Public Petitions Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Official Report 501KB pdf

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Current Petitions

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A83 (Improvements) (PE1428)

The first current petition is PE1428, by Councillor Douglas Philand, on behalf of Argyll First, on improvements to the A83. Members have the papers relating to the petition, a letter from Graham Edmond, head of network maintenance at Transport Scotland, and various other attachments relating to the A83 and the implications at the Rest and Be Thankful.

Do members have any comments on the petition?

I suggest that we keep the petition open and write to Argyll and Bute Council to seek an update on the progress made following its decision a year ago to ask the Scottish Government to develop a business case for trunking the A83 between Kennacraig and Campbeltown. We should also write to the Scottish Government seeking clarification on the timetables set out in the paper that we have received. I commend the Scottish Government and Transport Scotland for the work that they have carried out to date in relation to the petition.

Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

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Mental Health Services (PE1438)

PE1438, by Lynsey Pattie, is on improving services for people with mental illness. The committee considered the petition about two months ago and agreed to write to the Scottish Government to seek information about child and adolescent mental health services; health improvement, efficiency and governance, access and treatment—HEAT—targets; and psychological therapies. A response has been received from the Scottish Government, which is in members’ papers. I invite the committee to decide what action we should take.

All the organisations that were contacted agreed with the petitioner, and the Scottish Government advises that NHS boards are now working towards the reduced 18-week CAMH target. Therefore, there is a strong argument to close the petition.

At the very least, I am minded to draw the petition and the minister’s response to the attention of the Health and Sport Committee.

Okay.

I am happy to close the petition on that basis. However, there was strong support for the petition across the board. Given the minister’s response, I asked before the meeting whether we could ask him any questions on the subject this morning, but of course we were not allowed to do that. The petition is sufficiently contained and interesting that if I were a member of the Health and Sport Committee I might quite like to see it.

Informally?

Yes.

For all the reasons that Jackson Carlaw gave, it is important that we refer the petition to the Health and Sport Committee. The petition contains a great deal of evidence, and it deals with such an important issue that that committee would want to see it, whether that is done informally or formally. I would rather that a formal referral be made.

I do not know all the detailed options but I support our referring the petition to the Health and Sport Committee. Perhaps the deputy convener can explain the difference between formal and informal referral.

Could I get clarification on what Malcolm Chisholm has just said? Are we referring the evidence that we have taken so far to the Health and Sport Committee, or are we asking that committee to consider the petition further?

The issue is extremely sensitive and difficult. The see me campaign does a fantastic job of trying to end the stigma around mental health issues. Most people are aware of the issue, although people with mental health problems who have had the misfortune of ending up in hospital sometimes find it difficult to get help after they have been discharged. The responses from health boards have been positive in that regard.

I am minded to close the petition but to show the Health and Sport Committee all the evidence that we have taken on it.

The proposal is that we close the petition but send the evidence to that committee. Is that agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

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Organ Donation (Opt-out System) (PE1453)

PE1453, from Caroline Wilson, on behalf of the Evening Times and Kidney Research UK (Scotland), calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to introduce an opt-out system of organ donation to help to save more lives. This is one of the most interesting of the many interesting petitions that have come before the committee. Do members have any comments?

I am minded to keep the petition open. We have received many responses on it. The Scottish Government has indicated that it is awaiting the publication of the UK research on the matter and will develop a strategy that, if not along the same lines as the UK strategy, will be appropriate to Scotland. The expectation is that those documents will be available over the summer. Therefore, I recommend that we keep the petition open until after the summer recess. Once we have those documents, we can reconsider the petition.

Is that agreed?

Have the clerks had any indication whether the Health and Sport Committee is also doing some work on the issue?

We do not know, but we can check. Are we agreed to keep the petition open and to revisit it—I hate that word—after the summer?

Members indicated agreement.

At some stage, it might be worth having a chamber debate on the subject. However, we can leave a decision on that until after the summer.

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Scotland’s National Tree (PE1457)

The next current petition is PE1457, which members may have heard about on the radio this morning. It is from Alex Hamilton and calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government, as a symbolic commitment to our woodlands and natural heritage, to proclaim the Scots pine as the national tree of Scotland. Do members have any comments?

As you know, convener, I have been somewhat lukewarm about the proposal that we adopt a national tree. However, I take exception to the letter that we received from the Scottish Government, which said that we are not allowed to have the discussion until we have voted “yes” in a referendum on Scottish independence. That is a grossly impertinent suggestion. I would have thought that the Parliament could agree to a motion on such a matter at any time if it wanted to do so.

For me, the issue is whether there is a national appetite for the adoption of a national tree. If so, is there a clear public view as to which tree should be adopted? In that context, 630 responses after 2.5 million “Opportunities To See” does not particularly lead me to suppose that there is a clear public view. In Mr Hamilton’s latest letter, he says that “interest has continued”. However, no constituent has written to me on the matter, and as I have wandered around the pubs and restaurants of the west of Scotland, I have not been accosted by members of the public who feel that the issue is of burning concern.

They are all hiding behind a tree.

I continue to be neither for the idea nor against it, but I am unclear as to the Government’s role in determining whether Scotland should have a national tree and, if it should, what that tree should be. I am not, as yet, persuaded that I could come to a recommendation on the basis of what I have heard today.

In recess, occasionally I go round conservation areas and talk to landscape gardeners and what have you. When I floated the idea of whether we should have a national tree, the view was that we should, and that it should be the Scots pine. It was a huge sample of about 12 people.

I am still hugely in favour of continuing the petition. I would like to seek some more information from the Minister for Environment and Climate Change about the designation of a national tree of Scotland. We need more information. Like Jackson Carlaw, I was not best pleased with the Scottish Government’s letter. It is important that we look into the matter further. It is a good idea, but we have to clarify our position.

So you are in favour of option 1 in the clerk’s paper.

Yes.

Clearly there are differing views on which tree should be the national tree. I am partial to the rowan tree myself. I do not think that the committee should recommend the Scots pine as a national tree, so I suggest that we recommend that the Scottish Government undertake its own consultation. The online polls were perhaps not as scientific as we would have liked, and the Scottish Government might make a more professional effort.

So we will not ask the Government to prepare a bill; we will simply ask it to investigate further. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

I will not say, “All those in favour of the Scots pine.”

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Scottish Living Wage (Recognition Scheme) (PE1467)

PE1467 is by Andrew McGowan, on behalf of the Scottish Youth Parliament, on a Scottish living wage recognition scheme. I welcome members’ contributions.

I support the petition. Option 1 in the clerk’s paper is to write again to the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the Scottish Trades Union Congress to seek a response, and to write to the Scottish Chambers of Commerce and the Confederation of British Industry Scotland for business views. If we choose option 1, we would keep the petition open and get further views on it. Those are four important bodies. I do not know whether we have sought their views and they have not replied, or whether the suggestion is that we ask for their views.

We have written to them and they have not responded. Shall I write to them again and remind them that they should at least give us the courtesy of a reply, whether meaningful or otherwise?

I noted in Nicola Sturgeon’s response to the committee that she was keen to know from the petitioners how such a scheme would operate and what its associated costs would be.

I read Andrew McGowan’s letter. I say in passing that we are considering various petitions with detailed and lengthy responses from the Scottish Youth Parliament and the petitioners concerned, and all of them read as if they have been written by the same hand. I would be interested to know whether the response that we have received in Andrew McGowan’s name was written by him. We could write to the Scottish Youth Parliament generally to ask who drafts the replies to the committee on its behalf: the petitioners themselves or somebody else? Their style is remarkably consistent.

I spent some time reading the submission and, beyond the fact that it says that the taxpayer should pay the costs, I still was not clear that it had identified what the costs would be. The Deputy First Minister believed that that would be a material consideration. As I said when we took evidence on the petition, I have no objections to the aims that underpin it, but the petitioner must be clear how the scheme would be financed, who would bear those costs and, once such a scheme was put in place, how it would be followed up and who would bear the costs of doing so. In its response, the Federation of Small Businesses asks a number of legitimate questions about the scope of the scheme.

We need to know all that information before we make any recommendation. As I have said, I am not against the principle behind the petition but I think that very clear terms of reference need to be set and it seems to me that Nicola Sturgeon, too, is looking for that guidance.

12:00

On your point about the similarity between the letters, I do not know but I suspect that the Scottish Youth Parliament agrees the principle and gets someone to draft the proposal. I have to say that I am not surprised by any similarity in that respect.

I am hugely in favour of continuing the petition but we need to get the views that we have sought from COSLA and the STUC. Indeed, a few people have been mentioned from whom we still have to receive a response.

So we should go back to those organisations and ask for their views.

Yes.

Do members agree with that course of action?

Members indicated agreement.

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Young Carers Grant (PE1470)

PE1470, by another MSYP, Lauren King, asks the Scottish Parliament to urge the Government to establish a young carers grant for carers in full-time education or under the age of 18. Do members have any comments to make?

The fact that we have received a number of comprehensive responses from some but not all local authorities brings us back to your earlier point, convener, about our not having received responses from all concerned. I would like to take the petition forward on the basis of a comprehensive response from all local authorities, because the general view seems to be that there is something to the petition and that its authority would be enhanced if we had a comprehensive list of responses.

I was going to make that very point, but you have made it so much better than I could. Are members agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

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Young People’s Hospital Wards (PE1471)

Our final current petition is PE1471, from Rachael McCully, again on behalf of the Scottish Youth Parliament. The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to establish specific young people’s wards or rooms in hospitals for adolescents and to ensure that staff are adequately trained to support young people’s mental and emotional needs in hospital.

I see that Jackson Carlaw wishes to comment.

I am sorry, convener—I seem to be on speed this morning.

The responses that we received slightly surprised me and highlighted something that I had not fully appreciated. When the petitioner made her presentation to us, there was much more of a concentration on the establishment of specific young people’s wards; in fact, the majority of the responses relate to the training of staff, and I think that that aspect will be quite interesting as we go forward.

That said, I do not feel that the responses leave us any the wiser with regard to the petitioner’s recommendation that there be adolescent wards in each hospital development. I have to say that for practical reasons I was not much attracted to that proposition when we took evidence but I am happy to seek from NHS Education for Scotland the information that has been suggested.

I was very impressed with Action for Sick Children Scotland’s detailed response, which was very sympathetic to the petition. This is a very complex area, but Action for Sick Children’s comments suggest that certain serious issues need to be addressed. I am in favour of following options 1, 2 and 3 in the clerk’s paper. We should seek information from all the bodies mentioned, but it would certainly be interesting to hear the views of NHS Education for Scotland and the Royal College of Nursing, and I would be particularly interested in hearing from NHS Lothian whether its planning for the new hospital will take the issue into account. It might not be as simple as either creating a dedicated adolescent ward or doing nothing; there are many different options—there could, for example, be a number of single rooms with a common area—and more work needs to be done on the matter. As I said, I recommend that we follow options 1, 2 and 3.

From my social work experience, I think that we need to continue the petition and seek further information. Given certain discrepancies in hospital wards and the fact that ill young people are being preyed on by others in adult wards, we should ask these questions and continue the petition to pursue what is an important safety issue for young people.

When we previously discussed the petition, I raised a concern about the training of nurses and their handling of patients. I think that the proposed action is eminently sensible.

Before I formally close the meeting, I advise members that the Official Report will be available at the beginning of next week and that the next formal meeting is scheduled for 28 May.

Meeting closed at 12:06.