Public Petitions Committee, 15 Feb 2000
Meeting date: Tuesday, February 15, 2000
Official Report
185KB pdf
Current Petitions
We will now consider the progress of previous petitions. I want to draw members' attention to a number of them.
Petitions PE18 and PE19, which went through some time ago, concerned the proposed new A701 and called for a public inquiry. Apparently, the Scottish Executive has now arrived at a decision and has given Midlothian Council permission to go ahead with the road. In effect, it has thereby denied the call for a public inquiry. At this stage, therefore, we must simply regard those petitions as a closed issue—unless any members think differently. We passed those petitions to the Scottish Executive, which has notified the petitioners of the decision. Do members agree to close those petitions so that they do not appear on future agendas?
Members indicated agreement.
The next petition is PE22. We received a letter from Allan Wilson MSP that referred to the letter from Sarah Boyack about that petition, which we discussed at our last meeting. Allan is keen to consider the Executive's share information, which it says is necessary to calculate the profitability or otherwise of individual ferry routes. He would also like a timetable to be set out for the receipt of that information. Those matters are being addressed by the Transport and the Environment Committee, of which Helen Eadie, who has just left the room, is a member. I suggest that we simply pass Allan's letter to that committee. Is that agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
Mr Frank Harvey crops up again in petition PE58, which called for the Scottish Parliament to take action to terminate the contract to process student loan applications that was awarded to a company in India by the Student Loans Company.
We have received a lengthy letter from the Student Loans Company, which gives details of the background to this contract. The letter makes clear that the press reports, to which the petitioner referred, simply were inaccurate. The contract was awarded to a company called Hayes DEI Limited following a competitive tendering process. Hayes is a multinational company based in the United Kingdom, and it makes arrangements for the work to be processed in India and Sri Lanka, because it is not possible to accommodate in the UK alone the volume of work and the turnaround times that are required by the Student Loans Company.
Hayes processes the Student Loans Company's work at two sites in India and one in Sri Lanka. It has to comply with international law on human rights and satisfy its clients—in this case the Student Loans Company—that its arrangements are robust in that respect. A senior member of staff from the Student Loans Company visited all three sites and found no evidence of poor conditions.
Hayes employs a high level of graduate staff and the Student Loans Company understands that wages are set at a level that is intended to attract the best people available. In Sri Lanka, typical wages at Hayes are 36 per cent higher than the average for comparable workers in the public sector in that country, and competition for the jobs is described as fierce. The letter seems to address Mr Harvey's concerns and it is suggested that we copy it to him for his information.
I asked for this at our previous meeting: can we have copies of any responses that the committee receives? It would be nice to have them so that we could look through them.
We can do that. Are you asking that responses received by the committee should be circulated to all members?
Yes.
Is that agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
There are no more petitions to be addressed.
Do we have an update on the status of the three Trident petitions PE31, PE34 and PE35?
No, we do not. When the Lord Advocate wrote to us on the matter of Piper Alpha, he said that he would write to us separately on Trident. So far he has not done so. He may be waiting for the referral of the case to the High Court. I do not know. We will get a reply at some point.