Chamber and committees

As noted in previous years—the answer is broadly similar—the SPCB will not consult the trade unions because it is not the employer of members’ staff. The SPCB is responsible for funding the members’ expenses scheme and for determining which indices are used to operate the overall provision, including staff provision. That arrangement is set out in the scheme as agreed by the Parliament. Therefore, our responsibility is to set the framework within which the salary increases can be agreed, but it is for individual members, as the employers, to determine any salary increase within the overall budget on their own or in concert with colleagues.

I thank the members who have been generous enough to lend their support to my motion.

Can I say too how delighted I am to see Fiona Hyslop here to respond to the motion. I hope that it will give her the opportunity to redeem herself after the casual way in which she brushed aside my inquiry a few weeks ago, which is the direct reason for my bringing this matter to the chamber for debate today. When I asked her about the matter, she said words to the effect that the Tories were in favour of localism, this was nothing to do with her and she washed her hands of the whole affair. I hope that that will not be her attitude today.

In some ways, perhaps I should hope that that will be her attitude because it has so offended all my constituents in Eastwood that it has done wonders for my re-election prospects next May. Perhaps that was her intention—I do not know. If it was, I will be eternally grateful. However, I would far rather that she called out the reckless disregard for the damage that her colleagues in Scottish National Party-led Glasgow City Council could be wreaking upon the public by pursuing the policy. I would also rather that she gave proper consideration to the wider, long-term consequences that might follow as a result of that action were other councils to follow suit.

What the council has proposed is not, as some people have now got used to, a low-emission zone charge for heavy, fuel-inefficient vehicles. It is talking about an at-city-boundary congestion charge. It is asking constituents not only from my local authority but from all the neighbouring ones to flash their digital passports as they seek to cross the city boundary into Glasgow. People who attend healthcare appointments at the Queen Elizabeth university hospital, people who go to work in the city, people who hope to bring some sort of income into the city and, in my case, people who just cross the road or go up the street to Sainsbury’s to get their shopping would have to pay a boundary charge for the privilege of doing so.

People in East Renfrewshire, Renfrewshire, West Dunbartonshire, North Lanarkshire and South Lanarkshire are likely to be the most heavily impacted. However, the charge would apply to every person in Scotland who does not live in Glasgow when they cross the council boundary. That is, a driver who is resident in the Borders or Dumfries and Galloway would be charged for entering Glasgow when they crossed into the city from one of the neighbouring local authorities. Drivers who are resident in one of the other 31 local authority areas would be charged for every car journey to Glasgow, including for work, healthcare, education or social and family reasons, while Glasgow residents would be exempt.

What have people had to say about that prospective charge? The chief executive of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce said:

“We cannot support a city-wide congestion charge until public transport improvements have been made”.

That was his reason for objecting to the plan but he also said:

“We are very concerned about the possible displacement of business out of Glasgow.”

The west of Scotland development manager for the Federation of Small Businesses said:

“we would urge extreme caution when it comes to considering”

introducing tolls.

In addition to the proposed congestion charge, there is a proposed charge for using the Clyde tunnel, which is used by many people to get to the Queen Elizabeth university hospital to attend urgent appointments. When that hospital was confirmed by Nicola Sturgeon following a decision by Malcolm Chisholm in a previous session of the Parliament, people who lived in East Renfrewshire, who could easily access the Victoria hospital, expressed concerns that accessing the Queen Elizabeth hospital was a much harder journey to undertake by public transport. To this day, that remains the case and, therefore, many such people have to access it by using their cars. They will all be charged.

People coming across from the north of the city will be charged for getting to hospital. That, surely, is the antithesis of the SNP’s proudest boast when it first came into office in the Parliament, which was that it was abolishing tolls. When we abolished the tolls on the bridge across to Skye, SNP members were bursting with enthusiasm for the fact that they had abolished tolls. Here we are coming full circle with the SNP administration in Glasgow proposing tolls and Fiona Hyslop washing her hands of the matter—despite section 51 of the Transport (Scotland) Act 2001, which she could enforce, saying that it can take place only with her express permission.

I am pleased to say that Labour members have been supportive of the motion. Even SNP MSPs have endorsed it. I am not surprised to see Mr Harvie glowering at me as he usually does. Ross Greer, who is the only West Scotland MSP who is totally unconcerned for the wellbeing of the West Scotland region, will no doubt think that it is a wonderful thing. It is not. It is potentially a devastating and damaging additional charge on my constituents and a devastating and damaging experience for businesses across the city, which could undermine the wellbeing and healthcare of my constituents and those in neighbouring local authorities.

I ask the cabinet secretary not to brush aside the proposal on this occasion—or, if she is going to do that, to use some nice, choice words that I can use in my election literature, as I have no doubt that that would assist me—but to consider seriously whether the long-term implications of all other local authorities following suit might be a matter of national concern. Were somebody to travel from Edinburgh up to Aberdeen, paying a boundary charge for the privilege of passing through every council area, stay overnight and then pay a boundary charge for passing through every area on the way back, it would be ridiculously complicated and a burden on that motorist. The proposal would place a burden on motorists across Scotland and it would damage both the tourist infrastructure across the city and the Scottish economy.

The second item on our agenda is consideration of continued petitions. The first petition is PE2099, an extraordinarily important petition on which the committee has previously engaged and has undertaken a site visit to the neonatal intensive care unit in Wishaw, where we were pleased to meet the petitioner, Lynn McRitchie.

The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to stop the planned downgrading of established and high-performing specialist neonatal intensive care services across NHS Scotland from level 3 to level 2 and to commission an independent review of that decision in the light of contradictory expert opinions on centralised services.

At our previous consideration of the petition, the committee agreed to take evidence from the British Association of Perinatal Medicine’s best start perinatal sub-group, and the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health. We will hear from the minister at a subsequent meeting, but at today’s meeting we will take evidence first from Dr Stephen Wardle, the president of the British Association of Perinatal Medicine, who joins us online, and then from members of the best start perinatal sub-group.

Good morning, Dr Wardle. I see that all the graphics on your background image have been reversed, so we are seeing all the text behind you the wrong way round. It is difficult to work out what it all says—those who are following the proceedings can puzzle over what it means.

We are also joined by our colleagues Clare Adamson and Monica Lennon. If there is time after committee members have asked their questions, I will invite both of them to put their questions to the witness.

Dr Wardle, is there anything that you would like to say by way of introduction?

Good morning, and welcome to the 18th meeting of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee in 2025. I apologise for our starting slightly late. We will be joined by a galaxy of parliamentary talent from different parties during the course of the meeting. As always, I hope that time will permit those who wish to contribute to our proceedings to have the opportunity to do so.

Our first item of business is the always rather technical one of agreeing that we will consider the evidence that we have heard this morning in private under agenda items 4 and 5. Are colleagues content with that proposal?

Members indicated agreement.

I invite my two parliamentary colleagues to contribute a question.

You must draw your questions to a conclusion, Ms Lennon.

I will draw the evidence session to a conclusion, but thank you both very much for your concise and informed evidence.

These are highly emotional and emotive issues. I hope that at no time would you get the impression that the committee is anything other than respectful of your clinical experience and the experience that you brought to any review. However, in pursuing the aims of the petitioner, I often say that we are at a magnificent advantage in this committee in that we are not following any party’s political election manifesto; we are following the aims of a petition that has been lodged by people who are concerned. Our job is to take that argument as far as we possibly can. I am very grateful to you both for your time. I will suspend the meeting briefly before we move to the next agenda item.

Welcome back. Our colleague Maurice Golden is no longer with us, as he has to leave to move amendments at another committee.

As we move on to consider other petitions, I have to say, as convener—and this is very difficult to admit—that we have 119 or so petitions still open, and very few committee meetings left before Parliament dissolves in next April, with the last sitting day of the Parliament being 26 March. Therefore, the committee has to determine what more we can do in respect of open petitions, even if what we decide might disappoint petitioners. There are petitions that we still think have merit and which might even be progressed; with others, it might be best if a fresh petition were lodged at the commencement of the next parliamentary session in May 2026.

We will now look at four petitions that were part of a thematic healthcare evidence-taking session that we had with the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, Neil Gray: PE1723, on essential tremor treatment in Scotland; PE1871, on a full review of mental health services; PE2017, on extending the period that specialist perinatal mental health support is made available beyond one year; and PE2070, on stopping same-day-only general practitioner appointments.

Our health-themed evidence session looked at the themes of patient experience; diagnostic and treatment pathways; capacity, skills and training; sustainability of funding and health service infrastructure; and post Covid-19 impacts and response. We were, to a greater or lesser extent, able to explore those issues with the cabinet secretary and to follow up further matters in writing.

This morning, we are considering the petitions that sat under the first of those themes—that is, patient experience. The committee has explored the specific issues raised in the petitions through written evidence from stakeholders and ministers, and the thematic issues were also explored in our recent oral evidence-taking session with the cabinet secretary.

During that thematic evidence-taking session, we raised the fact that a number of the petitions highlight a gap between policy, strategies and people’s experience of services. The cabinet secretary accepted that there can be gaps between policy and delivery—indeed, that was the very subject of the evidence session that we have just held—and noted that there can be a variation in delivery between health boards for geographical or demographic reasons.

We are joined again by Monica Lennon, who will speak to the petition on the full review of mental health services, and I will invite her to say a few words after I have summarised the petition. We are also joined by our colleague Douglas Lumsden, who will speak to PE2017 on perinatal mental health support.

The first of the petitions in this section is PE1723, which has been lodged by Mary Ramsay and calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to raise awareness of essential tremor and to support the introduction and use of a focused ultrasound scanner for treating people in Scotland who have the condition.

The cabinet secretary confirmed to us that the ultrasound service is being provided in Tayside, and the written follow-up confirms that between April 2023 and April 2025 47 patients have been treated in Dundee, and that no patients have been referred to England for that treatment. During oral evidence, the cabinet secretary stated that, if it were found that a service had a level of demand that would merit expanded provision beyond one specialist service in Scotland, the Scottish Government would consider that. Therefore, considerable progress has been made on that petition.

PE1871, on a full review of mental health services, has been lodged by Karen McKeown, who we heard from earlier in the parliamentary session, on behalf of the shining lights for change group. It calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to carry out a full review of mental health services in Scotland, including the referral process; crisis support; risk assessment; safe plans; integrated services working together; first response support; and the support available to families affected by suicide.

We have pursued the issues that the petitioner has raised. In our oral evidence session, the cabinet secretary highlighted the Government’s focus on preventing people from moving into a mental health crisis in the first place by looking at whole-family support and addressing poverty and social factors in order to reduce the acute level of mental health need.

The then Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport, Maree Todd, wrote to the committee in October 2024 to respond to a range of concerns raised by the petitioner, including data on effectiveness and consistency, admittance to mental health acute beds, workforce wellbeing, and training for the wider mental health and wellbeing workforce. The petitioner has provided a written submission highlighting outstanding issues in relation to data collection and reiterates her call for a review of mental health services.

Monica Lennon, do you wish to make any brief comments at this stage in the consideration of the petition?

I think it is fair to say that no petitioner has been more assiduous in keeping committee members abreast of developments, some of which have been outwith this committee: they have been the direct result of her own intervention.

Our next petition is PE1976, lodged by Derek James Brown, which calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to require council tax discounts to be backdated to the date on which a person was certified as being severely mentally impaired when they then go on to qualify for a relevant benefit.

We last considered the petition in March, when we agreed to write to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government. We were struck by the merits of the petition. The cabinet secretary’s response to the committee states that the Scottish Government appreciates the concerns that the committee has raised and that it agrees in principle with the argument that is presented by the petitioner. The submission confirms that the Government is

“exploring legislative options and intends to introduce proposals in the coming months”

to address the issue raised in the petition. The petitioner has warmly welcomed the cabinet secretary’s response, and he hopes and trusts that the Scottish Government’s work will lead to the adoption of the request that was made in the petition.

In this instance, we have had an encouraging response from the Government. Given that, I hope that the aims of the petition can be fulfilled. In the light of the circumstances that we have been returning to all morning, does Mr Torrance have a proposal for the committee’s consideration?