Greg Fleming

And sometimes you can just say, look, actually, I just want to go straight to the next stage.

So the next stage is that you then have to find an MP who is willing to present it to the House.

And that happens at the beginning of the next question time.

So anyone who watches Parliamentary TV will know that the first item of business after the prayer is the Speaker announces that petitions have been presented.

The Clerk of the House reads those out.

They always say they have been referred to the Petitions Select Committee.

And that's why we end up with literally hundreds of petitions a year coming to the Petitions Select Committee.

So it's a full select committee and so far as it operates by the same rules, same support structures, same requirements or standing orders apply to it.

Where it's different is that we don't work on legislation.

So the recommendations that we make are just there.

We don't have the power to actually affect any change to either laws or policies.

So what we are is a forum for members of the public to be heard within a parliamentary context.

It can require submissions, and we usually do, from the likes of government departments or other specialist agencies.

And we'll hold a hearing for all of those.

So we don't invite public submissions.

It's all very much specialist advice.

But the hearings themselves are public, so it's still on Zoom like any committee hearing is.

People can Zoom in and watch it, or they can come into Parliament and watch it live.

And then at the end of all of that, we then work with the clerks of the committee to draw up a report which summarises all of the findings, and then we make a recommendation.

So we have to write a report back to the House, and the report back either says that we asked the House to take note of our report, and that's simply our way of just going, here's all the stuff we've got, we don't have a particular opinion on it,