPICe Research