Official Report 216KB pdf
Item 2 on the agenda is petitions. We have three petitions before us today. Members will have received the paperwork for them and the recommendations.
Would it be possible for us to write to Scottish Borders Council and to the Scottish Executive, asking them what work has been done on social exclusion arising from the lack of a Borders rail link, so that we are better prepared when we are asked for our comments?
I notice that one recommendation of the clerk to the Public Petitions Committee was to agree to a debate on the matter in the Parliament. I think that, as part of the process of highlighting the issue, we should support that. The issue is important—I had not realised that the area was the only mainland region of Scotland without any trains. I think that we should go along with the clerk's suggestion, but I think that this committee should back an attempt to find time for such a debate in the Parliament.
In the meantime, we would try to get more information. The issue should be somewhere on our agenda for us to return to once we have the information. If there is then a debate, we will be informed for it. You have heard a lot of the information in the Public Petitions Committee, John, so would you say that such a course of action is appropriate?
Yes. The petitioners, in presenting their petition to the committee, made the point that there were important social inclusion aspects about the absence of a rail link. They wanted this committee in particular to be involved in examining that aspect. That is why I suggested that we could write to Scottish Borders Council, which has probably done some work on this matter already, and to the Scottish Executive, asking it what it can say about the social exclusion or inclusion aspects of the lack of a link. That would better inform us.
We need a timetable for that.
I wondered whether it would be possible for this committee to agree to support the Public Petitions Committee in its request for a debate.
Do you mean as a formal decision?
Yes. I would like to know from John McAllion whether the Public Petitions Committee indeed agreed that a request should be made for a debate in the Parliament. I would like this committee to support such a request.
One of the key points made by the petitioners is the social isolation of communities in the Borders. I agree with John that we should write to Scottish Borders Council, but I think that it would be useful also to ask the City of Edinburgh Council for its views. One of the issues in Edinburgh is access to employment, and the importance of the Borders as a potential future market for employers. If the Borders communities feel isolated, from whom do they feel isolated? I suggest that Edinburgh is one of the key employment markets from which they are isolated.
That would essentially take the form of written evidence. We would get the submissions, examine them, return to the matter and take a view on it, which would form our view of the debate. That is now noted. We also need a formal view: do members agree with Mike Watson's suggestion that we formally support the call for a public debate?
I am assuming that the petition sheet is representative; it is not the petition in its entirety.
No, there were 17,000 signatures.
If the signatures that we have are representative, it is perhaps worth pointing out that one petitioner comes from Stirling and another comes from Dalgety Bay.
It is a national issue.
It shows how widespread the support for this issue is; support is not just from Borderers.
I take it that the convener of the Public Petitions Committee can confirm for us that there is widespread support for this petition.
Yes: the meeting in Galashiels on 27 March was the best-attended meeting that we have ever had.
I know; I saw it on television.
After the Public Petitions Committee decided to send the petition to this committee and to the Transport and the Environment Committee, the petitioners wrote back saying that the issue also has health implications. They suggested that we should consult the Health and Community Care Committee about its views on the impact of fuel poverty on health.
That is part of the recommendation.
In considering the timetable for an inquiry, we should alert the Health and Community Care Committee about this at an early stage. We could perhaps have a joint meeting with that committee when we are taking evidence.
That is a useful suggestion. We need, however, to get our heads round the future work load of the committee. We really need to get into the issue of fuel poverty, and we all know that the housing bill is coming up. I will make recommendations about preparations for that later. The recommendations on petition PE123 are broadly agreed.
The key thing is to take the wider issues into account. We get into dangerous territory if we start to try to tell democratically elected local councils how to reallocate their budgets—we could be here for ever and a day if we create that precedent. Having said that, there is clearly a wider issue, for which I presume the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee would be primarily responsible.
The petition has been referred both to the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee and to the Equal Opportunities Committee. As convener of the Public Petitions Committee, I have taken up the individual case with West Lothian Council, rather than ask committees to do so.
I think that the view behind the recommendation is that we do not have the capacity to get involved in such single, specific issues.
One of the things that we want Karen Whitefield, as reporter on the voluntary sector, to do is to examine the impact of the budget process on the voluntary sector. We should note that the voluntary sector is to a large extent having to deliver the Executive's social inclusion policies. I have concerns about the impact of these issues on people with disabilities. I think that that is the angle that we should take up, although Karen might want to build that into her work as reporter on the voluntary sector.
I did some work over the recess on funding, with the intention of coming back with a paper. That will be included in my report so that we can examine the impact of the budget process on voluntary sector funding.
Good.
This is not just a question of funding the voluntary sector. We must also consider the implications of costs to the voluntary sector. I refer in particular to criminal record checks. The implications of the work of the working group, which was appointed last autumn and will probably not report until autumn this year, are huge.
We considered and took evidence on that issue and we will pursue it. We agreed a set of work priorities, which arose from that evidence.