 Iest touched on the current meeting of the Public Petitions Committee. I remind people to switch their mobiles or other devices to Silent. On agenda item 1, we're dealing with a continued petition. The petition is on the register of interest for members of Scotland's judiciary. We're taking evidence on petition 1458, which calls for a register of interest for members of Scotland's judiciary. We have taken evidence this morning from the Lord President, Lord Carloe, who is accompanied by Roddie Finne legal secretary to the Lord President, and thank you both very much for joining us this morning. We have copies of a number of recent submissions, including the most recent correspondence from Lord Carloe. So, in order to meet the most efficient user of time this morning, can I suggest that we move straightforward questions from members? And perhaps I can? Then welcome your Lord Carloe opening up. I want to explore some of the issues that you have identified the potential risks where anabisiwis to the administration of justice should register of financial interest being introduced. One of those is the risk of retaliation by a dissatisfied litigant by way of online frauds. You have commented that this is not to the best of your knowledge happened in respect of those judges currently required to disclose interest but the sample size of those judges is too small to derive comfort from. In identifying the potential risks have you given consideration to the experience of other holders of public office who have to declare their financial interests? For example, MSPs, local authority councillors and members of public bodies all have a role in making decisions that may leave people dissatisfied. Are you aware of any individuals in these categories who have been victim to retaliation by way of online fraud? I am not aware of the details of members of other public institutions being subjected to online fraud but I do think that judges are in a peculiar position in relation to this matter. They make decisions that inevitably cause disappointment to one party to a litigation and they can be resentful. I appreciate that that can happen in wider public life but it is a particular problem with the judiciary. The losing party can in some extreme cases blame the judge for the failure of their case and seek to find a reason beyond the actual decision as to why the judge found against them. It is not unknown for persons to form a malicious or hostile intent towards a judge or even judges in general if they are disappointed with the outcome of their case. They can become paranoid or suspicious about the reasons for what is a simple finding of fact and law by the judge and I would be concerned if they were to be the source and potentially damage the judge's personal or pecuniary interests. Do you think that there is a general culture in the sense that people look for explanations beyond simply the decision so that they would begin to do this already, not necessarily around financial matters of interrogate any connections that judges might have that might explain or try to explain a decision? It is a relatively common phenomenon, especially with party litigants, that if they lose the case or they lose a particular aspect of it, they search for reasons as to why they have lost the case and they will search for reasons that are outwith the obvious, in other words, they lost the case because they were wrong in law or wrong in fact and they will seek to find reasons as to why the judge found against them and, of course, they will search to find things peripheral to the case itself. That is a problem that we do have to put up with is perhaps the wrong expression, but we do have to deal with. Do you think that it is compounded by the world of online communications that make it? Do you think that online fraud is a particular issue now? As followers of blogs and so on in relation to judges, we will know that there is quite a lot on the internet that is, shall I say, not terribly complementary about particular judges. Again, this is something that we have to put up with on a day-to-day basis. We are subject to basic abuse by litigants of one sort or another on the internet. It is something that should be guarded against. In the First Minister's letter to your predecessor in the committee, she made specific reference to the particular need to consider judges' privacy and freedom from harassment by not only aggressive media, but specific reference to hostile individuals, including dissatisfied litigants. That is exactly the type of thing that I am talking about. Thank you very much for that, Angus. Okay, thanks. Good morning, Lord Carlawy. Good morning, Mr Flynn. I very much appreciate your attendance here today. You have identified a possible risk to the innovation of justice in terms of judicial recruitment or of judges starting to decline positions on bodies such as the judicial appointments board or the courts and tribunals service in the event that judges were required to disclose financial interests. Given the principal's guiding conduct in public life, why should a requirement for transparency act as a disincentive for judicial office holders, but not for other people holding public office such as ourselves? A judge or a sheriff is, like many people, a holder of a public office. The critical distinction between a judge and MSPs is that the judge has to be independent of any form of government, so one is in the exact opposite position from the political dimension. I hasten to add that the system here is one that has an international reputation for fairness and has an international reputation for not being corrupt, which is something that we are extremely keen to protect. You may have seen in the papers that the Council of Europe has an anti-corruption organisation Greco, which examines and specifically examines potential for corruption in the United Kingdom judiciary, including the Scottish judiciary, in recent years. They were fairly clear on their findings, which I think that I quote in the papers, that they did not find any element of corruption in relation to judges in the United Kingdom, nor is there any evidence of judicial decisions being influenced in an inappropriate manner, and because of that, they did not see any necessity to introduce a register of interests specific to the judiciary. Answering your question a little more directly, we in Scotland do not have a career judiciary in the sense of having judges who begin their judicial life at the point of leaving university, as they do, for example, in many countries in the continent. We recruit our judges and sheriffs from people who are generally, not exclusively, but generally from private practice, and they are recruited in their 40s and 50s, perhaps sometimes even a little later, so far as the senior judiciary are concerned. We have a relatively small pool of lawyers of excellence who are capable of taking on the job of being a member of our senior judiciary. You may be aware that there are certain problems at the moment in relation to the recruitment of particularly the senior judiciary because of certain steps that are being taken relative to pay and pensions generally. Therefore, we have particular difficulties with recruitment at the moment. If I were to say to senior members of the profession, which they are, before they were recruited into the judiciary, by the way, if you wish to become a judge, you will have to declare all your pecuniary interests and open them to public scrutiny. I have no doubt whatsoever that that would act as a powerful disincentive from lawyers of experience and skill becoming members of the judiciary. I can assure the committee that we need them more than they need us, if I might put it that way. Okay, thanks for taking that on board. You mentioned the career judiciary. Now, you will be aware that we took evidence from your predecessor, Lord Gill, and it is probably sure to say that he did not have a higher regard for the system in the United States where they have had a register of judicial interests, as you will be aware. What is your view of the fact that the United States has successfully introduced a register of judicial interests? Would you agree that it has helped to increase public confidence in the judiciary in that part of the world? I am not in a position to make any comment whatsoever about the United States judiciary, because I simply do not know enough about it to make a meaningful comment. You will be aware that there are problems in relation to the United States judiciary, but the depth of that is something that I am simply not qualified to comment on. What I can comment on, and I am sure that the committee is aware of, is that the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom considered that matter. Previously, as members of the House of Lords, they required to have a register of interests, and they decided that they should not have a register of interests. I would have thought that if that is the view of the United Kingdom Supreme Court, that is something that we ought to give some consideration to, even if, of course, we are not bound by their decisions in that regard. In relation to any changes to the current system of recusal whereby it has got a judge to decide whether or not to recuse, you comment on the inefficient disposal of business in the courts. I would like to explore the balance between the efficient disposal of business and having systems in place to ensure that there are trust in judicial decisions. In that respect, could I ask whether there is any way of quantifying the risks to efficient disposal of business, and if so, whether your office has carried out an assessment of that? Are you talking about the process of declining jurisdiction or recusal, as it has put the processes that we use? Can I start with a little preface and state that, so far as my own concerns exist in relation to that topic, my concern is primarily not that judges are not recusing themselves in particular situations, because I am quite satisfied that they do when they should do. My concern, and this is also to do with the disruption of business, is with judges or sheriffs who are recusing themselves unnecessarily in circumstances in which they should not do so. That is a much more common phenomenon. In other words, one has to bear in mind again that we have litigants who will effectively try and forum shop. That is to say that they will encounter a judge or a sheriff who is not to their liking, and they will attempt to remove that judge from the proceedings on pretexts such as having some remote connection with the case or the people involved in it. That type of thing can cause major problems in the management of business. The way that these things are done, in the normal case where perhaps somebody is represented by a member of the legal profession, is that if there is a genuine concern that the judge or sheriff does have an interest in the case, that will be raised informally with the clerk of court. In practical terms, the sheriff or judge will simply decide not to be involved in that particular case. Again, that is not something that can be done in every court, in a particular court which only has one sheriff, especially if it is not raised in advance. What happens again in the sense of practicalities and reality is that civil business, which is again what we are talking about here primarily, can be allocated relatively late in the day, and a sheriff or a judge may only on the day in question be faced with an application formally in court to decline jurisdiction in that case. If he does so, then it is likely that that case will simply have to go off with all the inconvenience that that involves. I am not sure if you wanted me to deal with that. There was a specific point about whether we think judges should not deal with this question but pass it to another judge. Would you wish me to deal with that point? Again, the answer to that particular problem is this. If a judge does not recuse himself in circumstances in which he should have, then any litigant who is dissatisfied with that and loses the case can appeal that, and the matter will be reviewed by three judges, so there is a form of open public scrutiny of a decision not to recuse a judge. If there was a system whereby that judge could not decide that matter himself or herself, and after all it is he or she who knows whether he or she has got a direct connection with the litigation of the persons involved in it, if that person had to pass the matter on to another judge or sheriff, you would cease the business in that case for a particular period of time until that matter was decided. You would also cease the business of which is scheduled for the other sheriff or judge in order that that other judge could take the decision. That other judge is likely to find the decision very difficult if he or she does not know the particular facts. I hope that, in a realistic sense, I am explaining the disruption to business that those decisions can involve. The simplest way to deal with them is the way that we are dealing with them at the moment. First of all, there is the informal route, which would mean that the sheriff is not hearing the case in the first place, but if that judge decides that he or she should hear the case in any event and is faced with a formal motion to recuse himself, that matter is dealt with in open court transparently and is subject to the appeal process. Thank you, convener, for picking up on this specific issue. We have received a submission to this petition from Melanie Collins, in which she highlights a recusal that had, for whatever reason, not been added to the register of recusals. This was only noticed or challenged one year after the submission. Lord Gill told us in November 2015, when he gave evidence here that, to the best of my knowledge, the clerks of court are screw-pillously accurate in keeping the register. Therefore, wherever there is a recusal, you may depend upon it being recorded in the register. Does it not concern you that the recusals have in the past failed to have been listed in the register of recusals? The fact that the register is being altered in some circumstances years later, and only when members of the public media or litigants point out that there are gaps in the register of recusals? I note that there was an error in not recording one particular incident. I am not particularly concerned about that. The position is that all recusals of the type that appears in the register are, as a result of events that occur in open court, in public forum, and they are recorded in the interlocutor of the court concerned. Members of the committee have a copy of the interlocutor of the court order that deals with the recusal. That is a public document that is open to public scrutiny. It is a result of a hearing in open court in which the parties would be well aware of the decision and they would have a record of it. Therefore, it does not particularly concern me that there was an unfortunate error in transposing that into a register of recusals, which is for a different purpose. That is the only error that you are aware of? The only error that I am aware of is that the judge or sheriff will make a decision in open court. The direction to the clerks of court is that they should transmit that to the judicial office so that it can be recorded in the register. If that was not done—and it was not done in this case—that is regrettable, but it is not a matter of deep concern to me. One mistake in many instances does not cause me concern about the general system. You could understand how Melanie Collins would not feel it. She was involved in the litigation and therefore she must have known that the decision had been made because she is the person who was presumably in court at the time. She or her representatives would have received a copy of the court order dealing with the recusal. I welcome Alex Neil, MSP, who thinks that he has an interest in this item. I will call Rona Mackay. I will go to members then, if you want to ask a question. Thank you, convener. Good morning, Lord Calaway. It is just going back to what you said earlier about the problems that you perceive with recruitment, should a register be introduced. I may have missed this in the background briefing. What is the Law Society's view on the whole issue of register of interests? I do not know the answer to that. You do not know, right? Fair enough. I welcome your indication that you have no problem in extending the register of recrusals to cover instances in which judges have considered recusal, but have made the decision not to recuse. You indicated that what you would consider may provide additional transparency, which follows on from Mr McDonald's comments. Have you considered options for the ways in which it could be made transparent when any additions or amendments are made to the register, notwithstanding what you have already said? Sorry, in relation to— What options to make it more transparent? Do you mean that we could, for example, put the party's names in? Yes. That has been considered. It is not thought to be particularly necessary or helpful. Again, I go back to the fact that all decisions to recuse or not to recuse are done in the public forum. They are done in open court. If anybody wants to see a particular court and has an interest to do so and wishes to see a particular court interlocutor, they can do so. If someone, for example, was looking at the register of interests and wanted more details of that, I am sure that we could provide them with that. However, we are often anxious not to put parties' names in registers of a public nature like this, because there are, as usual, cases involving considerable sensitivities such as children and so on and so forth. I think that we would be reluctant to do that, although it is something that could be done. Yes, it could be done, but, obviously, it would have to be very carefully looked at. Thank you, convener. Thank you, convener. I just ask Lord President, would you be content to see information about the date on which an entry is made or a way of noting amendments to entries in the register such as to correct clerical errors, as we are aware happened in at least one occasion? Do you think that that would further enhance transparency? Yes, I think that that is a fair point. If an entry is being made late—in other words, whatever—we could have a protocol that if an entry was being made more than a fortnight or something like that after—no, but I mean anything after a fortnight, then we could put a footnote entered on such and such a date, yes. Okay, that's good. You'll be aware of the fact that there was a similar petition in New Zealand two or three years ago, which was eventually withdrawn. Are you aware of the circumstances—well, defeated, yes—are you aware of the circumstances as to what the—are you aware if any register was introduced in New Zealand along the lines of the register of recasals or register of interest after the— I'm not, I'm sorry. I thought the matter was ended with the defeat in Parliament. Well, convener, I apologise for being slightly late because I had to go to the Audit Committee and I apologise in advance for uncovering the ground that's already been covered. Can I ask you, first of all, Lord Calaway, an issue of principle? Do you think that it should be left up to a judge only to decide whether they are going to recuse themselves or should that be something that you or the keeper of the role should be able to insist upon if you believe that there's a potential conflict of interest? The short answer to your question is that I don't believe that there is any problem with the current system. That is that the judge who knows what his connection is with the case or the parties to it should make the initial decision. That decision is made in open court when the parties are present and is subject to review on appeal. In other words, if somebody is dissatisfied with that decision, it will at some point or if the litigant, certainly if the litigant eventually loses the case, it will go before three judges who will review whether that decision was correct or not and if it was incorrect then clearly the decision in the case would fall. But supposing that the person bringing the case to court isn't aware of any conflict of interest that the judge may have and it doesn't ever find out but it may well be that the judge has been influenced by a particular interest. Surely that's not right. Surely if the judge, if there is any potential conflict of interest, surely there should be some kind of declaration or some commitment by the judge that there is no, you know, an explicit statement, there is no conflict of interest because if people, they might not have the resources to appeal, for example, so is the system not balanced against those people who come to court for justice? No, it is not. Again, I go back to something that I mentioned earlier and it's very important. Scotland does not have a corrupt judiciary. This matter has been examined by independent persons, notably the Greco anti-corruption body operating under the auspices of the Council of Europe, who examined the United Kingdom judiciary, including the Scottish judiciary, and they were clear that, fortunately, we, as to think from many other countries, do not suffer from corruption within the judiciary. For that reason, they did not consider that a register of interests was necessary because if one is introducing this kind of measure, you have to be satisfied really that it is necessary and that it is proportionate. If one is analysing its proportionality, one has to look at, well, what exactly are we guarding against here? Now, if the situation were that there were, that there was corruption in the Scottish judiciary, which we would discover at some point or another, then, of course, we would have to consider measures to prevent that, one of which may be a register of certain interests. Until such time, as it's demonstrated that there is corruption within the Scottish judiciary, I'm entirely satisfied that there is no requirement for a register of interests and that it would be positively detrimental to the administration of justice, particularly in relation to the recruitment of judges and especially at the higher level of the judiciary. Can I draw a parallel with the register of interests that members of this Parliament have to sign an update on a regular basis? That came about not because of any allegations or belief that the system was corrupt or that MSPs are corrupt. The 18 years we've been here, I haven't heard one allegation of corruption, but it's not there because of allegations of corruption. It is there to ensure that there is no prejudice, so that if I'm participating in a debate and I have an interest that I have not declared, then I'm open to the allegation, not of corruption, but of prejudice. By having a register of interests and declaring interests in a debate or in a committee like this, then there is a transparency to ensure that I am not acting in a prejudicial fashion. Going back to the case cited as I come in by Mr Macdonald of Lord Malcolm and the advanced construction in the Donald Nolan case, where Lord Malcolm's son was involved as a lawyer with one of the parties, the issue there was not an allegation of corruption, it's an allegation of possible prejudice or misconception of prejudice. That is a very good example of why either a register of interests or a more robust system of recusal, or perhaps both, might serve the judiciary very well. In relation to Lord Malcolm's case, I am satisfied entirely that Lord Malcolm's actions were entirely honourable and he acted in accordance with the code of judicial ethics. I'm not sure what I'm aware of the background to it. Have you investigated it? I've read the papers which it involves. Well, with all due respect, Melanie Collins and Donald Nolan have written to you on numerous occasions and at no time have you replied to them, let alone met them, so you haven't heard the other side of the case. Well, I'm sorry, I'm not aware of letters to me by that particular person. Well, your office, sorry. Yes, I, absolutely. My point is, how can you reach that conclusion if you haven't heard the other side? I've read documents emanating from the persons that you've mentioned. So far as I'm aware, they were not addressed to me, but I could be wrong about that. But the position is that I'm aware of the circumstances of the case, I'm satisfied that Lord Malcolm's conduct was entirely correct in the circumstances. But here, this is part of the problem that you've perhaps highlighted. This has got nothing to do with a register of pecuniary interests, that case. The suggestion is that we should start registering what our relatives are doing and where they're working in matters of that sort, which is going way beyond, I suspect, even what is expected of politicians. No, we actually do have to register for close relatives, too. Can I deal with the difference between MSPs and the judiciary, which I think I dealt with earlier on in the morning? It's quite a different function. A politician is, by nature, someone who is not independent in the sense that the public expect the judiciary to be. That's not a criticism, it's a reality. Judges do not deal as a generality with the type of issues which politicians are dealing with. Politicians have executive power. They are dealing with major economic interests of one sort or another. As a generality, judges are not dealing with that type of thing but are dealing with issues usually between private individuals but can be between private individuals and government or others. They are not dealing with the type of issues that politicians are dealing with such as planning inquiries, et cetera, at a local level or major economic development in society as a whole. The need for independence in the judiciary is different from the kind of independence that a politician requires. With a politician, it's primarily, as you've pointed out, issues of pecuniary nature. Those are not the issues that arise in most of the recusal cases with which we are concerned. What we are concerned with as judges is that we appear to be independent of all connection with the case, so that it's not a question of having a pecuniary interest. If one looks at the register of recusals, certainly in recent years or in the last year, I don't think that any of them were to do with pecuniary interest at all. It was to do with social connections with people, whether someone is a friend, whether a party to the litigation is a friend of a friend, no matter of that sort. Those are the type of situations that are raised by people in the practical reality of litigation. Those are the issues that are being dealt with, and unless you're suggesting a register of one's friends and, presumably, therefore one's enemies, then the real issue with recusal in the judicial system would not be being addressed. Well, again, if I can just finally draw the parallel between our register and what's being talked about in terms of either recusal or financial interest. Politicians, particularly MSPs, actually as individuals and collectively MSPs and lesser ministers don't have executive power per se, but what's very important is the perception of fairness, the perception that justice has been carried out, and rightly or wrongly, if in any case, without referring to a specific case, if a relative, a close relative of a judge is participating in the case, rightly or wrongly the perception is that there may be a degree of prejudice. Now, it might be very unfair, but the point is to try to ensure that the reputation, the excellent reputation of the judiciary down the years in Scotland, that the judiciary attains that reputation not just for not being corrupt, which we all accept, we're not accusing anybody of corruption, but the perception of fairness, the perception of being not prejudice is extremely important, and I would argue that, certainly in at least one case recently, which we have referred to briefly, that perception is that there may have been an unfairness and a prejudice in the way the matter was conducted, particularly as the judge concern was involved in the case, not once, but on a number of occasions. I disagree entirely with your analysis of that particular case, and I repeat what I said earlier. The case that you're referring to did not involve the judge's son, as it was, having any active involvement with the case whatsoever. Now, we have very clear rules in our statement of principles of judicial ethics as to how to deal with this matter, and it is made very clear in that statement that if a relative is the advocate in the case before one, then the modern approach to that is that the judge should not hear the case, or one could put it another way round that the relative should not be presenting the case, whichever way it happens to be put, so that the older the situation that we had, say, 20 or 30 years ago, when it was commonplace for the relatives of judges of one sort or another to be advocating the case, that practice no longer exists. It doesn't exist because it was thought that there was any actual problem with the decision making, but, as you say, because of a perception of unfairness. Now, there is a very clear judicial rule about this, and I am not aware of any case in which that rule has been breached by myself. I have been in a situation where my son has been involved with a particular firm who had been litigating before me, and if that is the case, the judge would be expected to declare that, and the parties would then decide whether to take the point or not. However, if they took the point and the relative was just happened to be a member of the same firm operating in a different department, then I would not encourage the judge to recuse himself in that situation. I think that that has been really useful in clarifying a lot of the issues that you always had presented to us in written evidence and an opportunity to explore some of those issues around prejudice. That has been really helpful. On how we now take this forward, what we might suggest is to ask the petitioners to respond in writing to the evidence and allow us the opportunity to reflect on that if people are so minded. I think that when we are looking at this petition at a future meeting, we can also consider any further actions that members might deem appropriate having read that response. However, we might want to make recommendations of suggestions to the relevant decision makers, but they are clearly not within the powers of this committee to implement the action called for in the petition, but what we will be deciding at that point is how we then take a view on that petition and dispose it to somebody else who would be making that decision. However, I think that today's evidence has actually clarified—certainly my mic—a lot of the issues, and if there is not any—if people are agreed with that. Thank you very much indeed for your attendance today. We will be asking the petitioner to respond in writing to what we have heard, but as I said, I think that we found very useful to clarify from your perspective the issues that have been suggested within the petition. I am very grateful for the committee's time in listening to me this morning. If we can now move to agenda item 2 on new petitions, the next agenda item is consideration of new petitions. The first new petition that we will be taking evidence on this morning is petition 1651 by Marian Brown on behalf of recovering renewal and prescribed drug dependence and withdrawal. Marian Brown joins us this morning, and I want to welcome you to the meeting and ask you to make an opening statement of up to five minutes after which we will move to questions from the committee. First of all, can I just make apologies for Beverly Thope, who is hoping to be here today, but her mother is very old, so thank you. I am here to represent many people in Scotland who are not well enough to be here in person. Some courageous individuals have provided clear evidence for the committee showing the terrible suffering being endured as a consequence of taking antidepressants and or benzodiazepines as prescribed by their trusted doctors. We have previously raised our concerns directly with the doctors, local and national NHS representatives, MSPs and the Cabinet Secretary for Health. We actively contributed to the BMA Board of Sciences 2014 UK research and are taking part in the BMA's ongoing work on prescribed drugs associated with dependence and withdrawal. Our focus now is on raising political, press and public awareness of these issues in Scotland, complementing the activities of the old party parliamentary group for prescribed drug dependence at Westminster. The SPICE summary that you have links to the current official medical guidance and policy outlines the recent BMA recommendations. We have found that major discrepancies exist between what the official medical guidance would have us all believe and the very different actual real experiences of patients. There is a statement in the SPICE briefing that reads, despite licensing procedures and guidance, it is ultimately the decision of clinicians to decide whether or not a drug should be used in the treatment of their patient. And that's a phrase that seems to come back and back in any questions and so on. Clinical trials of medicines are usually carried out over relatively short periods. Patients may be prescribed these medicines over very long periods and perhaps in combination with other medicines. We have found that individual reported patient experience is frequently ignored, put down and disbelieved by the clinicians. In benzos, the clear medical guidance is that these should be prescribed for a very short time only and this is not happening. There is substantial evidence for prescribed benzo dependence and withdrawal issues going back decades. In contrast for antidepressants, medical guidance is that these should be taken for at least six months and then are commonly prescribed indefinitely. There are now many people who have been on antidepressants and or benzos for 20 years or a lot longer. Long-term harm is now very clearly apparent. Safe tapering after different periods of prescribed treatment is fraught with difficulties for patients, the very few mostly online support groups that exist have for years been informally gathering evidence on a trial and error ad hoc patient report and patient self-help basis. This genuine experiential patient learning and sharing has been largely dismissed, disregarded and even denigrated by the medical profession. Now that there is a great deal of patient communication via online social media as well as extensive internet availability of research and medical information, patients often come to know much more about their own conditions than their doctors possibly can. When patients do try to discuss what they have learned, doctors patronise them and say they should not believe anything they find on Facebook or the internet. These patients find themselves perceived by their doctors as troublesome and difficult heart-sync patients and acquire psychiatric diagnoses such as personality disorders and medically unexplained somatic functional or conversion disorders. I would like to refer to the diagram that is in my own submission, which summarises the pattern of the actual patient journey that we've now observed across numerous actual patient accounts of what's happened to them. Patient medical records being confidential to doctors turns out to have unexpected consequences for patients. Self-reported serious drug effect symptoms have been noted in the notes, but have not been acknowledged by doctors as drug effects and instead further medicines have been prescribed for the reported symptoms. Complaints procedures tend to be perceived as threatening to doctors. The medical defence organisations encourage doctors to do what any other doctor would do and to comply with current medical guidelines. If patients do complain, this results in professionally defensive responses, so adverse drug effects continue to be unrecognised for what they are and are not reported to the regulator. There is no provision for systemic patient feedback and constructive learning. To sum up, patients are suffering very serious harm from taking these medicines as prescribed. Dependence and withdrawal problems are causing untold damage. Doctor-patient relationships are being destroyed. All parties are suffering. There are utterly desperate consequences to this. Long overdue recognition of these issues will open the door for honest communication and genuine collaboration, leading to the establishment of appropriate national, regional and local support services for those in need of them, and, most importantly, urgent prescribing guideline reviews and updating of doctor education. The principles of duty of Canada surely apply here. With the focus of Scotland's realising realistic medicine being on listening to patients, shared decision making and collaboration, I hope that we can really show by example what this means in real practice. This is raw, genuine public patient feedback. I would like to finish with a quote from Black Box thinking by Matthew Syed, who says that the anatomy of progress is adapting systems in the light of feedback. Thank you very much for that. I think that we should record a thanks to all of those who provided submissions. A very significant number of submissions have come in, and people talking about their own experience in that is also going to help the consideration of the committee. Can I maybe start off as your petition refers to the BMA's recent recommendations on the issue? One of the BMA's suggestions is for a national 24-hour helpline, so it's a starting point to be helpful if you could clarify whether you would like the Scottish Government to establish a Scottish helpline or to contribute towards a UK-wide helpline? I think what we envisage is that all the UK, a total UK thing that the Scottish Government would collaborate with all the other UK partners so that it would be, because if you think a helpline could cover the whole of the UK with a telephone system and a website, the idea would be to have a connected website with lots of information, and I think the website would be especially useful for doctors and patients, but for doctors and patients, if there was reliable information on there that doctors could refer to as well, I think that that would be immensely helpful, and that could cover the whole of the UK, so it would be fairly cost effective to cover all the regions. Are you aware of, has the UK Government taken action in response to the recommendation by the BMA? I believe the BMA representatives from the BMA met with representatives from the Westminster Government on 22 June, but I haven't heard any report of what happened there, but certainly they've been approaching the Westminster Government. That's something that we can obviously inquire about. Rona Mackay? If I could just maybe expand a wee bit on the helplines, I'm just wondering what role you think it might perform. Do you think it would be a source of medical advice or act as a counselling service, or is it just to signpost people to various sources of support? I think that at the moment the discussions about that are still on-going, but I think that it would have to be a combination. People are sometimes very, very distressed, so they need to help, because I think that the Samaritans, for instance, have been really quite overwhelmed with this problem, but they don't have the expertise to help people. At the moment, there's nowhere to signpost people to anyway. Do you foresee specialist training for something like that? Yes, there certainly would have to be specialist training, but it could be centralised. There are helplines that have been running in England. There's nothing in Scotland, but there have been helplines running in England for quite a long time, I think about 20 years, but some of them are closed down due to lack of funding. There's one in Oldham, Barry Haslam, and he said in one of his submissions that he helped to set up one in Oldham, which has been replicated in other places in the north-west of England. Is it widely used to your knowledge? Yes, there's one in Bristol, and they're quite overwhelmed. People can't get through to them. There's a huge need, and there's a huge need for a really properly resourced and with really good information that the doctors will believe, because at the moment, even if people say they've found a helpline and the helpline advised them, something or other, and they go back to the doctors and the doctors say, well, they don't know anything about that. It doesn't say that in the guidelines. More crossover, more cooperation between the two? Absolutely. It needs to be something that the medical profession collaborates with and believes in as well, because it's hopeless. If the patients are getting, well, hopefully good advice from somewhere and going back to the doctors and saying, I've been advised, for instance, tapering advice, quite often they get good tapering advice from one of the, it's usually one of the online advice bodies, and they go back to the doctors and say, I've been advised this, and the doctors say, well, my guidelines don't say that, and I suggest you do this. So there's a disconnect somewhere. Okay, thank you. Angus McDonnell. Okay, thank you, convener. Good morning, marine. Falling on from that, another of the BMA's recommendations calls on each of the UK Government's relevant health departments and local authorities to establish adequately resourced special support services for prescribed drug dependence. Can you perhaps expand on what, in your view, adequately resourced specialist services should look like, in addition perhaps to helplines and the website that you mentioned earlier? I think we're still in quite early stages of trying to figure out what exactly that would be, and again I think the collaboration would be, the BMA's been talking to the charities that have been running support and helplines and so on, so I think there'd be a lot of, there's a lot of expertise there that I think they would work with, but again, you know, this early in the process it would be a collaboration between everyone, speaking to everybody else and trying to work out what was needed, but I mean at the moment people are just left in the long grass really suffering, you know, you've read the accounts of people, there's just nothing, there's no support, they're just left and nobody believes that they're, what's wrong with them. Okay, thank you. Maurice Corry. Good morning. I know of your work in Helensburg, my hometown and my region, so I'm well aware of the good work that you do with the recovery and renewal in Helensburg and it's a great benefit to the area. Can I just ask the BMA's recommendations also call on professional bodies to offer guidance on tapering withdrawal management? Are you aware of any work being done on the development of such guidance? I think again it's in early stages, but because the problem hasn't been recognised by the medical profession, there's been, it's, you know, nobody's done the research, nobody's really done anything about it except hope it would all go away. So, but there is some research being done now and I think there will be more research. But one thing we're quite, we'd like to say is that there is a lot of expertise within the self-help groups. These are like Facebook groups and internet groups. The patient self-help groups have developed a huge amount of expertise and they will be able to share that, you know, as long as there's the willingness for them to share, they can share what they've learned and they've been helping real people through real processes and so there's been, you know, a lot of coming and going and supporting each other. So I think there's a lot of expertise there if it's recognised that we'd be able to, again, in a collaborative way, if everyone were able to talk to each other, we'd be able to be developed. And you find that it's sort of helping your work in the recovery of a renewal centre? Well, we don't, we don't have a sense of, in fact. Well, I mean, sorry, the, yeah, work, sorry, the renewal, the recovery in your work that you do, that you're involved in? Well, we've found it real difficult because what happens is people are struggling desperately with the medications. The doctors aren't helping them or the doctor's advice often is, you know, they're finding it unhelpful to them. And, I mean, it's really hard because we, recovery renewal, when we first started up in 2013, we approached the local doctors and we said, would they be, you know, we told them what we were doing, we asked them if they would be interested in coming to speak to the group or whatever. And they, we heard nothing. So, we've kept writing to various people and we keep getting nothing. The response is nothing. The response is this blank. So, everywhere you go in the medical profession, you get this blank response. So, we've been trying to help people, we've been signposting to the help, to the charities and the Facebook groups. There's a website called Surviving Antidepressants and another one called Benzo Buddies. They've been going for years and they've built up a huge knowledge and experience, but they're not funded. They're self-help groups, basically. Okay, thank you, Gwyneth. You mentioned in your evidence that many people appear to have been, have taken prescribed medication for many years when, in fact, they used to be intended for short term. It would appear from the many submissions that we've received from patients that they consider this practice has harmed their health. What do you think could be done by the Scottish Government to better monitor prescribing practice and raise awareness of the issues? Well, I think the first point is really raising awareness of the issues. As far as prescribing practice goes, you know, once the issues are recognised and taken into account, then I think that will begin to, you know, this whole thing of feeding back that begin to help things to change, but I mean, I think that's really for the Scottish Government. I mean, I can really only speak for the public perception of what's happening. I think I would have to, I don't think really that's for us to help with. I think that the suggested overuse of prescribed drugs and perhaps leading to sort of the changing of people's personality can lead to a lack of a decision-making process. In the current system of prescription, do you think that that then leads to the ability of patients to stockpile prescribing drugs, and that coupled with that impaired decision-making process is exacerbating the problem? Are we sort of going on to more misuse? No, I'm thinking more of the way that these drugs are prescribed and the lack of control by perhaps the medical profession is allowing that poor decision-making process by in fact taking those drugs to exacerbate a health problem with antidepressants. I'm not sure that I could really give an opinion on that. Okay, that's okay. Record that I'm here on behalf of a constituent at her request who I know had hoped to be here, Joanna Denison, but who's unable to be here, and I believe you've all got her personal testimony anyway, so I just wanted to put that on the record for her on her behalf. As I said earlier, we are very appreciative of the personal submissions that people have made, I think they've given us an idea of some of the really quite important issues that have been flagged up by herself. I wondered if you spoke about the old party parliamentary group in Westminster and whether you've explored the possibility of a cross-party group with MSPs here to deal with these issues. Yes, I think Jackie Baillie raised something. I think it was back in 2013, it was soon after we started up the group. We've been involved with Jackie Baillie right the way through, and she knew about it and she came to one of our meetings and she did contact, I think there is already a cross-party group for something quite similar, isn't it, mental health issues or something? It's quite a range of them, we may have to look at them, but there may be some, I think there are very specific questions around prescribed drug dependence, maybe a subset of some, but I think you made a distinction between the misuse of drugs and being prescribed drugs and being there for dependent on them, which I suppose is a slightly different issue. We did ask her to explore that and then it came back, there was a letter came back that said that they didn't think it was something that was necessary. Perhaps the tradition itself may generate an interest in it and then that would be something that could be looked at. I don't know if there's any other questions that people have. I appreciate again your evidence and the substantial evidence that we received in written form on a question, which I think there is a dilemma. First of all, the appropriateness of prescribing, particularly drugs at all, prescribed them for longer periods of time than perhaps were attended, other some drugs ought not to be prescribed at all or to be discouraged, and the extent to which the medical profession is then alive to people's concerns when they feel they have become dependent. We're all in a circumstances where we've raised questions and responses being less of a clinical decision, which clearly is very difficult to argue with. I think that you've raised a number of important points, but what we now need to decide is how we want to take this petition forward. I think that the thing for me is that, as you've alluded to, it's not the prescribing of the drugs per se here, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's the length of time that those drugs are then prescribed for. If a drug is supposed to be there for a short period of time, what's in place for the medical profession then to change that type of service? I think that the only thing that I can think of really is to ask the Government or write to the Government to ask what their view is on this particular petition. I think that we should set that up with a good starting point to the Scottish Government, because they would always then take advice from a chief medical officer. I don't know whether there are patients or organisations other than your own, whether people who are dealing with mental health issues are seeing people coming through who have a particular concern. I don't know whether there are organisations. You mentioned Samaritans, for example, who may have evidence around the scale of the problem that they're facing, or Sam H or whatever. It's clear that the BMA is aware that there is a problem. There's no denying that there's a huge issue. It's just a question now of taking it forward. Certainly, from our point of view, writing to the Government, our Government would be the first step at that point. Moving on from Ronas's point, if the BMA are aware of the problem, I think that we'd like to understand, you may have thought, why the problem exists, if there's something underlying within a professional existing, whether or not we need to go any further than write to the Government at this point of whether we're writing to it. I might suggest that we write to the Scottish Government and they would be taking information from the chief medical officer. I think that it might be worthwhile exploring with Sam H, Samaritans and other organisations, whether they're aware of this as an issue. We have had a petition in the past, of course, where there were tragic circumstances when a young woman was prescribed her first surgery visit to prescribed drugs, which she then sadly died. They were very aware of the individual tragic circumstances in another petition around this. I think that that's a kind of an issue that we might want to tease out further around the appropriateness of prescribing drugs in the first place and then managing dependents at a later stage. Moris? It might also bring this issue to attention to the UK parliamentary group for prescribed drugs and dependents, which you mentioned earlier on. I think that's something, because we might as well benefit from the larger area and you may have been in touch. It might be worth contacting them and just seeing where have they been with this issue. We've been involved with them as well, so we know that we've been working with them. And perhaps ask the BMA for an update on where they have got their recommendation around to help me. Okay, I think that's a reasonable first stab, but I think that that's been a very important petition. Can I thank you again for your attendance? Obviously, once we have responses from Scottish Government and other organisations, this petition will be back on the agenda in the next term. Thank you very much. I'm going to suspend the meeting to allow change over our witnesses. I call the meeting back to order. The next new petition that we will take evidence on is petition 1653 by Michaela Jackson on behalf of Goldbridge Community Development Trust on active travel infrastructure. We're joined this morning by Michaela and she's accompanied by David DeFew and David Frenge, who are both members of Spokes, which I think is a Lothian cycling campaigning group. Can I welcome you all to the meeting and invite Michaela to make an opening statement of up to five minutes, and then we'll move to questions from the committee. I should also welcome Christine Grahame, MSP, who has an interest in this petition. Hello. Thank you very much for having us this morning. I'm going to be joined by David DeFew, who's going to be talking about policy issues and David Frenge, who's also going to be helping me to present and he's going to be talking about the issues with option B for the share of four roundabouts. I started this petition when it became clear that the option chosen for the share of four roundabouts was really the worst option with regards to accessibility for pedestrians and cyclists. The issues extend to broader transport policy, which I feel is at odds with two key policy objectives within the Scottish Parliament. The first is CABs or the Cycling Action Plan for Scotland. That's an action plan that was initiated in 2010 with a vision to see 10 per cent of all journeys in Scotland taken by bicycle. A recent review has indicated that there's only been a 0.2 per cent increase in cycling journeys, and at this rate it would take more than 300 years to reach a 10 per cent cycling goal. It's clear that transport policy at present isn't integrating cycling or active travel enough. Cycling and active travel have to be central to policy, not an add-on at the end. The second Scottish objective that I feel is at odds with cycling is climate change. Scotland has really ambitious CO2 emissions reductions targets. When reading through the environmental analysis of the share of four roundabouts, I was really surprised to see that climate change with regards to how the construction was implemented and how that was going to be used wasn't really a consideration. The key considerations were really the actual environment and journey saving times. I feel that we need to look at how what we build impacts users. If we build for traffic and cars, we're going to get more traffic and cars. If we build for people for places, we're going to get more people for better places. What I'm asking today is for active travel not to be an add-on but to be absolutely integral to any new transport infrastructure, especially with regard to trunk roads and key areas for commuting. I'll spend two minutes outlining some policy issues. As Michaela said, the Government's preferred sheriff's hall option B is the worst option for cycling and walking, making it impossible to include a direct pedestrian cycle bridge and with numerous slip road crossings. The Government's option B announcement did not even mention cycling. Sestran, the regional transport authority, in its report strategic cross boundary cycle development, identifies the importance of a bridge here if there is to be high quality cycle provision. Sestran's, the Scottish Government's main partner on cycling infrastructure, states in a letter to the designers that this option is so poor that they will not comment on its details and they instead urge a rethink on the options. Even the Scottish Government, in a letter to Spokes, dams option B with faint praise, merely saying that it is better than existing arrangements. In 2004, Scottish ministers allocated £800,000 to Midlothian Council for a cycle bridge here. Sadly, the cash was subsequently reallocated because at that time it appeared that the roundabout rebuild was moving up the agenda. More generally, the Scottish Government does have a trunk roads cycling initiative policy, which will particularly interest Mr Whittle and Mr Corey as this policy was introduced by Lord James Douglas Hamilton back in 1996. It is still current and it commits the Government to give special consideration for cyclists in trunk road improvements, ensure no hazards to cyclists are built in and ensure that opportunities for cyclists are exploited. This policy is clearly breached by the choice of option B. Finally, option B reflects a general issue in the treatment of walking and cycling in infrastructure projects, of which I have countless examples. Namely, major decisions are taken and only then do designers try and fit in active travel, although good options may by then be impossible. Instead, cycling and walking should be essential criteria from the outset and holistic solutions should be developed. I am just going to talk briefly about Sharaff Hall itself. Sharaff Hall is an important road intersection, but it is an equally important barrier at the moment between Milothian and Edinburgh for pedestrians and cyclists. Crossing the current roundabout is really not a fun experience, and that is whether you take the pavement and cross the carriageways, or if you cycle around the roundabout itself. Neither is very fun. The building of a new roundabout is a great opportunity to fix this and to make active travel between Milothian and Edinburgh at Sharaff Hall an appealing option. The proposed option B does not manage that. As Dave has said, improving safety at Sharaff Hall for non-motorised users is not a particularly high bar to clear, but I am not convinced that proposed design even manages that. The assessment report asserts that safety for non-motorised users will be improved by grade separation, but crossing the slip roads will still be dangerous, especially if the crossings are not signalised. The nearby straight and junction is already grade separated, but it is listed as by such strands recently as one of the very worst accident spots in the country. We really need to segregate routes across Sharaff Hall. We are obviously interested in the specifics of Sharaff Hall, but we want to look at the more general issues. I think that some of those have already been flagged up. Good morning. Your petition calls for active travel considerations to be incorporated into all new major infrastructure projects. We know that there is disagreement over the extent of which that has already been achieved and how we measure the provision and quality of the infrastructure. Do you have any suggestions for how the provision and quality of active travel infrastructure can be objectively measured? Is there a widely acknowledged standard or guidance that you are aware of that can be drawn on for this purpose to make any comparisons? I do not know I am not an expert but myself personally. If I feel like I can take my children along the path, I feel like that is a safe path for active travel. I myself do not define myself as a cyclist, I am just trying to get from me to be and get some exercise into my day, but I will take higher risks. I will travel on busier roads that I would never dream of taking my children on. For me, that is a benchmark. Would you take an eight-year-old child on that road? I do not know what Spokes has. I do not know details of myself, but I know that when the Scottish Government or Transport Scotland was consulting on the options for a Sharaff Hall roundabout, Sustrans did a very detailed analysis of the different options based on various criteria and we could provide that letter from Sustrans if it was helpful. Did you get an explanation of why this particular option was chosen over the others? I have just looked at the assessment reports. Basically, there is a model called Stag or or something similar where different criteria are put into the model, but the problem with that model is that it is extrapolating data from 2014 to 2024 when the roundabout will be put into existence and then it is looking at the impact that that will have on journey times, on safety and on the local environment, but at no point does that model... I feel like we can't be using models that extrapolate from 2014. We need to be looking at where we want to be in 2024. We can't just assume that traffic is going to increase by 40 per cent. Already transport is the highest greenhouse gas, the highest contribution of greenhouse gas emissions in Scotland. We've got to look at how to hold that back, how to decrease the level of traffic, how to improve... We can't just be tinkering on the edges of the system that we have now. We need to look at creating a different system that supports actively different methods of getting from A to B. I just feel that we can't build this sort of hard measure into our society when we're looking for long-term change. Do you think that there's merit in looking towards some of the European infrastructures and looking for best practice there, that they've been working for some time? Undoubtedly. It's not a very difficult problem to solve because there's lots of other countries that have solved that problem. Copenhagen has 50 per cent of their people on their streets or on bicycles. We haven't. I think that it's also the level of priority that's given to walking and cycling in these decisions. There are the obvious reasons that Mikaela has mentioned climate change and public health, which are obviously very important. In terms of Government policy, the Government has a very clear objective that 10 per cent of all journeys should be by bike in 2020, which is incredibly difficult to meet now, if not impossible, but at least we want to work towards it. Yet they have no policy to increase journeys by car, and yet here we have decisions being taken where the car convenience and time savings are given much greater priority than walking and cycling. Similarly, if you look at the overall Scottish Government transport policy, which is in the national transport strategy, there's a very clear statement of their vision for the future of transport, which is a culture in which fewer journeys are made by car. And yet here we are taking decisions that are increasing car journeys and making walking and cycling more difficult. Scottish Government has published a long-term vision for active travel in Scotland to 2030. The vision includes the aspiration that main roads into town centres all have either segregated cycling provision or high-quality direct, safe and pleasant alternatives. Pedestrian and cycle paths are in place. Rural and suburban minor roads have low-speed limits, linking nearby communities and services, so opening up new travel opportunities and choices. Have you had a chance to review the strategy? Do you have any thoughts on the Scottish Government's vision? I'm thinking really around is it the policy integrated and will it lead to the desired outcomes stated in the policy? I've briefly looked over it and it sounds wonderful. I agree with everything in that vision. I just feel like it's a little bit like caps. They have these amazing visions and we have incredible targets that we're hoping to meet with regards to climate change as well, but we're not actually putting the policies in place to achieve those visions. That's where I feel that there's a disjointed—there's no cohesion. Everything's siloed, so we have good visions on individual things, but we don't look at how to implement them and join them up with transport, education and health. That's the issue that I have. I mean, I think the document's great. There's no clear indication as to how the money is going to be put. There's not enough practical indication of exactly how that's going to be achieved. I think that the first point that you mentioned from that was the provision of segregated routes on main roads, et cetera, which we think is absolutely critical for the future. In terms of inter-authority cycle routes, such as Sheriff's Hall's good example, Midlothian to Edinburgh, that's the case where it's really important to have segregated provision. I believe that I'm right in saying that your manifesto for the Scottish Parliament included segregated routes in every city in Scotland. The problem that we have with segregated routes between authorities is that, quite understandably, each local authority wants to invest its cycle funding within its area of greatest population, so there's less money for routes between authorities. Some years ago, the regional transport partnerships used to have capital funding, but that was removed by this Government when they first came to power. As a result of that, there's now a lot less money available for inter-authority cycle routes. Sestran, when it used to have capital funding, had allocated £4 million for routes between Edinburgh and Midlothian, Eastlothian, et cetera. That was all lost when the capital funding was scrapped. One project that did survive was the A90 cycle routes, which goes from Edinburgh to the Forthbridge to Fife. That was completed about two years ago and has been incredibly successful. I don't have figures with me, but Edinburgh Council could supply them a major increase in commuting into the city through that. As far as sheriffals and particulars concern, Sestran has pointed out that the existing biggest flows of cycling between Edinburgh and surrounding areas is between Edinburgh and Midlothian, so it's a particularly important corridor. I know that Midlothian Council is planning on a bit of a cycle highway between the Sheriff Hall roundabout and the Tesco hardened green roundabout. I don't know if you know the area, and then between hardened green and Eskbank. I think that they were really keen to get that quite wide road to properly segregate that. Having something properly implemented in Sheriff Hall could be a kickstarter for other exciting developments to support commuting into Edinburgh. Journeys within Midlothian are challenging in the Midlothian transport report. It stated that it is very difficult to get from west to east in Midlothian by public transport, so it would support connecting Midlothian as well. Good morning to all. The committee is aware that some local authorities have adopted active travel action plans. Are you aware of whether that is widespread and do you consider that the Scottish Government should promote those initiatives? Yes. I believe that in the cycling action plan for Scotland it's—I don't know whether it's actually a requirement, but it's a very strong request to all local authorities to do that. Money and resources have been put via Cycling Scotland into assisting local authorities with drawing up those plans, so I believe that process is under way. I'm not quite sure what stage it's reached, but Sestrands, I'm sure, could advise on that. I deal with the Midlothian active travel transport officer quite closely, and they have tiny pockets of money. A lot of them are for soft measures, you know, having cycling days to try and get people out and get their bikes fixed. In fact, the transport officer himself said on commuting to work by bike. He himself is trying to go along with people and show them the best routes to get to their work and stuff. The budget is—there's a small amount of money, but it's so small that it's really relying on almost like one person single vision and a lot of soft measures. There are some hard measures about to be implemented. I think that there are plans along certain parts of the railway, which is—that was a key missed opportunity with regards to being able to implement really good active travel infrastructure. The small pockets of money that come every now and again, and instead of actually connecting roads, what they do is they just kind of have a path that's ready there and kind of pave it over and maybe make it—but actually the problem with these is that people don't know about them. You know, there's like a path behind and Mayfield, by the Shell garage, that it's impossible to see. I only know because he told me. If I could, could I just follow quickly on that? Some years ago, the committee will presumably know that there were regional councils rather than the present setup. That meant that because the councils were much bigger, it was possible to set up expertise within each council on walking and cycling, and Lothian region, for example, had a fantastic cycle team. When the regional councils were split up, Edinburgh was fine because it's still a fairly large local authority, but Mid Lothian, West Lothian, East Lothian all basically lost nearly all their expertise. I think that this is another place where regional transport authorities could really help considerably. I know that Sestran is trying to work on that, to be able to build up regional expertise and provide assistance to all the smaller local authorities who just don't have the resources for it. I mean, that doesn't help with the capital funding, but it provides the expertise, which is the other side of the coin. Can you just follow on from that? You've answered half of my question. What involvement have Sestrans had in this particular, more reference to the option B and other options? This is Sestrans as opposed to Sestran. Sestran in relation to the expertise for small local authorities, but in relation to Sheriff's Round Direct specifically, Sestrans has paid a great deal of attention to that. They did a very detailed assessment of the original options. As I said in my opening statement, they have said with regard to the option that the Government has chosen as its preferred option. They have said that this option is so poor that they are unwilling to comment on the details and they feel that the Government should rethink which option it's going for. Okay, thank you. Thanks. Can we just follow on from that last point, have Sestrans told the Government that they're unwilling to comment? Yes, they've written a letter which is publicly available. It's a letter to, I don't know how you pronounce it, a ecom who are the consultants which the Government has taken on for the design. This is a letter from Sestrans to ecom which is publicly available. That's great. A key part of your petition is about the consultation process and how this feeds into the development of infrastructure projects. Do you have any suggestions as to how the Scottish Government could achieve a higher standard of public consultation on active travel infrastructure? I personally don't feel it's the consultation. I feel like there was a consultation and I know that Robert was there and he said that he felt listened to and heard and obviously Sestrans have had their input and Spokes have had their input, so these people have been heard and listened to by the Scottish Government. Despite that, priority is given to the STAG model which says that this is going to create this amount of journey time saving. However, the STAG model doesn't look at, for example, if we increase cycling by 10 per cent, for example, how will that decrease congestion? What will that have? What will the impact to the local economy be by increasing cycling? What will the CO2 emissions savings be from that? I feel like there's nothing wrong with that model in itself, but it needs to be a lot broader and it needs to take into consideration different criteria. It's very narrow at the moment. I have a master's degree, but we did environmental assessment methods, and I feel like there's just nowhere near enough of that in that model. I'm just following on from that. Do you know whether figures of surveys of active travellers regularly feed into infrastructure projects in Scotland in general? Do you have any suggestions for how the Scottish Government could source that data? I know that Dave mentioned sharing detail from Sustrans earlier. I would look to Sustrans, but I don't. I'm not sure. Local authorities do collect some data, but I'm not sure how consistent it is between authorities. Edinburgh, for example, has a lot of automatic traffic counters, which can't cycle as well as motor traffic, but I don't know the position in local authorities in general. With regard to academic literature, there's a plethora of research that states that the more roads you create, the more traffic there's a direct correlation between the length of road and the amount of cars that will then use that road. There's also clear evidence that by providing active travel infrastructure such as segregated cycle paths, you will then get an increase in cycling. There's lots of literature about economic benefits as well for creating. The payback is very short. I know that people say that transport budget is quite tight, but the payback is short. On the question of how big decisions are taken, there seems to be a general feeling among designers, decision makers and so on, that you can take the big decisions on a project and then you'll be able to fit in walking and cycling after that. However, as I said in my introduction, often your big decision then rules out the best option. By far the best example of this that I can give you is the Edinburgh tramline system. As you'll know, there's been a great number of injuries. 250 injuries have been seen at the Edinburgh hospitals. There's been a recent death possibly implicating the tramlines. A lot of the problems are to do with the layout of the tramlines. We made these points when the 10 or 12 years ago, when the layout was being discussed, we even brought over an expert from the Netherlands who did a report showing how the layout of the tramlines could be made much more amenable to walking and cycling. Unfortunately, that was all turned down. As a result, it's now much more difficult to implement safe interaction between walking and cycling. Obviously, you can't now change the layout of the tramlines. That's very far too expensive and disruptive. However, if only at the decision making time and the consultants who came over said, what you're doing here is you're implementing a tram, then you're trying to fit everything around it, if we were doing this in the Netherlands, we wouldn't be implementing a tram. We'd be looking at tram, bus, walk, cycle. How does the whole thing fit in for maximum safety, maximum convenience for the whole of society? That's a helpful example. Thanks very much. Now we are getting very tight for time. I did promise Christine that she would get an opportunity to ask some questions, but just to be alive to precious in time. Oh, you're loved seeing that to me, as I do in the chamber. I know this round about the back of my hand because I travel it regularly, either the A7 or the A6106. I have never seen a cyclist trying to navigate it because, as you and I know, the light changes on it happen immediately, and as soon as the light changes for the bypass, the next lane whizzes off and a pedestrian, I don't think I've ever even seen a pedestrian trying to do it, and I believe cyclists call it the blender, and I'm not surprised. I'm very practical about these things, you know, these models and things like that, but I mean, I'm looking at this picture of the option, and the only thing they've done, frankly, is lift the bypass up and lift the original round about as it is, which currently, as we know, has lights that switch very rapidly. This is no use to cyclists and pedestrians whatsoever, and the irony is, as you and I know, and the other side, north and the A7, there's actually a cycle path, but there's no way of reaching it. Now, my question to you, because I asked the minister, I've asked him a couple of times, I'm looking at a question of 50, and I asked him whether he'd make provision for cyclists, and this is where I get back. Suitable provision of all using the cyclist is an important part of the proposed improvements to Sheriff Hall roundabout, and this will be developed in further detail. Now, I've had nothing since, and my concern is that we're going to get something planted on that's naturally not going to work for you. Given that there's something like this in train and you're talking about graded lanes, are you also saying you would require, as I think you probably would, lights that change for cyclists and pedestrians and hold the local traffic? Not just to slip roads that go off if you're going the bypass west or the bypass east, but you would need something other than just graded lanes because of the way the light system operates. What's your solution? You're the cyclist. You know better than anybody else. I'll tell you what everyone wants and what Madeleodian was promised is a cycle bridge. Unfortunately, with option B, the bypass goes over so you can't have a bridge over the bypass, so that's out of the way. It's really difficult because the current option is so poor. What we're doing is hammering on something onto the outside. It should be integrated within the design, and lights presumably would be an improvement to the current situation. I wouldn't cycle along the straight and roundabout either. That's a nightmare. If we're going to just create a system that has a barrier but has a minor improvement, you're not going to get people on bikes. We don't need to get cyclists on bikes. We need to get people that want to have the opportunity. We need to get the lady that works in radiology at Little France to get on her bike because she feels like that's a safe journey and she won't have to set in traffic. We don't need the brave cyclists. They'll do it. My husband will do that, but it's the normal people that need support. As much support as you can give them, presumably, lights, but ideally not something tacked on at the end. We wanted a proper crossing. Okay. If you were to tear this up and say, we do have to deal with the bypass traffic because it's enormous and separate local traffic from it and also traffic that's feeding on to the bypass. It's not a bad thing. What would you have done instead of just having the fly over from the bypass? What would you have had? Option C. Option C looped. In the consultation, I criticised it for some minor things, but it was a huge, huge improvement on what's there. Huge, huge improvement on options A and B because you could cycle from Dauquith to Edinburgh without crossing the A720 or the A7 or things. I have cycled round Sheriff Hall. I consider myself a fairly confident brave cyclist. It's terrifying. I took the pavement the last time I went there. It took me three minutes to go round and round about because you have to stop and wait for a gap in traffic, which isn't always obvious. Drivers don't indicate when they're coming off the slip roads. They're going terrifyingly fast. I'm a brave confident cyclist and I'm terrified. We should be building infrastructure in which people are happy to take an 80-year-old across or somebody, an 80-year-old, should be happy cycling across or people in wheelchairs should be able to go across. This is not it. Just as a final point could be very tolerant if you just see what option C is. Option C involved moving the round about half a mile west and then using the old roads, the current A7, A6106 and putting cyclanes on them and then building a bridge over the A720 to the east of the new roundabout. It would have been great. This is going to be an issue that's alive particularly and the minister will be questioned, but specifically around the petition and what we do with it. I thank you very much for all the evidence that you've given us today. It's been very useful. I wonder if members have comments or suggestions for further action. I think that we want to take the petition forward around this whole question of planning ahead and not bolting it on afterwards when it then becomes difficult. Brian? I would be really interested to hear Government feedback on this particular plan and the reasons why they've gone with this option. Okay, so we're going to contact the Scottish Government on Christine's question, but she's not really had much feedback from me, okay? It's very general. We'll make sure that they're catered for and not actually practical. Well, it may be that in consultation with the clerks we can see whether it would be actually worthwhile to get the Scottish Government minister in. I suppose that just simply being correspondence, but we can look at that. Are there other mentions, Sustrans, we might want to... Yes, Sustrans. I'd also like to get more emphasis on option C, which has been emphasised specifically. In the report produced by the clerk to the committee in the conclusion section, it recommends writing to various bodies seeking their views on the petition. Could I just suggest that we add to that, seeking their views on the petition, both in respect to transport projects in general and specifically on the share of all roundabouts? I appreciate that, but I would need to take advice on whether, as a petition committee, we can deal with very individual, very focused projects. It might be in the context of that. We would ask the minister about that project, but we can check that one out in the klats. I'm sure that we'll be happy to give us advice. Angus? Yes, thanks, convener. Given the nature of the petition, we should also contact the environmental link, which is the umbrella body for a number of NGOs and perhaps WWF as well, because I know that they have strong, very strong views with regard to the current situation. Okay. I think that those are a number of issues that we can highlight in your direct question about whether we can seek views on the specific as well as in general. We'll certainly come back to that. I thank you very much for your attendance and I suspend the meeting until I witness to leave the table. To members, we have a very significant amount of business still to get through. I'm not quite sure that we're going to get through it all. We want to make sure that all of the petitions here are treated with respect and that we have enough time to reflect on them in a serious way. It may be an interdresser balance between dealing with the petition in a serious way and the pressures of time that there are some of those petitions that we won't reach, but I hope that the petitioners will understand that. That is because we want to make sure that the petitions are treated with respect. I can rattle through this in 15 minutes, but I think that that is disrespectful to the petitioners and to the exeterations of the committee. We'll see how it goes, but we have to finish at 22. My expectation is that we may not reach particular petitions, but they will obviously be rescheduled as soon as we return. We're always getting the balance between getting through the business and making sure that even taking evidence that we give the petition sufficient time. We'll see how we progress. We're now moving to the next petition in the agenda, which is petition 1592 by Shaheen Mcaid. I apologise on group B strip information and testing. Members will recall that the UK national screening committee's review of the latest evidence and screening for group B strip was published in March 2017. It has not recommended introducing a national screening programme for this disease. At our last consideration of this petition, we agreed to write to the Scottish Government seeking its view in this decision. It explains that the national institute of health research has been asked to commission a UK-wide clinical trial to compare universal screening for group B strip against usual risk-based care. The Scottish Government hopes that this work will commence as soon as practicable. The Scottish Government also noted that the UK Government chief scientific advisor held two research workshops last year to bring together a broad range of experts on group B strip from across the UK. It is intended that an outcome paper will be published following these meetings, outlining steps that are intended to aid in reducing the harm caused by group B strip. We have not had any written submissions through the petitioner, although she has been invited to do so. Nevertheless, I think that we can conclude from this that the Scottish Government and UK Government are taking forward measures that will, to be hoped, address the issues raised by the petitioner. I wonder if members have any comments or suggestions on action that we can take. Angus? I can ask the convener how long the clerks have been waiting for a response from the petitioner. I think that it is from the beginning. I think that we very much appreciate the petitioner submitting the petition, given the information, but she has not chosen to respond further. I think that is also within her entitlement to do so. Absolutely. I congratulate the petitioner for making sure that the issue was on the radar. Given your earlier comments, convener, I would be minded to close the petition and our standing orders rule 15.7, given that the UK National Screening Committee has reviewed the latest evidence earlier this year. It does not recommend screening for group B Streptococcus, but it has asked the National Institute of Health Research to commission a UK-wide clinical trial to compare universal screening for GBS against usual risk-based care. What would be the view of the rest of the committee? Progress has been made, and I think that we have gone as far as we can with it. Of course, there is always the option for somebody to bring back further petitioners to feel if it is in progress. We are agreeing to close the petition as outlined by Angus, but I think that we would want to reiterate our thanks to the petitioner for the courage that she demonstrated in bringing the petition and giving her personal testimony to the committee, which, understandably, is not easy. However, I think that that has shone a light on a very important issue, and it is clear that, at the Government level, there is an awareness of that. If we can then move on to the next petition, which is petition 1621 on steps as awareness diagnosis and treatment lodged by James Robertson. Members will recall that, at our last consideration, we invited the Scottish Government to respond to questions raised by the petitioner with regard to on-going work and measurements training programmes and mapping. The Scottish Government has advised that the work in sepsis awareness and management continues within local boards as part of the deteriorating patients pathway. That work is monitored through national standard performance indicators and is supported by the Scottish patient safety programme team. The Scottish Government advises that training programmes that incorporate sepsis are at foundation year 1, where doctors undertake mandatory training sessions. It notes that specific sepsis scenarios are included as a mandatory component for all doctors in the advanced life support course and advises that nurses and other healthcare staff are able to access that course. It adds, however, that while those courses are delivered consistent across the entire Scottish healthcare system with the same mandatory components, there is no formal mapping process. The petitioner acknowledges the detail provided by the Scottish Government but refers to his own personal experience to question the effectiveness of the training. He also notes a recent resolution by the World Health Organization urging all Governments to raise awareness among the public of the symptoms of sepsis. He suggests that the Scottish Government might act in this by launching a national public awareness campaign to be led by NHS Scotland. Members will recall that in its submission in March the Scottish Government indicated that it would be supportive of any public-facing campaign, which it suggests that it could be done through its endorsement of existing work being undertaken by charitable organisations such as the Fiona Elizabeth Agnew trust and by encouraging individual boards to work collaboratively. I wonder whether members have any comments or suggestions. My own view for what it is worth is that we should be asking the Scottish Government if they would consider their own public awareness campaign given the resource of the NHS compared with a small voluntary organisation. I think that there is no doubt that the question of public awareness is a really big issue. I would also be quite interested in understanding on going to the CPD process within the health board itself. That seems to be a recurring theme that has come up across a multitude of disciplines within the NHS. That sort of CPD process seems to be an issue. I will continue awareness training amongst the clinicians. I think that that would be a sensible course of action, particularly given the recent resolution by the World Health Organization to launch a global public awareness campaign on sepsis. We are going to get the Scottish Government's views on a Scottish one. I am interested in Mr Robertson as a constituent of mine. I agree with what we are planning to do. It is important that there is a Scottish-wide awareness campaign. Mr Robertson thinks that we are doing less here than NHS England is doing. In view of the less than a month ago, the WHO launched the global campaign. It is imperative that we… He also highlights his opinion. He is unconvinced of the effectiveness of the training at the moment because it is not so long since his wife died in hospital after 17 days of the condition. We want to contact the Scottish Government to ask that it does launch a national public awareness campaign. We would be interested to know why it would not want to do that, given the importance of it and the World Health Organization point. We would also like to thank the petitioner for pursuing the issue, which must still be very difficult for him because he has such a personal connection and awareness of the direct impact of it on his own and his family's life. If that is agreed, we can then move on to petition 1623 on unelected church appointees at local authority education committees. The petition is by Spencer Fould days on behalf of the Scottish Secular Society. The Scottish Government has replied to our questions from our earlier previous consideration and has confirmed that it will carry out an equality impact assessment on any policy changes made through its education governance review. It adds that it will address separately any proposals within the petition that are not addressed through its governance review. The Scottish Government has published information on the next steps in its education governance review. That was debated by the Parliament yesterday afternoon. The petitioner welcomes the commitment and clarification provided by the Scottish Government. I wonder if members have any comments or suggestions on how we might take that forward. Angus? I think that the petition looks to or seems to have done its job, given that the Scottish Government has given a commitment to consider the issues raised in the petition as part of the education governance review. It has confirmed that it will carry out an equality impact assessment on any policy changes made through that review. I would move to close the petition understanding orders rule 15.7. I would not close the petition. I think that we need to take the point about let's look at it, let's look at the education reviews, next step, documents, etc., and how it pertains to the petition. I think that we should keep it open until such times as we have considered that as a committee. The other point that I would make is that the education governance review is very, very massive. It is a big, big and wide-ranging document and review. There is a very small part of it. We have a choice. We can close it, and the petitioners can come back if they are unsatisfied with what the Scottish Government does in relation to the equality impact assessment, or we can do it as more as we suggest and keep it open. I do not know whether other members have a view. Either way, it is not closing in the opportunity for the member to bring it back. I am not sure what could be gained by it until we know whether the petitioners are satisfied with the changes in the governance review. I am being coffee and on here. I am inclined to close, I have to be honest, given that the petitioner has the option to come back again. I think that it is always a fine balance and I think that this question of when we close a petition and not is shaped the history of the petition committee itself. I think that we recognise the issues. The Scottish Government has said that it is going to address it. I think that we would then have the opportunity to repotition if they are unhappy with what the Scottish Government has done when this question is open. It may also be that we could not prefer the petition to the education committee but flag up to the education committee who will be scrutinising the response to the Government. This has been a particular issue that has been highlighted and I ask them to at least ensure that it is part of their scrutiny. Would that cover it? I certainly do not think that we should close it. I must stand by my original set of my experience on the education committees over in the councils. I am sorry that I did not agree with the rest, but I think that yes, it should be flagged up with the education committee, but I stand where I stand. That is helpful. On balance, across the committee, we do not agree with you. We understand the point that you are making, but I am wondering if the general view or the majority of views that we do close the petition angus. I was just going to say that I have also served on education committees at a local authority level. I am pleased to see that the Scottish Government has given the commitment to consider the issues raised, so I am still minded to close the petition. If you want to push it, we will just have a vote for the purpose of recording any more. Sorry, I do stand by what I say. You take that as you wish. In that case, I am moving that the petition is closed on the basis of what we have said with reassurance that the education committee would have flagged up on the issue, and the petition might be able to return to a later stage if it is unsatisfied with the Scottish Council. You can see those in favour of that proposal. That is carried. You have abstained 3, 1 and offensit. No, that is entirely within your rights to do so. I think that that is, obviously, we recognise that there are important issues there, and we would also want to thank the petitioner for bringing in this question to the attention of the Parliament and to the Government. If we can move on to petition 1626 on the regulation of bus services, the next petition is by Pat Rafferty on behalf of Unite Scotland, petition 1626 on the regulation of bus services. The Scottish Government has provided the clarification that we sought following our previous consideration of this petition and has advised that improved partnership working and franchising will be elements of the full consultation on the proposed Transport Bill. We have not received a response from the petitioners, but we can ask members if they have any comments or suggestions for action. Again, it would be interesting to find from the Scottish Government when the time scale for consultation on the proposed Transport Bill and perhaps ask them at the earliest opportunity to engage with the petitioner. I would agree, convener. I think that we are all keen to see the Transport Bill going through its Parliament stages as soon as possible or sooner rather than later. Clearly, getting an indicative timescale from the Scottish Government would be of enormous help. It would be a commitment to address the issues that have been flagged up, particularly around the provision of bus services across the country, which was raised with us. I agree, convener, that we are right to the Scottish Government seeking an indicative timetable for its full consultation on the proposed Transport Bill and to ask that the Government engage with the petitioners, as Brian has already said. Is there anybody else? It may be that we have just come back to the petitioner and it may be that they have been caught up with so many other different things that have not been able to respond. If we can then move on to petition 1629, MRI scans for ocular melanoma sufferers in Scotland. The next petition is petition 1629 on MRI scans for ocular melanoma sufferers in Scotland, lodged by Jennifer Lewis. We have received submissions from the chief medical officer and the petitioner. The chief medical officer has provided her views on the action called for in the petition, essentially supporting the Scottish Government's views set out in its submission from March, in that the specialist Scottish ophthalmic oncology service follows national guidelines, which were accredited by NICE. She explains that it is her understanding that the guidelines will be reviewed in December 2019, but that an intermediate review would be carried out if any new evidence becomes available before then. The petitioner's submission argues that new evidence has already been presented both during the course of her evidence at the committee in 2 February and also in her submission of 12 April. Her submission is supported by Ian Galloway, who members will recall presented evidence to us alongside the petitioner in February. He notes that in the rest of the UK, if a patient requires an MRI scan, they are able to get it, even if the centre does not offer that facility for first-line surveillance. The petitioner and Ian Galloway also queries information provided by the chief medical officer with regard to research being undertaken on the use of ultrasound for first-line surveillance. They regard that as futile and a backward step when ultrasound is already known to be inferior to MRI. In addition, they note that it could take up to two years for the research to gather sufficient, statistically significant data due to the small number of patients and compare it to the cost implications of the time and resources spent on this research against the additional cost of providing MRI scans. The chief medical officer refers in her submission to a recent commissioning for quality and innovation meeting in which it was agreed that a UK-wide group would be formed to develop UK-wide guidance and recommendations on surveillance. Ian Galloway indicates that he would wish to understand more about the effect that any UK-wide group could have and would welcome sight of the minutes to get a fuller picture. For her part, the petitioner regards the formation of a UK-wide group as, quote, a potential step in the right direction. Can I invite any comments or suggestions from members? I think that we have to probe it further because clearly there are still a lot of unanswered questions from the response from the chief medical officer. We have to ask the question about flexibility, why some UK centres offer this and will provide MRI scans to patients on request. We need a timescale for the formation of the UK-wide group, which is going to undertake the work. The various other points raised by the petitioner, we need to probe a wee bit further and get some more answers to. I am concerned about the chief medical officer's response to the petitioner saying that he goes on to say, I can only hope that Gartnavel will be proactive. That is not strong enough. That is the severest concerning to me. Therefore, I think that we have something more positive to say about that. I think that writing it nice is going to be a productive way forward as well. We need to get them to button down this. It is not satisfactory the way that it is. Is that agreed? I recall from the petition that we found evidence compelling. The MRI scans help diagnosis and help the scale of the problem. It is not clear why that would be something that would not routinely be offered in Scotland if it has been offered elsewhere. The points around new evidence and so on are made well by the petitioner. If that is agreed, the petition will come back to us when we have that information. If we can then move on. The next petition on the agenda is petition 1630 by Fiona Webb on nursery funding for three-year-olds. Members will recall that our last consideration of the petition, we asked the Scottish Government for an update on its response to the consultation and its plans to expand early learning and response to the child care provision in Scotland. That includes the commitment to increase the current entitlement of free early learning and childcare entitlement to 1,140 hours. Members will see from the clerk's note that the issue of parents' ability to access the full entitlement for their children was raised when the minister made his policy statement. The minister noted that the Scottish Government considers that the current arrangement provides sufficient flexibility to local authorities to provide the entitlement to address the issue. The petitioner has been invited to comment on the Scottish Government's response, but the submission has not been received. Do members have any suggestions or comments on how we might take this forward? The petition on this particular topic is a very interesting one in my part. I think that there is a lot of to-ing flowing around this one. The Government's position has been fairly well stated, and I do not think that it is of mind to move at this current juncture. When I wonder, therefore, without a follow-up submission from the petitioner, whatever way we feel on this particular topic, whether it is viable to keep the petition open, even though, to me, it is a really fundamental issue. I think that it is a very live issue here, and people are watching closely the ability of the Scottish Government to implement its childcare strategy. That, again, as I know as a member of the education committee, we have looked at the planning process around that, and that will be something of no doubt that other committees of the Parliament will be looking at. It is a kind of issue that will secure parliamentary scrutiny, whether it specifically deals with the issue around the third birthday question. That will obviously be seen. The Government has replied saying that local authorities now have the flexibility to sit within their discussion to offer entitlement at an earlier stage. Obviously, there will be a watchful eye-kept in it all, but I do not think that that is as far as we can go with this petition. I would suggest closing it. Are we agreeing that we would close petition on the basis that the Scottish Government has published an action plan for the expansion of early learning childcare in Scotland, and has made a commitment to publish an evaluation report of the expansion by the end of 2017? Again, there will be an opportunity for the petitioner to revisit this if they feel that that is not being addressed. Is that agreed then? So, we are agreeing to close the petition. I again thank the petitioner for bringing the petition and highlighting an issue that is clearly of concern and has been an issue that has been addressed in Parliament, not just in the Petitions Committee itself. If we can then move on. The next item in the agenda is petition 1632 by Amanda MacDonald in concessionary transport for carers. Members will recall at our last meeting we agreed to seek the view of a number of stakeholders. The carers organisations that responded agreed with the petitioner that many carers face financial difficulties in affording transportation. They have provided figures to the Scottish Government for what they estimate this policy would cost. The Scottish Government explained that the Carers Scotland Act 2016 will place a duty in local authorities to support, quote, the identified needs of carers who meet local eligibility criteria. The relevant provisions of the act will come into force on 1 April 2018, also aligned a number of measures that it has taken recently to provide additional support to carers. COSLA explained that local authorities address carers needs in a targeted way to assist those in the greatest need. COSLA questioned whether the scheme proposed by the petition would be affordable or, quote, represent the most effective way to invest resources to improve outcomes for carers in the greatest need. Members will recall that we agreed to meet informally with the petitioner. Arrangements were taken forward for this meeting, but they had to be cancelled. We were sorry not to have the opportunity, but the petitioner has provided a written submission outlining our views in more detail and responding to the submissions received from stakeholders. Ms MacDonald explained that young carers are included in those who save the Government an average of £132 billion per year, however, they are not eligible for carers allowance. Ms MacDonald also noted that many carers do not live with the person they care for, which means that their care and related transport costs are not always covered by the companion card. I wonder if members have any comments or suggestions on how we might take the petition forward? I mentioned last time that I was struck when I attended in a wee day for young carers struck by a round-table discussion that they got to question MSPs and boy did they. I was struck by some of the personal and anecdotal evidence of some of the issues that they face. A lot of it is around transport, even paying for a bus fare to go downtown to pick up a prescription to come back. It seems to me that there is an obvious solution here, which is raised by the petitioner. I am loath to let this one go, I have to say. You can see the argument around cost, you can understand the position of the Scottish Government's position, but the argument put by the petitioner around the savings to the public purse from the support from carers is pretty compelling as well. If we are not going to close it, how are we going to take it forward? How useful can we take forward? Who is going to have an argument about costings? Is there something specific that we would be seeking evidence on that would help in form of view? I was really hoping that you would come up with the answer, convener. Again, based on experience at chairing the IJB in Argymbut, this is very much a healthcare and social care partnership. Their budget is accordingly devolved to that. I think that this is something that has to be addressed with local authorities. I was certainly saying that if we close the petition as it stands at the moment, I do not think that we are closing off the actions of what could happen. The IJBs have only been operational since the first of April this year, and they are getting their act together and I put it that way. Obviously, it is something that I know that is in consideration bearing in mind what the young carers are saving, the Government nationally as well as local authorities. I think that we just need to give the local authorities the space to try and implement it, and then maybe it gets revisited by the petitioner again. To the fact that we will be having the Carers Scotland acts being enforced by April next year, and that will throw a new dimension on it, and they will be dutying the local authorities to support the needs of carers who meet certain criteria. I think that it is on-going, but I think that we should keep it open from now until next year. I am not sure what we could achieve. I agree. Clearly, the onus is on local authorities, so I would agree with Morris and Rona. Reluctantly, we should perhaps close the petition, but at the same time monitor how local authorities are. If I were a devil's advocate, I would not argue that it might be the Scottish Government's job. If we have a national concessionary bus scheme, the way in which we would be the responsibility of the Scottish Government would be for them to extend the criteria to carers. There is a natural infrastructure there. That question is clearly one that the Scottish Government has pushed back on, but I think that the judgment of the committee is whether we let the petition go in the knowledge that, as the carers legislation is implemented, there is a question round whether the issue is addressed. My sense is that both the Scottish Government and the local government have said that they could not afford it, so they have made it. They have taken a view on the petition. The question is whether we want to push that further, or is there a place for it? Is there something that we could host that would be another kind of round table type thing that we might have addressed this, or would that be taken too far in terms of is it so specific an issue that it wouldn't be that broad-based view that we would be looking for? The other way would be to bring Cosner back to the table here and get a sort of viewpoint bearing in mind that it's going to have to come out of the budget, so the local authorities, that's the issue. My argument to you is that the other option for that is that because the bill says that you can have locally determined needs, there is nothing to stop separately the Scottish Government deciding that they are going to expand the concession travel scheme to carers. Those two things don't preclude each other, but we know realistically neither Cosler nor the Scottish Government are going to argue for that on the grounds of cost. I agree, I think that it's a national strategy, but at the end of the day the money that has to pay for that comes from the local authorities, that's my point, so there's a crossover between the two national government and local authority. Well, some of it is, but the national concession scheme is funded through the Scottish Government budgets. Right, to some it's the idea, okay. Talk to me to stand still. I mean, of next year, I mean, it might not, you know, it could be revisited in the sense that it would be nice to get an indication of how much it would cost to implement this. Yeah, that's a fair point. We don't have a ballpark figure from any of Cosler or the Scottish Government, so it would be good to get that and see if it is feasible. Can we maybe, it would be useful also to ask local authorities realistically when they say there's an issue of cost. Are any of them contemplating this as part of the local provision for carers and we could do that. Okay, so we will continue the petition to establish costs. Okay, if we can then move forward. The next petition is petition 168 by Sean Clarkin on local housing allowance bedroom tax 2. We've received submissions from the Association of Local Authorities Chief Housing Officers, the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations and the Scottish Government. The Scottish Government notes that the petition reflects concerns among stakeholders of the impact of this measure. It says that it shares these concerns and would welcome parliamentary discussion of the issues, but that it would have first required full details from the DWP of how the policy will be implemented. Members will recall that we asked the Scottish Government for an indication of the extent and limitation of powers available to it within the terms of broader UK policy. The Scottish Government repeats that it is unable to provide a detailed assessment of options available to it until its clarity on UK Government policy. It adds that this extends to any consideration of funding arrangements and that ministers intend to raise these concerns directly with the UK Government. The Scottish Government was able to provide an update on the research being undertaken in partnership with the Chartered Institute of Housing, attaching the interim report to its submission. That report identifies a number of potential challenges. Those are summarised in paragraph 8 of the paper. The submission from ALCO and the SFHA support the action called for in the petition and provide some examples of the challenges that may be faced due to additional complexity of the measure. Both submissions identify the measure as more complex than the so-called bedroom tax, making it far more difficult for the Scottish Government to mitigate the impact. The petitioner considers that the submissions demonstrate the concerns that exist about the policy and make it clear about the difficulties in mitigating the impact. He repeats his call for a parliamentary debate on the issue, and I wonder if members have any comments or suggestions. I am now certainly very struck by the response from housing organisations in particular. The impact for their tenants, and the impact on particular groups, including single young men, was a particular issue. I am a bit disturbed at the lack of detail that they have. Even if we were to ask the Scottish Government to consider mitigating the policy, then they do not have the detail with which they can do that. The resources are perhaps convenient. How far do we go to mitigate the impacts? There is no bottomless pit to get the money. I think that it would be useful to find out when the Scottish Government is going to raise the issue on funding arrangements with the UK Government to tease more detail out on all that and whether erotic plans to have a parliamentary debate. We have already scheduled two requests for debates from earlier business. It is something that we could certainly look at, although I do not think that at this stage we will get enough information for that. I do not know whether the Social Security Committee is looking at this, whether the local government committee and with housing is looking at it. I think that we would want to be flagging up to the relevant subject committees and asking them whether they have got this. Partly because, as we see from the evidence, it is both a substantial issue, but it is quite a technical issue. For organisations such as SFHA and ALCO to be highlighting that, we suggest that they are working on it, but whether it is worked as we threw it into the parliamentary process, we would not be sure. I fully expect that this would end up with a parliamentary debate. I think that it would be interesting to check with the subject committees who are there, exploring this. I do not know whether there are other issues that we could take forward at this stage. Brian Whittle? I am just going to say that I think that further other committees are gathering evidence as well. I would prefer to gather that evidence together, because, as you say, it is quite a complex issue. I suggest that we also write directly to the DWP asking them where they are in the process, what their timescales are for the details and whether they have done an assessment of the impact of their own policy. If they do not write directly, the clerks will give us advice on whether we write to the minister or the department, but that is something that we could take forward. My sense is that we do not want to let the petition go to the relevant subject committee at this stage. We would still want to get further information about how that is. Now, it may be that, in the world of uncertainty that we are living in, this might be one of the things that has fallen off the agenda at the UK level, which I think that most of us would welcome. Equally, it might be something that is simply not a focus on it, but it is being pursued at a departmental level. We want to be aware of that as well. I think that this committee should reserve the right for the time being to initiate a chamber debate if there is no willingness from the Scottish Government to initiate a debate, which I hope there is. If not, we should keep that on the agenda. Our option for a parliamentary debate would be informed by the further information that we have. I do not think that we would drive a parliamentary debate ahead of that information, but I certainly think that, in illuminating the question to the other committees, we are perhaps creating a trigger for them to be asking those kinds of questions. We are writing to the Scottish Government, highlighting it to the relevant subject committees and we are going to contact the DWP directly on what they have done. If there are other housing organisations who have an interest in this and respond to the petition, we would find that very welcome, but I think that it is an issue that, again, I appreciate that the fact that the petitioner has brought this petition forward, because it is one of those issues that, because of its technicalities, could have ended up not being something that people were aware of. If that is agreed, can we move on to our final petition? For consideration this morning, petition 1643 was lodged by Jack Douglas on behalf of NUS Scotland on introducing individual risk-based blood donation in Scotland. The petition calls for a change to the regulations to prevent people from within the LGBT community from donating blood and to move to an evidence-based system that examines people on their individual risk to provide blood. Members of copies of the submissions received from the Scottish National Blood Service. I will just start at the beginning of petition 1643, since we had to suspend it. The final petition for consideration this morning is petition 1643, lodged by Jack Douglas on behalf of NUS Scotland on introducing individual risk-based blood donation in Scotland. The petition calls for a change to the regulations that prevent people from within the LGBT community from donating blood and to move to an evidence-based system that examines people on their individual risk to provide blood. Members of copies of the submissions received from the Scottish Government, the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service, Terence Higgins Trust, HIV Scotland and the Equality Network. The Minister for Public Health and Sport says that the Scottish Government is very much open to revising the deferral criteria for men who have sex with men and other categories of donors and is sympathetic to argument that a 12-month deferral period may no longer be necessary for some groups of potential donors, given the improvements in blood screening tests. The stakeholder submissions also indicate support for revision of the current rules in deferrals and speculating potential recommendations coming out of the review conducted by the donor selection working group of the advisory committee on the safety of blood tissue and organs. The SNBTS submission indicates understanding that the working group was due to report earlier this month with subsequent recommendations to made relevant ministers in health departments of the devolved administrations. It may assist our consideration of the petition if we can get some confirmation of that. Each of the submissions also expressed support for the suggestion of a move to an individual risk-based system considering that it could eliminate discrimination and improve confidence in the system. SNBTS supports the concept in principle but suggests that a lack of evidence interpretation of individual risk assessment and time and resource constraints have an impact on the feasibility of such a move. It adds that an online confidential donor selection portal, as suggested by the petitioners during evidence to the committee, would be possible to implement but would have to be scoped, designed and constructed. I wonder if members have any comments or suggestions on what action we might take. I had a member's debate on this subject. We are at the stage now where we need to seek an update on what has been going on, an update from the Government and from SABTO on the status of the review being undertaken by the donor selection working group. There is a cross-party group in Westminster meeting next month. It is time to regroup and have an update. Given the constraints of time, I assume that the committee agrees with that. We seek an update and we can proceed with the issues from there. In conclusion, I thank all the members of the committee and the committee and the official report. I thank everyone who supports the committee for everything that all their help and support over the past year. I think that we can be proud of the work that we have done, the number of petitions that we have dealt with and the opportunity that we have afforded petitioners to raise a whole range of issues with us. I thank everyone. I should also thank Spice. We do not have a particular role in this committee that there may be more burden done by others. Finally, I thank Maurice Corry. I am very sorry to hear that he is leaving the committee, but it has been a pleasure working with you, Maurice. We wish you well in your new committee, and we can always invite you back when you are coming to support individual petitions. We look forward to working with your colleague when she becomes a member of the committee. I wish everybody all the best for the summer. I look forward to seeing you in September. We will close the meeting.