 Ddi recognition i ddigon i y gwbl addressedon. Achse dargrwp anlych. Yn fod i'n gweld coff piclos, mae'n cy afectaidd bwysig, a'r cwmpAS yn yna mwy fwy r pesos mefydau ar ei없annau pan invent öyle ca prosiect y gallu rhaid Jaganau. A dy websiteswn, bob maen nhw i ddigon i gyflwyso postsyn Go ahead, Fath. Before we go any further, I will note his apologies from Angus McDonald, because he is not getting the food this morning. the Gonzala will be here as soon as he can, and Jackson Carlaw is also... I had to put in his apologies. It brings us to our next agenda item, which is consideration of new petitions. The first petition this morning, The Mumetown, which is in front of us, is PIE 1584 by Angus Files on a new Scottish Vaccine and Immunisation Advisory Committee. The members have a note from the clerk, the petition and the Spice briefing and we also have this folder which has been provided to us all this morning by the petitioner. Thank you very much for all that information but to get us going if you wanted to take five minutes or so to introduce your petition then we will discuss it. That's right. It's great showcase for Scottish democracy. I'll just proceed if that's okay. The subject of Scotland's reliance for vaccine policy and the advisory United Kingdom's Joint Committee on Vaccination, Emun fulfilation and ещё BCVI. In the brief space allocated I'd like to focus on the initial statement in Rachel Smith's letter to me on the 29th of October. i 23nd. 16. 11. 1. Cwrd, llawer am y cyfliwethaf. Scots-minute y mae'r ffordd ar hyn o'r wneud hynny i'r cyfeirie��u ato aethり. Yr hyn gan gymryd y Cyfliwethaf yn cwrt o gyfr metre ag y mwneud â Ffacfynydd Andrew J. Pword, 11. vapu 2014, 12. April 1904. The chair explained that it was important for the committee to be independent and to be seen to be independent when providing advice to government. Sheriff and his work are not only being separate from the influence of industry but also being independent from the Department of Health as a recipient of the committee's advice. If the prime reason for trusting the advice of the JCVI is so that it is an independent body the administers must have failed to do their research. Sadly a number of its members including the chairman have a concerning catalogue of links to the pharmacy to go industry. Professor Paul Ord, a present chair is among his other appointments, head of the Oxford vaccine group, that its continuing existence to accepting contracts for research and clinical trials from pharmaceutical companies and other agencies trying to promote vaccine products. Although he states in his declaration of interest that he does not receive personal remuneration from the industry, yes, the director of an enterprise which acknowledges participation in a significant number of drug trials following on from which he has co-authored numernous papers on the outcomes. Very recently he co-authored a paper in respect of trials associated with G 자연 Cymru yn dweud bod arall, o raiseswyr mwyciwll rhywunio ac ein sydd ar gyfer y cyfwyl sydd cyfwyl o'r cwrwm, oherwydd hemyl ei gweld cyffredinol, yn cyfrifasgol cyfwyl, nad ymlaen i colli hwnnw o'r cyfrifiad yma pell yn wneud chi'n i'r cyfrifasgol sy'n i'r cyfrifiad lleol. Oherwydd, mae'n ddechrau yn cwrwm, yn cyfrifasgol, yn gyfrifasgol, ac yn cyfrifasgol, a adnodd When appointed chairperson of the JCVI in October 2013, he had significant on-going links to the pharmaceutical industry. Ask quote principal investigator end quote to a number of clinical trials. However, he stated ambiguously in his EMA declaration that he wasn't quote, planning end quote, to take on any new grants for clinical trials and research. In June of this year, his JCVI statement noted that quote, since taken up by his role with the JCVI, he no longer takes on research grants from industry and resources end quote. This is confusing, since his EMA 2015 declaration includes a clinical trial funded by Pfizer commencing it in November 2013, a month after he took up office. With that background, he has now chaired the JCVI for two years. In June 2013, his EMA declaration of interests indicate that he was working as quote principal investigator end quote from October 2012 for another of his R-M-N-B-O-M-V-N-Z-Bectro vaccine trial, a trial that was at the time described as quote current end quote. It has previously done so in a number of trials involving Bectro meningitis B vaccine between 2008 and 2012. Under his chairmanship, the JCVI recommended the inclusion of Bectro vaccine into the UK immunisation scheme in March 2014, having previously decided against it in July 2013, before Professor Pollard took up office. However, in a paper published in clinical and vaccine immunology dated February 2014, which he co-authored, he has declared that he is quote named on patents in the field of group B meningoccal vaccines, end quote. The JCVI revised code of practice demands that the chair quote cannot have any interest that may conflict with his or her responsibilities to JCVI and also that the JCVI chair and sub-committee chairs cannot have interest that could conflict with the issues under consideration by the JCVI or sub-committee respectfully. The JCVI minutes of the meeting on 12 February 2014, where Bectro was discussed, do not include a declaration of members' interests, so it is impossible to know what conflicts of interests were declared. However, it is clear from the minutes that Professor Pollard took declarations and that members with specific interests were excluded from voting. There is nothing in the text to indicate that the chair absented himself. Five days after the meeting, a clinical trial was lodged in Bolvin Bectro with Professor Pollard as quote principle investigator, end quote, which was partially funded by Novritus vaccines. It is currently described as quote on going, end quote, and not expected to terminate until December 2015. In June 2014, while chairing the JCVI and acting as principle investigator for the trial, he co-assigned a quote study information booklet, end quote, on behalf of the Oxford vaccine group, inviting families with children approaching routine vaccinations to participate in the Bectro trial. His JCVI declaration of interests from June of this year acknowledges that, quote, other investigators, end quote, and his department were undertaking trials in respect of a men B vaccine funded by Novritus, which has said to have, quote, ended, end quote. There is no indication at this list, Bectro, but if it is not, one wonders where Professor Pollard noted his involvement in the on-going Novritus Bectro trial, not expected to conclude until December of this year. If it is the Bectro trial that is referred to, then according to the clinical trial register, it is still quote on going, end quote, and not ended, end quote, as stated in his declaration. In February 2014, the committee agreed that quote, any conflict of interest, should continue to remain for one year after it ceased, end quote. It follows that Professor Pollard's association with Novritus will not be expansion until December 2016. Of the remaining members of the JCVI, three have declared financial input from pharmaceutical companies to their places of employment. It follows that, although they are not personally in receipt of monies paid directly from the industry, it is the case that their earnings are recovered from that source. That their employment continues to be somewhat dependent on pharmaceutical companies, continued to invest money in clinical trials, et cetera, for their products to be carried out by the institutions. Members have additionally benefited by advancing their careers as co-authors of numerous publications that are published following trials. It is also critical that the chair should be free of conflict since it is his job to appraise other members of the committee annually. Although the JCVI code of practice dated June 2013 at item 39 includes how, quote, minutes of each meeting will include interests that are declared and how they have been handled, end quote, only once in the past two years and seven meetings of any declarations being published. That was on 3 June 2015. It is troubling that the actions of the committee could have wider commercial and political implications. In the case of Bexar negotiations between GlaxoSmith Klein and Novritus began for the transfer of Novritus vaccines, which was deficient a month after the JCVI recommended the vaccine. The Government agreeing a price for the Bexar vaccine was also part of the Conservative window dressing for the recent general election. Ministers must surely have concerns that the recommendations circulated by the JCVI promoting the inclusion of vaccines into the immunisation schedule is not done by a committee that is entirely devoid of influence from the manufacturers. At the same time, it is hard to understand how the officials in the Department of Health and Health England could, for instance, have been completely unaware of any of Professor Pollard's entanglements. In recent years, there have been a number of serious adverse reactions and covered fallen receipt of JCVI-advocated vaccines to include panmarix and fluens, both of which cost narcolexia, cataplexia and some recipient children. Cervrix and Gardasil and HBV vaccines are now subject to thousands of yellow card ADR reports of serious lasting conditions in our young women and rotarex, with an unacceptable risk of interception of the bowel, which has already been removed from the schedule in France. Fluents place immune compromise people and people with asthma at unnecessary risk by continuing to shed for weeks. The JCVI has an established history of permitting its members to not only hold consultancies and shares in pharmaceutical companies but to accept enumeration for lecturing and carrying out clinical trials spanning decades. The members are appointed by the Secretary of State via the Department of Health, senior responsible officer and consultation with PhD public health directorate. The sub-committee invites industry representatives to their meetings. It looks as if, on its own terms of reference, the JCVI has failed miserably to maintain its independence. It is not good enough to simply state that it is independent when there is much evidence to counter this. I respectfully submit to ministers that it should not be complicit in such practices. As an independent appointment, Professor Pollard was more unqualified than the chief executive of a pharmaceutical company, being tied, as he was, to several of them. I therefore request that the consideration be given to the formulation of a Scottish JCVI to serve the best interests of the Scottish people. I was prepared to let you go because I was interested to hear the background information that you were providing. I was listening intently to hear examples of where you thought that people's association with pharmaceutical companies had created a situation in which either a decision had been made against a vaccine or for a vaccine directly attributable to the fact that they had that association. I have got to be honest and say that I did not really hear any compelling evidence that any decision that was made was made because someone has, you know, their job requires them to work in an establishment, which has a connection to a pharmaceutical company. I cannot imagine many people who would be in a position to make a judgment on a vaccine who would not, at some point, have to work in an academic or medical or a pharmaceutical area to get an understanding of the subject matter. Therefore, how do you get the amount of ability, understanding and knowledge of a situation if you cannot be associated with the industry that makes the medications that you are discussing? Yes. By their own admission, that statement that I just read out there, there are three people that have nothing to declare, so that means that they are completely independent. The chairman that has put in place just now and the previous chairman have items to declare by their own. This is all public domain stuff. It is quite easily accessible if you are into the sub-subject, but they have their own, they have three there that have nothing to declare. The chairman has interests to declare, so he is not the best person to be in charge of the JCVI. He has a patent in the product, which, having formally been refused by the JCVI, just after he becomes chairman, he becomes accepted. It is of great possible commercial significance because within a few days GSK and Novartis are in negotiation for the purchase of Novartis's vaccine division. Essentially, your petition is saying that the JCVI cannot be trusted. It is not impartial. We need our own version of that in Scotland. I have been in this place long enough to know that, in terms of dealing with issues on a Scotland-wide basis, there is always a sort of in the background lurking that I can't your favour attitude. No one in Scotland that works in any sector can be devoid of knowledge or understanding of other people. How on earth would Scotland be different from the current situation, given that we would be drawn from a smaller pool of people? The whole system needs a complete shake-up from the Vaccine Damage Payment Unit to the MRHA down to the JCVI because, quite simply, we have a system here that is put on the trust of people that come from a scientific background. Quite clearly, the trust has gone wide and the integrity of the decisions that are being made just now is lacking big time, as highlighted in my speech here. How somebody can come up and say that, you know, I have a patent in that vaccine and then introduce it to the schedule in Scotland. To be blunt about it, that vaccine cost, I think, roughly about £27 million into the schedule in Scotland's NHS. Again, we would foresee a way forward where there was independent science rather than the science being provided by the manufacturers of the vaccine, which has been fed to people around the JCVI that have come through the schools of pharmaceutical companies and their institutions are funded by the pharmaceutical companies. How can critical companies spend a lot of money in creating, trialling, testing different vaccines and medications? If those companies were investing so much money and felt that they were being treated unfairly, we would probably have heard about that before now, do you not think? I don't know that we would. I think that it might happen that through various, they might bring their influence to bear on members of the government and we wouldn't hear anything publicly about it at all. We have a quote here actually from the House of Commons Health Committee from 2005. It says that the Department of Health has for too long optimistically assumed that the interests of health in the industry are as one. This may reflect the fact that the department sponsors the industry as well as looking after health. The result is that the industry has been left to its own devices for too long. It may be relevant that this is the first major select committee inquiry into the pharmaceutical industry for 100 years. Anyhow, they also take the task of MHRA. I doubt in the decade that has intervened that things have improved. The industry is by no means solely to blame for the difficulty that we describe. The regulators and prescribers are also open to criticism. The regulator, the medicines healthcare product regulatory agency, has failed to adequately scrutinise licensing data and its post-marketing surveillance is inadequate. The MHRA chairman stated that trust was integral to infective regulation as trust with the manufacturers, but trust, while convenient, may mean that the regulatory process is not strict enough. The organisation has been too close to the industry. A closeness underpinned by common policy objectives, agreed processes, frequent consultation and interchange of staff. I think that with the JCVI, an example of this culture is a can-do culture. What happens, as we know, is that they review products, new products keep on being added, nobody ever considers removing products. By now, a two-month-old baby gets eight vaccines in one go, including Bexaro, which is a vaccine with very common and quite unpleasant side effects, which you can find even in the manufacturer's insert information. The fact is that the schedule just gets longer and longer and longer, and this is really, obviously, suits the industry. Nobody comes back and says, oh, hold on, isn't this overdoing it? I can tell you, if nothing ever happens, the list of products will just go on getting longer. I understand that. As I said, I am trying to keep an eye on what your petition is asking for, and you want a separate Scottish version of the JCVI, whatever it would be called. What I am interested in is in your take on how we would establish such a body and retain its independence. You said that there were people on the current JCVI who are not associated in the way that others are with the pharmaceutical industry. Can you give me an idea of what is their knowledge and understanding of the area that reassures you that they have the capacity to make the right decisions but retain an independence from the future? I am on the terms of the advertisement for the job, which will ask them all their credentials for that. The point is that those three people have said that they have no declarations to declare, whereas the chap is in charge of it. You could ride up a horse and chariot through the amount of declarations he has got and conflicts of interest that he has had. The point being that the JCVI only has to declare 12 months of your previous employment of conflicts and nothing else. You could be the head of Merck, or Glaxwysmouth Cline or whoever, and then get yourself on to the JCVI. Providing that you have not got any conflicts for the past 12 months, you are there on the JCVI dictating policy and immunisation to the children of Scotland. The point is where I come from in Argyll recently, just two weeks ago there, I have noticed that there was an article there where one in three children in mainstream school require classroom assistance. Never in the history of the planet has that been the case for one in three children require a teacher to go along with them to explain what the teacher is teaching the class. How long can the Government sustain figures and money to keep on supporting the likes of that sort of damage? It is not all linked to vaccines, but there is a correlation. As the schedule gets bigger, the more people are coming up damaged. We would have to take evidence on that, but that is a storm. I would like to come back to you, because what Angus has said is that the executive speaking on behalf of the ministers told him that they were confident in the independence system. I do not know, even if we do not know how to replace the system, we do not know how we can have confidence in it. Following on from the convener's point, I did obviously hear your concerns about Professor Pollard and other members of the JCVI. What I am not yet hearing and perhaps we would look for clarification of is how would it be better, or how would the issues that you are concerned about on the Pan-UK body be avoided in a Scottish body? At the moment, once a vaccination is given to a child, it is written down by a doctor, supposedly, into your medical file. From there, we all know what doctor's handwriting is like, so you could end up with scribble or whatever. I was part of the MMR litigation, and one of the bits of evidence that I was requested was the code of the vaccine given to him. I gave them the code deciphered from the notes as best I could, and several other people said, yes, that is what it says. I sent that off to Merck. Merck wrote back and said that was not the MMR, that is more like a polio vaccine that you are given. That is the code for a polio vaccine. From there, at the moment, that is what is in place. If you take the Norwegian example, where they have a database where each vaccine is recorded in the database, and to bring up a page, you have to have the code of that vaccine on that data page. With that, it is given the code number of the vaccine, the date of birth, your national insurance number, the time of date it was given, and then after the vaccine, you are required to stay for 20 minutes in the surgery to report any reactions. Before you can move on to the next data page for the next vaccine, the first one has to be a completed first, systemic position to be taken by GPs. What I was asking about is the advisory council and the nature and basis of it. A suggestion, I think it is quite a difficult issue, but one thing that seemed to me to be a problem is that the people who monitor the policies and who are responsible for the products are the people who license the products and advocate the products. I do not know whether it is a JCVI or what, but what we do not have is monitoring that is sufficiently distant. On what basis do you think that a Scottish distinctive council would be superior? I can understand concerns about conflicts of interest, but that is why we have registers and declarations. Is it not the case that this is a very specialised field in which there are a limited number of people who have the talents and resources, and so long as they are open about any potential conflicts, it is better to have them than to have people who perhaps have no conflict, but the consequence will be that they do not have any knowledge of the industry? No, the point is that the people who are making the decisions just now are completely tied to the pharmaceutical companies, so the system that we have just now is completely broken and needn't fixed and needn't changed. We cannot say whatever else that it is independent. This is what Rachel Smith said, ministers are confident in the independence of the JCVI. Frankly, I do not see where in all of this, with all the expertise in the world, is there minding the public interest? There is nobody governing their independence. Who does the JCVI report to themselves? It's like FIFA football. There's nobody governing. In England, the law states that the Secretary for State should actually do what the JCVI tells him. That's not your problem, but it is an extreme situation. If you argue like you have a problem, there's no point at which the politicians can ever say, they're always in the position of saying, I leave it to the scientists, I leave it to the experts, I leave it to the Department of Health, the MHRA and I'm never in a position to question anything that they do because they're the experts and I think this is quite a dangerous situation to be in. John Swinney. You've made reference to the chair and three members of the committee having what you would consider to be interests in the pharmaceutical industry, and therefore, on that basis, they shouldn't be allowed to sit on the committee. How many members are actually sitting on the committee at the present moment? Is that 20? I don't know, but we're... And you've said that the chair and three members have declarable interests that show that they have still got current connections with the pharmaceutical industry or the testing of new drugs in the system, and so that would, based on your 23, then that would be 20 members of the committee who don't have a declarable interest based on your earlier statement that is older than 12 months. So how... I was just trying to get to the issue about why you think the chair and those three members who have got the declarable interest and have declared their interests can... Declared interests, the three have declared that they have no interests to declare. Right, three have declared no interests, so... And I'm just trying to get to how many out of that 23 committee members have declared interests with connections with the current pharmaceutical industry. Oh, there's only three that haven't. The only three that haven't, so the other 20 have got declared interests. I think it's worrying that you have a position where interests, and this often happens, are disclosed in one place and not in another place. So we know about things because they've been disclosed to the European Medicines Agency, or they've been disclosed in a published article or something, and nevertheless it's all right for the chairman to preside over things in which he does have a connection, or apparently anyway. The employer is trying to make... The convener is trying to work out how many members are on the committee, how many members can overturn decisions and make recommendations. You have indicated that the current JCVI is appointed by the Secretary of State for Health for England, or Westminster, and therefore all the appointments are made there. So in relation to the Secretary of State, surely Secretary of State would have satisfied themselves on advice from their officials that these individuals would be the best place to actually sit in such a committee. From saying that they're independent, isn't it? And clearly we're talking about the terms of reference of the JCVI itself, and we're talking about Nolan's conduct of public life. And we have an issue here where however wonderful these people are, they don't meet the criteria. Now, maybe people ought to think about that. It's one of the... Certainly I don't know what the answer is. It might be having... It might in Scotland be having a Scottish institution which has tough a regulation, but I'd say that you know, you actually have to consider that the rules are not being adhered to, or apparently not. Okay, convener, just to get clarification, my understanding of the code of practice for the JCVI is it doesn't say that they have to be independent, that the appointment is based on merit and in accordance with the code of practice for scientific advisory committees. So I'm not sure where the issue about the independence comes into the debate. Surely when you're appointing committees, you look to appoint experts in their field. Now, I do accept that there may seem to be a conflict of interest in terms of the appointment of the chair and the current chair of that committee that they do have direct links with on-going trials in pharmaceutical industry. But the reality is that it doesn't say in that basically the code of practice or the guidance notes that they have to be independent. I think that goes back to the point that's been made by the convener and Kenny MacAskill, that how else would you get people on such a committee making decisions if they did not have experience or links to the pharmaceutical testing or industry itself? And what you've said is that the academic interest in this area would be crucial to make sure that hopefully what they're doing would make sure that they were actually testing out the vaccines in a way that could be upheld in public. That's possible, but you have the problem that the only ultimate purpose of this committee is to recommend new products. So the list just gets longer. Or reject. But you can reject products, but nevertheless they don't say, well actually we all, as far as we can see, but they never seem to say, we better look at some of these others and see if we can weed us some of that because it's too much. This is a great bias in favour of the industry. And again as well, like there's no actual tests for these vaccines together. You get your MMR, none of these, that there's never been an MMR vaccine trial. There's never been the three together and a population study done on it. It's the same with the eight vaccines at once just now. All the vaccines have been investigated independently, but together they've never been trialled. And all you have is the cash salesman rhetoric, where these vaccines are okay. Yeah, pumping them up. I'm not sure there's any relevance to what we're actually considering in terms of the petition, because surely that's a matter for the GCVI regardless of its membership. You can question whether there should or should not have been some testing of joint vaccination programmes, but that doesn't really get to the heart of what we're actually considering here this morning. Hanzala, do you want to ask a question? Good morning. GCVI's board is being questioned, what is in tegatry has been questioned. And I think that's a very serious charge, particularly when we're suggesting that there are people on the board who potentially have a conflict of interest, a financial one in particular. Decoration or non-decoration isn't the issue. The issue really is that there are people on the board who do clearly have a financial conflict of interest. That concerns me. I don't care how expert they are and how many few experts are out there, but when people have a financial interest, I have to say that I feel very uncomfortable with that. So that needs to be addressed somehow. I think that's a legitimate concern. What we're trying to do is establish exactly the merits of the petition because the petition asked for a couple of specific things. He's a Scottish version and therefore I'm asking how we would avoid the pitfalls that you've identified in terms of conflict of interest and how we would do that in a Scottish environment and still be able to maintain the level of expertise that's required. That's my concern about what you're asking for. Just to follow on from the convener, Kenny MacAskill, you never really answered the question because this is such a specialised field, how are we going to find the people in Scotland who have the skills to take us forward and not have done clinical trials at some time in our past or connected to pharmaceutical companies? I'm not saying that the point is that there are independent scientists out there who are excommunicated, so to speak, from the science departments these days where they have differing opinions on the tests that have been carried out to date. These people are ostracised from the scientific hierarchy of Westminster and such. There are opinions I've never asked for. Again, there needs to be a lot more openness and the integrity needs to be established back into the JCVI. I'm not saying to be away with it, but the integrity of it is gaping. There's just nothing there. I can't go into the specifics if you want to say what sort of body we're required. There's quite a lot of information, which we all take on board. We don't dismiss any information that's brought to us. I'm wondering whether the petitioners would be satisfied if the JCVI could satisfy us all that the board does not have anybody on it that has a financial interest rather than creating one for Scotland separately. The point is that they only have to declare 12 months, so, like their previous careers, they don't have to declare. Are you aware of any other boards where appointments are made with that kind of restriction? Are there any evidence that boards relate to other medical matters have similar strictures placed on them and how do they work? No, I'm not aware of any. I mean, if you've got any conflicts and if you're biased in any way, if you've got any financial interest in it, I don't think anybody would have you there. For the likes of, to put it into a small context, one vaccine, and you're talking the smallest, whatever vaccine it is, if you've got a patent in that one vaccine, the science of it, if you've got the patent in one small part of that vaccine, whether it be the preservative or whether it be the virus or whatever, it's like winning the lottery every week. You wouldn't be filling in a lottery ticket, you know. That's the money that's involved in it, because these vaccines are worldwide. To put it into context, the likes of in America, where Congress is lobbied quite openly over a vaccine, the pharmaceutical company is the biggest sponsorer of lobbying. It's three times bigger than it's nearest competitor. It's nearest competitor is gas and oil. So that just puts it into context roughly, you know, the money that's involved in pharmaceuticals. But just to go back to what I think the question may have been, I don't know the answer. What I do know is that the condition, for instance, disclosure when you're writing for journals has very, used to be, a few years ago, five years, a five-year gap not for it not to be disclosed, and it was reduced to three. Sometimes the criteria are weakened. I wouldn't say that one could be very necessarily very happy with any one would have to look at the criteria and say what criteria would be satisfactory to guard the public interest. And I don't, I think maybe you have to, people would have to look who had a sort, maybe people who were more, maybe people who were more concerned with the institutions than with the science might have to answer this question, because in the end, these are institutional questions. We're told the institutions are independent or something, and mostly they're not, and mostly it's quite difficult to do anything about it, but one would have to say, look, what do we create which could make this a little bit more wholesome? That's what we've got to take into consideration. I hope that the colleagues to make suggestions how we take the petition forward, because I think petitioners have raised a few issues that require some examination. I think that we certainly have to write to the GCVI and ask them to comment on the concerns that have been raised this morning, and obviously the Scottish Government to ask them what their view is of the current situation and whether an independent separate Scottish GCVI would or similar type body would have any merit from their perspective. We'll open up to other colleagues. It might be worth checking with the Commissioner for Public Appointments in England and Wales about the practices. I think that that seems a sensible view, given the suggestions about year criteria or whatever, whether they feel that meets their requirements. That's already been done. I know that the GCVI is part of that system, which is left to self-governance, and self-governance doesn't obviously work, where the departments down in England are taking no notice of what's going on. You know that these problems are raised, but there's nobody actually. It's not a bad idea. It's a very good idea. Draw it to their attention. At the same time, I watch Mr Stone for making that point, because I was going to make the point that the committee wants to understand this thing, so I think that we need to write to them, so trying to talk us out of doing that is probably not in your best interest, Mr Fields. We'll take the issue forward, John. Given that the Secretary of State for Health is responsible for the appointment to the GCVI, I think that it might be useful to write to the Secretary of State making aware of the petition and the issues that are raised within the petition, because there is an issue about public transparency in terms of appointments. If the Secretary of State is responsible for those appointments, I think that we should give the Secretary of State an opportunity to respond to the issues that are raised. Ah, I think so. Ministers, to see if anything's been brought to their attention and whether they're looking into it. We should write to the Scottish Government, so it would be the health minister who would take that with him. We'll make contact with those bodies and we'll collate that information back and get back to you with the responses that we receive and see how we take the petition forward from that point. I appreciate it. Okay, thank you for coming with us this morning. I'll suspend for a few minutes until we change over witnesses. The petition this morning is PE1589 by Stuart Curry on an independent review of child contact and financial provision post-separation. Again, members have a note from the clerks. They have the petition Spife Briefing and a submission from Families Need Father Scotland. So I welcome the petitioner, Stuart Curry, to the meeting this morning and invite you to make some opening comments before we discuss the issue Over to you, Mr Curry. Thank you for allowing me to bring my petition before you today. As I've stated in the petition summary, I believe an independent review would be an effective way of ensuring post-separation child contact and finances are fully investigated, and as many organisations and stakeholders as possible involved in the process. Whilst it would have been easy to highlight one or two problematic areas, I feel a more detailed study of the current situation would help to create a clearer and more balanced picture of how families are affected post-separation and hopefully lead to positive changes. I've already highlighted how engaging directly with organisations such as the National Records of Scotland helped in its sensitive information relating to divorce cases is no longer going to be available to the general public. This is only one of a wide range of organisations or groups potentially involved during a divorce. The growing up in Scotland report 2013 mentioned already highlights that non-resident parenthood is considerable, so it's important that the issues surrounding people in these situations are dealt with in as effective a way as possible in order to help to stabilise families as soon as practically possible post-separation. I feel that this can be achieved when things are looked at holistically. You can see that my petition highlights a wide range of issues, including effectiveness and length of negotiations post-separation, health, finances and legislation. All of these can impact upon mental, emotional and physical wellbeing of parents and children. Family cases are currently very expensive in Scotland. Legislation suggests that the best interests of children are paramount and so they should be, however determining what is best for a child can take a very long time when negotiations are difficult and lengthy. For cases that proceed to court, I believe that engaging parties in a significant way at specialist family courts would help to reach a suitable conclusion for a significant number of cases and may well assist in halting unhelpful correspondence between lawyers. Having specialist family sheriffs is regrettably currently not the norm and people need to be involved more at these times. The fact that there are many pathways that can be taken with no guarantee to lead to a satisfactory outcome means that it can be very difficult for people to determine the best course of action to take. Should they go to a lawyer, should they attend mediation or court? With that in mind, signposting to services that could assist is vital, along with easier access to information. Unfortunately, some services such as the Scottish Child Law Centre are currently stretched. If services such as these were better resourced, then possibly many cases would not need to proceed to cost the court cases. Children spend a significant amount of their time at school and attending youth clubs, so it is also important that guidelines are provided for education authorities and other voluntary organisations and bodies to assist them in ensuring that they are acting within the law and are informing and involving both parents as is appropriate. Instancies documented have shown that some schools have been excluding non-resident parents. That may be a result of ignorance in relation to the legal position, however, it is unacceptable nonetheless and could be addressed to training and guidelines for staff and volunteers. In conclusion, there are many issues to deal with for separated people and children and are often a major concern. I urge the committee to consider my recommendations as they are submitted with a genuine desire to help to improve the lives for all parties post-separation. Thank you very much, Mr Currie, for your petition this morning. The contribution from families who need fathers—I do not know if you are involved with them—is an organisation that is not spoken to them. You are not part of the group. Not that that matters. They make the point that there are a number of areas that are coming together here. We are dealing with a variety of petitions at the minute in relation to these types of issues. How widespread a problem do you believe this is in terms of the specific issue that you have identified? Have you got any statistical information that can back this up or is it just something that you have encountered, but you are not particularly aware of a wider question? I have read a lot of things, for instance, on the internet. I have read reports on the internet. I do not have all the specific details of the reports here, but I have read widely on the internet about people finding it particularly difficult to access information and to know what to do in legal positions. People can go to court and spend an awful lot of money on a case, but once a case is concluded, issues can arise in the future. They have to then go back to court and can then cost them another awful lot of money. As I said, I have read on it myself. I have also contacted the Scottish Child Law Centre and have attended courses that I have run through my workplace, so I am aware of them in that way. I have spoken to them and found out that they are pretty stretched. They have got lawyers there who are able to give people advice. Possibly things like that would be helpful. People are going to doctors and attending community centres, so I think that there is a signposting thing as a major one. What do people do? The first thing they have got to do is think that they need to go to a lawyer. Which lawyer do I go to? How long does it take? It is all pretty complex. The whole procedure for people is a traumatic time in their lives. It is not an easy time for people. Some people may well be able to sort things out relatively quickly, but for others it is not that way. I have spoken to people in the legal profession and I have highlighted in here that it can take a year. That is a common place for it to take a year going to court and in some things that may not be a particularly long period of time. However, when children are not seeing one parent or the other or their whole routine is disrupted and people's emotions are running high, that can cause huge issues. I was going to ask my follow-up question. How do you think adversely this impacts when the children are obviously the situation in which you find yourself as an adult relationship but it would have an impact on any children involved? How big an impact do you think dragging court cases out having? Even in the best of circumstances there are still people coming together in a court which is not a nice scenario. Children are aware of things. They are always going to be aware of things. I work with children as part of my job and it is major because they talk about things to people and they raise it with people at different times their issues and their concerns about things. Particularly just now in education which is the area that I work in, we think about GERFET and we think about all what we are trying to promote in our children resilience and making them have the effective contributors, responsible citizens and well-rounded people. We want to give them the best start in life and undoubtedly people will continue to be separated and there will be divorce that is going to happen. We want to give the children the best start and make sure that their relationships with both parents are not ripped for too long a time. That is the problem with the current situation. There does not seem to be a time frame for things. Things can just be as long as they take and that can have many, many people contributing to why that can take a long time. We can often say that one party can be more difficult than the other. That is not for me to make that judgment about people but that is certainly not going to help the children. Particularly in these cases, people need to be proactive. If you are going to someone for assistance, if you are going to an organisation for assistance, you really need help. You need people to set some sort of targets in place and assist folk in that manner. I do see it as a very wide area. The likes of one of the things that I highlighted there was a personal example of having to attend the national records of Scotland and find out about my own situation, which was a huge amount of information that was published publicly. I had to put a stop to that. I was quite concerned that that was available given my job and given the children that I work with and given my desire for the best things for children. That is why I had to take it up with the Scottish Court Service. That is just one example of the stumbling blocks that people find themselves facing. You think that there is an awful lot to consider. There are a lot of things that people need to face but I think that administrative things could be tightened up. There could be tighter time frames putting things in obviously what is published to people just walking in off the street. They can pay money and access things, has got to be changed. I was quite starkly shocked when I found out the things that they can publish for people to read. It is a wide, wide area. People are out there to help but it is very disjointed, I feel at the moment. Another area that I have come across legislation-wise is the involvement of the Scottish legal aid board in those situations because they have got their own legislation that they use in cases but they have got their legal aid laws and there are also family laws within Scotland. That can cause issues as well when you are going through these divorces and things because lawyers are working through two lots of guidelines and based on speaking to various lawyers I have found out that it is actually not particularly lazy at times to determine what the legal aid board's financial clawback and rules are. They have got booklets, they have got guidelines but to read that and to understand it as a layperson and also as lawyers, as lawyers have told me, is not the easiest thing to do so that obviously makes negotiating hard if they are putting people in a certain pathway in order to try and resolve their finances but the legal aid board's got other rules which are in place, their law, but there is an issue there in trying to marry the two together and that can again lengthen cases. Hans R. Thank you, convener. Good morning. You are absolutely right. There are a number of petitions in front of us. People have different aspects of this particular area that is troublesome. I have had first-hand experience where I have seen families split up and then I have seen the children suffer as a result of that. I have even seen in-laws coaching children which are not only detrimental but quite cruel because they are denying the child one parent on another. I think that it is absolutely crucial that if there is a separation that we have, benchmarks of how quickly things have to turn around, particularly in the interest of the child, children should not have to suffer the indignity of being separated from one parent on another unless there is something that can be proven in court because accusations become fast and furious and quite outrageous accusations. I agree with the petitioner and petitioners who have come to us. I think that if the petitioners are happy, perhaps we could put them all together so that we can actually ask the Government to look at this more seriously because I believe that social work has a very important role in this because when children are involved, I would like to see the social work department get involved fairly quickly and rapidly in the best interest of children and that happens and that is established. Then if the parents are not in a position to bring their grievances to an end, then at least the children's interest could be looked at far sooner than that and I think that that is very important. I agree with Hans Alam Alex's point that we have two life petitions at the moment dealing with other aspects of family law but brought by fathers who have been affected by their experiences of the system and I think that we do have to look at all those in the round. Of course we will look at your own individual specific issue but I think that if we take an overview by conjoining that the three petitions will get a fuller picture and I think we are building up a picture here of areas in which I think that we would like to see the Government answer in terms of family law at the present time but Kenny, do you want to ask a question? I would concur with yourself. I have no questioners to make the point that I actually concur with that. I think that we are all together. I think that Mr Culley has made valid points. I do think that we are at a juncture where we have moved on considerably from previous investigations both in this Parliament and legislative change but we now have a change to the court system. We have a change to the appointment and specialisation in the Shrevel bench. We have pressures on the legal aid board but there are changes happening there. There are changes even to benefits and that opens up opportunities whether we stay as we are or go back to previous positions that existed or whatever. I think that this is a juncture at which the Government should be seeking to try and bring it all together rather than looking at any one bit individually because those things, as Mr Culley has correctly said, do come together. Rather than looking at contact or looking at a child payment fit or whatever else, I think that this is a time when the Government should be perhaps asked if it is its intention to seek to try and bring the current changes together and consider where we go because there are clearly issues across this whole spectrum. No other comments from committee members. As I said, I think that you can tell that there is a degree of sympathy for the issue that you have brought. We will take that issue forward to the Scottish Government to ask them to comment but we will make the point that we think there is an emergence here of a concern that there may be aspects of the law that have to be looked at in the round so that we can get the best system possible because if we are taking the interests of the child and the account then we have to get it right for them. I think that the points that you have made this morning are very valid in terms of the duration of court cases and the impact that that can have when things are being dragged out. We will write to the Government and we will get back to you once we have had that response and you will see how we take forward the petition from that point. Thank you very much, Mr Currie, for coming before us this morning. Again, I will suspend for a couple of minutes to change over. Our next new petition this morning, PE1579 by Jean Hepburn on funding for the new barhead high school, brings us to a situation that we do not find ourselves in very often, that we had published this. It was a petition that was coming forward and would have been discussed this morning, but given that the issue that led to the petition being brought to the Parliament has been resolved and that the school is in the programme for the new hub funding, then the issue has been resolved and there is nothing else that we can do with it. We will open the petition and close it if members agree. That brings us to agenda item 3, consideration of continued petitions. The first of those is PE1480 by Amanda Cappell on behalf of Frank Cappell Alzheimer's awareness campaign on Alzheimer's dementia awareness and Jeff Adamson on behalf of Scotland against the care tax on abolition of non-residential social care charges for older and disabled people. The members have a note on the committee's previous consideration of the petition and submissions from the Scottish Government and both petitioners. In opening this up, I see what the Government is saying about the work that Professor Bell did, but there is other work out there in relation to the care tax and the charges. I think that this figure of £300 million, I am sure that Professor Bell did not pick it out of thin air, but I am not entirely sure that it relates exactly to the issue that we are talking about. If you collect information on one subject, it does not necessarily mean that it is relevant to the specifics of another. I would like to give back, if not directly to Professor Bell, certainly to the Government to ask just what the basis of that figure is. We have seen information from Scotland against the care tax in particular, and I have spoken to that organisation on a regular basis. I think that the figures that we are talking about here are quite wide of the mark in terms of what they are specifically asking for in relation to the petition. As I said, I am not querying the fact that Professor Bell produced a figure of £300 million, but I am not entirely sure that it relates specifically to the issue. Therefore, for it to be used as the basis on which to respond to the petition, I think that it is questionable. I do not know if colleagues have other comments on the information that we have. We need clarification about that. The disparity in the figures is quite—I know that we always get causal and others chipping in with statistics, and we can always see best-case scenarios and worst-case scenarios, but very seldom do I see a series of figures that are so divergent that you can say that the thing would be so wide that it could be as little as £14 million or as much as £300 million. Something does not add up when it comes to the statistics. I am not sure that the figures that we are using are absolutely relevant to the point that is being made, and I would like to get some clarification around that. David. I think that we should definitely write to Professor Bell to see what criteria he is using and how he has come about his figures, because, as you say, there is a wide difference between the two sets of costs. I would like the committee to do that. Members appear to agree with that. I think that we have to continue to ask this question, so we will do that and take the petition forward in that way at the moment and bring it back at a later date. Our next petition is PE1549 by Alan Clark Young on concessionary travel passes for war veterans. Members have a note on the committee's previous consideration of the petition and submissions from Transport for London and the petitioner. The response that we got from Transport for London was seen by the petitioner. I think that the petitioner has identified a number of questions that relate to that. I do not think that we ever believed that we could look at the situation in London and say that that is exactly what the petitioner is asking for here. I think that there are things about eligibility and other areas that he has identified that we could go back to Transport for London and ask him to get a bit more information about so that we know that we are comparing apples and oranges, but that does not mean that we cannot learn from what the Transport for London is doing with our oyster cab to see whether it relates to the concessionary travel scheme here before we consider the issue further. The members agree that we go back with those questions. The next petition is PE1551 by Scott Partinson on mandatory reporting of child abuse. Members have reports on the previous consideration in front of them and a submission from the Scottish Government and the petitioner. I will open up to the members to discuss us. I am inquiring with the UK Government, given the commitments by the Prime Minister, on where they are taking it. I appreciate that, at the Scottish level, these things can be double-edged in the views about who is concerned. It might be interesting to know where the UK Government is going. Other than that, I would be inclined not to venture in terms of legislative change, given the potential consequences that would be unhelpful and potentially dangerous. I do agree that we should at least get the UK Government's position on that so that we know that we are making a decision on the full information that is available to us. The next petition is PE1554 by Jack Kelly on behalf of Leonard Cheshire disability on improving the provision of disabled-friendly housing. Members have a note on the committee's previous consideration on the petition and a submission from the Scottish Government and the petitioner. It is not what the petitioners sought, but we have equally gone to those who have an interest in it. To some extent, it seems to me that we have approached an election period. It is for people to raise the issue and seek to make it a matter of public policy. Beyond that, I do not think that there is anything that we can do than to send letters that would not take it anywhere from. I think that there is a degree of understanding of the petition. I certainly support the intention behind the petition and it is how we get into a situation that delivers on what the petitioner is asking for. I personally believe that we should be building houses that are fit for disabled people. We have to make that commitment, but I do not think that we are going to achieve it by taking the petition any further forward. We just have to, as individual MSPs, support the petition's intention so that we can get those types of issues addressed by political parties to ensure that they are party policies. There was a debate in Parliament regarding the lack of housing in Scotland today and the type of housing of the members. One of the issues raised in that was that the size of rooms was very small, they were inadequate, large houses were missing and there was a suggestion that the Government should consider having percentages of how many percentages should be there. This is the type of thing that could also be considered that we have a minimum percentage of houses that are specifically designed and applications put in place that are user friendly for people with disabilities. I think that it might be worthy of going back to the Government to say that it has had any more thought in this area because at the end of the day, there are citizens out there who need those facilities and to try to redesign houses is an expensive way of doing things, whereas if we had something built in in terms of what percentages people are expected to adhere to, it could become Government policy. I think that that is a good petition and I think that we should… I do not disagree with that. As a good petition, it raises a very important subject. It was Alex Johnson's debate in the Parliament a few weeks ago that raised the issue of the size of rooms, so there was a lot of discussion at the point and the minister did respond to that. The point that Kenny made and I tend to agree with is that we are at the point now that we know what the Scottish Government's view is on the issue. This is an issue that we as individuals and the support of organisations such as Lenard Cheshire should try to make party policies so that we can get the changes because that is the way that change will come about. We have had the Government's response to it and we are not going to get a different answer to that, to be perfectly honest with you. We just have to take our own view as to whether that is an acceptable answer or in a more positive vein what we want to do to address the concerns that Lenard Cheshire is making. Do you have any information on how many houses we would require annually for people with disabilities because for any political party to take up the case they would need that sort of evidence? I think that there are organisations out there that have an idea. I do not know that I can remember off the top of my head. The figure of one in ten new builds is the one that is sticking with me at the minute, but I am not entirely sure that that is a general consensus among the organisations, but I certainly know that there is some belief that there is a note in the briefing paper that gives some indication of the figure. There are indications out there. There are organisations that have produced an analysis of what will be needed in the future, so it is up to us to look to see whether we can get those issues brought forward. We have to deal with the petition and whether we can take the petition any further forward. I think that is the point that Kenny was making. We have established the Government's position on it. It is not the outcome, I do not think that the petitioner has wanted, but sometimes we have to accept whether we have exhausted the questions that we can ask of the Government. It falls on the rest of us if we are not happy with that response to do something about it. The Government has that position because we clearly know that there is a need out there. I think that the Government is morally obliged to then try to reduce that gap. John, do you want to make a point? There are two things. One is the response from the minister in relation to the letter that he has given to the committee. He has made reference to the local housing and planning authorities that are responsible for assessing all housing requirements and their area of planning to meet those through their local housing strategies and local development plans. The issue for me is how the local development plans and the local housing strategies are accountable to local authorities. It is fine to say that local authorities are responsible for delivering those, but how do we check that they are delivering on those strategies? We have had some discussion previously where there are some disability groups who fail greater consultation at a local level and may help to deliver the needs that are required and identify the needs at the local development planning stage. I know that, in one of the local authorities that I represent in North Lancashire, it is about to go through its local development plan. I am not sure whether the local authority will consult disability groups or look at the stats in relation to the number of houses that would be required, that one in 10 figure that you used earlier. I would be keen to write back to the minister to ask exactly how those local development plans are tested and how local development plans are approved by ministers at the end of the day. It would be useful to find out how the ministers test against the demand that we think is out there and whether or not local authorities can show the demand levels that would be required. I am keen to make sure that everybody on the committee does not become the responsibility for social landlords or those in the housing association and housing co-operative sector. That should become a responsibility and a notice on all house developers. Unfortunately, too often, we find that the local authority or the social landlord housing association are the ones who are left picking up the tap for the disabled adaptations or building appropriate housing that would suit people with disability issues. I am trying to put a wee play in here to write to the minister to get clarification on how it would test that local authorities are including those issues in the local development plan and the housing demand side of things in relation to the future developments. I take that point on board, John. That is a good question. I do not think that he is going to change the outcome of the petition, but we can certainly establish just how the Government can do that. I am more than happy to keep the petition open until we get that answer. The next petition is PE1563 by Doreen Goldie on behalf of Avonbridge and Standburn Community Council on sewage sludge spreading. Members have enrolled from the committee on previous consideration of the petition and submissions from the Scottish Government, SEPA, and the petitioner. What do members think, Kenny? Pushing the Government away a bit more, I think. This has been a long-standing issue since this Parliament was re-established. I think that both the petitioners and the deed are entitled to know what is happening and what is going on, so I think that pushing them would be useful. I think that we also need to be pushing SEPA as well, because, while I welcome the response from SEPA and they detail the number of organisations that currently have, I think that they have talked about operating sludge production of treatment facilities, they also indicate that the list above does not include details of, and what I am particularly concerned in three bullet points have indicated, is that companies involved in alternative enduces of sludge such as incineration or landfill. A no landfill in my area is a particular issue where the licences for landfill dumping of sewage is a concern to residents and others, as well as the residents from the Avonbridge area that raised the petition initially. There is a concern that some would describe as indiscriminate landfill usage or dumping in sludge, and it would be useful to try to get some indication of how widespread the use of landfill dumping is in Scotland and what proximity those are to residential areas. That is an issue that might come back to haunt us if we do not try to deal with that issue as well. I will go back to SEPA with those questions, John, for when else is agreed. Next petition, PE1565, by James Dugo and the whole of life sentences for violent re-offenders. Members have notes on the petition so far and the submission from the Lord Justice clerks. What do we think we need to do with this? I would be minded to close it on the basis that it has gone to the Sentencing Council. If the petitioner does not like the Sentencing Council's view on it, then it is a matter of public policy, as we were saying, regarding previous matters and that needs very well performed part of various parties' law and order manifestos for the 2016 election. However, it seems to me that the Sentencing Council is a place to go, and if it does not satisfy it, then the time it came back here, all we would be doing is saying that it is an election issue. Next petition, PE1566, by Mary Hemphill and Ian Reid on a national service delivery model for warfare and patients. Members have paper working front of them on the previous consideration of the petition and submissions from the University of Birmingham, the petitioners and Dr David Patterson. I think that this is when we need to go back to the Government to get information on the Healthcare Improvement Scotland's guidelines on self-testing and ask whether the Scottish Government would commit to consulting with the petitioner and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde in evaluating the efficacy of the local self-management service delivery model that they have developed together. We need to find out what they think of it. Members agree? The next one is PE1568, by Catherine Hughes on funding, access and promotion of NHS Centre for Integrative Care. Members have a note from the committee's previous consideration of the petition and submissions from a number of NHS boards, the Scottish Government and the petitioner. Members should note that the petitioner submitted an additional submission, and that has been circulated and put on members' desks this morning. Before I came in this morning, I received an email from Dr Jacqueline Martin. Dr Martin had raised a couple of issues about evidence that is up on the website. It is just for clarification, she has identified issues in paragraph 2 of the SPI's report and in paragraph 3, which she considers to be inaccurate. It is just to put on record that the SPI's report was produced at the outset of the petition and obviously information that has come to light to us since the petition was brought forward means that that information is now updated. It does not change the original SPI's report, but we are aware that the two issues that she has raised about the range of conditions and also on inpatient homeopathic beds, which she considers is inaccurate. We know that they are inaccurate and we can take that on board in our considerations, but that does not change the information that we have. Maybe because I was not in the committee at the time that this first came out, but I have been involved in discussions with local people who have received support from this service. I would like to make a request to the committee that we invite. Some of the health boards are making these decisions to come and speak to us. I am told that the waiting list for these types of services is now going through the roof. There are real concerns about the types of support that have been given to people with chronic pain issues. I wonder if we need to get representatives of the health boards who are making these decisions not to support the funding of this integrated care service so that we can get a fuller understanding of why they have made these decisions. Writing back and forward is helpful in getting some information, but I think that it is just raising more and more questions. The members agree that we are trying to get a meeting at which the health board can come and speak to us. I am supportive of that idea to bring the chief executives along, but I think that one of the issues that we need to make them aware of before they come along is the decisions that have been made not to refer any more patients to the CIC. Clearly, NHS Lannyshire, although there is a commitment to continue the treatment of those patients who started treatment prior to 1 April 2015, there is no current commitment to make referrals after 1 April 2015. The issue about the waiting list that you have raised is one whereby patients can no longer be referred from NHS Lannyshire. That might be the same in other health board areas, but clearly for greater Glasgow and Clyde health board, the question is that, at the present moment, they are saying that they will maintain that service, but how long will they maintain that service? I think that that is the concern from the petitioners and others. Although the great Glasgow and Clyde health board has said that it will maintain that commitment, if the other health boards start reducing their reliance on that service, how long can they maintain that service? NHS Lannyshire has clearly said that it will continue the treatment of those patients prior to 1 April 2015, but that will be reviewed if they no longer feel that they would require treatment beyond that period. There is an issue in terms of the sustainability of the CIC, but underlining that is the referral rates or the lack of referrals from other health boards. In terms of who do we invite? There have been submissions from Lannyshire, from greater Glasgow and from Highland. Is that the health board that we are talking about? That will certainly give us an idea of what is going on out there. If we write to them and ask them if they are prepared to come and discuss that issue, not just in the negative about what they are not doing, but what are they going to do to replace the services and promote more constructively the concerns that people have about health promotion? It is not just about challenging them over their decision but asking them what they are doing as an alternative. If that is what their decision is, what are they doing to replace the services that they currently no longer feel they want to support? I think that we take that forward with that request. The final petition today is PE1543 by Stephen Salters on investigating parental alienation and reviewing civil legal aid. This petition was originally lodged in November 2014 and was subsequently taken down for legal reasons. Those reasons were that there were outstanding legal proceedings involving the petitioner to which the subject matter of the petition was relevant. The legal proceedings have concluded. The petitioner requested that his petition be published and considered by the committee. Having had sight of the petition and being aware of the outcome of the proceedings involving the petitioner, which have resulted in a non-harassment order being put in place, the committee will consider what action we could take. My suggestion is that we close the petition under rule 15.7 of standing orders on the basis that the outcome of the legal proceedings and the issues involved mean that, in this instance, it would not be appropriate for the committee to consider this petition further. That means that we go to agenda items 4 and 5, which are to be taken in private session, so I will now close the meeting to members of the public.