 I can get started. I welcome you to the meeting of the Public Petitions Committee. There is only one item on the agenda today, a consideration of new petitions, but we will be considering a total of 9 petitions. The first six petitions will be considered without taking evidence from the petitioners. I shall invite members to comment on each petition in turn and to suggest any action that we should take in response to the issues that are raised. Focallegau 1 Cymru, 1606, ond yn ddwylliant y Gwladdion Gwladdol, yn ystod i gyd yn ystod i gyda'r sgol iawn. Focallegau 1, 3, yn ei ddweud mewn cyfaintol yma i'r adroddau Peter Greggson i'r cydnod gyda'r sydd. Foddau y Gwladdion Sgol iawn i'r adroddau i ddau'r adroddau i'r adroddau i'r cyfaintol i ddweud yn gyfaintol i'r adroddau i'r adroddau i'r adroddau Mae'r gweithio'r gweithgofadau sydd yn sefydlu i'r ffordd, i'w adeiladu digon y Poppywyr, a'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio. Felly, ac oedd dyma i'n gweithio'r gweithio a'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio? Mae'n gweithio'r gweithio yn fwyfyrddol yn y gweithio. Rwyfawr, gallwch yn ddigon ni gONG If inheritie yn ôl. Mae'n ganwech chi'n gallu gwneud i gweithio'r gweithio. gyda ddull ar gyhoedd gyda'r cyf raisingordd. Diolch chi'n dderbyn amddangos bynnag dweud ac os ydych chi'n gyfgrifennu llwyfer, rydych chi'n ddigonwch angylch i'r ddweud. Felly, rydw i'n ddweud ydych chi'n ddweud y gyfrasiliad. Mae ffordd yn fy ffordd yn yw'r ddechn Подblyg yn pair argyffreddio'r llawb tystiolaeth buty llawer o'r ddefnyddio'r lleen. felly teimlo fyddwyd yn tirfyniad o'r ddaf i'r cyhoesoddi, but yn pob ychydig iawn o'r dweud o'r hyffordd gechwyn i'r bobl yn yw ddelfnyddio'r ddechrau i'r ffnodd yn meddwl am yr llawb yn gilydd ddelfnyddio'r amser i ddelfnyddio'r amser i ddelfnyddio'r amser. Although it seems that it must be required to get it through. I would definitely be keen to hear the Scottish Government's views before we take further decisions in the petition. Charlie Mc시면 bundle would suggest writing to Convention기로 Scotland and the local authorities for their opinions of views. It would be useful to know from them what progress has been made on sharing services. If we write to the Scottish Government also to find out where they are in relation to public sector reform and we want to write to the community local government committee as well just to see how they are going to be looking at this issue because Angus MacDonald makes an interesting point around education. In the education committee we are currently looking at the proposals around devolving power down to schools. We know that some local authorities actually don't have a director of education any longer. They have bulked up their responsibilities so you wonder how those discrete services can manage through all that shared services work. I think that that might be a useful way to take it forward. Any other suggestions? No? Okay. Okay. Thanks very much. Thank you to the petitioner for that petition. If we can move on. 1. Petition 1.607 on congestion charging in major Scottish cities. That is the second of Mr Gregson's petitions. That petition calls for legislation to introduce congestion charging in major Scottish cities and the petition has provided a further written submission in support of its petition. I am keen to hear comments from members. I do note that there has been some discussion just in the last couple of days on the issue of congestion in Glasgow. I was in the Parliament during the period when they attempted to get congestion charging in Edinburgh and it was by referendum. To think that it was controversial would probably be pretty accurate at the time. I think that the petition is addressing this question that is congestion charging a good thing. If it is, is it feasible to do it through a referendum or is it possible to give the powers to local authorities to make that decision without a referendum or a consultation? I am happy to hear people's views. My initial reaction to it would be quite against it. I think that we all would like to see traffic in our city centres reduced dramatically, if nothing else, for health reasons. I think that there are other ways that we should explore doing that. My gut is to not have a congestion charge. It is massively unpopular in London. I know that in the petition documents it says that it has been very successful. I am not convinced that that is true. I am not sure if we do know what the position is for how massively unpopular it is in London because I have also heard people saying that people have accepted it and that it is something that people have come to terms with. At the point at which it has been implemented, I think that there was a great deal of controversy. It might be something that would be worth while even just checking out, I suppose. How would we ask the mayor of London or whatever to write to him? I am not sure if that is a... We could do that. I presume that we could write to the Scottish Government local authorities to ask them their review. The petition seems to be focusing on the question of, if congestion charging is a means of addressing emissions and so on, have we actually got a power that nobody is going to use because it is not doable? Research that legislation does already exist, it is just not being used widely. It really is then up to the local authority to implement it, if they want to. Is my understanding of it? The petitioner is asking that local authorities should not have to consult prior to introducing a charge. I think that that would be very unpopular. I think that it is a very important local authority matter to deal with, chair, and they have the ability to introduce a congestion charge as anyway. It goes through a standard TRO, the traffic regulation order, etc., a consultation period. It is all the mechanisms are all there, so I do not think that it really... Write into and ask why in the view of why this power is not being used clearly that are issues of congestion in some of our cities. That is a fair comment, yes. Now I will support that. If we are going to write to COSLA, given that there are four other local authorities who stand alone in another group, it might be an idea to write to them as well, just to give them the place. That is a fair point. Maybe we can leave it to the clerk to decide which would be the most appropriate authorities to write to. I do not know how much congestion charging is required, the certain bits of Ergyll and Bute's. Okay, if that is agreed, thank you very much. I will move on to petition 1608 on wholly-owned national private pharmaceuticals. That petition has been lodged by Martin Keatings and calls for the Scottish Government to create, own and operate a medical manufacturing research facility in Scotland, which focuses on producing medicines that meet the needs of Scotland's population. I am interested in people's views on the petition and what actions we might take. An interesting financial question here, chair. Could we create a pharmaceutical company in Scotland that could have the financial muscle to create some of the medicines that we use on a regular basis? I think that there is an issue of costs. I attended a meeting on drugs medicines the other night here in the committee room, and it is an extremely expensive operation and I do not think that it is really incumbent on the Government to set up some nationalised business. I think that the pharmaceutical companies are there ready to do the work. What I would suggest, chair, is that right to the industrial bodies such as the British Generic Manufacturing Association and the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry for their views on that. Certainly, convener, having read the briefing that we received, I know that there is no mention of the issue of state aid in any venture like this, and I have been told more times than I care to remember the number of good ideas that come up that are shot down by the issue of state aid. Of course, post Brexit, state aid may not apply, so it may not be an issue, but it would be good to get some further information on that just to see if there would be a state aid issue. I think that this is a fascinating issue. Even just getting the opportunity to get the briefing from the clerks on the whole complexity of the area and you can see what people would be by the motives of the petitioner in terms of trying to find a way of getting medicines as cheaply as possible and as effectively as possible with as little—I think that it is quite a complex area, but it would be worse if we might be writing to the Scottish Government because it will have a view on state aid and an understanding of that. It might even have looked at the option and decided not to go there because it is so complex. Even just managing the process of transition, you would imagine, would be hugely difficult. If we can suggest then that we write to the Scottish Government and it has been suggested to the pharmaceutical organisations. Is that agreed? Yes. Thank you very much. If we can move on to petition 1609 on NHS Scotland treatments, the fourth petition for consideration today has been lodged by Robert Marks. It calls on the Scottish Government to refuse treatment to NHS patients for illnesses and conditions that are self-inflicted. Members have a spice briefing and a note by the clerk, which sets out some background to the issues relevant to the petition. Therefore, I will open it to comments from members on how we take this petition forward. I think that I understand where the petitioner comes from. I have heard this argument before, but in modern society I do not think that there is any room for refusing treatment for anyone, no matter what. That is not the point of the NHS. It is that they get treatment free at the point of contact. I think that who is going to make that decision as well? You are going into a whole mess who is going to play judge, jury and execution at that point. That is certainly something that I would not like to pass on to any of our NHS staff. The whole thing about determining causation is the big issue. He cites examples of smoking or alcohol. You can argue that they themselves have their addictions, so they are illnesses, so why should they not be treated if they cause even a subsequent illness? I think that it is not a road that I would want to go down. I agree with that. I also think that we have this big issue of mental health coming in, and I think that a lot of this is behind that. Therefore, it must be that the NHS's ethos and doctors' medical profession is to help all those who need help. At the same time, I think that you are expecting the NHS and others to promote the idea of healthy, loving, well-being and prevention. I think that that is the way in which we need to go anyway. It is certainly not punishing people. It is certainly not the way forward. I think that there are circumstances in which people refuse treatment until we presume that there is a clinical decision about whether they will get an operation until they have lost weight and so on. I think that that is the safety reasons for their own health. Do we want to take it forward, or do we think that we want to just... I would suggest that we take it forward, to be honest. Have you heard of the members of the committee? I am not in favour of taking it forward. I am not in favour of taking it forward. Well, I would have been keen to seek the Scottish Government's views rather than closing it down right away, but if it is the feeling of the committee to close, then I am happy to go with that. The one option would be to write to the Scottish Government and ask them, A, have they considered this, and what is the definitive position on it, and what is their public health programme in terms of addressing those questions? I think that it is worth getting the views of the Government first before I think that we know what the answer would be in terms of would you refuse treatment, but if you go to frame it around what other amuse are available to help people with alcohol addiction or with smoking addiction, then I am okay with that. I think that what is behind the petition is the idea that I will be wasting NHS resource and that is one way of addressing it, but if people get to the point that they are becoming ill because of addiction or poor lifestyles, then that is a burden on the health service, but there are other ways of addressing it rather than simply refusing treatment. It would be interesting to know what the Scottish Government sees their role in that early action prevention and early intervention. Is that agreed? The next petition is petition 1610 on the upgrade of the A75. The petition has been lodged by Matt Halladay. It calls on the Scottish Government to upgrade the entire A75 to dual carriageway. We have noted in the petition in a background briefing, and one of the things that is noted in the briefing material is the recent transport summit that was held in Dumfries and Galloway. I wonder if members have any comments on the petition and what actions they may wish to take. Who was there? Lots of people. Was it hosted by the Scottish Government? It was hosted by the Scottish Government. I'm the use of it, and the Deputy First Minister chaired the meeting. Apart from local MSPs, there were representatives from the councils, representatives from the very ports. It was a very well attended meeting, certainly in excess of 100 people. There was a very good discussion around the A75. It's a long-standing issue. It was one of the points made that it's a Euro route that takes from the west coast of Scotland all the way down to Barcelona, I think. It's the only part of that route that isn't dualled. It's a heavy use of articulated lorry. It's about 25 per cent of the traffic there. It's heavy goods vehicles coming off the ferries, and it's also a major route south and north for goods coming into the country. The feeling was that nobody spoke against it. It's very positive in terms of dualling the A75, but it was left as a discussion with the chair. Where are we in terms of the commitments of the Scottish Government? There was no commitment to do it, but it's a commitment to look into it. I think that it seems to me that that part of the A75 is long overdue, being upgraded, having heard the evidence across the border, especially given that it's the third busiest port in Britain. Down south, there's a lot of money that's been spent on the infrastructure and other ports down there. The inference was that there's a danger that we lose some of the traffic through the port. I think that most people were in favour of having it dualled, as a Government understandably. They're not going to commit to that at that time in that meeting, but I think that the commitment was to look at it seriously. Any other comments? Brian, it's clearly a crucial road, and it's certainly worthy of us inquiring us to what the position is with an upgrade. Absolutely. Not only does it connect the south in Barcelona, but it also connects across to Newcastle and connects into the Netherlands. It is a very important artery, and having been a use of it for many years, I'm happy to support it. Just on that convener, the E18 also travels up into Scandinavia as well, and having been on the E18 over there quite a bit, it would certainly seem that we're the poor relations when it comes to the A75 section of it. There's certainly room for improvement. I think that we can agree that this is not an important issue, and that we should write to the Scottish Government to seek the views and petitions, perhaps a follow-up from the summit and even the timetable for making a decision on whether it's going to upgrade. Is that agreed? Thank you very much for that. We now move to petition 1614 on the adult consensual incest. That is in similar terms to a previous petition lodged by the same petitioner. That petition was considered and closed by our predecessor committee at its meeting on the 26th of January 2016. That committee closed the petition on the basis that the Scottish Law Commission undertook a report on that issue as recently as 2007 and concluded that the majority of them, at that time, favoured retaining of their friends and their current definition. Do members have any comments on the petition and what actions they may wish to take? I am very much in favour of closing the petition. I totally agree under rule 15.7 of standing orders. If that is agreed, we can close that petition. We can now have a short suspension before moving to hearing evidence on the remaining three new petitions on today's agenda. If we can recommend, we are dealing with petition 1605 on whistle blowing in the NHS, a safer way to report mismanagement and bullying. That is the petition lodged by Peter Gregson on behalf of kids not suits. The committee has received correspondence from Accountability Scotland in support of the petition, and Mr Gregson has also provided additional information in advance of his appearance before us today. I welcome Peter Gregson to the meeting. Thank you for attending today and for the additional information that you have provided. You have the opportunity to make a brief opening statement on your petition, after which we will move to questions from the committee. I would ask that the opening statement, as well as the questions and answers, are kept focused and succinct. That will ensure that we are able to explore relevant points and ensure that we have time to do the same for the remaining petitions on our agenda. People will be aware that we are strictly confined in terms of time, because we have to finish by half past 11, as we are not able to sit at the same time as the plenary of the Parliament. If I can ask you, Mr Gregson, for an opening statement. Right. I come here to you today as a taxpayer, someone who pays for public services. I was last before the Petitions Committee three years ago, and at that point it was also about whistleblowing. That was trying to get councils to implement whistleblowing policies. At the time, I had just been fired from Edinburgh Council for gross misconduct. I had blown the whistle. I had written to a councillor about the head of schools leading Mortonhall Inquiry. I worked in housing, and this was outside my job. Again, I had written to the council as a rate payer. The council happened to know that I worked at the council, so I sent the letter to my boss and I was immediately suspended. Thereafter, the council treated me as a whistleblower, so I maintained to this day that I was not really a whistleblower. I was just a concerned, unhappy rate payer. No, the council treated me as a whistleblower. At the same time, I had done other things. I had asked Unison EGM, a motion about implementing a whistleblower hotline at the council. I had been involved in my own time in campaigning against the closure of Casabria High School, but I did not know why I had been suspended. All I know is that I had done something wrong. The council has a huge amount of influence in our lives, like most public sector bodies. I was banned from my son's school. I was banned from libraries. I was banned from going anywhere that was owned by the council without seeking permission. All those who work in the public sector consume services as a taxpayer, but if you follow your employer, your right to those services are compromised. The law allows the employer to do as they wish in matters of employment. The council was able to troll the internet for filth about me using British Telecom and public funding to pay for that. That is what employers can do, whether it is any public sector employer. They found out that I had written an email to a Miami Foundation where I had compared the councillor through a US film called The Cooperation. This is pertinent to any reflection on whistleblowing. Is it big organisations when threatened I maintain responding in a psychopathic manner? There is a lack of empathy and emotions. There is a lack of conscience. There is no sense of guilt. There is often a history of victimising others. The body actors it chooses. There are few constraints. There is an inability to learn from past mistakes. Those are all characteristics of a psychopath. The troll found the email and I was fired four months later. I wonder if you can focus on the petition that is dealing with whistleblowing in the NHS? I am trying to explain to you the cost of whistleblowing. Unless you understand the cost of whistleblowing, you cannot consider it. The cost of whistleblowing is something that we all pay for. Everybody pays for public services if those services are not working properly for whatever reason, we all foot the bill. Do you accept that? I suppose what I would say is that your petition offers a practical series of suggestions about whistleblowing that we will be keen to focus on now. You have ruined my speech. Particularly on the council, I would say that the costs were not just personal. I would say that the costs of the process were about £50,000. That brings me on to the petition. The costs of suspending whistleblowers at the NHS are phenomenal. Jane Hamilton, the doctor at the heart of the St John's inquiry, was off work for four or five years. The costs of employing locums to take her place was £1 million. That is a lot of money. Whistleblowers lose their job, reputation and family life. I lost my home, I lost my family. Taxpayer loses too. I want you to consider those costs when considering my petition. My understanding is that, where the mechanism exists, the best way to bring concerns about inefficiencies or inadequacies in the public sector, if you are an employee, is to route it through a hotline. What the NHS has at the moment is a helpline and that more or less tells you to go back to your manager or to go to the trade union. This is a problem. Last week, it was published by the Northern Ireland Quality Regulation of Quality Improvement, which oversees health and social care in Northern Ireland. It came to the same conclusions as I did. The fact that the helpline is getting fewer and fewer calls does not necessarily mean that the service is getting better and better. NHS Scotland is facing £40 million a year in compensation claims from staff and patients. It is a huge amount of money. The staff are in a position to help to cut that cost. The publication, which is very interesting, talks about helpline. I do not think that they really understood the impact of what we have got in Scotland because we have had a helpline for three years. The level of complaints has not gone up, they have gone down. I would not say that necessarily because the service is getting better. They point to testing the silence. They say that bodies, if they are getting fewer and fewer complaints, why is that? There needs to be some way of testing the silence, and there is not any at the moment. The staff survey indicates that only 57 per cent of staff feel comfortable about speaking up if there are problems in the NHS workplace. That means that almost half are not. That is a phenomenal amount. If they are not using the helpline, what is happening? There are a number of issues here that are very much about how you deal with whistleblowing in the public sector. I argue that having a helpline that refers to batch of managers and the answer to what you need is a mechanism, a system, that brings your concerns and takes it off the shoulders of the whistleblower. Once you have lodged your concern whether you choose to do that anonymously or not, that concern should then go to the decision-making body. The point of employing a hotline is that it can filter out stuff that is into major and operational matters. If it is operational, such-and-such has got a bigger desk than me or whatever, that is more like a grievance or a complaint. It should be dealt with internally by middle management. However, if it is about quality and the quality of the service, that should go to the board sub-committee that is responsible for overseeing quality. In this case, I am thinking of staff governance, because every board is a staff governance sub-committee. Our sub-committee has got non-executive members on it. Those people are appointed to oversee how the health board is working. They do not get the knowledge—the whistleblowing champions come from within that group, but they do not have the knowledge because there is no mechanism for them to find out how much whistleblowing is going on, so they cannot act as a champion. I think that you have clarified for me the difference between a hotline and a helpline, so I will just ask Maurice Corry to ask a question. Yes, thank you, chair. Mr Gregson, the first line of the background information states that the hotline would build upon existing whistleblowing policies. Can you clarify your view of policies such as the staff governance standard and the partnership information network? All that I know about the partnership arrangement is that there is a group that involves the unions and NHS management in jointly overseeing the health service in Scotland, and that is the partnership arrangement. I know what the NHS whistleblowing policies look like, and I can tell you that those policies that are given to staff do not have any indication that there is an individual person or champion to whom concerns can be brought. It does mention the national confidential alert line, which is the helpline that I told you about. Last year, Paul Gray wrote to all the health boards in September—this is the letter. The number of things that he wanted health boards to do was in September. This is a year later. If you examine the minutes for the 14 territorial health boards in Scotland, you will find that none of that has been done. They have appointed the champions, but nothing else. Those champions' identities are kept secret. How can they champion anything? My definition of champion is that it is a person that nobody knows of. The things that Paul Gray—I can actually go through them, if you like—and I can point to the things that are not happening. One of the things that he suggested is that there is a named contact for whistleblowing, and that does not exist. I cannot completely answer your question, because I do not know enough, but I know that what the Government thinks is happening is not what is happening. I was going to ask you about the national confidential alert line. Whether you think that it has been assessed as operating effectively, you have answered that in your opening statement. I am taking it that you do not think that it is operating effectively. When I was at the council, the first thing that the council wanted to do, because I lodged a petition to the petitions committee at the council three years ago, and the petitions committee went off and said, yes, we will look at this. The corporate management team came back and said, okay, we want to set up a helpline, a public and sound network to run a helpline. That was at the same time—that was in May 2013—that there was a conference here in Edinburgh by Scotland Patients Association, where they identified with Dr Kim Holt from patients first that the helpline was not working. That was three years ago, and things have not gotten any better since. I campaigned hard at that point for the council not to have a helpline, and it took a lot of work. It was not because the evening news got involved, and a lot of people wrote to their councillor saying that they did not want a helpline, that they wanted a staff helpline, and that was why the council in the end agreed to change it. It is about risk. This is all things about the management of risk. How do you effectively manage risk? I finally had a meeting with the head of legal at Edinburgh Council and convinced him that this was about the management of risk. He saw the light, and the next thing was that he agreed that the risk committee at the council could take reports. A year and a half later, the council is now published in January of this year a report saying how effective the hotline has been and how much it has improved efficiency. No one is boasting that the helpline has done that at the NHS, but the council itself is now saying that the initially opposed helpline is a huge boon. When people phone the helpline, what do you think happens? What is the outcome if I wanted to lift the phone just now and phone the helpline? Where does it go? The public concern at work runs the helpline, so you will get a call handler who knows what the NHS was who blew in policy is, because they have it in front of them, and they will guide the caller through it and advise them that the best thing is best to dress internally by going back to their manager or going to the union. 90 per cent of callers—this is all published because the helpline publishes its data on the Scottish Government website—have already been to their manager and been disappointed by the response, yet the helpline just tells them to go back there again. Eventually, if things go very bad, the helpline will get involved in taking the case to Health Improvement Scotland, but there has only been six over the past three years. Describe the difference between a helpline and a hotline, and your petition seems to suggest that there is a lack of confidence in the helpline, whether that is in relation to confidentiality or outcomes. Is that why you think that a hotline would make a difference in those levels of confidence? The hotline is a different beast entirely. When you phone up a hotline, the first question is not, who are you? The first question is, which organisation do you work for? They are concerned about the organisation. After they have that knowledge, they will then say, if you choose to, you can remain anonymous, but we will log your call, and they take written notes throughout the conversation of what their concern is. At the end of that, they then say to the caller, we will give you a written report of your concern, and we will also take the same written report to the risk committee or whatever bodies appointed to take the reports. The whistleblower has not been pulled into the nightmare of dealing with middle management. The whistleblower has had the weight taken from their shoulders, and that has been given to the hotline, who have then committed to taking it to the risk committee, for example. That is so utterly different, because that kind of experience means that whistleblowers are not frightened of retribution and they are not frightened of being ignored, because thereafter the hotline provider has a commitment to keeping the whistleblower informed on progress relating to their concern. It is actually a commercial arrangement. Those are commercial organisations, and they only do that for money. However, they function very effectively in rooting concerns and in managing risk. That is why it is different, because you are having a single point of contact, a single number that anyone—a 160,000 workers at the NHS in Scotland—would take that concern and route it to the relevant committee for them. It takes the weight from their shoulders. They no longer have to carry the burden and the fear of retribution and victimisation. It seems to me that you are talking about culture and the way that potential complaints are being held. Why can't we adapt to the hotline? What you seem to be suggesting is a completely new system. Can the hotline not be adapted towards what you are talking about? The hotline is not set up to take reports. Public concern at work is the sort of founding principles that they do not do that. They are not there to root concerns to the committee. It is a different beast entirely. My public concern at work is a charity, fundamentally, whereas those hotlines are commercial businesses. I would posit that, if you think that you need to change it, you need to retender because you probably get a better price. I think that there is a number of hotline providers in Britain. The one that I know most about is the Edinburgh Council, and it does three health trusts in England. Those health trusts use it because it allows staff to root concerns directly to the whistleblowing champion or to the relevant committee. It is a different beast. They have a different service, a different way of operating, and they work in a different way because they are set up to log reports and to take reports to committees. Thank you very much, Mr Greggs. We now want to consider and discuss what action we might want to take in this petition. We have some suggestions that we have identified already. Do members have any comments on how we might want to progress this petition? I would quite like to understand how the hotlines that Mr Greggs is talking about are actually functioning from their perspective. How easy that would be to do? To Edinburgh City Councils and to Salford Royal NHS Foundation, they have got hotlines. What their view is, what their purpose is and maybe some of the challenges that they face as well. The University Hospital of South Manchester, and there is Camden in Islington Foundation Trust. I only found out about those yesterday, so there are three trusts in all that I would suggest to have a view that might be helpful. Can we maybe establish how long the hotline has been working in those other places? I think that the Salford Royal one is one that has already been identified, perhaps working, and it would be a good starting point for us anyway. Anything else? I can also suggest that we ought to seek the Scottish Government's view on the progress in relation to the introduction of the non-exec whistle-blowing champions. Let's see where we are on that. It does seem from the petitioner's point that if you have a gap between what the Scottish Government thinks is happening and what the reality is, what is establishing that. Do we want to write terminals? We need to seek the views of the public descent at work, etc. NHS boards, generally, while we are looking at unions and any other stakeholders' groups. Can I request that you write to the whistle-blowing champions that have been appointed? I know that the champions themselves have been appointed at each NHS Trust and NHS Board in Scotland and asked them, ideally, for a personal view, because they are there because they care about the subject. If you are asking for a trust view, it is going to be quite different from their own reflections. In my view, we should write to the NHS boards first and identify what they have appointed, what progress they have made and what is the purpose of those whistle-blowing champions. I am not sure whether we should seek the personal views of those champions at this stage. If there are whistle-blowing champions who would want to give evidence to the committee and have the opportunity to do that, I think that, just at this stage, we would want to write to the NHS boards. Is that agreed? I do not know whether Sir Robert Francis might be pertinent. He was the one that the Scottish Government had said that they were going to follow his report. Will he be able to comment? I think that what we want to establish is whether, if there is a gap between what the Scottish Government thinks is happening and is actually happening, that is the first stage, and it might be once we have that information and we can reflect further on whether there is a gap between what the intention was and the reality. It is certainly something that we can look at once that evidence has come in. To add, convener, on the responses that we get back, I would be keen to seek the views of the Scottish Government at a later date once we have reviewed what comes back, as to whether they would consider commissioning an independent review into an open and honest reporting culture in the NHS, but that is for a later date. Let us take the first step. There is a suggestion, at the very least, that the Scottish Government's intention and reality are quite far apart. We want to write to those other organisations of an interest. I think that everyone is in favour of a culture in which people feel safe to whistle blow, but we recognise the complexities of that, but that is something that we might want to look at further. If that is agreed in those recommendations, I thank Mr Greggson for attending today. It is a petition that we will be coming back to and can we suspend while we change witnesses? I recommence. We are now going to deal with petition E1605 on ensuring greater scrutiny, guidance and consultation on armed forces visits to schools in Scotland. That petition has been lodged on behalf of Quakers in Scotland and Forces Watch, from whom we will take evidence today. I welcome to the meeting Mary Campbell Jack from Quakers in Scotland. I understand that there are two witnesses from Forces Watch on route, so I am happy that we can start with you, given time constraints. If your colleagues arrive in time, they can obviously join us. I invite you to make a short opening statement, if you wish, and then we will move to questions from members. Again, it would be helpful if both questions and answers could be as succinct as possible. Thank you very much, convener. I apologise for the lateness of my colleagues. I believe that they have had some traffic trouble. I think that they have just arrived. Can I welcome Emma Sangster from Forces Watch and Rhiannon-Lewis from Forces Watch to join Mary Campbell Jack in presenting the petition? I am representing Quakers in Scotland today. Quakers were formed in 1652, so we have been around for almost 400 years. At a very early stage, the peace testimony of Quakers became a very important central part of their belief. For many Quakers today, it is still a strong part of their identity. The peace testimony has seen Quakers working in battlefields and conflict zones across centuries and around the globe, tending to the injured, comforting the dying and brokering peace. In the modern day, we have worked in places like Rwanda, on truth and reconciliation, in the democratic republic of Congo and in elections in Brindai to make sure that they are held free and fairly. The peace testimony is not just people sitting in the warmth and comfort of their own homes wishing for a better world, but Quakers go out and actually live their peace testimony, sometimes putting their own safety and lives at risk. Quakers in Scotland are concerned at an increasing militarisation in society since the Iraq war, and we are especially concerned when it comes to the militarisation of our young people in schools. We believe that there are several issues here. One is child welfare. There is increasing evidence that the younger somebody joins the armed forces, the worse their outcomes are, including death, disability, addiction and poor mental health. There is a concern around informed choice, as it appears that often when the armed forces go into schools, there is not adequate balance. They are presenting a glossy, glamourised and adventurous image of life in the armed forces, and it does not take into account the uniqueness of this career, the dangers and the ethical problems that soldiers and other people in the armed forces may be faced with. The last concern that we have here is about parental choice. It appears that not all parents are informed by the armed forces or the school of their visits, so they do not have an opportunity to discuss the visit with their child, with the school or with the teacher concerned, and therefore their right to consciously object is removed. In this petition, we are asking for scrutiny to have transparent, accessible information available to the public guidance so that teachers and parents know how balance is achieved in the classroom and consultation, so that parents and children can consider and have a voice on the issue. First of all, on the point that you make about parental choice, would you see in senior levels of school that that choice should be exercised by the student rather than the parent? We would expect students and parents to talk with each other about this and the issues. How parents and students want to have that conversation in their own home is not up to us, but we would hope that, as children got older, they would be able to start their own process of critical thinking about these issues. I am trying to establish that, if somebody is over 16 and is unable to vote, should it not be within their right to determine whether they have the right to withdraw from an event in school where the arm is present rather than the armed forces, rather than a decision for the parent? I would agree with that statement. The petition refers to a narrow definition of recruitment being used by the armed forces in that it only refers to the act of signing up. How would you define recruitment and would that definition apply to other organisations? Should all careers-related activities in schools promote particular careers or organisations? Should that be considered to be recruitment as well? We see recruitment in Scotland as a process rather than an event, and we know that the armed forces see it as a process as well from their documents. Would you like to say some more, Emma? Yes. We know from their internal documents that they see recruitment as taking the sort of pre-recruitment interests that they would like to gain young people. That would take place over a number of years and might be sparked by any one sort of encounter with the armed forces. Of course, we do accept that the actual process of recruitment of signing up on the dotted line, as it were, does not actually take place in the school. In any case, it would need to involve parents at that final stage, but we are concerned that a lot of what happens in schools is that sort of pre-recruitment activity. There is certainly quite a bit of evidence from internal MOD documents that that is how it is also viewed by them. That is a process that other organisations also go through when they go into schools? I think that that is an area that we are not expert on in terms of how other organisations might what they might seek to get out of their activities in schools, but we do know that we have done some research on other public service visits to schools. None of the data that we found showed anything like the level of visits that the armed forces make to schools. The fire service go into schools, but that is to talk about fire safety. That is not particularly to talk about becoming part of the fire service. Private companies are going in to recruit. Do you expect there to be some kind of monitoring of what those jobs involve, where there are ethical questions in their work too? Yes, indeed, of course. I do not think that the education system should be seen as a ready catchment for recruits into any industry. Going down any pathway needs a lot of consideration. Of course, it might be an arena where you would start to gather information about different career pathways, but not to go a significant way down any of those pathways. You would be concerned more generally about career fairs going on in schools, where companies come in and talk about what they do? I think that a lot of those are about opening up options to young people. I think the armed forces are a little bit different because you can sign up at age 16, and you can commit yourself to a long period of service up to six years. That is actually quite different from any other career. Of course, you have got the unique risks of an armed forces career, so it needs extra consideration. That is one of the things that the Welsh Government in particular noted. It is that unique nature of an armed forces career that sets it aside from other employers in disrespect. I note that you are concerned that schools in deprived areas have been targeted, although you say that there is not a straightforward link between the number of visits and levels of deprivation. In relation to the number of visits to schools, the petition states that 83 per cent of secondary schools have been visited compared to 50 per cent of independent secondary schools. For state schools, a total number of visits is also provided. Do you have a total number of visits to independent secondary schools? We do have that figure. I do not have it totally to hand at the moment, but it was clear from the data set that we were looking at for that report that the visits to independent schools really were just a fraction of total visits overall, and far fewer of those schools were visited. In fact, the army, in those two years, we did not have a single recorded visit by the army to an independent school. They were all from the RAF or the navy, and the army just visited state secondary schools. Okay, if you do have that breakdown, I can provide you with that. Can I just declare, convener, that I had a visit from Mr Jim White, an independent researcher on this subject to my office? I just want to make sure that we are clear on that. Can I ask Mrs Campbell-Jack? The location of Armed Forces Korea's office is significant, and could you expand on that and say something about how that significance is demonstrated by evidence of career-related activities in schools? Sorry, could you just repeat the first part of that sentence? Yes, the location of the Armed Forces Korea's office is significant. I actually think that Forces What would be better at answering this question, and they will be able to give you more information. Yes, it was linked to the issue of whether more visits are made to certain areas, and we did find that certain local authority areas were visited more than others. If you look at the range of visits geographically, there is a focus in the central belt going up towards Aberdeen, and that is where a lot of the Armed Forces Korea's office is, were certainly located at the time of the data that we were looking at. The location of those offices where regiments are based, where there might be a lot of Armed Forces families living, where there might be other employment related to the Armed Forces, I think these are all factors that are important in looking at which schools are visited more than others, and I think perhaps one very significant factor is the relationship that the school has built up with the Armed Forces over time, and that will enable more visits to take place. Can I just further that, chair? Have you considered the fact that in Scotland there is unique in many ways for its regimental traditions and in fact the regimental families? If you go to many parts of Scotland, there are unique ties with those local regiments, which is something more so than the rest of the UK. Have you considered that? Can we not build that into some of your research? Yes, we do understand that that is very particular to Scotland, and I don't think it undermines the concerns that we have in terms of how visits should be conducted and what guidance should be given to schools around those visits. I'm just thinking of the interest point of view of the families involved who there's children who come forward to site to declare an interest in being recruited. Therefore, there is an external interest, we'll call it. We don't think that it's very important for you to consider it. In terms of visits to schools, has a comparison been made with any other employee, be it the public or private sector, or with other uniformed services such as the police or the fire service or the ambulance service? Has there been a comparison made with any other of the employees? As I said mentioned earlier, we did try and get data through freedom of information about the number of visits from other public services. The armed forces visit schools at a significantly higher rate, but we haven't done a huge amount of research further into that area. We just wanted to explore whether other public services are visiting schools to that degree, and we think that we can say confidently that they're not. I actually don't think that they're resourced in the same way that would allow them to visit at that level, because the armed forces do put quite a bit of funding in that direction. We would also argue that comparing other public sector employers with the armed forces isn't actually comparing like with like, because one of our points is that this is a very unique job, it's unique in its dangers and it's unique in the ethical questions around it. While there are other jobs that are dangerous, such as being a fireman or being a paramedic, where you are putting yourself at risk in going into risky situations, those are jobs that you can also quit quite easily, whereas it's not the same for the army. We think that it needs to be treated differently from other employers, and its uniqueness should be recognised. Is there any evidence, including from elsewhere in the UK, that visits to schools have a tangible impact on numbers of young people joining the armed forces, or is the information gathering suggested by the petition part of being able to make that assessment? We don't have particular information on within a school, if a school is visited regularly, whether those young people might go on to join. I mean, we do know that over two and a half thousand under 18 year olds join the armed forces currently annually, so those, that will have been precipitated by the armed forces, you know, having contact with those young people at some point. But yeah, we haven't actually looked at that direct relationship. Obviously, perhaps not so much in Scotland, but elsewhere in the UK, you've got the cadet forces in schools, and that's something that's being expanded, particularly in England and Wales, and that is perhaps more of a direct link between, you know, involvement in cadets and then going on to join the armed forces. We started doing the research for this petition in early 2015 and gathering up FOIs, but we actually found it incredibly difficult to get hold of information. Some of the information where the armed forces had recorded their visits to school was on handwritten notes. Other times, personnel had changed or left the armed forces and they couldn't get the information from what they'd done, or I think in one point there was a computer system change, so there was massive holes in the information we could get, so it's very hard for people to actually have really reliable data and information on what's happening in schools, and that's one of the reasons why we do believe we need accessible information that the public can look up. Yes, I would reiterate that, having done a lot of the data analysis myself and the difficulties of getting hold of the data and then using it, and that's one of the issues that we think it's very important to address. And I think there's another element that is more recent, which we don't have much information on, but we think it needs exploring, which is the involvement of CAPTA, which is the private company that has the recruitment contract with the MED, and part of that involves working within education to interest young people in listing in the armed forces. We don't know the extent to which CAPTA or the outreach team in CAPTA actually visit schools, but obviously if they are visiting schools and their single remit is to provide recruits in the longer term, whereas you could say that the armed forces have a number of interests in going into schools, partly to inform young people about what they do and to create more knowledge within young people, as well as recruitment, but CAPTA's sole interests will be to recruit. We think that there should be research done and more transparency around the role of CAPTA in this process. Morgan MacKay. Yes, your petition talks about a need for a balanced view to be presented by the armed forces. What do you think the chances of that happening? Do you think that that will be forthcoming? Well, there are some questions around balance and where it is appropriate to come from. It could be that the teacher in the classroom might be the best person to provide balance after the visit for the students. It could be that the school might choose to provide balance by having some peace organisations come in and also talk to children. There are some great organisations out there like Veterans for Peace and Peace Jam, so those are two ways of providing balance. The other concern is not so much what the teachers and schools are doing, but the presentation that the armed forces give. It does seem to be quite glossy and glamorous and exciting. Young people's cognitive development means that they are not as good as assessing long-term risks to themselves as people who are older would be. There is a risk with armed forces creating a rather rose-tinted view of what the life is like. There is also the issue of who is best to provide balance and how organisations such as Crakers in Scotland can support schools, teachers and local authorities in providing that balance. We do not believe so. What are the views of the pupils when they have these presentations? Probably, like most of Scotland, they will be very mixed. Some people will probably welcome it and some people might feel very neutral. We know from Craker Children that they have been left to feel very uncomfortable in the classroom. Sometimes they have not been given any alternative but to attend and that has been very difficult for them. It would be great to have the plurality of views recognised. It seems to me that you were posing in terms of balance the implication was that the armed forces were in favour of war and that peace organisations were in favour of peace. Actually, peace organisations are not necessarily in favour of peace. They are in favour of critical thinking around conflict issues and would work with children to encourage that critical thinking. We feel that criticism does not come when it is just an armed forces visit. If the armed forces were talking, for example, about peacekeeping work through the United Nations, presuming that they themselves are also not seen through one prism. We are not aware of any armed forces visits where they are focused on peacekeeping work. Besides peacekeeping, there is also peacebuilding and conflict transformation. There is a whole realm of material out there about conflict transformation that is not widely available to children in schools. If the armed forces are going to go in and talk about military responses to conflict, I think that they should be made aware that there are other responses and that diplomacy is also an option. When you look at the information that is given to young people, even on the armed forces website, it does not talk about conflict at all. It talks about other things like skills development and scuba diving and exciting sports activities. The actual combat is not mentioned at all. It is misleading to think that the armed forces actually talk about conflict itself very much when they go into schools. With education as a precursor to a career path, and I have a simple question really, do you oppose joining the armed forces as a reputable career path to go down? Is the fact that children are recruited into our armed forces? Do you define a 16-year-old as a child? Well, legally anyone under 18 is a child. But we have moved to a point where I think that 16-year-olds are now recognised as young adults. Do you have a vote? Yes, they do. I personally welcome the fact that young people are being more and more involved in public life, but the transition from childhood to adulthood does not just happen on your birthday. It is a very, very slow process and we think that the last part of that process should be choosing a job where you may end up either dying yourself or taking the life of another person, the impact of which should not be underestimated. Can I ask finally who you would see as being responsible for overseeing the collection of data and ensuring that it is triggered in terms of understanding what is happening in our schools and how is this question addressed in Wales? That is a really good question because obviously schools and local authorities are under a lot of pressure and teachers in the classroom are under a lot of stress as well. We do not necessarily understand the way each individual local authority works and how this could fit in with individual local authorities, which is one of the reasons why we would welcome an inquiry to have the chance to open up discussion and debate around that issue. You talked about CAPITA as being a recruitment organisation for the armed forces. Have you got any research information from them as to the visits that you talked about, bits of paper being written on by the army itself, but surely if CAPITA is the one's recruitment, surely you have got information from them? Over to Emma for that one. As a private company, they are not covered by freedom of information legislation, so it is actually even more difficult to get information about how they are conducting their contract with the MOD. We have, the information we have is via the MOD about— No, have you spoken to CAPITA? No, we have not directly spoken to them, but it is something that we would like to pursue. That is where the information will be? We hope, but it would be very helpful for an inquiry by the Scottish Parliament would open the doors, I think, for that information to be forthcoming. As a follow-up chair to that question, you talk about obviously the armed forces visits, but remember that there are also defence manufacturers like British Aerospace. We are looking for modern apprenticeships like Lockheed Martin, there are various other organisations that do visit schools. Have you researched into that, the frequency of their visits to schools? We focus particularly on the armed forces. We are aware that there are developing relationships between education and industry of that kind, particularly for older children in the education system. Some of those things are very new and we are looking at them, but we have not actually done substantial research on that. Would you not agree that it is something you should look at? Yes, we are looking at it particularly within England, the university technical colleges, which are really founded on partnerships with local industry, and some of that does include the defence industry and the armed forces within an area. So we are looking at that right at this moment. Would you say that your case is rather narrow at the moment and not really broadened? It is just concentrating on the uniformed element of it? Part of the reason is that we are very small organisations that only have part-time staff. We do not have the kind of budget that people like MOD or Lockheed Martin have to put resources into this. It has taken us a year and a half of work to get here. There are lots of things that we would really love to be able to do, but, unfortunately, resources and time do not always make that possible for us. I thank you very much for your evidence. I think that there is enough stuff there. If I can characterise it, we can think about what we want to do. There has been a long-held concern that, for example, poverty is the greatest recruiting sergeant to the army and we would be very concerned if communities were targeted in that kind of way. However, my sense is that what you are looking for is some transparency around what is happening and what are the detections. There was a more general issue about when private companies or whoever go into our schools want to know that there is a, they are not promising the earth and encouraging people perhaps to make choices but they are not fully informed. I think that it is an interesting area to try and get some more information on. I do not know whether members have a view. I do not know what the modern army recruitment process is. When a young woman walks through the door to look to join the army, I do not know what that process is. I would like to understand that a bit better. I am under the offices that there is a general reduction in the number of armed forces in the country. I am unaware of how many knock on the door and how many get accepted and what the process is. I would like to know that. I think that, in the case of my own local authority, it went to a voted council this issue and the council took the decision not to allow it. I know that local authorities seem to have some autonomy in the matter. Have you gone down the route of going around local authorities and asking them? We have contacted every local authority in Scotland and we got responses from about 26 of them. That information showed quite a varying picture with some not particularly recognising the issues while others had done more to give guidance to schools, but a very uniform approach. A lot of local authorities are saying, well actually we leave it up to headteachers to decide. Passing what was going on there? Yeah, or lack of clarity about where the responsibility for this actually lies, because it is also covered by the careers service side of things as well as education. There are a lot of different agencies that could be involved, but where does responsibility lie? One of the things that we would be interested in knowing, perhaps from the Scottish Government, what their view is from the local authorities, is that I can see in some localities with a strong connection to the army. Individual schools might be very keen on this, but in other areas there is less of a connection. Is there a role, would it be contacting local authorities or maybe just cause at this stage and ask what their view is? And the Scottish Government also would want to contact the army in terms of their career service, what their response is to the petition. Any other suggestions? You could wind it to apparent councils etc, but maybe that is for further down the line. Maybe at the initial stages it needs to be the Government and the local authorities through COSLA. Schools develop in Scotland because they develop the careers approach to schools. And how a school decides what presentations from which organisations, how they make that decision. Who would that be? Education, institute, I don't know, sectors, teachers, sectors. I'm not sure whether the unions would have a view at this stage or not. Can I suggest that there is a series of organisations and one suggestion has been included in the Children and Young People's Commissioner and the Scottish Youth Parliament who may have a view on that. That is a list that perhaps in constitution with the clerks we can expand because we are really just trying to get the information, get a sense of where people are on this as a kind of that dilemma between on the one hand particular communities being targeted, but also recognising that for some young people there are potentially some good employment outcomes. We have seen that in terms of some young people making that act of choice to go into the armed forces. But we need to get a sense of what that looks at, what safeguards are and the extent to which is not being targeted in particular communities. Would that be fair? Are we agreed on that then? Yes. Okay. Can I thank you very much for your attendance? We will await the responses to the correspondence that we have and will keep you in touch with how that has progressed afterwards. Thank you. Can we suspend while we move to the next petition? We commence this meeting of the Petitions Committee. We are now going to deal with petition 1604 on inquests for all deaths by suicide in Scotland. The final petition that we will consider today has been lodged by Catherine Matheson from whom we will take evidence. She is accompanied by her daughter. I thank you both for being here today and I welcome you to the meeting. It is Catherine Matheson and Karen Gordon. If I can ask her maybe to make a short opening statement, if you wish. The reason that we are here today is that we do not believe that the current system is serving the best interests for relatives of those who die by suicide in the community under community compulsory treatment orders. The fatal accident inquiry system was reviewed last year and, in our opinion, a valuable opportunity was lost where all those deaths could have been covered. Deaths under NHS care by suicide under those orders in the community could have been covered by that review, but they were not, although the prison system was. All deaths in the prison system will be mandatory to go to a fatal accident inquiry. However, if you are out in the community and you die by suicide, it is really up to the NHS how they investigate the way that you died and the circumstances leading up to that. I will give you a bit of personal background if I can. My son was ill for many years with schizophrenia. His final hospital admission was from March 2010 to April 2012. While he was in hospital, his illness took a severe turn where he did things he had not been doing before trying to severely damage himself all the time. For a whole year, we were told that he was not suicidal. He wrote final notes to us while he was in the hospital at that time. We were given to him by the procurator Fiscal six months after he died, when he found them in his files. The consultant was saying that his son was not suicidal. Eventually, we complained and said that he could not go on. His son is harming himself, swallowing objects. He was referred for surgery twice to have objects removed. Still told that he was not suicidal. The consultant was then allowed to handle the complaint against him when we wrote to complain. He wrote back to me. He said perfectly saying that people do these things. Eventually, after this year, my son was sectioned and transferred to Casview, where I discovered that his medical records were totally incorrect. I corrected the records. I was told that the corrections would stay with his records. That did not happen. Eventually, he was released on a compulsory community treatment order. He was cancelling numerous appointments that we did not know about. One of the reasons that he was on that order was to make sure that he engaged with the services so that they could make sure that he was staying well and safe in the community. Despite cancelling those appointments and being anxious in weeks leading up to his death, no one took any notice. No one did anything. On the day that he died, he cancelled an appointment by answering machine to the Scottish Association of Mental Health, who was supporting him. They reported it to his psychiatric nurse who did nothing. I got home at 10 to 5 and found him hanging from his loft. On that day, when he had been to his GP practice, his prescription for a drug called a phenogen that was to stop his anxiety and restlessness in his limbs was not available, as he had been promised a day before it would be. I am trying to build a picture of how various elements were involved in the lead-up to my son's death by suicide. None of those elements have been satisfactorily examined for the sake of improving the system. Nothing I do or say will bring my son back or my daughter's brother or my grandson's dad. It will not bring him back, but the fact is that if we can get the system a process that can properly investigate those things that are going wrong, that is the only way that we can improve that system. NHS Tayside can decide for themselves what kind of reports they do. They did a scare report initially. They did not involve us in it. They did not involve the GP practice in it. They did not involve the mental health officer in it. In the first instance, I had to contact them and ask them what they would do, and they did not have any standard procedures in place. When my son died, the procurator Fiscal sent me a letter saying, we are very sorry to hear of the death of your son, this is what will now happen. The NHS had nothing like that. When I asked them about it, they said that they had to update their datex system or some such thing. They did a report that covered the last six months of my son's life. They did not include the other two years where he was in hospital because it was kind of the same thing, where he was in hospital but out of hospital on leave. He was still under their care for two and a half years. They said that they would do it. I was advised by the patient association because of the length of time they were taking to talk to a solicitor. I talked to a solicitor who got me a report by an independent expert. The NHS said, well, now you have talked to a solicitor, we are not doing any report on your son's death. We are finished here. You might say, well, okay, fair enough, you went to a solicitor, but when we got the independent report, that was all we wanted. Our legal action stopped there. We could not afford to go any further. We did not want any more, just somebody to tell us whether what had happened, which we knew in my son's case, it was not right anyway, but we wanted a proper expert opinion. Having got that, the NHS was able to say, well, we are not doing this anymore. For their own purposes, they should be doing a complete report on anyone who dies by suicide in the community under their care for their own purposes, so that they can review their own systems and see what could they do better in the future or what maybe shouldn't have happened for their purposes, not just ours. So they had that within their power to say, we will do a report or we won't do a report. They did produce an independent report for the procurator fiscal, which in our opinion, and you have probably heard this before from many relatives of people who die by suicide, it was just an absolute whitewash. It listed all the appointments my son had cancelled and said, well, that's okay, you know, cancelled appointments, that's fine, you know, nothing they could have done, but you know, the whole purpose of him being in that system was that there was something they could have done. They should have heard him kind of reviewed and asked why he was cancelling appointments, nothing of that happened. My conclusion is that only a proper inquest type investigation will lead to all the facts being established and if it's chaired by a truly independent body, perhaps such as a mental welfare commission, it should lead to improvements in care and maybe even save lives, which is what we all want. I don't want anyone else to go through what our family has been through. I do appreciate just how difficult it is when it's your own son that you're having to talk about it. I wanted to say in behalf of the committee, thank you very much for that opening statement, because I think the point that you make, which is the most powerful one in terms of this committee, is that this is now about how we make sure that it doesn't happen to someone else and what are their lessons from it and there are systems that can be put in place to avoid this distress in the future. That would be a very important aim for the committee. I mean, this is an issue that I wasn't aware of, but the distinction between your son's treatment in hospital and then in the community, do you think that that was the thing that actually caused the problem? There was a breakdown in communication and there wasn't the same close monitoring of how he was? Well, I think that this should have been closer monitoring, but after he died, I kind of pieced all the pieces of the jigsaw together. You know what happened to him that day, and I found out about him not getting his prescription from the GP. I found out that he'd cancelled the appointment with Samitch and when I spoke to Samitch, they said, well, we have a duty that when someone cancels an appointment with us, we have to let the CPN, the psychiatric nurse, knower, whoever is in charge of person's care, and the CPN didn't seem to have that duty. There was no trigger where it would say, well, he's missed three appointments or six appointments. I mean, he missed loads of appointments, but there was nothing to trigger that response to say, right, okay, this is appointment number three. Samitch has told us, we will phone him and see, just a two minute phone call, what's gone wrong with you today, are you all right? Risk assessment when somebody moves from the hospital setting out into community, although they're still under the care of the hospital, and are there procedures, well, there is a procedure obviously from Samitch, but are there other procedures to monitor how somebody is in the community when they're still under the care of the hospital? The psychiatric nurse was the lead person, and the way the system worked, it was more kind of a system rather than procedures, was that the people who were supporting my son would report to her, and when we did attend the meeting of the first skia, the contact us after they've done the first skia, and they said, oh, but the CPN's autonomous, and we said, no, she's not autonomous, she's leading a team that is supposed to be caring for this person. And the sad thing is that that woman was at my son's funeral, and she was really upset, and, you know, had there been some procedure, it would have been better for staff, you know, to have this certain procedure set out where they agree, you know, if you miss the appointments, I'll call you in, or if you miss the appointments, I'll phone you up, or, you know, she would have been safe in knowing that she had done everything she could. So, your view, I suppose, then, is of the purpose of the inquest would be to identify those kinds of issues that have caused a death, and then there can be lessons learned around changing procedure? I think it's rather more than issues that can cause a death, it's kind of how do you keep that person safer in the community, you know, is it by procedures, and if you find, as we discovered when I researched this, that this has happened before, and the NHS has been criticised by the Scottish public services ombudsman for not responding when someone cancelled appointments, then, you know, if that's happening, it's up to the NHS to look at why is this still happening, and if they're not willing to do that, then I think it needs to have an independent body involved who will be involved in even a meeting like this about someone's death, where the GP's there, the mental health officer's there, everybody involved with that patient is represented to say, you know, honestly, what went wrong, what could we do better? Okay, thank you, Brian Whittle. I guess really, you know, that the, what we're looking for here is what you're hoping to achieve, what outcome you're hoping to achieve from this, and I think I would just like to clarify your position in that you're not specifically pointing the finger at NHS staff, it's more the procedures on which they sit in, would that be correct? That's correct. So ultimately then is your goal to have that most procedure reviewed? Yes, and where are the, there are not procedures for procedures to be put in place? Yeah, I just wanted to ask him, please, if you can't answer this, please don't feel you have to. In your view, what's the difference between a fatal accident inquiry and, you know, an inquiry of this nature that you're wanting? I think a fatal accident inquiry covers a wide scope, and I think it could be covered by someone's actions leading to the unfortunate death of another, and that's the way I view my son's suicide, you know, someone's actions or inactions have led to his death. So, you know, I don't, we'd have been, I suppose we'd have been quite, I don't know if I'm satisfied with the word, but we'd have been a bit more appeased if we had had a fatal accident inquiry where everybody, as I say, it's about a meeting where everybody involved is having to attend that meeting and say what went wrong, you know? Thank you. Okay, Maurice Corry. Yes, thank you for your information, Ms Massen. You refer to the independent inquiry system that you're calling for, and how do you feel sort of family should be involved in that? I feel that we should be invited along with everyone else to give our view of what happened, you know? I thought I was leaving my son safe that day. I thought he's got a meeting with a support worker at 11.30. The last time he contacted me was at 11.38, and that's the last day anyone heard from him. He would have been at that meeting had he not cancelled it. I want to be sure that people like me can go away for, I went away for one day, and I couldn't leave him in safe hands for one day. I want to be sure that people can be assured that, yes, he is still not regarded as being well, but he's on this compulsory treatment order that makes sure that he's engaging with the services and they're engaging with him. Did they have daily check-ups on him or not? It wasn't daily, but I was there, you know, and I was keeping a very close eye on him. That one day I couldn't be there, and they should have been there. It didn't happen. Thank you. Angus MacDonald. The fatal accidents and sudden deaths Scotland Act 2016 was passed in the last session of Parliament. You may not be aware that there are three stages to each bill that's going through Parliament, and stage two is where amendments are put forward at the committee that's dealing with that actual bill. At stage three, it goes on to the whole Parliament, where every member has an opportunity to submit an amendment. At stage two, amendments were proposed that would have required fatal accidents and inquiries to be held for deaths in mental health detention, and those amendments were overturned at stage three, amid concerns that such a system would distress family members and stigmatise those with mental health conditions. What's your view on that? That's not a view that I've heard expressed by any family that's lost anyone to suicide, because anyone who loses someone to suicide, all they want is answers. They want answers, you know. I think that the only way that they can get answers is by a system such as I proposed that, you know, everyone is sitting around a table. I think that if relatives are going to be too distressed, there should perhaps have been an option to say that you don't have to attend, if you don't want to attend, but I think that not just because, bear in mind, this is not just for the relatives. This is to save lives of people who commit suicide every day. There's two a day in Scotland—I don't think that's decreased over the years—so I think that that was not a valid reason to reject it at all. Can I ask you—I'm interested in what happened to you as soon as you went to Solicitor, the NHS stepped back. Was there argument that, because you were going down that route, there was a possibility that you were going to end up in conflict with them over, I don't know, compensation or whatever? Did you get a sense that that was the reason why they stepped back? I think that it possibly was, although that wasn't our intention, you know. All we wanted was answers and changes to procedures and we started out thinking. I mean, I used to read the papers and think, oh, there's a family, they're three or four years down the line, they've still not got answers. Sadly, we found that this is the way it works. She got the procurator fiscal, the NHS really dragged their heels with her as well, she had to keep emailing them. Time dragged on and on and on, nothing was happening, so I went to the Scottish Patients Association. They actually put me in touch with the solicitor that was recommended by them, because, as I said, all we wanted was answers and improvements. So now we've ended up that it will be four years in November, since my son died. We were told earlier this year that we won't be getting a fatal accident inquiry. I think that actually to have the kind of system that I would like would mean that this could all be done very quickly for the NHS as well and it should be, because as time goes on, people change jobs, people move on who were actually involved. Although it's not about blaming staff, it's about passing on lessons learned. It's a bit like you have all new people sitting there thinking, well, I don't even know about this case, I didn't know this person. I think it would be better if it was all sorted out nearer the time within, say, a six-month period to have a meeting where all facts are established on any improvements that can be made or made. In terms of the outcomes of that meeting, you would be looking to maybe recommendations around good practice. Would you see it as identifying staff members who had failed in their duty? I think that staff members should be given evidence, but I don't think that there should be a culture of blame. I think that they should have to be there to give evidence of what actually happened, but there should not be a blaming culture. If there are procedures missing, then you can't really say to a staff member, well, you didn't do that, because the staff member would be thinking, well, I wasn't told that I should be doing that, which is a valid defence. I don't think that it's about blaming. I think that it's about learning. Thank you very much. Are there any other questions? Can I go back to my original question? With regard to the amendments that were put forward at stage two and were overturned at stage three, are you aware of any of those amendments being put forward as a result of your specific case? I wasn't aware. I was dealing with Christian Allard at the time, and he certainly didn't say to me whether any of those were put through on my behalf. Can I just make one more point, please? I'd like to come back to the convener's last comment about recommendations. The information that we found from the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman that this had happened already before, the NHS had heard recommendations made about people in the community cancelling appointments, and they obviously haven't acted on those. I think that we need something that is mandatory. That's why I would like an independent person to chair any meeting that investigates the suicide of people under the mental healthcare system. It needs to be mandatory. It needs to be time limited. You must show us that you have procedures in place by a certain date or whatever, because they can just please themselves at the moment. They can choose when they're going to do something or if they're going to do it. I don't think that's good enough. Thank you very much for that. Again, I appreciate taking the time and giving us so many things to think about. There are very challenging issues there and a whole range of issues there. My sense is that the committee really would want to do something more about this. I don't know what kind of suggestions people have. It's massively complex with a whole series of people involved in the ultimate tragedy. For me, I need to get an understanding of the trust perspective of what procedures they would have in place when a tragic suicide case like this happens. What do they have in place? What would they usually do? What would the process be? You've got to talk to people like Sam H. I would imagine that I would like to understand from their perspective where are the warning signs from their perspective? What do they then do and how do they follow that up? There are so many moving parts in this to try to pick it apart. I agree with my colleague. We need to find out what uniformity there is through health boards and how they deal with those situations. We need to get guidance and ask the Scottish Government what they know is in place to deal with this. If they are aware of the irregularity of this and how it has been handled, virtually entirely this whole case has to be relayed to them so that they know exactly what we are talking about here, because it is extremely serious. To me, there are two different things. How did he end up in the position where his son was left? Nobody was checking up that he had cancer deployments, and on the particular day he was left. What were the things that led to that? What is the view of the Scottish Government health board about how you would address that particular question about somebody who is in the care of a hospital but is out in the community? It is a separate issue that has been described in a very moving way. Once it has happened, what support is offered to the family to identify that it has been taken seriously and lessons learned from it? I have dealt with cases in the past where the fatal accident inquiry system is not used in a lot of cases, and it is quite cumbersome, and it takes a long time. Is there something that you suggest that is a quicker process but has the same force in terms of people listening? The other element to it is the way in which, because you cannot get an inquiry, families are forced into taking legal advice, and as soon as they do that, they become almost a problem for the health board that is to be resisted rather than to be worked with. Those are big, big issues that will be really, really useful for us to explore. We want to write to the Scottish Government and its reaction to it may be that we are also both at the health and justice in terms of the question of access to justice in those circumstances. Is there anybody else that we would want to speak to? It might be worse speaking to, as was suggested, Sam H and perhaps get a perspective from the Scottish Patients Association if we have not already got that in terms of their view of how people can be supported through this process. It feels to me that a lot of barriers put in your place and it is only your own strength of character and your determination that is taking us and their families like you, I know, in the conditions that I represent, who have had to do the same kind of thing. Is there anything else that you would like to add before we conclude? I guess the one thing that stood out for me in my brother's situation all that time he was in hospital, he was constantly trying to commit suicide and I think the hospital and NHS just failed to recognise that. They denied that continuously throughout his care, even though, like my mum said, he had been swallowing objects, he had been swallowing glass, cutlery, all this kind of stuff, anything that he could get his hands on in the hospital. He had to have stuff removed from him, he was trying to hang himself with stuff in the actual hospital, but still there was an overall denial that he was trying to commit suicide. I think that the hospital looked upon it that he was just self-harming, but to us he was serious about this and it is proven now, looking back in hindsight, that that is what he was trying to do. That failure, I do not know if that had any contribution to the care once he was out in the community. If the hospital just thought, well, he is okay, he is not suicidal or anything, we do not have to follow up on appointments with him or whatever, he is fine, we will just put him out there. That simple presumption or clinical diagnosis that he was not suicidal then led to other consequences. Do you think that there is an issue about families being listened to in a hospital setting then, but you would probably understand the known better than anybody else? I think that as well, he was in the hospital for two years and then all of a sudden over a period of a few weeks he was allowed visits out gradually and then he was released out and that was it, someone would make an appointment to go and see him every few weeks and like that he could reject that appointment at his own will and nothing was followed up on it. There was not any real process when he was released from the hospital and engaging with the family and discussing maybe signs that we could look out for for him being suicidal or stuff like that. I do not know if they do that when they are recognising that someone is suicidal or if that person should be released from the hospital. Can I just ask you to confirm how often did the hospital consult with you as a family or discuss your brother's situation with you approximately? I consulted with them more than they would be willing to consult with me because I made sure that I became his name person and that I got as much information as I could, but I have heard other parents say that we do not get told anything, but I think that it was because of me. Did you instigate the meetings or did they come to you and say that they would like to discuss? Sometimes I did get invited to meetings and sometimes I did not and that was just the way it was. As I said, there does not seem to be anything mandatory about it. It is all what the NHS decides they will do or will not do. Do you presume that the meetings would have expressed to you that you thought that he was suicidal? Do you feel that you were not being listened to at that point? We were not being listened to. We got a letter saying that perfectly sane people do these things, the swallow broken glass. In terms of the work of the committee, we are unable to pursue individual cases, but your testimony is very powerful about what is happening in the system. That is really important to us in terms of how we take it forward. It is very much what you said earlier on. You do not want anybody else to have to go through what you have done. We would once write to the Scottish Government, Patients Association Sam H, that we wait for those responses and then we can look further into the whole range of issues. It may not be that your proposal on how you solve the problem is the one that is fixed upon, but what you have done critically is to identify that there is a big problem here and that it is something that we would want to address, if that is agreed. You say that something that I think underpins the whole attitude of your son is not suicidal, although he has written final letters and he is obviously seriously damaging himself, is that I do not think that there were any beds for him to be section 2. I think that that is important. I cannot believe if there is a consultant who works in the NHS who sees all this happening and there is a surgeon at 9 when I say that I cannot keep opening him up and stitching him up again, something will have to be done. I do not believe that consultant did not think to himself that I would section him if there was a bed for him to go to, because beds are constantly being reduced and beds in Angus are currently under threat yet again. I think that there may have been in my son's case a shortage of beds in the intensive care unit at CARF's view, which is why he did not get it, but I do not think that the consultant would admit that. That is something that would come out in an inquiry, because that would be the kinds of questions that you would be able to explore. It is a mechanism by which you get to ask those questions, I think that we are wanting to look at further. I think that we have agreed, therefore, to write to the Scottish Government, the Scottish Patients Association, to Sam H, but I think that it is something that is a whole number of issues that we would want to explore further in terms of general procedures of people who have agreed to that action. In that case, I thank you both very much for coming along. We really appreciate what you have said to us today, and I think that we would hope that the kinds of points that you have made will inform the Worker's Petitions Committee on the petition. Can I say to you that this concludes our consideration of petitions for today? Can I thank all members, petitioners and other witnesses for their contributions to today's meeting, and I now close the meeting?