Official Report 281KB pdf
Police Assaults (PE482)
Item 2 on our agenda is current petitions. Petition PE482 is by Douglas J Keil on behalf of the Scottish Police Federation and calls on the Parliament to take the necessary steps to make it compulsory for assailants and others who have exposed or potentially exposed police officers to a risk of infection to submit to a blood test or tests, the results of which will be made available to the police officer should he so wish; and to take the necessary steps to amend the Data Protection Act 1998 so that the results of those tests may be retained on the police national computer.
I was a member of the committee when this petition first came to us and I remember that police officers from Fife constabulary presented it. You may have been there yourself, deputy convener. I am concerned that it has taken so long to move forward with the consultation. It would be reasonable for the committee to write to the Minister for Justice to express our concern at the delay and to ask about the public inquiry and the issues raised by the petition. Doing that would move us forward. We should express our dismay that things have taken so long.
Are members content with that proposal?
Members indicated agreement.
Given the scale of the problem, which affects 150 police officers a year, the Executive should address the issue urgently. We will write to the minister.
Unadopted Roads (PE507)<br />Adoption of Roads and Footpaths (PE563)
The next petitions—PE507 and PE563—are linked. PE507 is by Mr Dan McRae, on behalf of Menzieshill Action Group, and calls on the Parliament to take the necessary steps to review the current system for the adoption of roads and pavements by local authorities and to consider whether the system needs to be modernised. PE563 is by Miss E J Stanley and calls on the Parliament to draft new legislation to instigate a statutory duty on local authorities to maintain unadopted roads and footpaths within village boundaries.
Given the responses that we have received, I suggest that we take no further action. I have considerable experience of such issues. Lairds in local areas have often sold off cottages and the coal board and various landowners have sold houses on their land over a period of time. In effect, it is written into every householder's deeds that they are responsible for the frontage of their house and that they must bring it up to the adopted road standards in order to get the council to maintain it regularly thereafter. Until that has been done, local authorities must—quite rightly—manage their very limited financial resources on adopted roads. Therefore, people must ensure that they truly understand the obligations that they are required to meet when they purchase their properties. The only way forward for them is collectively to bring up the roads to the standard at which the council can subsequently look after them. Therefore, we should not take any further action. All the responses have set out with clarity the guidelines, codes and criteria that local authorities have established.
I sympathise with the people whom we are discussing and with many other people throughout Scotland. It is not only lairds and landowners who are affected by the matter. People who have bought houses—
I am sorry to interrupt but, to clarify, people buy the houses on what was the laird's land and a condition of their buying them—
I understand that. To continue, at the demise of Strathclyde Regional Council, responsibility for such roads and land was assumed by the housing revenue accounts department. That meant that the housing department, not the roads department, had to adopt them.
Indeed. Individuals can consider their next course of action. In response to the petition, COSLA and the Society of Chief Officers of Transportation in Scotland have created the good-practice guidance. To that extent, the petition has served its purpose.
Members indicated agreement.
I think that we have achieved a good result for the petitioners.
Palestine (PE536)
PE536 is from Hugh Humphries, on behalf of the Scottish Friends of Palestine, and calls on the Scottish Parliament to offer advice and training to those who are involved in running the Palestinian legislature and any institutions following or preceding any elections and to those who are involved in communicating the proceedings of the Palestinian Legislative Council to the Palestinian nation.
I have a question rather than a comment. Am I right in thinking that you are on the SPCB?
I am.
Has the subject been raised on your agenda? There is a general principle involved, which might apply not only to the situation with Palestine but to other countries' democracies that we want to assist. Should we ask the SPCB to examine how the Scottish Parliament could help develop democracies in other countries? Could we ask it to consider establishing the criteria that the Presiding Officer mentioned, which we might wish to make use of with regard to the petition? Lots of colleagues in the Parliament might also want to make use of those criteria. It would be worth while asking the SPCB, given that we have received the petition. The SPCB response describes the current situation, but we should ask whether we can change the situation.
I am a member of the SPCB and the matter has been discussed. The Presiding Officer makes it quite clear that, given our budget, our responsibilities lie first and foremost in creating parliamentary services around this building, which one would expect. Given the tightness of the budgets within which we operate, we took the view that although we were sympathetic and would welcome visits from Palestine, or indeed any other area, with a view to helping, we could not commit funding to that. If you wish to write to the SPCB or the Presiding Officer, I am sure that he would respond in due course.
Perhaps we should just take up the matter with our party business managers and progress it through that route. We could identify whether colleagues support the view.
That is a helpful suggestion. Each party could gauge whether there was an appetite for the SPCB to extend its remit to do the sort of work that we are talking about. There would certainly be a requirement for funding. We would test the water if we proceeded through the business managers.
We are doing work on external relations through the European and External Relations Committee, which has set itself clear objectives and targets. We just need to ask ourselves whether one of our targets should be to assist the developing democracies and, if so, how we do that. Do we allocate resources to match our aspirations on helping developing democracies?
I agree entirely with Helen Eadie that we should write to our own business managers. I am a member of the cross-party group on Cuba, which requested that parliamentarians from Cuba come over here. We had no budget for that, so we had to put our hands in our pockets for it. However, in Westminster MPs have a budget for that and they can fly parliamentarians over, which seems ludicrous.
Notwithstanding Helen Eadie's comments, are members happy to close the petition at this point?
Members indicated agreement.
NHS Prescribed Drugs<br />(Effects on Children)<br />(PE631, PE638, PE639 and PE640)<br />Children with Learning Difficulties (Support and Information) (PE663)
At its meeting on 3 September 2003, the committee agreed to link PE631, PE638, PE639, PE640 and PE663 by James Mackie, on behalf of Overload Network. PE631 calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Executive to investigate the effects on future employment, housing and insurance cover for individuals who were prescribed neuroleptic and similar drugs as children. PE638 calls on the Parliament to investigate whether certain vitamin supplements should be prescribed by the NHS to help children with a nutritional imbalance caused by addiction to NHS-prescribed drugs. PE639 calls on the Parliament to investigate the storage and dispensing of NHS-prescribed drugs in schools. PE640 calls on the Parliament to take the necessary steps to ban the prescribing of neuroleptic and similar drugs to children. PE663 calls on the Parliament to take the necessary steps to ensure that the need to provide support and information services for parents of children with learning difficulties and behavioural problems is recognised by the Scottish Executive.
A mountain of work has been undertaken in relation to the petitions. We have carried out some in-depth studies. It is good that that has happened, because clearly it is important that we get the nutrition of our young people and disabled people right.
Are members happy to proceed on that basis?
I thank Mr Mackie and Overload Network for bringing so many petitions to us. I was on the committee when the petitions first appeared, and I am back again for the updated briefings. I understand what Helen Eadie says, because the petitions have been explored, but I am concerned about the over-prescribing of drugs. The response on PE631 and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 does not answer all the questions that are asked in the petition. The petition is about insurance and how kids have been prescribed neuroleptic drugs. I have concerns about not taking further action.
We have received responses from the Executive, which form part of the briefing. The Executive comments that it is working to the Scottish intercollegiate guidelines network guidelines, which say that there is insufficient evidence to prove a case for dietary cause or intervention. Like you, I have a deal of sympathy with Mr Mackie's petitions, but we have asked the Executive for its views and it is working within the SIGN guidelines.
Did we pass the petitions to the Health Committee to seek its views? I might be a bit late in the day in asking that, but I would have liked the Health Committee to consider the petitions.
I cannot remember whether the Health Committee received the petitions; we would have to ask the clerks to check. A huge number of petitions are referred to the Health Committee.
The petitions were not referred to the Health Committee.
I do not oppose that suggestion, but I give a health warning. Because the Health Committee, of which I am a member, receives so many petitions, it has agreed that all petitions will go into a pool. As we do our work programme each year, we will revisit that pool to identify which petitions we can deal with effectively in the context of an inquiry. The Health Committee would decide whether it thought that any of the issues that are raised in the petitions merited further work.
Are you talking about one petition in particular?
I would like PE640 to be passed to the Health Committee. Although the prescription of drugs is a reserved matter, we are talking about the prescription of drugs to our children. I support Helen Eadie's recommendation on PE639, which was that we ask for teachers' comments. We might be able to close our consideration of the other three petitions.
Are we content to close our consideration of PE631 and PE638, to keep active our consideration of PE639, to close our consideration of PE640 after sending it to the Health Committee for information and to take no further action on PE663?
Members indicated agreement.
That is all right. Although PE663 is coupled with PE640 in that it is about the drugs that are used to treat children, I think that PE640 might cover the issue. However, I am not 100 per cent sure that it would cover the entire subject of PE663.
If you would prefer, we can copy PE663 to the Health Committee along with PE640 and then close our consideration of them.
Thank you—that would be great.
Childhood Vaccines (PE676)
PE676, which was submitted by Bill Welsh on behalf of Action Against Autism, calls on the Parliament to urge the Executive to inform all health boards, health practitioners, immunologists and organisations involved in the childhood vaccination programme in Scotland of the opportunity that parents now have to choose the mercury-free vaccine Infanrix instead of vaccines with thiomersal, which contains mercury, for the immunisation of children against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis.
We should jot that down as another success story for the Public Petitions Committee and close the petition.
Are we modestly going to chalk up that success to our efforts as well?
Members indicated agreement.
Pyroluria (PE706)
PE706, by James Mackie, calls on the Parliament to urge the Executive to ensure that NHS boards recognise, diagnose and appropriately treat the condition pyroluria.
We could invite the petitioner to comment on the response. I have not been around for the consideration of the petition and cannot ask questions on it, so I feel at a bit of a loose end and want to know more. Is there any way for me to find out more? If funding is down to boards' discretion, there will be no uniform approach.
The petitioner has already responded.
I am sorry, is that all in our papers? I am lost on this petition.
Jim Mackie's response is attached as annex B to the papers. There is a handwritten PS on the back of it.
We must close the petition. I read Mr Mackie's response the other day. The funding of alternative or complementary tests or therapy is up to individual boards, although it should be up to the Executive. The next step now is for Mr Mackie, Overload Network and others to try to get figures from the boards about exactly what they are doing. They might then be able to bring the issue back not to the Public Petitions Committee, but to the Health Committee by saying that health boards are not doing what the Executive says that they should.
I support what Sandra White has said, but I reassure Mr Mackie that I am a great believer in alternative therapies. It is down to us all to go back to our various health boards and ensure that they understand that a great number of people in Scotland share that view and that the boards ought, therefore, to make increasingly greater budget provision to support alternative therapies. All kinds of approaches—alternative therapies and vitamin or mineral supplements—can often make an impact when more modern medicines have failed. We should close the petition in a supportive spirit and not at all write it off as a matter on which we can make no more progress. I am certain that we all know that, as MSPs, we have continuing work to do on alternative therapies.
I identify closely with those remarks, and I thank Sandra White for the suggestion of closing the petition. If that is the committee's view, we will do so.
Members indicated agreement.
Meeting closed at 12:30.
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