 Hello and happy new year, and welcome to the first meeting of the Committee of 2016. Every one present is asked to switch off mobile phones and other electronic equipment as they affect the broadcasting system.Some Committee members will refer to tablets during the course of the meeting as we provide meeting papers in a digital format. No apologies have been ddechrau. Rydw i'n rwy'n ddigon i agenda item 1, the Buryale and Cremation Scotland bill, and we will take evidence from two panels this morning as part of our stage 1 consideration. Our first panel are representatives from local authorities and our second panel are representatives from organisations with an interest in the bill. Can I welcome Gerard Hannah, strategic change manager for Renfrewshire Council, Audrey Hardy, Cemetery's Officer for East and Bartonshire Council, Ian Cairns, team leader, burial grounds and registrars at Inverclyde Council, Willie Rennie, environmental and commercial services manager at Inverclyde Council, Bruce Reakey, waste service and community green space manager at Perth and Kinross Council, and Kevin Robertson, service manager, parks and burial grounds, community directorate of Angus Council. I invite you, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to make any brief opening statements. Does anybody wish to? No, okay, in which case we will move straight on to questions. One of the things that we have come across is the difference in price for layer costs and cost of interments and cremation costs. If I could start with layer costs and costs of interment, the cheapest that we have come across is £694 from Western Isles Council, and the priciest is £2,785 from East and Bartonshire Council. Ms Hardy, why is it so costly for a layer and interment in East and Bartonshire? I cannot comment on the cost. Obviously, the cost of land is premium and the layer space is premium. That is the cost to the committee, and the revenue that we received back from the chargers we incur is directly against different budget lines. The money that we receive does not come directly into our service. That is all that I can say about the natural cost itself. What you are saying is that the money that you take in goes into the general pot rather than back into the service that you work for. Do you have any idea whatsoever what the profitability of those costs are for East and Bartonshire? It would be very interesting for the committee if you could provide us details of the actual profitability and where the revenue from layers and interments actually goes into which service that goes or whether it is a general pot. If we could look at the cremation and scattering of ashes, the cheapest local authority is ever Clyde at £512 and the priciest is Perth and Kinross at £749. If I could ask the gentleman from Inver Clyde why is it that he managed to be able to deal with this service at such a low cost, who wants to answer? Mr Rennie or Mr Kern? Again, the price and structure is set at committee. We are one of the lowest costs for cremation and obviously that has an impact depending on the budgets that is set. Inver Clyde has increased its costs over the past few years but still maintained one of the lowest costs in the industry. Is there a different price range for non-Inver Clyde residents that may be using the crematorium on Inver Clyde? No, we do not have a residency charge. It is all the same. Thank you. Perth and Kinross, Mr Reekie, the priciest? In terms of our charges again, they are set by committee. A number of years ago, we applied a mercury abatement levy as well to our cremation charge. Our cremation charge actually sits at £649 but the addition of the abatement levy obviously brings it up to £749. What is that abatement levy, Mr Reekie? There is a mercury abatement equipment that has to be installed in terms of the crematorium. What we have done is that the £100 charge is put into a sinking fund. That sinking fund will allow us to invest in mercury abatement equipment, renewal of the cremators and also a refurbishment of the crematorium as well. Hence the reason for that charge being applied. I think that in terms of the general public, they are not really going to care what that extra £100 is for. Is there an additional charge for anyone using the service from outwith Perth and Kinross? No, it is a set rate for anyone using the crematorium. Does anyone else wish to comment on the price differences that exist between local authorities here? No? No? Excuse me, good morning. Does anybody else have this mercury abatement charge? Inverclyde also. They have not got mercury abatement equipment and bought the buy-in, the spare capacity. They have joined the cameo scheme where they pay, because the industry needs to achieve 50 per cent of mercury. We also have a charge on top of our fee for the abatement. Which is charge-separate? No, no, it is included in the cost. But yours is charge-separate, is it? Yes, absolutely right. In terms of the actual cameo system, which is almost a sort of trade-off scheme for mercury abatement, we currently pay into that. We have made the decision to stop that sort of on-going revenue cost, what we are going to do, we are going to invest in our own mercury abatement equipment, hence the reason we have applied that £100 levite on top of our cremation charge. Okay, John Mawson, please. Thank you, convener. Good morning. One of the reasons for bringing the bill forward to the Government is to help to reduce costs. I note from the convener's question in terms of cremation costs. Inverclyde is one of the lowest cremation costs in Scotland. I would be useful, convener, if we could try and get some of the background to the decisions that are being made by local authorities and whether or not there is a like-for-like comparison that is being made when committees make the decisions regarding costs, because certainly Inverclyde is one of the most socially deprived local authorities in Scotland. We would be interested to find out whether or not local authorities are setting the rates, taking account of the affordability of the residents in that local authority area. To move on, does the panel think that what is contained within the bill as presented will lead to cost savings for local authorities? The main area of interest for Angus Council is the reclaiming of layers. At the moment, I will take a quick look at our burial grounds. We estimate that there are between 25% and 30% of our layers that have been sold but have never been used. Those are sitting in the burial grounds, and that would be something that we could look at. If we could reuse those layers, that might allow us to reduce the cost for some of the other layers. That is only layers that are free of any burials. The other issue that we were looking at was exhuming existing remains. That is a difficult one for us, because the cost involved in that is more expensive than a burial. Any revenue that we would get back from that would be a loss to the council. One aspect of it is that we support 100%. The other aspect is that we are not so sure on what that actual cost would be. I agree with what Kevin MacDonald is saying. The only thing that I would say is that the reuse of layers may still not mitigate against having to develop new cemeteries or extended cemeteries, so there may still be a cost associated with that as well. The burial and cremation service in the burial and cremation service is subsidised. The cremation service makes a surplus, and the bottom line is that we subsidised the both services together, subsidised to the tune of £214,000 a year. A big part of the cost in burials is because cemeteries have been rolled since the 1850s, and it is about the grounds of maintenance of the large cemeteries when layers have been sold in perpetuity. When we sell a layer, we sell it with maintenance of the cemeteries, such as the roads, the walls and all the establishments in the cemeteries, so there is a large cost not in the burial element but also in the maintenance of the cemeteries. As a decision of the council committee as to whether or not they choose to add the charges on when large investments are made in new crematorium plant, or we are going to be expanding cemeteries, as we need to do. The charges that you see most local authorities relate, certainly in the McLeod's case, to the revenue costs, as opposed to any major capital costs, that committees a year on year can decide on that, depending on what the capital costs may be. However, it is a subsidised service and it looks like it is always going to be a subsidised service unless the prices go up very much higher. I reiterate what my colleague and I were saying about the service within Reefshire. It is a subsidised service, and we are one of the lower priced local authorities. We do not operate our own crematoriums, so it is only the burial costs that we have an interest in. I suppose if you look at the average cost, if you know within Reefshire that the burial costs only account for about 20 per cent of the overall cost of a funeral, I am unclear about how the bill will address the other 80 per cent of the costs that the families have to incur. Mr Robertson, go back to your response. Did I put you up correctly? Did you say that 25 per cent of the layers in Angus currently lie unused? Yes. We did a quick survey just in the last week, and some of our larger summaries are up to 30 per cent. Overall, we estimate that there are 25 per cent of layers that lie unused. How does that relate to other local authorities that are before us today? Is there any figures that you can give for unused layers? There is quite clearly a difference between an unused layer and a layer that has been opened and there has been a burial taking place, and there may be other capacity within that layer. Does anybody else know what their current situation is in relation to unused layers? We do not have an exact figure at the moment. We are carrying out a quick survey work at the moment. We are aware that we have a number of unused layers through a number of summaries within Perth and Cynos, but we do not have an exact figure as yet that will be coming later this year. Mr Rennie? We do not have an exact figure, but we, as a council in the mid-1999, stopped selling layers for future use. We only sold layers for immediate use. We did an audit at that time, and although there were a lot of unused layers, I cannot say exactly how many there were, we need to do a re-audit now. We do not really see that as going to be a major influence in the next decade or more, even half a century. We are still expecting to have to expand summaries to meet burial use. Where there are layers that are unused, they are dotted around all the summaries. There are no banks of areas that are unused. Ms Hardy? Over the past probably eight years ago, we had a scheme where we did reclaim unused layers back. That took about two and a half years to carry out that exercise. We did reclaim probably about 50 or 60 layers back through three different summaries, which have now exhausted layer space within three summaries. Those summaries are now full to capacity. There is no available layer space at all. There are another couple of summaries where we have vacant layer space, but we at the moment do not have a figure for how many layers we have available. I do not have the exact percentage on the number of unused layers. The last time we done a survey was maybe five years ago, so I would have imagined that that would have significantly changed in the last five years. The committee would be grateful if those who have been unable to give an answer could write to the clerks with a figure. To Ms Hardy, you said that your local authority reclaimed layers that had been unused. Could you give us an indication of how you identified the layers and how you went about reclaiming the layers? As Mr Robertson said earlier—I do not think that it was Mr Robertson or Mr Rennie said earlier—that normally these layers are sold in perpetuity. We do not sell layers in perpetuity in our management rules for 40 years. Eight years or so ago, we did a trawl of some of our summaries where layer space was coming very limited. Obviously, it was all done manually through looking through all the ledgers. Then it was a physical inspection to make sure that there were not any double headsstones over it. Double-check new books within the office and the symmetry books as well, just to double-check that there was not. It was advertised and done nationally and locally over a two-year period. We then came up with a list of vacant layers. Those layers were advertised as well in the local papers. Once the time had exhausted, we could then resale those layers on entertainment only. That was layers that had reached the 40-year times? It was probably older than that because it was a bit wary if it was just on the 40-year eb. However, if there was no action on the layer, no layer transfers and no interest at all in the layer, those layers were identified and pre-purchased, but we were not used. Just on the follow-up to that, convener, on how you mentioned transfers in relation to family members and estates, the title to the layers, how do the local authorities manage that issue? How do you notify potential layer holders that there is a family layer there? Obviously, what we did, we wrote to every layer owner on our list, probably 99 per cent coming back on known address, because, obviously, those are old layers, and the majority of the time, the people have passed away. Layers have not been used, families have been dispersed, moved to different areas, and they have no interest in the layers. I totally forgot that they had them, but we certainly went down the appropriate routes to try and locate ownership, but we never get any feedback at all. I ask other panel members what they think about the 40-year time period, because there is a time period proposed or recommended in the bill for the length that the layers can be held on for. Do you think that 40 years is sufficient, or do you think that it should be reduced to, say, 25 years or whatever, in relation to, or in the case of one authority, where the layers are sold now as the need transpires, rather than allowing people to purchase layers well in advance of their use? Clarification of the bill, as it currently stands, is where the layer does not contain any human remains the period of 50 years, beginning with the day on which the right of the burial and the layer was last sold, and where there are human remains the period of 100 years, beginning with the day on which the last burial took place. Who wants to take a crack at that first? Mr Kerrins, please. The 25 years that states in the bill is reasonable, and it will give a chance to be in touch with the title holder, whether it be a change of address or just to update the information. The 25 years if you sell a layer and they have to come back and renew that. Anyone else who wants to come in there? Mr Robertson, please. I agree with that as well. The important thing for us is to keep in touch with our layer holders, keep accurate records, and as time goes on, those people move away, people die, people move address etc. A 25-year period is a lot more manageable. Is there any differing view from that of Mr Robertson or Mr Kerrins? No. John. Willie Coffey, please. I just back on the costs issue, if you don't mind. Before we jump at Dumbarton for being excessively high, could the other councils give us a clue what the purchase of a layer price is in your respective authorities? Mr Hanif, please. For the purchase of a new layer, around £437. The internment fee is £456. We don't operate a crematorium, but if someone wishes to enter cremated remains until here, then it's £100, £45. Ms Hardy, we've got a figure for East and Bartonshire 2785. That incorporates a purchase of layer, which is £1,527, and internment fee, which is £1,258. The purchase of a layer is £492. The burial of an adult is £579. Mr Reekie? The sale of a full layer is £855, and the internment fee is £891. Mr Robertson, please. The prices we gave were last year's prices, but they are currently purchase of a new layer, £559 for a resident, and £839 for a non-resident, and an internment fee is currently £601. There is quite a difference here for East and Barton. I don't expect it now, but would you have any data that shows the number of burial areas cremations in your authority? I would imagine with that price-charging system that there would be more cremations in your authority than perhaps other authorities in Scotland? The cremation within your area is probably about 75 per cent, and 25 per cent of a burial area. Mr Hannah, you said earlier on that the burial costs roughly 20 per cent, and I'm sure that you know in East and Barton that it's a huge cost, and I'm quite surprised to see how anybody can afford to be buried in East and Barton. Three years ago, why they came up with that figure, they increased the prices by 25 per cent, and then they fall in year 50 per cent. There was a huge jumping cost over a two-year period in the last year of it up by the rate of inflation. I don't know what they're going to set them at this year. Obviously, councils' budgets are financially tight. They've all made savings, so I really don't know what the cost is going to be this year, but I'm hoping that the freeze is prices because it's come to a saturation point with a lot of families where they just can't afford it. That's absolutely right for the record. You're saying over a two-year period, first an increase of 25 per cent, and the second year an increase of 50 per cent. Obviously, increases were not to just cover costs of the service. There is obviously a level of profitability there. I don't think that there is profitability. I think that other services within our directorate might be run at a loss. Could you give us an indication of what other services lie within the directorate that you're alternating? You've got property maintenance and facilities management, along with green space as a whole, which covers street cleaning, parts maintenance and symmetries. Clearly, the bill's intention is to try to help here, not to expose areas where it's overcharging or across subsidy to the general services fund. Do you think that the bill could ultimately assist East and North in sure to look at that issue? That's extremely expensive. Personally, I'm probably speaking out a ton here, but I think that they're absolutely ridiculous. It's myself that gets his front line with most of the people that phone in or complain about the cost, because I'm the public face for the symmetries. It's myself that gets all the complaints about it, though I don't say that the actual cost is done at a far higher level than me. I've got no control over what the costs are, and I have to try and justify those costs. I think that it would help if we could cap them in some way. I really don't know, but obviously all councils are under financial restraint. I'm not saying that it's a money making exercise, but it does feed into different services to try and reduce financial burden. Following on from Mr Wilson's question, the intention is to try to make it easier for authorities to deliver services more for people. Do you think that that might well be the case here? Do the other authorities think that the bill will assist that to try to bring those kinds of prices down? Mr Rennie? In the case that I'm required, it's good that the surplus that's created on cremations can offset the costs of burials. To date, we've also kept the cremation charges down as well. There is the element that I mentioned earlier that this is mostly revenue money that we're talking about from year to year, so capital is probably not factored in there, the council is investing in that. One of the things that we submitted in the written evidence was that we were a wee bit concerned that some of the costs of cremation could increase, especially with the proposals on the return of ashes from funeral directors. The issue is not really with when the bill comes into force. It's about the retrospective part of it where that could actually increase the cost of administration and doing what we do in the crematorium. That's an issue that we would certainly seek to address at some point during the consultations. Anyone else? Ms Hardy? I can just say that a lot of the cemeteries, obviously with Ineson Batchart and other authorities, are old. The infrastructure in the maintenance is very high to try to keep those safe. Headstone maintenance is another issue, keeping roadways up to standard. The infrastructure of buildings at on-going costs to run a cemetery is very high. Obviously, that is done through revenue, but we were at the capital side as well, which Mr Rennie was speaking about. Ineson Batchart, as an authority, is trying to develop cemeteries to a high standard. We opened a new cemetery two years ago at a cost of £1.9 million. We've just extended another cemetery half a million and we're procuring land this financial year to build another cemetery at probably another £3 million or £4 million. Obviously, we are trying to keep land year for burial. Obviously, that costs a lot of money in the long term. Obviously, when we do maintain cemeteries, it is for perpetuity, which is probably an on-going cost for the council itself at no other cost to the families. Mr Rennie? To add to that as well, very much the charges that we're talking about obviously go to revenue. The levy charges that I mentioned about the £100 to the mercury abatement, that's funding our capital investment within our crematorium. There's also capital investment as well, as the lady was talking about, in terms of either extension to existing cemeteries or new cemeteries as well, so there is still capital investment required. Anyone else? Mr Harro? One of the concerns that I would have about the bill and the address and the costs would be, was in the register we looked at, if we operated a full cost recovery model, our prices would increase by about 120 per cent. If the bill was to set out that councils couldn't operate a profit and they could only recover their own costs, we would have to increase our costs by about 100 per cent, which obviously wouldn't be a decision that we would have taken today, so it's not something that we would probably look to do at some point in the future either, so I suppose that that's just how we would be able to interpret what the bill was saying in terms of how local authorities would address their costs. Lastly, convener, it's not to pick on Easton Wartonshire and the enemy, but are you finding that people are choosing to have burials out with your authority because of that price that they're being asked to pay within the authority? Surprisingly, not as many as I thought there would be, obviously we do have the policy, if you live outside Easton Wartonshire you want buried within your cemeteries there is a double charge, so the cost does double for the internment fee, that's their choice if they want buried in your cemeteries and majority of the time there's no issue at all with it, they do pay it. Every undertaker are advisable, the costs, once it's set at committee in February, they're all lettered in March plus it's always on our website as well about the costs, so everybody is advised and are aware of it prior to the funeral taking place. It would be interesting to see what the burial numbers versus commission numbers are in the other authorities, I suspect that in your authority case that people are opting for the cheaper more affordable option because it's 75 per cent commission rate in your authority, I don't know if it's any way like that and the others. If anyone has that information Mr Kerrans? I think that our hours is 70-30 in favour of cremation and we have in terms of the crematorium we have roughly between a 20 and a 25 per cent out of town who come to invoclate for cremation as well. Anyone else have that information at the fingertips just now Mr Robertson? Don't really have accurate information as Angus doesn't operate a crematorium but we estimate that we do 25 per cent of funerals. There is a private crematorium in Angus is there or not? Mr Hannah, again you've got a private crematorium. Yes, again some of us have a privately operated crematorium but we believe the figures to be round about the same as Angus. We were catering for 25 per cent of the burials. Okay, okay Cameron Buchanan please. I understand Ms Harley's submission that the removal of, against the removal of existing provisions restricting the proximity of housing to new buildings, the last paragraph there. Is that the same with everybody? You don't want the restrictions lifted? That's the housing near crematoriums which we've had quite a lot of correspondence on. Ms Hardy, do you want to go first since Mr Buchanan? I think you should keep the actual distance as it is. I do think you need to keep the crematoriums away directly from housing. I know that excavators are becoming more modern than they used to be. They consume less gases than everybody else but I certainly do think that for peace and tranquility can't have it directly next to a busy housing scheme and stuff. I do think you need to keep it distance wise. Mr Robertson. No, really an issue for us. We'll have one crematorium in Angus. It's quite rural. It's right in the centre of Angus and we don't. One of the things about these kind of situations in terms of the draft bill we're not just thinking about what there is at present. There's also what may happen in the future. We have had some correspondence of late which has stated that having housing in close proximity to a crematorium would cause a fair amount of grief. Others have argued that that's not the case. Rather than just thinking about what the situation is today, we should also think about what may happen in the future. Mr Reedyd, is Perthenkin Ross of a view? Yeah, very much of you with the audience view that I think that the minimum distance should be the 200 yards as well. One of the reasons for that as well is also to take account of obviously gardens of remembrance that obviously surround crematoriums as well. I certainly think that the 200 yards should be a minimum but obviously as well there would be obviously planning conditions to apply to that if there was a new crematorium developed as well. Inverclyde, please? I'm saying that the 200 yard drill should remain. Okay. Mr Hanna. I can echo the comments so far. I suppose that one of the kind of main things to consider is that tentatively find the cemeteries are visited on Christmas day, New Year's day, weekends, these times where households are generally at their busiest. It's about maintaining the respectful, quiet and peaceful surrounds of a cemetery or a crematorium grounds for that matter. Can I ask, in terms of the authorities that currently have their own crematorium, are there houses within the grounds already of those crematoriums? I'm thinking, for example, in Aberdeen, the crematorium there is a house right next door. We have houses adjacent to the crematorium but, if memory serves, I think that they are more than 200 yards away so they meet the condition. Okay. Mr Rennie. The rule, as it is at the moment, doesn't work both ways. I think that's stated in the documentation. So we would like to continue to see a buffer. So a green-up crematorium is built in the heart of Greenock Cemetery, so it's well away from housing. What I would have more concern about is that any future developments encroach on the crematorium, the rule, as it stands, is to stop the crematorium being built close to houses. I would like to see the bill reaffirm that there needs to be a buffer zone 200 yards seems to be reasonable to me between houses and crematorium both ways. Okay. Anyone else want to come in there? We've talked about the reuse of layers and covered a fair bit there. The bill also talks of the reuse of headstones. What are your feelings about that? Can we start with Mr Hannah, please? I suppose that my own thoughts on the reuse of the headstones are slightly more complex, I suppose, than the reuse of the layer. With the layer, the person is just buying the right to be interned in that layer. They're not buying the piece of ground as such whereas with the headstone, they are going in pain in the region of about £1,200-1,300 to have a headstone and then have it installed, so far as to then reclaim that property from them, I think it might be a more complex issue than the layer reclamation. It's just about how we proceed sensitively when dealing with these kind of things, particularly when the difficulties we've mentioned about making contact with these people after maybe 30, 40, 50 years and how we go about doing that. I agree with the reuse of layers. The reuse of headstones is a totally different issue. Obviously, that's visually historic. You can actually see the people's names on the stones. It's whether, when people buy the right of burial in those existing layers, would they own the headstone or does the council own the headstone? If that's the case, what happens with the headstone? Would the council decide to keep it there or need to remove it at what cost in what happens with the headstone? Do they store it or do they destroy it? Obviously, they need to be photographic evidence done as well, I would presume, but it's a great issue as to what happens with these headstones if we reclaim layers back on layers that have already been reused. Historically, those are monuments as such, and we need clearer guidance as to what to do with these stones. I think that the practicalities of trying to retain older headstones would be difficult. Obviously, if a layer wasn't used, there wouldn't be a headstone, so you're talking about reusing layers at 100 years old and presumably the headstones of the same age. In our experience, in a lot of cases, headstones of that age and the design of that type just wouldn't be practical to try and reinstate them. There's a sensitivity, a historical value as well, so there needs to be some evidence retained photographically of the headstone that was there, but ultimately, the reuse of headstones for practical purposes in the main wouldn't be feasible. I agree that one of the issues there is that the council does not own the headstone so that there's that issue about, well, do we have the right to move it? There's also that issue as well about the historical significance of some of these headstones as well and the information contained within them. There's that issue about where do you then cite that headstone if it is to be retained? Do you have that reverse round and have the new headstone adjacent to it? Is it laid flat or is it taken away or is a photograph sufficient as well? I dare say that historical Scotland may have a view on some of those issues in terms of some of the older headstones. Mr Robertson, please. In principle, we would love to reuse as many layers as possible within our cemeteries. Unfortunately, I don't think that it's really practical. The headstone element of it, like everybody else has mentioned today, what do you do with an old headstone? Many of our headstones are unreadable anymore. We would love to be able to remove a lot of these. They're also not dangerous, of course, and that's a lot of money keeping the headstones safe by the year. However, the sheer practicality of it, where you may have a really old headstone, but quite a recent burial, makes things very difficult. I would like to see as many layers reused as possible. However, it's not cost-effective. Exhumations are very expensive. Removing the headstones can be expensive as well. What do we do with them? You'd really have to be disposing of them completely to make it cost-effective. If we look at other aspects of the bill, burial and cremation records, the bill places a duty in all parties that are required to maintain records under the bill to do so indefinitely. The bill enables the retention to be done electronically. What do you feel about the retention of records? Can we start with Mr Robertson? Do you have a view on that? In Angus, we keep very good records. Some of our records in our rural church are quite basic, but we keep records of all our burials. We keep them electronically, and we keep the old books up to date as well. We don't see any issue with the bill on the keeping of records. A recent approach across Scotland would be a worthwhile thing today? From what I know from other authorities, we have quite a consistent approach across Scotland. Some authorities move to electronic records, which we haven't done completely, but I think that it's a way forward. Certainly, keeping records and keeping them consistent across Scotland is very worthwhile. We obviously keep burial records, and we obviously have our cremation records as well. Some of our burial records are now being placed on the system electronically, so we have no issues with that. Okay, Mr Kerrns. Burial records, we do keep them electronically, and we also keep them in the ledgers. Cremation records, we keep them electronically, and we also keep the paper records as well, so we agree that they should be stored both ways. Ms Hardy? I agree that they should be kept indefinitely. If nothing else, the consistent approach will help us with no layer capacity planning. It's not just about keeping hold of the records electronically. It helps with the accuracy, but in terms of your space planning and your future requirements, it's a lot easier to generate that. John Wilson, please. I have just a follow-up. In the present moment, do any of the local authorities charge for the search of the records? Mr Robertson? Yes, we have a time with the Seast online. All our central records are available online. There is a cost for that, obviously. There is a small income to the council. We, at this moment, do not allow, other than by previous appointment, people to view our actual cemetery ledgers due to the time and the administration of that, to make staff available to fetch the books and find the books on some occasions. All our records are available online, but there is a charge. You said that there is a charge for the Seast online. Is there a charge for an individual if they phone up the office and say that they want to come in and look at the hard copy of the records? No, we make allowances for, for instance, scholars or for research purposes, by appointment, with educational establishments etc. For a private individual, they are directed to the Seast online. We charge for doing family tree searches. We do not charge for showing, for locating a layer for a member of the public. If they want to visit a grave, we do that free of charge, but there is a charge for family trees. Ms Hardy? No, we do not charge at all for any searches. Mr Hannah? To invite Clyde, if someone wishes to locate a family member, we would do that for free, but the family tree searches, such as £15, apply for that. Mr Eike? We do not charge for searches. Willie Coffey, please. I wonder if I could ask a question to previous committees about the record. As I understand it, there is no connection between the national record of Scotland and the person's death record and where they are buried or where they were cremated. Would that be something that you think would be of some value to the public in the future? For example, if you go to a cemetery and you see a person buried there, John Smith, for example, there is no way of knowing who John Smith was in terms of the national records. There is no backwards method of establishing who that person actually was. Is that something that you would be familiar with? Do you think that we might have a use and interest to the public to establish? Anyone want to come in on that, Mr Kerr? I believe that that happens in England. If we get a cremation in from England, there is a forum that we sign off and we tell them that they were cremated at the crematorium. It does not work the other way where we send something back to other registrars, but I am sure that it is something simple that that can be put in place and that there can be a tie-up. There is no connection between the two. You just wouldn't know who the person was that was buried in the cemetery and where the record was in the national records. You would be guessing, wouldn't you? Anyone else want to come in on that? Could you say that again, Mr Robertson? Sorry, I have no knowledge of that. I do not think that there is any link between the two. For people like me who are interested in family genealogy and so on and occasionally have a wee look to see where one's relatives actually are, it is often difficult to establish whether, in fact, they are your relatives, because there is no connection between the burial record and the national record of death in Scotland. You would tie that back to the registrar's office. Is that the NRS? You would tie all the details with them so that they have got it on their ledgers. How do you know that it is the same person that is buried, in fact, on the national record? Well, the date of death would give you that age. I do not want to go into too much depth in this, because we are straying a little bit. Can I thank you very much for your evidence this morning, and I suspend for a few minutes for a change in witnesses. We move on to our second panel of witnesses this morning from relevant organisations who have submitted written evidence to the committee. I welcome Dr Salah Beltaggy, director of council, Muslim Council of Scotland, Sterling Harcass, legal adviser for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Jim Nickerson, general manager, Edinburgh Crematorium Ltd, Fraser Sutherland, policy officer at the Citizens Advice Scotland, and Bill Taylor, chaplaincy adviser for the Scottish Prison Service. Can I ask if anyone wishes to make a brief opening statement? I would quite like to say a few words, if I may. Mr Taylor, please. Thank you, convener. It is to say that, from our perspective, we seek some clarity as to which is the responsible authority when a person dies in prison. We feel that the proposed bill does not yet provide that clarity, and I would like to be able to speak to that this morning. You can maybe explain to us a little bit more. Obviously, a prison is within a local authority area, often the prisoners within may be deemed to be from another local authority area. Is that caused conflict in the past? Is this the difficulty? Yes, we have found this in our experience. I would say that, occasionally, we have the incidents when there is a disagreement between two local authorities, typically the one in which the prison is situated, and the local authority where there may have been family ties, or the local authority may have been involved in the care, or in the prospective care following the release of a person who had then died in prison. We have found that sometimes the dilemma continues, and it can take a while until there is a resolution. We also propose that there be a means of dispute resolution to allow for a shorter period to determine which is the responsible authority, and the one that will take matters forward in terms of making funeral arrangements and funding for the funeral. Obviously, that is not in the draft bill. That may be covered in guidance at a later point. That is certainly something that we will look at and try to clarify with Government. Do you know if any of that is covered in guidance at this moment in time, or whether it is a case of being ignored completely? I do not know that it is covered in guidance, although I think that it could be. My concern would be that the language of the bill section 56 concerning the disposal of remains and the duty of local authority is permissive. To some extent, it leaves it to the goodwill of local authorities to choose to offer this kind of care. That is built on the preceding legislation where the Social Work Scotland Act 1968 indicates that a local authority may cause to be buried the body of any deceased person who, immediately before his death, was in the care of or receiving assistance from that authority. That is what I perhaps mean by permissive language and the difficulty being that such local authorities may not choose to provide that care or exercise that responsibility. Then it falls to the other local authority who may decide that it ought to have been the responsibility of the prior local authority. You can see how the dilemma continues. We feel as though the language of the bill does not help to prevent that kind of dilemma from existing, which is a situation that has caused an extended period of grief for one or two families who have found themselves in the middle of this. I have made some comments on our submission about the difference between burial and cremation. That, as Muslims and some other faiths as well, do not accept cremation. I mentioned this a lot about the part where the bill was talking about stillborn and children and loss of pregnancy. The submission from the bill makes me say that we should extend that comment to also adults who are going to be interned by a public body because they have no family or laws, no body to give instructions. Even if an adult dies and there was no instructions from a family or a relative, etc., we should always have a question whether burial or cremation is the preferred choice. That could be gathered from the community, from some leadership, etc., and not take cremation as the default, because my reading of the part about children seems to emphasise or not emphasise, but at least gives it the impression that cremation is the option. Even in the chief medical officer letter it says clearly that cremation will be done free, meaning that if it is not cremation then the family has to pay for this, etc., and in these cases where it is only a child or a pregnancy loss or somebody who has no family, etc., then it has to be clear. I just want to make this point that cremation is not acceptable. We have a problem if there is no one to give clear instructions, but we should have the thing asked for or we find out as much as we can. I say this because it happened in cases and it was just caught up by the last minute when bodies were found in a container and they didn't know which vision and which thing, and they were ready to cremate, but then somebody discovered that they are Muslims and they should not really be cremated. At general point again, rather than the specifics of the bill, the commission has care for war graves in 152 countries around the world, so we see a wide range of practices in terms of how graves are treated—war graves in particular but also cemetery practice around the world. I want to start by encouraging and welcoming the changes being brought in in Scotland to bring Scotland up to a level where the issues are being talked about and spoken particularly in respect of reuse of graves, which is something that worldwide is a problem, particularly in the UK as a problem. I know from a lot of our work in England as well is an issue that needs to be addressed, so firstly welcoming the changes here as well and to pick up the point about different faiths and different approaches. Again, there is a wide range of views on this sensitive issue, so to see some action being taken is excellent. It's the consultation and making sure that this is the first step rather than having blanket rules that would apply to everybody because it is sensitive and it does require consultation. Thank you, Mr Nickerson. Do you want to? Yes, good morning. Thank you for inviting me here today to give evidence. First of all, I agree with what has been said so far that we welcome change to come along. The burial and cremation in Scotland is really quite out of date and it needs to be pulled together. As a bit of background to where I am coming from personally, Edward Crematorium is limited on Warwickshire and Seafield crematorium. Seafield has a cemetery as well. It has over 300 war graves, so it puts it within the top 10 number of cemeteries from quite a few war graves in Scotland. Warwickshire and Crematorium has carried out more cremations than any other crematorium in Scotland. Thank you. Thank you. Mr Sutherland. Thank you, convener. Obviously, citizens advice has been talking about our clients' experiences over the past couple of years in terms of the increasing cost of funerals and the problems that that is giving to many of our clients and people who are not able to service those costs. We have seen in the last year an increase in 35 per cent on the number of clients coming about issues about funerals and about the affordability of funerals. That is separate to issues of the social fund funeral payments, so that is just about the costs. Obviously, that is the main concern that we are here today about, as people being able to afford a funeral that is dignified and respectful for their loved one. Let us stick with that particular issue to begin with, because you probably heard us question the previous panel around about those costs. I know that Citizens Advice Scotland has done a fairly substantial piece of work in recent times around about funeral costs. What do you think of the comments that were made about the lack of justification for some of those costs that we were given this morning? Obviously, representative from East and Bartonshire has to do what the committee of air tells us, but £2,785 in East and Bartonshire—double if you are wanting to be buried in East and Bartonshire but you are not from that community—compared to £694 in the western ales. What do Citizens Advice Scotland have to say about that? I struggle to put it any better than the representative from East and Bartonshire Council who said that it was ridiculous the increases. Someone from their own local authority is saying that increases of 50 per cent in one year are ridiculous. How much better can I put it? Last year, we saw another council increase their charges by 42 per cent. We have got this increasing variation now across Scotland of one council charging almost £3,000 and another council charging £700. Families in those areas do not necessarily—or the clients of our service in particular—don't have any more money because they live necessarily in one council and compared to another, but yet they are expected to pay that additional money. One of my concerns—an issue that was raised before, and I think that it was right—was about introducing some kind of cap. If you introduce a cap, of course, there is always a danger that everybody moves to the cap and therefore you have a whole load of councils at the moment who are charging less, moving to a much more expensive fee. However, something that could be looked at is a cap on the amount that increases in year. If we are allowing at the moment for 50 per cent, 25 per cent increases year on year, that is money that families just maybe cannot afford. I would like to raise a point that is raised by some of our clients who are maybe planning their own funeral because maybe they have a terminal illness. If they are all of a sudden told, do you know what your funeral is going to be an extra 25 per cent than what you have planned to pay, and they have maybe only got a few months to live? That is a really stressful thing for them to have to go through. Can I ask Mr Sutherland? In some cases we listened to Perth and Kinross today in terms of their cremation costs, which are currently the priciest local authority that they have admitted today. However, there was some justification for that in terms of future capital spending and ensuring that they are dealing with all of the environmental aspects of cremating folks. If local authorities were to spell out their reasoning for some of those charges, it might make it a little bit more palatable. I think that a lot of people who are arranging funerals are doing so through a funeral director, and a lot of funeral directors will say that this is how much the council charge, and there may not be an explanation beyond that from a funeral director as to what is the person getting for that money. Obviously, there is mercury abatement and other things about installing new cremators. Some councils are going through big regeneration projects. Falkirk Council is currently taking out a big project to update their facilities for their crematorium. That is going to cost them money, and they obviously want to see that money come in that they can afford to update and give the people with brief families the experience that they want, because some of the facilities are obviously starting to date and they want to have a good facility for people to go to. Maybe people do not necessarily understand that that money is being used for it. They just compare it to what is over the wall. They just look at another council and they say, why am I paying twice as much? It is not quite a big difference for crematoriums, but there is maybe a question as to why are they having to pay so much more than someone else who only lives 10 miles away from them? In one of your previous reports, you talked about allowing consumers to make informed choices. We believe that the funeral director code of practice is allowed for in the act should stipulate clarity and transparency of charges freely and publicly available. Do you think that that transparency also has to lie with councils too, in terms of the charges that they are making? When we first started on that work, one of the first recommendations that we made a few years ago was to encourage all local authorities to make their charges freely available on their websites. Most of them already did that in advance. They put all their fees quite clearly up in their websites and was available from council offices for other people to find as well. However, there are still some councils who have not put their prices online. Some of the big local authorities in Glasgow do not have it online, for example, and there are a few others. I am not going to name them because I cannot quite remember and I do not want to accuse someone who has not. However, there are still about four or five different councils in Scotland who still have not put all of their charges online. Incidentally, we would like to see that of funeral directors as well, putting at least an indication of a package price so that consumers, before they walk through the door, have some kind of indication of how much a funeral is going to cost from that funeral director. Because from research we have done, we know that there can be a difference of about double within a town between one funeral director and another for exactly the same service. In your opinion, do you think that people do this comparison at the time of death between funeral directors and crematoriums? Currently, there is very little appetite for shopping around. I think that that is because it is difficult, but I think that the fact that someone is bereaved makes it... Who wants to go into a funeral director's, go through all the lists and then go down the street and do it all again, they are just not going to do that. If you can give someone that opportunity to do it at home before they go to funeral directors, it might start to make them think a wee bit about it. It also makes it easier for someone planning their own funeral because they will be able to... I would very much strongly encourage more people to be doing that, to think about their own funeral and pre-plan and pre-pay if they can afford to, but then they could be picking people or picking options that they want and they want to have maybe a burial, but they maybe want it in an affordable place that they know that they can afford or their family can afford. If we could maybe move on. We asked the other panel about their views on the reuse of layers, and I am keen to ask this panel the same question. Dr Bill Taggy, what are your views on the reuse of layers, please? Talking about the Muslim community, it is difficult because they do not come all from one place and there is a lot of background culture, etc. However, if we look worldwide, there are countries where things happen which cannot be imagined here, so my idea is that really it needs a lot of consultation and a lot of thinking which is outside the usual case so that we can make use better use of land. For example, using the layers more than once even within a short period of time, not necessarily 25 years, if it is confined to the family using the layer, not everyone else or some parts of the family. That happens in many countries of the world, so this could be part of it. It needs consultation because it is very difficult to put some solution which can be accepted by many others because cultures change. The main thing is that it exists in Burial, but there are many options which can be used. That is all I can say now because it is really lots of different cultures within this same community to be accommodated. Generally, the things that are mentioned in the bill are a step forward. I think that some of it is not really enough and we need to open thinking a bit more. I think that one of the things that probably colleagues have come across as well, and certainly was the case in Aberdeen, where there was a difficulty for a while in finding an area within a cemetery for Muslim burial, mainly because there is so little cemetery space left. What you are saying is that you are being quite pragmatic around some aspects of it as long as there can continue to be burials. The same happened in Glasgow because the burial cemetery was quickly filled and we spent years until we reached the solution where we found another piece of land to use, but that was where Glasgow was with a high percentage of ethnic minorities, etc. It took years to find it and some of it was just because of unpopularity of having people beside you who are of something set in other faith or something else. We had a lot of trouble getting through this with the council. I am surprised that there is no one from Glasgow council here because they are I think the biggest. We select panellists and we are careful in terms of making sure that councils take their fair shares over everything. Glasgow has been here for a lot of other things of late, so they would have maybe liked to have given evidence, so we will not be unfair to them. Mr Harcass, please. In general, we can appreciate the need for reuse of gravespace, particularly the reuse of unused space. Again, that is just use of space and that there is a pressure on burial grounds across the country. However, from the commission's point of view, we are opposed to any reuse of graves that have war casualties within them, whether that is a single war casualty in a gravespace that might be in a service plot or a war casualty buried within a family plot, whether those are family members before their death or after their death. There is a whole range of instances where you might find a war casualty. Across the world, we see this again to put the international side to it. As mentioned, many different countries take look at death and look at provision on death in different ways, and reuse of gravespace is not uncommon on the continent or in Asia and other countries, but we have secured, as the commission, exemptions for war graves in almost everywhere where we operate. There is a general recognition and acceptance that war graves are a particular class apart and that they should be given exemption and protection from disturbance, and that is what we look for. Mr Nickerson, please. Yes, we are in favour of reuse of graves. Our cemetery is 120 or 30 years old, and the older graves are just never visited nowadays, but they are still the upkeep to make sure that the cemetery is well kept throughout. Newer graves tend to come on special occasions, but it tends to be just the next generation, so after about 25 years, they are not visited. Edinburgh used to be full of private cemeteries, and it has filled up. They have become unviable. The local authority then takes them on, and the local authority just has them as a burden, so really it is in the interests of everybody to continue to keep these cemeteries going and reuse of graves is really the only way of doing it. We have a number of Commonwealth war graves at Seafield, and I completely agree with what Mr Harkins says that they should be a special case. Mr Sutherland, please. Yes, just to echo what Mr Nickerson was saying, obviously, reusing the graves allows for a large number of cemeteries that we have brought back into use, and it means that large maintenance costs can be offset in some ways. For example, in large rural local authorities, they can have a huge number of different cemeteries spread out across the area, and the cost of maintaining them is quite high, and maybe opening up some of the unused space in those where layers have been sold but are not actually used. People in the local community might actually quite like the idea of being buried in a village cemetery that up to that point has not been an option. Just with one point specifically within the bill, there is information or there are clauses in there about how people are told about a reuse being thought of and allowing people to object, but, as a previous witness had said, 99 per cent of the things that came back from the vaccine address are unknown. We would be quite keen for a notice to be put on the graveside in the case that there is family who visit on that graveside, because otherwise they might not know that it is being proposed, that that grave would be reused even though they might visit every month or so, and it would be quite good if they knew before they came back and found out that it had been used for someone else and they had no prior knowledge of that. I do not think that I would have a specific view from the perspective of the Scottish Prison Service on this matter. However, I might say as one who is involved in chaplaincy that it would be important in my view and I echo what Dr Salah has said on this. It would be important that people's religious faith and belief sensitivities were taken into account and that there were consultations with those bodies about the reuse of layers, since I think that differing faiths and beliefs would have a multiplicity of perspectives on that. If we move from the reuse of layers to the reuse of headstones, what are you feeling on that, Mr Taylor? I liked what was suggested earlier in the previous session about a historical record being made of a gravestone, perhaps a photograph or so forth. I think that it is important and vital that we retain the information that is on many of the headstones. However, I do not have a specific view on behalf of my organisation. We do not really have any specific. There is a very large cemetery in London that has reused layers and has reused headstones. What they do is turn them round, polish up the back and put the new name on the other side so that the old face is still maintained and the back side is used for the new burial. We have mixed feelings on that. Quite frequently, older ones are just eligible, and quite often there is no historical significance in them, so there is not any real reason for doing it other than just keeping them. If there is an old sandstone one, you could not polish up and use the back anyway, so the family of the new layer would then want their own one on and it would be impractical to have two on. What we currently do with every Commonwealth Wargrave headstone we have, we have photographed it on our website, so if somebody wants to view one, they can do it. I would suggest that that is a way forward for any old historical headstone that is photographed. We could put it on our website and it could be viewed, but I think that as a matter of course to legislate for keeping them, we would not be in agreement with. Mr Harkas, you are in a somewhat different situation again. I think that re-use of headstones, there are a few issues that come out of it. The first one, the practical fact of should you turn a headstone round and re-use it for another family, obviously from the Wargrave's point of view we would be opposed to the re-use of any of our headstones because they would be marking a current casualty or a current deck that we would not like to see anything else being added on there. It does happen where you have extra family members buried in to the grave, but I think that the concept of re-using a headstone for an entirely new set of remains, an entirely new grant of a rite of burial is something that we would be opposed to and something that we see as being counterintuitive, is that if you are re-granting the burial rites, you are really starting from fresh. That is on the practical side of it. However, in terms of the historical record and the remains that are correct within a grave, of course the burial records should already have that information anyway and making those records more available, more uniformly available, would come over that question as to who is in the grave space rather than your first port of call being the headstone, it would be the burial record. In terms of the information, I think that that is something that can be dealt with without re-using headstones on a physical basis. That leaves just the historical and aesthetic considerations, the archaeological historic Scotland view, which in some instances, if it is a listed monument, you would have the questions there as to whether it could be taken down. Is a photographic record good enough? Possibly it is. That is something that we don't have a strong view on because we would very much be advocating for keeping for our own headstones, keeping them in place and keeping them with our brand, as it were, with a warheadstone, is a wargraves headstone. Dr Balthaggi, please. Quite again with historical and wargames etc, this has to stay as it is and no change in there and they have the body to look after it. What I found when I go to cemeteries here is that some of the old headstones, huge ones, and they become hazardy and the council is not responsible for them, as was said earlier, but they have to do it because of the safety of other people. So if it comes to that stage and the family are not caring for it, then you can have a record of it, photographic, electronic etc, and do it in a way which becomes safe. If you have more than one person by then, there's no problem of having more than one name on the game if it is done by a game in front of the beginning. Thank you very much. Thank you, convener. Good morning. Just to take on the issue about the cost again, because I'm intrigued by Citizens Advice Scotland's submission where they actually list out a minimum that they see as being required, but they then go on to say about the cost of a funeral cost, and I think they've said that the average funeral cost is roughly £3,500, but they then start attributing different percentages, average percentages, in terms of costs, and you indicate, and if I can find the page, refer to the average cost, that's it, 71 per cent of the cost of a cremation service that is made up by director's fees, and 57 per cent of the cost of a burial are director's fees. Would the panel wish to make any comment in terms of the director's fees, because if over 70 per cent of the cost of a cremation are the funeral director's fees and 47 per cent of the cost of a burial are director's fees, do you think that these are proportionate to the overall cost? Just as I further add on to Mr Sutherland to find out whether or not the average cost that you have cited here of the £3,550 includes a headstone, or excludes a headstone, because one of the issues that has come up in the past is the issue about the headstones, because you're right, unless a headstone is marble, that if it's sandstone, then it's likely to deteriorate over a period of time, whereas a marble headstone is likely to last longer, so it's just to try and get some, go under some of these figures and find out if this bill is about trying to cap or reduce the costs of funeral arrangements, how do we do that if we then impose fees that can be charged by local authorities, but don't impose fees that can be charged by the main providers of the funeral service? Mr Sutherland, first, please. First of all, just to clarify the figures, the figures that we have supplied have come about as market research carried out on behalf of Sun Life and Royal London to insurance companies. They are market research carried out by YouGov, and the figures that they supply are people self-reporting, so they've done market research and gone and asked people who have recently carried out a funeral, how much did that funeral cost, so it's the total cost of what they have reported for a funeral, or a recent funeral that they've carried out, so it would cover a headstone if the person had a headstone. That's probably why it's £3,500, because that's quite a lot for a cremation in some areas, but it's probably less than a burial in other areas by the time you add in a hearse and a funeral tea afterwards and everything else. It could be more than £3,500, so that's why the average is that amount. In terms of the make-up of the fees, obviously in terms of the funeral director's fees, we'd be really keen that the costs were upfront that allowed people to shop around. We were disappointed that the National Association of Funeral Directors has withdrawn from providing a simple funeral from all their outlets, so it used to be in their code of practice after a finding by the OFT suggesting to them that they would supply that, and that meant that people could go to different funeral directors and say, how much is it for a simple funeral from your funeral directors, and that had a set list, if you like, of what would be included. We would really like that to be an option for people again. It's not a disrespectful funeral, it's not as funeral on the cheap, it's nothing like that, it's just a more affordable funeral that's still respectful for a family who maybe are looking to see a cheaper option. It allows them to go around different funeral directors and get different prices and then go with the one that they feel gives them the best service and the best value for money. Anyone else want to come in on this one? Yes, of course. As been said, I'm part of a group which is Faith in Community Scotland, and one of the issues we looked at is the final poverty because it's coming more and more, and we looked at the reports from the citizen advice, and there's also a group of Quakers who have started a project in London to look at how this can improve. What we found is that there is very little awareness of general public about what happens when a movement happens, and they just go to the nearest place, or the most famous funeral directors, and they just follow it. What we suggest is really that there should be much more awareness and community education through either the faith groups or the community groups or the civic groups, that this is another item you'll have to face, and there are information available and so on. Of course, that has to be done in general terms all the time, and the competition is not really very clear in the market, especially with the time and the sense of the person. That's part of it really, is that people should be told about it and talk about it in advance, and that will make them more aware, and take lessons from other communities where they do it as a community thing, not as a business in small communities, with special requirements. It's done by one community organisation, and in this case, yes, it's in-house, but it is done with more volunteers working in and so on, and that could be also important. One of the things that came up at the welfare reform committee recently when we were dealing with this was the fact that in many smaller places where there has been what has been seen to be a family-run funeral directors, which has been, well, the name has been on the go for sometimes centuries, that a lot of these have been bought up by the big multinational companies as well, so I think that folk are not fully aware of what they're actually buying from in a lot of cases either. Does anyone else have anything on this particular one? Mr Taylor? If I may say that I welcome the comments that Mr Sutherland's made about the simple dignified funeral. Many prisoners' families are economically challenged, where options such as this exist. It would be more feasible for prisoners' families to afford the kind of funeral that they would like to provide. I'm sure that it's important that costs are as transparent as possible at every step of the way. I think that for us there are issues around the depth of involvement that a family may have following the death of a loved one in prison. It may be that there have been years of estrangements that have grown on account of the person's offence that has led them to be imprisoned. When that person dies in prison, there is a non-existent relationship, and the family at that stage find it very unnatural that there should be the expectation that they should meet the costs of this funeral. On the other hand, it sometimes seems that the more interested a family is, the more they may be liable for costs, but remain unable to afford meeting those costs because of their own means. We hear that. Some of the families of prisoners may seek support from the social fund but find themselves ineligible because of other benefits that they may already be receiving, so that that support is not necessarily one that people are met with and families can feel isolated, they can feel alone with the burden of meeting those costs. Anything that keeps costs to a minimum and provides a dignified ceremony at the end of a person's life is something that we would support. Mr Nickerson, from the private sector, what do you have to say about costs from the Edinburgh Crematorium? Cost from our point of view is that we provide a public service very much. We obviously have to make a profit in order to stay in business, but we make a profit to provide a service as opposed to providing a service to make a profit. We did not put our prices up in 2011, 2010 and we have not put them up this year in 2016 because we feel that at savings we have made an administration of the business that we do not need to. We are very much aware that it is an issue to lots of people because they have not prepared ahead, so we keep our costs as keen as we can, but I cannot possibly make a comment on funeral directors charges. Just a reminder, what is the criteria for the social fund application that Mr Taylor might be able to give in response to that? For those families who have to rely on an application to social fund to help with funeral costs, what are the current limits that are in place? You have to be on a qualifying benefit. I cannot quite remember off the top of my head, but I think that there are some tax credits and there are some other qualifying benefits. However, the difficult part is not about whether you are on the qualifying benefits, but about the relationship with the deceased and if there is another next of kin who is able to pay for that funeral. That is where it will come into play for prisoners, especially if it is a brother or a sister and there are other siblings within that family who may be seen by the DWP to pay for that funeral. That may exclude the family who wishes to organise the funeral from getting any money at all, and it is up to that family member to then chase the other brother or sister for paying for the person who has died. They may not wish to pay for it, especially in the case of a prisoner who has died. Mr Taylor said very clearly that some people are estranged from family members who end up in prison and do not want to take part in a funeral service for that person, so that makes it difficult for a family who might otherwise have qualified for a social fund. It is not just prisoners, of course. There are other people who are estranged from their family members, but nevertheless, they are not qualifying. In terms of the social fund, what it pays for if you do qualify, it pays for the full cost of the burial or cremation, although it is the cheapest cremation or burial in your area, so if there is competing different crematoria, it is not a huge issue in Scotland, but it is down south in England, where there can be competition between crematoria on price. It covers all that side of the cost, so essentially the disposal of the body is covered. There is a cat fee of £700, which has not changed in a large number of years. I cannot remember the top of my head how long it has been frozen for, but it is a significant number of years anyway. That fee has been frozen. That is to pay for everything else, the funeral director's fees, transport to and from the cemetery. It is to pay for if you want to have a funeral tea or service or any notice in the newspaper or anything like that. It has come out £700, and that does not go any way towards covering that cost. That leaves a lot of people who are actually successful in getting the social fund with a large shortfall to find the money to pay for it. I do not really have much more to add. I do not know the specifics of the criteria for the social fund. I am aware that sometimes it is very difficult for families who may find themselves almost competing with one another as to who would be able to assist at such a time. From our perspective, there is a sense in which there is almost an incentive, although I do not think it would really be put this way. However, there is almost an incentive for a family to be less interested. The more interested they are, the more liable they are likely to face costs. That, in itself, militates against what one would hope would be a good grief outcome, where people may find themselves stepping back from the experience of the funeral, from making the arrangements that have to be made in order to avoid costs, but at the same time that denies them the part of the healing process of grief, which includes the funeral, etc. I would like to move on to the parts of the bill that cover registers. Obviously, you heard me questioning the other panel about that. What is your views on the requirement for registration as is in the bill? Dr Bill Taggy, please. Well, there are two things here. One is that the bill mentioned something about a form to ask for a plot of land for burial. What we said is that this is happening already and it is happening with the cemetery department of each council. We should not really complicate this because that will cause extra delay and one factor is important is that the burial should be having as soon as possible. With the new death registration system, which requires registration to be completed before burial, that should be done much easier because that registration is done already before going to ask for a place. The other question you talked about is the keeping the records of who or where person is buried. Again, with the new system where the registration happens, it can be linked with the birth and death records with the NRS and I don't see much difficulty in that. We spend a lot of time on discussing the death certification system and those things appear and it can be done for the future. I think that registers now are in a pretty good state. We have dealings with most local authorities across Scotland. One thing about war graves is that they are often being found on an on-going basis. New casualties are being identified. We are in a position where we need to go out to the cemetery, track down the locations, verify them and then add them to our records. In doing so, we are dealing with 100 or 75-year-old First World War or Second World War casualties. The records from that era are patchy. They can be excellent and non-existent. We can be relying on newspaper reports or there can be a ledger. Historic records are patchy, modern records are much more up-to-date. When we want to register those casualties and have the plot marked out, councils now do that quite easily. They have good systems in place for that. I think that a uniform system for us would be welcome. It's easier as a third party to deal with, when you're dealing with many local authorities, just to have one form, one application, one system to deal with and consistent information that could be captured. Obviously, I would like to see war graves being marked. We do have a registration with each local authority, but to have that as a field that was captured would be useful from our point of view, but also useful from a more historical interest point of view. There's a lot of genealogist-type interest in this field, so how many war graves are there? You can look on our website or, if you wanted to ask directly to the council, it would be a useful piece of information. Record keeping is important. It's certainly improved as to what it was. Let's just see more consistency. Mr Nickerson, please. Yes. Our records are all electronically kept, have been for the past seven or eight years. Forms that come in for cremation now, we scan so that we can keep them electronically. The older records were all on ledgers. We became members of the Seast online because they scanned them, so that put them immediately in the public domain. The Seast online records, though, sense of information is blocked out, like who the applicant for a funeral is, who the medical personnel where it's blocked out to, so that's not freely available. We have some reservations about making all information freely available. The reason for that is that we have had people come on to us looking for information to realise that somebody's died. There's going to be a death notice in the papers, so they know that we've cremated them. We have had landlords coming on and asking for who the next of kin is of a particular person because they're looking for a back rent. We wouldn't pass that information on. If it's publicly available and we had to give it, it would be passed on. We've had other people, too, who perhaps claimed to be long-lost relatives. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. We don't know. They want to know who the next of kin is. In cases like that, we would pass that information on to the next of kin and say that this person is trying to get in touch with you. They can then make the decision whether to go. We just have some reservations about making all that information publicly available. We've got no query at all about having it electronically kept. No problem with electronic records. You have some data protection concerns. Mr Sutherland, please. Much the same. I don't really have any concerns with the proper record-keeping of burial or cremation activities. One of the things that we had raised in a previous consultation to the Government's consultation itself was the record-keeping around what current national assistance funerals for where the local authority carries out a funeral for someone who doesn't have any family to carry out. We found that to be varying massively. We carried out a Freedom of Information request to all 32 local authorities. We found the records there to be massively different between the local authorities. Some were providing us with names and addresses, last known address of the deceased, their date of birth, their next of kin details, their next of kin's address, which I thought was maybe a bit of an over-provision, and others couldn't even tell us how many they had carried out in the last year, which was a bit concerning that they didn't have that record or they didn't have a record of how much they'd spent on national assistance funerals. I think that there's maybe a question there about when we, in this bill, there is going to be the new provision to take over from national assistance funerals that maybe record-keeping around them has made much more streamlined and common across the country. Finally, you will have heard us ask about the 200-yard limit around about crematorium. Mr Nickerson, what's your view on that? We think that it should be kept. At both Warreston and Seafield, we have had housing built up to us. Neither does it happen to be a major issue because two sides of Warreston is allotments and the third side is a road, so we don't really have an issue except at the one side, but we do occasionally have problems there. At Seafield, we've got housing on two sides and it becomes a problem if somebody's coming to visit a grave, visit a memorial and other people are playing music in the back garden. It's not particularly, it's not a good atmosphere and the issue always tends to be a look from the planning point of view of people's housing who are then getting a crematorium built next to them. They don't look at the people who are going to be visitors to the crematoriums and mourners, it's never looked that way. I think that not only does it need to be kept, but there should be something put in to stop housing then creeping up next to crematoriums and cemeteries. Does anyone else have a view on that, the first question? The reason which was mentioned is that that's a new one ahead, but the reason mentioned in the previous session was that it disturbs the quality of the space and thinking and the collection, etc. Does that not apply the same to the cemeteries? Will that be extended to the new ones, not the old ones of course, old ones have houses inside? That is something that is not in the bill and I think what we're looking at here is some of the historical legislation that is currently in place and whether or not that should be modernised or not. Anyone else have a view on the crematorium issue, Mr Sutherland? It's an issue that, at the moment, while it exists, it can be really difficult to enforce, so there was one particular case in the Scottish Borders where a new crematorium had been opened within the 200 yards and a homeowner objected to it. However, for them to have any success at that, they would have to take lengthy legal action at their own cost to do that. So there's a question about how enforceable the current law is, because in that example, the crematorium is now open and operating despite there being an objection for it being built within 200 yards. We will take a nice sense of that, too. Can I thank you gentlemen very much for your evidence today? I now suspend and we move into private session and I would ask if we could clear the room quite quickly, please.