 If I can call meeting to order and welcome you to this meeting of the Public Petitions Committee, I should indicate that Brian Whittle has given his apologies and that his substitute Edward Mountain is here in his place, so welcome. We're also hoping, expecting that Neil Findlay MSP may be joining us for this item later on. The first adjoined item then is a continued petition on 1.635 in the review of section 11 of the Children's Scotland Act 1995. This is a round-table evidence session on 1.635, which calls for a review of section 11 on the Children's Scotland Act 1995. We are joined this morning by five witnesses, so I welcome to the meeting Stuart Valentine of Leadership Scotland, Ian Maxwell of Families Need Fathers, Pauline McIntyre from Children and Young Peoples Commissioner Scotland, Dr Marcia Scott of Scots Women's Aid and Varema Gowyn from Assist. The purpose of holding an evidence session in this format is to allow for a discussion of issues between all of the participants. However, in the interests of managing the meeting and making sure that everyone gets to contribute, I would ask all the participants to indicate to me if they wish to say something. To ensure that we make the most of our time this morning, we won't have any opening statements, but we will have copies of the written submissions that we have received on the petition. Once we have concluded our questions, ministers and members will have a discussion to agree our next action on the petition, so I would be grateful if witnesses could bear with us during that discussion. I will kick off with the opening question. As I say, this is an attempt to try and have a dialogue and a conversation rather than a more formal setting on an issue that the committee was quite struck by with something that we had not been aware of in terms of contact centres and the points that the petitioner had made to us. It is quite useful to explore those questions with you. There are a number of issues to discuss this morning, one of which is external regulation of child contact centres. Before we get to that subject, I would like to start by asking about the nature of cases in which contact centres are involved. Relationship Scotland states in its submission that there has been a quote, an increasing complexity of cases seen over recent years, so I wonder if I could ask Stuart to start us off by outlining a bit about the type of cases and their associated complexities after which I will open up a discussion to other participants. Relationship Scotland operates 46 child contact centres across the country, and each year around about 2,000 children are supported to see their non-resident parent through our contact centres. It is fair to say that, over recent years, the cases that have come to us have got far more complex issues attached to them. The families who see us now increasingly have issues around drug and alcohol dependence, domestic abuse is clearly a factor in terms of the cases that come to us. In general terms, it would appear that the statutory organisations such as social work, the NHS and others are less able to deal with many of the issues that have been faced by families in Scotland, and many more of those issues have been passed over to agencies such as Relationship Scotland and others to try to deal with. In terms of the cases that come to child contact centres, the starting point is a relationship breakdown. There has been a breakdown of the relationship between the two parties, the mum and the dad, and they have not been able to resolve the future arrangements for seeing their children. 70 per cent of the cases that come to child contact centres will have been referred either by the courts or by solicitors. The starting point for the cases that come to us are highly conflictual situations with a whole range of issues. 10 per cent of the cases that come to us come for what is called supervised child contact, which means that that would be one family at a time. That would be supervised by two trained members of staff of Relationship Scotland, and the whole contact is observed very carefully within the room. Should anything happen during that contact, for example, if it was a dad who was the non-resident parent, if they asked any questions about the mum, those types of conversations would be stopped straight away. If anything inappropriate was happening during a supervised contact, our staff would intervene straight away. In those cases for supervised contact, there would be reports that would be written for the court, which would be factual accounts of how the child contact session progressed and our staff would be well trained and well versed in terms of reporting back. It is clear across the country that those situations are very difficult in the sense to manage. Our role in Relationship Scotland is to be impartial. We try to support the resident parent and the non-resident parent. Very often, the resident parent is the mum, but not always. Roughly 10 per cent of cases would be the other way around, so it is not always the case that the non-resident parent is the dad with many cases. The safety and the welfare of children is Relationship Scotland's first priority. We clearly have referrals coming to us from a variety of places. Our role in particular is to make a risk assessment in each and every case as to whether it is safe for that contact to go ahead. What I can say is to the best of my knowledge, no child in the 25 years that we've been running child contact centres has ever been physically harmed by a parent in our child contact centres. We run our centres very safely and very carefully and people are appropriately trained. Although there is clearly a debate to be had about whether it is right for contact to go ahead or not, when contact does go ahead in our centres, we do it in a safe manner for all concerned. Can I ask you about the suggestion that you are making? Because the formal agencies are under pressure, there are families coming to you now that would not have come to you in the past that would have had a more formal supervised system. Does that mean that there are young people and families coming to you that it is basically inappropriate for them to come to you? There is always a judgment to be made about the appropriateness of where someone is coming to us. What we do know as people are coming to us, for example, as I mentioned, if you take drug and alcohol issues as a starting point, where you would have hoped that there would be support in place for those types of issues that they are facing already, and we are finding that those supports are not in place and that there are additional complexities to the contact arrangements that are happening. You have got absolute authority to say that that is not an appropriate case to come to us. We do. Although the courts can refer cases to Relationship Scotland, we make an independent judgment about whether or not we consider it safe for that contact to go ahead. We would not try to replicate the decision or revisit the decision of the court about whether contact should happen, but the judgment that we would make is that particular contact is safe to happen in our child contact centres, and if it is not, we do not go ahead with it. It would be fair to say that there is not a massive number of cases that we would not go ahead with in terms of making the judgment on it, but on a regular basis we do not take referrals from the court because in our judgment they would not be right and would not be safe for that contact to go ahead. From our experience with family fathers, we come across a lot of fathers who are asked to use the contact centre as part of an interim order done by the court. One of the things that is happening here is that when the court has a child welfare hearing, it does not have a lot of firm evidence in front of it, but the court is keen to maintain the contact between the parent and the child. A number of the referrals by court to contact centres are not because of any of the issues that Stuart has mentioned, the drug, alcohol, domestic violence. They are simply because the court does not know the full situation. They have not had a specialist report, but they want to maintain and keep the contact running. We often get asked by fathers, I have been living with my children for a long time. Since I left the home, I have not seen them. I have gone to the court and the court has said that you have to see them in a contact centre. We say to them, do it because it is a chance to resume the contact with your children. It also gives safety for both parents and the child because there will be trained people there who will observe what is happening. Avoid some of the conflicts that often happen at handovers. Handovers between separated parents when there is a high degree of tension can be difficult points, but the contact centre can avoid that by having the children handed over in the contact centre and the parents do not actually meet themselves. Part of the role of contact centres is purely for to allow the court to make a safe decision but to use the supervised contact as a means of ensuring that there are no risks. Obviously, there are many where the court is concerned about domestic violence or drug or alcohol, and that is a separate issue. To give a full picture of the type of people using contact centres, it is a very wide range. It can be almost anybody if they are going to court and the court does not have firm evidence that wants to make a decision of contact. Yes, just a couple of things that I would hope would help frame the conversation today, especially in response to the specific circumstances around the petitioner's case, which is, I think, it's really unhelpful to talk about contact as a generic event. It's unhelpful to talk about relationship breakdown as if it's domestic abuse and that what we really hear, I think, are focusing on is something that's been flagged up by Scottish Women's Aid for at least 10 years, joint work with the Children's Commission on it over the last three years, which is contact in the context of domestic abuse. The use of contact centres out with that is, I think, a very different discussion. In this case, getting engaged in a pro and con about contact ordered out with domestic abuse is not terribly helpful because it really is a separate event. The notion of impartiality is a misnomer in the context of domestic abuse unless we completely ignore the rights of children in the context of harm. I guess I would encourage us all to be thinking about this as not, you know, contact generically but as contact in the context of domestic abuse. We have libraries of evidence that that does, can and does, do harm to children when it's not managed appropriately and sometimes it can't be managed appropriately and safely often for both mother and child. We've had academic research in Scotland and the UK for, since the 1990s, that the orders of, that contact orders we're putting women and children in danger, in real danger. I mean, I'm not minimizing, I do not wish to minimize it but also every day in Scotland that children were being harmed, not by ill-intentioned people in any part of the system except possibly abusers but I think it's really, really, if we're going to do something about this problem we have to be really clear about what it is and it is about the presumption in the system to award contact when it is unclear that that is safe and I think it would be, we would so welcome the petitions committee's help around getting some traction for this very specific discussion because, you know, we've been talking about it now for 10 years. Vari will tell you that, you know, Emma's story, as horrific as it is, is replicated in our caseloads every week and the stories are, you know, we have had very little traction in the system and we would really ask that instead of engaging in sort of academic conversations about contact in general, we look at what can urgently be done and we do have a few suggestions for that. I don't know if this is the time for that and I'm willing to hold off on that but it is really important, I think, here to be focusing on the rights of the child in the context of domestic abuse. I would agree that there are two totally different situations where you've got contact in general, where relationships have broken down and contact where there's been domestic abuse. It's two totally, totally separate things and what I want to do is highlight the situation of clients of ours that have experienced really dreadful experiences throughout the separation and on-going management of all of this. I want to highlight here those stress here that not all contact centres are run by Relationship Scotland. The issue is anybody can set up an act as a contact centre. Just set up a website, send out mailings to courts, tell people what they're supplying and that's them a contact centre. We've got no way of regulation. 90% following what Stuart said, 90% is supported contact and there is no idea then whether the non-resident parent is questioning the child or not. In fact, I was contacted this morning on the way here by someone who said that the contact centre, which is not one of Relationship Scotland, had refused to allow someone to accompany her to the centre, which is an action that she had taken in order to feel safe going in and out. There are all sorts of decisions and issues that are arising, but the main point is that we need to make sure that children are safe and are not put under pressure by non-resident parents about what the resident parent has been doing, who they've been seeing. We want to make sure that risk assessments take place and really we need a real shake-up of the system. Like Masha, let's look for solutions, but let's separate out the situation of contact centres, which do a really valuable job where there's not domestic abuse, but where there is domestic abuse in complex situations, we need a radical change. Can I just say that in terms of individual petition, just to be careful about anything that we might say about the individual circumstance of the petitioner, but the general points I've come from her petition are really, I've given this an important focus and I absolutely hear a lot of the evidence that we've been given specifically about the issue around where there is domestic abuse, but I think that we're also interested in getting a picture of how contact centres work and how there's a general issue around security within contact centres and then having particular process for dealing with where there is domestic abuse and whether, in fact, it's appropriate at all in those cases for the kind of provision that you're giving, but you wanted to come in? Yeah, just briefly to support and agree with Marta and Barry, I think the importance of focusing this discussion around the particular issue of domestic abuse and contact is vital. Relationship Scotland works and we've had many conferences and presentations alongside Scottish Women's Aid and others. One of the key developments that we would like to see would be the development of specialist risk assessments that the court can order before making a decision on contact. I think that it's a significant gap in the process. They have started on a very small scale, there's been four specialist risk assessments done by something called Katrina Grant. They have been well received by the sheriffs who have been involved in that and I think that it's an important gap that's a necessity, I believe, in those cases to have those specialist risk assessments. I agree with Marta, I think that the conversation is best focused, of course, on the other issues as well, but to have that focus on domestic abuse and contact, I think, is really important. Very briefly, in terms of the number of child contact centres in Scotland, 46 come under the banner of Relationship Scotland and to our knowledge, there's three independent child contact centres that currently aren't under the banner of Relationship Scotland. Do you think you could set one up? Yes, you can. Someone who contacted me has been in touch with me recently. What would stop them? There's nothing to stop anyone setting up a contact centre. This particular individual has tried to find out details of the management of the centre, et cetera, and it's been very difficult. I checked it out as well. I couldn't find easily details, so people are left in limbo. To take it back slightly, when court reports, child welfare reports, are written, they're written by people who may not have a knowledge and understanding of the dynamics and risk of domestic abuse anyway. Courts are putting the position of having to make decisions when they may not have appropriate reports in front of them. Not all sheriffs have training in domestic abuse. It is not mandatory. There's gaps in the system all the way through before it even gets to contact centres. When it does get there, the issue then is how is it regulated. People think that when they hear that it will be in a contact centre, people immediately think that it will be safe. However, as Stuart points out, only 10 per cent are supervised. While I agree that the supervised handover is very helpful, if there's not someone in the room and there's been domestic abuse, we don't know what's been said. I just wanted to thank the petitioner for raising the issues that she has in her petition, because I think this is a significant children's rights issue, particularly the issue of children who are affected by domestic abuse and the issue of disputed contact. In terms of some of the rights that it does engage, it engages the right for the child's best interests to be taken into account when decisions are being made about them. It also takes into account article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which talks about the voice of the child and decisions that affect them. I think that there are some very significant issues here in terms of children facing barriers to being able to put across their views and barriers to them being believed. There are other rights that are engaged here as well around the right for a child not to be separated from a parent unless it is in their best interests to do so and also the right for them to be protected from all forms of physical and mental violence. I think that in the time that I've been working at the commissioner's office since 2005, initially I worked there and I ran their inquiry service, and we received a number of calls from parents who were very distressed by the process of taking their child to contact. They were very distressed that their child did not appear to have a voice in the proceedings, and when they were allowed the chance to say something, they generally were not believed or their views were discounted because it was felt that they were being manipulated by the resident parent. I think that there is a further issue for me as well around legal representation for these children. There were changes to the legal aid regulations back in 2010 and 2011, and those made it much more difficult for children to have independent legal representation, and that was because they changed the eligibility criteria so that before what had happened was that children were able to be eligible on the basis of their own income and then they changed it so that parental income was taken into account as well. That small change has made it almost impossible for a child who is experiencing domestic abuse to be heard in those kind of settings. The settings that children are in are patently not child-friendly. The methods that are used to take their views are not child-friendly. This is a system that is built for adults, which does not take into account the dynamics of domestic abuse as to what Barry and Marcia have said, but it does not take into account what it is like to be a child and the harm that domestic abuse can do to that child. I think that that is really interesting. How appropriate do you think that it is in terms of hearing a child's voice for them to instruct a solicitor? Would it not be more appropriate that there was a system in place where there were independent children's workers who knew how to work with young people and hear their voice through that rather than having some experience sitting in a hearing system in a panel? There are lots of solicitors who represent everybody in the room virtually, but whether that means that the child's voice is heard through that process, I am not sure what you think about that. I think that that is a fair point. The problem with the moment is that what happens is that the child's views are generally thought to be represented through the pursuer solicitor or the mother solicitor. Automatically, there is some suggestion that the child's views are being manipulated or changed in some way. In an ideal world, yes, having someone there who could work with the child, who could build up a relationship with the child and allow them to speak openly, then that would absolutely be helpful. One of the issues that came out of some research that we carried out as an office in 2013 was that when court reporters spoke to children, they often were not taking the time to get to know the child and the child was balancing up all sorts of risks. A child that is in a domestic abuse situation is having to think about, if I say this, will it get back to, in most cases, my father? If I say this, will there be retaliation on my mother because of what I have said? They are balancing up a wider range of issues than a child in a general contact situation where they are perhaps worried about hurting the other parents' feelings. This is much more about a safety issue. I think that we did get some information from—I cannot remember the title of the work, but it was a children's work and it seemed to me to be somebody who would actually be able to have those kind of conversations that you are allowed to say. The whole thing about children going into circumstances where they are not even allowed to say whether they have enjoyed themselves or not because they might have consequences on either parent. Iain, do you want to come in? Can I pick up on two of the points that have just been made? Firstly, on this question of training of child welfare reporters who are the people who are now tasked with preparing reports for court, there was a working group established a few years ago, including ourselves and Scottish Women's Aid and various other organisations, who prepared a series of recommendations on how this system could be improved. Some of them have been implemented, the ones to do with how the interlocutors are prepared and so on, but one of the crucial recommendations of that working group was to that child welfare reporters should have to take training in various things. Obviously, the key aspect here was training in domestic abuse and training in parental alienation. This was agreed by that working group across the board, but so far this recommendation has not been implemented and we have been advised that there is some problem in insisting that these things happen. However, we feel that it is ridiculous that child welfare reporters should not be expected to undertake that crucial training. I hope that that is a point that the committee could take up. The second point is about the views of children. I am also a member of the Family Law Committee of the Scottish Civil Justice Council, although I state that I am not speaking on their behalf in this forum. I am speaking purely from my family's need fathers involvement. That committee has been actively involved in looking at the ways that the views of children are taken. It has been engaging with a whole range of other organisations and also commissioned some consultation with children and young people about how their views should be given to court. The form that children use, which at the moment is a really dry, nasty-looking form F9, which is not child-friendly in any form, is being revised at the moment and is being redesigned. I hope that the new form will help, but I think that that Family Law Committee is actively still pursuing this issue because they recognise that there is a need for better methods to ensure that children's views are taken into account and in an appropriate way. Also, the issue about confidentiality of children's views if they are taken in a court setting is a really important issue. However, I have pointed that out that this work is taking place in this area, but I am sure that the committee will be glad to reiterate the importance of children's views. Finally, on children's views, it is very important that children have an input into this process, but children should not be the decision makers. The views of children are very important, but it is the court and the ultimate body who are making the decisions, and I think that that is also important. I think that the committee may have heard from the children's rights officer on West Lothian, and I happened to know about that because I started the post when I was working there. We did it in the context of desperation, really, not being able to find a way to get the concerns of children into the evidence in front of the courts. I agree with Ian around that. Also, to be actually listened to and to influence, not that children's decisions, wishes, were the decider completely, but that there was absolutely no evidence that they were influencing the process in any way. What we were then finding were traumatized children and mothers coming through our domestic and sexual assault service. We had no way to really support the ending of that trauma. What we found was, when you had somebody with training exactly like Pauline says, around children's development and how you talk to children, and she now has a caseload of 200 in West Lothian, which is not the hugest local authority in Scotland. What she found, I think, and we found was that it doesn't take rocket science and it doesn't take a huge amount of time, but it takes somebody who understands how to work with children and understands the nature of domestic abuse. She worked with children when I was there as young as four years old and was able to help them draw pictures, write letters, do the kinds of ways that were communication that was most effective for them and share that with sheriffs. I know that there are some sheriffs now in West Lothian who almost automatically default to getting her involved with cases like this. I think this comes directly to your question about our lawyers the most appropriate now. I would completely support that under CRC and other obligations, children have a right to access to justice just like adults do, and they should be able to have legal representation. It's not an either or, but the preferred model would be that they were trained, appropriately trained people in communities, whether it's child's rights officers or how it is implemented, that have the appropriate ability to work with children and to feed their voices into the system. I know the F9 form is being revised and a piece of work that the Children's Commission and Scottish Women's Aid has been doing together on Power Up, Power Down, which we sent the links for, so I hope people get an opportunity because that's directly children's voices about their experiences of contact. It has fed in to the review of F9 and I hope that that will have some significant impact. I think the thread that runs through a lot of what has been said by all of us I think so far is the lack of appropriate training in the system. What I call domestic abuse competence is sadly missing in many of the actors who make decisions about children's lives and women's lives in the context of domestic abuse. When the appropriate training has been put in place in child welfare hearings, we have seen some really good outcomes. It's a bit about giving people well-intentioned people who are trying to make the interests of children power mount in their discussions, the tools to understand what's actually going on. I think one of the things that we have been calling for for some time now is a requirement that any sheriff that hears a case that involves domestic abuse have specialist training, which is not the case, but also social workers do not have to be trained at the moment in domestic abuse and we hear very often from cases around, and we have 36 services all across Scotland, so this really is. Every single one of them tells us that this is a problem, that social workers sometimes say to them that this is a court problem, that this isn't in our case alone. I just want to pick up on something that Ian had said in terms of the Scottish Civil Justice Council. I absolutely agree that the Scottish Civil Justice Council is working very hard to try and improve the situation for children and young people that are going through these types of proceedings, and indeed ourselves and Scottish Women's Aid have had a lot of dialogue with them to try and inform that. I know that they are revising the F9 form, but we are equally aware that a form is not the way forward for children and young people and that children require a whole range of ways to allow them to contribute in a way that works for them. The work that Marcia alluded to is the Power Up, Power Down project, which we worked in partnership with Scottish Women's Aid on. That involved consulting with 27 children, I think, aged between 7 and 15. The idea behind it was quite an innovative way of looking at it, so a cartoon was produced that explored how children's views are sought at present in those types of cases. The children were asked to look at the cartoon to talk about how it made them feel, and then to try and create a new cartoon that set out in an ideal world of how that would work differently. I think that there were some useful suggestions as part of that, so if you have the opportunity to look at that report, hopefully, and some videos that we've produced that explain some of the children's views on that. I suppose that, to give you a very basic example, I was made aware of a case once where a child experiencing domestic abuse was trying to provide their view, and they asked to do it through the medium of Lego. They wanted to use Lego to help explain, which is a very child-friendly way of doing it, and they were told, no, they weren't allowed to do it. I think that, to me, demonstrates probably clearer than almost anything else. The way that the system is set up at the moment is process driven, and it's about we need to do things this way, we need to do things that way, instead of being child-centred. That's what we need, a child-centred system that understands the dynamics of domestic abuse and the particular impact and the harm that domestic abuse causes to children and young people. Our service covers 42 per cent of Scotland's population, and daily our children's workers talk to children about child contact. Children raise it all the time, asking about will they be forced to go, what will happen, what their worries about being asked questions. We have report writers coming to the office interviewing our workers, asking them for details, and it's not unusual that, at the end of that situation, a report writer will say, I never thought about this or my goodness, I never understood all that was going on. When we're doing that, we're not talking in general about the situation around domestic abuse, there's a death of information out there, and yet there's so many things that would help. Adopting David Mandell's safe and together approach, which we've all been talking about for a number of years now, would make such a difference, because what it does is focus on what's happening in terms of the abusive behaviour, how is it impacting in the child, what are the mitigating circumstances that the other parent is putting in place, and what's the effect in the child. The whole system is there to ensure that children are safe and together with all parents, and we could ensure that there's a number of local authorities that have started that process in Scotland. Really what we need to do is try and push that forward and make sure that children at the centre, because unless we ensure that children at the centre, children will not be safe. Can I just maybe ask something? I'm going to take Rona in a minute round some of the training issues, but I had the opportunity to go and visit one of her centres in Glasgow, and we'd want to put in record my thanks to them for what was a very interesting visit. One of the issues that has been raised through the petition is the idea that the non-resident parent has entitlement to contact, and the child is taking along, and whether they want to be there or not, they've got their time. What I was told was that that wouldn't happen, that a child wouldn't be obliged to be in. There wouldn't be a pressure on a child to stay if the child was distressed or unhappy. Can you maybe say something about that? In circumstances where a child is coming for supported contact and they don't want to be there but the father said, wait a minute, I've got two hours. What's the advice to the centre staff in those circumstances? That's a very good point that you raised. In terms of, say, a child who was, if I will say, a court-ordered contact that came to one of our centres, if the child was distressed, fundamentally did not want to go through, our staff would not progress with that contact if the child was saying that they did not want to go through and that was their settled position, they would not go through. Our staff may gently encourage people to go through, but nothing beyond that, nothing beyond that. I think that that's really key. There's not situations where children are being physically forced to go through for contact, that would not happen in our child contact centres. It's not your obligation to enforce the court order? It's not, it's not. The court can order contact to take place. Relationships aren't being ordered by the court to make it happen. As I've said previously, we do, on a number of occasions, make the decision that we don't believe it's safe for that contact to happen in our centres and we will not facilitate it, we'll say it's not happening. If on the day children fundamentally do not want to go through and to see their non-resident parent, then our staff will say that the child was distressed and didn't want to go through and the contact didn't happen. It's not our job to enforce contact to happen, it's to facilitate it where it's appropriate and safe to do so. And do you keep an eye in the sense that if a child becomes distressed or is unhappy or uncomfortable, there's means by which they can come back out of the contact? Absolutely, if that was the circumstance, we would bring the contact to an end. I mean, I think that what we're hearing and what we pretty much knew was that the court of it does rest in training, particularly for the court system. Unfortunately, there's nobody here from a judiciary to speak today, which is unfortunate. You said earlier that you understood that the judges were quite amenable to the specialist court training. Is that something that you think is widespread? I think that there's two issues of the training for the child welfare reporters to make sure that they're adequately trained in terms of domestic abuse issues and skills in terms of how to take the views of children. In addition to that, there's a need for new specialist risk assessments around domestic abuse. I think that, certainly for Relationship Scotland's point of view, that's a major gap in the system. That's not just about the training of the child welfare reporters, it's about having highly trained new people available to the court who can undertake specialist risk assessments where domestic abuse is a concern. I think that would make a radical difference to the quality of the decision-making of the courts. It's in nobody's interest for dangerous, violent, coercively controlling men to be continuing to, in some ways, harm the lives of women and children beyond. The courts need to be equipped to make sure that they're making the best decisions possible. One of the routes that we've been advocating for many years has been the development of new specialist risk assessments. They started on a very small scale. We had, as an organisation, applied a number of years ago to try to set up a pilot project. Unfortunately, we couldn't get that funding. In our opinion, that would make a significant step forward in terms of the quality and decision-making of the courts if they would have new specialist risk assessments around domestic abuse. Ultimately, it's the judge that will order contact. We've heard that there are problems with judges knowing enough about the case, the background information to it and coming fresh to it and not really there's been a breakdown in communication. While I hear what you're saying about the specialist, other members of staff, ultimately the judges and the judiciary themselves have to have some awareness of what the background to the case has been. We would certainly support Ministeral Relationship Scotland ourselves. We've been involved in the training of sheriffs through the judicial committee and clearly we would support additional training for sheriffs around the areas of domestic abuse. That would be very important. Can I ask you about the training for your staff and volunteers in Relationship Scotland's centres? We have a briefing to say that they undergo full training, but we've heard that that isn't always the case. Can you tell me how much training they go through? Partly it depends on the role that they play. There will be a difference in training, for example, for those staff and volunteers who undertake supported contact versus those who do supervised contact. There will be a higher level of training for those who undertake supervised contact because of the writing of reports of the court and the analysis of the quality of the contact. Our basic training is that all volunteers and staff who go through would cover the key issues around child protection, domestic abuse and other areas. It would be fair to say that there has been a development over the 25 years that we have been doing in child contact centres in terms of improving standards and quality as we go. That is a journey that continues. Could our training be better than it is? I think that it could be. I think that there are challenges there for us to address and to try to make sure that that is an on-going improvement of the standards that we have. No one would go into working in our child contact centres without previous experience of working with children and without going through all of the training that we have in place. How long does that training take? What is the training? How long does it take place? What is the timescale of it? In terms of a number of days, we are not talking about a social work course for a number of years. We receive basic training covering a number of issues over about two days or so. I am going to take in Mary Marcia. Ian, you are indicating to come in. I would be interested in your views on the question of training for the judiciary and training for centres. Maybe I could ask you if you talked about if a child were distressed. Is there a definition of how that would reveal itself to us members? That is part of the skill that I believe is the visit that you had to Glasgow. You are speaking with Carol who runs our child contact centres in Glasgow in Bramiglyn. The people who work there are highly experienced in working with children and knowing the issues that they are facing and being incredibly sensitive about how difficult a process this can be at times for children. As I say, the first priority—the first top priority—for everyone involved in our work at Relationships Scotland is for the safety and the welfare of children. There is—to come back to your point and run that you raised—it is not our job to enforce contact to happen. It is to facilitate it where it is safe and appropriate to do so. Our staff would not wish to see children being distressed and going to contact that they fundamentally do not want to do. If they do not want to go through after a couple of times of saying, would you like to go through? If they do not want to go through, that will be the end of the contact, and the contact will not have taken place. I think that in terms of the training, first of all, the judiciary have a day's course on domestic abuse, which is excellent. The problem is that they have to volunteer to go on it. It is not at the moment, as far as I am aware, regularly being run. That might not be the case, but the last time I spoke to the Judicial Studies Committee, which was at the end of the year, it had been a significant period of time since that course had run. In terms of the report writers, there is no mandatory training for any report writer in court about domestic abuse at all. There is a huge range of experience from woefully inadequate to very good. However, I want to ask you to think about this issue through the eyes of a child, where a child has been—it is regular experiences for us that our children are incredibly upset. They do not want to go. They have had nightmares, they have been bedwetting, they have been crying, saying to mothers, I do not want to go. Mum is having to say, the court is telling me that you have to go. Mum is having to say, or the child is saying to mum, why are you making me do this? The child is then dragged to the contact centre to meet someone that they do not know, saying, would you like to go through and see Dad? How on earth is that child going to feel able to say to a stranger, you know what, I really do not want to go. We are asking children to stand up against a system that is not child centric, and I just do not think that it is feasible to expect children to say that. I wholeheartedly agree with Stuart around risk assessment and the Katrina Grant reports. I am right with you on that. In terms of gentle encouragement, what we may perceive as adults to be gentle encouragement, and what a child may perceive as something else, I think, could be different. We are asking children once or twice. That, I think, is undue pressure. I also think that, in terms of training for centre staff, it needs to be longer than a couple of days. I would be saying that, for domestic abuse alone, it needs to be three days. To look in detail at the coercive control, the dynamics, the effect on adult victims, the effect on children. Having small periods of look-out, usually generic training in domestic abuse will pick up people at the extreme end of the abusive spectrum. What it will not do is pick up the subtle manipulation that will go on. Abusers are of all sorts. If it was easy to spot them, we would not have a problem of domestic abuse in our society, because we would see them, but that is not how they appear. They appear, for the most part, as genuine, authentic human beings, when, in fact, they have a higher level of expertise at manipulating their victims and manipulating society. Can you say to me if you have come across any examples of women ending up in the court system because they have been deemed not to be ensuring that contact takes place? Absolutely. Women have been held in contempt. Women have been jailed. There was quite a famous case recently where a woman was held, I think, for three days. So, yes, women are told that they were in contempt. So, would you put that down to us at the court system? I think that, yes, people not understanding and not being believed. Judges assume, sheriffs assume, that when women say there's been domestic abuse that they're lying. What happens is you're told by your lawyer, please don't mention domestic abuse, because it'll look as though you're trying to influence the outcome of the court. So, she sits there not mentioning domestic abuse. The hearing goes on, her anxiety rises, and then, as it looks as if contact's about to take place, then she'll blurt out, but there's domestic abuse. Of course, the court then goes, hmm, you're raising that now at the end of the process, but lawyers have been saying all the way through, sheriffs won't like it, don't raise it too early. So, there's an issue between faciliters for sheriffs' court system. Marcia and then you. I'd like to pick up on a couple of things. One is that I am absolutely sure that there is fabulous practice happening in some of the child contact centres, but I have to challenge our experience over many years and speaking to thousands of women and children is that children are forced into unwanted contact every day in Scotland, much of which happens in contact centres, not because people are ill-intentioned, but because of a system that forces children all the way through. And when they hit contact centres, they're there as a result of the system, not because of the contact centres. I can tell you one case I remember when I was working in Westlawdian about a child who was reluctant, who was in a contact centre somewhere, and I don't know where it was, who the worker there told the child that there were sweeties and toys in the other room in order to get them to go in because the child was reluctant. One case where the child was told that the child's mother was in the room, and in fact, it was not the child's mother, it was the child's father. I mean, these sound like isolated cases. They are repeated over and over in Scotland every day. And I have to say the system is failing children and it's not doing what it says on the tin. The contact centres aren't doing what they say on the tin. The protection of children and their interests as the paramount consideration happens almost never. I think we have to start listening to these voices. In terms of the court-ordered problems with women being put in jail, usually around contempt proceedings, we have women tell us all the time that they are really afraid to tell the truth about what their children are telling them because they are afraid they will be sanctioned and seen as taking the court in contempt. There is no way through the system that women can be guaranteed that people who hear their cases will not assume that they are lying, despite the fact that there is next to no evidence in the literature that says that women consistently lie about domestic abuse and its impact on their children. In terms of training, I absolutely agree about the judicial studies institute course. And I think we do have some good practice to look back at, which is when we set up the Glasgow specialist domestic abuse court very early in its history, all of the sheriffs who heard cases got specialist training. And the outcomes of those cases were so much better than the routine everyday cases that are being heard these days. And while the sheriffs have been telling us for 10 years, we're independent, you can't force us to have training, and I would never try to force a sheriff to do anything, trust me. I think it is possible for us to do what we did initially in Glasgow, which is to say absolutely we can't force you to have training, but we can say if you're going to hear a domestic abuse case, you have to have training. If you're going to hear a case that involves the rights and needs of children, you need to have training about children. And it's not just judges, we have a whole host of legal aid lawyers who don't understand domestic abuse, who with great intent take up cases. And then we wind up hearing stories about women who are now so into the system, they and their children have been so harmed by it. And it is really hard for them to find a way back out because of the way the court system operates. Finally, one thing that I think has been, that we've been talking about for a long time, is the systemic problem with the divide between criminal and civil courts systems and the way they operate in Scotland. And I know I sit on the justice experts group for the equally safe implementation and really happy to see a lot of concern across the stakeholders on that group about this problem. But this problem has been looked at in other places and there are solutions. For instance, I think in New York, I talk like that, they have a case in the context of domestic violence there of one case, one judge. Because what we have in Scotland all the time that happens now is you'll have a criminal case in which perpetrators convicted of domestic abuse harm to both non-offending parent and children identified and of concern to the case. That same child winds up in a courtroom and maybe in the very same court, not very long after that in which the discussion has almost nothing to do with what has happened in that criminal case or nothing actually, in some cases. And the discussion is only about how contact can be facilitated in the context of relationship breakdown. So there's training needed all the way throughout the process and I think as a system we need to take responsibility for in whose hands are we putting children's interests. I'm going to take Keane, Pauline and then Angus, so maybe bring you in. Okay, we don't have the judiciary with us this morning but I'm going to speak up on their behalf particularly for the specialist family courts in Edinburgh and Glasgow. You have sheriffs there who've got extensive experience of family cases and who are doing a very difficult job because we've got to remember that sheriffs are having to determine whether or not an allegation of domestic abuse is an actual something that has actually happened. There are instances of allegations being made in order to gain an advantageous place in a contact dispute and the court has this job of sorting out when is domestic abuse actually happening and when is it being alleged in order to give one parent the upper hand. Now that is a difficult job and we know of plenty of cases where the courts do order restrictions or complete cessation of contact so it's not a case that there is an assumption that children should be seeing their parents. There's also, as the SPICE report pointed out in their submission, there is nothing in law that assumes that children should see their parents. It's very much the emphasis is on the paramount importance of the welfare of children. So sheriffs and judges in our Scottish courts have got to do a very difficult job. An English judge once described it now that capital punishment has finished, family cases are amongst the most difficult ones facing sheriffs. There is training. We agree that more training should be available but we feel that training should cover a range of issues, not just domestic abuse. It should also cover the proper means of ascertaining the views of children. It should also cover the areas where children are being unduly influenced by one parent to reject the other. This is what's called parental alienation and that's something which is becoming increasingly apparent both in the UK and in other parts of the world. It is another factor that needs to be taken into account alongside domestic abuse. There are very difficult things to work on. Avenue in Aberdeen, one of the services that Relationship Scotland undertakes, has been doing a lot of work with children commissioned by courts talking to children, finding out their views. One of the things that they say is that it's really vital that you talk to children several times because the first time you talk to a child, you'll tend to hear things being echoed that they feel that they're supposed to say, either because their resident parent says it or whatever. You've then got to build up confidence in that child and the child has got to get to a stage where they are going to be willing to give more of their own views rather than the views that they feel they should be giving. Work of services like avenues should definitely be supported and encouraged in other parts of Scotland. The judges need to be held to account, but I don't think that we should be viewing them as being the culprits in this system. The judges are working very hard to establish what are very difficult decisions. They are often, in our view, over-cautious when they are awarding contact. I'm going back to the main focus of this meeting, which is the contact centres. Contact centres provide a very valuable resource within the system. Unfortunately, they are part of the voluntary sector, so they don't get guaranteed funding every year. They've often got to go out and raise money themselves to keep things going. I feel that, if anything, the committee should be supporting increased and secure funding for contact centres so that they can build up on their training that was mentioned here, so that they can recruit more people and so that they can provide more of their services. One of the things that we suggest that it does is that a court would look at a circumstance around contact where the abuse was against usually the mother. That would be deemed to be a separate decision or not a decision that would then impact on decision to have contact. I'm working the assumption of what they think is whether not abusing a child so that there should be contact. Is that your experience? There is mention in the 2006 act of whether the child is present when abuse takes place. I was involved with an inner house appeal a couple of years ago where it was judged that because the dispute between the parents, which was a two-way dispute, it wasn't just a one-way domestic abuse thing. Both were not relevant in the lower courts that the father's contact had been stopped but the inner house appeal reinstated his contact because it was felt that this was more important to the child that the child should have contact with both parents. Each situation is going to be difficult and complicated. The judge has got a very difficult job to do and I would say that there are some very good examples of judges taking very difficult decisions and taking these factors into account. Pauline, can you come in briefly on the funding thing after Pauline? Briefly, the Scottish Government supports the work of Relationship Scotland. Last year, only £166,000 of that money was used for our child contact centres. Given that we run 46 centres, you will appreciate that funding does not go very far. We also have additional funding from the big lottery and other charitable trusts. Clearly, if there is to be a step change improvement in the facilities, training and so on, that would need to be appropriately resourced. I think that the first thing for me is to say that we do children agree to service if we suggest that they essentially parrot back what their parents say to them. Children, even very young children, who are often not asked for their views, have very strong views about what it is like to live in an atmosphere where domestic abuse is present. You raised the point about a child witnessing incidents of domestic abuse. There has been a lot of work that has been done around the domestic abuse bill at the moment to demonstrate the fact that children are victims in their own right. Whether or not they witness something, living in that toxic environment, is harmful to them. Domestic abuse is recognised as being an adverse childhood event. To come back to something earlier on about a child having to go into a situation in which they are distressed, I think that there is a risk that we perpetuate that trauma and that distress by the expectation that a mother usually will facilitate that contact. We will take a child who is incredibly distressed, who may have missed education because they have been wet in the bed, being very upset and had stomach aches, who may find that their mental health is under risk because of that. We are asking a parent to take a child to a situation in which the child may be clinging to the parent's leg and hand them over to someone that they do not know. I cannot imagine any other situation in which that would be something that would be seen as being acceptable from a parenting point of view and from a child's perspective. I am not suggesting that it is the contact centres that are forcing the children to have that contact. I am absolutely not suggesting that. What I am saying is that there is an expectation and there are risks to the mother and to the child if they do not comply with that court order. If they are seen to be non-compliant, if they are seen to be difficult, it can cause difficulties for them later on in terms of contact. Those are the key things. There may well be some cases where domestic abuse is raised, but I think that that does a disservice in terms of the vast majority of domestic abuse cases will not result in a conviction. As has been recognised by the domestic abuse bill, the vast majority of domestic abuse incidents are coercive control incidents that happen on a day-to-day basis. They are often very subtle manipulative techniques that are used that create an atmosphere of fear. For a parent that allows their child to live in that environment—I am talking about the parent that perpetuates and is the perpetrator of that domestic abuse—that is a parenting choice, and that has to impact on the relationship with their child. It already does in terms of the fact that they are allowing them to be exposed to that kind of atmosphere. It breaches their right to mental health and good health, it breaches their right to have a say in that situation, and it puts them a state of fear and alarm. I think that any system that says that is okay really is not putting the best interest of the child at the centre. We have covered the issue of training both with the judiciary and contact centres quite extensively this morning. However, I would be keen to know what systems are in place to ensure that the staff at contact centres are aware of any particular conditions that apply to each individual case. I would also be keen to know what is going on with the contact centres if you believe that there should be a minimum ratio of staff to other attendees at the centre. I am happy to say that. In terms of information that comes from the court, we, in relation to Scotland, believe that it is not as good as it should be. Very often we get very little information from the court about the background of the case, and we are left to have to try to get that information from the parents during the intake process. That, again, is another key failing of the process. We are not getting sufficient knowledge of the issues that are facing the families that are coming to us. We are still able to, as best we can, make a decision about the safety of the actual contact that is taking place, but we are left in the dark about many of the issues about the families, so I think that you raised an excellent point there. The second point was— With regard to the minimum ratios of staff and the need to ensure that staff are aware of any particular conditions? In terms of staff numbers, for supervised contact, there would be two well-trained staff involved in supervised contact. In supported contact, staff would be around at some points to be inside the room at some points outside, but supported contact cases would be ones where it is being viewed that contact is safe to go ahead without further supervision. There would be a judgment made, whether it is by the courts and indeed by ourselves, that supported contact is safe and appropriate to happen. As I say, that is the vast majority of the cases that we mentioned before are straightforward. Does that judgment be made in each and every case, whether it is safe to go ahead? In terms of raw numbers, we try to have as low numbers as possible in the supported rooms. Of course, when it is supervised, there is only one case in the room at any one time. It might be a non-fair question, but what is the proportion or percentage of children that are distressed when they come to your centres? It is hard to say that I do not personally work in child contact centres. In terms of the managers who work in the centres, in the vast majority of the cases, there will be a level of nervousness about going ahead. What we see in the vast majority of cases is that once contact begins and establishes, they can get over that first hurdle. There is very good contact and very good relations between children and their non-resident parent. In terms of what our clients tell us, 79 per cent of our clients who go through the child contact centres say that the process has made a significant improvement to the quality of their family life and to their family situation. For those who provide us feedback, 99 per cent of our clients say that they would recommend our child contact centres to others. While clearly some people do not have and have not had positive experience going through child contact, many people do. We are seeing 2,000 children each year, plus 4,000 parents each year going through our child contact centres. They are telling us in the vast majority that they are having a very positive experience and that the process is making a significant improvement to their lives. What proportion of the youngsters that come to our family are coming to take the point that Marcia Scott makes about focusing on domestic abuse? There could be a general thing that the contact centre works simply with this family breakdown and we will all know a folk who has been a breakdown. It is astonishing that they can have drop-offs when they do not go anywhere in the house and all that. You can see that. What proportion of the young people who go to contact centres will have been identified to you as being in a circumstance of domestic abuse? Certainly, the majority of those who come for supervised contact has been raised as an issue and I concern there from the courts. That is a broad indication that the majority of the child contact that goes ahead is more straightforward around the issues of relationship breakdown, but as a rough guide, a tenth of them, one in ten, comes through the supervised process. There is a reason for why the courts have ordered that to be a highly supervised process. It is a broad indication that would be roughly there. Do you track that 10 per cent in a different way? You would get the fact that the 90 per cent is able to establish contact and it works. Before the 10 per cent, where it is supervised, where there are issues of violence or domestic abuse or coercive control, do you track those specifically? Do you treat them? If you may just talk us through, so you know that that is the circumstance that the child is coming in and the specific things that you do and the specific things that you keep an eye out for. Do you record and report back? Yes, we would be the summary of that. The cases that have come to us are supervised clearly are receiving far more intensive oversight in terms of the quality of the contact, in terms of writing back to the court. We write factual accounts back to the court of the quality of contact, what actually happened in the contact. Things like, for example, if the child was distressed or for any reason the contact had to come to an end, the details of that are being reported back to the courts. There is a fundamental difference between supported and supervised contacts. When the courts have these understandable concerns, the whole process is very highly supervised and all the quality of that contact is then fed back to the court through a court report. Fari, Pauline and then I am going to ask if Morris and Edward have particular questions that they want to ask, and then we will just try and pull it together. The vast majority of clients that we have worked with who have experienced this issue, supervised contact, has not been the process by which they have experienced contact centres, so for us the vast majority of clients is supported contact. It seems to me that we are lacking in knowledge of exactly how many situations of domestic abuse there are. When there are, there are all sorts of different assumptions being made, different parts of the process, that mean there are gaps that we need to plug in. I absolutely take Stuart's point about funding and the difficulties when you are struggling with resources about what you would like to provide and what you are able to do in terms of service or training or whatever. I think that it is absolutely crucial that, if nothing else, we move forward in a way that hears that the gaps will be addressed because whether there are gaps in those kinds of situations, then we allow abuse to take place and that needs to stop. I just wanted to refer back to some research that we carried out into the experiences of children experiencing domestic abuse and their views being taken in child contact cases. One of the things that came across very strongly in that research is that the children who were not asked for their view tended to be most likely to have a contact order in place. Those tended to be younger children as well, so it would tend to be younger children that would be going to contact centres in that sense. The other issue that I thought might be helpful for the committee to hear is that I am aware of an example of where a disabled child was treated differently to their siblings in a contact case. The disabled child was deemed not to be able to give a view, and the siblings were very scared of their father. They were not told they had to have contact, but the disabled child was. There are some further issues with the system in terms of particular groups of children and young people. The final thing that I just wanted to mention is that, in terms of younger children, there is often an assumption that they will not be able to form a view or that they will be unduly influenced by a parent. In the research, we had a quote from a six-year-old girl. She said, I do not want him anywhere near me or my family. You make me very, very sad. He was very bad to me and the family when I was with him broke my heart. I do not want to go and stay with you at the weekend. You swore in my mum's face. That is a six-year-old. If you are telling me that a younger child cannot have a view on what it is like to live in that kind of environment, I think that there is something very wrong with the system that we are not able to capture those views on a routine basis. Moris, are there any questions? A question, if you may, is just drilling down, if we may, into the situation where contact with a child is through a contact centre as a result of domestic abuse. Are we sure and are we convinced that at the contact centre that very subtle coercive behaviour that we have heard about and abusive behaviour is not being continued? Are we sure that we have systems in place to make sure that that does not happen, because that certainly causes some concern to me? I would say that, where there is supervised contact, our staff are very, very alert to exactly those tricks and schemes that people may try to use to continue the abuse or to get information through the child. In terms of supervised contact, I think that in our contact centres we would be confident that we would be picking up on those issues. I think that you make a very good point variate about those cases where perhaps, as we know from the research that domestic abuse coercive control can be hidden, it is entirely possible that those cases that go through supported contact, where that is an issue that has not been fully brought up and clearly supported contact whilst it is a safe process, it is not supervised to the extent that supervised contact is and there is the potential for that to happen, so I think that you raise a very good point. Can I just come back just on that? If you are not getting the information on the cases coming to you, it worries me that you are not knowing what to look for, but are you still convinced, because it is very important that this does not happen, are you still convinced that it does not happen? Not through supervised contact, we would be more likely to have more information about that, but there is an issue about the courts not providing our contact centres with sufficient information about the background of the cases that we are dealing with. That is again another gap in the system that is affecting our ability to best ensure that children and families receive the very best service that they can. It seems a huge gap. Morisyn, I want to go back to Angus. Thank you, chair. The question of regulations is covering contact centres. Are there any features that should be specified as a minimum requirement that would take where the contact takes place in these centres, recognises and prioritises the wellbeing of children? If I can say very briefly, there is not formal external regulation of child contact centres in Scotland. Relationship Scotland oversees the standards, the training, the quality of our centres. We do quality assurance audits on all of our centres. I think that if regulation was to be brought in and we would be supportive of that process, it would cover many of the issues that we already cover. That would be to do with things such as the training, on-going CPD professional development and making sure that there are minimum standards put in place across the whole of the country. As I say, there has been a process of development of child contact in Scotland over the last 25 years. If the next stages mean improving that and moving towards regulation, that is a process that we would support. Can I just follow on with that slide? It leads me on to the question of funding. Do you have any ballpark figures for what it costs to run a contact centre? I am not asking for them now, but is that in your system somewhere that… Yes, we could give that information. We could give that information. Obviously, it is successful in running those centres as well. A very small part of that is Government funding. Currently, £166,000 a year of Scottish Government money is being used to fund the work of child contact centres. You add that up across 46 centres across the country. That is a small amount. We receive about £700,000 or so a year from the big lottery and other charitable money as well, but it is not a lot of money for what we do. If I could just say, we have 400 volunteers and staff across the country who are passionately committed to working with children and families. They put enormous effort into making sure that those are positive experiences for children. In some of the most difficult cases, you can imagine that it is a credit to our staff and their volunteers for the work that they do. I have a question on the family justice modernisation strategy that the Scottish Government is looking at and regulation in general. The panel will be aware that the Scottish Government has recently written to stakeholders as part of a business and regulatory impact assessment. It is undertaking in advance of the consultation on the family justice modernisation strategy. Included in that piece of work is a question about regulation of child contact centres. We appreciate that the panel members here this morning may be contributing to that process. It would help if we could have some indication with regard to your views on external regulation and whether there is general support for it. It is absolutely crucial that there is a set of standards. Anyone who knows me knows that I am constantly arguing about sets of standards for our own sector and consistency across the country. For me, it is about ensuring that, when society says that it wants something, we make sure that it is delivered. I would be absolutely in support of regulation and a way of setting appropriate standards and ensuring that they are met. That is absolutely a question that relates to something that I want to say anyway in the sense that we need regulation. If you think about the enormous contrast between the amount of training and monitoring that happens in child protection arrangements in local authorities and the exposure of women and children experiencing domestic abuse to harm in unregulated, unprotected, no care inspectorate obligations, all of that. It is just like two different universes. The public interest is not served in that contrast. I would absolutely support a move to monitor it. I would also like to put in a maybe a little bit out of the box thinking about this, which is that I think absolutely that the child contact centers and relationships in Scotland have been given an almost undoable task in some ways. I think that maybe what we could think about is moving away from the bricks and mortar approach to protecting children's interests in this situation and think about what are the resources that need to be available to courts and to children. For instance, something like a locally well-trained children services advocate. They could meet with children in community centers that are set up for children. We have all seen fabulous settings for children where both the advocates and then if there is going to be contact with a parent that's deemed safe, it could happen. I think it's the deeming safe that's not happening. It doesn't matter as much what the bricks and mortar are. It matters about the deeming safe and then about getting the views of the children and then making sure that the way you order contact responds to their fears and concerns if you do order contact. It doesn't have to be in a child contact center. If we thought about investing that money into the local ability to support children and into the early years infrastructure and into the resources available to courts for ordering contact, I think we might have a better system change in mind and one that actually delivers across all children in a local area rather than for the ones who are sent, which are most of our children involved in visitation and custody conflicts are not even going through courts. They are arranged separately from the court system. I think it's really important to think about investing in communities to do this better rather than trying to support an industry to do it that is really quite difficult to parachute in. I think that's really important thoughts about talking to communities about what would help them do this rather than automatically investing in a model that's really difficult to deliver and possibly not cost effective. We've really only got about nine minutes left and a few folks still want to come in on the question of funding. I wonder if you can provide us with information if not now, later, about charges to those who use the contact center? I mean, I'm assuming, I don't know who is at the non-residential parent who would pay or what those kind of charges would be like. You might not have that to hand us now, but it would be useful to get that information. I'm happy to provide more information. I'd say very briefly that many of the cases that go through supervised contact would be covered through legal aid. In the majority of cases supported contact, there wouldn't be a charge or there may be a small charge for the intake process. Again, wherever possible, we will seek to get that through legal aid covering the costs for the majority of people. But in some circumstances people would be charged? In some circumstances they would, but the issue is about, for us, the whole issue of ability to pay. If people are able to pay in as an appropriate charge, then that would be made. If you can provide us with just what that charge is going to be like, that would be useful. Ian, then Rona and then we're going to have to pull it together. Stewart mentioned that contact centres have been around for about 25 years. I used to work for one of the organisations that was crucial in getting contact centres under way in the first place. I think that they developed as a result of a need. They very much came from the ground up. Although I can take Marcia's point about things being community-based, I think that contact centres have come from that. They've happened because there was a need for places for parents to feel safe in seeing their children. Therefore, we should be cautious about trying to throw that out and set up something new when it has got that. I would agree with Stewart that there are very dedicated volunteers and very professional staff in current contact centres. They're dealing with a difficult job. They're dealing with two parents who are in conflict. Obviously, when the addition of domestic violence is added into this mix, they're dealing with all sorts of concerns about safety for children. I would hope that this committee would take away the view that there is a worthwhile service out there. It needs to be better regulated. I agree with that. We need better training in the court and the child welfare service in order to make sure that the right decisions are made. However, as I said, the sheriffs who are dealing with this have a difficult job. I have confidence that there are sheriffs there who are doing very sensitive work in this area. I'm not always getting it right, but we shouldn't just condemn them as being insensitive to the very serious domestic abuse issues that have been raised by the committee this morning. I agree with Marcia Scott's comments. I've got many years of experience in the children's hearing system and the contrast between that and getting it right for every child and this system is huge. The best supervised contact that takes place is out with a social work office that's in a child-friendly environment and nothing could take away from that. I think that there's lots and lots of things for us to think about there, but I do want to thank everybody for their thoughts today. I would be speaking for the committee saying that you probably raised a lot of questions for us in terms of how we're going to take the petition and the issues round it forward. I think that it was Rona Mackayl who said before that even though she was involved in the hearing system, she hadn't really been aware of the whole question. Some people have very bad experience of contact centres. I think that there's a number of questions in my mind that we wouldn't look for more information from. I would inappropriately end up with young people having contact through contact centres because the statutory system is failing, so you're making up for the fact that there's cuts to local government or whatever. The whole question of women being contempt for not taking their children into circumstances in which they feel are harmful. What is the training for the judiciary? It's disappointing that we weren't able to get something along from them today, but I think that that is a whole question in itself around judicial training and access to judicial training because there might theoretically be courses available, but if they only run once in a blue moon, then it's less likely. The question of training more generally is funding. I think that there's some consensus here on regulations, certainly, from yourselves. Just to the extent to which people can have confidence in the system more generally, but specifically around domestic abuse cases, it does again worry me that you're saying that you might have families coming to you where the courts have not provided you with adequate information and you're saying that the court report is not trained to even draw out the appropriate information on what we now do. I think that we're agreed to the committee that we want to do some more on this, but I wonder if there are some suggestions of what usefully we should be doing. Pauline? I just occurred to me sitting here that the issues that we're discussing might be very usefully explored in a children's rights and wellbeing impact assessment, which could set out the different areas that are involved and the different training needs that are required, that are setting out where children's rights are being respected and that are not being respected. It's being rolled out more widely across the Scottish Government at the moment and I think that it could be potentially a useful tool for that to be carried out, which I think would set out very clearly where children are invisible in the system. Would it be reasonable for us perhaps to get the Cabinet Secretary for Justice to talk to him about that? There's a lot of information about very small technical things such as the F9 report, the questions that Angus raised about what the Government is actually doing and being able to discuss with the Cabinet Secretary, particularly since there's a domestic abuse legislation going through, the extent to which an understanding of that is then going to be fed out into the business system. Would that be a reasonable thing to do? Is that Edward? There's been a lot of issues raised that you summarised very effectively, convener. I think that the Cabinet Secretary is coming in to explain those and to be quizzed on them I think would be important. Just from a personal point of view, I think that it should be done sooner rather than later because I think that there are real issues here that I've heard this morning which give me concern that the system isn't working properly and it may fail people between now and when we get it resolved. I'd quite like to see it done sooner rather than later. Marcia Briflydyn, Angus, and I think we'll just throw it to the commission. I should just say that many of these issues have been raised in the discussions that Scottish Women's Aid and some of our colleagues have been having over the last few years with the justice officials writing the domestic abuse bill. I would say that there's a children and young people's reference group under Equally Safe that has certainly spent a lot of time talking both to officials and to stakeholders about the challenges of reflecting the rights and needs of children in the domestic abuse bill. I think that when I gave evidence to the Justice Committee about the bill last week actually one of the things I flagged up was that one of the areas that we think the bill could still be improved is about some appropriate way to reflect the experience of children as victims. My sense is that the Government is very sympathetic to the problem but hasn't seen a solution to it that might not derail the bill in general and which of course we would be worried about also. I do think that it would be really welcome if the Justice Committee around the domestic abuse bill was talking to each other. That's a highly technical phrase. Certainly what we can do is ensure that it's flagged up to the Justice Committee. This event will also be on the official report and we'll flag that up to both the convenier and the Scottish Government as well. Angus, do you want to say something brief? No, just to concur with Edward Mountain, I think that so many issues have come to light since we started looking at this in recent months. There's no doubt that we need to have the justice secretary in to address some of those issues. Would it be possible to have somebody, like a sheriff, or somebody from the judiciary here to give their side of... Can we maybe look at that and maybe have a conversation with people who understand these things better than I do? Who are the people who feel able to come here? Why shouldn't they be able to feel able to come along and discuss those issues? We do know from the domestic abuse court experience in Glasgow that a lot of people are very positive about that. We just tried to find a way of understanding properly what their needs are. It would be fair to say again that we recognise as many staff and volunteers involved in trying to make contact work for people. It's about improving that system for everybody. I understand that the cabinet secretary will be in front of the Justice Committee next week. We'll make sure that the information on the round table is available to them. As everyone has said, they're very struck by the range of issues here and the context. I'm troubled by the idea that the contact centres have more complex cases, which in the past would not have come to the contact centres that have been dealt with in the statutory system. That's something that I might want to explore further. I thank everybody very much indeed for their attendings today. That was really useful in reflecting on some of the very genuine concerns that the petitioner has brought before. It's very important issues. I think that we want to thank the petitioner too for allowing that experience to be able to shape some of our thinking and perhaps hopefully shape the provision in the future. Can I suspend briefly while we move to the next item? We'll meet him back to order. We now move to agenda item 2, new petitions. The second petitioner agenda today is a new petition, petition 1658, which calls for compensation for those who suffered a neurological disability following administration of the pluserix vaccine between 1988 and 1992. We have the opportunity this morning to hear from the petitioner and are therefore welcome when to step into the meeting. You're able to come along. We'll start off with a brief opening statement of up to five minutes and then move to questions from members. Once we've concluded our questions, we can consider action that we wish to take. I thank you and ask you to make your statement. Good morning and thank you for inviting me to address you today. I would like to make it clear that the brand of MMR vaccine, which is the subject of my petition, is not in use today and has not been used in the United Kingdom since 1992. The issues that I raise are historical in nature but nevertheless of huge significance to the young people in Scotland who receive pluserix MMR and, as a consequence, still suffer with lasting neurological disabilities today. In October 1988, despite the fact that the Urabi containing trivrix vaccine had been introduced and almost immediately removed from use in Canada in 1986, following concerns that it was causing mumps meningitis in recipient children, the Scottish Home and Health Department supported and implemented the marketing of pluserix, a Urabi containing brand of MMR here in Scotland. After the Canadian authorities had stopped using the vaccine to await laboratory-confirmed test results to conclusively determine whether or not the vaccine was the cause of the meningitis and the manufacturer voluntarily ceased marketing the vaccine it was introduced in Scotland. Despite a number of early indications that a similar problem to that encountered in Canada was occurring here, the Scottish Home and Health Department continued to support the use of pluserix for four years, two of them after the Canadian licence was cancelled in 1990 when it was conclusively proven that the Urabi mumps strain had been isolated from the CSF of the Canadian children. At that time, the Canadians concluded that the vaccine was not considered safe for immunisation of Canadian children, and one has to wonder how anyone could have thought it was safe for Scottish children. Eleven months after its introduction here in September 1989, the Committee on the Safety of Medicines reported 10 cases of mumps meningitis. Dr Alistair Thors was a senior medical officer and named point of contact in the Scottish Home and Health Department's circular advising that pluserix was to be one of the MMR brands introduced into Scotland. He also represented the department on the JCVI and the ARVI and was present when the high incidence of mumps meningitis was reported on by committee members. In April 1990, despite the fact that the Scottish Home and Health wrote to the JCVI outlining their concerns as to the incidence of mumps meningitis and questioning whether or not an alternative brand of vaccine should be used, they still continued to support the use of pluserix on Scottish children. Dr Thors was also present when in May 1990 the JCVI heard that three districts had switched from Urabi containing MMR to the alternative brand and one has to wonder why Scotland, with very obvious heightened concerns, did not do likewise. The JCVI statutory functions do not extend to Scotland and the authorities were not bound to comply either in part or in total with any advice given to them by the JCVI. It was at all times open to the Scottish Home and Health Department to cease using pluserix and switch to the alternative brand. In September 1992 the Department of Health removed pluserix from use and it became the subject of an import ban in 2002, at which time the CSM chairman spoke of the risk of potentially serious neurological complication to children. Pluserix was insufficiently attenuated and a defective product within the meaning of the Consumer Protection Act of 1989. Originally estimated to cause mumps meningitis at a rate of 1 case per 100,000 doses, scientists in Nottingham provided a laboratory confirmed rate of 1 case per 3,800 doses, a significant difference. The Department of Health commissioned a study conducted by the British Pediatric Surveillance Unit of all reported cases of mumps meningitis included a follow-up study a year later to determine any lasting sequelae in the children. Nine cases of sensory neural deafness, a condition that is included in the manufacturer's list of possible adverse reactions to pluserix, were detected in the cohort and reported on in a paper by Stuart and Prabhu. The vaccine damage payment scheme only provides financial assistance to applicants who can satisfy the assessors as to a 60% disability. It is the case that some applicants seeking compensation in respect of the sensory neural deafness following administration of pluserix have been acknowledged as vaccine damaged but not damaged enough to qualify for a payment. Despite the fact that the Scottish Home and Health Department were aware of both the historical background to pluserix from Canada and the fact that identical problems had been and were occurring here, parents bringing their children for MMR vaccination were entirely unaware. It is difficult to see how informed consent could have arguably been obtained in these circumstances. Unfortunately in 2008 to Ms Nicola Sturgeon, the then health minister acknowledged that a senior medical officer files were not held centrally within the Scottish Home and Health Department but retained by individual doctors during the period of employment and destroyed thereafter. It follows that relevant files on pluserix MMR have been destroyed and are not available to the committee. I respectfully request that the committee consider the way in which this highly problematic dangerous vaccine was firstly able to enter the Scottish market and secondly to remain there for four years despite the obvious concerns and problems identified by the Scottish Home and Health Department. To date the children who suffered lasting neurological disability following the administration of the pluserix vaccine in Scotland have received neither acknowledgement nor compensation. In 1982 Lord Campbell of Allaway in the House of Lords advocated that where a child has been damaged through vaccination in the interests of the community there should also be absolute liability and fair compensation. Today, on behalf of those who suffered lasting neurological disability following the pluserix vaccine, I am seeking both. Thank you very much for that and it's obviously a lot in there. Can I maybe ask—you've kind of referred to it but just to capture it—a picture of the scale of the problem and how you think it might be addressed? Do we know how many people in Scotland have been adversely affected by the vaccine? I know that you said that there were some—it had to be more than 60 per cent disability before they were counted but are there others. How do you think that the level of compensation should be calculated? I have no way of knowing. Nobody has ever collated that information. Have you got an idea of how the level of compensation should be calculated? How would that be done? The vaccine damage payment unit is, as I said, only compensated or paid money to applicants who are over 60 per cent disabled, which means that you can't have people coming in under the 60 per cent threshold acknowledged as vaccine damage but not receiving payment. What do you think they should be? Well, we have the situation where we have a party saying to an individual, you have been damaged, we acknowledge that you have been damaged, we acknowledge that the vaccine has damaged you, but in our opinion, after assessment, you are not damaged enough to qualify for a payment. I don't know of many circumstances in life where somebody can say that to a party. My product, I or something that I am party to, has damaged you but not to the extent that I have to acknowledge that, deal with it and compensate you. Can you think of any examples where somebody has had damage but they have not had that threshold? Is there anything comparable that you can think of? No. Where people have been treated differently? It does not seem to me to be fair, I am just wondering if there are any examples of where people have been treated more fairly? No. Okay, Angus? Thanks. If I could just follow up on that. The committee understands that payments can be made under the Vaccine Damage Payments Act 1979 and we also understand that this does not prejudice a person's ability to claim compensation through the courts. So, could you expand a bit further and give us your thoughts on the payment scheme under the act and how it is working for people who have been adversely affected by these vaccines? I do not think that it is addressing the problem because it only addresses the people who, as they say, can meet that 60 per cent threshold and beyond that. You have the unsavory situation where people can be told and acknowledged by the VDPU that they have been damaged by the vaccine but that they have not been damaged enough in their opinion following assessment to qualify for a payment. Okay, thanks. I think that we need to get some more clarification on that 60 per cent threshold. It is non-negotiable that the 60 per cent is across the board for everybody. It used to be 80 per cent but it dropped to 60 per cent. That still means that the assessors who work to the VDPU examine the individuals and then say what percentage of disability they feel that person has. There are two hurdles to overcome at the Vaccine Damage Payment Unit. One is to establish biological plausibility that the vaccine has caused the injury complained of. The second part is to meet that threshold of 60 per cent. We have situations where children are meeting that biological plausibility and being acknowledged as vaccine damaged and struggling with their disabilities but not being assessed as viable for a payment. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Rona Mackay. Thank you, convener. Good morning. Yeah, just to sort of say that this is to some extent historical and that it happened before devolution but the Scottish Government can make voluntary payments to people affected by the vaccine. Are you aware of anyone asking for a payment from the current Scottish Government or previous administration? For this particular cause, no, I am not aware of anybody else. What about anyone in other countries? Do you know if there has been any compensation from governments awarded to people in other countries? For this particular cause, no, I am not aware of that. Not every country used Plucerix MMR. There are many, many countries. America, for example, only ever used MMR2 product. Scotland implemented three brands of vaccine and when they discovered the problem with Plucerix and eventually removed it from use, they switched to an alternative brand. Thank you. I mean, I may have missed this in our papers but how long have you been campaigning for this? Approximately 25 years. Right. What bodies have you approached about it in that time? I have been to the court in England. I went through the MMR litigation in England. I have approached many ministers. In the early 2000s, my MSP Mike Rumbles very kindly approached the Justice Minister at that time, Jim Wallace, and asked him if it would be possible to bring a litigation in Scotland. At that point, I was told no, but I was granted legal aid in Scotland to find out from a solicitor if there was any viability in the claim, but it came back that there was no possibility of bringing a case in Scotland. Again, in 2007, I wrote to the then First Minister, Alex Salmond, and asked Mr Salmond why it was that we were not able to bring a litigation in Scotland. At that time, I was advised that Scottish ministers do not give legal advice. I was not seeking legal advice, but all I wanted was an understanding as to why we could not bring a legal action in Scotland for these young people. Would this have been a vaccine that was available across the United Kingdom? If so, are you aware of any cases in the rest of the United Kingdom that have been successful? No, because nobody has ever brought an action specifically for Plucerix. The MMR litigation that was held in England included all vaccines and only addressed problems with autism and IVD, so neurological problems that were specific to the Urabbi month strain contained in the Plucerix vaccine were never looked at. To use it as a very specific issue, which is quite different from people making a connection between MMR and consequent diagnosis of autism, yours is quite a different issue, but it has been established that the vaccine was a problem. Wendy, thank you first for giving evidence. I am just struggling a little bit, but I have looked through the papers and I am trying to come to grips with the amount of people that you think have been affected by this. I understand that it is difficult because you do not have the files and they have been destroyed, but do you have an indication of how many other people have suffered problems? No, I have no—nobody has ever brought these people together under one body, nobody has ever counted that figure, nobody has ever attempted to see how many people out there have been affected by this vaccine. What I can tell you at a personal level is that the MHRA has confirmed to me that they had 11 cases of sensorineural deafness reported to them in connection with the Plucerix vaccine, but that is only one type of condition. Do you think that deafness is the only symptom, it is the one that you alluded to in your—that it was on the papers that could be a side effect? I would imagine that there would be other side effects. I have not personally been involved in any of that. My drive has been more to do with the sensorineural deafness. The sensorineural deafness is listed in the product insert from the vaccine as a possible side effect of the vaccine and also the Department of Health study that was commissioned to investigate the children who took meningitis after Plucerix. It was determined that there were nine cases of sensorineural deafness, so deafness has definitely appeared following the use of Plucerix. You explained in your evidence that, although compensation is available through the courts, people have experienced barriers to accessing it due to issues such as limitation periods that are applied. If the Scottish Government were to agree to make voluntary compensation payments, what principles would you think it would adopt to ensure that the voluntary scheme is suitably accessible and fit for purpose? I would hope that my aim is to secure perhaps an excursia payment for those children. The only way that we could go back to a legal process would be if we could go down the road of lifting the time bar, but that is a very lengthy, complicated and not always successful road to go down, because undoubtedly there would now be long-since time bars on bringing more legal action. On top of the difficulties that I encountered in the early 2000s when I did try to bring litigation in Scotland, at that point I was told that the limitation act would prevent me from going forward. Funding would also be a problem. If those issues were a problem back in the early 2000s, they would definitely be a problem for young people today. We would also, as I said, have to go to court to ask for the time bar to be lifted to allow us to go forward in that way. Have you thought of any action against the manufacturer? That is what the litigation in England was about. That is what it was about. That is the only defendants that were involved in that litigation, the actual manufacturers of the vaccine. As we have already discussed, that litigation was— Is that covered under the time bar? You have just not been given advice about the ability to take legal action against those who then prescribed the vaccine, as opposed to the person who manufactured it. That was what you confirmed earlier, the advice that you had given them that you could not take. You could not do that in the early 2000s, no? Wendy, as part of your petition, you are all saying, according to the Scottish Government, to make an acknowledgement of those who have been adversely affected by the vaccine. Can you elaborate to me and the committee how you see that acknowledgement being made? I think that what I personally would like would be an acknowledgement, a statement perhaps, acknowledging that there was a problem with this vaccine and that some children, not all children who got it, but some children have been left with lasting disabilities because of it and are still going about today with those disabilities. Nobody has ever mentioned the word plucerix before. It has not been spoken about, it has never been approached, it has never been acknowledged. The children do exist, they are young people now, they are young men and women now, and it did happen to them, but nobody has ever acknowledged that they exist, or even addressed their problems, or said, let us have a look at this, it has just not happened. I think that it is the case for the committee, it is not something that I was aware of until I read the papers and there is a whole number of questions here, including where the threshold lies, why that threshold is established, you have got a problem but it is not enough of a problem, these are things instinctively, we can see from your perspective that that is something that we would want to ask for other questions about, so I think that I am very grateful to you for bringing the petition forward and I wonder if there are some suggestions about how we might take this forward. Angus? Thanks, committee. Clearly, we need to seek the views of the Scottish Government first and foremost, but also it might be an idea to contact the JCVI MHRA, which has already been mentioned in evidence and the Committee on Safety of Medicines, just to get their views on the petition. I think that that would make sense. I think that in terms of the Scottish Government, we would want to know, first of all, are they aware of the circumstances, is it something that they have looked at, this whole question, is it something that would contemplate payments, voluntary excretia payments and how do you think those would be calculated and it may be that once we get a response back we can think about whether we want to actually take more oral evidence or not. You have posed a lot of questions on an issue that I do not think any of us genuinely were aware of, but I think that we get a very strong sense from you of just the sense of injustice about what has happened and I suppose part of the injustice maybe is not even something that has been discussed. Could I just advise the committee that the MHRA only came in to being in 2003 and therefore were not around in 1988 to 1992 when the vaccine was on the market and the Committee on the Safety of Medicines was replaced on 30 October 2005 by the Commission on Human Medicines? That would be useful for the clerks to know. We may want to know what the predecessor body was to the MHRA and take advice on who are the organisations that we might get further information from, Morris. I talked about manufacturers there, and it would not be possible to think about the manufacturer appearing in front of us. Can we look at that further to see whether that is something that we can get advice on to? Within that there are some issues. Could I suggest that the only avenue that I think might be applicable for the committee to pursue would be to approach Dr Thor's, who was the man on the Scottish Home and Health Department at the time, when the vaccine was very much in circulation and supported by the Scottish Home and Health Department? In view of the fact that the files have all been destroyed, we do not have the luxury of referring to the files, but Dr Thor's could perhaps be approached to give some background to that. Can I suggest that what we might do is take advice about how best we would get access to information about decisions that were made at that time? It might be through the chief medical officer or whatever, and we are conscious of the difference between somebody's role, the role of the system and the role of individuals within it. I do not think that we would want to just be careful about that, but we certainly want to get some sense of how those decisions were made and what the systems were that were in place to test against decisions around vaccines. One other thing that I think in the evidence that I heard from Wendy that there was a court case or a decision, was it made by Lord Gill or it was made relating to people who had been injured as a result of being vaccinated in the community benefit for the eradication of disease? Lord Campbell of Allery. I think it would be useful for the committee to look at that as part of the papers when you look at the next stage as well, because I think that it would give us steer on the way to deal with it. I think that, again, because those papers have been destroyed and we do not have them, I think that we should go back also and get some information of the Canadian medical authorities why they stopped it. I am sure that there must be evidence in the system that maybe reports on why they made that decision. I could perhaps assist with that. I can perhaps assist with that. They removed their product because it was causing what they thought at that time was mumps meningitis in the children, but they could not be absolutely sure because there was no definitive test at that point to determine that it was undoubtedly the vaccine. With the passage of time, they developed a test that could determine whether or not the vaccine was the sole cause of the meningitis that they were seeing in the children. Once they had laboratory confirmed proof that the meningitis that they were seeing in the Canadian children came from the vaccine, they took away the licence for the vaccine in Canada. I think that there is a lot of information gathering that we want to do ahead of our next consideration of the petition, but we recognise that you have brought to attention the committee more broadly on an issue that people have not been in conversation in public health at all. I thank you very much for that. We will obviously gather that evidence and we will have a further session in consideration of the petition. I thank you very much for your attendance and I will suspend briefly. Order and move to agenda item 3, new petitions. The next petition on the agenda is petition 1654 by Ian Munn on forestry regulation. Members have a spice briefing, a note by the clerk and a submission from the petitioner. The petition is calling the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to develop a statutory code on stakeholder engagement for the forest industry based on confor guidance. It is also calling for a Scottish Government body to oversee the implementation of and compliance with this code. The spice briefing explains that the Forestry and Land Management Scotland Bill was introduced on 10 May 2017, but does not include provision for a statutory code and stakeholder engagement for the forestry industry as requested by the petition. Members will see that the petitioner's submission sets out in more detail how local people can be affected by a lack of consultation with the industry, and I wonder if any members have any comments or suggestions. One of the things that I was struck by was the petitioner's comments on the degree of damage that they can cause, damage to roads, damage to verges, forestry that has obviously been planted many, many years ago is now being harvested, but there is not any obligation to work with local communities around that. That is clearly something that we can understand the level of concern that people are using on what the petitioner says. Just one thing that helps the committee is that it is not something that is at all covered in the forestry bill that has just started to come through the rural economy and connectivity committee, and we have heard evidence that the rural economy committee has seen the damage that can be caused to roads as a result of forestry. It is one of the issues that was brought up to the committee on one of the forestry visits that we did. It is a genuine concern. As it falls out with the bill, it may be that it is more for this committee to contact the Scottish Government and find out a bit more about this to find out whether it would deal with it more in the regulations or the guidance to the bill where it is at the moment. Why do you think that it is out with the bill? I accept that it is, but have you got a view on why it would not have been included if it was evident to the committee that there was an impact? It is probably too early to say, and I probably should not answer for the committee. It is interesting yesterday at the evidence session that it appears as well. Certainly, reading the bill, there is a lot about felling in the bill, huge sections of felling in the bill that probably was covered by regulation before, and the committee is still looking at why some things are within the bill and out with the bill. However, the whole issue of consultation will probably fall within a regulation as far as grant schemes in the future, but I do not think that it covers the issue that the petitioner has brought to the committee. It does talk about Verges roads, but it also has an impact on traffic, which is already, I think, on some examples of roads in which we have already got petitions. Thanks. I have certainly got some sympathy with the petition, and I have certainly seen at first hand the damage that can be done by heavy trucks moving timber. However, there has been an attempt, as I recall, by the Scottish Government to move the transportation of timber from road to sea through an initiative called Rha Rad Namara, which is a gaelic for a road of the sea. The Forestry Commission has been heavily involved in that, so I have seen it in practice on the Isle of Mull and some other west coast sites. It would be good to get some more information on that, but it is important to clarify that attempts have been made up till now. The very fact that there is a bill addressing this whole question of forestry tells us that the Scottish Government is aware of it. It would be useful to know what those initiatives are and the limitations of them or the benefits of them, too. I think that we would be wanting to write to the Scottish Government. The Scottish Government has a network of roads that are approved for forestry and forestry extraction routes and limitations on the road, which I believe is agreed with local authorities who will be responsible in many cases for maintaining those roads. It may be that the committee feels that it might be appropriate to take up with the Scottish Government whether that needs to be reviewed as part of the forestry bill in the wider scheme of things. However, there is a very basic outline of routes that are available for people to use, the land ones, and I am not sure what the terms would be for it. I have experienced it with Argyll and Bute. We have gone a long way with the Forestry Commission—sorry, my old interests of being a councillor. They have gone on to the sea and a lot of the staff. There is still a fair amount travelling. I think that we should put a cosiler on the map here to get them for us, but there is something going on that is improving it. Would it be more logical, rather than a cosiler, to identify the local authorities for whom this would be an issue and speak to them? I think that the issue is whether constituent with local authorities extends to communities, so we might have a direct impact. The Scottish Government called for Forestry Commission Scotland and the various industry bodies and others that have an interest in Woodlands Trust. Perhaps any others at the clerks can establish that we might have a view on that. We recognise that there might be an issue here, there might be an opportunity in the legislation, but there are already initiatives to put it into that context. If we make contact with the bodies that are suggested, we can look at something further. Is that agreed? Thank you very much for that. In that case, we can move on to petition 1656, threats or assaults on sitting members of Parliament, their staff and families. The next petition on the agenda is petition 1656 by Rob McDowell on threats or assaults on sitting members of Parliament, the staff and families, members of a spice briefing, a klats note and a copy of the petition. The petition is calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to bring forward a specific legislation that would introduce a statutory aggravation for assaults or threats against the safety of the life of the elected members and their staff or families. The petitioner highlights the fact that statutory aggravations exist in Scots law such as assaults against police officers and, in his view, similar aggravations should be in place for parliamentarians, their staff and families. I wonder if members have any comments or suggestions. It is difficult to do special pleading, I suppose. One of the things that has happened and it has been in the life of the Parliament is that there have been, through the emergency workers legislation, a desire to identify groups of workers who put themselves at public risk and may suffer a sort of idea that the fire service has been ambushed, which drove a lot of that early legislation. Then there was a conversation about whether other groups of workers are also vulnerable, whether they are shop workers, workers refusing to serve people because they are under age rather than under influence of alcohol. It feels like an extension of that and I understand the motivation behind it, but I think that there has often been a—at what point, if you identify different groups who are vulnerable, who is left behind because very often people in their workplace are vulnerable. I am understanding the motivation behind it. I think that we will all have had experience, particularly if there are extra staff, which I have certainly regretably had to deal with. However, I suppose that the question is whether having a statutory aggravation is something that we think is worthy of pursuit. I think that it might be worth seeking out the views of different organisations in this. Is it possibly somewhere hidden that it actually fits under some existing legislation? That was my concern reading through this. I think that often that is the case, but it is like—I think that the motivation by earlier legislation was to name the crime. You can understand in the context of the terrible things that have happened to Joe Cox and so on. You can understand people recognising the vulnerability of elected representatives. I would extend that to local authorities and other elected members, who are very often in the front line when people are feeling let down by the system, frustrated by the system or have an hostility to the system. I think that argument about naming the crime is very often why it has happened. It is just the question of whether, in reality, does it give more protection than currently does it deter people, as far as the bigger question that people have looked at. I do not think that anyone is disputing the motivation behind the petition and recognising the vulnerabilities, particularly for our staff. It is a question of whether there is a legal dimension to that or whether there are other things that we can do just to make sure that people are safe. I think that it might be worth it, but I do not think that we are suggesting that we close the petition at this point. I wonder if we do look to see what people have used there. We can write to the Scottish Government, the Crown Office and other legal organisations to the Police, the Scottish Sentencing Council, but to emphasise that it is simply to test the proposition in the petition. We have not taken a view on it at this stage, so I think that that would be fair. If we can then move on to agenda item 4, a continued petition with petition 1637 on chip-to-ship oil transfers and transport accountability. I welcome John Finnie MSP to attend to this meeting for this item. It is a continued petition that we previously considered. Members have copies of the submissions that we have received, including a response from the petitioner to those submissions. In deciding what further action may be appropriate for us to take in this petition, members may wish to reflect on the fact that we do not have a role in relation to circumstances of any particular cases that may lead people to petitioners for a change in national policy or practice. Do members have any comments or suggestions? I do not know whether John Finnie might be worthwhile asking you to comment at this point on where you think that issues are in relation to the petition and your involvement with it. Good morning. Thank you for allowing me to join your committee for this particular issue. I think that you are right to say that the focus has to be on process rather than any particular live claim or otherwise. I have to say that I do not believe that there is a widespread public understanding of the process. For instance, I would want to know why Scottish Government ministers fail to see that there is a role for themselves in it. When we understand Marine Scotland did a number of reports, where are those reports? Who caused them not to be advanced? Can they be recovered from a bin and an explanation given why they were not used? I mean, there is also the question, which, having said what I did say, that there was a significant inadequacy about the initial application and how the various authorities should respond to that. It is important to note that SNH and SIPA did provide responses, so there is a role and disappointingly Marine Scotland did not. It is what the wider implications of that are that we need to understand the clarity of process. Also, in relation to the governance of ports, I think that there is a distinct lack of clarity there. I can see that public bodies can be democratically accountable. Commercial bodies may or may not be accountable to shareholders. Where some of the transport sits in the level of accountability, I think that there are big question marks around that and I think that there needs to be clarity around that. Okay, any other comments? Angus? Can I just slightly to support what John is saying? I think that there is certainly a lack of understanding on who can input and who cannot input into this whole process. Certainly, SIPA's role, SNH's role and Marine Scotland's role, I think is vital. I think that it is also vital that, as those departments work for the Scottish Government, make sure that they are aware of those reports and support them when they go up to the next level, which does not appear to happen. Therefore, I can understand why that petition has arrived here. I can also understand that maybe the application has been withdrawn, maybe there is another application coming, maybe we do not know what is happening, but I think that people need some clarity. I think that by this petition coming forward and by focusing the Government's attention on it and actually asking them to be more clear in what they are doing, I think that it is useful. If it is, you would be suggesting that there will be a liaison between the Scottish Government and the UK Government on the process? I think that the Scottish Government, first of all, has got to make sure that it understands what all the agencies that report to it are saying and that the Scottish Government should come up and make their position clear on it. I am not sure that the petitioners, and certainly Cromarty Rising, understand where the Scottish Government and what the Scottish Government has done. I mean, I may have got that wrong, but that is my understanding of it. It is important to note that the Scottish ministers do not have regulatory powers in relation to licences for ship oil transfer, and that is just the way it stands. That is a clear matter of fact. I understand the role of the agencies that sit with the Scottish Government and the state to which the Scottish Government is informing the thinking of the UK level of licences. The position is that I totally understand the legislation and that it is the MCA that ultimately will make a decision on it. The Scottish Government clearly will have a view on that. It has a view on a lot of things, and rightly so, that perhaps it can feed into the UK Government, but it does not have ultimate control on it. It should make its position clear on that. Are you meaning a view on the particular proposal or on the process? On the proposal based on the information that has been given to it by the agencies that form under them, such as SEPA, SNH and Marine Scotland. I should declare an interest in that I, along with others, successfully opposed a ship-to-ship oil transfer application in the first and fourth in 2006-2007. I spoke in support of Cromarty Rising during John Finnie's members' debate in the chamber. I am lost to understanding where the Scottish Government is on this one just now, because it was very vociferous in 2007 with regard to the first and fourth applications. There does not seem to have been the same action taken at Government level as there was at that time. John has raised some valid points regarding the lack of accountability with regard to port trusts. I would certainly tend to agree with Cromarty Rising with the suggestion that we should take account of the fact that the current Scottish Government guidelines for trust ports in Scotland are not binding in law, and the petitioners call for greater Scottish trust port accountability to Scottish ministers. I think that they raise an extremely valid point there. Many of the port trusts, for want of a better term, seem to be alone to themselves, and it might be an issue that needs to be looked at in greater detail. They also make a valid point with regard to the need to change the sequence of steps in the licensing process and introduce a pre-submission step where compliance with Scotland's national marine plan, European protected species licensing, habitat regulations and independent financial assessment are conducted prior to an STS license application being submitted to the maritime and coast guard agency. Those are all valid points, and they should all be included in any contact that we have with the Scottish Government on this. I think that that is helpful. What I would want to be in a position as a parliamentarian is not to understand the minutia of the legislation that is involved but to refer any constitution to wish to understand the process to a very clear sequence of events. I do not think that it is helpful. I should not be a part of that. It is not helpful for the Scottish Government to go. It has nothing to do with that. Clearly, we have a submission in response from the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency talking about where the competent authority is mindful of the standards that are set by Scottish domestic legislation. The environment does not have no boundaries anyway, so that is not about constitutional matters, it is not about party political matters, it is about a standing process to ensure that all the legislation comes together to ensure the maximum protection for our environment. If we have that, there should not be undue impact. However, there is a very, very close link, as Angus has said, with the accountability process in which we are told about reference to communities. Nairn is directly on the other side of the water, and there was no contact there. Again, there is a very vibrant community campaign wanting to understand the process and wanting to know whether to be another application—hopefully there will not be—but whether to be that due process has been followed. Why would Marine Scotland prepare reports and then not be utilised? They were prepared in good faith to serve us a process, so I think that everyone needs to understand that process. Given what you have said, Angus, how do we take it forward? What is it that we would then do in terms of getting more information? I think that we certainly need to write to the cabinet secretary highlighting the points that Cromarty Rising have raised, and to ensure that the Scottish Government does engage with the UK Government and ensure that the Marine Scotland report is submitted. I am not sure whether it has been or not, but maybe Mr Finnie could clarify. I think that that would be dependent on a live application. I think that it is good to try and make an understanding of the process on the basis of what has happened, because clearly there are flaws in the process here. Never mind the application. There should be a very clear understanding of who does what when and what the relationship is. Ultimately, there is no dispute about who makes the decision. It is a reserved matter, but it has to be an informed decision. We will write to the Scottish Government and ask them what they think the changes in the process would be that would help to allow them to inform the decision around what information is provided to the UK Government. What is their submission going to be to the UK Government around the devices and processes? I think that it is all very well for the Scottish Government to submit reports from agencies. The Scottish Government also has to take a position on the reports that it has submitted. I cannot see in any other organisation that that would not happen that they would make their position clear at the same time. I think that that has got to be part of the process. I would go one step further to help to focus and continue this game. You are probably not going to thank me for this. I think that the petition should be kept open until this process is completed. It has to be said and reiterated that the Scottish Government took a position in 2007 just after the election. Not on this one. Not on this one. On a similar one. Yes, identical, virtually. We should write to the Scottish Government and ask them how they think that the system should be improved. The information that they have and their view of a proposal can be fed into the licence system. If they decide that they have made it a UK level in ensuring certain order, this is the view of the Scottish Government. If they are not saying that they want to make the decision for them, they are telling them what their view is and what they are doing to improve the process. I think that there is an issue here about how the trust ports work and they would maybe want to ask for the response on that as well. Would you keep the petition open then? Yes. If we were asking for a response, we would keep the petition open until such a time as we have that response. We are very alive to the fact that it is not about the specific proposal, but it is about the process of any such proposal. I am trying to learn from that and the concerns that the petitioners have highlighted to us. That is agreed. I think that that has come to the end of the agenda. I will close the meeting and thank you for your attendance.