Engage @ Scottish Parliament

Timeframe: November 2019 – present

The Scottish Parliament runs Engage, its citizen participation platform, on our open-source Your Priorities software. What started in 2019 with three consultations — Community Wellbeing, a new Civil Partnership Bill and Climate Change — has grown into one of the longest-running parliamentary engagement programmes in Europe, with 24 active communities on the platform today.

From consultations to committee infrastructure

Engage is no longer a series of one-off consultations: it has become standing infrastructure for the Parliament's committees. Dedicated communities support the work of the Criminal Justice Committee, the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, Net Zero, Energy and Transport, Education, Children and Young People, Local Government, Housing and Planning, and the Equalities and Human Rights Committee — alongside the Parliament's wider Participation Network.

Recent projects show the range: the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee heard the public on the high-profile Dualling the A9 petition PE1992; the 25 Years of the Scottish Parliament anniversary programme asked Scots about the Parliament's future; and committees have used the platform for scrutiny of the National Care Service Bill and the COVID-19 Recovery Committee's work.

Latest: lived experience that moved a parliament

The strongest recent example landed in 2026. For its inquiry into ADHD and autism pathways and support, the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee deliberately split its evidence-gathering: organisations and service providers answered a formal call for views, while individuals and families with lived experience told their stories through Your Priorities — the channel chosen specifically for ordinary people.

In its report, published in early 2026, the Committee drew on that lived experience to call for urgent national action: a national plan so that autistic people and people with ADHD can access clear, consistent support pathways no matter where in Scotland they live. From a citizen typing their family's story into the platform, to a parliamentary committee demanding national change — that is the pipeline this platform was built for.

Case in point: the fireworks law

When the Criminal Justice Committee scrutinised the Fireworks and Pyrotechnic Articles (Scotland) Bill, it used Engage to put the Bill's hardest questions directly to the public: police powers to stop, search and seize fireworks, council-designated firework control zones, licensing with mandatory online training and £30–50 fees, age restrictions, and whether the proposed law went too far — or not far enough. Citizens debated ten such topics point by point, in Your Priorities' structured for-and-against format, and the committee took the results into its scrutiny. The Bill became the Fireworks and Pyrotechnic Articles (Scotland) Act 2022.

Why it works

• It overcomes distance. "It overcomes barriers of time and space," says Alistair Stoddart, senior participation specialist in the Parliament's committee engagement unit — involving people who live far from Edinburgh in committee work.
• Deliberation beats polling. Independent points for and against each idea give committees a clearer picture of public reasoning than yes/no consultation responses — and let "hot button" issues be debated with minimum acrimony.
• Citizens keep coming back. By early 2022 more than 40,000 people had visited the platform and over 6,000 had created accounts to take part directly — and the programme has kept expanding every session since.

Read more in Democracy Technologies: Scotland embraces digital democracy at parliamentary level, or visit engage.parliament.scot.