Public Petitions Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Official Report 429KB pdf

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Current Petitions

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School Bus Safety (PE1098 and PE1223)

We will consider PE1098 and PE1223 together. PE1098, by Lynn Merrifield on behalf of Kingseat community council, and PE1223, by Ron Beaty, are both on school bus safety. Members have a note by the clerk.

Do members have questions or comments?

I do not want to let go of the petitions. We should keep them open. We should get back to the Scottish Government, which has been reviewing the guidance on school transport safety. I would like to know how that is going. I am not sure whether we have already asked the Scottish Government this, but if not, we should ask it to ensure that the signage issue for school buses is covered in the review. It has got lost in the seat belts issue, but Mr Beaty’s petition in particular focuses on the need for adequate signage.

I declare an interest in that, as of this week, my son is being taken to his nursery by bus. I have been interested in this issue for a long time, even before being elected to Parliament, but it is of personal interest to me now. I commend Mr Beaty, who I believe appears at every meeting at which his petition is considered. He has commendable stamina in his pursuit of the matter.

It would be churlish not to say that some progress is being made. However, the pace of progress is the concern. Further, the focus appears to have fixed on seat belts and, although that issue is important, focusing on it ignores some of the wider aspects in the petition. Perhaps we could write to Transport Scotland and the Scottish Government to say that, although we are pleased that the issue is being taken forward and that we appreciate the focus on seat belts, we would like to know their views on those wider issues and whether they think that there is scope for some of them to be considered. Some of the issues in the petition are not caught up in the legislative guddle between Westminster and Holyrood that is causing delay with regard to seat belts and they could, therefore, be acted on more quickly.

We could also write to COSLA, given that local authorities implement their own policies around school transport.

Do we agree to continue the petition and to act on the recommendations that have been made by Nanette Milne and Mark McDonald and are in the paper that has been provided to us by the clerk?

Before we move on, I note that there is still an issue involving Transport Scotland, the Scottish Government and the United Kingdom Government and the devolution of the powers around school bus safety. As Ron Beaty quite rightly indicated in his submission, the issue is not just about seat belts or lap belts. The Association of Transport Coordinating Officers has addressed the issue of having a legal requirement that all buses that transport schoolchildren should be fitted with lap belts. We do not know whether that is happening yet.

In the previous session of Parliament, the Public Petitions Committee held an evidence-taking session in which we discussed the possibility of other powers around road transport safety for school buses being devolved. That would enable us to enact Scottish legislation that would encompass the wider issues around school transport, including road usage, road signage and other features that might be applicable in terms of the operation of school bus transport systems.

I suggest that we write once again to the Scottish Government and the UK Government to find out what progress has been made in that regard. I note that some of the timescales in the letter from Transport Scotland talk about 2018. It is six years since PE1098 was submitted. If we wait until 2018, it will have been 12 years since we received the petition, which will mean that we have been acting very slowly. If we had previously resolved some of the issues around seat belts and lap belts, we would have been wiping out any school bus contract that did not specify buses with properly fitted seat belts or lap belts.

The wider issues around transport that do not rest with the Scottish Government should be resolved as quickly as possible. I would like us to write to the UK Government and the Scottish Government to find out whether we will see any movement around the devolution of those powers prior to the referendum in 2014.

Looking through the papers, I noted the issue of local authorities being able to make it a condition that operators remove signage when school buses are not in use for pupils. Local authorities appear to think that they do not have the power to do that, but we heard—from Mike Penning, I think—that they have that power. We can get clarification from the Scottish Government. If local authorities have that power, we can ask how many local authorities are aware of that and whether they can be made aware of it by the Government.

Absolutely. The recommendations in the clerk’s note touch on that. John Wilson talked about devolved powers, and we can ask whether the Scottish Government would want a quicker devolution of powers to enable it to act on the issue. I take on board what Nanette Milne says about the awareness of local authorities; we can raise that matter, too.

Does the committee agree to keep the petition open, to raise the issues that have been raised by members and to follow the recommendations in the clerk’s note?

Members indicated agreement.

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Acquired Brain Injury Services (PE1179)

PE1179, in the name of Helen Moran, on behalf of the Brain Injury Awareness Campaign, is on acquired brain injury services. Members have a copy of the petition and a note, including recommendations, from the clerk.

The clerk’s note mentions that the Scottish Government has committed to introducing legislation on the integration of adult health and social care services; the consultation on that will be published in May 2012. We may wish to suggest that the Scottish Government invites the petitioners to participate in that consultation. The note also draws our attention to the fact that the Scottish Government has confirmed that, over the next two years, an ABI sub-group will proceed with work that will help to move the ABI network from a clinical network to a care network. It seems that the petition has achieved something, so we might consider closing it.

I draw the committee’s attention to the most recent submission from Helen Moran on the issue. She is in the public gallery today, and I commend her for the work that she has done not only on the petition, but in promoting the Public Petitions Committee system more widely.

The petitioner specifically requests that the petition remain open until other factors are in place. In particular, she says

“we see the Social Care side of treatment/support as lagging far behind”

and that she would like to see a support strategy coming forward before being satisfied that the petition should be closed.

There are a number of issues that we still need to consider. We must ensure that all the services are in place. It is okay to say that one part of the service, or the Scottish Government, recognises that something needs to be achieved, but there are other issues around the social care side of the treatment that need to be resolved. To satisfy the petitioner and those who support the petition, we need to ensure that they get a wider response than the narrow one that they have got at the moment. I respectfully request that the petition remain open until we get responses on the issues that the petitioner has raised.

I agree. The petitioner makes a valid contribution in her most recent submission. Frankly, I would rather see work completed than work in progress before we close the petition.

I, too, support the suggestion that we keep the petition open. I am not entirely pleased with the response from the ADSW, which highlights only one local authority. West Dunbartonshire Council may be doing a very good job, but it is only one local authority out of 32. I wonder whether we should write directly to the local authorities rather than go through the ADSW, so that we can get their responses on the matter. If we approach the local authorities through the ADSW, we may receive a fairly selective reply.

15:45

Thank you, Mark. We can write again to the local authorities. Obviously, that was one of the actions taken on the petition before you and I were members of the committee. Does the committee wish to continue the petition and keep it open for any further action?

Members indicated agreement.

As I said, a public consultation will be published in May 2012 on the integration of adult health and social care services. I suggest that we ask the Scottish Government to invite the petitioners to participate in that consultation. Do members agree?

Members indicated agreement.

As well as writing to local authorities, I suggest that we write to the Scottish Government to ask whether its intention is to draw up guidelines or draft legislation that would help to deliver the social care element of the issues that the petitioner has identified. The Government has indicated that it wants to take the matter forward and that it hopes that local authorities will take it forward. However, we in the Parliament have experience of the Government’s intentions not always being carried forward by local authorities. Guidelines may be needed, or measures may have to be put in place. We should ask the Scottish Government whether it intends to do that to ensure that we get a comprehensive support service throughout Scotland from all 32 local authorities.

The Scottish Government has made it clear that that is its intention. Are you suggesting that the ABI sub-group should write guidelines as part of its work, if it has not already done that?

I am suggesting that we should ask the Scottish Government to consider drawing up guidelines.

Is that the wish of the committee?

Members indicated agreement.

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Victims of Crime (Support and Assistance) (PE1403)

PE1403, in the name of Peter Morris, is on improving support and assistance to victims of crime and their families. Members have the clerk’s paper and copies of the submissions. Do members have any comments?

As you are aware, I was involved in helping Mr Morris get the petition to Parliament. I was disappointed by the response from the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland. I thought that it was unhelpful—that is probably the charitable way to describe it.

We should keep the petition open. I suggest that we contact the Scottish Government about the timescales that it envisages for legislation on the issue. My view is that once the legislation is in process, the petition would be of value to the Justice Committee as part of its deliberations. However, we do not want to pass the petition to that committee just now, because we do not have a clear understanding of the timescales. We should get that information from the Government, then make our decision on the petition at our next meeting.

I take it that everyone is in agreement with that. The words that ACPOS used—“aspirational and unrealistic”—are certainly not very helpful. I put that on the record, so that ACPOS knows that the committee is not very happy about its use of those words.

Are we happy to continue the petition and to ask the Government for an update on timescales?

Members indicated agreement.

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Pernicious Anaemia and Vitamin B12 Deficiency (Understanding and Treatment) (PE1408)

PE1408, in the name of Andrea MacArthur, is on the understanding and treatment of pernicious anaemia and vitamin B12 deficiency. Members will recollect the very good debate that we had in the Parliament on the issue, in which we all took part. I thank everyone very much for that.

Members have a note from the clerk on the petition and copies of the submissions. Do members have any comments on what further action we should take?

May I just correct you? I was not able to take part in the debate—it was unfortunate that a clash meant that I could not do so. I want to put on record my apologies for not being able to speak in the debate. However, I read the Official Report and it seemed to be a very good debate. Members who were there will certainly have emerged with more information than they had when they went in, which is always good.

We should write to the minister to ask for confirmation that he has written to the Scottish intercollegiate guidelines network. We should ask him to provide the committee with any response, to help to inform our discussions. Standards in relation to diagnosis of B12 deficiency are to be published, and it might be worth waiting for them before we take further steps.

I participated in the debate; members are aware of my particular interest in the matter.

I agree with Mark McDonald that we should write to the Scottish Government to ask what action the minister has taken since the debate to follow up on the issue.

Can we also ask that person-centred treatment be considered? I was quite wrong when I talked about the SIGN guidance during the debate; there is no SIGN guidance, as we were advised. SIGN guidance must take account of the particular needs of patients. However, medical professionals clearly apply some kind of guidance or practice when they treat vitamin B12 deficiency. I referred to what I understood to be SIGN guidance because of my wife’s experience with general practitioners and nursing staff in her local surgery, who have all indicated that the guidance that they had been given was that vitamin B12 injections could be given only every three months.

There is an issue to do with whether patients should be treated as individuals, rather than being told that treatment can be given only after a certain period of time has elapsed. It is clear from the debate and from the discussion that the committee had when we received the petition that people react differently to vitamin B12 deficiency, so solutions should be drawn up round the individual patient’s needs and not to a timescale that it suits medical practitioners to determine on behalf of patients.

I remind members and others to have a look at the DVD that was provided in evidence to the committee, which shows the impact that vitamin B12 deficiency can have on individuals’ lives.

Thank you. Does the committee agree to continue its consideration of the petition and to write to the minister, to seek confirmation that he has written to SIGN and ask him to provide us with the response that he receives? We can also ask him to consider person-centred treatment and ask for an update on the action that the Scottish Government is taking. We will also await publication of the British Committee for Standards in Haematology guidelines on the diagnosis of B12 and folate deficiency.

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you.

Meeting closed at 15:54.