Current Petitions
We move on to discuss responses to a series of current petitions.
The first two such petitions, PE352 and PE355, were both lodged by Mr Duncan Shields. The first petition, PE352, is about the misuse of doctors' reports by lawyers in court actions. The second petition, PE355, deals with local councillors' interests in court actions.
Members will see from the paper on PE352 that, in addition to seeking the view of the Executive, we also sought the views of Family Mediation Scotland and Children in Scotland. Those organisations have replied to say that they have no quarrel with the Executive's view. However, they are concerned about the use of adversarial court procedures to settle family disputes.
We consulted with the Scottish Executive on PE355. It has indicated that a new code of conduct has been drawn up under the Ethical Standards in Public Life etc (Scotland) Act 2000, which will affect councillors' behaviour. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has also responded along similar lines.
On PE352, Family Mediation Scotland and Children in Scotland hold the view that courts are an inappropriate forum for residence and contact to be explored. Neither organisation has contradicted the views of the Executive on doctors' reports. It is suggested that we copy the correspondence to the petitioner and to the appropriate justice committee for information and that we take no further action. Are we agreed?
The question that is posed by the petitioner was about the misuse of doctors' reports. Family Mediation Scotland has given the green light to submissions that were made by doctors. That view is correct in the great majority of cases, but each and every one of us is aware of the pressures that individual patients can bring to bear on practitioners. There is no doubt that that could lead to reports that are not necessarily of benefit to the child. FMS has failed to address that point. The petitioner might not be satisfied with the response that he receives.
If the petitioner is not satisfied with the response, he can come back to us to make that point. Family Mediation Scotland and Children in Scotland concurred with the Executive's view that both sides in court should be properly represented. That would allow medical reports to be contested and it would allow for reports to be open to scrutiny. That is a safeguard against the misuse of reports.
The convener's comment is fair.
The Ethical Standards in Public Life etc (Scotland) Act 2000 will go some way toward ensuring that the problems that were raised in PE355 do not occur. It is suggested that we pass a copy of the responses to the petitioner and that no further action be taken. The new codes of conduct should address the petitioner's concerns that councillors who are also lawyers could take decisions in their own selfish interests, rather than in the broader public interest.
Are we agreed with the action that is proposed on PE352 and PE355?
Members indicated agreement.
We move on to PE362, which was lodged by Jane Sargeant on behalf of the People's Protest. Members will remember that we agreed to take no further action on PE362, following our pursuit of the issue with Wendy Alexander, the Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning. However, on 6 July 2001, the minister wrote to me indicating that the system for payments is now up and running, that payments are being made and that everything seems to be working in accordance with the plan.
It is suggested that the committee should agree to note the latest correspondence and take no further action, other than to send copies to the petitioner, the Rural Development Committee and the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee for their information. Is that agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
The next petition is PE366 from Dr Andy McDonald, on behalf of Craigmillar Community Information Service, which calls on the Parliament to urge the Executive to support the CCIS digital inclusion charter and to take a range of steps to tackle the digital divide. The Executive has responded by drawing the committee's attention to the creation of a dedicated digital inclusion unit as part of the digital Scotland initiative. The Executive also aims to develop a digital inclusion strategy later in the summer. The Executive has discussed the issues with public, private and voluntary sector organisations, and is interested in working in partnership with other bodies.
The petitioner is a member of the digital Scotland reference group and has the opportunity to raise issues in that forum. In addition, the Executive has arranged a separate meeting with him. He will be given an opportunity to feed into the development process of the Executive's digital inclusion strategy, so it is suggested that the committee should send the Executive's correspondence to the petitioner and take no further action. Is that agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
The next petition is PE367 from Mr Eric Drummond, on services for the diagnosis and treatment of those who suffer from sleep apnoea. We agreed to copy the petition to the Scottish Executive, Greater Glasgow Health Board and Lothian Health and we have received responses from them. The Scottish Executive's response describes the background and how what was originally a national service was transferred to national health service trusts and health boards in 1996.
The responses from Lothian Health and Greater Glasgow Health Board say what they are doing. GGHB has got its act together in a way that Lothian Health has yet to do, although Lothian Health is conducting a review, which it hopes will be available shortly, and which has involved consultation with other health boards.
We might wish to note that at its meeting on 27 June, the Health and Community Care Committee agreed to pass to the Public Petitions Committee its concerns about the current system of funding for small disease groups.
It is suggested that Lothian Health should be asked to provide the committee with the results of the review of the sleep service when they become available. The committee could consider the petition further on receipt of that information. In the meantime, it is suggested that the responses that have been received should be copied to the petitioner and the Health and Community Care Committee for their information. Until we get Lothian Health's review, we cannot come to a conclusion.
That is reasonable. We should express our concern at the on-going difficulties. I have a case-load on the issue and I am concerned. I hope that Lothian Health addresses the matter urgently.
Absolutely. We will be in a better position to judge that when we get the result of Lothian Health's on-going review which will, I hope, be completed in the near future. Is that agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
The next petition is PE369 from Mr Brian Rostron, on behalf of the Confederation of United Kingdom Coal Producers, on opencast mining planning permissions. The petition calls on the Parliament to urge the Executive to guarantee a number of things. The Executive has responded and has said that it already does everything that the petitioner has asked it to do: coal deposits are accorded positive policies in development plans; opencast coal development is considered in the planning system, as is any other development proposal; the strategic need for coal is recognised in the determination of opencast coal applications; and energy from a Scottish employment, business and economic perspective is recognised as an important consideration in Government development planning and guidance.
A previous petition, which took the opposite view to that of the opencast mining lobby, was passed to the Transport and the Environment Committee following our meeting on 22 May. It considered that petition on 5 September and agreed to defer consideration until we agreed to action on PE369. It is suggested that the petition should be referred to the Transport and the Environment Committee to allow both petitions to be considered by the committee, because both petitions argue about the same situation from different perspectives. Is that agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
Petition PE373 from Mr Raymond Dorricott is about summary warrants by sheriffs to local authorities. It calls on the Parliament to amend the current legislation, which infringes the right of alleged debtors to reply or comment before a warrant is issued.
We agreed to request comments from the Executive, which has pointed out the recent publication of a report called "Striking the Balance" by the working group on a replacement for poindings and warrant sales. That report recommends that the Executive should examine with local authorities the use of the summary warrant procedure by local authorities.
Consultation on that document ends on 17 October, after which ministers will, in deciding a way forward, give careful consideration to the submissions that are received. It is proposed that we agree to respond to the Executive and ask that the petition be taken into account as part of the consultation process. We could then agree to copy the Executive's response to the petitioner and take no further action or, if members think it worthy, we may refer the petition to the justice committees for further consideration.
We should refer the petition to the justice committees. Allegations of unfairness in an appeal procedure, or the lack of an appeal procedure, would contravene the European convention on human rights, to which we have signed up.
It is almost certain that the report of the working group and any proposals that arise from it will end up at the justice committees anyway, so it would be a good idea to send the petition to those committees and ask them to consider the petition when they consider the recommendations of the working group.
I support Winnie Ewing's comments. The issue has major effects on all our constituents, although it depends on the local authority areas that they are in. South Ayrshire Council regularly issues summary warrants on a mass scale about three months after the new rating period begins. The problem goes back to an argument with councils about standing orders and direct debits because, when people pay only a few days late, they get warnings that they are behind with their rates payments, although they have paid by the time they receive the letter. The council automatically moves to summary warrants and issues a huge amount at any one time. That has a terrible effect, on elderly people in particular.
As Winnie Ewing said, it is wrong that sheriffs should simply rubber-stamp mass applications by local authorities. If we pass the petition to the justice committees, I would like the Public Petitions Committee to comment strongly. I have read "Striking the Balance". It is fine and it contains many useful recommendations, but it does not go into the detail of the petition.
I sense that the committee feels that the petition should be referred to the justice committees, and that those committees should take the petition into consideration when they consider the Executive's proposals that arise from "Striking the Balance". In doing so, we will draw the attention of the committees to Phil Gallie's comments and ask them to take those comments into consideration. Is that agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
Perhaps we should underline those comments to the Executive before the Executive produces its proposals.
It would be for the justice committees to comment on the proposals, rather than for this committee. Not everybody in this committee will have read "Striking the Balance".
I acknowledge that I am in danger of over-committing the Public Petitions Committee.
Absolutely.
We will leave it to the justice committees to arrive at conclusions, but we will refer the petition to them, draw Phil Gallie's comments to their attention, and ask the justice committees to consider them as part of their review of the Executive's proposals.
The next petition is PE374 from Dr Steve Gilbert, on the underfunding of chronic pain management services in the NHS in Scotland. We dealt with the petition at our meeting on 19 June, when we agreed that it should be copied to the Executive for comments and to the Health and Community Care Committee for information only. We have received a response from the Executive, which sets out a series of arguments from its perspective. It is suggested that the petition and the Executive response should be referred to the Health and Community Care Committee for its further consideration or, if we do not want to do that, we can agree to copy the Executive's response to the petitioner and to the Health and Community Care Committee for information and take no further action. The issue is whether we want to accept the Executive response and leave it at that, or pass it on to the Health and Community Care Committee.
I have been told to read out for the record that the Executive notes that
"increasing effort and resource goes into palliative care, both in the NHS and in the voluntary sector; and a significant amount of that effort is related to pain relief."
The Executive also points out that
"In general, there are difficulties in having a central policy on pain management services as pain needs to be seen in the context of the individual patient's illness, in which case the pain aspect may be treated as an integral part of the patient's care."
It is a complex issue, but the question before us is whether we send the Executive's response to the Health and Community Care Committee or leave it.
I declare an interest as convener of the Parliament's cross-party group on chronic pain. The problem with the Executive's response is that it seems to have misunderstood what the crux of the problem is. I am not being critical of the Executive, because petitions are being showered on it, but it concentrates on the two areas on which we did not want it to concentrate.
The first area is palliative care. There is a cross-party group on that subject, which is—quite properly—separate from the cross-party group on chronic pain. Palliative care is mainly hospice-related care in the community and is reasonably well endowed in Scotland. The Executive also concentrates on cancer pain relief, which goes to the top of the pile, even in the most over-stressed pain control unit in Scotland.
We were not telling the Executive to do more about that; we were talking about people in the community who suffer from chronic pain—mainly arthritis sufferers, back pain sufferers and so on. They form the vast majority of the 350,000 to 500,000 patients with chronic pain who have been referred to. The Executive infers that treatment for pain goes along with treatment for whatever those people suffer from. However, these days those people often do not see doctors at all. They have been virtually written off and it is considered that nothing further can be done for their condition. They do, however, need more pain relief treatment.
There are very few services in Scotland. At least two reports have been produced in the past six or seven years—whose recommendations the Government has not implemented—on the need for specialist pain clinics in Scotland. The Executive has kindly asked people to account for the pain services that exist in Scotland, but the results confirm that there is no provision in the Highlands. That is terrible. In instances in which two consultants deal with a pain clinic, we are not told how many hours a week are involved.
We are also not being told that almost all the consultants have other duties as anaesthetists. There is only one full-time pain consultant in Scotland, who is at Ninewells hospital. It is most regrettable that the Executive has gone at this skew-whiff. The one angle that we did not want the Executive to concentrate on was palliative care, which soars above all other considerations. We want people in the community to be relieved of their pain and for services in the community to be extended. For that and other reasons I respectfully suggest to the committee that the issue is worth considering in greater depth and should be referred to the Health and Community Care Committee.
I support referring the petition to the Health and Community Care Committee.
I should declare an interest, because I am a member of the cross-party group in the Scottish Parliament on palliative care. My concern stems from the correspondence that we have received from Dr Steve Gilbert, which points out that
"Edinburgh is the only city where a full pain management programme is provided".
Apart from the problem of health resources in Edinburgh, we must also deal with the fact that everybody tends to congregate in the city and that, as a result, there are massive transportation problems. It seems perverse to bring more people into the city when there have been attempts to disperse them around and about and to improve the transport system. We should encourage each health board to fund pain services, as Dr Gilbert suggests. Perhaps I should also declare another interest: as an arthritis sufferer, I can understand the kind of problems that are being discussed.
I am a bit concerned to find that, in the Scottish Executive health department's response to this petition, Highland was the only health board to reply "No" to the question whether chronic pain management services were provided. At a meeting of Highland Health Board that John Farquhar Munro and I attended last Friday, I raised a point about hydrotherapy pools, which seem to attract a lot of money from local people. Indeed, I was involved with the pool that was set up in Dingwall.
The health board was very dismissive, saying that there was no evidence of the clear health benefit provided by such pools, and that the two existing pools received maintenance only because they were opened before the board had made a decision on the service. We were told that people could go to a swimming pool instead. However, as I said at the meeting, people who use hydrotherapy pools feel the benefit. Although the pools will not cure multiple sclerosis and arthritis, if they make people feel better, is that not a health benefit? There is no doubt that people feel the benefit; that is why so many raise money. For example, in Lochaber, £700,000 has been raised towards a hydrotherapy pool, so communities must have a strong feeling that they provide benefits. However, the health board merely said that it was not a priority. As I said, I am very concerned to find that Highland Health Board does not provide any chronic pain management services, and if I had known that fact on Friday—indeed, I should have known it—I would have mentioned it at the meeting.
The Executive seems to have misread PE374. In its reply, it says that pain management treatment
"is likely to be complex, given the wide ranging nature of illnesses and disabilities that can result in chronic pain"
and that, as a result, it
"is an operational matter for Health Boards and Trusts to consider and prioritise within their resources."
However, the petition is concerned with a distinct category of pain. People in such pain will not necessarily show themselves in hospitals.
They will not. Luckily, in this case, we are not up against party politics. An old Scottish—indeed, British—attitude towards people suffering from problems such as arthritis is to say, "Oh well, we cannot do much for you, dear" and, "It's your age". Most of us find that utterly unacceptable in this day and age, because we know that things can be done. It seems that the Executive has simply misread the petition and that is unfortunate. Perhaps it was a busy day. Let us be merciful and relieve its pain.
I am always merciful to the Executive. Are members agreed to refer the petition to the Health and Community Care Committee for its consideration?
Members indicated agreement.
We need an overall Scottish strategy.
We will also refer the committee to our discussion on the matter.
Can we also refer the committee to the fact that Highland Health Board does not have any chronic pain management services?
Absolutely.
The statistics for the Highlands are quite disturbing. Last week, I attended the Pain Association's inaugural meeting in Dingwall. I never knew that such people existed. About 50 people in the community attended because they had an interest in drawing attention to their chronic pain problems. However, the nature and effects of their pain varied. The Executive's response perhaps highlights the fact that there is no particular cure for pain because its nature and effects are so varied and disparate.
It is fair to say that most hospital medics would send the patient away with some sort of medication and say, "Take that and it might help for a little time". However, that approach has complications as well. There were 50 people at the meeting in Dingwall; they did not know whether there was an answer to their problem, but they were prepared to come along and listen. A group has been established in Dingwall because of that initiative and I am sure that things will develop from that.
The Pain Association plans to expand beyond Inverness, up north—there was talk of going to Thurso and Wick and places such as that. It will probably develop. The Pain Association is a purely charitable organisation.
The Executive gives the Pain Association some funding, but it is greatly overstressed because it does not get enough money. Last week, I was at a meeting of the Pain Association in Knightswood, Glasgow, which was attended by about 60 people suffering from chronic pain whose ages ranged from 30 to 70. Chronic pain is almost an epidemic—people say that it is getting worse because of sedentary modern life. The number of chronic pain sufferers in Scotland is put at 350,000 to 500,000, which suggests that it is the biggest single health problem in the whole of Scotland and indeed, Britain—bigger than heart disease and cancer put together. It is a neglected, non-sexy area of medicine.
Phil Gallie has suggested that we write to the Executive giving our views on the misunderstanding that has occurred. I could find the references to the two previous Government reports, which called for national standards on chronic pain relief.
We have already agreed to send the petition to the Health and Community Care Committee. We could also agree to write to the Executive, thanking it for its comments, and drawing its attention to our discussion, as we believe that the Executive misread the petition.
Is that agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
The next petition is PE376 from Ms Linda Simkin, which calls for an amendment to the Protection of Animals (Scotland) Act 1912. Members will recall that the petition was raised in the light of the principal petitioner's personal experience of horses located near to her home, which were in poor condition but could not be rescued as their condition was not poor enough. At our meeting on June 19 we agreed to seek the views of the Scottish Executive and a response has now been received.
The Executive's response indicates that it has long been recognised that the provisions of the Protection of Animals (Scotland) Act 1912 are rather limited in scope. The Scottish Executive environment and rural affairs department has recently consulted on changes to the act. As stated in the consultation letter that was issued in January 2001, the Executive proposes an amendment to the 1912 act, designed to meet the objectives of the petition. The proposed bill, which is currently being drafted, will for the first time permit animals that are being kept for commercial purposes and which are at risk of cruelty and neglect to be taken into care. It is proposed that the Executive's response should be passed to the petitioner for information, with a suggestion that any further inquiries be directed to SEERAD, and that no further action should be taken. Is that agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
The next petition, from Mr Michael Kayes, concerns toxic dumping, cattle incineration and other pollution activities in built-up areas, with particular reference to the dumping and other disposals that are currently taking place in the east end of Glasgow. At our meeting on June 19, we agreed to ask the Scottish Environment Protection Agency to respond to the issues and to additional points that had been raised by members. A copy of the petition was also passed to the Transport and the Environment Committee for information. We have received a response from SEPA, which is detailed in the committee papers. SEPA appears to regard the matter as a planning issue, rather than an environmental one, and therefore a matter for the local authority to decide. However, if the local authority has decided against the activities of that unit and it was only on appeal to the Scottish Executive that the unit was allowed to operate, there are certain national implications.
SEPA believes that the company is operating within the parameters of the licence that was granted and that several of the issues that were raised by the petitioner are planning issues. Glasgow City Council refused the initial planning application, but the Scottish Executive overturned that decision on appeal. As the committee cannot become involved in individual planning decisions such as this, we could agree to take no further action. Alternatively, we could refer the petition to the Transport and the Environment Committee with a view to asking it to consider the wider issues involved in current planning legislation. There seem to be national implications arising from the Glasgow situation, given that the local authority's decision was overturned.
The petition should be sent to the Transport and the Environment Committee. You are right to say that this is a national issue and that similar things have happened throughout Scotland. When I was a member of the Transport and the Environment Committee, the issue came up time and again and it was thought that the committee would, at some stage, conduct an inquiry into the matter.
I declare an interest, as Mr Kayes lives in my constituency area and I have been doing work on the matter of the cattle burner for several months. Margaret Curran, who is the MSP for Baillieston, and I agree that the incinerator should not be allowed to start up again—it is not operating at the moment.
The cattle incinerator in the east end of Glasgow is the only such facility to be in a built-up area. It is next to two schools, playing fields that are used by 400 children, many houses, two caravan parks and a hospital. It operated under a different owner until September last year, when conditions for the local people got so bad that it was forced to close—it had also lost an Intervention Board contract. It now has a new owner and is due to reopen soon as part of the BSE surveillance scheme. However, the burner is not licensed to take cattle that have been proven to have BSE. The burner's top temperature is only 850 deg C and the facility does not have enough refrigeration to store the animals.
I suggest that we send the Executive an urgent letter. Only to some extent is this a planning issue. It is a shame for Glasgow City Council which, four years ago, before the burning of any BSE-infected cattle was proposed, decided that the area should not have the incinerator and turned down a planning application. However, that decision was overturned by a Scottish Office reporter. The report that was produced stated that no animal that had been proven to be suffering from BSE should be burned at the plant. However, the words in that clause can be played with, as the cattle that arrive have not been clinically proven to have BSE. We have seen Government documentation from England and Scotland that says that there is a high risk of the cattle that are involved in the BSE surveillance scheme having BSE. Those cattle are the fallen stock that the European Union wants us to investigate in an attempt to find out how small or large the incidence of BSE is in British herds. That means that the people of the east end of Glasgow will have to suffer as a result of a European statistic-gathering exercise.
The last time the burner was in operation, the situation was horrendous. The plumes of black smoke from this virtual crematorium were going 150ft into the air. Singed cattle hair was falling on gardens, prams and children's toys all over the area. At times, blood was running down the streets approaching the incinerator as cattle trucks arrived with dead cows. That is unlikely to be prevented this time, as refrigerated transport is not being used.
I will go into the grisly details as people in the east end of Glasgow will have to live through this horror story. The results of the test for BSE—which involves the head of the animal being removed—do not come back for 14 days. The rules say that the carcases must be incinerated within 72 hours. We will not know until afterwards whether a BSE cow has already been incinerated, and that would break the planning requirement, but retrospectively. This is complicated.
Glasgow City Council still does not want the plant. It never wanted it in the first place. The east end people, who have protested in their hundreds over another local pollution issue, do not want it and say that they will barricade the entrance to the plant if it reopens. Those are not idle threats—they have done it before at another local polluter, and 100 police had to be called to attend one street. I do not want that to happen month after month, and we cannot afford for the people in the east end to suffer any more risk to their health.
The constituencies concerned are the two unhealthiest in the whole of Britain. The site borders on Shettleston, which is the unhealthiest constituency, and goes into Baillieston, one of the next unhealthiest. What is proposed to be perpetrated is an absolute outrage, simply because it is a burner in that built-up area. I am not complaining about the BSE surveillance scheme, and realise why it has to be carried out, but it is absolutely essential that the cows are removed to another plant that is not located in a built-up area—and there are other plants in Scotland.
I appeal to the Executive through you, convener. I would like a letter to be sent, asking for an immediate investigation into where else those cows could be sent. Ministers have held off signing the contracts, I believe because we all started protesting in early July. My main plea has been to hold off signing the contracts to avoid getting into a legal situation later.
SEPA has claimed that it helps with meetings and has been open. It was certainly not open at the public meeting that I attended. A senior representative of SEPA was on the platform, and it was declared that the burner's reopening had absolutely nothing to do with BSE or BSE cattle. We then found conclusively that it was to do with the BSE surveillance scheme.
I have tremendous sympathy with everything that you have said, Dorothy-Grace, and the set of circumstances that you have described in the east end of Glasgow is quite horrific. Unfortunately we, as the Public Petitions Committee, cannot get involved in individual cases. The issues can be raised with Glasgow city councillors and local MSPs and MPs.
We are restricted to considering the national implications that arise from the situation, and to referring the petition to the Transport and the Environment Committee, asking it to consider the wider issues. Even that committee would not be able to get involved in every aspect. If we were to get involved in one individual case, the list would become endless, and the Parliament would just spend its days dealing with individual cases that locally elected people could deal with. I am sure that you have the support of every individual on the committee but, as the Public Petitions Committee, we are restricted to considering the wider implications and referring the petition to the Transport and the Environment Committee and asking it to do the same.
Could we write a letter to Mr Finnie?
If you organised a round-robin letter, I am sure that everybody would support it. We could not write such a letter as a committee. It is not the role of this committee to become involved in issues of this nature. There are locally elected people who may deal with it.
In that letter, could we say that we are members of the Public Petitions Committee?
You can say what you like as an individual, as long as it is not that the letter is from the committee.
Is it agreed to pass the petition to the Transport and the Environment Committee?
Members indicated agreement.
The next petition is PE379, from Mr Andrew Wood, on behalf of the Independent Farming Group. It calls for financial support for farmers who have incurred high cost due to the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak. It concerns the farmers who farm in the restricted areas in Scotland, who have not been required to cull their livestock, but who have nevertheless incurred high costs as a direct result of foot and mouth.
At our meeting of 19 June, we agreed to seek the comments of the Executive. A response has arrived, outlining the Executive's firm view. It indicated that the Executive has no power to compensate farmers or other businesses that have lost money or incurred higher costs due to the foot-and-mouth disease restrictions that were imposed.
The response states that the restrictions were necessary to limit animal movements, which is an essential part of the disease eradication strategy, and details of the current status of the restrictions were provided. The response concludes by stating that it is not only farmers in the infected areas who have suffered consequential losses. It says that, as the whole of Scotland is a controlled area, some restrictions to normal trading have affected virtually all livestock farmers at some time during the present outbreak.
The Executive's response will clearly not be welcomed by the petitioners. We have two options: to copy the response to the petitioners and take no further action; or to refer both the petition and the Executive's response to the Rural Development Committee for further consideration.
We should take no further action. Everybody in Scotland, from all walks of life, suffered as a result of the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak. Hoteliers in the Highlands had to deal with cancellations, shops did not get the usual custom, bus companies suffered—everybody was affected. We cannot compensate everybody.
Is it agreed that we copy the Executive's response to the petitioners and take no further action?
Members indicated agreement.
The final current petition that we will address today is from Mr Thomas Campbell, on behalf of the Transport and General Workers Union and Unison. It concerns the closure of the ambulance operations rooms in Scotland.
We dealt with this petition at our meeting on 19 June, when we agreed to seek comments on the issues that the petition raises from both the Minister for Health and Community Care and the Scottish Ambulance Service. A copy of the petition was also sent to the Health and Community Care Committee for its information. We have received a response from the Scottish Ambulance Service, which is detailed in the papers that members have received. Yesterday we received a letter from Susan Deacon, which has been handed out to members. Both responses argue that the closures represent an enhancement of the service, which involves additional funding and the creation of jobs. They argue that the process is being properly carried out and that they feel it necessary to go ahead with preparing the business case for the proposals. However, that does not meant that the process cannot be reversed.
It is up to us to decide what we want to do with the responses that we have received: whether we want to send them to the Health and Community Care Committee along with the petition or whether we want simply to send the responses back to the petitioners.
I read Susan Deacon's letter this morning. It promises all kinds of good things. However, having seen the ambulance control facilities in Ayr, I cannot see where the problems lie and where the improvements are going to come from. There is a good service in the south-west of Scotland, which is provided from that centre. Local knowledge plays a part in the way that the service is operated and there seems to be a fully co-ordinated service in operation. It is great that people are making statements about the planned improvements, but what is the level of complaint and what are the problems with the service as it stands?
Once rationalisation and centralisation of the services begin, there will be no way back. I wonder whether the Health and Community Care Committee should consider the matter and try to find out what the problems are, rather than be satisfied with wild assertions about the improvements that are going to be made.
The letter from the minister refers to the fact that much of the inspiration for the changes came from a report by the National Audit Office and from suggestions that were made in the Scottish Parliament's Audit Committee, which wanted improvements to be made to the system. In addition, the response from the Scottish Ambulance Service goes into detail about the nature of local provision. It makes the point that ambulances will continue to be dispatched from their existing locations and that local knowledge rests in the experience of the ambulance crews.
It is a complicated matter. I favour the suggestion to send the petition to the Health and Community Care Committee, asking it to consider it together with the responses from the service and the minister.
I am not opposed to that. Most of us would probably agree with what the minister has said. There is always a case to review if the main thrust of what we are trying to do is to improve services. We all want to know how we can do something better and more effectively. That is implicit in what the minister is saying. I see no problem with referring the matter to the Health and Community Care Committee because that is one of the facts that will emerge from those discussions. There will be a full discussion because we are seeking to improve the service.
Of the members present in the committee, how many have had recent complaints about ambulance services and arrival and dispatch times?
I have had none.
Not recently.
I have had complaints about ambulance cover in certain areas. It goes with the territory that I cover because one can be a long way from the local ambulance service. Ambulances cannot be everywhere and that is certainly a concern in my area.
Do members agree to refer the matter to the Health and Community Care Committee along with the two responses that we have received?
Members indicated agreement.
The final part of this item is the summary of progress of petitions since the last time the committee met. If there are any questions about the summary, they can be raised with the clerks later.
You will remember PE217 from Glenorchy and Innishail Community Council about their concern about single-handed general practitioner practices. We referred the petition to the Health and Community Care Committee, which issued a report. We have received correspondence from the community council and from Duncan Hamilton complaining about the way in which the Health and Community Care Committee carried out their investigation.
I have not had a chance to look at the issue in detail. I am also a member of the Health and Community Care Committee but, as convener of the Public Petitions Committee, it would be for me to write to the convener of the health committee to straighten out the disagreements. The main problem seems to have been that the Health and Community Care Committee did not consult the petitioners. That is the principle that the Public Petitions Committee has to establish. I will correspond with the convener of the Health and Community Care Committee and report back.
You will also remember PE354 about Greater Glasgow Health Board's intention to set up a secure care centre at Stobhill hospital. We referred the petition for consideration by the Health and Community Care Committee. We have now received a copy of the response from Greater Glasgow Health Board. It was addressed mainly to the Health and Community Care Committee and it is for that committee to respond. However, for information, the response indicates that the GGHB has changed dramatically its proposals in response to the petition and the way in which the petition was handled. It looks like the petitions process is working. There will now be full consultation with the local community before any further provisions are made.
I move that we accept those recommendations.
Members indicated agreement.