Health Service Provision (North Clyde) (PE735)
The first new petition is PE735, from Vivien Dance, which relates to the national health service. The petition calls on the Parliament to urge the Executive to require NHS Argyll and Clyde and NHS Greater Glasgow to make a special agreement on transferring responsibility for the design and provision of health services in the north Clyde area and, where appropriate, to amend existing legislation so that the boundaries of the two health boards are adjusted in order to transfer authority for the north Clyde area from NHS Argyll and Clyde to NHS Greater Glasgow.
Good morning. I thank all of you for inviting us to the committee and for giving us the opportunity to address you today. We are joined—in the body of the kirk—by two of the other principal petitioners, Leila McKichan and Eileen Gorie. We are delighted to be here.
Good morning. I will be clear about what exactly it is that we are asking for. We are looking at the needs of the 140,000 patients who live north of the Clyde estuary, in the catchment area of NHS Argyll and Clyde. They are a third of that health board's patients, so they account for about a third of its budget—about £200 million. We want responsibility for those patients and that budget to be transferred to the Greater Glasgow NHS Board. Our reasoning for that is laid out clearly in chapter 7 of "Partnership for Care", which states:
Jackie Baillie has expressed an interest in the petition. Does she want to speak before the committee asks questions?
As the local member for the area involved, I support the principles that underlie the petition and its desired outcome, which is to deliver quality health care as locally as possible and, when local services are not possible, to ensure that people have reasonable access to services. The petitioners have helpfully recognised some of the pressures, such as junior doctors' hours, the shortage of consultants and the increasing drive to specialisation, which all lead to a need for review and reform of future health service provision.
Jackie Baillie rightly used the phrase "reality check". At one time in my life I lived in Clydebank and at another time I lived in Argyll, so I am aware of how vast an area Argyll and Clyde NHS Board covers. Asking people from Clydebank or Helensburgh to go to hospital in Paisley, either as a patient or a visitor, is just ridiculous. I do not mean anything against Paisley, but there is even a psychological issue involved. There is a natural divide between the north of the Clyde and the south of the Clyde; they are separate localities. I am amazed that people from Helensburgh have to go to Paisley to go to hospital. I did not know that that happened and it seems very silly. It is as though someone has sat down, looked at an area on a map and, without considering the realities, said, "Oh, that's achievable."
You have used an important word there—"split". Patients who are served by the Vale of Leven district general hospital now have to get a lot of services south of the river in Paisley. That is focusing people's minds on which services they can receive locally. There has been a downturn in such services, which is causing great concern. Many of you will have read press reports and responses from the public in the local area. Our petition has been necessary because we now face more and more journeys south of the river to access services. The problem is becoming even more acute—no pun intended.
If someone in Lochgilphead needed a specific hospital service, where would they end up?
People in Lochgilphead can access many services locally because there is a community hospital there. We are fortunate that that will still be provided for in the next few years. In addition, local general practices may take community health care to the level above what is offered at the Lomond end, for example. If people require acute care they can come down to the Vale as day patients. However, they will have a difficulty now in that they may have to travel to Paisley.
In essence, where are you now? I appreciate that people have lacked confidence in Argyll and Clyde NHS Board; Jackie Baillie has brought that to the attention of Parliament. How does Greater Glasgow NHS Board feel about you going to them? Has that board expressed views? I appreciate that you have expressed your views in public in forums such as this, but have you been in communication with the Glasgow board to find out its views on the commonsense solution that you seek?
That is a reasonable question, and the fair answer is that we have not consulted the health boards. We thought that we might be asked that, but the issue is about the constitutions of the health boards, namely, their boundaries, and we felt that it was necessary to take it a stage further. Each of the health boards will have a special interest in the petition one way or the other, and that is why we are bringing the matter to the committee.
Jackie Baillie has made the not unreasonable criticism that there has been a breakdown in regional planning. That issue has exercised the committee over almost the past year. Do you agree that your situation is another example of a complete breakdown in regional planning and that there is a huge need for people to think outside the box, to use that rather nasty jargon phrase?
Yes, I agree, but we cannot expect those who are in the box to do the thinking. That is why we have not gone to the health boards themselves. The question is bigger: in our view, the focus and the root of the problem are the boundaries. Whatever arrangement can be made in the meantime to get round that would be appreciated, but the boundaries are the problem. Some of us are old enough to remember that there seemed to be an idea some decades ago—presumably in Edinburgh—that regions should be defined around river basins. We have got caught up in that and have somehow been left with a region that has a major river right through its middle. That is no longer tenable in the modern situation of increased, and obviously desirable and necessary, centralisation of services, which we understand. The problem is continually being aggravated to a serious point.
My questions build directly on John Scott's. You have all indicated that you have had considerable individual and collective experience in national health service governance over the years and so know your way around the system. That prompts me all the more to reinforce John Scott's question about what level of discussion and dialogue there has been, not only with the two NHS boards concerned, but with the Scottish Executive and other bodies with an interest. It is always of interest to the Parliament to know what local attempts to make progress and resolve issues have been made before we consider the issues, so will you elaborate on what you have already told us on that point?
We have followed with interest the debates on the clinical strategy that Argyll and Clyde NHS Board is currently developing. We have been kept informed of the discussions that underpin that clinical strategy, and the timing of the petition is designed to ensure that it has an impact on decisions taken on the clinical strategy. The strategy will not be finalised until June but, as far as we are aware, the transfer of population base and budget to Greater Glasgow NHS Board will not be an option—I say that knowing that somebody will now write it in to ensure that it is an option.
I appreciate the wider points of substance that you make, but I would like clarification on the specific points that I asked about. Extensive discussion and consultation have taken place, and continue to take place, at local and national level on the issues that you have mentioned. Have you had a dialogue with those who are involved in such discussions and consultation to attempt to influence the outcome of the various processes?
The question is: to whom can we talk? We all have experience within the system and talk to people all the time about such issues, but there is no place to go to propose the concept that we are discussing, except to the Parliament. Such matters can only really be addressed to the Parliament because all the other people to whom we might talk have a vested interest and a position to defend. We can go to Greater Glasgow NHS Board and say, "Look, we have this great idea. We want to come and be part of your scene." Greater Glasgow NHS Board will say, "That sounds like a good idea, but hang on a minute. What will that do for our relationship with Argyll and Clyde NHS Board?" Equally, we could go to Argyll and Clyde NHS Board and say, "We have this great idea. We want a third of your budget to be taken away and given to Greater Glasgow NHS Board," but what would it say to that? We are in a fix. The great blessing is that we can come and talk to MSPs, which is wonderful. However, our central problem is to whom we can talk.
Thank you for your answer, which I take as a no. You have given reasons for that answer.
Historically, we have all suffered because health boards do not seem to be able to communicate at that level without direction from the Parliament and ministers. When that direction comes, I think that it will give greater clarity to what is happening to patients north of the river. We express on behalf of the population the dissatisfaction with the status quo and the fact that, historically, things have simply never worked. We have all been part of a system in which governance has been an issue and we have sat in many meetings in which we have discussed the funding deficit in respect of Argyll and Clyde NHS Board and Greater Glasgow NHS Board. I do not understand how good patient experience and good quality regional planning can be taken forward on the basis of such a premise, or how, without direction from the Parliament, managers will be made to deliver what is in the white paper.
I will take Linda Fabiani and Jackie Baillie, then try to get some direction on what to do with the petition.
It is obvious that Jackie Baillie has been working on the issue. I notice that, in an answer to her, Malcolm Chisholm said that the boards would write with detailed responses to the questions that she had asked. Have there been any responses? Could the kind of voluntary cross-border arrangements that Susan Deacon alluded to happen elsewhere? I have asked those questions of Jackie, but perhaps I should not have.
In an attempt to be helpful I will address some of the issues that have been raised, including Linda Fabiani's. It is fair to say that the subject of the petition is the single issue that has dominated debate and discussion not just in the local community, but at GP surgeries and among consultants. It is the talk of the steamie, because people care so much about what is happening. It is one thing to explain to people some of the national changes that are happening, why it is right that quality of care should be paramount and why we cannot provide things in the way in which they have always been provided—rightly so, because medicine advances and we are living longer. However, no matter whom one talks to, they do not understand the issue of reasonable access.
Whom do you suggest we write to to get them to think outside the box?
I suggest that we write to the Scottish Executive and NHS Scotland, seeking their comments on the petition. We should ask not only about PE735 but about the other petitions that we have received that have illustrated a lack of regional planning. Jackie Baillie says that other areas have co-operated and that there have been better results, but I argue that other areas could be better served even if there has been co-operation. The Executive needs to knock heads together. We all understand the impact of the working time directive and the lack of consultants and junior doctors, but we cannot escape the fact that satellite areas around Glasgow have just as much right to health care provision as does Glasgow itself.
We must ask that.
In general, I agree with everything that John Scott has said, but we cannot let the particulars of PE735 get lost in the wider issue. We must deal with the specifics of the petition, which seem to indicate an obvious example of good intentions going wrong. We can ask the Executive and the health boards to consider the wider issue, but we must remember where the petition came from and what it is about and not allow that to get lost. We must make it plain to the Executive that, as well as wanting it to address the wider issues, we require answers quickly to our questions on the petition. As Jackie Baillie said, the issue will not come out of the blue for the Executive, so we should put a time limit on getting its response to our request.
We should also write to the two health boards involved.
They can just copy the letter that they sent to Jackie Bailie and send it to us.
Whatever.
We would normally expect a response within six weeks and we can stipulate that we expect that timescale to apply in this case. Are members happy for us to write to the Executive, NHS Scotland and the two health boards and to get them to respond as quickly as possible?
I thank the petitioners for coming to the meeting and bringing the issue to our attention.
Houses in Multiple Occupation (PE736)
Our next petition is PE736, from David Stay, on behalf of the Marchmont Action Group Promoting Initiatives for the Environment and Marchmont and Sciennes—I hope that I pronounced that correctly—community council. The petition calls on the Parliament to urge the Executive to make the necessary legislative changes to ensure that the impact on localities is taken into account when licenses are granted for all houses of multiple occupation. Before the petition was formally lodged, it was hosted on the e-petitions website, where it gathered 12 electronic signatures from 17 February 2004 to 27 March 2004. David Stay will give evidence in support of the petition. He is accompanied by Susan Agnew. I welcome you to the committee. You have three minutes to make a statement, after which we will ask questions and develop the issues with you.
Susan Agnew and I are here today on behalf of a community in crisis. I trust that members have had the opportunity to read the supporting papers that we submitted. Members will see that we represent residents whose ability to stay in their own homes is under threat. Every year, the membership of our group alone suffers loss because members who can take no more move out of the area. Fortunately for our continuing existence, our limited publicity efforts have produced a crop of new members, some of whom are desperate for help and advice.
On behalf of Marchmont and Sciennes community council, I ask the Parliament to introduce legislation to restrict the percentage of houses in multiple occupation in an area, street or individual tenement. Scottish ministers have previously passed legislation to regulate HMOs. In 1991, HMOs were added as a category to the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982, but it was left to local authorities to decide whether to use the new power. In 2000, Scottish ministers made the licensing of HMOs mandatory. At the same time, the number of occupants that constituted an HMO was reduced from five to three.
Why is the City of Edinburgh Council not prepared to take effective action in the way that Glasgow City Council has done, albeit that Glasgow City Council has had to justify its action in the courts?
Interestingly, I attended a meeting of the licensing committee in Edinburgh last week. I admit that most of the meeting was about liquor licensing, but HMOs also came up. The licensing committee's first reaction was to pass the buck to the planning department. Personally, I think that the planning department is pretty slow already, and asking the planning department to deal with HMOs would just block up the system completely.
Is Councillor Attridge the member for the Marchmont ward?
No, he is a member of the licensing board.
Is the councillor for Marchmont not prepared to help in any way?
The councillor for Marchmont is Councillor MacLaren, who is convener of the MAGPIE group. She has given us her full support and co-operation from day one. The group was formed after I wrote to her to ask that something be done about the state of the streets, which were manky. She put a notice in her local bulletin, a meeting was held in the City Chambers and we were launched in short order. She has been very supportive and co-operative, but she is not in the ruling party. Unfortunately, things tend to fall along party lines in Edinburgh. I am sorry to say that, but it is true.
Before I finish, I should declare an interest as someone who, as a student, stayed on Warrender Park Road in Marchmont 30 years ago. I was happy there, too.
It is perhaps just as well that HMO licences were not required then, as John Scott might have been tossed out.
They had landladies in those days.
Let me start with a comment. I sat on the Social Justice Committee when it took evidence on the licensing of houses in multiple occupation. As I remember, a steady stream of landlords' representatives told us that we would kick rented housing out of Edinburgh. However, it seems that the opposite has happened.
I got a fright yesterday, when I had the spare time to sit down and examine the statistics—which I seldom have time to do—in preparation for today. I was staggered to discover that, in several major streets in Marchmont, just under 50 per cent of the houses are HMOs. In some cases, such as in one smaller street, the proportion is considerably more than 50 per cent. That is the kind of figure that we are talking about. The overall figure that I have for the area is 34 per cent, based on the council figures. However, I have done my own homework and read through voters rolls, and I think that I know of more HMOs—unlicensed ones—than the council does. Based on that information, I would say that the figure is more than 34 per cent. My percentages—all of which I have with me—are staggering, when we realise the numbers that there are. I would say that, in reality, we are almost up to 50 per cent in the area.
I take it that the vast majority of HMOs are student accommodation.
Yes. We try not to be pejorative, because we are quite genuinely not against students. We have good relations with students, but there are just too many. We are being overloaded. That is the problem.
How significant is the problem of trying to get absentee landlords to co-operate when seeking to get repairs sanctioned or actioned? I am aware that that is a problem. Would you like to expand on that point?
I am reluctant to say too much, because I have to deal with such a landlord. The typical response is zero. Letters are just not replied to. Fairly minor repairs have had to be done to our building twice in the past four years, and on each occasion it has been like getting blood out of a stone. He is an absentee, but he lives in the city and I happen to have his address. Finally, I presented myself at his address. He immediately named the problem and said, "Oh, do you want a cheque?" He had never replied to my letters, but he paid up; I was amazed that he did. I know that he owns several properties in the area, and every one of the self-appointed factors—namely an owner-occupier from the stair—has had difficulties getting money out of him.
What I have to say is more of a comment than a question, so perhaps I should wait until the committee discusses what action to take on the petition.
We can take ideas, if you want to suggest something. The petitioners have been quite clear in presenting the issue and making the points that they wanted to make. I think that we can judge what to do with the petition once we have heard some comments.
I have listened with interest to what the petitioners have told us. I represent a constituency that covers part of the Edinburgh area, and what they have said has certainly got me thinking. I very much recognise the extent to which properties in Edinburgh are now being bought as investment opportunities simply because of the shifts in the market. I note that that is having all sorts of knock-on effects in different parts of the city. The fact that the situation is quite specific to the Edinburgh area should probably be factored into any questions that we ask when we advance our consideration of the petition.
Following on from Susan Deacon's points, there are wider issues at stake about the composition of housing and the mix of social housing and student accommodation. It strikes me that the problem would not have arisen if there had not been such a decrease in student accommodation. I am interested in finding out how much accommodation that was designated as student accommodation has been lost in Edinburgh. If it had not been for the loss of that accommodation, the opportunities would not exist for so many landlords to buy it up and rent it as HMOs.
We have had the suggestion that we write to the Scottish Executive and the two local authorities. I do not think that it would be too difficult to ask specific questions such as those that Carolyn Leckie has suggested. If we can get some statistics to provide an analysis of the change and of how things stand at the moment, it would help us to understand the situation.
I have a point of information. I think that we should add the student accommodation services in Edinburgh on to the list of the people to whom we write. We should not ask them about what Carolyn Leckie was saying, as that is a separate issue; I am interested in what the student accommodation services think that the effect on students in Edinburgh would be if the licensing system were operated in the same way as it is in Glasgow.
Are you talking about the services that are provided by the University of Edinburgh?
Yes. It will be possible to find the references in the Official Reports of the Social Justice Committee.
Perhaps we should also write to the minister to ask him whether he is considering whether any changes need to be made to the guidance or to the relevant legislation. He said that he would do that when reviewing the matter.
I am sure that she will consider whether any such changes need to be made.
I beg your pardon. I was looking at the news release from the Executive, which is among our papers. It says that Hugh Henry, the Deputy Minister for Social Justice, had said that he would respond, so I think that we should write to him as well.
We need to be clear that the licensing regime that has been put in place for HMOs is about safety and standards; it is not—and never has been—about preventing people from buying up property and converting it into HMOs. Linda Fabiani is quite right—when the licensing of HMOs was being discussed, all the talk was that we could not put the regime in place, because it would prevent the creation of HMOs. Thankfully, the Social Justice Committee saw the sense of having the regime. Having said all that, it is legitimate to ask, "If one area can deal with issues of density, why can't another?" Therefore I support the view that we should write to COSLA about that.
Are members happy with that? Are there other suggestions?
I am quite surprised that the commercial activity that we are talking about is permitted without people having to follow the due process of planning or regulation. I understand from the petition that properties that are in the ownership of particular landlords can be converted into houses in multiple occupation without due notice being given to the local planning authority, which seems strange to me. Any other commercial activity would be subject to planning and neighbour notification, to which one of the petitioners' complaints relates.
Those are the percentages that Glasgow City Council has applied, although I do not know whether the rate is applied to each street. The council has said that proportion of properties that are HMOs will be 10 per cent in the university area and 5 per cent elsewhere. I do not know how that has been achieved.
Surely there could be anomalies in defining the boundary between where 10 per cent would apply and where 5 per cent would apply. Who determines what the university area encompasses?
There is a map and the council has specified which streets are in the university area.
In your petition, you highlight the fact that the HMO regulations have been challenged in court and that the Court of Session has upheld the views of Glasgow City Council. However, the City of Edinburgh Council is not prepared to follow what Glasgow City Council has done, saying that it would be challenged in law, despite the fact that the Court of Session's decision supports Glasgow City Council.
It is a mystery to me why City of Edinburgh Council is able to plead that it would be challenged in law. As you said, there have been appeals against Glasgow City Council; it has lost some of those cases, but in most cases its decision has been upheld. The City of Edinburgh Council, with its much softer regime, has had a smaller number of appeals, and I think that it has won two cases and lost two cases.
We have had a few suggestions about who we should write to on the petition. Are members happy that we take up the matter with the Executive and the local authorities in the way that has been recommended?
Okay. We will await those responses.
Civil Partnerships (Solemnisation) (PE737)
Petition PE737, in the name of Stephen Harte, on behalf of the Holy Trinity Metropolitan Community Church, calls on the Parliament, before considering a Sewel motion in respect of the Civil Partnership Bill, to seek for the bill to be amended to provide for the possibility of solemnisation of a civil partnership in Scotland by a minister of religion in a way similar to that allowed for religious marriages under the Marriage (Scotland) Act 1977 or, failing that, the deletion of clause 89(2) of the bill so that registrars will be free to conduct civil partnership ceremonies in otherwise appropriate venues that have a religious connection. Stephen Harte is present to give evidence in support of the petition; he is accompanied by Rosemary Street. You have three minutes in which to make your presentation before we move on to questions.
I thank the convener and the committee for seeing us today. I also thank the clerk and his colleagues for fulfilling what must be the challenging task of dealing with a variety of enthusiastic petitioners who are trying to be heard.
Thank you. Does any member have a question for the petitioners?
I do not know whether what I have to say is a question. The matter seems clear: I think that I understand everything that you have said. It seems that the issue is one of basic unfairness and inequality. Could you lay out simply why the bill would not give churches the freedom to exercise their beliefs?
You are correct to say that the situation seems unfair. I have explained the matter to MSPs, MPs and ministers. Indeed, I had a meeting with my MP, one of whose many hats is that he is Secretary of State for Scotland. When I presented the issue to him in a surgery, he said that our proposal seemed to be clear and fair. That is the response that we get until we reach the civil servants in the bill team and the ministers who are responsible for the bill, after which everything goes funny and we are told that our proposal is not necessary. The bill will not allow a minister of religion to be the person who solemnises the civil partnership—the person who creates it on behalf of the state.
Could you please explain solemnisation?
I am sorry; it is technical jargon.
Never having been married, I have never been solemnised.
I have not been married either. The technical term "solemnisation" refers not only to a church blessing of a relationship, but to the church service that creates the legal relationship in exactly the same way as happens in the registry office ceremony. For many people of faith, solemnisation is an important manifestation of their religion; the ceremony is grounded in their faith. In the same way as faith is important to many people in Scottish society, it is important to many LGBT people. As the bill is drafted, churches will be forced to send their same-sex couples down the road to a dingy registry office, whereas their mixed-sex couples can ground their relationship in their faith as part of the church community.
That was simply put. Thank you.
At the weekend, I was reading an issue of the Church of Scotland's "Life & Work" magazine. Next week, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland will meet across the road from here. The new moderator is leading the church in an ecumenical direction. Given that various reports will go forward from the assembly, what is the ecumenical view across Scotland of the subject of your petition PE737? We like to pay regard not only to one church, but to all the churches and faiths of Scotland.
Unfortunately, we can speak only for ourselves. We have tried to seek out the views of others, as far as that was possible for a small organisation with small resources. All the Church of Scotland ministers, Methodist ministers and Unitarian ministers to whom we spoke and who confirmed that they would show their support of our petition have done so.
I support your right to be able to solemnise a marriage. I am not religious and would not choose to go down that route, but I respect your rights and think that that route should be open to all. The petition is obviously aimed at the Scottish Parliament as we consider the Sewel motion on the bill. However, are you aware of the lobbying situation and the amount of support that there has been in England and Wales for the bill to be amended?
We are conducting this campaign in Scotland, but there are also moves in England and Wales. As members know, the Scottish Parliament is much more accessible than the Parliament at Westminster. The bill is currently before the House of Lords, but how can the House of Lords be lobbied? We have tried to do so, but there are no lords who are ours to contact. The bill is being considered by a committee and the Westminster bureaucracy is tough. The existence of the Public Petitions Committee means that people's voices can be heard in Scotland. Colleagues in England are impressed by our freedom and our contact with our elected representatives and ministers. We do not always get what we want—no one does. However, lobbying in England is, unfortunately, hard.
It is a pity that the committee's own lord is not here.
I do not want to spoil the party and I entirely appreciate what you have said about the Parliament's openness. Nevertheless, we are dealing with a Sewel motion and, whether that is right or wrong, that is the context in which we are operating. I might agree with some of what you have said about how one can lobby the House of Lords—or, indeed, the House of Commons—but that is where there must be lobbying if the kind of change that I think you want can be created. There may well be a mechanism in Scotland that gives powers to amend a Sewel motion, but I would have thought that you should focus your tactical attention elsewhere.
You may know that the Equal Opportunities Committee did a lot of work on the issue before Christmas. I understand that it obtained an agreement from ministers that the bill team that would consider the Scottish parts of the bill would consist of civil servants accountable to Scottish ministers. There is a separate Scottish part of the bill and the civil servants dealing with that part are in Victoria Quay and are accountable to the Minister for Justice, which is why we are making our efforts in Scotland.
I have a point of clarification that builds on Jackie Baillie's question. If a Sewel motion were introduced for the Civil Partnership Bill, would it allow same-sex marriages to be solemnised? If so, would that solve your problem?
First, the Minister for Justice has already lodged the Sewel motion, which means that it is already before Parliament. Much though I would love to debate the term "same-sex marriages"—
Define it as you wish.
As I say, I would love to have that debate at some point. Unfortunately, that is not what the Executive has put on the table.
I am horrified by what I have heard this morning, because it seems like a basic denial of rights. It simply confirms the point behind the argument that the Civil Partnership Bill should not be dealt with through a Sewel motion. After all, so many aspects directly affect Scotland and the Scottish people. I guess that that argument will be raised when the matter comes up again.
We made a submission to the Equal Opportunities Committee's consultation and the Executive's consultation. However, as is often the case with Executive consultations, our response disappeared into a black hole. I am not saying that it was ignored, but one never knows what happens to such things after they are submitted.
And that is a straight recommendation from the Equal Opportunities Committee to the Executive.
Yes. It is recommendation 9.
You have explained some important issues very well this morning. However, the matter leads us into a moral and legislative maze. We also need to remember that, for good or ill, the bill that you are talking about is being considered at Westminster.
You correctly refer to the legislative realities. As we sit here, the Justice 1 Committee is also considering the procedures relating to the matter. I regret that I am unable to attend that meeting. We believe that a great injustice is being done and that ECHR-guaranteed rights of people of faith in Scotland are being trampled on. That is the reality for us.
As has been mentioned, the Minister for Justice, Cathy Jamieson, lodged a Sewel motion on the Civil Partnership Bill on 26 April. The Justice 1 Committee will consider the motion and take oral evidence on it. As far as I am aware, it is doing so this morning. I am not sure that the committee will not consider the issues that we have been discussing this morning. It would be appropriate for the points that Mr Harte has made, the questions that have been asked and the information that we have gathered to be presented to the Justice 1 Committee, to allow it to consider that evidence before the Sewel motion comes before Parliament. What do members think about the tight timescale to which we are working? I believe that the Sewel motion may come before Parliament in June.
I agree with your recommendation. The matter needs to be turned around quickly because, as the petitioner has indicated, the Justice 1 Committee is considering the bill now. It is crucial that we get the evidence that we have received to the committee, so that the committee can take it on board. The petitioners should not forget that, ultimately, they need to lobby Westminster. That is the point that I was trying to make to them.
I beg the committee's indulgence. I hoped that the issue of families would come up in the questions, but it did not. My colleague Rosemary Street, who is a member of our church, is also an active member of Parents Enquiry Scotland and would like briefly to share with the committee some information on the impact of the bill as drafted on Scottish families.
I do not know whether we can spend much more time on questions, but if you want to say something that you think will add to the information that we refer to the Justice 1 Committee, I am more than happy for you to do so.
I will bring the debate to a personal level. I cannot emphasise enough what I feel about the unfairness of the wording in the bill. I have been a member of the Metropolitan Community Church for nine years and have met many lesbian and gay people of wonderful, true faith.
Are there any other comments before we bring this item to a conclusion? I do not want to keep the debate going. We are trying to decide what to do with the petition.
In the context of those final comments about families, I raised the issue of family law and made the point that there are plans for devolved legislation on family law, on which a consultation process is currently taking place. I repeat the point that the moral issues and the legislative debates that today's discussion has touched on are all germane to that process and to the legislation that will eventually be passed. There has been enormous focus on the Civil Partnership Bill, but there are other ways and other places in which some of the issues can be raised. The current debate may or may not eventually lead to further legislative changes, but there are other vehicles for debate, discussion and potential statutory change here in Scotland. In a sense, I am disappointed that the petitioners did not address my question on that. I know that time is limited, but perhaps that is something that the committee could bear in mind.
I agree with the recommendation that the petition should be sent to the Justice 1 Committee, but I also recommend that we write to the Minister for Justice asking her whether she has taken those issues on board in making her decision about what to put before Parliament. We should ask whether she has raised those issues with Westminster, in relation to the Sewel motion that will be lodged and in relation to the bill. If there are issues that are not being addressed in the Civil Partnership Bill, we need to know whether she has plans to cover those issues in further legislation that is now being considered.
I have just one point to make on that, Linda. First of all, the timescale would not allow us to get a reply back from the minister or—
We have two weeks. The minister's officials must know whether what I am asking about is being done.
Given that the minister has already given us a response in relation to that, it would be for the Justice 1 Committee—
Yes, but it does not answer the question.
It would be for the Justice 1 Committee to take those questions to the minister once we have referred the petition to that committee. We have said previously in this committee that we either send a petition to the minister or we send it to another committee. We cannot delay the timescale to which the Justice 1 Committee is working; if we asked for a response from the minister, that would not meet the Justice 1 Committee's timescale. The Justice 1 Committee will have to take up the matter with the minister in relation to the Sewel motion. If we refer the petition to the Justice 1 Committee, we will effectively be doing what you are suggesting by demanding a response from the minister.
If you are talking about the response from the minister and you mean the letter that is among our papers for this meeting, that is a news release that was put out by the Scottish Executive in September last year. That is a long time ago and things could have happened since then. Let us give the minister the benefit of the doubt; perhaps she has taken the issue on board. If you are saying that a Scottish Executive news release is a response from a minister to a formal committee of the Parliament, I do not think that that is on.
Okay, but we know what the minister's position is on the issue. What we do not know is the minister's response with respect to the issues that the Justice 1 Committee is considering. When writing to the Justice 1 Committee, we can ask it to take up the points that have been raised this morning by Mr Harte and Mrs Street. In that way, we could elicit a response from the minister.
Could we also ask the Justice 1 Committee to ask those specific questions?
That is what I said.
Well—
If we write to the Justice 1 Committee and give it a copy of the Official Report of our meeting, as we always do, and ask it to take on board the points raised by Mr Harte and Mrs Street this morning, those are the questions that the committee will put to the minister, if we ask it to do that specifically.
That covers one element of the issue. I shall take it on myself to cover some of the others. That is fair enough.
Are members happy with that?
I thank the petitioners for coming along this morning.
Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 (PE721)
Petition PE721, which was lodged by Alan McLauchlan, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Executive to produce authoritative guidelines in relation to provisions contained in the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 and to ensure that those guidelines and adequate advice on the act are available to all tenants who sublet, assign, or exercise the right of other provisions contained within the act. Before it was formally lodged, the petition was hosted on the e-petitioner site, where it gathered two electronic signatures during the period 23 February 2004 to 20 March 2004.
I should say that I am a member of the Chartered Institute of Housing in Scotland. In fact, I am a fellow of the institute—I was promoted.
The specific case that the petitioner raises is definitely a matter for the courts. It is for the tenant to prove that consent has been unreasonably withheld and that can happen only in the context of an appeal to the court. We cannot get involved in the individual case, however valid it might be. That is not a job for us. However, it would be reasonable to ask the Executive whether it intends to produce guidelines along the lines that the petitioner proposes, given that there appear to be no such guidelines.
Are members happy to follow Linda Fabiani's recommendation and to contact the organisations that she suggested?
Green-belt Sites (Scottish Executive Policy) (PE724)
Petition PE724, which was lodged by Grace McNeil, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Executive to review its policy on green-belt sites. The petitioner is concerned about the potential impact on wildlife of the proposed development of an area of green-belt land in North Lanarkshire.
Thank you, convener; I am grateful to you for giving me the opportunity to speak to this petition. Although the petition focuses on one particular site, a general issue arises because of the fear of an increasing presumption in favour of developing green-belt sites when adequate brownfield sites are available.
This petition, if considered with the previous petition on this issue, shows that there is a trend. That trend has been caused by local authorities trying to supplement their income. The bigger political issue is that green-belt land is being encroached on because local authorities are selling it off. They are selling off school sites as well.
I am happy for us to write to the Scottish Executive, but I am not aware of it ever having said that it wanted more development of greenfield areas. The position is quite the reverse. It has been announced at UK level and at Scottish level that development of brownfield sites is wanted. Having been on the planning committee of the council in Fife for 13 years, I know that the Government was adamant that we should not encroach on greenfield sites. It was the development of brownfield sites that it was after.
I have no problem with associating this petition with the petition that we considered previously, and I have no problem with our writing again to the Executive. However, as in all planning issues, there is a balance. Although 19 decisions may have been notified in one local authority, I am unsure how many of them were then supported by the Executive.
Are members happy that we ask where the response is to PE712 and that we consider this petition with PE712 when the response returns to us from the Executive?
Notwithstanding what Jackie Baillie said about local authorities not benefiting in her area, they certainly do in other areas. It would be worth inquiring of the Executive whether the trend of local authorities going into green-belt land for their own financial benefit is on the increase.
That is fair enough, but we are dealing with separate issues. Local authorities sell off land and they benefit financially when they do that. I am opposed to what is happening in South Lanarkshire, for example. However, when one talks about going into the green belt, one often means buying land from farmers rather than buying land from local authorities. We are in danger of being caught between two stools here. If we ask about local authority ownership of green-belt land, we will not address the major issue that Carolyn Leckie spoke of in the first place.
Are members happy to write to the Executive to chase up the response to the original petition and then consider both petitions together when we receive the responses?
TETRA Communications System (Health Aspects) (PE728)
Petition PE728, in the name of Paul Goddard on behalf of Comrie Action on TETRA, calls on the Parliament to urge the Executive to carry out a full inquiry into the health effects of terrestrial trunked radio communication masts and to implement an immediate moratorium on the installation and activation of the system until the outcome of such an inquiry is known.
I am happy to follow the suggestion that the Communities Committee might wish to consider PE728 further along with PE650.
It should be mentioned that because they are raising a health issue, the petitioners would be concerned if the petition went only to the Communities Committee. It should be on record that although we are referring the petition to the Communities Committee, that committee has already passed on the issues that arose from its consideration of the previous related petition to the Health Committee and to the Environment and Rural Development Committee. The assumption is that the same would be done with this petition.
Are members happy with that?
Autism Treatments (PE729)
The next petition is PE729, on a conference on autism treatments. The petition is in the name of Bill Welsh, on behalf of Action Against Autism. The petitioner calls on the Parliament to urge the Executive to fund as a matter of urgency a two-day conference on autism treatments so that parents, professionals and medical doctors can receive information and practical advice on the screening and testing of autistic children and adults, leading to individually tailored treatment protocols, which are emergent in the United States of America. The petitioner suggests that the conference should be based on the "Defeat Autism Now!" two-day mini-conference programme, which focuses exclusively on a protocol for testing and treatments for autism spectrum disorder.
I wonder whether the Executive has already turned down a request for such a conference and that is why the request has come to us, or whether the request has come straight to us. Do any members know?
Although it is a worthy idea to have a conference to examine the ways of treating ASD, we should write to the Scottish Society for Autism and the National Autistic Society Scotland before we write to the Executive seeking a conference, because there is only one petitioner. It would be worth while garnering the views of those two organisations before we write to the Executive so that we can at least be sure whether their view, not only that of the single petitioner, who is apparently only one voice, is that we should write and request a conference.
The central question was asked earlier. I have no problem with John Scott's recommendation, but we do not know whether the petitioner has approached the Executive and I would have thought that common sense dictates that if somebody wants the Executive to fund something, they should approach it directly in the first instance. I would expect the Executive to take wider soundings from organisations such as those that John Scott mentioned so, although I endorse that proposal, we should tell the petitioner that he should perhaps write to the Executive.
We do not know that the petitioner has not done that. I remind the committee—although I hope that it is not necessary—that we refer petitions to the Executive for comment on the basis of a single petitioner's request all the time, so I do not know why PE729 should be any different.
We should do something else in tandem with what John Scott suggested. The Executive has confirmed funding for addressing various elements of autistic spectrum disorder. There is nothing to prevent us from writing to the Executive and asking whether it would be minded to fund the proposed conference from the agreed funding. I note that the petition uses the word "urgent", so it would be good to get the Executive's answer to the funding question at the same time as its response to the rest.
I have just a couple of comments. I am conscious that I am a novice on the Public Petitions Committee, which has probably been obvious from my contributions already today. Within the parameters of health bodies, let alone more widely throughout Scotland, there are hundreds of organisations that might want to hold what could be an important and valuable conference. If I were a full member of the committee rather than a substitute one, I would be concerned about people always coming here to ask the kind of question that PE729 asks.
I am sorry to cut Helen Eadie off before she speaks, but I have one observation to make. Although, as John Scott noted, the petition is in one person's name, it is clear that the petition is on behalf of Action Against Autism. The petitioner is the chairperson of that organisation, so we are not talking about just one individual who has come up with a bright idea. The petition is on behalf of a group that obviously feels that it has an input to make. We must try to find out how we can assist in raising the question that the group has put in the petition.
I hear what you are saying, convener, but I have much sympathy with Susan Deacon's point. I take Carolyn Leckie's point about bringing people together, which is a good thing to do. However, we should not always think that it is the job of Government to bring people together to undertake conferences. Only two weeks ago in this room, I hosted a conference on skin cancer, which more than 100 people attended. There is nothing to prevent any individual MSP or any group of people from facilitating a conference of that sort. Those groups that Jackie Baillie highlighted should rightly form a collective to organise and facilitate a conference. In many ways, it can be better for a group to organise its own conference because it can do so to its own prescription rather than to that of the Executive. Therefore, I am in the camp of following John Scott's suggestion and of clarifying, as Linda Fabiani and Jackie Baillie said, whether the petitioners have made a direct approach to the Executive.
For the avoidance of doubt, I state that I am in favour of having a conference, but it would be better for the committee to write to the Executive with the evidence from the Scottish Society for Autism and the National Autistic Society Scotland in support of the petition. We would be more likely to get a positive result by doing that. The Executive is aware of the problem of autistic spectrum disorder and it is putting £2 million towards addressing it. However, if a conference were organised with money from that budget, something else would suffer. Therefore, I presume that new money would be sought.
I have a couple of points. I am a wee bit disappointed, given the sort of experience that I have had in this committee, which generally operates on the basis of consensus and being positive about petitions that offer new ideas and seeking to facilitate rather than obstruct them. The petition is from an organisation that has a specific request for the Executive and on every other occasion when we have been in this position we have agreed at least to write to the Executive before we decide to do anything else, such as referring the petition to a committee.
We would not do anything to delay that, but we cannot accede to your request, because we would have every petitioner turning up and sitting in the public gallery hoping that they would have the opportunity to give evidence. That is why we operate in the way that we do. We take requests to speak and we choose. I know that it is difficult, but we have to do that, and on the basis of the information that is in front of us.
We are in danger of saying that there is something about the issue with which we do not find favour. We need to set that aside because, as Carolyn Leckie rightly said, in the past the committee has been sympathetic, not just to this issue, but to a wide range of issues.
In the submission from the petitioner there is no indication that a request was made to the Executive and there is no information that a request was turned down. To help things along, we could write back asking for that information. We can encourage the petitioners to go to the Executive and then, if they fail, they could come back to us and ask for support in making the conference happen.
If we seek clarification on whether an approach has been made to the Executive and it transpires that an approach has been made and the response has not been favourable, we should not have to wait until we have another meeting before we write to the Executive.
I want to try to find a solution to this. I am perfectly happy for us to write to the Executive in addition to writing to the two other organisations along the lines that Carolyn Leckie suggests. If we believe that having a conference is a good idea—as I believe that we do—our case would be strengthened when we write to the Executive if we had the support of the other organisations in addition to Mr Welsh's view. It is a question of semantics. We are all agreed, so if Carolyn Leckie or the rest of us want to write to the Executive, that is not a problem.
It is not a problem, but I have to agree with Jackie Baillie that we would be setting a dangerous precedent if the committee was the first port of call in setting up a conference of this nature. We can assist organisations that are experiencing difficulty, but I do not think that we should be the conduit through which a request to hold a conference would go. That is what I am concerned about. We have to try to be helpful, but we could do so by encouraging the organisation to go to the Executive to make its request. We can then assist once we know the answer to the request if the organisation is not happy with the outcome. We have to be careful that we do not become the sounding board for requests to the Executive for conferences. I agree with Carolyn Leckie that as we have discussed the subject at great length, we will not need to take a lot of time to address the matter again if it comes back to us. However, it might not have to come back to us if the organisation writes to the Executive itself.
I agree.
I agree completely with what the convener has just said. We can bring the matter back to the next meeting, which is only two weeks away.
I am sure that we will get a speedy response.
Will we write to the other organisations in the meantime?
Yes. We do not have any difficulty with that. We will await the outcome and try to be as helpful as we can to all the organisations.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—
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