Official Report 369KB pdf
Fire Control Rooms (PE765)
Item 2 is consideration of our new petitions, the first of which is PE765 from Jim Malone, on behalf of the Fire Brigades Union Tayside. The petition calls on the Parliament to urge the Executive to ensure the retention of eight fire control centres in Scotland. Jim Malone is present to give evidence in support of the petition, together with Libby Logan and John Duffy. Welcome to the committee. You have three minutes in which to make a verbal submission, after which we will ask questions.
On behalf of the FBU Tayside, I thank the committee for considering our petition for the retention of the eight fire control centres within the eight brigade structure in Scotland. Emergency fire control centres provide a highly skilled, experienced work force whose talents have been recognised by Audit Scotland as providing the best value-for-money public service in the United Kingdom. Our petition, which is in response to the Scottish Executive's much-maligned Mott MacDonald report, emphasises the level of disquiet that exists among all fire service stakeholders.
We are joined by John Swinney, who would like to add a few words.
The day before the worst of the flooding problems that we experienced in Tayside in early August, I visited Tayside's fire control centre. I was struck by two things. First, the significance of the depth of local knowledge that was retained by the people who were operating the fire control centre that day—in a large rural area, such as the one that I represent, that is of fundamental importance. Secondly, to my layman's eye, the intensity of the pressure under which those people were operating at a time of high demand on the service was quite beyond comprehension. Based on what I saw that day, I believe that, if a number of incidents happened throughout Scotland, the strength and speed of the response would be diminished if there were only one, or even three, fire control centres in the country.
I am concerned about the loss of local knowledge that might result if there were only one, or even three, fire control centres. I am also concerned about the time that it might take each fire brigade to travel to incidents if there were centralised fire control areas, given the geography and, perhaps, the bad weather.
One of the problems of having a centralised control centre would be the difficulty in ascertaining where the person was. Many addresses are similar and when someone is in a panic, as they often are in a fire situation, they might not give you the perfect address. In a larger control area, the operator would have to do further interrogation, which holds up the mobilisation of the service, which means that it will take them longer to get to the scene. In a fire situation, the sooner the service arrives, the better.
You mentioned the UK pathfinder report. Could you comment on its findings compared to those of the Mott MacDonald report, which you say is discredited?
The Government-sponsored reports that we alluded to in our statement, the most recent of which was published in 2002, have said that the status quo—eight brigades and eight fire control centres—should be retained. We point out that, just two years after the most recent report, Mott MacDonald has completely changed the Executive's opinion.
Have you any anecdotal evidence from your colleagues in the other emergency services on how the centralisation of their services is affecting the response time? I am thinking of the ambulance service in particular and I know that police response times are perhaps not all that the people who wait for a response expect.
We distinguish between what we do and what the ambulance service and the police do, because fire control centres deal with every 999 call in the same way—the same attention and care is paid to each call. There is no prioritisation of calls, as happens in ambulance and police control centres. Prioritisation means that calls are left unattended. During the firefighters dispute, the same thing happened in the joint operating centres: 40 per cent of all calls received no attention. Fire service control centre operators answer every call with the same care and treat them all as being equally important. We are quite happy to put our record up against those of the ambulance service and the police control centres. We do not want to go down their road.
The Mott MacDonald report has received wide criticism from several quarters. Very few people, including me, are persuaded that one control room would be adequate.
The Strathclyde fire brigade area is bordered by four other fire brigade areas and any decision to share out calls would be determined by which area the work could be shared with. Such arrangements are already in place. During the flooding to which John Swinney referred, our brigade used resources from Fife, Grampian and Central Scotland fire brigades. There is a system in place at the moment.
Along with Westminster colleagues, I visited FBU representatives in Fife to hear their representations. Will you expand on the significance of the new technology that you have for the taking of addresses from very distressed people? We were shown the integrated risk management plan—I think that that is what it is called—that you have on computer, which contains very detailed knowledge. I am not coming down on a particular side of the argument; I am trying to get at whether the new technology overrides some of the arguments that you are making. During my visit to the local fire brigade headquarters, I was shown that by pressing a button one could get detailed information to pop up.
Operators need to be able to get the address out of the person in the first place, which can be very difficult to do in a panic situation. Often they need to ensure that they are hearing the correct address. Operators in a larger control room may not be aware of other possible spellings for that address. The technology is very good when it works, but people are needed to operate it. I am not saying that we cannot operate it, but the greater the choices that are available, the greater the possibility of a mistake.
What is your opinion of a Scotland-wide control centre? You mentioned difficulties with local accents and places that may not appear on maps. If a national control centre received a call reporting a fire at a place called Third Park cottages, which is a wee group of cottages that probably does not appear on a map, would it know that the site was within a mile of a nuclear power station?
I hazard a guess that it would almost certainly not know. In that situation, the control operator would need to spend a lot more time figuring out which brigade area was affected. At the moment operators occasionally come across addresses that they do not know and have to locate, but that would happen much more often in a national control centre. After working out which brigade area was affected, they would need to decide which was the nearest fire station and what response they should send. All of that takes up time. We refer to the intervention window, which is determined by the time from the call coming in to the fire engines turning up. If that time between call and response is increased, people's chances of surviving an incident are diminished. Whatever we can do to increase the intervention window benefits the caller, because they are the person trapped. The sooner the fire engines get there for them, the better. In a local control room, where operators have local knowledge, far fewer supplemental questions are asked.
I have a couple of questions about the attitude that you highlight in your papers about the Mott MacDonald report. You say that it did not consider the issue of return to duty, that it failed
It is important to note that Mott MacDonald spent on average about 30 minutes in each control room in Scotland. The FBU produced evidence covering all the points that Mike Watson has mentioned. The Mott MacDonald report was published for England and Wales, but the Executive is implementing its recommendations. We do not think that the report takes into account the diversities in Scotland. Those are recognised at the start of the report, but they are not addressed in the findings.
But the views of Scotland, as it were, have not been identified in the report strongly enough to highlight such differences. Did you feel that the FBU—in Tayside and Scotland-wide—gave Mott MacDonald the information that would have allowed it to come to the conclusion that you are recommending now?
That kind of information would be openly available. We will speak to anyone about the future of the fire service. Information was certainly submitted to Mott MacDonald; however, most of what appears in its report is simply a copy of its England and Wales review, which concluded that the service must regionalise. As a result, if it carried out the same review in Scotland and came up with any other answer, it would contradict what it said in its earlier report.
Did the Scottish fire brigades and fire boards represent Scotland's distinctiveness when Mott MacDonald invited them to do so?
Their responses to the Fire (Scotland) Bill and the Mott MacDonald report have been as one. We feel that two or three boards might have been pushed in a certain direction. After all, boards that said that they did not want a system of three controls might not get one of them. In this respect, I am thinking in particular of Lothian and Borders and Grampian. We know that we had support in those authorities.
So management and staff in Scotland differ in what they would be prepared to accept at this stage.
No. As the Official Report of the Justice 2 Committee shows, our management, the firemasters and CFOA fully supported the retention of the eight control centres alongside the eight brigades. At the moment, the command and control structure is one control for one brigade. That is how the system works.
You might or might not be able to answer this final question. What is driving the Mott MacDonald report? Is it simply cost savings? After all, I have seen your figures comparing the fire service with the police and ambulance service.
You are exactly right. The report is an Exchequer-run exercise to save money. However, as our witnesses pointed out in the Justice 2 Committee, the amount of money that Mott MacDonald says will be saved has been highly exaggerated.
So is the conclusion that, because money has to be saved, time will be of the essence and that, ultimately, lives will be lost?
There will be a straight trade-off between costs and lives. Last year, the fire death rate in the UK increased. This is not the time to be making cuts in the fire service.
Members have had the opportunity to question the witnesses. I now seek members' suggestions on what we should do with the petition.
Given that the Executive will make a decision on this matter soon, and that the Justice 2 Committee has come to the end of its evidence taking, I wonder whether we should do a number of things. We should write to the Executive to indicate the concerns that have been expressed and send a copy of the petition to the Justice 2 Committee for its information. At a subsequent meeting, the committee will pull together the evidence that it has received and reach conclusions for its stage 1 report. As a result, it might find it useful to have the petition in front of it.
I wonder whether it would make sense to suggest that we in Scotland commission our own report into the future of the fire service. I realise that we have not discussed that idea with the FBU representatives, and I do not want to reopen the discussion.
Nor would I want to pre-empt what the Justice 2 Committee is doing.
I am not aware of what the Justice 2 Committee is doing.
We are considering the petition and I am trying to find ways to address the concerns that have been raised and find out with whom we can raise them. Jackie Baillie has suggested that we send the information on our discussion to the Justice 2 Committee for its information, but we also want to know whether the Executive knows about the information that has been presented. Given that it has been said that management and staff are at one on the matter, it would be useful to get some written response from the Chief Fire Officers Association to accompany the information that we have received when we send it to the Executive.
I agree with what you and Jackie Baillie say. We should also ask the Executive for any comments that it has on the petition, particularly the allegation that the Mott MacDonald report did not address the Scottish perspective. I would like to go as far as what John Scott has said, but that is for another meeting, and I would certainly like some comments from the Executive on what the petitioners have raised.
Yes, we can ask for some kind of explanation from the Executive.
Forgive me for asking this, because I am new to the committee, but is it too early in the process for us to call people in to answer questions?
It is not common for us to do that, Rosie. We expect responses and, if we are not content with the responses and cannot find another way of getting to the bottom of an issue, we leave open the option of bringing someone in front of us. We must start a process, and I suggest that, to do that, we contact the Executive and ask for its comments on what we have heard this morning and on the concerns that have been raised in the petition.
The reason that I ask is that I had dealings with Mott MacDonald over a report that it produced for the Scottish Office on the dumping of toxic waste in Rutherglen. Its work was seriously flawed on that issue as well; so for me, Mott MacDonald does not have a good track record. I would like to ask the company about issues of which it was clearly not made aware and to which the Executive might react, such as local knowledge and how it affects the length of the interrogation that is needed, as well as the uniqueness and diversity of Scotland. How do we fill that gap?
The way that it has been done before is to do exactly what you have suggested: write to Mott MacDonald and ask it to respond to the points that have been made.
Thank you.
Is it agreed that we write to all three—the Executive, Mott MacDonald and CFOA—to get the fullest picture that we can and get responses as quickly as possible before any decision is made on the matter?
Could we include the FBU in that?
We have had information from the FBU this morning and submissions from the petitioners. If we send all that information to the Executive and Mott MacDonald and ask them to respond to it, we can address the responses in due course.
Fatal Accident and Sudden Deaths Inquiry (Scotland) Act 1976 (PE767)
Our second petition is PE767, which is from Norman Dunning on behalf of Enable. The petition calls on the Parliament to urge the Scottish Executive to review the operation and effectiveness of the Fatal Accidents and Sudden Deaths Inquiry (Scotland) Act 1976.
Thank you for receiving our petition and giving us the opportunity to speak to it. Enable, as the committee is probably aware, is the largest Scottish voluntary organisation for people with learning disabilities and their families. I am the chief executive and Betty Mauchland, who accompanies me this morning, is one of our voluntary members. She is a member of our health and medical issues group but, significantly, she has personal experience of a fatal accident inquiry.
Do members have questions for the petitioners?
Having gone through a bereavement in a hospital, I can identify with your comments and I know that there must be an emotional cost to going through such an inquiry. Like you, I find it hard to believe that the sheriff's findings have no legal status. How might the existing arrangements be improved?
The inquiry should be inquisitorial rather than adversarial. Its purpose should be to find out what went wrong. The families' perspective is that they want to know how the situation might be avoided in the future. The current arrangements lead to a defensive response, perhaps because people are afraid that there might be further legal action and they might be sued. That does not help to get to the truth of the matter nor, which is important, does it help to prevent the situation from happening again.
Under the current set-up, people are very defensive in FAIs. That has been my experience. The inquiry was about defending doctors and health trusts and minimising blame rather than about finding out what happened. In the end, it was distressing to watch. Going through an FAI is quite harrowing. For me, the grieving process is not complete three years after the death. When somebody dies, you expect that you will get closure, but I had to wait such a long time. The FAI lasted over a year and it sat for 26 days but, ultimately, its recommendations were not acted on. I am sorry if I am going off on a tangent and not answering the question directly, but I am telling you how I feel. I have never been in a place like this before.
I have not gone through an inquiry process myself. Was it worth it in the end? Would you do it again if you had known then what you know now?
I do not know. That is a difficult question to answer.
You mentioned the fear that people will sue being a barrier in a fatal accident inquiry. Do you think that it is an issue that if we push this matter further, people may go ahead and sue? Do you think that, because of the barrier that the law and—as we are coming to see—health boards have between the public and themselves, they are not prepared to engage in the process? Do you think that if we did as you suggest, people would not need to pay the £20,000 to £25,000, as the matter would be covered by legislation?
There are different ways of tackling this. One is to improve the current fatal accident process. In relation to that, there are two specific issues. Section 4(6) of the 1976 act makes provision for a sheriff to sit with experts—that is not the exact wording of the act. If that was made mandatory rather than voluntary, that would immediately get away from the business of everybody calling all their expert witnesses. The sheriff could sit with his own witnesses. If the sheriff then tried to establish what had happened rather than who was at fault, that would change the whole nature of the proceedings. We could change that part of the act.
I have forgotten what it was myself. No—I think that you have answered all my questions.
I echo the sentiments that other members have expressed. It must be very hard to lose a family member and then go through the process that you have had to go through. All credit must go to you for sticking it out, as that is important. I hope that we are not too terrifying.
No. I am settling down now.
That is good, but do not get too settled.
Sitting in these grand surroundings, I think that my preference is for the monitoring to be done from here. It is for such a reason that the Scottish public wanted this body. We wanted a central authority that can look across organisations—one that can look into what public bodies do, but which also has powers beyond that. We would also like the monitoring body to be democratically accountable. So my preference is that the body be located here. My second preference would be to have somebody who is responsible to the Parliament.
Thanks for coming today. You said that you had never been in a place like this. We do not often meet people like you, so thanks for talking to us about what you have been through. I have a couple of questions on the background. What were the recommendations from the inquiry? You said that there was no response from Greater Glasgow NHS Board, but did you get decent, interesting or useful responses from other health boards? Fatal accident inquiries look into the events leading up to and surrounding the death of an individual. Did the inquiry do that?
Sheriff Dunbar made 21 wide-ranging recommendations. Some of them involved training. Others involved appointing specialist nurses for people with learning disabilities, because the thing people with learning disabilities need more than anything else is stability. If you have ever been in hospital, you will know that you see a sea of faces. Lots of different nurses and doctors come in on different shifts. There is no continuity. The idea of appointing a consultant nurse in every health board was important, but it has not even been implemented in Tayside—and Jimmy died in Ninewells hospital in Tayside.
The remit of a fatal accident inquiry is to examine the events leading up to and surrounding the death of an individual. Did it do that?
No, because I do not think that fatal accident inquiries do that. It is all about damage limitation. The inquiry does not consider the real cause of death. An inquiry should be an inquiry; it should explore as many avenues as it can to reach a reasonable answer. The inquiry into Jimmy's death took place over 26 days, which seems like a long time, but on some of those days the inquiry met for only an hour or less, so it did not explore all the avenues. The inquiry did not deliver, although it made recommendations that have not been implemented. The process was too adversarial and did not do what it was supposed to do. It should have been an inquiry into a death, but it turned into a case for the defence.
I declare an interest, because my daughter is a procurator fiscal depute—do not let that put you off, Elizabeth. It is nice to see you here. You and Norman Dunning have raised serious issues, which give us real cause for reflection. When the meeting ends we will want to think further about what you have said.
There are different approaches to fatal accident inquiries. If a fatal accident inquiry is held as a result of an accident at work, the Health and Safety Executive kicks in and, I suppose, monitors the implementation of recommendations. No such body exists in relation to deaths in hospital.
For clarification, would the sheriff's findings automatically be sent to the various agencies that might have an input?
Not necessarily, unless the sheriff directed that that should happen. In the case of Jimmy Mauchland, the recommendations to health boards were specific and useful, although they perhaps did not go as far as we might have expected. However, as Betty Mauchland said, there was no mechanism even for their distribution to health boards. That happened only because we asked a member of the Scottish Parliament to lodge a question to the minister and the minister arranged for the recommendations to be sent to the health boards, which is a rather hit-and-miss approach.
Rosie Kane asked about feedback from health boards. Is there evidence that health boards have acted on any of the 21 recommendations that were made as a result of the case that you highlight? Health boards were not required to act by the FAI.
Some health boards have taken action. Our survey sought to ascertain whether action had been taken. However, a voluntary organisation such as Enable can ask boards to tell us what they are doing, but boards should be required to provide that information to someone. As Betty Mauchland said, one of the largest boards has not replied to us, but it is not the only one. Some boards replied constructively and we will follow up what they are doing. We have suggested that boards that are demonstrating best practice should publicise their work among other boards, so that the exercise is regarded not as negative but as a way of tackling the issues. Enable, with the help of Betty and other volunteers, is happy to take action, but it should not be left to us to do so. There will be circumstances in which individuals have to attend inquiries without the support of an organisation such as Enable and will not be able to pursue the case in the way in which Betty has done.
Members have no more questions, so we will move to recommendations. What do members suggest doing with the petition?
It would make sense to invite the Lord Advocate, the Law Society of Scotland and the Scottish Law Commission to comment on the issues. Thereafter, we might refer the matter to the Executive. In the meantime, we can obtain an initial response from the bodies that I suggested.
Do we want to write to ask the chief medical officer for Scotland to explain why the Greater Glasgow NHS Board has not responded or why he has not directed it to respond to Enable?
I suspect that the Minister for Justice might be interested. I know that the committee cannot take up specific cases, but if we asked in general terms what the mechanisms are and used the case that we are discussing as an example, that might be helpful.
Are members happy with that?
Norman Dunning and Elizabeth Mauchland put their case forcefully. Is there a way to let the minister know what they said?
As a matter of course, we send the Official Report as supporting evidence to ministers or whomever we write to for responses. All such people receive copies of submissions and the information that we obtain at meetings.
I thank both witnesses for attending. Your evidence was interesting and I hope that the experience was not too harrowing.
Thank you.
Speech and Language Therapy<br />(Agenda for Change) (PE768)
Petition PE768, which is by Susan Bannatyne, calls on the Scottish Parliament to consider and debate the implications of the proposed agenda for change legislation for speech and language therapy services and service users in the national health service. Susan Bannatyne is present to give evidence in support of the petition and is accompanied by Nicola Orr and Judith Philip.
I thank the committee for giving us time. The three of us will share our opening statement.
Our concerns have been raised through union representation at every level and through individual therapists contacting their MSPs, MPs, the Scottish Executive and the press, but we feel that those concerns have not been addressed adequately. We have prepared a document detailing our concerns, entitled "Information in Support of Petition", which you should have in front of you and which details the issues that we are asking the Parliament to investigate. Those issues include the fact that 30 to 50 per cent of speech and language therapists require pay protection, which would be lost should they move post or be promoted. Some speech and language therapists could face a salary drop of up to £10,000 a year and there could be knock-on effects of pay protection on opportunities for career progression, the balance of skills and experience within departments, recruitment, retention and morale. The younger generation of speech and language therapists see their career prospects vanishing before their very eyes.
Our issues with agenda for change are about more than just money. The loss of salary and the need for pay protection are concerns, but the greatest concerns are the consequences of that for career structure and, ultimately, for our service users. Our service users are individuals whose lives are affected profoundly by their difficulties. They are your granny who has had a stroke, your premature baby, your elderly neighbour with Parkinson's disease and your nephew with an autistic spectrum disorder. It could also be you. They are just a fraction of the individuals with whom we work—individuals who cannot take communication for granted.
Thank you very much. We are joined this morning by Keith Raffan, who has expressed an interest in the petition.
I have constituents who have taken up the issue with me and who are concerned about the lack of progress that has been made. In a week I will meet some of the representatives who are here today to discuss how to progress the matter. My concern is about the avenues that the petitioners have explored so far. You say that you have contacted MPs and MSPs. You have raised three clear issues—career structure, levels of pay protection and the effect on client users. Do you feel that you have made progress or do you feel that you have been hitting your head against a brick wall?
We feel that we have not really made progress. Although I was pleased that SPRIG had replied to me, I felt that it was hedging on the issues. You will see from the letter that it makes points about the possibility of addressing concerns about matching an individual's job description with the job profiles. However, it does not address our concern that the profiles that were drawn up were not suitable and it does not acknowledge the huge effects that we think pay protection will have on career structure and service users.
I see from the papers that Amicus is one of the unions that are involved. I have read that it is analysing the results from the surveys that it has carried out. What other unions are involved? What are the trade unions saying?
Agenda for change will affect all NHS workers apart from dentists, doctors and some senior management. The unions for all other health professionals will therefore be involved. The two biggest unions concerned are Amicus and Unison. I believe that Unison is to recommend that its members vote for agenda for change. Although agenda for change is very likely to be voted through, we are concerned to ensure that it is the best that it can possibly be. We do not want to stop it just because of our issues; we can see that it is doing a lot of good, but we want to ensure that problems are ironed out.
Are there specific unions apart from Amicus that are directed at your area of work? Unison is a big public sector union; are there smaller unions that are aimed at your profession?
It is just Amicus to which speech and language therapists are affiliated.
Has the union given you any direct response? Have you had any meetings with trade union officials to discuss the issues?
I am a union representative, although I am not, of course, speaking in that capacity now. We have taken our concerns to the senior representatives of the unions, but we were concerned enough also to raise the matter as individuals.
From what you have said, the pay situation is rather worrying, particularly in relation to your comments regarding the European courts. Five years down the line from 1999, some people are only just getting equal pay. You will, I hope, be able to give us your honest view on these concerns. I note that 98 per cent of speech therapists are women. You also mentioned that domestics, administration staff and secretaries, who are also women, are in the low-pay bracket. From your point of view—not as a union rep but as someone in the profession—does the fact that 98 per cent of your people are women have something to do with the low pay situation?
We would like to think not. That is the most honest answer that I could give to the question. I sincerely hope not. Although the petition specifically mentions speech and language therapy, many domestic and clerical staff will suffer just as much as we will, if not more. They already have to deal with separate issues; for example, we are quite used to drawing up job profiles in our profession, whereas that is completely new for the domestic staff. We have to deal with that process as well as with the possible negative results at the end of it.
Perhaps you should be politicians—you did not give an answer, as I would see it. Your submission mentions non-statemented and non-recorded children, and it covers some of the reasons why attempts were made not to grant you equal pay. Could you elaborate on that? Is it being suggested that you are not treating as many people as you do treat because some of them are not recorded?
That probably relates to the severity of the cases that are dealt with. Children who are statemented or recorded are probably at the most severe end of educational needs. That does not take away from the work that we do with non-statemented or non-recorded children. That might explain where that comment has come from.
I am very concerned about the contents of your petition. I should say at this point that I am a member of Amicus. I remember when speech and language therapists joined the union. There was a very long-running case that went all the way to the European courts concerning equal pay for work of equal value. I recall that it took about 10 years to go through. It seems that, on the face of it, the situation that you have described could unpick that. That is obviously a matter of great concern.
The Scottish Executive's August statement said that the pay part of agenda for change will go ahead as had been stated originally but that some of the pay and conditions parts, which were causing a lot of difficulties, would be put on hold. Those elements will go ahead however, and I believe that the ballot is on the package as a whole.
In any job evaluation exercise, there will be winners and losers—that is the nature of the beast. The additional information that you supply with your petition says that
The bottom of the scale is approximately £18,000 a year for a newly qualified therapist and up to about £60,000 for people at management level.
So the drop of £10,000 would affect only the management level.
It would affect the more senior staff.
Nonetheless, one sixth of someone's salary is a huge drop.
The additional concern in that regard is that senior staff are closer to retirement age and, given that our pensions operate on the basis of final salary, the pensions of our most experienced staff will suffer as a result of the change. That concerns us greatly.
In general terms, what would be the effect on the starting salary?
If pay protection came in, it is likely that more middle-of-the-road and senior therapists will stay in post because they will not want to move to new jobs or take promoted posts because they might get a lower salary and worsen their pension situation. That means that junior therapists will not be able to move up the career structure. We feel that there will be no throughput of staff.
You also say that the effects are "disproportionately devastating". Have the implications of the changes come out of the blue? As the process evolved, was not there an indication that you were likely to be hit particularly hard? I find it strange that, given that we are right up against the implementation date, the unions were not dealing with this earlier.
You and us both.
As I said in our opening statement, there were concerns from very early on. People were not happy with the job profiles that were drawn up and there were concerns about the early implementation year. It has been difficult to get information about how we have been affected. We have been able to glean only scant information from the reports. Before we are asked to vote, we would like to have detailed information about how we will be affected.
I understand the points that you are making about blockage in the career structure of the profession.
Yes, that is being joked about in speech and language therapy staff rooms throughout Scotland, but it is only half joking.
The time for joking is over.
A recent phone poll was carried out by the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists; 90 per cent of respondents said that they would leave the profession to pursue private careers if the changes were to occur.
Mike Watson has covered many of the points that I wanted to raise. However, I am particularly worried about the effect on recruitment. You outlined clearly what the effect would be on the highest-level salaries in your profession, but what would be the effect on average salaries and, in particular, the effect on new entrants to the profession?
An on-going survey into recruitment and retention in the profession has been carried out every year for the past three years. As I understand it, this year's findings are that the situation is just starting to turn the corner and get slightly better.
So there will be no career path?
No—we would lose that.
I have been qualified for only a year, so I am one of the new graduates who could benefit now from agenda for change. However, I am so concerned about the situation at such an early stage in my career that I need to fight to do something about the profession that I have joined because it is a fantastic profession. That should demonstrate the level of concern.
So far, questions have understandably related to you as speech and language therapists and how agenda for change would impact on you. What would be the impact on the people who receive your services?
I am a paediatric therapist who works in community services. We already have long waiting lists, so it can take up to a year before a person can get an initial assessment. That could be a one-off appointment; it does not mean that the person will return every week to work on any problems.
Do members have recommendations for how we should deal with the petition?
If we ask the Minister for Health and Community Care for his comments, will we have time to do something about the situation, given that agenda for change comes into force on 1 October?
According to the information that we received this morning, implementation of agenda for change will be only partial; discussions about terms and conditions are on-going. I think that there is room for our input. Can that be clarified?
I was just checking with my colleagues. As we understand it, implementation will take place in December, but conditions will be backdated to October.
So we have some time. That timescale would allow us to write to the Executive.
The matter has not been balloted by the unions yet. As Amicus members, we do not yet have a date for that, but we obviously hope that there will be scope to amend things, even after the proposal has gone through. I do not think that it would be the end of the matter just because it had been voted on. It certainly would not be for us.
I am happy enough to write to the Executive and I have seen the letter that Mrs Philip has given us today and the reply from the Scottish pay reference implementation group. I suspect that the Executive's opinion is that there has been a system, that it is objective, that there are winners and losers and that that is all that can be said. I think that it would be difficult for the minister to intervene at this stage, but we have to ask him whether he is concerned about the effects on NHS services for people who need the services of the women who are here today and their colleagues.
That was my point, convener.
We shall write to the minister and to the unions to get a clearer picture of where we are going.
Is there likely to be a group of people who could be classed as the recipients of your service and to whom we could also write? In terms of job protection, Amicus is the group to write to, but is there a user group, so to speak, whose members might have views on what that is likely to mean for them?
There is a range of user groups. Our service obviously splits into adult and paediatric services and I am sure that we can give you details of a number of user groups to cover the range of clients with whom we work and who might be able to comment.
It would be interesting to hear their assessment of the likely impact.
You could provide our clerks with user-group information. I think that it would also be useful to write to your royal college to hear its take on the situation. I know that writing to Amicus has been suggested, but as you are all members of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. It would be useful to know what it thinks about the dilemma that you face.
I have had language therapy, because I have nodules. I could see the witnesses looking at me because I keep clearing my throat a lot, and I get a row for that.
Could we wait until we get our responses back? That might well be where we end up sending the petition, if we send it to a committee. Given the evidence that we have heard this morning, equal opportunities may well be an aspect of the case. However, until we get responses back from the bodies that we are writing to, it will be difficult to go to the Equal Opportunities Committee pre-emptively. That may be the course that we take, but we are at the stage of gathering information at the moment.
I am always jumping the gun, as you know. I am always in a hurry.
It is not a problem.
I thank the witnesses for bringing their petition and for their helpful evidence this morning.
Voluntary Sector (Local Authority Funding) (PE762)
We come now to PE762, by James Clifford, on behalf of Craigneuk Development and Support Unit. The petition calls on Parliament to urge the Executive to review its guidance to local authorities on allocation of funding to the voluntary sector; in particular, the apparent emphasis on funding innovative or new projects at the expense of existing projects. The petitioners are concerned at the withdrawal of funding from the CDSU, which is a voluntary organisation that provides assistance to local unemployed residents in accessing education, training and employment opportunities.
I am grateful to the committee for affording me the opportunity to speak in support of the Craigneuk Development and Support Unit petition. Although the terms of the petition are probably self-explanatory, I think that it would be worthwhile for me to spend a minute or two on a couple of points that have wider implications for the voluntary sector in general.
Thank you, Margaret. That was helpful. I know of CDSU's track record, as it operates in a constituency adjacent to my own.
I agree. Essentially, the situation is one of a new community partnership exercising choice. However worthwhile the group, sadly it is a loser in the process.
Members have agreed that we should pass PE762 to the Executive for information and close our consideration of it at this point.
That is helpful, convener. I am sure that that will help to raise awareness of the wider issues.
Sub-post Office Closures (PE764)
Our next petition is PE764, which has been submitted by Margaret Tait on behalf of the Stoneybank Tenants and Residents Association, Musselburgh. The petition calls on the Parliament to request that the Post Office considers sympathetically the needs and requirements of disabled and elderly persons who, in urban areas in Scotland, would be expected to walk substantial distances—sometimes in excess of 2 miles—as a result of the closure of certain sub-post offices.
As the member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh, which includes the Stoneybank area that the petitioners are from, I appreciate the opportunity to comment briefly on the petition. The petition was sparked by the proposed closure of a local post office in the area. I should say from the outset that I appreciate that the committee has considered petitions on the subject of post office closures before. I also recognise, as the convener set out in his opening remarks, that there are procedures in place for deciding national policy on the matter—the legislative powers for which lie at Westminster—and for making decisions about individual post offices, which are taken by Post Office Ltd.
Our papers quote the Deputy Minister for Communities as saying:
I am happy to extend Mike Watson's knowledge of the Musselburgh area any time he wishes. For the purposes of the Post Office's network reinvention programme, the answer is that the office is in an urban area.
Is the area regarded as deprived?
The particular office is not, to my knowledge, classified as an urban deprived office. Again, that is the Post Office's definition.
Therefore, that might disqualify it from a share of the £2 million—which is not a huge amount if it is to cover the whole of Scotland. I asked the question because I wondered whether the office would be able to benefit from that money.
Hello Susan. Can you tell us about the wider financial services in Musselburgh? It compounds post office closures if local banks close as well, or open for reduced times. I recently met representatives of the Clydesdale Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland to discuss the issue of moving bank accounts to post offices. If that happens, it helps to make post offices a bit more viable. The representatives told me that they were involved in developing such schemes with around 1,600 post offices. What is the situation in Musselburgh?
Because I understand the remit of this committee, I have been careful to speak in wide terms, rather than speaking too much about the local situation. However, I am happy to speak more about the local situation. As Mike Watson suggests, we all know of situations in which the wider social issues in relation to a decision must be considered. We have to consider more than simply a post office's location on the map.
Let us move to recommendations, as we have addressed the issue of post office closures before. Mike Watson has suggested that we ask specific questions of the Executive concerning its policy agenda on social inclusion. It might be helpful for us also to write to other interested parties such as the Disability Rights Commission, Age Concern and Help the Aged to find out their perspective on how the programme is rolling out and the impact that it is having on communities in Scotland.
I suggest that we also write directly to the Royal Mail about its programme. It gave a commitment that 95 per cent of customers in urban areas would live within a mile of a post office, but that is clearly not the case for this community. We can ask for an update on where the Royal Mail is with that. Postwatch Scotland has been very helpful at a local level—certainly in my constituency—in challenging some of the decisions. This case is right up its street, so I recommend that we write to Postwatch Scotland as well.
In addition, when we contact the Royal Mail about the matter of 95 per cent of customers being within a mile of a post office, we could ask how many customers 5 per cent represents—those who will be outwith the mile—and where they are.
Yes. We can ask that question. Are members happy that we deal with the petition in that way?
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