Chamber and committees

PE2073, which was lodged by Robert Macdonald, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to require the police and court services to check that address information is up to date when issuing court summons and to allow those who are being summoned the chance to receive a summons if their address has changed, rather than the current system of proceeding to issue a warrant for arrest. When we first considered the petition, we heard a detailed example of the impact of that practice.

We considered the petition in March, and the Lord Advocate has responded by echoing a previous submission from the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service and highlighting the point that, if the person referred to in the background for the petition was an accused person, the responsibility to update the court on a change of address would rest with that person.

The response also confirms that the processes for obtaining a warrant for accused persons and witnesses, as set out in a past submission from the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, still stand.

Additionally, the Lord Advocate points members to a statement that she made before Parliament last October, in which she referenced her specific instruction that pre-conviction warrants should normally be obtained by prosecutors and executed by the police only if there is no immediate alternative to securing the accused’s attendance, or when the accused represents an immediate risk to others.

Finally, the response highlights that His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prosecution in Scotland and HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland have initiated a joint inspection of processes for witness citation and of ways in which the processes could be modernised. The inspection is to be undertaken during the course of this year, 2025.

Do colleagues have any suggestions as to how we might proceed?

Item 4 is the consideration of new petitions. As I always say before consideration of the first petition, the Parliament seeks the preliminary thoughts of SPICe, the independent research body in the Parliament, so that it can give us a proper briefing on the issues raised. We also get an initial response from the Scottish Government. As I have explained before, the reason why we do so is that, historically, those were the first two actions that we agreed to take, so it curtails the delay in our proper consideration of the issues at hand.

However, as I have also said and as we now have to say to petitioners, we are up against it and have just a handful of meetings of the committee left. Even with new petitions, we have to be pretty certain that we can do something meaningful in the time that is available to us.

We thank the petitioner and hope that the consultation, which covers the routes through which council tax might be changed in the next session of Parliament, will be a mechanism to take forward the aims of the petition.

I do not want to disappoint Paul Sweeney if he has arrived to discuss the petition on the personhood of rivers but we have just come to the end of our proceedings, having already done so, I am sorry to say.

That brings us to the end of the public session.

The final new petition today is PE2177, which was lodged by Jordon Anderson. We considered another petition of his earlier. The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to provide sustainable funding to organisations that provide mobility equipment. The petitioner says that mobility services are vital for access to shops, services and community life. His view is that, without secure financial support, such services face closure, putting equality, mobility and inclusion at risk.

The SPICe briefing explains that the funding of ShopMobility schemes varies by location, with funding coming from local authorities, health boards, charitable donations and grants. The briefing notes that there have been reports in recent years about ShopMobility centres having their funding cut or reduced by local authorities or health boards.

The Scottish Government’s response states that local authorities are independent corporate bodies with their own powers and responsibilities and they are entirely separate from the Scottish Government. It states that it is up to individual local authorities to manage their day-to-day decision making and allocate the total financial resources that are available to them based on local needs and priorities.

Do members have any comments or suggestions for action?

Kym, you touched on schools and the fact that the requirement to learn CPR is not an integral part of the curriculum. When evidence was submitted to us about that, some local authorities did not contribute, so we are not altogether clear what is happening. Can you talk further about what difference such a requirement would make? How could learning CPR be made slightly more compulsory, and in what age group would it be done? Is there a best practice model to articulate how it could become a more established compulsory requirement?

Could you and others expand on the standards and guidance in workplace settings? Is there a national standard for workplace training and understanding of the issues? Is there a best practice guide, or should more action be taken in relation to that as well?

Maurice Golden will explore those themes further shortly.

Thank you, Mr Mountain. Do colleagues have any suggestions for how we might proceed?

The next item is a thematic evidence session on emergency cardiac care issues that have been raised in various petitions. The first is PE1989, to increase defibrillators in public spaces and workplaces, which was lodged by Mary Montague. I always make a point of noting that Mary is the provost of my local authority in East Renfrewshire. The petition was tabled prior to her appointment in that position. The next petition is PE2067, to improve data on young people affected by conditions causing sudden cardiac death, which was lodged by Sharon Duncan, who is the mother of David Hill, who was a Parliamentary colleague who died while playing rugby for the Scottish parliamentary team in Ireland. The other is PE2101, to provide defibrillators for all primary and secondary schools in Scotland, which was submitted by Peter Earl on behalf of Troqueer primary school.

We have used the evidence that has been raised in our consideration of the three petitions to date to draw up a series of themes to allow us to explore the issues. In due course, we will hear from the minister but, this morning, I am delighted to say that we are joined by Kym Kestell, policy and public affairs officer at the British Heart Foundation Scotland; Kirsty Morrison, policy and campaigns officer at Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland; and Steven Short, programme lead for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest with the Scottish Ambulance Service. A very warm welcome to you all.

There are five themes. Each of us is going to lead on one of them, and other colleagues will jump in with questions. Please indicate if you would like to answer a question. For the Official Report, it will be helpful if the leader of each section says their name as they come in, otherwise it might not be entirely clear who is contributing.

The five themes that we have identified to look at are data, research and guidance; public awareness; the provision of life-saving equipment and emergency preparedness; preventative actions and protection of vulnerable populations—it is striking that the survival rate is a lot lower in deprived areas—and cross-sectoral policy, which means how those things bounce across different areas of responsibility.

The first of the themes is data, research and guidance. Fergus Ewing will lead on that.

Yes—that is a very fair summation of the position. I think that there is absolutely frustration and disappointment—well, probably more than disappointment now. The petitioner looks to the process that exists, which is the petitions system, yet our system is frustrated by our not engaging directly with the issue of the petition when we do not get the responses that would allow us to do so.

If legislation is introduced in the next session of Parliament, there will be an opportunity to directly address the issues that the petition raises in the context of the debate that will take place as that legislation progresses through Parliament. The issue is sufficiently serious that I hope that that will happen.

On that basis, given Mr Fergus Ewing’s comments, are we minded to close the petition?

Members indicated agreement.