Public Petitions Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Official Report 451KB pdf

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New Petitions

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Cerebral Palsy/Acquired Brain Injury National Football Team (PE1335)

We have four new petitions before us today, and we will take oral evidence on the first two. PE1335, by Maggie Tervit and other parents on behalf of football players with cerebral palsy or acquired brain injury, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to take action, including making representations to the Scottish Football Association, to bring Scotland more into line with England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, to adopt the Scottish national team for footballers with cerebral palsy or acquired brain injury.

We will take oral evidence from the petitioner via videoconference. We have visual and audio feed. I welcome Maggie Tervit to the meeting.

Thank you.

I invite you to make an opening statement of no more than three minutes, after which members will have the opportunity to ask questions. The floor is yours.

Since the petition went live, I have had the opportunity to do more research. In addition, Gavin Macleod, chief executive officer of Scottish Disability Sport, has communicated with me. I have an e-mail from him. Regarding the nominal payment, he says:

“SDS receives performance funding from sportscotland which is used to support all our key sports and there is a danger that a bid to support football in isolation will be detrimental to the remaining sports. SDS has never operated an individual membership scheme for obvious reasons, so all athletes who attend SDS events and squads are asked to make a contribution. We have to be seen to be treating our sports and athletes equally”.

That clarifies why our players are asked regularly to contribute a nominal payment.

Regarding the SFA and other disability football teams, he says:

“Our partnership with the Scottish FA has never been stronger and the levels of investment from the Scottish FA to disability football have never been higher. There is huge pressure on the Scottish FA to support all disability groups who co-ordinate football programmes.”

It is obviously essential that we tread carefully so that none of the other football disability teams, sports or athletes that are supported by SDS are disadvantaged.

I now wish to elaborate on the “Action to be Taken” plan on pages 5 and 6 of the petition, which is written in layman’s terms as it deals with a complex situation involving various opinions, bodies and objectives. I have a quote from Gavin Macleod that should be added in support of points 1 and 2. He says:

“extra funding cannot be found by redirecting resources from other areas, this would have the potential to undermine the huge amount of work that has been done to date”.

I will elaborate on point 3 of the action plan in the petition. It would be unreal to compare the Scottish FA with the English FA. We do not expect to catch up with the English. All that we want to do is compare the status of the CP/ABI teams in the four countries, which is an extremely small part of the football associations’ programmes. It is a scale in which England obviously leads and the Republic of Ireland is probably second, with Scotland perhaps third and Northern Ireland perhaps fourth. For reference purposes only, it would be beneficial from the point of view of looking to the future to see exactly where everyone stands, who funds the CP/ABI teams, how they are funded and when and what they must do to qualify for more support.

We wish to drop point 4 of the action plan, which is, in hindsight, unnecessary. The Scottish FA document “Hitting the Target 2006-2010: the future of disability football” is due to be rewritten this year. If it appears to be necessary to compare the issues that are outlined, we presume that other football associations have similar documents that are available to read.

In theory, our national team already has an elite position and has set an example for other Scottish disability football teams. In addition, in July 2009, Stuart Sharp, the SFA’s national development manager for disability football, was named head of technical control at the Cerebral Palsy International Sports and Recreation Association. He was approached by the CPISRA after his achievements with our team in Rio de Janeiro. We like to think that our team contributed a little to his being offered that position.

If the SFA wants to keep up with change and transformation, one can only presume that, at some time or another, it will start incorporating national disability teams in its core programme. Furthermore, it is only fair to expect that CP/ABI teams should be the first: it must be possible to achieve that one way or another. For example, if the SFA adopts a team, a sponsor may be found solely for our team, with the SFA holding the strings.

Good afternoon. It seems to me—and, I am sure, to other colleagues—to be unfair that players have to self-fund their participation. That is something of an injustice. How is funding for the English, Northern Irish and Republic of Ireland squads made up?

I am sorry—I have no detailed information on that. I know only that the Republic of Ireland squad receives a considerable grant from the Football Association of Ireland. The English squad is funded solely by the Football Association.

I have one further question. I know that we do not have the specific figure, but how much approximately would it cost the SFA to adopt the Scottish national team for footballers with cerebral palsy/acquired brain injury?

I could guess at £50,000, but I honestly do not know. I do not know how much SDS contributes and how much the SFA contributes. I know that the boys in the selected team that will represent Scotland in August are going to Cyprus in July for two weeks to train. If I remember rightly, that will cost £35,000. Stuart Sharp managed to find a sponsor to fund the trip.

To which bodies do members suggest we write about the petition?

Given the detail of the petition, and having heard the petitioner, I suggest that the committee support the petition and ask the Scottish Government to take the action that the petitioner requests, by making representations to the SFA to bring Scotland more into line with other home nations in this regard. We should also ask the Scottish Government whether it thinks that it is right that players have to self-fund their participation in matches, training and so on, especially given the success that the team has had, which Maggie Tervit mentioned in passing, and given the positive reputation that it creates for itself and its country.

We should ask the Scottish Football Association and Scottish Disability Sport for responses to the petition and ask whether they will take the action that has been called for. It would be interesting to know what present annual funding in support of the CP/ABI teams amounts to and how it is made up. The SFA may be able to tell us how many squads and players there are, how often the national squad trains together and how many friendly matches it plays in a year.

14:15

It might be useful to write to the football associations of the other countries that have been mentioned. In this Parliament, we too often feel that we have to do what is being done in England, Wales and Northern Ireland; however, as those countries have been mentioned, we could find out what they do and what their approaches are. We could also try to get information about how much the proposal would cost before we write to the SFA. If it is going to cost only £50,000 a year, that will strengthen the argument significantly when we ask the Government to write to the SFA. It would be useful if we could get a ball-park figure, because £50,000 seems to be a minuscule amount.

Okay. We have agreement from committee members that we should keep the petition open. It is suggested that we contact the Scottish Government, the Scottish Football Association, Scottish Disability Sport and various football associations to elicit information from them.

I thank Maggie Tervit for bringing the petition to the committee. That is often hard enough to do without it being by videoconference.

Thank you.

14:16 Meeting suspended.

14:18 On resuming—

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Disabled Services (Consultation) (PE1334)

The second new petition is PE1334, from Ann Cassels, calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to set out what its expectations are in relation to how, when, with whom and on what local authorities consult when they are considering the closure or relocation of centres that provide services for people with disabilities, and to ask what evidence there is that that is what local authorities are really doing. I welcome Ann Cassels and John Thomson from the Fernan Street Action Group. One of you may make an opening statement of no more than three minutes, after which members will have the opportunity to ask questions. I also invite Frank McAveety MSP to say a few words in support of the petition.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We are here on behalf of Fernan Street Action Group. The Fernan Street complex was built in the late 1980s and has been a partnership between social work services and the users, some of whom still attend. It had three components: respite, day care and information. It has hosted various daytime activities such as a heart and stroke club, an extend class that provided exercise, arts and crafts, drama and a drop-in facility. Physiotherapists have also used it twice a week.

We have held fundraising days and dances. At night, the centre has been used by the brownies and the local Multiple Sclerosis Society branch. Housing associations have held their meetings in it, councillors have held surgeries and an east Glasgow disability group has used it. It is centrally located beside a train station and bus routes. For respite users, the building is near shops, a health centre, a library and sports centres. Now, those users are in an industrial estate and are further away from those amenities.

We first heard about the closure after it was agreed to by a local council committee. There was no consultation and no users were invited to put their case. The Fernan Street centre was to be the social work services’ flagship in Glasgow. The council has systematically shut all other disabled centres in Glasgow. It is a disgrace that we will no longer have suitable services in a city the size of Glasgow. Would it not have been more practical to keep open that purpose-built building, with equipment, alarms and staff for disabled people and to maximise its use and cater for able-bodied people, too, rather than compromise with less suitable buildings for the disabled?

The Fernan Street centre is not just a building: many friendships have been made. We are in our own way a community of people with disabilities. We are more aware of how others learn to cope with their disabilities. How would councillors feel if members of their families depended on the services? Would not they want the best available service? We feel that if we do not take what is being offered to us, we will have nothing at all. Do not forget that the issue is not just about the users; it is about carers having time, too. If that is how we treat disabled people, we do not know the meaning of care in the community.

The process is happening not only in Glasgow; it is a problem throughout Scotland because councils are having to make cuts. We understand that cuts have to be made, but why hit the most vulnerable people first? Do councils think that we will be an easy target and that we will just accept it? I do not think that we will.

The Fernan Street building must stay open because the quality of service that it provides is second to none and it is a major asset to the east end of Glasgow and to Glasgow City Council, if it would only admit it. We realise that the budget is restricted, but the money that was spent would be recouped through the work that the centre does—physically and mentally—for the users and their carers. Carers know that their family members and loved ones are in a safe and friendly environment and are getting the best care that is on offer. They can gain correct information on any problems that they have. We do not believe that there are any centres of the same quality in the area, either within the city limits or beyond.

We are the first to raise such issues, but I am sure that we will not be the last. The sad thing is that people never know when they will need such services. Once those services are gone, we will not get them back.

Before I ask Frank McAveety to say a few words, I record our thanks to him for his commitment and service to the Public Petitions Committee in the past three years. Thanks very much, Frank—we are delighted to see you back in your capacity as a constituency member.

Thanks very much, convener.

I want to add to the points that Ann Cassels has raised. Members have received background papers relating to the consultation. The critical point that Ann Cassels has identified is, in a sense, about the need, when key users of a service have not been engaged with senior officers, for post-consultation to try to find ways to manage the services that people have been utilising.

After a number of inquiries, I and other elected representatives have raised issues on behalf of the Fernan Street Action Group and we have met the local community health and care partnership. I welcome the opportunities to do that. Even at this late stage, we wish to pursue matters further.

Underpinning the petition is a debate about what kind of consultation should take place and how to work with service users. I have a personal view about the value of location, and I am sure that people throughout the country have similar views about the value of local services. From the discussions that we have had, it is clear that the changes have been driven by the finance agenda. Local councils will have to address, and are addressing, those issues, but there is a real concern—not only among service users—that the range of services that allow people to come together will be lost. If a more extensive consultation process had been carried out, we might have come up with a more imaginative response than closure.

In conclusion, from the point of view of those who use the service, there is a sense that there needs to be an honest debate about how we arrive at such decisions. As Ann Cassels identified, we know that there is a difficulty with finances, and the action group also knows that, but this might be a short-term saving that proves to be a major mistake in the long term because of the range and quality of the services that are provided. It is true not only in this case but throughout the country that difficult decisions are having to be made, but to make such decisions on a financial basis rather than based on services would be wrong, even in the light of the public finances that are available.

Thank you. I ask committee members to ask questions.

I will ask a couple of questions, because I am slightly confused. It has been said that the decision was taken to close the building because it was not fit for purpose, but you have both said that the decision was finance driven. Is the building fit for purpose? I know that we are talking about wider issues, but can you respond on that specific point?

The council is saying that the respite provision is not fit for purpose because the rooms are too small for equipment that is needed, such as hoists, and the bathrooms are too small for two carers plus the person plus a hoist. There is nothing wrong with the rest of the building that could not be sorted.

So the rest of the building is closing purely because the council is withdrawing the funding.

The rooms were too small and the council decided that it would cost too much to make these rooms bigger.

Could I just amplify that? I will quote from the minutes of one of the meetings that we have held with senior officers. The minutes state that the

“Council needed to close due to the Budget available for such services ... the availability of money is making this decision inevitable.”

There is a combination of that factor plus the problem with the element of overnight respite care, because of the Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care standards. No one is arguing about that. People might feel uncomfortable about moving to a private sector provider, but in principle the conditions were not great for the provision of such care. However, people genuinely feel that, in respect of day care services, there is an issue for broader discussion and debate; they would have been happy to have that discussion, but they have, in a sense, arrived at that position after the event rather than before it.

I think that Frank McAveety is right that this is happening all over and that some services will have to close because funding has to be withdrawn, but the key problem is that consultation is not taking place. I have experienced that with services when the funders have decided to withdraw funding because people can access other services, but the other services are nothing like the services that are being withdrawn and do not address the problems that the service that is being withdrawn addresses. They would know that if in the first place they properly consulted the people who use the service. That is a significant issue and it is one that we need to delve into a wee bit deeper.

One point that I want to add, if the convener does not mind, is that I am now saying to a lot of community organisations that funding will be difficult over the next few years. Everybody accepts that, but there is an organisation called Pilotlight, which works with local organisations to enable them to become more self-sustaining and less reliant on public funding. I am looking into that organisation and will send the petitioners information about it, because Pilotlight’s support has enabled a couple of organisations that I know to continue to provide a service to the people who require it when they would not have been able to continue without its support. I will send you information about that, because the situation will get more difficult over the next few years.

Good afternoon. Obviously, the committee has heard that the consultation was not really a consultation at all, that it was very poor and that it was like dictation rather than consultation. Can Ann Cassels or John Thomson say what needs to be done to make consultation in circumstances such as that faced by Fernan Street centre users more meaningful? What could make it better for users and at least more honest and open?

The users need to be involved. The council should be looking for properties to put people in rather than waiting until they have decided that the place is closing and saying, “We have a room here and a room there—we will just move you in there,” without taking into account the fact that the existing centre has permanent staff and bathrooms with alarms and handrails. One of the properties that it talked about moving us into was a building used by a pre-five group. We would have been in the building with the pre-fives. Now, we are a wee bit slower on our feet and not as agile as we could be, so where is the sense in that? We have a building that was purpose built for disabled people. Why do they not make the best of that building and move so-called able-bodied people in beside us? That would mean that we were both catered for.

14:30

The building is just off Shettleston Road.

That is right.

I remember it because I was a councillor there for a brief period. John, do you agree with Ann? Do you have anything to add?

I will describe my personal experience. My wife is an A1 priority plus—she is at the highest level; people cannot get any more dependent than that. They offered her two places. One was at Revive in Maryhill, which is only for exercises; there is no communication between people. The other one was at a place in Drumchapel—the Antonine centre—but it takes an hour to get there and an hour to come back, so it would add two hours to our day. Carol can be shattered coming up from the Fernan Street centre. She is paralysed from the neck down and she is doubly incontinent. Usually, when she gets up from Fernan Street, she needs to go to the toilet right away. That is just the nature of her illness.

To get Carol to the Antonine centre by booking taxis on contract—which means that the cost does not go on the meter; there is just a one-off payment every month—would cost £400 a month. They turned round and said, “Your mobility will cover that,” but we do not get £400 a month in mobility. It is a farce. I actually asked them if they had worked things out on the back of a cigarette packet.

There has been no consultation whatsoever and no thought has been put in. They are offering people ridiculous premises. They said that they would offer like for like, but one of the other places that was mentioned—it was not offered, but it was mentioned—was a guest centre up at Ruchazie that does not have toilets to suit Carol. She needs two people and a hoist because of the nature of her illness, but there were no suitable toileting facilities at all. I do not know what they are talking about. I am honestly shocked at the standard of care that they think they can hand out to people.

I am listening carefully, as my colleagues are, to what you are both saying. It is shocking, and it shows a lack of any kind of thought or care for the people who are supposed to be cared for and supported. Thank you for being so frank with me.

As there are no further questions, I invite members to suggest how we should proceed.

The petitioners have made a powerful case about the lack of proper, thought-out consultation and real contact with both those who depend on the Fernan Street centre and the family members who depend on it to provide services for their loved ones.

If colleagues agree that we should pursue the petition, I suggest that we write to the Scottish Government to ask what its expectations are in relation to how consultations are carried out—the

“how, when, with whom and on what”

that are mentioned in the petition. It would also be useful to ask the Scottish Government whether it monitors local authorities in that regard and looks at how consultations, especially with vulnerable groups of people, are carried out. What we have in the case that we have been discussing is the opposite of good practice. It is just not acceptable. We should ask the Scottish Government about the things that I mentioned, but colleagues might have in mind other things that we can do.

I wonder what expectations organisations such as Capability Scotland and the Equality and Human Rights Commission have of provision for people such as the petitioners. We should ask those organisations what they recommend.

Is that agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Given that the issue relates to local authorities, I think that we should also write to a selection of local authorities to ask them what their reaction is to the very serious points and concerns that the petitioners have raised. I suggest that we write to Glasgow City Council, City of Edinburgh Council, Aberdeen City Council and perhaps a rural authority.

Yes, it might well be worth writing to Aberdeen City Council, which was in the very same situation a couple of years ago. It might be interesting to see how Aberdeen City Council responds to the issue now.

Okay, we will continue with the petition. We will write to the organisations that have been mentioned and take the petition forward. Given the current financial situation, I think that we are all agreed that such issues will be faced by quite a few groups in the coming days.

Convener, we are perhaps skirting around the fact that there is a very specific issue in Glasgow. I am aware that Glasgow City Council has a commitment to service users and a disability equality scheme—I am sure that it has the bits of paper that say all the right things—but what we have heard from the petitioners plainly indicates that some of the right things have not happened in the midst of all that general paperwork. I agree that we ought to address the principles involved, but I wonder whether we ought not also to write to Glasgow City Council to ask it to respond to the specific issues that have been raised, which we should not ignore.

When we write to Glasgow City Council and other local authorities, can we ask whether they believe that they consult in the way that they should by involving service users? Can we also ask them for a concrete example of that? It might be nice if Glasgow City Council gave us an example of how it consulted the users of the Fernan Street centre. No doubt the council will assert that it consults people properly, but it would be good to have something that tells us how it did that. The council will say, “Yes, we consult properly and, yes, the public believe that we consult properly,” so I would like to be given an example—not just from Glasgow City Council but from the selection of local authorities that we contact—so that we can read about what local authorities think is the correct way to consult.

It occurs to me that it might be appropriate also to write to Convention of Scottish Local Authorities to ask about the quality of consultation that local authorities are expected to undertake.

I thank Ann Cassells, John Thomson and Frank McAveety MSP for giving evidence. The petition will be continued.

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Pit Ponies (PE1330)

PE1330, by Roy Peckham, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to prohibit the use of equines underground. Do members have any suggestions on how the committee should deal with the petition?

Convener, I think that the committee should continue the petition.

Let me just read out an extract from a short story that I managed to pick up from a friend who worked in the pits for 51 years. As well as writing a poem about the pit pony, he describes what actually happened to such animals:

“Little welsh ponies were coupled to the hutch to transport the coal. They had to be small as the roads were very low but they were tough animals. There must have been around sixty ponies in the stables. There was an ostler on the day shift and one on the back shift but there was none on the night shift and so the ponies were often overworked. The ponies could be quite temperamental, some were easy to work and some could be quite difficult. As a result the night shift drivers were taking the good ponies in the absence of an ostler. Some of the ponies would work fourteen hours a day but the night shift wasn’t in production so fortunately they weren’t many used at night.”

As I said, that brief description of what happened when pit ponies were used in the pits comes from someone with 51 years’ experience.

The same author goes on to describe how he saw a pit pony being killed—for which he blames the driver—because it was chained up to a hutch that was allowed to go over a ravine. The pony was dragged along with the hutch, so the pony was killed as well.

The situation that the petitioner highlights must have been an oversight when the legislation was changed. However, it is clear that, under the present legislation, pit ponies could be brought back into use if deep mines were reopened.

In continuing the petition, we could write to several organisations for comments. I hope that we will prevent the reintroduction of the practice if deep mines are reopened. We should write to ask the Scottish Government whether it will prohibit the use of equines underground, as the petition requests, and for assurances that pit ponies will not be used if any new deep coal mines are developed.

We could write to ask a range of organisations—the British Horse Society Scotland, the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the National Equine Welfare Council and the International League for the Protection of Horses—whether they support the petition. We could also write to Scottish Coal to ask whether it supports the petition and to obtain an assurance that pit ponies would not be used if any deep coal mines were reopened. Lastly, we should write to the National Union of Mineworkers, as its members’ experiences of how pit ponies were used or abused in pits could be relevant to the petition.

As members have no more comments, we agree to continue the petition.

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Gypsy Travellers (Council Tax) (PE1333)

The last new petition is PE1333, by Shamus McPhee on behalf of the Scottish Gypsy Traveller Law Reform Coalition, which calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to investigate the inequalities and discrimination that are faced by Scottish Gypsy Travellers and members of the settled community who reside in mobile homes in the assessment of council tax liability and of water and sewerage charges.

Do members have suggestions on how the committee should deal with the petition?

We should continue the petition. We need to write to ask the Scottish Government whether it will investigate the inequalities to which the petition refers and when they will be redressed, if the Government agrees that they exist. In particular, is there a discrepancy between the Local Government Finance Act 1992, under which a caravan must be classed as a dwelling for the purpose of council tax banding, and the Housing (Scotland) Act 1987 and subsequent acts, which state that a caravan cannot be classed as a dwelling in relation to the assessment of minimal tolerable standards? If so, when will the Government remedy that? When we ask the Scottish Government those questions, we should throw in the question whether local authorities can legally charge the council tax even if they provide no amenities. That is a reasonable question to ask. The petition throws up a range of questions; those are three suggestions to start with.

I am sure that we could do several things with the petition, but they are not all springing to mind. The issue that comes to the fore is the extent to which Gypsy Travellers are a separate ethnic community. I am sure that some are from the community of folk who have since time immemorial been Travellers and whom we might—with the greatest respect—legitimately call Gypsies. I am no expert on the subject, but I have the impression that some folk have also banded together and bought themselves caravans that they park on the local green because they feel like going there. They are travelling odd-job men and sometimes they get away with what the local community regards as murder. I have the impression that, sometimes, those people really are not Gypsies—they are folk who come from a different background and who have adopted that lifestyle.

I have no idea how to discriminate between those groups—or rather, how to distinguish between them; “discriminate” is probably the wrong word. Will we explore that issue? Folk out there have picked up the label. They go for a camping holiday somewhere convenient—I am giving a slightly extreme example—and the police do not want to move them on because they think that to do so might be to discriminate against a group against whom they should not discriminate. The police fail to distinguish between the proper ethnic group—if I might use that phrase without being pejorative—and the hangers-on.

I do not have the answer to that, but I think that there is a real issue lurking here. I do not know quite how we should explore it, but if we are going to say that part of our travelling community has ethnic rights, there must be some edge to that. I think that the settled communities would be grateful to find limits to it, so that the police can decide who are the folk who should be allowed to stay and who are just the hangers-on.

14:45

Are you referring to the Race Relations Act 1976?

I think that what we are talking about underpins the whole legislative framework, regardless of whether it was thought about at the time.

It is important to point out that this petition is not about anything to do with the police; it is about people paying for services that they do not access. It refers to:

“Scottish Gypsy Travellers and other members of the settled community residing in mobile homes.”

It is about the home in which people live and whether it has access to services for which they are being charged. I think that Nigel Don has raised a slightly separate issue, although I know that he is not saying that we should not progress the petition. We should progress the petition, look at the Housing (Scotland) Act 1987 and find out from the Government how it will take the petition forward.

An Equal Opportunities Committee report from 2005 found that there was a lack of equality of treatment in relation to accommodation, education, health representation and engagement. It would be reasonable to ask the Scottish Government whether there has been any advance since that 2005 report, specifically in relation to the issue that the petition raises about the supply of water, electricity and proper sewerage facilities. I also think that we could ask the Scottish Gypsy Traveller Law Reform Coalition whether it supports the aims of the petition and what it has to say about the issues that the petition raises.

Thanks. It occurs to me that we should perhaps ask some local authorities to comment, too, because they will have experience in this area. I understand that the petitioner’s particular concern was about the threat of sequestration and being billed for a dwelling, which, if it was a house, would have been condemned for being below a tolerable standard. The issue is to do with the home being a mobile home as opposed to a house and the fact that Gypsy Travellers will often live in mobile homes. It might be sensible to ask the Scottish Human Rights Commission what steps it would take to prevent a similar thing from happening to other Gypsy Travellers. Are there any other suggestions?

I am grateful for the opportunity to respond to what Anne McLaughlin said. Please be assured that I agree with her absolutely. The petition is about Gypsy Travellers and the settled community who live in mobile homes. I was merely trying to draw a distinction between some parts of those groups.

I agree that we should write to the Scottish Human Rights Commission, the Equality and Human Rights Commission Scotland and the racial equality council in Central Scotland to ask them for their views on the petition and whether they support its aims. We should also ask whether they classify Gypsy Travellers as a separate ethnic minority group in Scotland, which goes to the heart of the petition. I know that sequestration and the way that people have been charged for council tax and other things are crucial issues that the petition raises, but the petition is really about our trying to establish the rights of Gypsy travelling people in Scotland, which we do not seem to have managed to do. I know that a lot of work has been done in Europe in relation to the Romany community and other communities, but we do not seem to have resolved the situation in Scotland.

To comfort Nigel Don slightly, most of the Gypsy Travellers of whom I am aware share only two surnames. I lived less than a mile away from what was a travelling people’s site, and the same surnames would crop up time and again. I hope that that will allay Nigel Don’s fear that we are referring to new age travellers rather than the population of Gypsy Travellers that we have had in Scotland for a number of years. It might also be worth while to write to Shelter to get its views on the petition and whether the charges are right. We must remember that the charges on households from Scottish Water for water and sewerage are separate from council tax. It may be worth while asking the Scottish Government specifically whether it would exempt Gypsy Travellers from water and sewerage charges.

Thanks very much. It is agreed that we will continue the petition and take the suggested actions.