Official Report 296KB pdf
Epilepsy Specialist Nurses (PE1182)
Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to the 14th meeting in 2008 of the Public Petitions Committee of the Scottish Parliament. We have received apologies from Bashir Ahmad, who cannot attend today because he has a doctor's appointment.
Thank you very much for having us, convener. Epilepsy is a complex condition that has wide-ranging effects on people's lives. That is why Epilepsy Scotland believes that we need many more epilepsy specialist nurses than are currently in post. Such nurses are highly skilled senior nurses who develop a really close understanding of epilepsy and work in partnership with consultants, thereby reducing the time that people have to spend with consultants. We hope that epilepsy specialist nurses will also reduce the time that people have to spend in hospital.
That felt like three minutes, Susan—well done. I said to her earlier, "Just three minutes," and she said, "No problem."
I was speaking very fast.
Do not worry about it. You covered what you needed to, so that is helpful. Are there any immediate questions from committee members? Both witnesses can feel free to answer.
First, I apologise for being a few minutes late. I am afraid that I did not read my papers and went to the wrong committee room. I declare an interest as an office-bearer in the cross-party group on epilepsy in the Scottish Parliament and as a great supporter of specialist nurses, regardless of the specialty. It is clear that there is a lack of epilepsy specialist nurses. There is also a lack of specialist nurses in other fields. The concept of general specialist nurses is obviously a contradiction in terms, but could epilepsy sufferers be dealt with adequately by nurses who were specialists not just in epilepsy?
I have recently talked to a number of people about that. That might be possible if the nurse was a specialist in two linked conditions—for example, two neurological conditions that have similar issues, such as migraine and epilepsy. Some people have suggested that we could have neurology specialist nurses, but we do not believe that that would work because—as I am sure members will know from presentations to the cross-party group—epilepsy is too complex a condition.
That is fine. Thank you.
In saying that epilepsy specialist nurses are cost effective, the SIGN guidelines were offering a carrot to health boards, whereby if they had more such nurses in post, they would save on consultants' time. However, we have found that NHS Quality Improvement Scotland has not been able to say that health boards must employ more specialist nurses, so there seems to be a gap between what the guidelines say and what is happening in practice.
Thank you for fitting your presentation into three minutes. It did not seem like three minutes—there was a lot in it.
Epilepsy is a pattern of seizures, so if someone has more than one seizure, it is likely that they have epilepsy. Seizures take different forms. Examples of seizures are absences, unusual patterns of behaviour that are caused by electrical activity on the brain and tonic-clonic seizures, which involve someone falling down and fitting—that is the type of seizure that one often sees in the media.
So, broadly, does epilepsy occur when the brain gets its wires crossed?
Broadly.
Is there any obvious reason why that happens? Does it correlate with anything else in normal life?
There are two types of epilepsy. There is idiopathic epilepsy, when there is absolutely no explanation for the condition, and there is epilepsy that has a cause, such as an injury to the brain of some sort. The brain is like any other organ in the body in that, sadly, it deteriorates as we get older. Someone might have little lesions in their brain that might not cause any other difficulty, but which might well be the trigger for epilepsy.
Is a genetic predisposition to epilepsy a hugely significant factor?
It can be. Many childhood epilepsies have genetic elements to them.
Right.
Nurses can do a masters course or they can take basic training that is provided by existing epilepsy specialist nurses. In other words, as well as academic training, they can build on a bank of experience.
In general, epilepsy specialist nurses are linked to a consultant neurologist for their continuing professional supervision and support.
I am interested in the timeline. If I were an ordinary nurse—I am not sure what that means, but I guess you know where I am coming from—and I was close enough to a consultant to get the supervision that I needed, would I be trained during my time as a nurse, while I was doing a normal job? How long would it take me to get from having no specialism to having an acceptable level of specialism?
That would vary, but it would generally take two years to take the masters degree and you could be trained on site to begin becoming an epilepsy specialist nurse. You would have a consultant overseeing your work and you would be learning on the job, if you like. We could start to hire nurses straight away if we wanted to. We could give them an induction time for training. They could learn as they went along and do the academic course over two years.
Would the study be done part time while I was working or would I need to spend a significant period away from the job?
The study would be done part time and would be on-going while you were in the job. You would be supervised by a consultant.
So, there is nothing in particular to prevent any ordinary nurse—whatever that means—deciding to get themselves trained, provided that they are close enough to a consultant department to make sense of it all.
The issue is that nurses have to be released from the ward or other clinical duties to be an epilepsy specialist nurse and to take on the role of seeing only patients with epilepsy.
It is usually a full-time job: it is about not just the clinic but all the visits and follow-up work with schools or employers. It is not just about ward duties.
I have a few short questions. If I picked up your introductory remarks properly, I understood that there are three kinds of specialist nurse: adult specialists, paediatric specialists and specialists for patients with special needs. Is there any way one person could cover all three areas?
That would be challenging, because nurses tend to specialise in either adult services, paediatrics or learning difficulties services. The areas are separated anyway. The nurse would be working with different consultants and in different hospital settings, so it would be difficult for anyone to cover all three areas. We know of one area where learning difficulties services and adult services have been combined in one role, but to combine the three would be even more of a challenge.
A number of health board areas do not have anywhere close to three specialist nurses. On the review of community nursing, a lot of people are talking about nurses working in teams. They would not all specialise in everything, but some of them would specialise in certain aspects of nursing. They could help each other out and depend on one another's expertise. Could that be a solution? Could such a team include someone who was not a specialist nurse for epilepsy but who had specialist knowledge of epilepsy as part of their specialism within the team? Would that help?
We certainly know of people who have a special interest in epilepsy, such as GPs or practice nurses who just want to run local clinics. It is about on-the-job learning and training, because you become an expert by seeing so many people who have a condition. That would be the qualifier. Nurses would have to have enough interaction with people who have epilepsy to become skilled enough to do the work that Rhoda Grant suggests, but in the short term, it might just work.
Often we find that the epilepsy specialist nurse is the person who supports those people in community health partnership areas or GP practices to develop or maintain their skills. The epilepsy specialist nurse is often the link.
Would it help the rural health boards, such as in Orkney, Shetland and Dumfries and Galloway—which are having difficulties because of their structure and finances, given how much they have to spend compared to bigger health boards—if they could buy the service from another health board and have specialist nurses working within their communities who could refer back to a specialist nurse from a different health board?
That is one possibility. We need to try to think outside the box in rural areas. The current model in Grampian is definitely not working, because the nurse there is hugely overstretched and is having to cover the whole of the Grampian area, plus Orkney and Shetland.
Yes. I can imagine that that is a huge area to cover. Orkney and Shetland are difficult to get to. If Orkney and Shetland had nurses with a specialism who could then depend on a specialist nurse to give them further advice and training, that might be an answer to the problem.
We do not need full-time specialist nurses everywhere—we could have part-time specialist nurses.
I have two questions. First, what is your assessment of the services for people with epilepsy in health board areas where there is no specialist cover? Are people well served or poorly served? Do they find other ways of getting the service they require?
We do not have exact numbers of people with epilepsy in Scotland, never mind in health board areas. It is hard to pin that down. However, we have contact with all the consultants and epilepsy specialist nurses throughout Scotland on the numbers of people they see. Studies have been done on the incidence of epilepsy and hard-to-treat epilepsy—70 per cent of people with epilepsy are treated and are seizure free with the drugs that are available, but 30 per cent continue to have seizures and are more intensive users of health services. There is evidence that a higher incidence of people with hard-to-treat epilepsy occurs in areas of multiple deprivation. There may be increased exposure to causes of epilepsy, such as head injury and toxic substances, but we do not know all the answers on that.
To answer John Wilson's first question, if someone lives in an area that does not have an epilepsy specialist nurse, their health board or general practitioner usually refers them on to an adjoining area that provides the service. People who live in Orkney and Shetland travel to Grampian by air ambulance. When someone who lives in an area that has an epilepsy specialist nurse moves to another area that does not have one, they have to telephone back to that epilepsy nurse to ask them to assist. When we ran the campaign in May, no health board had enough nurses to match its population. We are not positive that the figure of one person with epilepsy in every 130 is the same for all health board areas; we just know that that is the condition's incidence in Scotland. However, in May, no health board had achieved the targets that had been set by the Joint Epilepsy Council of the UK and Ireland.
So in health board areas with no cover, the pressure is transferred elsewhere to specialist services in a neighbouring health board area. We clearly do not have enough specialist nurses, and the nurses that we have are under more pressure because of transfers from other health board areas. There is an issue about the level of service. Do you believe that there are individuals out there who suffer from epilepsy but who have not been diagnosed because they have not been referred to the appropriate specialist services?
Absolutely. We know from research and from information from specialists that there is underdiagnosis and overdiagnosis of epilepsy. The SIGN guidelines clearly say that an epilepsy specialist has to diagnose epilepsy because of the difficulty of the diagnosis. It is what is called a clinical diagnosis, because there is no test to say, "Yes, this is epilepsy," or, "No, it's not." The expertise of the clinician comes into play. When a non-epilepsy specialist does the diagnosis, although the person has had a seizure of some sort, or a funny turn, the non-expert sometimes mistakenly believes it to be an epileptic seizure and therefore treats it with anti-epileptic drugs. We are as keen to see an end to that sort of misdiagnosis, as we are to see an end to the underdiagnosis of epilepsy, which means that people living with epilepsy are not being treated. I suspect, from the evidence that we have had through our later-life work, that there is a huge level of underdiagnosis among older people.
That is the very point that I was going to ask about. I should also declare an interest as a member of the cross-party group on epilepsy.
I want to come back on one issue. You spoke about medication. For my education, if epilepsy is properly diagnosed and medication is given and used, is the condition by and large treated and is the person, in general terms, able to maintain an ordinary life?
Seventy per cent of people who are treated with anti-epileptic drugs respond and are seizure free. However, anti-epileptic drugs tend to have a lot of side effects, so people have to manage living with them. The vast majority of people with epilepsy have issues with memory. Scientists have not yet worked out whether that is to do with the epilepsy or the medication or a combination of the two, but people with epilepsy have to live with that, and they still face a lot of stigma and discrimination. Epilepsy does not necessarily go away completely because someone is taking the treatment. The treatment helps, but it can cause problems.
Have health boards made much progress over the past few years? If there are obstacles that prevent health boards from responding to the call that you make in your petition, how can it and the committee help to raise the debate with health boards and others that make major decisions so that your concerns are addressed?
We have been heard by a lot of health boards, which is positive. Some of them are making progress. We are delighted about the posts that are in the pipeline. We campaigned in Lothian to get a new consultant epilepsy specialist and we were successful.
Our concern, given that epilepsy self-evidently has been around for a long time and is not a modern or inexplicable phenomenon, is that over the years, the challenge that location poses has not been addressed by structures for partnership arrangements, sharing knowledge and experience, and the training and development of staff at moderate levels so that they can reach more specialist levels.
It really helps us if MSPs keep the issue on the agenda; indeed, I suppose that that is why we keep the pressure on members and civil servants to do so. It gives us more power if we can say, "The issue was discussed at the cross-party group," or, "We are progressing the matter with ministers and civil servants." However, until all health boards are required to employ epilepsy specialist nurses to a certain level, we will not get any further with this argument.
When managed clinical networks for epilepsy and other conditions were being developed, the then Health Department sent out a letter more or less instructing health boards to take the matter seriously and examine ways of developing it. Similar strong guidance, along with suggested targets, would certainly encourage the use of epilepsy specialist nurses.
How much does it cost to train an epilepsy specialist nurse?
I do not have any figures for training costs. Allana Parker mentioned the various masters and diploma courses that nurses can take, but the fact is that they do not have to take those courses to become epilepsy specialist nurses; they can be trained by consultants in clinic and then develop the specialism themselves. After all, they are already highly trained nurses who might, for example, have a background in neurology or have worked a lot in learning difficulties with people with epilepsy.
I suppose that, on top of all that, it is difficult to judge any savings in hospital time that might be made for epileptic patients.
Yes, but I want to examine different models. I do not want to bang health boards over the head with a stick, saying that there is no other way of looking at the issue. It might also help to work with CHPs in different areas and to use community-based epilepsy specialist nurses.
The committee will now determine what to do with the petition. We will, of course, keep you fully informed of what happens next, but we have to explore many of the issues that you have raised both in writing and in your presentation.
NHS QIS was mentioned right at the beginning, and we should certainly ask it about the implementation of the SIGN guidelines and the employment of nurses. I imagine that the Royal College of Nursing, the west of Scotland and Tayside epilepsy network and the north of Scotland managed clinical network for epilepsy will also have a view.
Unison has a large nursing membership and could, like the Royal College of Nursing, have something useful to say. We should also ask the Scottish Government for its views on target setting and the like.
As someone said earlier, having specialist epilepsy nurses in the community will help people either to maintain or to return to employment. For many employers, there is still a stigma about epilepsy, and it would be helpful to find out from the Department for Work and Pensions or some other organisation about the impact of such local services on maintaining employment levels for people with epilepsy.
We should also contact a neighbouring health board or two.
Surely we should ask NHS Shetland, NHS Orkney and NHS Grampian what they are thinking of doing up there.
Perhaps we should ask four or five health boards for information so that we get a sense of what is happening. The petitioners have given us a wee steer on that with the information about their campaign activities and the responses that they have been getting. If they have any information that is not already in the system, they should send it to us. We should also seek views from some other support networks in Scotland that have on-the-ground experience.
Off-sales Alcohol Purchases (Age Limit) (PE1187 and PE1191)
We will now consider PE1187 and PE1191 together as they deal with the same subject. PE1187, by Greig Muir, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to reconsider its plans to increase the age for off-sales alcohol purchases from 18 to 21. PE1191, by Tom French, on behalf of the coalition against raising the drinking age in Scotland, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to drop its proposal to increase the age for off-sales alcohol purchases from 18 to 21. Accompanying Mr French is Gurjit Singh, who is also involved in the petition on behalf of the coalition.
I lodged my petition because I thought it was necessary to show the anger that exists about the Government's proposal to increase the age limit for alcohol off-sales. In a modern, free and equal society, there can be no differences in the rights and privileges that are enjoyed by anyone of the age of 18 and over. For a Government of the nation to undermine that would be a backward step in the process of achieving social equality. In effect, the legislation could create a two-tier society within the age group, dividing people into those who can afford to drink and those who cannot.
I invite Tom French to comment on his petition.
I represent the coalition against raising the drinking age in Scotland, which is a coalition of youth and student organisations, including the National Union of Students, the Scottish Youth Parliament and a number of student unions from across the country. We accept fully that alcohol misuse has a devastating effect on the health and wealth of Scotland. According to the Scottish Government's consultation document, it has costs to the NHS, the police and so on of about £2.25 billion a year. As a youth and student coalition, we believe fundamentally that something needs to be done about alcohol misuse. That is why in our response to the Government's consultation, which runs to 67 pages, we have outlined not just our opposition to the proposal to reduce the minimum purchase age for off-sales but how we believe alcohol misuse can be tackled in Scotland. I am sure that members will have questions for me on that issue.
Tom, I think that we have got the message. Some things never change in student unions: a three-minute speech always takes seven minutes.
Good afternoon. In light of the Government's consultation on raising the purchase age for alcohol to 21, what are your views on the actions that have been taken by several major supermarket chains? Asda seems likely to roll out the challenge 25 policy that it currently operates in London. Spar already operates a challenge 25 policy in its stores throughout Scotland. Tesco operates a minimum age limit of 21 for purchasing alcohol. Arguably, the Government is simply trying to normalise the age for purchasing alcohol from off-sales. What does the panel think of the actions of Tesco, Asda and Spar, given that the latter two have gone beyond the Government's proposals by setting a minimum age limit of 25 for purchasing off-sales from their stores?
I do not think that the Government should take advice from supermarkets about law. It is up to the Government to decide whether the proposal is an appropriate thing to do in this country. The Government should not follow the lead of the supermarkets, irrespective of the reasoning behind their policies. The issue is for the Government to discuss; it is not for supermarkets to impose.
We welcome initiatives such as challenge 21 and challenge 25. In our consultation response, we suggested that the challenge 21 policy should be made a mandatory condition of licence for all off-sales and on-sales premises. We would like such policies to be put in place to better enforce the current laws and clamp down on underage drinking. We have also suggested other proposals, such as increasing test purchasing and—to go alongside a challenge 21 initiative—a national proof-of-age card for young people. Such initiatives would provide mechanisms by which the Government could enforce the current law.
I was interested in Mr French's analysis of the figures from the pilot areas. In Armadale, it was clearly identified that the number of incidents of alcohol abuse by young people decreased from 2.5 a week to 1.5 a week, which is a 40 per cent drop. Is that finding from the pilot not significant? Does it not underline the need to address the purchase and misuse of alcohol by young people?
We need to clarify which issues we are trying to address. Are we trying to address the excessive consumption and misuse of alcohol or antisocial behaviour? There might be a range of other reasons behind such behaviour, including possibly a lack of investment in other things for young people to do. I imagine that that is the case in places such as Armadale and Cupar.
We are all concerned about alcohol misuse. How could we best promote responsible drinking? You disagree with the policy of raising the age limit for purchasing off-sales, but in evidence all three of you have shown that you are interested in healthy and responsible drinking.
Other policies that were mentioned in the consultation, such as setting a minimum price per unit of alcohol, could have a very positive effect. We should take a closer look at the specific drinks that people are consuming and the impact that they have. For example, more problems will be caused by someone getting drunk on a bottle of spirits from Asda for £4.99 than will be caused by someone drinking four bottles of beer from Asda for £4.99. We should consider structuring prices according to the strength of the alcohol in order to encourage people to consume drinks that are less likely to make them drunk.
We have suggested that instead of creating new laws and raising the purchase age, there are three other ways in which we could tackle alcohol misuse in Scotland. The first is enforcement of the current laws, such as increased use of test purchasing. Test purchasing is not being used enough, and the incidence of shopkeepers selling to underage people has increased over the past few years, so we need to crack down on irresponsible sellers of alcohol. A national proof-of-age card and the introduction of a mandatory challenge 21 policy are other means of better enforcing the current law.
Through NUS Scotland, student unions promote safe drinking in various campaigns. On Tom French's point, I believe that tackling binge drinking must be part of a wider package, and that we need to step up a gear on education. We must also be clear about what constitutes binge drinking. There is differing guidance from NHS Scotland and other organisations on what constitutes binge drinking. Once that is clear and we put the message out, we can start to target and educate young people so that alcohol is seen as a dangerous drug that can have a long-term effect on their lives if it is misused.
I would like one small point of clarification. You have made some cogent points, all of which I agree with. In NUS Scotland's response to the Government consultation, did you make all the points that you have made to us this afternoon?
Yes.
Greig, have you responded, too?
Yes.
We were dismayed—I think that is the right term—that seven days before the consultation ended, the First Minister said that the proposal would form part of the legislative agenda. It does not set a good example or make people feel that the Government is listening to them when seven days short of the end of its own consultation the Government says that it will go ahead with something, regardless of what people have said in their consultation responses.
That will now be in the Official Report.
There is reassurance in that the issue has to go before Parliament where, unlike previously, the Government does not command a majority.
I understand that you have done a lot of work in speaking to MSPs and various organisations. Have you found any support for the policy in those conversations?
The meetings have suggested that the Labour Party—as you know—the Conservative party, the Liberal Democrats, the Green party and even some Scottish National Party MSPs do not support the proposal. Potentially, there is not much support.
My follow-up question is on an issue that you have hinted at. Do you see a need for community solutions? The changes were introduced on a trial basis as local licensing boards and communities thought about how they could address the problems of antisocial behaviour and underage drinking. I know that some areas have trialled initiatives such as banning of credit card sales at the weekend and greater enforcement of the existing legislation on purchase age. Do you see room for community solutions and variation in how communities deal with the issues?
Definitely. We want more investment in alternatives to alcohol for young people. As the Government pointed out in its consultation document, some schemes are happening around Scotland—midnight football leagues, community projects and so on. We want investment in such things. Anyone who goes out after 8 o'clock in the evening—not only young people—will find nothing to do in their town that does not revolve around drinking. In addition to bars and clubs, most cinemas and bowling alleys now have bars. More investment needs to be made in alternatives.
It was said earlier that if the Government cannot get the proposal through at national level, it will introduce it at local level. I want to clarify the situation: the Government has no authority or mandate over local licensing boards at local authority level. If a board felt that it was appropriate to introduce a byelaw, it would be up to the board to do so. The Government cannot influence the boards either way.
That was not my comment.
Right—a point was, however, made on the impact of the proposal on low-income families. Will the panel expand on that? The question whether the proposal can be said to be discriminatory is an interesting one, given that the basis is the ability to pay.
I do not really understand the last point.
I will clarify it. I think you said that the proposed policy would discriminate against those who cannot afford to buy alcohol. I am trying to draw out what was said.
What I was saying was that, if the Government plans to ban 18 to 21-year-olds from buying alcohol at off-sales, they will have to buy it at on-sales. If they cannot afford to drink in a pub, they cannot drink.
My comment did not relate to the proposal but to minimum pricing, which we support. That said, minimum pricing needs to be done in a way that tackles irresponsible pricing. The Government cannot seem to be saying to low-income families and pensioners—all those who are not rich—that they cannot buy alcohol because they are poor. What we need to tackle is irresponsible pricing.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thank you for the cogent arguments that you have made, which have been well received.
It is not just 18 and 19-year-olds who buy drink for underage people: when I was 16 or 17, my dad bought drink for me. The consultation document says that 34 per cent of 15-year-olds who got drunk in the past week bought alcohol from a friend or relative or someone else. You cannot just concentrate on 18 to 21-year-olds because if they are removed from the equation, the younger ones will just get alcohol from somewhere else.
That bothers me—I am not sure that you are right. If parents buy for their children, that is up to them. There is nothing I can do to stop them, although whether it is legal is another matter. It probably is. However, there is some force in the argument that, as we get older—and 21 is an arbitrary number, like any other—maybe we get far enough away from being under 18 to begin to recognise that it is not too clever to buy alcohol for under-18s. Is there not a point there somewhere?
I agree in the sense that there needs to be a clampdown, but I also agree with Greig in that I am not sure that the problem is specific to 18 to 21-year-olds. In fact, speaking as someone who was recently 18 to 21 and below—I probably should not be saying this—my parents would buy us alcohol, and that was a common feature. Parents buying alcohol for underage people is more of a problem than 18 to 21-year-olds doing it. I am not sure that there is a large group of 18 to 21-year-olds or older who want to hang around with under 18s anyway.
This is a rather strange conversation to be having on the record, but I thank you for starting it. We have to discuss the issues in the real world; there is no point in pussyfooting around them, and I am glad to have the opportunity.
There is a notion that delaying the onset of drinking until the age of 21 means that everyone is going to be responsible—although I know that is not what you were saying. In America, where the legal drinking age is 21, there is a craze in which a person who turns 21 has 21 shots on their birthday. That does massive health damage. I think that I am right in saying that it has killed a couple of people.
Only a couple?
There are news reports and videos on YouTube and goodness knows where else. I am not sure that delaying the onset of drinking necessarily works.
I am sure that that is a part of it. However, I have a bone to pick with you. You call your group the coalition against raising the drinking age in Scotland. With respect, no part of the discussion has anything to do with raising the drinking age. A campaign that goes under a banner that is itself a misrepresentation is probably not the greatest way forward.
Just to clarify that, we set up the campaign in April, when the Scottish Government was not stating clearly whether it was going to raise the age for off-sales or for on-sales. We wrote to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and the Minister for Public Health, but we did not get a response until some time in June. We did not manage to get a meeting with them until 27 August. We have tried to work with the Government on the matter all along, but we have had our advances rejected, as it were.
Understood.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. Nigel Don tried to elicit a response from you as to how we overcome the perceived problem with underage drinking.
The education programme on alcohol needs to continue throughout a person's life. We need to remind people constantly of the specific physical effects of alcohol. It is not enough for me to turn on the television and see a picture of someone with a hangover—that will not stop me drinking. However, if it is an advert that tells me about the specific harm that I am doing by putting the substance into my body every day, I would perhaps think again.
I agree. In some respects, we need education throughout schooling that begins at an early age, and is appropriate for each age group. We also need awareness campaigns for people who are not in school, and for older people.
The big issue that you have raised will be part of a wider debate that we need to have in Parliament, so there will be other opportunities to raise many of the issues that you have generated in response to the consultation.
As Gurjit Singh said, there needs to be a package approach to tackling alcohol misuse. I accept the fact that there is an issue of alcohol misuse in the 18-to-21 age group, as there is in other age groups. However, some of the worst binge drinking happens among people in their 40s and 50s, so the issue is not specific to young people. There must be a package of measures to tackle different problems.
I agree with Tom French that there should be greater enforcement of the current law. If we cannot control underage drinking when the purchase age is 18, it will be impossible to control it when the purchase age is 21. There must be greater enforcement of the current law and alternatives to alcohol should be offered.
I appreciate what is being said, but there is evidence of antisocial behaviour and drunkenness among underage people throughout Scotland and there is no evidence that the proposed policy will work. Therefore, I do not see how it is something that members can tell their constituents they are doing to address the problem. The consultation paper relied very much on American evidence, and the main finding of that evidence was that the policy leads to a reduction in drink driving among young people, which is not such an issue in this country. I do not think that it is right for us to push ahead with something for which there is no evidence.
Okay. We have had a fairly lengthy—I was going to say "session", but I had better not do so, given that we are talking about alcohol—discussion. I am conscious of the fact that it is the subject of consultation and that it will be debated in the chamber in the near future.
I understand that the Justice Committee will deal with the bill that will propose the changes with which the petitions are concerned. We normally write to the Government ourselves and ask for a response, but should we refer both petitions to the Justice Committee so that it can consider them as part of its scrutiny of the bill?
That suggestion seems to be okay.
I agree. Are we in a position to make any recommendations to the Justice Committee? Could we suggest that it call the petitioners to give evidence?
We can draw the Justice Committee's attention to this discussion in the Official Report of today's meeting. We can let it know that we have received the petitions and ask whether they would be of value to its scrutiny of the bill. I imagine that it might well invite people who are involved in the campaign.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—
Local Leisure Activities (PE1173)
I reconvene the meeting and thank members for their patience—we have had a long shift because of the nature of the petitions that were before us. The next new petition is PE1173, by Parisa Tadjali, on behalf of Ayrshire ice skaters, which calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Government to ensure the continuous provision of local leisure facilities and to ensure that such facilities are not closed to make way for new housing or supermarket developments without equivalent local facilities being provided. We have information in front of us. I ask for recommendations on how to tackle the petition.
As I—wearing another committee hat— have just had a petition passed to me wearing another committee hat, I wonder whether we might pass the petition to the Health and Sport Committee, because the petition would seem to be right up its street and the sort of issue that it is considering.
Are members happy to pass the petition to the Health and Sport Committee, which is considering pathways into sport?
Rural Fuel Prices (PE1181)
The next petition is PE1181, by Helena Coxshall, calling on the Parliament to urge the Government to make representations to the UK Government about the cost of fuel in the Western Isles and other rural areas of Scotland, which are now among the most expensive places in the world to buy petrol or diesel; to highlight in particular the refusal of the UK Government to introduce measures similar to those that operate in France to reduce the tax on fuel in very remote areas; to protest at the serious consequences that high fuel prices have for fishermen, motorists and businesses in island and rural areas; and to request parity with mainland city prices.
I send apologies from the people who put together the petition, but it would have been a rather expensive exercise for them to come in person. I thank the committee for the opportunity to speak on their behalf.
I was under the impression—because I have asked about the matter before—that wholesalers deliver fuel at the same price throughout the country, including the outer isles. Are you saying that when the Shell tanker pumps out fuel in Stornoway or Kirkwall, the cost is at a premium?
You touch on a controversial issue. The tanker belongs to Scottish Fuels Ltd and it is a mystery why it puts fuel ashore at different prices in every part of the west of Scotland. Even between Skye and Lewis, the difference in the price of wholesale petrol is huge.
Do retailers compete? Do they sell fuel at the lowest price that they feel is profitable?
Do you mean petrol stations?
Yes.
There is competition, because different petrol stations sell petrol at different prices. However, the margin is so tiny that most petrol stations rely on other income sources to make their profit, such as a shop. Given that petrol stations may be 15 to 20 miles apart, a kind of competition exists, but it is not the same as competition in towns.
Could petrol stations be given relief that did not involve the rather complicated and previously unconceived idea of a differential tax rate? Could they be supported in other ways to reduce their prices further?
Such measures would certainly be welcome, but even if petrol stations reduced their prices to the wholesale price and made zero profit from selling petrol and diesel, fuel would still be dramatically more expensive than it is in Edinburgh, Glasgow or perhaps even Ullapool. Such support would be welcome, but even selling at wholesale prices would not overcome the differential.
The practice of wholesalers seems unfair, so I presume that they have received urgent representations on the matter. What has been their response?
They have certainly received representations from me, and from others. They have offered numerous commercial explanations for the situation, which are not always readily accepted by people in the islands. One explanation refers to the distance from Grangemouth, which would be easier to believe were it not for the fact that when the boat gets to Ireland, the fuel is put ashore there more cheaply than it is in the Western Isles. The issue of the quantities involved has been raised as an explanation, too. In addition, various explanations have been offered that involve deals that were reached with BP. However, the fact is that the wholesalers are not prepared to put ashore petrol or diesel in the islands at anything resembling the price that they charge elsewhere.
For a number of reasons, I do not believe that it would be possible to have a differential tax rate. We can see, for example, what happens between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland because they have different tax rates on fuel. Have you thought of ascertaining whether the Government would be prepared to subsidise the extra costs that are inherent in taking the lorries on the ferry to the outer isles? In other words, lorries would be given a free trip on the ferry, which would remove most of the excuse that the wholesalers give for charging a higher rate.
You rightly point to the situation between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which arises because they have different tax regimes. However, I am not sure that the comparison is valid, because if a differential tax rate applied to the islands of Scotland, that would not make the petrol there cheaper than it was in Edinburgh or Glasgow, even if someone was prepared to take a detour to, say, Benbecula for a cheap tank of petrol. The petrol would probably still be slightly dearer. I do not think that a differential tax rate would distort the market, because nobody would go to the islands to fill up.
Excuse my ignorance, but is all fuel delivered by ship and pumped ashore?
Yes. The bulk of it comes from Grangemouth on a ship that is operated by Scottish Fuels.
It occurs to me that there might be problems in putting tanker loads of petrol on passenger ferries anyway.
What the petition asks for is a reserved issue and the action that it proposes has already been taken by the committee, so I suggest that we deal with the petition slightly differently. Given that the Scottish Government has already made representations to the UK Government, I do not think that there is much point in asking it to do that again.
That should be fine.
That would be worth while.
Robin Harper made a point about free ferry trips, but there is a regulation that prohibits the tanker from going on to the ferry unless it is unaccompanied by any other vehicle.
We will take those points on board. There might be room to raise concerns about some companies' conduct. There will always be a debate about where taxation kicks in and so on. We might not always agree on that, but we have identified a number of areas of concern and we will raise them with the decision makers at both levels to see whether there are things that they can do under their powers, or in partnership, to address the concerns.
Planning etc (Scotland) Act 2006 (Third-party Right of Appeal) (PE1183)
PE1183, by Keith McCarter, on behalf of the Coopersknowe residents association in Galashiels, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to amend the Planning etc (Scotland) Act 2006 to introduce a third-party right of appeal for communities where the terms of the planning consent that pertains to a development have substantially changed. Do members have any comments on the petition?
When the committee considered a similar petition last year, we decided to ask the Government to consider whether it intended to carry out any post-legislative scrutiny of the 2006 act. I urge the committee to take the same position again. There are clearly a number of issues, and it is not just in Galashiels that the situation arises. In a couple of incidents in my constituency, a third-party right of appeal against subsequent planning permissions has been refused because of the 2006 act. I urge the committee to support the suggestion that we write to the Government and ask it to take the petition into consideration if it does any post-legislative scrutiny of the 2006 act.
Are members happy with that recommendation?
I suppose that I should declare a post-legislative interest. I was keen for a third-party right of appeal to be included in the legislation. At the very least, there should be post-legislative scrutiny of how the act is working.
Okay. We will take the recommended course of action on PE1183.
Eco-friendly Schools (PE1184)
PE1184, by Mrs L Albarracin, on behalf of the Bellahouston academy eco-committee, calls on the Parliament to urge the Government to make funding and other assistance available to schools to enable them to become environmentally friendly and achieve green flag status. Do members have any suggestions on how to deal with the petition? It strikes me that we should just raise the matter with the Government to see what actions lie within its remit and what discussions it has had with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities on the issue. We should write to the Government and COSLA about what schools can do. The papers on the petition refer to a request for funding that could not be met, but the school would still like to address the issues.
I agree. We should do exactly what the petitioners ask and find out what people think they are doing and what can be done. I am sure that the historic concordat will be mentioned somewhere in the response. That is inevitable.
It is all right—it has been binned.
Perhaps it is completely historic—it might even be prehistoric now. We just need to ask people what they are doing.
Think of all the speeches that could be recycled.
Given that 93 per cent of primary schools are involved in the scheme, there cannot be many significant problems in the primary sector. The eco-schools programme has just started to raise the bar and get more secondary schools involved. Given that there might be perceived barriers in that sector, perhaps it would be a good idea to ask for a response about that issue.
One of the issues that has been brought to my attention in relation to eco-schools is the flying of the eco-flags. Although funding is available for schools to move towards and progress through the award system, there does not seem to be any funding in place to buy the flagpoles. I know that that is a bone of contention and that schools make appeals about their being able to display the flags prominently to show that they have won the awards. We might ask the Government, when it is looking at its funding streams, to find out whether there are particular problems with that, especially in deprived areas. If schools get the awards, how do they display the eco-flag? Some time ago, an appeal about that was made to me. The parent council was looking for £1,000 for that purpose. That might not seem a lot of money in the great scheme of things, but for some schools it is a substantial amount for the parent council to raise. We might be able to raise the issue with the Government so that we can find out whether schools can display the flags prominently and whether the costs of that can be met.
Okay. Are members happy to pursue those matters?
Road Bonds (Sewers and Drains) (PE1185)
PE1185, by Andrew Kaye, on behalf of the Coopersknowe residents association in Galashiels, calls on the Parliament to urge the Government to amend the relevant legislation to ensure that sewers and drains associated with roads from new developments are included in road bonds and to give local authorities enforcement powers in that regard.
It is clear that the good folk of Coopersknowe have had a real problem with this. It occurs to me that the lawyers who represented the purchasers should have alerted them to the problem that could arise if roads are covered by bonds but sewers are not, which seems to be the case. In principle, there should be a case for purchasers to ask why their lawyers did not tell them about that. I am not trying to start hares running against lawyers in this case, but we might write to the Law Society of Scotland to ask it what its understanding of good practice in such cases is.
Lawyers will take it that, because there is no statutory bond, all new developments are in the same situation. They will not necessarily alert the purchaser simply because they think that, as the Government has not decided to introduce a statutory bond, there is no problem. As a result, we might ask the Government whether it will consider putting a bond in place for water and sewerage. I believe that historically councils used bonds to deal with roads payments and with water and sewerage, but the situation was not continued when responsibility for the latter was given to another body.
I am interested in finding out whether other councils are experiencing this problem. Perhaps we should write to either the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities or a selection of councils for a more general view.
The matter has certainly come up in members' case loads. Indeed, I am dealing with a case that involves renovation problems at a former local authority house. The folk who rent do not get charged for the work, whereas homeowners have to pay for something that one would assume would be the statutory agency's responsibility. It is certainly economically disadvantageous to householders.
With regard to writing to COSLA or to a couple of local authorities, I point out that problems emerge for residents when the council is urged to adopt roads or waterways, particularly in private estates that the developer has since left. In some areas, it can take several years for a local authority to adopt roads—if, indeed, it ever does. If the local authority is not prepared to adopt roads or waterways once a developer has moved on, who is responsible for repairing and maintaining them? As a result, we should ask COSLA whether there is a general problem about adopting these works after the developer leaves.
Are members content to raise the issues in the petition with the suggested agencies and organisations?
Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (PE1186)
The final new petition is PE1186 by Jean Mullan, which calls on the Parliament to urge the Government to abolish the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman and replace it with a transparent organisation that is accountable to the people. Do members have any comments?
I know that we recently considered a petition on this matter, but I have to say that a number of concerns have been raised with me about the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman. Surely I cannot be unique in finding that these cases have started to come out of the woodwork.
Fairly recently we considered a petition that called for an appeals process against ombudsman decisions. How far have we got with that? Similar issues are raised in the two petitions.
The committee agreed to suspend further consideration of such petitions until the Government had announced what action it planned to take as a result of the Crerar review. We are still waiting for that announcement.
I suggest that we group the two or three other petitions that we have received on the subject with PE1186. A broad range of petitions has been submitted to us, and we want to know whether there is a process for reviewing the conduct of the SPSO and other Government agencies. I do not want to get into the detail of the petitioner's concerns, because we cannot resolve them—clearly, they are matters for the petitioner and the SPSO. However, we should address the issue of how the rules of engagement are identified and seek a response to the petitions. Do members agree to that course of action?
We should recognise that the SPSO reports to MSPs by e-mail on a fairly regular basis, to keep us up to date on what it is doing. Progress has been made in improving the service, which has responded to criticisms in the period during which it has been in business. I thought that we were of the opinion that there cannot be a court of final appeal on a court of final appeal. The SPSO is a court of final appeal; we need to make it even better than it already is. We should not set up another appeals system. Some of the cases that come before SPSO have been through two or three previous appeals procedures in which people have not received an answer that satisfies them. People should not automatically expect to be satisfied with the SPSO's judgment.
I do not want to divide the committee on recommendations, so I suggest that we explore the issue further. To use an old cliché, the buck stops with the SPSO. However, given that there are issues outstanding from previous petitions, we should seek clarity in a couple of areas. As Robin Harper said, there must come a time when the appeals process is exhausted, but it would be helpful for us to seek further information on the matter.
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Current Petitions