Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (Local Office Closures) (PE1425)
Item 2 is consideration of new petitions. There are three new petitions for consideration today. The first new petition is PE1425, in the name of Maureen Harkness, on the adverse impact of the closure of Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency local offices. Members have a note from the clerk, a briefing from the Scottish Parliament information centre and the petition.
Good afternoon, convener and committee members. Thank you for allowing me the time to do this little presentation about the possible closure of all 39 DVLA local offices in the United Kingdom.
Thank you very much for your presentation. Thank you also for the briefing that you gave me and the Inverness provost, Jimmy Gray, some months ago.
That is what the DVLA says will happen. Rural Scotland does not always have the best broadband access or mobile phone service availability. I know that from living in an area that does not get a lot of service. People in rural areas will be restricted in the services that they can get. Although the DVLA could be available 24 hours a day online or on the phone, if you do not have access to some services, you are not getting a wider choice. It is not as efficient or easy for you to go and see somebody and sort out your problems.
In the past, there has been a lot of agreement across the political parties about ensuring that there is a transfer of public sector jobs throughout Scotland and that such jobs should not just be maintained in the central belt. However, the proposal seems to be in contradiction to that because, if many of your staff are not willing to be transferred to Swansea, it is taking jobs away.
It is completely unfeasible for us to move anywhere else. Even within local government in the Inverness area, there is not a lot of choice for moving to another department. There is no doubt that there will be unemployed people.
Do any of your colleagues wish to add anything at this stage?
There are 1,213 jobs in the DVLA throughout the UK, of which 120 are in Scotland. The equivalent net gain for the main administration office in Swansea will be only 300 jobs. At the most recent consultation meeting, it appeared that those would be only temporary jobs as the Government looks for online solutions. In the consultation process, it seemed that the Government was a long way from finding a suitable online solution. The union predicts that the process will be up and running by 2015 to 2017.
That is a useful point. I do not think many members were aware of that.
No, not at the moment.
I am very concerned about the proposal because the largest loss of jobs in Scotland will be at West Campbell Street in my constituency. It is reminiscent of the passport office closures proposed by the Westminster Government. Although consultation took place, I would say that the Government’s mind had already been made up before the consultation ended. Centralisation is an issue of great concern for me and for the workers in Glasgow.
I have been directly involved in the consultation. The consultation document was considered a sham by the union. You might be able to see it online. I have been involved in consultations for the likes of the coastguard, and this was one of the poorest that I have seen. The UK Government’s guidelines on consultations state that impact assessments have to be done. For example, there has to be an equality impact assessment. There is a duty on the department, although it is not a full legal duty because of the weakness of equalities law. An equality impact assessment for the staff was not done before the end of the consultation, and the one for the service users throughout the UK, including those in Scotland, has only started to be done. The guidelines state that they should be done as part of the consultation.
That is an interesting point and a pertinent one, considering that, if an MSP introduces a bill, they have to hold a consultation with everyone who is interested. I am sure that other members will pick up the point about the consultation.
It is quite possible. At present, there is seven days’ leeway, but the DVLA is hoping to change the legislation so that tax discs for new cars are issued from Swansea and not from the local offices, and the period would be increased to 14 days. The owner of a new car that went out without a tax disc would have 14 days to get it. If it did not arrive in the post, it could be another seven days before the customer realised that, if they remembered at all. They would not be able to go to a local office to get a duplicate, so untaxed cars could be on the road for anything up to four weeks. I think that that would impact on people’s insurance, as having a valid tax disc is a requirement, along with the vehicle being roadworthy.
The DVLA was hoping to tack the changes on to the finance bill that has just gone through at Westminster, but it missed that window of opportunity. That put back its plans, and it has not even come to a decision on the consultation. Also, it does not have a plan for what we call automatic first registration and licensing—AFRAL—which is where the 14-day rule was to be implemented. A trial of that is no longer feasible because the DVLA missed the window of opportunity to get it into legislation, so at present it is stuck with the existing period that the police allow for new vehicle licensing, which I think is five to seven working days. The DVLA is on the back foot on that one.
Thank you.
Let us stick with the consultation. I confess that, until I read about the petition, I was unaware that the consultation had happened. I believe that it ended on 20 March. Was it a three-month consultation?
Initially. It was done for the shortest possible period, and the DVLA breached the Government guidelines again, in that the guidelines state that traditional holiday periods should be avoided, but the DVLA did the consultation over Christmas. It was trying to rush it through. If there was a way of doing things wrong in a consultation, the DVLA found it. It has a project team trying to push the changes through, but there is no information about what it is doing. In good old civil service manner, the DVLA has appointed a new project team to oversee the project team, so that has delayed things further. With Westminster going into recess on 25 July, we expect an announcement to be made towards the end of June or the beginning of July. That will set the processes going.
It strikes me that, on such a significant issue, just over 900 consultation responses is not many. Was the consultation well publicised? I did not know about it, but that might just have been me.
Quite a lot of the work to publicise the consultation was done by the trade union, which asked its members to hand the consultation over to customers. Until a week ago, the agency was trying to put things online, but it never put the consultation document online. The trade union also issued a questionnaire that was similar, in a lot of ways, to the consultation. It received responses from 1,400 car dealerships from across the UK, which were 8:1 in favour of keeping the local offices open. We are here for the trade union, which is protecting our jobs, but there is also a huge issue for car dealers.
I appreciate that. Have you and others made representations to the Westminster Government about the flaws in the consultation?
Yes. There is an early day motion in Westminster just now suggesting that the consultation should be extended. Frank Doran MP, from Aberdeen, also secured an adjournment debate on the issue, which concentrated initially on enforcement. At the start, the plans were so poor that not only was the DVLA going to withdraw the local offices, it was going to withdraw enforcement. There are about 30 workers in Glasgow whose job is enforcement. If anybody in Scotland had ended up in court in Scotland for not paying for their tax disc, the procurator fiscal would have wanted a witness from the DVLA and it would have had to fly people up from Swansea. The average case gathers only £150 to £200 and I do not know the cost of flights from Cardiff airport to Edinburgh or Inverness. There is a code for the closure of enforcement cases on the ground of economic efficiency, and such cases would just have been closed off. The Daily Mail would then have run a story about road tax cheats getting away with murder in Scotland.
That is another important point. It would seem crazy if staff from Swansea had to come up to deal with court cases in Scotland. There would be a huge cost involved in that, as you say.
On the back of that debate, the agency has agreed to enter into discussions with the trade union to see how many enforcement staff it needs to keep in Scotland to send to court. That is a small victory for the trade union.
Good. I am glad to hear it.
I have experience of dealing with the local DVLA office in Aberdeen and the DVLA in Swansea, and I know which one I prefer. I imagine that the office in Inverness is particularly significant for people who live in remote rural areas. Many of those people will be in areas that do not have a post office, so they will travel to their local DVLA office. What is the likely impact of the closures on people who, for whatever reason, want a face-to-face service when they are renewing their tax disc or something like that? I know that that can be done at post offices, but that is easier in some places than it is in others.
In any case, if the DVLA were to use the Post Office as an intermediary, it would use only main post offices in the cities and major towns. As the plans stand, there would be an impact on rural communities even if the DVLA went through with that. There will be no face-to-face DVLA interaction for people in rural areas that do not have post offices, such as areas around Inverness and in the Scottish Borders. As I said, there are no plans as yet to continue to use the Post Office. I believe that the Post Office contract comes to an end next year and that the DVLA is in the process of tendering a new intermediary contract. It remains to be seen what face-to-face contact, if any, there will be for anyone.
In some rural areas, post offices issue tax discs, but only in cases in which the person is the registered keeper. Post offices cannot change tax classes—they cannot change from disabled to petrol or vice versa—and they cannot do a change of keeper. They can do only straightforward taxing of vehicles. As members will imagine, there are a lot of heavy goods vehicles in rural areas, but post offices cannot tax HGVs or special vehicles. Without local offices, everything that is not straightforward will have to be sent to Swansea. People will have to wait for it to come back and will then go to the post office to tax the vehicle.
That leads me on to my next question. For whatever reason, there are times when people leave it until the last minute to get their new tax disc or they forget that their tax disc needs to be renewed. Obviously, there is only a certain grace period—
There is no grace period.
I thought that there was, so I have been misinformed—not that I have ever used the grace period, I hasten to put on record.
Nobody does.
In some situations, a quick turnaround is necessary. That is particularly true for a small business, which could have a van or a fleet of vans off the road for a week because a 24-hour or at-the-counter turnaround is not possible.
Absolutely.
It is an urban myth that there is a 14-day grace period. There has never been anything in legislation or elsewhere on that. However, the DVLA plans to make that urban myth real. To return to the crime issue, the DVLA had to start doing accurate surveys following the death of Jill Dando. When the police tried to get her killer, they could not find out who had been driving the suspect’s car because the DVLA’s vehicle database was inaccurate and they had to go through about 14 or 15 keepers. Following the work that was done, the DVLA’s figures show that, when a policeman notices that a disc is out of date, 23 per cent of the time, the person does not get done—
Is that a technical term?
Aye. In 23 per cent of cases, the person does not get done just for the tax disc, because the insurance is out, too. There are other percentages for cases that go on to higher crimes, including where a warrant is out for the person. The police are trained that an out-of-date disc is an indicator and an excuse to stop a vehicle. If the DVLA introduces that 14-day period and we have discs that are out of date for 14 days, how will the police differentiate? That will mean that 23 per cent of the people who the police do not stop will be committing other crimes.
That is a good point. I remember reading that, when there was a crackdown on crime in New York, the police connected problems with cars to wider problems with crime.
A number of valid and salient points have been made. I am concerned about the belief that the consultation was a sham and about the fact that the consultation was done over the Christmas and new year holiday period. I am also concerned that no equalities impact assessment is on the horizon. We would expect at least to have a date for when we will see the result of an impact assessment.
Thank you for that observation, and I thank the witnesses for their contributions. The petition is interesting and worthy in many ways, in that it raises issues to do with the centralisation of jobs and the vital role that your members play throughout Scotland. I think that the petition is important and that our consideration of it should continue. I suggest that we write to the Scottish Government to ask what discussions it has had with the UK Government and to ask what its view is on the strengths of the petition.
I entirely agree. When we ask those questions, can we send the Scottish Government the transcript of the discussion? A number of pertinent issues were raised, particularly in relation to crime and people who are not insured. We could highlight that part of the discussion, to show why we are so concerned.
I agree with what members have said. Can we take action on the process of the consultation? Must we do that through the Scottish Government or can we write directly?
The clerks are telling me that we can write directly to the originators of the consultation to express our concern.
Valid concerns have been expressed about the process, apart from anything else.
That is a fair point.
I am concerned about the impact assessment and the timescale—or lack of timescale. We are talking about a serious number of jobs. I do not think that I have ever passed the Glasgow office without seeing people queueing outside. I cannot believe that all those people will start using computers to do everything online from here on in.
Do members agree that we should continue consideration of the petition by writing to the Scottish Government, to ask about its discussions with the UK Government and to seek its view on the petition, and by writing to Westminster to express our concern about the nature of the consultation?
We will keep the petitioners informed about the next steps when we have had some feedback. I thank our three witnesses for coming along; your evidence was helpful.
National Donor Breast Milk Bank (PE1426)
Our second petition is PE1426, by Donna Scott, on a national donor breast milk bank service. Members have the clerk’s note, the Scottish Parliament information centre briefing and the petition.
Before we begin, convener, I declare that the petitioner, Donna Scott, is one of my constituents and that I know her and have been working with her on this issue.
Thank you for that. I ask Donna Scott to make her presentation, after which I will invite the committee to ask some questions.
Good afternoon, convener and committee members.
Thank you for your evidence. You make a strong and compelling case. You mentioned the international evidence. What best practice can you identify—first, in the rest of the UK, and secondly throughout Europe? Are there examples of a national milk bank service that works in a particular nation state or large territory?
Throughout the rest of the UK, the provision of donor milk is a patchwork. I cannot cite any examples, because services tend to operate in their own local areas.
Have you identified any constraints on health boards, apart from money? Why are other health boards not looking at the milk bank as an excellent initiative on which Yorkhill is leading the way in Scotland?
Given Scotland’s population distribution, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde has a larger number of babies who require neonatal care, and they are treated at Yorkhill. Because other health boards have not had access to the resource, they have not been using it, so on the surface the demand has not been there. The more that clinicians and parents realise that the resource is available and can be used, the more use of it will become common practice.
Has there been any interest from the third sector or the co-operative movement? There seems to be an ideal opportunity for them to get involved in this development across Scotland.
Not to my knowledge.
Perhaps that is something that we can pursue as a committee.
Thank you for your interesting presentation. As the convener said, you make a good case. Politicians inevitably think of money, and at present budgets are stretched, including health board budgets. Have you done any research on relative costings for a national donor breast milk bank and for banks set up by individual health boards? Do you have any figures on that, or is there anywhere we could go to get them?
I have read estimates and my understanding is that to set up a new milk bank would cost about £200,000. That includes staff training, all the necessary infrastructure and everything that is required within that. It would therefore be quite a big financial undertaking to set up separate banks around Scotland. That is why enhancing and expanding what we have is the most effective and efficient approach.
It strikes me that that cost is not enormous in terms of health service budgets. I do not know whether the Government has done any costings, but that is something that the committee can find out.
Welcome to the committee, Donna. My first question is for Mr Kelly, who I know has been working with the Yorkhill milk bank to transport milk from donors to the bank, and from the bank to other health boards where there is sufficient capacity, although there is also demand from elsewhere. Will you expand on the work that ScotsERVS does with the Yorkhill milk bank?
ScotsERVS is a charity that operates throughout Scotland and transports any medical items that the NHS needs quickly. The NHS might be used to using other means such as taxis or expensive couriers, but we transport for free.
There will be a certain window of time within which donated milk has to get from the donor to the bank or from the bank to the health board that requested it. What is that window? If you were in Glasgow and a call came from Inverness because donor milk was required there, are you confident that you could deliver within a viable timeframe?
All our vehicles are specially adapted, and we have specialist refrigerated boxes. The boxes that the NHS supplied to us can only refrigerate for a maximum of eight hours, which is more or less fine for Scotland. The boxes that our charity has purchased refrigerate for 24 hours, so we can provide unlimited UK coverage for what is inside the box.
Donna, I am aware that you took a large amount of milk to donate to the Glasgow milk bank, which I think was before ScotsERVS was involved. Will you expand on what you did?
My son was discharged from the neonatal unit at the end of April 2011. I was in the fortunate position of being able to fully breastfeed my son upon leaving the unit. However, I had been expressing to save, and by June 2011 I had 5.5 litres of expressed milk. Of course, that was far more than I needed, so I wanted to make a donation. However, doing that was very difficult.
You spoke about the issues of demand and the difficulty in measuring demand in areas that do not offer a donor milk service. If the service is not there and the available service is not being promoted, how can demand be measured?
Many people that I have spoken to—parents and non-parents—have said that they did not know that milk banks existed. People think that milk banks are a great idea. At an individual level, one friend that I spoke to was particularly concerned that she might need donor milk, which she knew could not be accessed—at the time—in Aberdeen. I have also heard that health professionals have assumed that people can get donor milk outwith Glasgow. For example, some surgeons have assumed that milk is available. They do not realise how the system falls short.
When we spoke to NHS Grampian, it stated that it would be interested in linking into a national service but that it would not be able to set up its own milk bank. Have you had any contact with other health boards on whether they would be interested in Scotland having a national infrastructure rather than their having to face the up-front costs of establishing their own milk banks?
I have not.
The committee might want to take that up.
I declare an interest as, many years ago, I was a contributor to the milk bank at Yorkhill. Also, I believe that I know Councillor Brothers’s father from a number of years ago, when I was a councillor in Renfrewshire.
As you say, ScotsERVS is a voluntary organisation that relies on public generosity and companies sponsoring us to meet our costs for fuel, vehicles, repairs and so on.
If there is to be true parity, some sort of contribution will have to be made by the other health boards as well, or we will need some central funding in order to make the milk banks into a national resource. I do not know how that would work within the NHS, but that would be important.
I think that this is an excellent initiative and I recommend to the committee that we continue the petition. I suggest that we write to the Scottish Government to find out whether it might want to roll out the service across Scotland. It would be in the best position to do that, although in saying that, I do not mean to knock the work that Yorkhill is doing. Do members have any other suggestions?
I absolutely agree that we should continue the petition. We should write to the Scottish Government to find out its response to what the petition seeks. We should write to NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde to get its response and to ask about its experience of its work on the donor breast milk service that it provides. We could also write to ask ScotsERVS—Jase Kelly’s organisation—and the United Kingdom Association for Milk Banking for their responses.
I call Mark McDonald, who has been very involved in the issue.
When we write to NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde to ask about its experience, we should ask it about the potential for expanding what it offers and whether it has assessed how much an expansion would cost. I suggest that we also write to the other territorial health boards to ask them what internal discussions they have had about donor milk, whether they would be interested in linking into a national infrastructure and whether they have considered establishing a milk bank. We spoke about the national versus the network approach. Ironing out such issues in the responses would be the way to go.
I have no idea what the proposal would cost. I presume that NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde knows what its service costs, but I do not know whether financial investigations have been done by other health boards or the Government. It would be interesting to find out about that from the organisations that have been mentioned.
I suspect that the UK Association for Milk Banking will be able to help on the costs, as it works with all the milk banks across the UK. There are a number of milk banks in England, which could perhaps provide comparative figures.
Elaine Smith MSP brought the issue to Parliament and the cabinet secretary Nicola Sturgeon replied on it, but it is important to go back to the cabinet secretary, because she gave an assurance that she would involve her officials, so some answers might be available already. It is obviously unfair that a postcode lottery applies to who gets milk.
I think that we all agree that the petition is interesting and that we will pursue it with the various bodies that members identified. We will keep the petitioner informed about the next step with the petition. I thank both witnesses for giving useful evidence.
Access to Justice (Non-corporate Multiparty Actions) (PE1427)
The third new petition is PE1427, by Rob Kirkwood on behalf of Leith Links residents association, on access to justice for non-corporate multiparty groups. Members have the note by the clerk, which is paper 3, the SPICe briefing and the petition. I welcome Malcolm Chisholm, who has a constituency interest in the petition.
Thank you. The petition is our second on the issue. The first, which was supported by Shirley-Anne Somerville, was shelved on her advice because the Gill report basically recommended that there should be procedures for dealing with multiparty actions.
Thank you for your statement. I invite Malcolm Chisholm to make a contribution.
Thank you, convener. The background to the petition is the experience of a large number of residents in the vicinity of the Seafield sewage plant, but it is also the experience of many people who live quite a long way from it who have been suffering for years from the stench from the sewage works. I pay tribute to the Leith Links residents for their long-running campaign, which has resulted in some progress, but we still have problems. Clearly, that is why the petition is still relevant to their situation.
Thanks very much. The petition is very interesting. In essence, Mr Kirkwood, you are saying that you want to ensure that there is a lot more power for communities like your own to take on faceless bureaucracies. We hear that message from many other groups across Scotland who are probably in circumstances similar to those of your group. As Malcolm Chisholm said, it looks as though implementation of the Gill review’s recommendations would have helped you. However, we have a problem because they have not been fully implemented. Does that summarise the position?
Yes. There seems to be no political will at the moment to implement the Gill review’s recommendations, because of the money involved. I hope that what we propose represents a cheap alternative.
I read through the petition and found it very interesting. I thank Mr Kirkwood for his explanation and Malcolm Chisholm for adding that the situation affects not only those who live in Leith Links but people further afield. The Government has said that in principle it agrees with the Gill review. We should ask the Government why, whether for financial or other reasons, the review’s recommendations are not being implemented. I do not see why private companies should not be held to account in the same way as public companies or anyone else.
The petition is excellent, because it seeks to be constructive. When the Government has said that it will go down a certain route, it would be easy just to argue against that, so it is commendable that the petitioners are trying to find an alternative route. I hope that the Government will be amenable to that.
Do the other witnesses want to add anything?
I was asked to come to the meeting today because of what I have experienced south of the border. I find the differences between Scottish law and English law bizarre and I cannot really understand the logic behind those differences. However, I am not a lawyer so those questions will remain.
I appreciate that you are not a lawyer, but you have given us an interesting example. My understanding is that courts have a power to insist on documents being submitted to them. There is also a general rule about freedom of information, although I understand that it does not apply across the board. For the record, can you run us through why such powers have not been used in this case?
I do not think that there is any enforceable protocol in Scottish law for the discovery of documents. I have been interviewed by barristers about the case at Seafield. They asked me what sort of things I would want, and I replied that I would like the site management records of the operator, which happens to be a private company. Counsel’s advice was that we would not get the documents. The case breaks down before it starts if people cannot get access to the documentation that they need to make a case for negligence. People want to know what the liability is, and what the causation is.
I have been a resident in the area for 30 years. The issue has been going on for a very long time. It is very hard for an individual to fight against a large company.
That is a clear statement that has been made by all the witnesses.
Professor Jackson’s comments are interesting. FOI legislation and so on exists, but we cannot get the documentation in court because we are dealing with a private company. Is that right?
That is my understanding of the situation.
If it was a public company, would we be able to get the documentation?
If it was a public company, we could get information. In Scotland, a large proportion of public utilities—putting the water sector to one side—are managed under private finance initiatives. My understanding is that, if the PFI company is a private company, there is no enforceable protocol for it to disclose information that is requested.
Thank you for clarifying that.
I have one final question, just so that we are totally clear. Is there a distinction between the situation with getting documentation prior to appearing in court and the situation post litigation, when courts generally have the power to get it?
The reason for having a pre-action protocol would be to get as much information as possible disclosed. It is all about avoiding the courts. If the document is out and we can all scrutinise it and agree what is what, there is no need to go to court, which is in everybody’s interests. The issue is the lack of a pre-action protocol.
Basically, the issue is about the need for a mediation process pre litigation and about getting the documents to prevent cases from going to court.
Yes. There needs to be open and full disclosure so that the documents can be scrutinised and the matter can be negotiated.
Thank you—that is helpful and has added clarity.
We should also write to the Lord President, the Court of Session rules council and the Scottish Law Commission. Can we clarify that, with a PFI contract involving a private company, we cannot get documents? Water is not privatised in Scotland, but it is in England, so I wonder whether there is a difference there and I would like to find out.
That would certainly be useful.
Next
Current Petitions