Gender-neutral Human Papillomavirus Vaccination (PE1477)
Agenda item 3 is consideration of two new petitions and, as previously agreed, the committee has invited the petitioners to speak to their petitions.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for the opportunity to come along and give evidence.
Thank you very much. I note that in your petition you say:
I do not want to turn this into an issue about sexuality or men having sex with men, but that is probably the most obvious area that should be considered.
Finally, I know that costs are quite difficult to ascertain because of commercial confidentiality. However, if I have picked up your petition right, the figure for Scotland might be around £1.2 million.
It is very difficult to ascertain costs. Figures from the Nordic countries have given us a baseline of €18 per vaccine dose. If Scotland were to decide unilaterally to implement this vaccination programme, which it can do, it would be in a very good position to negotiate a good deal with the pharmaceutical industry. After all, it is very much in the industry’s interests for countries to adopt gender-neutral vaccination.
Thank you very much. I seek questions from my colleagues.
I should declare that Jamie Rae is known to me as a friend and former colleague and that I met him in February to discuss the issue.
The best available coverage is for HPV-16, HPV-18, HPV-6 and HPV-11. Your question is a good one, because this is a complicated matter and a growing area of interest for many scientists. Scotland is again doing a lot of good work on it, but there is still so much that we do not know about HPV.
You mentioned the costs in Norway, and I note from the petition that you have used figures from the Norwegian health authorities to cost the three-dose vaccination at £45. It is always good to err on the side of caution but, given that in my experience most goods in Norway cost nearly twice as much as they do here, it might be that the cost to extend the programme to 27,000 12-year-olds in Scotland might well be lower than the figure you have suggested. Indeed, if a deal can be done with the manufacturers, the figure might be even lower.
Denmark is looking at it seriously and we believe that it is very close to making its decision. That is the only comment that I can make, because I do not know about the other countries.
But it has been extended in Australia.
Yes. The United States has recommended vaccination for all boys, as has Canada. It has been adopted in two provinces in Canada, where boys are routinely vaccinated.
Good morning, Jamie. In the last paragraph of the background information for your petition, you refer to Australia introducing vaccination for young men; in the paragraph before that, you suggest that 12-year-old boys in Scotland should be vaccinated. What is the age range for which Australia has introduced vaccination? I assume that it would be year-on-year vaccinations for 12-year-old boys, so there would be a recurring cost—but a decreasing one, we hope, as the vaccine is used more readily.
The reason that we have asked for 12-year-old boys to be vaccinated is that the vaccine works best prior to any sexual activity. That is why the vaccine is now given to young ladies about 12 years old. Getting boys vaccinated at a younger age as well would be a practical measure to ensure that people get the most effective use of the vaccine. It would be given to young people aged 12 and under.
There is evidence that the vaccine has a prophylactic effect so, even if somebody has been exposed to some strains of the virus, that does not mean to say that it is too late to be vaccinated. However, best practice is definitely to vaccinate before any sexual activity because the virus is so contagious that it is better to act as early as possible.
Clearly, vaccination would be a decision for the Scottish ministers to take, informed by scientific evidence and advice from officials. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation is not currently minded to recommend that the HPV vaccine be made available on a gender-neutral basis. I was struck by the point to which you referred, which is that the JCVI feels that there would be sufficient protection for heterosexual males because of their exposure to girls who have been vaccinated. I am sure that the point about discrimination is not lost on the committee.
That is a good question, Mr Eadie. More than 150 of the people who have signed the petition are medical experts. Some of them are world leaders in their field. For example, our own Professor Heather Cubie, who until recently led the HPV research laboratory in Edinburgh, is in favour of gender-neutral vaccination, and she is considered to be a world-leading expert in the field. It is interesting that we have people such as Professor Cubie who disagree with the JCVI.
Are you aware of any side effects or risks associated with the vaccine?
No. There has been some press speculation about that and there are individual cases with all vaccination programmes, but we have been using the vaccine in Scotland since, I think, 2007. It is a very safe drug. Its profile shows no significant problems. The most common issue is some redness and soreness around the area where the vaccine is administered in the arm. That is pretty much as far as it goes.
There has been a lot of adverse press, particularly in America, about the Gardasil vaccine, but a lot of it is unsubstantiated and based on loose interpretations of adverse reactions. When it comes to vaccination, adverse reactions include every single thing that happens; they are not necessarily related to the vaccine. For example, if someone has been given the Gardasil vaccine and they then die in a road traffic accident, that is listed as an adverse reaction.
Do other members have any other questions or points to put to our witnesses?
The petition is interesting and well researched. I thank both our witnesses for that. I think that we need to keep the petition open and seek further advice from key organisations including the Scottish Government, Health Protection Scotland and Cancer Research UK. Do members agree with that course of action? Are there any other organisations that members would like to be added to that list?
I agree that the petition should be continued. We could also ask Stonewall and the gay men’s health group for their views.
Who have we agreed to ask?
So far, we have agreed to contact the Scottish Government, Health Protection Scotland and Cancer Research UK. Sorry—I missed Angus MacDonald’s point. Could you please repeat it?
We could contact Stonewall and the gay men’s health group as well.
Thank you.
I have a further suggestion. We could contact the Scottish cancer coalition, which represents the range of cancer charities in Scotland.
Jamie Rae mentioned some of the medics who have signed the petition. It might be useful to approach some of them as well, as they have a lot of expertise in the subject. Is that agreed?
I thank our witnesses for coming along. We are very interested in the petition and will continue it. You have raised an interesting point. We will get as much evidence as we can and will keep you up to date with developments.
Blacklisting (PE1481)
PE1481, by Pat Rafferty, Harry Donaldson and Harry Frew, on behalf of Unite, GMB Scotland and the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians, is on putting an end to blacklisting in Scotland. Members have a note by the clerk, a SPICe briefing and the petition.
Good morning. We warmly welcome this opportunity to give evidence to the Public Petitions Committee. The motion on blacklisting that was debated in the Scottish Parliament on Thursday 2 May was entitled “Blacklisting, a Scottish and UK Human Rights Abuse”. In no way was the motion’s title overdramatic or exaggerated. This insidious discrimination in our employment system, particularly in the construction sector, is a scandal that has affected and continues to affect workers and their families throughout Scotland and the UK. It is a national disgrace that has ruined lives and indelibly stained our construction industry, its biggest employers and successive Governments.
Thanks very much for your statement. We should congratulate the trade union movement on the work that it has done on this high-profile issue. In your comments, there seemed to be a touch of going back to 1950s America and McCarthyism, because the practices that you describe are very much what happened in that era. Your suggestions on procurement and an inquiry are useful.
I believe that there are gaps in data protection. I do not know whether you had the chance to catch “Panorama” last night on BBC 1, which covered blacklisting in the UK. The ICO raised concerns about the lack of power and bite in attempts to address the issues. The regime should certainly be strengthened. As I said, that point even comes from the ICO.
I bring in Neil Findlay to make a brief comment.
Last night’s “Panorama” condensed the issue well into a short space of time—it was a half-hour programme. It raised the concern that, as Pat Rafferty said, blacklisting continues.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. Good afternoon, Neil. I have some experience of dealing with trade unions, employee-participation companies and some companies in which management was perhaps a bit draconian and had to be changed. Let me start with the issue of those who were blacklisted. My experience of dealing with the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers—with Willie McKelvey, Ernie Ross and all those guys years ago in Dundee—is that there was openness and transparency. The managers whom I dealt with worked pretty hard at that. However, there were those within the trade union, although not many, whose activities were ultimately designed to hurt the 6,500 employees. Do you believe that all the people who have been blacklisted are bona fide, good employees, or do you believe that they just might have had a different agenda?
I believe that they are bona fide people who have been discriminated against because of the blacklisting process. I do not believe that they have been out there to purposefully undermine an employer in any way, shape or form. It is not in anybody’s interest to do that. It is certainly not in the interests of the trade unions or the people who work on contracts. We are interested in having good industrial relationships with employers, which helps to secure employment going forward. We have never had an agenda to try to undermine that in any way, so I do not accept that point.
Okay. Our briefing notes on the petition indicate what the trade unions have called for, which would have serious implications because the call is not only for full disclosure of the information obtained by the Consulting Association, but for an investigation into links between not just the employers but the police and the security services. Why do you have an issue with the police and the security services? What do you think they are doing in terms of corroborating the blacklisting?
There are questions that go beyond the Consulting Association to the police force itself. We can go back to issues around that with the miners, for example, during the miners’ dispute.
We are talking about now in Scotland.
In Scotland?
Yes.
What we want to try to find out from the police service is what information the police service or department holds about people being blacklisted, which is a contributory factor from the police service’s side.
But the trade unions refer to links between employers and the police and security services. You are not just asking for open information. Our information is that you are asking for an investigation into the links between construction employers and the police and the security services. Why are you asking for that?
It is a matter of trying to get the information from the police service to see whether there are established links between the employers and the police service.
I abhor blacklisting just as much as I abhor bad management, and there is a lot of that around. However, you are asking the Scottish Government to do something while the Scottish Affairs Committee is undertaking an inquiry into the matter. The minister set out the legislative framework and said that blacklisting was not illegal, although we can argue that maybe it should have been. However, the minister has said that we now have a better position in Scotland under the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2012. We will also have the procurement reform bill, and I am sure that we will all want to ensure that it secures openness and transparency in how contracts are disposed of and the conditions therein. What do you expect from a Scottish Government public inquiry that has not been done or covered and that will not be covered going forward?
Pat Rafferty alluded to the fact that 3,213 people were on the blacklist—that is what the Information Commissioner’s Office found. Only 10 per cent of those people know that they were blacklisted; the rest still do not know. In Scotland, 582 workers were blacklisted, so Scotland has been disproportionately affected compared with the rest of the UK. That is why we firmly believe that the Scottish Parliament should take a lead on the issue and there should be a public inquiry.
I do not agree with blacklisting, and I accept that, in some cases, we have bad management, but in that spirit, you cannot tell me that all the people concerned are okay. The fact that you brought the police and the security services into the issue makes me wonder what else is going on, and that is why I asked the question, against the background of what I have said about bad management and blacklisting.
Interestingly, the issue to do with the police and the security services has come about because we understand between 200 and 300 female green activists are on the lists and have been targeted. Where would that type of information come from, given that it is certainly not the case that all those women work in the construction industry?
So you believe that it is unlikely that the people in question would engage in any action that would hurt or harm the vast majority of people with whom they might work.
That is the belief, but I must make the point that there is no proof, hence our request for a public inquiry.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. I would like to explore with you the second half of the petition, which is about investigating
The forthcoming procurement bill presents a good opportunity to make changes and to make things a bit stricter and tighter. It has been suggested that one of the questions could be, “Have you been prosecuted in the past for blacklisting?” However, I do not think that that would address the issue in any way, because no one has been prosecuted for anything that happened prior to 2009, not even the Consulting Association. Ian Kerr was prosecuted under the Data Protection Act 1998 and was fined by the courts, and the fine was paid by one of the contractors, not to Ian Kerr but to his wife and daughter. I do not know why, but that was the method of payment and how it came about.
Do you have suggestions about the questions that we should ask?
We met Paul McNulty and made it clear to him that the questions must be framed so as to make it difficult for companies that have used such practices in the past to continue using them. We as trade unions are meeting, and I have no doubt that we will go back to Paul McNulty with suggestions to make the rules tighter and more stringent. Careful consideration must be given to how the questions are framed.
Is there an opportunity to do something better?
There is an opportunity to address some of the issues, but whether companies continue their practices is another matter. Historically, there was the Economic League way back in the 1950s and 1960s, but people used to say, “That’s the Economic League finished. That doesn’t happen now.” However, the Consulting Association was set up and the practices continued. I have no doubt that Pat Rafferty is right to say that there are hints that blacklisting is still going on in projects such as crossrail.
Do Mr Rafferty and Mr Donaldson have anything to add?
The tender documents could ask potential contractors, “Have you treated anyone less favourably because of their trade union activities or membership?” If any information that companies provided on such a tender document were proven elsewhere to be false, they could be excluded. There is proof, evidence and documentation, and the GMB was lodging 70 defamation cases in the High Court in London as of last week in pursuance of those matters.
I think that we are getting somewhere.
The termination clause is important and it should be part and parcel of the issue. There is further evidence that we have not submitted, which I will submit now. We believe that one of our executive council members, a man called David Brockett, is getting blacklisted from the Southern general project with Mercury. We will pursue that and we will keep the committee informed. That is current—it is happening right now. The get-out clause—the termination clause—is a key point.
I put on record my membership of Unite the union and my participation in the chamber debate that Neil Findlay initiated on blacklisting.
As you rightly say, unions have merged over the years, and my union, Unite, is a combination of other sister trade unions that have become part of it over the years. Unite was created only in 2007—we are very young. However, we have investigated and will continue to investigate any involvement of trade union officials in blacklisting. If we find evidence of anything like that, we will deal with it appropriately, as the committee would expect. We do not believe in such a practice and we would not tolerate it—in any way, shape or form—taking place in Unite.
It is interesting that trade unions are willing to engage in the process—in a public inquiry or whatever else—and to take the appropriate steps should it be proven that there has been any such action by any trade union officials. That is the difference—there is a willingness and an openness to do that on our part, which we are not meeting from the opposite direction. Those are some of our difficulties.
That leads to my next question, which is about such things being proven in relation to not just trade unions but employers. Harry Frew mentioned the Economic League’s role. We know the Consulting Association’s role in relation to the information that the ICO was able to pull together. When Ian Davidson MP held a session at the Scottish Parliament with interested MSPs, he clearly highlighted that the ICO found only limited records. The 3,213 cases that we have in front of us are only the cases that we could get records of at the Consulting Association.
The reality is that we do not know. As you correctly stated, when the ICO raided the Consulting Association‘s offices, it took certain information, but far more was left behind. Had that additional information been procured, it might well have led to an expansion of where we are.
I understand that the four areas in relation to which people have experienced human rights abuses are political activities, trade union activities, health and safety issues and environmental activities. Do you agree that those are the four main areas that led to people being blacklisted by the Consulting Association or employers?
The “Panorama” programme last night made it clear that Ian Kerr spent most of his days going through left-wing magazines, reports in the press and various things to collate any small pieces of information that he could on individuals. That was then passed to employers.
I understand that three lists—construction; oil, gas and petrochemical; and environmental—were available at the Consulting Association. The environmental list related to things such as the building of the M77—the names of people who climbed up trees were on that list. There were those three lists, but possibly other information was destroyed or taken away before we managed to get a hold of the construction files.
I declare an interest in that I am a member of Unite the union and of Community and I spoke in the blacklisting debate. I hold particularly strong views on the fact that comrades have been disadvantaged throughout their careers as much as they have been.
Certainly. One of the questions should be, “Are you prepared to work in partnership with the trade unions through your procurement?” That might address issues for the future. However, the lip service that goes along with that does not form a reality that actually happens.
One of the interesting issues is that, if the employers—those 44 major construction companies—held their hands up, admitted wrongdoing, compensated the individuals and apologised to them, that would be a public statement that would go a long way towards addressing the problem and ensuring that there were no further occurrences of blacklisting in the economy ever again. That would be a step in the right direction.
I do not think that that will ever happen, no matter what we decide. As Harry Frew said, people would pay only lip service unless we legislated properly.
No, we have not.
The GMB has had access to other files, as other unions probably have, but I have not seen them. When I listened to Dave Smith at our congress in Plymouth last week, it was clear that his file contained his national insurance number, his date of birth, photographs, details of his car, his safety credentials, information on his wife and his brother and details of when he complained about asbestos, toilets and so on. That was the sort of detail that it contained. We can tell you what employer put whose name on the list.
You have not seen the files.
They are there and they are available.
But you have not seen them.
I have not seen them.
We have not seen the files personally, but that is not to say that the unions have not seen them. I have not seen the files, but Unite has seen them.
I am asking because it is important to have—although I hate to use the phrase again—clinical evidence.
Seventy cases were lodged in the High Court last week. Clearly, the evidence will come out.
The information that is in the files is the type of information that the police, security services or private investigators use. I am not suggesting that those groups accumulated the information, which is extremely intrusive.
We do not know. I am certainly not linking our issue to the PRISM programme. The issue about links with security services involved environmental activists and particularly why all those women found that they were on a blacklist.
I have not seen the large file, but the Scottish Affairs Committee’s report contains extensive extracts from people’s files. The people are not named, but the extracts are a fascinating read. For example, one person’s file says something like, “He might not be a Communist, but his father was.” That is like saying, “He might not have robbed a house, but his dad did.” Another file says something like, “He is suspected of being the twin of someone else.” I never knew that being a twin was an offence. Another one says that someone is suspected of being a member of the Green Party. One even says that someone attended a meeting in Dundee Labour club. I appreciate that some people around this table might think that attending Dundee Labour club is a crime, but I do not.
It is a crime scene.
I think that we should move on.
Some of the extracts are bizarre, to say the least, and I encourage people to read them.
We have found the session interesting and informative, but I am conscious of the time. We must move on and decide what we will do with the petition.
I have a number of suggestions. We should also write to the Confederation of British Industry Scotland, the Scottish Trades Union Congress, the ICO, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities—because some local authorities have entered into joint contracts with some of the companies involved, including some that were named in the crossrail case—and Construction Scotland.
You suggested that you should get in touch with the Scottish Building Federation, convener. I think that you will find that most contractors are in the UK Contractors Group. That is the organisation that you need to contact.
Thank you.
The minister who replied in the members’ business debate and the Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure, Investment and Cities have said that the Scottish Government wants to talk to interested members about the procurement process. A few weeks ago, I wrote to the Government about that, but I have not heard anything in response. When the committee writes to the Government, can we ask when that engagement will happen?
We will do that.