 Fawr Facebook mewnidaethion isw eu pithial sydd wedi cael ei clywed ac iaith fy etomos a Gweithgoredd Gweithio Llywodraeth gliwr. Rwy'n edrych gyda unig ar gwaith Llywodraeth ond rydym iawn o'i ddatblyg o 양hwени newid r recurring, mae'r syniadol i chiadwy ym Personen 1 i chi gynradd neithg ni'n tlawasol, gawn christiannaethau ond rhe inaccurate peithnau comedianau trunio panòf i adversary a anonymousrghech yr af newid yn gwbl историиol peth, arferwad i'r Unedauadellol Cymru i gydangoddiadol, i ddim yn ei rhoi, neu'r prifysgol yn gweithio y siaradau. Mae cwmwynghau yn cywirodd y cyfysgol i'r ysgolu'r system cyfos Suppose a'r pethwyr yn cael ei ddechrau na'r cyflym. Felly, mae'n rhoi wneud bod eich cwmysiwn â llawfyr shyd dotiwr a'r cwmwynghau ac yn mynd i'n cymwynghau cymwynghau.wnaeth fawr i'r cyflwynghau yn cwmwynghau, ac mae'n cael dechreuu cael ei gwyllwyr that the commission heard evidence suggesting that if a revaluation had taken place in 2014, 57 per cent of properties in Scotland would have changed the council tax bans. The Scottish Assessors Association also informed the commission that, quote, a revaluation exercise to a revised system of property valuation bans could be achieved at a cost of £5.5 million to £7 million and take two to three years. The spice briefing explains that the commission and the local government and Communities Committee both came to the conclusion that this policy change would be costly and challenging to implement. I wonder if members have any comments or suggestions to make. I can certainly see why the petitioner has submitted this petition. However, having looked at the previous committee reports, it would seem to be logistically challenging and administratively challenging and quite costly as well. Undoubtedly, there would be some shocks for householders, so you have to be careful what you wish for at times. However, that said, I think that we should write to the Scottish Government and COSLA to seek their views on the petition. I'm going to hit that. I'm hesitated about writing to the Scottish Government because I think they've made the position quite clear. I did think about getting COSLA's view on it, but I'm happy to go along with the suggestion to write to the Government although I think that we know what the answer is going to be. Nothing will get in our current position. I'm basically just reiterated. I do feel that—I mean, you can have an argument whether we're going to have the council tax or not. Is there a different form of local government finance? As long as we've got it, it does seem unjust to me, even if it's going to be costly, that somebody has to be in a property that would have been deemed to be that value in 1991 in particular band. Some properties will have improved, some properties will have deteriorated, but they've stuck there. For them, yes, other people are going to be a bit of a shock in one direction, but they presume that we would have a benefit in the other direction. To have put it into just simply too hardbox, you can't have revaluation. I'm not advocating it, but simply because it's very—not because it's simply expensive, but because it would create people who would have to pay more. Presumably, they are benefiting from the system currently. The petitioner is making that it doesn't relate to the value of the properties now. I'm glad that, while we go to the expense and huge administrative task, if the long-term view is to replace the council tax, we wouldn't be needed anyway. It's a difficult one. I think that we haven't got the best view of the Government and the council before we can start looking at it. I think that we can agree to write the Scottish Government and to cause it. I'm interested if there are other organisations that are campaigning around this question who may have a view on it. Anything in writing to the Scottish Government and to cause it, we understand the issue of cost and the risk to people, but there's a fundamental sense of injustice that, depending on where your property happened to be in 1991, you know, it's not recognised that in certain circumstances there are areas where the property values will go up, where they will go down, and it doesn't seem to be—I think there's something in what the petitioner is asking for that strikes me as identifying a problem, which maybe seems fair, but what the solution to it might be a bit more difficult. However, if we agree then, we will write to the Scottish Government and to the council asking for their views on the petition. If we can then move on to the next petition on the agenda, it's petition 1650 by Rebecca Janes on student awards agency for Scotland's postgraduate eligibility criteria. Members have a copy of the petition, a spice briefing and a note by the clerk. This petition is concerned with the eligibility criteria for postgraduate students in Scotland. The petitioner is concerned that individuals who have studied an undergraduate degree in Scotland but are ordinarily resident in the UK and are not eligible for funding. In particular, the petitioner highlights a funding gap for the postgraduate diploma in legal practice, which is, of course, a course that forms part of the route to qualifying as a Scottish Solicitor, and I wonder if members have any suggestions or comments. I think that this is quite an interesting one, especially when we're discussing becoming working within the Scottish legal system, which is obviously difficult from England. I certainly would consider writing to the Scottish Government and maybe some of the student bodies to highlight this issue and maybe get their opinion on it, because it certainly seems to me that, especially around that issue of working within the Scottish legal system, if you're going to do postgrad to get into that system, you're going to be working within our country. I think that it's definitely something that's worth asking the Government and the student bodies about. I wasn't sure about what extent there is funding for postgraduate courses full stop. By funding, do they mean simply access to student loans? We all have anecdotal evidence in our own families of people who have done postgraduate courses, and I've had to pay for them themselves. I'm not sure what it is that's being funded. If you were deemed to be living in Scotland, would you have access to funding? What would that be? I think that the issue is that you're not going to get funding for the rest elsewhere in the United Kingdom, because it's specifically to do with Scottish law, so you're going to be working in Scotland, so I think that there is an interesting issue there. I think that we're agreed that we would write to the Scottish Government, National Union of Students, Student Awards Agency Scotland and University Scotland, seeking the views in the petition and perhaps clarifying that we're really useful to know what courses do attract support, what courses attract not support but the right to get access to a loan, because I know that in some of the professions that I say about teaching, there are some local authorities who have systems where they fund you to do your postgraduate diploma, so we're quite interested to see what that landscape looks like and how they make those decisions. Other examples of, if you come from elsewhere in the United Kingdom to Scotland, where those other bodies will fund you to do postgraduate courses. I guess that anomaly that it really highlights is the fact that all European Union students are the ones that don't get access to support and to free tuition in Scotland are students from England and Wales, which seems to be the big anomaly for me. Are there any other suggestions of things that we could do? No? In that case, if we agree, we'll write to the Scottish Government, the National Union of Students, Scotland, the Student Awards Agency Scotland and University Scotland, asking for their views on the petition and the quite interesting issues that the petition highlights. If we can then move on to the next petition agenda, it's petition 1652 by Irene Baillie on abusive and threatened communication. Members have a copy of the petition, a spice briefing and a note by the clerk. The petition is concerned with the operation of the existing law on abusive and threatened communication and the extent to which it is enforceable, particularly in cases involving text messaging. The petitioner takes the view that the law needs to be reviewed. The spice briefing advises that the relevant law is contained within the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications Scotland Act 2012. Do members have any comments or suggestions? I would be interested to understand if there are differences within the law between Scotland and the rest of the UK. I would have thought that any threatening behaviour, even through text, is the same as any other threatening behaviour that can be prosecuted for. I don't, as I said, would like to understand what the position is there. Perhaps, with that in mind, it's maybe a police Scotland or a Crown Office, a procurator fiscal, if we write to them, and just to clarify that. It seems to be an issue around corroboration and the impact of having to get corroboration that the text was actually sent by the person who has the phone. I suppose that's why they've added that it's strict liability. It's the argument that, regardless of whether it's irresponsible because it's your phone, but from speaking to young people, I'm aware that one of the things that does happen from time to time is that people use other people's phones to send messages or whatever, and this has already gathered us. One of the questions that I've written down here is to consider asking the Scottish Government what action has been taken on the corroboration side that falls on from the point. Since the postponement of a proposal to abolish corroboration in April 2015 by the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, I think that we need to be specific on that, as well as going back to the Government. Sorry, if you're just to clarify that this is part of the hate crime review, which has been launched at the beginning of the year. This takes it in, but maybe just to clarify that. Ryan? Would that be similar to the corroboration that your car is caught speeding? It's you unless you can prove it with somebody else? I think that's the argument that the petitioners are making. I think that that would be interesting to know what the views of those who are involved in the criminal justice system are thinking about that. What would be the consequences of that kind of approach? It's not to minimise in any way the impact of the receiving end of abusive and threatened communications and not being able to prosecute it because we need corroboration when somebody can use that in quite a systematic way in a course of hostility towards you. It must be very difficult if you can't then get anybody to say they recognise that it's happening but they can't prove it. I think that the suggestion of being interesting to ask these organisations, people that we're writing to, would strict liability work, is addressing it through changes to corroboration. Does that make sense? Fundamentally, I think that the owner says, if there's a bit of hate crime, how do you police it if you're not going to do it in the ways that one might suggest? The cabinet says that saying that the corroboration aspect would be part of a wider package of measures to be reviewed in the next parliamentary session. It's obviously on the radar, but it would be good just to get clarification of where we are with that. So, we want to write to the Scottish Government Police Crown Office. It probably would be good to write to some of the women's organisations that are supporting people who are dealing with abuse and violence, especially since there is now this recognition that the legislation coming through from the Government is not just physical violence but coercive control and so on as part of it, so other women's organisations and organisations dealing with victims. Is there anyone else that we would want to write to? I think that there's this recognition that we've got the point where we understand that this is a crime and it's a course of action that is directed against someone and all their understanding of the way in which these matters now operate, but it is actually securing a prosecution and what steps have been taken to address that. So, I think that we've agreed then to write to the Scottish Government Police Prosecution Service, women's organisations and other victims' organisations to try and see what they view on the petition and specifically round the hate crime review corroboration and the potential for the use of strict liability. That's agreed. If we can then move on to agenda item 2, considering of five continued petitions. The first petition for consideration under this item is petition 1551 on mandatory reporting of child abuse, which was lodged by Scott Pattinson. Members will recall that following our previous consideration of this issue, we wrote to the Scottish Government to establish why it was waiting for the outcome of the UK Government's consultation this issue and whether it had a cut-off point at which it would develop its own approach. We've received a response from the Minister for Child Care in early years in which he refers to submissions provided to the session 4 committee, which includes views that if the Scottish Government was to develop its own approach it would require a public consultation. The minister clarifies the scope of the UK Government consultation in this matter and appears to suggest that the Scottish Government would simply be duplicating that consultation if it was to explore options for its own approach. The minister states that the Scottish Government will consider the findings of the UK Government consultation as soon as the results are published and that those results will be considered within the wider context of the child protection landscape in Scotland, taking account of existing legislation. However, there remains a lack of certainty about when the UK Government will publish results of its consultation. The minister also states that mandatory reporting will also be considered in the context of the child protection improvement programme and identifies that the issue may be considered as part of the review of all current legislation on abuse and harm. The petitioner submission indicates that it does not consider that the Scottish Government has answered the question of why it won't establish its own approach to mandatory reporting, and I wonder if members have any comments. What I was struck by in the submissions that people have provided from a range of organisations is that people have an understanding of the motivation of the petition but believe that it would have an unintended consequence. It seems to me that people are quite happy to participate in that argument in that debate, so I genuinely do not understand why we are waiting for the results of a consultation, which is presumably for England. Is it just England or England and Wales for both? In our evidence, they also say that the landscape in Scotland is different, particularly because of the children's hearing system. I think that there are two separate things. It is not whether we think that the approach of mandatory reporting is the right one, but it should not be something that could be taken forward and argued one way or another in a conclusion that would come for Scotland. I agree that a Scottish-based consultation would be specific to those that a future law might cover. Therefore, there are anomalies that we have up here that are different from England, so it has got to be a base. I think that that is what we need to drive out. Whatever happens, whatever is agreed in the UK, it still has to come back under law in Scotland. I think that we have the argument and come to the conclusion whether we agree with mandatory reporting or not. I think that there are compelling arguments in both directions, but the idea is simply that this would be duplication. The logic of that is that you would not do anything or anything that possibly a UK Government would consult on, so I do not think that that makes much sense. I also thought that there are two separate things. The argument is really interesting around mandatory reporting and how it might inhibit a young person from disclosing. On the other hand, if you took the view that some of what happened around child abuse where either hierarchies within systems moved the problem on rather than confronting it, so it was reported to them. I think that Sarah Nelson's submission talks about the culpability of people at the top of an organisation not to listen when they are reporting, or indeed that if there are abusers operating within a system, it is in their interests to be closed down. I think that the petition is in some part trying to deal with that. It is saying that if you do not report this, then you are. There is an issue here, and maybe one of the reasons why people are not reporting is because they are parted to the abuse. That is a difficult thing to deal with, but I do think that that is part of the issue. I am wondering in terms of how we take it forward. Right to the minister for childcare in the early years. Ask him about the timeframe and just where we are with it. What steps would the Government or Government plan to take regarding that? It is amazing to say that we do not accept the issue of the UK consultation. It is a consultation by the UK Government to part of United Kingdom. Would it be reasonable to say that we do not accept that as an argument for not consulting? We accept that there is clearly a very challenging debate around the consequences of mandatory reporting. We are not taking a view on that, but we do think that that this is something that should be decided in the context of the child protection systems in Scotland. It is legitimate for the petitioner to argue this case and that that should be what the Scottish Government is dealing with. I think that that is a fair point. Can we know yes? I think that that should be included. We want to write to the Scottish Government saying that we recognise as a debate here on the question of mandatory reporting the benefits of it and perhaps the consequences that some of the children's organisations themselves highlight, but we do think that it is something that should be not determined by a timetable for a consultation for the rest of United Kingdom. From our evidence, there are plenty of people in Scotland who want to engage in this discussion. Is there anything else that we would want to do? We are grateful to the response that we got from the consultation. Can we get a response from the Crown Office on their view on how that could be done? That might be something that we should be looking at. In their terms, that is something that we would see as being enforceable. How easy would it be to prosecute in those circumstances? I think that that is very useful if we can then move on. The next petition is petition 1612 by Graham McKinlay on criminal injuries compensation scheme changed to the same roof rule. We last considered this meeting on 2 February when we agreed to seek more information from the Scottish Government on why it had no plans to establish a separate compensation scheme and to invite it to respond to the written views from Victim Support Scotland, which considered that the process of claiming for compensation for a criminal injury should be the same for all victims to avoid discriminatory practices of any kind. We have received a response from the Minister for Community Safety and Legal Affairs, which refers to a recent judicial review of the rule. The outer house of the Court of Session upheld the rule as being quote, proportionate and within the legitimate exercise of the discretion accorded to Parliament. The minister notes that it would be for the UK Government to amend the current scheme. The minister states that the Scottish Government's commitment to ensuring that the individual needs of all survivors are met through integrated services at local level and identifies a range of factors for not pursuing its own separate compensation scheme. Those factors include a degree of uncertainty of the likely demand, the range of circumstances that should be covered and the additional administrative costs associated with setting up the application, investigation and assessment processes. In her submission, the minister also refers to other strategies and frameworks, including the equally safe strategy and the survivor Scotland strategic outcomes and priorities 2015-2017 framework, which are designed to ensure that survivors have equal access to the resources and support that are required. She adds that the limitation child to abuse Scotland bill will remove the three-year time barrier for all survivors to whom it applies. Members will know that stage 3 proceedings on that bill are scheduled for next Thursday. The petitioner indicates that he is pleased that matters raised by his petition have been taken into consideration. He notes that there is no timescale for changes to be implemented and refers to the adage of closing the stable door after the horse is bolted. However, he indicates that he feels things are moving in the right direction and expresses his hope that, quote, "...it may ensure that steps are taken to do more to prevent abuse taking place, thus negating the need for compensation." I wonder if members have any comments or suggestions. I think that the only thing that strikes me there is the uncertainty around the number of people that might affect. I do not see how that is something that should be particularly relevant in terms of, we should not be making legislation around the number of people that affects. I agree with that. I do not think that that was the strongest argument. I think that there are means by which you could work that out or a system. If somebody is entitled to compensation on the basis of what 10 other people might get beaten up that month, he would not qualify. It does not make any sense. I am interested in the petitioner and how it feels to be fair that there has been progress in things that have been moved forward about, which I think is encouraging. I do not think that the argument around why they would not have a compensation were terribly strong specifically for that reason, but it is whether there is anything useful that we can add at this point, given that the abuse inquiry will certainly, I know that it has not got a remit to look at compensation, but there will be things that will come out of that inquiry. I think that it may mean that this will be revisited. I am struggling to try to find something that we can do to take this petition any further forward, to be honest. I do think that the petition has run its course, but it is. It has to be stressed that it is a prime example of how pressure can be put on the Scottish Government through this committee. It clearly does have an effect. It is encouraging that the petitioner has welcomed the fact that the matters that have been raised have been taken into consideration and that those will be addressed in the near future. I agree that the petition has run its course. It has gone as far as we can take it down this committee. I agree that it should be closed. I agree that the petition should be closed. We acknowledge that the petitioner says that things are moving in the right direction and that there has been progress made. That is in no small part due to the petitioner raising those questions and things that people probably would not have been aware of. We also recognise that Victim Scotland had support the petitioner and recognised that there was an issue here. The Limitation Childhoods Abuse Scotland Bill is a vehicle for a lot of this to be addressed, but it is also true that the petitioner has the opportunity to afford it to him in the future. If there are aspects of their concerns that remain there, something that could be petitioned on in the future. We recognise that it has certainly informed and shaped a lot of the debate. I think that that has been helpful. In that case, if we are agreeing, we will close the petition on the basis that there has been an explanation of the rationale, although we are not concerned about the question of not being able to assess the numbers. We do not think that that is relevant, but that there has been progress made through the bill. We would also encourage the petitioner to follow the progress of the bill to royal assent and implementation and to see over time how that addresses the issue that is raised in this petition. As we have said, if he believes that there is not sufficient progress in forthcoming, he may be able to submit the petition in the same or similar terms in a year's time. I thank you for that. If we can move on to the next petition, which is petition 1625 by Patricia Hewitt and Mary Black on wider awareness acceptance and recognition of pathological demand avoiding syndrome. At our previous consideration, we agreed to write to COSLA and integration joint boards to establish what approaches were used on this issue and to identify what support mechanisms and resources were in place. We received four responses. COSLA did not respond as it considers this to be a matter for individual local authorities. In terms of recognition of the condition, the submissions from North Asia Health and Social Care Partnership and NHS Western Isles note that PDE is not recognised condition within the manuals, which are considered to be the gold standard for autism diagnosis. North Asia and also Falkirk Health and Social Care Partnership suggest that there needs to be more research in this area before a decision can be made as to whether PDE should be recognised as a standalone diagnosis. That is a view that the petitioner support and suggest was part of the motivation behind the petition. East Asia Health and Social Care Partnership states that social work services recognise that it is a developmental disorder and adds that to have a PDE diagnosis there must first be an ASD diagnosis. From the submissions received it appears that while there may be different explanations and phrases used, PDE is not officially recognised. However, in terms of the resources and support provided, the responses seem to be fairly consistent in the team of ensuring that whatever support and resources are provided are based on putting a child or young person at the centre of that support and working collaboratively. What is not clear is whether that is based on guidance, best practice policy or different teams of specialists using their initiative and speaking and consulting with colleagues. In their submission, the petitioners agree that it is entirely right for the support and resources to be centred on the individual, but that there is still work to do to clarify and expand on current understanding. They suggest that there may be benefit in the Scottish Government investigating whether there are examples of best practice elsewhere, and I wonder if members have any comments or suggestions. I am still struck by the fact that there seems to be a huge variation in the way that this is treated in different local authorities. I am struggling to understand why there has not been some sort of research into the condition already. I like the idea of writing to the Government and looking to see whether there are examples of best practice elsewhere in the world. If there is a huge variation accepted somewhere and not accepted elsewhere, that would seem something that needs to be clarified. I wonder whether the variation was not so much in recognising it as a specific condition, but that, in autism, there is not just one approach that people with autism or it will reveal itself in different ways. Therefore, the response to the way in which you support someone with autism should vary as well. In terms of the petitioners' evidence, my recollection was that some of the strategies that you would use with someone with autism would argue that they were counterproductive for their young people. The evidence is that the case is not clearly being made that it exists as a separate condition, but that, even if it has been treated within autism, it should be recognised. I agree with Brian. It is worth writing to the Government to find out if it is going to look at policies elsewhere and to see how more consistency of the diagnosis and support throughout local authorities was made if they were planning to do that. It is worth another stab. We have almost come to the end of the road with it, because we have had an emphatic response, but I think that it is worth another letter. I agree. We should get more responses from more of the IJBs. We have only got four there. I declare an interest in being the chair of one of the IJBs. It is now beginning to function properly after a year, which is to be fair. We need another 28. I do not think that we can take the four in a distinct direction. The fact that we are working with health care and social care together, there may be bits in there that might give us some clue. It would seem to me if you were sitting on a joint board and the view is in the gold standard of autism diagnosis that it is not a distinct condition, then that is what you are going to follow. I think that it is reasonable to say that if there is an end with a view from the joint boards, it would be interesting to hear that, but what is the Scottish Government going to do? Other things that they could do to identify a bit of research, what happens in other parts of the world, or within the treatment of autism and other specific strategies that they would do for people whose families would deem them to have his PDA. It would be worthwhile. Is there a dual approach? If that is agreed, we can seek further comment from the integrity of joint boards to the Scottish Government. I was not quite sure why it was not anything to do with COSLA. I do not know when they decide whether something is a matter for individual councils or for them to have a general policy. We need to have an opinion. What I said earlier is that the formation is in the last year, so there was a certain amount to know. Having attended some of the COSLA conferences on that, it was clear that they were waiting for a sort of bottom-up approach, so we can get in there first. I think that, as Rona said, it is something that we can at least have one last week to look at, because it is clear from the evidence that families themselves feel that it is a big issue in terms of the nature of the support and the benefit of the support that their young person might receive. If we can then move on to the next petition agenda, which is petition 1633 by Bill Alexander on private criminal prosecution in Scotland, members will see that we have a number of submissions that have been received since we last considered this petition. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and the Scottish Government take the view that an individual can petition a court even when the Lord Advocate does not concur. In that regard, the court may direct the Lord Advocate to give his concurrence or authorise the private party to proceed without it by ordering criminal letters to be issued. The Scottish Government incurs with his view and advises that it has no plans to amend existing legal framework. The petitioner raises concerns that the cost of challenging the Lord Advocate may be prohibitive for some. Mr Alexander also considers that there is a potential gap in prosecutions taking place from health and safety matters in Scotland, particularly in the racing industry, which he considers could be addressed by the action called for in the petition. I wonder if members have any comments or suggestions. I think that there is an issue here about the way in which health and safety the health and safety executive operates in Scotland. I know that there is a Scottish committee, but it says that, given that HSE is not prosecuting authority Scotland, we have no comment to make. Is that the gap that the petitioner is trying to address? If there is something that happens, who provides the report? I suppose that the petitioner thinks that the fall-back position is that you can then pursue it as a private prosecution yourself without the inhibition of a time to get past the Lord Advocate. However, the other advice that we are getting is that you do not actually have to have the Lord Advocate. I was inclined to head towards closing the petition right up until health and safety was mentioned in there. As you mentioned, there seems to be a great area of gap that might need to be explored. I am not sure what we do with it, but that was the direction that I was heading until. If the health and safety executive is a prosecuting authority in the rest of the kingdom, who fills that gap in Scotland? It is maybe a gap in our understanding rather than anything to do with the people who are ducting this job. I know that in the past there have been concerns expressed that the level of fatality within the construction industry in Scotland was higher than the rest of the kingdom. There was a sense in which the health and safety executive did not seem to be very alive to this at a local level. That is something that we would want to at least address before we finally consider closing the petition. That is the Government, but it is not the position of the Government. I think that it is back to them and then said not to close at this stage. I certainly think that we should get further clarification given that the response on the HSE was that, given that the HSE is not a prosecuting authority in Scotland, we have no comment to make, which is disappointing to say the least. It is the petitioner's view that the Lord Advocate in Scotland can direct Police Scotland to carry out an investigation, but it has no powers to direct the HSE to carry out an investigation as it is a body. It seems to come in both directions, does it not? In other constituency work, the issue seems to be fairly live. I would really like more clarification on that. We would be agreeing perhaps to ask for the Scottish Government's comments on that, perhaps the Crown Office, but also the health and safety executive. I do not even know if it operates. I know that there is a Scottish committee, but I do not know if it operates. Can we write to them directly and see what their role is and try to think of a scenario in which, as you say, the Lord Advocate can ask for a report to be made, but not health and safety. I think that there is a wee bit there still to go in terms of addressing the concerns of the petitioner. If we can then move on to the next petition, which is petition 1636, to require that all single-use drinks cups are 100 per cent biodegradable, the petition was lodged by Michael Trail. We initially considered this petition on 30 March. We have received seven submissions from stakeholders, including the Scottish Government, COSLA and a range of organisations that are actively engaged in developing initiatives in this area. The submissions are generally supportive of the motivation behind the petition, but posed some questions about how effective a suggested action might be. Points are made about the distinction to be drawn between biodegradable and compostable. There are also issues around the existing recycling and waste management infrastructure, the composition of disposable cups or food packaging, public attitudes and consumer incentives. The submission is going to some technical detail about the various processes and possible alternatives to that suggestion in the petition. Members will be aware that the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee has recently announced its plans to examine waste generation and disposal. Members have any comments or suggestions? I think that, given that the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee are doing quite a bit of work on this or are due to look at the issue in some detail, it would probably be a good time to refer it directly to the committee. However, in doing so, I note that there is another suggestion that we could ask the Scottish Government whether there are any plans for a public awareness campaign. I think that perhaps we should also do that as the Public Petitions Committee in advance of forwarding the petition to the Equare Committee. Would it be reasonable, in the sense that I think that it would be quite good that we move the petition on, that we do right, but that we are actually referring it? We can share the information in terms of the public. If any information that the Scottish Government gives us in our public information campaign, we can share it with the committee later, but also with the Environment Committee. I think that there are very interesting issues in here. One level seems quite simple. Everybody knows that it is a problem, but it has started with the technical stuff, so it is slightly more complicated in that. I do think that anything that would encourage businesses to provide less complex packaging would probably be a boom. I agree with you. It does face a lot of interesting things, especially the idea around the public awareness. It was not something that I considered until I saw the petition. It is like many of these things until it has brought to your attention. Maybe you do not think about it. I think that sometimes people at mum, but it is just me being ignorant and old. I actually thought that a lot of paper cups were disposable and by being disposable were by degradable or whatever. These things were already environment friendly, but I suppose some of what the evidence has suggested is the opposite of that. They have already made meals of the black plastic trays. That is a real problem for recycling. I think that it is really a public awareness. Our duty would be done that, brought together, because it goes across everything to bottles and things like that. If we are agreed, we will refer the petition to Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee for consideration as part of its work on Scotland's approach to waste management, but we will also write to the Scottish Government to ask whether there are any plans for a public awareness campaign on this issue. We can then share that response on our website. If that is agreed, we can deal with what that petition dealt with and I will suspend briefly to allow witnesses to come to the table. I will bring the meeting back to order again if we can then move on to agenda item 3. The next item in the agenda is petition 1463 by Sandra White, Marion Dyer and Lorraine Cleaver on effective thyroid and adrenal testing diagnosis and treatment. We are joined this morning by the lead petitioner, Lorraine Cleaver, as well as Dr John Midgley. We are also joined this morning by Lane Smith MSP, who is in interest in this petition. I welcome you all to the meeting. We have a very full agenda today, so I ask that members and witnesses keep their answers succinct. Members will be aware that a lot of information has been gathered in this petition from a range of stakeholders since it was lodged in 2012. We therefore intend to have a focused discussion this morning. I will allow five minutes for either Lorraine Cleaver or Dr Midgley to make an opening statement. Thank you, convener. Ladies and gentlemen, committee, good morning. I will start by a bit of history. Only 50 years ago, my wife was a technician at the University of Newcastle of Ponteil and Department of Medicine and Professor Reginald Hall, who at that time was an authority on thyroid function test development and diagnosis. After a while, she began to feel ill. She was running the test for thyroid stimulated hormone, the first test to be developed in this country. She started feeling ill. The professor said it was, shall we say, she was doing the test and she felt ill because of a suggestion, but after a while she put her serum sample into the test run and lo and behold where she was, TSH up in the sky, she was suffering from Hashimoto's thyroiditis, which ultimately destroyed her thyroid. I was a lecturer in Newcastle University on something else altogether different, but, of course, naturally, I became interested in the thyroid and it's how it worked and how it was treated. By a series of coincidences later, I got into the position of being able to invent the thyroid function test, which are now used worldwide for free thyroxin and free hyodothyrinine. Over the next 40 years from the late 1970s, I've taken interest in the development of the testing and treatment and diagnosis of thyroid patients. And I must say that I've become increasingly unhappy about the way in which testing has proceeded. I think that it is unfortunate that the test I've already mentioned thyroid stimulating hormone has become an all-over-eaching test, which is supposed to be successful in diagnosing both the onset of disease that is under or overfunction for which it is perfectly suitable, but it has been extended to the control of treatment for which it is totally unsuitable, and this unsuitability has led to a significant number of patients being wrongly diagnosed and wrongly treated or not treated at all. So I'd just like to make some general statements to the committee, which I've written down here, I'm afraid, my memory sometimes I lose it at my age. So I hope to convince you that the current paradigm of thyroid deficiency treatment is insufficient, wasteful of medical time and resource, the wrong test to control treatment are being committed. It commits the sin of categorisation. Now categorisation, I mean, it puts you or the diagnosis and treatment is aimed at putting you into the normal range. Now the normal range is a wide range and you as individuals each have your individual position in that range and you might differ, just looking at the number of people here, there'll be somebody, shall we say, very much different from the average. And it's not sufficient just to put somebody in the range, you've got to put them in the range, in the position where that optimum health is to be found. And since you don't know what that value was when they were well, because they were never measured, there's a lot of flailing about going on to find out what the best solution will be. And that's what I mean by the sin of categorisation, just shoehorning people in the normal range and saying that's okay, job done, and that is wrong. And then the next problem is the promotion of biochemical markers, that the measurement of thyroid hormones and blood over patient presentation. At the moment, the chemistry dominates the presentation of symptoms by the patient. That's the wrong way around. The presentation of symptoms by the patient should dominate over biochemical parameters, which should be suggestions, indicators, but not dictators of the situation. But it's very important. And all this, therefore, has been the detriment of the health, well-being and the economic activity of mainly female patients. About 90%, 80% to 90% of thyroid sufferers are female. And therefore, shall we say, us males perhaps are a little less, shall we say, aware of the situation than women are in this respect. Because one or two percent of women, at least, at least two percent, have got thyroid problems. And that's quite a significant number when you think of the population. So, in short, I believe there should be a unbiased review of present protocol for treatment and diagnosis in the light of new evidence, which shows that the single use of thyroid stimulating hormone as a test for thyroid deficiency and for treatment is an unsuitable and a misleading one. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. Can I maybe kick off by asking a bit about the Scottish Government's listening exercise? I should be aware that the Scottish Government agreed to conduct a listening exercise in doing so commissioned thyroid UK to conduct a patient survey. You expressed disappointment with the manner in which the Scottish Government approached the listening exercise in its response to the survey. Do you have a view on how the listening exercise could have been conducted differently, and do you have any suggestions in this regard? Absolutely. Do you have any suggestions on that? Yeah, my suggestion is what was mooted at the committee a few years ago, which is an inquiry run by the committee, because the listening exercise was an exercise in wasting money, wasting time and achieving zero. I had met a Scottish Government minister shortly after the listening exercise was agreed upon, and he discussed setting up a short in-house inquiry with medical people, with patients not just from thyroid disease, patients with fibromyalgia or ME, and running a long-term, a year's project. Nothing happened to that, and I know the budget that was set aside for that. Nothing came of it. The thyroid UK survey was a very small part of the listening exercise. It wasn't the listening exercise. Nothing was done with the findings of the thyroid UK survey results. In fact, I think they were roundly ignored by the minister or what that came here. So, I think five years, almost four and a half, going on for five years, we have not achieved anything. We have passed things over to the Scottish Government or to sign, and we have achieved absolutely nothing. I think that an inquiry has got to be seriously considered by the committee. Otherwise, five years have worked for nothing. Angus McDog. Okay, thanks. A key issue that has come to light in the committee's consideration of the petition is about the evidence base for patient experience and clinical opinion. Do you consider that there are gaps in the existing research in this area, and if so, what gaps have you identified? There's a rather stern answer to that. The gaps that are alleged in knowledge are, in fact, refusal to acknowledge the fact that there is evidence which, in fact, flies in the face of current actions. Because the medical profession is, by definition, a conservative one, and having, shall we say, conducted a particular way of diagnosing and treating people for 35 years is not going to take kindly to being told or indicated that they've been doing the wrong thing for all that time. It will take an enormous amount of pressure to bring them to reading and understanding. There are the complicated, and I'll have to say that, there are the complicated papers which now show that what has been done over the last 35 years or so is suboptimal and has actually caused harm to patients. Now that is a very big thing for the medical profession to have to swallow, but swallow it one day, it will have to do, and sooner rather than later. Good morning. We understand from the Scottish Government's latest submission that the chief scientist officer has the remit to fund clinical research that has led to a Scottish-based clinician or scientist, and that has the potential to improve the health and wellbeing of people of Scotland. Have you approached any Scottish researchers to make funding application to the chief scientific officer to address any gaps in clinical evidence that you may have identified? My great disadvantage is that I'm not medically qualified, and that means that I can be easily ignored because that can be raised against me immediately. I do not have those connections, and nobody from the health service in Scotland has approached me, and indeed nobody in the world has approached me to actually talk in any forum about this situation. So I would say the invitations on my mantelpiece rate to zero and look to be continuing to be zero for the time being. So it really, I believe, is up to the authorities to debate with me the situation, and in some way, the appropriate people and I to have a discussion based on current evidence about how to proceed further. I would like to ask you about the importance of the doctor-patient relationship in identifying suitable treatment and implementing patient-centred care. Do you think that patients are sufficiently supported in circumstances in which they do not agree with the treatment plan proposed by their GP or endocrinologist? Do you have any recommendations for what steps NHS Scotland could take to support patients finding themselves in those circumstances? Right. My belief is that what I read of people's experience is that in general, general practitioners are woefully ignorant of how to deal with thyroid dysfunction, shall we say, in patients and their treatment. They seem to have become used to what I call computer thinking, where you look into a blue screen where there is advice given to you and you simply follow that advice in a rigid and mechanical fashion. That means, as I said earlier, that the biochemical numbers which are displayed on that screen from the pathology laboratory seem to become paramount over the appearance of the person in front of you. That is the great, in my opinion, the great error that has been created, that the patient is now subordinate to the chemistry, and that's not right. It cannot be right because the chemistry is a jide and not a dictation. But I can't leave the fold at the general practitioners because they only behave in the way they are instructed to behave. I could go on for ages about this, but the individual patient is an anecdote. There they are in front of you. They've got their parameters and their unique within or without the normal range, depending on how they are. That's one thing. The normal range is obtained for health statistically, and there is a tension between statistics and individuality. The individual is a place within those statistics, but to use the statistics backwards and say that individual is in there and therefore okay wherever they are is a complete error. So I'm saying really that the general practitioners are not given the proper method of discriminating the individual from the ranges they are given to place that individual. The individuality of the patient is lost and therefore misjudgments are continually made as to the success of the treatment. This applies also, I'm afraid, to endocrinologists who can be just as guilty of the same errors as the general practitioners. So this is a matter of education in my opinion. Do you see this going back to training, the clinical training? Yes, I think clinical training has to change very, very, very much because there are an awful lot of misapprehensions about how you treat numbers and how you relate them to patient presentation. Can I say something, Rona? This is the 21st century NHS. Medicine has gone backwards for us, for this patient group, we're going backwards. We used to have pig thyroid, desiccated thyroid that had everything in it. We can't get that now. We're actually going backwards. This paper from an American scientist published in October last year. I'm just going to read you the last paragraph because I find it astonishing that this is happening in the 21st century. Better medications are needed to treat hypothyroidism. Until that day, I urge doctors to change how they talk about it with patients. Doctors should be telling their patients, I'm going to normalise your TSH, but you're going to be at a higher risk for gaining weight, experiencing depression and chronic fatigue. It's also more likely that your cholesterol will go up. Most of these patients will end up with statins and antidepressants. That's what we should be telling our patients. What they're saying is, I'm going to treat you, your TSH, and reduce your TSH down to, it's in a nice part of the range, but you're going to need some statins and beta blockers, some antidepressants and gosh knows how many other things. This is outrageous. It's the 21st century because they'll do that rather than admit that what they're doing is wrong. They're medicating people with one drug that doesn't suit everyone and they're medicating you to keep the TSH happy rather than remove your symptoms. So it does go back to training and education and I think John's correct when he said, this will take decades to unravel because the egos of the people who wrote the papers and decided that the protocols are not going to easily give up. Okay, thank you. That's interesting. Thanks, convener. It's a supplementary on around the sort of GP issue, but first I just put on the record just given what Lorraine said there that Dr Anthony Toff, who is a Scottish endocrinologist, eminent Scottish endocrinologist, actually said in the BBC recently, he was commenting on the cost of T3, which maybe we can come to, and he was asked whether desiccated thyroid hormone was likely to be used instead and he said in a quote, I suspect that in time that's what will happen. Now to me that is just tragic because the people that are not getting it now can't wait, they're going to enter upon their own depression medicine, they might be suffering fibromyalgia, et cetera, et cetera. So I think just in terms of what Lorraine said, it's horrendous that it's going to happen in time, but all of the women that are going to suffer in the meantime and be not economically active, many of them because of it. The committee have my own story where loads of money was spent putting me, testing me from Lyme disease to Addison's to everything else in between, and putting me through a brain scan situation, which must have cost a fortune, heart monitoring, et cetera, et cetera. All through that process I said to every doctor, I've got an underactive thyroid, it's got something. After two years of a fortune being spent, finally I got to Dr Toft who tested my T3 and I wasn't converting. I came back to life with a small pill, but that two years and I was just determined. How many women are out there that aren't that determined? What I want to ask convener is about GPs in your paper that I have, I don't have your private papers. It's talking about that there's not going to be any sign guidance, so we're back to where we started. It says, good practice guide for general practice may be a more useful document. I want to ask Lorraine about that, but it goes on to say that the GPs say that they're not in a position to comment on unlicensed medication. That's T, that's a discid thyroid hormone, which they used to prescribe 35 years ago, so it was unlicensed then as well. So they're not in a position to comment on this and yet they can prescribe it and some do, but they do it under the radar and they do it under the radar because if you look at the position of the late Dr Skinner who kept getting holed up in front of his professional body for doing no harm to his patients, for actually doing good to his patients, so I can't understand how they can say they're not in a position to comment on unlicensed medication and I would like to ask Dr Mitchell and Lorraine to comment on that paper. How can GPs say this? I think that the behaviour of the opinion formers in thyroid medicine is, well, it's verging on disgraceful. They refuse to allow desecrated thyroid to be licensed or used in this country for a very strange reason and the strange reason is that it doesn't have the right content of thyroid hormones which are appropriate for treatment. Now I scratched my head on that because if you give thyroxin only to patients, which is the normal treatment, that's about as unphysiological as you can do and it's far more unphysiological than giving natural desecrated thyroid. So long as the content of that product is regulated and controlled, which I believe it is according to the pharmacopiers, so there is no real evidence and no reason not to be quite liberal in the choice of treatments that you offer patients according to their requirements and according to their responses to the treatments. I can't see why there should be just narrow translines of suggestions and recommendations in the light of the fact that physiologists, individuals, is so widely defined and so widely corrected went wrong. I simply shall not see this narrow behaviour having any logic in it whatsoever. Thanks, community. I'm like Elaine Smith. It's the issue of desecrated thyroid that I can't quite get my head around either. We know it's been available in the past and we know that it's worked. Just for clarification, Lorraine Craver just mentioned a minute or two ago that clearly it's unavailable. I think we took evidence in the past that it is available on the internet from abroad and presumably people are still buying it from abroad. I buy it from abroad but I live with the fear that I won't be able to source that one day because it's licensed in America and I'm buying it via the Pacific Ocean, some company there, but which is ridiculous. The medical community removed my organ and said I'll put back what we took out and they're not doing it. They're leaving me to buy medicine on the internet and many thousands of other patients. There's another problem with the T3 which has been investigated I believe by the MHRA. There's one manufacturer in the UK for T3. They seem to have a monopoly on price. It's gone from £54 for 28 tablets to £154 now. Although you're not allowed, you're not supposed to stop someone's medication due to cost. That is what's happening and Elaine's been dealing with that also. I can see the position the NHS is in. Some of these patients are costing £300 a month for a T3 which is €1 a pack in Turkey or wherever. We're in the EU just about still. Why can't we be sourcing this cheaper T3 from there? Why is there one manufacturer? That's the tiny glimmer of hope that some patients have that they can access some T3 eventually if their doctor prescribes it, but they're under constant threat of having it removed and they are having it removed. The desiccated thyroid is available abroad at a reasonable price? It will. The price has increased somewhat, but it still works out about £50 a month for me. It's still cheaper than the T3 that the NHS is getting stitched up over. I would not grumble about paying that. I have no problem. Most patients don't have a problem about paying it, but they have a fear about accessing it. I'm just conscious of time, so I think that there may be quite a lot of other questions that we could ask and maybe that we could give you those questions in writing, but I'm just conscious that there's a very complicated set of issues here, and I don't want to lose the fact that we're right up against the clock at 20 to 12. I suppose that one thing would be to say that the question of licensing is not really within the remit of the parmin, and that is obviously for elsewhere. I don't know if there's any final questions that people want to ask. Brian? Just a comment, convener, on per chance, I happen to find out through working with this committee that a friend of mine actually has this issue—it's a male, funnily enough—and they were having real problems with the T4 until sort of endocrinologist, a consultant, prescribed T3. The combination of those two, he says, has made a huge impact on his life. I know that it's anecdotal evidence, but I got the opportunity to speak to his consultant, and his consultant was saying to me that half consultants believe it one way and half believe the other way, which is really unhelpful. What that tells me is that we're still in a situation where proper clinical research hasn't been achieved here, and I don't know what the answer to that is, but somehow or other that circle has to be closed. I think that certainly the issue of research is something that we'd want to flag up to the Scottish Government around this whole question. It does feel as if there's an awful lot more to be established. It's not within the power of this committee around licensing, obviously, but we're also interested in the degree of concern people have about the way in which they themselves have been treated. Moris? Yes. Can I ask Dr Midgee a question? Do you think clinicians have clear guidance on when to use different types of diagnostic tests? No. I don't think they're given guidance at all, actually, at the GP level. The dogma is always take the thyroxin, normalise your TSH, thank you, madam or sir, go away, you are properly treated. That's the end of it, and if you feel ill, well, that's something else. You're depressed or you've got a cold or something, but you haven't got a thyroid problem. I'm afraid the ignorance in that is quite astounding, really, but there's just one thing I'd just like to quickly run over, and that is that the actual instruments used to measure these thyroid hormones from different manufacturers don't give the same answers. So you've got that extra confusion in which the normal range from one manufacturer will be different from the normal range from another manufacturer, and it can be up to 50% different. I mean, it can be astounding, especially for 3D3s, awful. The standard of actual measurement is as bad as the standard of diagnosis, so I will get on, I do not know. It's slightly red her, I think, because GPs can prescribe descated thyroid hormone if they want, and when T3 ran out a few years ago when the committee was dealing with this, we couldn't get T3, we were told then to get it from abroad. The GPs were told just to get it wherever they could, so licensing aside, they could, but they're frightened to prescribe it because they'd been holding in front of their professional body for doing so. Okay, as I say, there may be some further points we might want to pursue with you at a later stage, but I'm conscious of time. Can I thank you very much for your attendance again today? I think that in terms of what we've heard, we had a draft report that we would want to produce, and so I think that we should reflect on the evidence that we've got today and any follow-up questions that we may have afterwards before we complete that report. Is there anything else that people think that we should be doing? It's such a big issue, and it's just a shame that we have had to round it off. I'd be interested to know, but I'm not expecting you to answer, because we've run out of time, what your priority would be to improve the situation. I know that there's a list of things, but we can maybe explore that in a letter. Roll everything back, all the problems that we have about the tests being inadequate, the medicine being inadequate, go right back to the source and the source of the guidance that's handed out to these GPs, this is why we're in this position. Those guidelines were written based on consensus, that's consensus medicine, it's not science, and we should go back to the source and say, why is that acceptable for such a common illness that all the guidance that's handed down is based on consensus rather than good quality evidence, because we're firefighting here when the problem's way back at the source. I hear that it's nice guidance, but surely it's the SMC in Scotland that have jurisdiction here. It's not nice. That's something that we can clarify as well. I think that it's sound guidance that we would deal with, but we'll get all of that clarified in terms of any final conclusions that we'd want to come to. After all the time and everything and being back to stage one with that guidance, and the fact that the GPs are not going to take on board, put it says in your report that the GPs are not going to take on board a good practice guide, that's not going to happen. Is there no possibility that the committee could in fact do an inquiry into this because all that happened in the beginning was around table, and then that gave more questions than answers, and then the petitioner has been before the committee a few times, but this is a new committee, I think that there's only one person on it who's got the experience, the stories that we put together in a hurry. Is there not any time in your timetable? It's obviously we've got the opportunity to reflect on our business programme for next year, as all committees do, but what I'm keen to do is that we have this draft report, and then we can make it and draw conclusions from that. While members of the committee, not all members of the committee, were on in past time, we have read back and reflected on the evidence and we have to balance the interests of this petitioner against all the other pressures that are on it, but we can rest assured that we will at least be looking at that. In that case can I again thank you very much for your attendance and can we suspend briefly. Back to order and we now move on to the next petition on the agenda, which is petition 1648 by Stephanie Dodds on nursery business rates. We're joined this morning by Stephanie Dodds and Claire Schofield, director of membership policy and communications for the National Day Nurseries Association. I'd like to welcome you both to the meeting and invite Stephanie Dodds to make a short opening statement of up to five minutes and we'll then move to questions by the committee. Good morning, convener and members of the committee. As you're aware, a sort of key issue for private nurseries is balancing the books, so they can deliver high quality childcare whilst remaining sustainable and keeping fees affordable for parents. Business rate rises have had a huge burden on nurseries, which are already facing severe financial pressure from increasing payroll costs associated with the national living wage, the pension auto enrolment and the uncertainties around the forthcoming 1140 hours of early learning and childcare. Many private nurseries experience financial crises as a result of the recent business rates re-evaluation, coupled with the chronic funding shortfalls experienced by private nurseries for the current 600 hours, and for the eligible to 2s and 3 to 4-year-olds, urgent reform is needed sustainability for the sector. Recent surveys done by NDNA in 2017 identified that there was a funding shortfall for private nurseries for their funded rate that they get from the local authorities. This, on average, is about £1,000 per child per year. In 2017, again, we were talking about what nurseries were going to do and they were having to increase their fees substantially to try to offset this increase. The Government's blueprint for the 2020 action plan, in there they are talking about private nurseries given the Scottish living wage. That is another increase that private nurseries are feeling. That will lead to higher payroll increases. That, in itself, is leading to the nursery thinking about whether we want to be in partnership with those nurseries and with the local authorities to deliver the 1140 hours. At a time in which the Scottish Government wants us to be at the forefront of early years education and given the best and increased hours to the children, we, the private sector, are there and able to deliver those hours at many high-quality private nurseries. It is such a shame that we feel that there is more and more being put on us, financially constraining us and making it difficult for businesses to run. A lot of the nurseries are now at the business relief rate because we have been revalued, most of them are above that, so if we have two nurseries under a group, then we do not qualify for that, so that has been wiped out. The highest increase has been 215 per cent for one nursery in Renfrewshire. In a poll done by Lambert Smith and Hampton, they researched it and found that Glasgow did not have that many increases. They stayed the same as they had in 2010. However, Dundee has some quite big increases, some of them up to 50 per cent. Aberdeen increased mostly by 50 per cent but some up as high as 178 per cent. In Edinburgh, generally over 70 per cent, with the highest being 147 per cent. I had gone out to a couple of different members. I am the NDNA chair, which is a voluntary position for East and Midlodion. I had gone out to different members asking for case studies to tell me how they feel and how it affects their business. There is a nursery who is not actually in our area, but who is through in Paisley, who was valued prior to 2017 at £16,500 per year. That allowed them to have the relief as well. Unfortunately, he was revalued this time at £40,000. Instead of having to pay £588 a month, he is now paying £1,800 a month. That is a huge increase for a small business, for one business to do. On top of that, and it is just going to come to light as well, is that the business rates are set, the property drainage rates as well and your water rates. On top of the business rates going up by that amount, he is now having to pay an extra more on his water and drainage. That is taking him up to about £14,000 a year more than he has paid in the past. That is the cost of a member of staff in a nursery who is working about 30 hours a week. Another nursery in West Lothian is a business rates of £50,000. It is a New York nursery that is just open to £50,000. The dentist next door is £30,000. When she inquired as to why that was happening, how do you base those rateable values, she was told that there are four rates for nurseries. If you have a nursery that is not well maintained, the building is not great or whatever, you will be on that lower rate. If you have a nursery that is a conversion, you might be in the middle two. If you have an all-singing, all-dancing purpose built, you have invested a lot of money into your nursery. You might not necessarily have a lot of money, but you have invested it. You are being penalised for that and paying the highest rate. Potentially, the purpose built lovely buildings that are given the best quality of care for the children, which is ultimately what is about, are being penalised because they do not reach that. They will not even get any relief because they are above that level. I think that that is what is frustrating people as well, as it seems to be that poor buildings are getting that relief and people who are investing are not getting that relief. It is a bit unfair. In my own personal nursery, one of our nurseries is in the East Lothian, in Haddington, and it has gone up 100 per cent in our business rates. Our nursery in Dumblane is 50 per cent, so it is 75 per cent between the two. Can I ask how many private nurseries operate in Scotland? Of them, have you got an estimate on those who are likely to be affected by the revaluation? In total, there are about 800 private nurseries across Scotland. We know from the consultation with our members that the time that we did our survey was just at the time of the revaluation, but we do an annual survey year on year. The message that comes through is the majority of nurseries. The revaluation has highlighted that it made it worse because of some of these very big increases, but generally, for most, they were not able to get any relief because their valuations are too high. It is a cost pressure that has just to be passed on to parents. As Stephanie says, when we are looking at expansion to 1140 hours, it is actually going to make it that much harder for nurseries to be able to get involved in that and remain viable as provision. Just on your last point, you will be aware that local authorities have been funded to provide the 1140 hours. The nurseries do not yet know the settlement that they are going to get and that is going to be passed on to them. Just on the rates question, you mentioned your opening statement that the business rates may end up being passed, that the increase may end up affecting the parents. Have you done any research to find out how many parents might not be able to afford an increase? I have not done any research, but if you look at the comments, even just from the petition, you can see the amount of parents who would struggle. They are already saying that this is a detrimental effect on whether they would be able to actually put their child into childcare. As a nursery, we cannot think that it is not like another business where you can say that you could bring some more children in because that could help with the shortfall because we have constraints. We can only have so many children per floor space. We could think that we could cut down on staff, but we can, because we have a staffing ratio. You want to have high-quality staff here, but you do not want the children not to have that. The only way of doing it is to pass some of that cost on. I might be trying to absorb some of yourself if you can, but it is to pass that cost on to the parents because some businesses will just close. The parents who are the youngest children here at that stage are really trying to return to work, but they are not getting their 1140 hours because it starts at three and the eligible twos. That is where you have the heaviest cost. If you are going to have to put your fees up, they are going to be hit most by those increases. If you could put a rough percentage on what it is hard for you to say, but how many of your parents might not be able to continue with childcare? I do not think that I could give that. We would need to go out. You would imagine that most of them would come back and say, I cannot. Some of them are saying, I do not know why I am working just now. If you did read some of the comments on the petition, I do not know why I work just now. You nearly all my salary goes on childcare. I think that they just keep thinking that it is okay because it is only for a few years, but that might be. We do have bad debtors in the nursery who clearly are struggling to pay their fees and give them a little bit more time to put in payment plans, so there are definitely people who are already struggling. You are probably aware that the Community Empowerment Scotland Act 2015 allows local authorities to grant relief to any type of rate payer for any reason, as they see fit provided. It is fully funded by the local authority itself. You mentioned a wee bit earlier about building quality being considered as one of the possibilities for relief by a particular local authority. I am not quite sure which one you were talking about, but are you aware of any moves by local authorities to use the power that has been given to them by the Community Empowerment Scotland Act in relation to nurseries to grant relief? I have not heard of anyone who has been able to. I know that the first case that I spoke about, he asked and was told that no, that there would be no. That was in Paisley. You are done bling, did you say? I have one done bling and haddington. I have put letters in to haddington, but I have not had a response from them. I have put in letters asking for some form of relief, but I have not had a response. What about Surin Council? I have not done that yet. From our perspective, on a national basis, we have been encouraging our members to look at all the options in terms of contacting their local authorities and getting reliefs. We have not heard of anybody who has said that they have had it, but we can look further. We understand that a number of types of businesses have been afforded transitional relief, including bed and breakfast and pubs. Are you aware of any specific reasons why nurseries were not afforded this relief? No, there is no reason that they have given. Are there any final questions? I think that we are conscious of the time. You have made a very strong case in terms of the issues facing nurseries, the importance of childcare in terms of the Government strategy and all of our own commitment. I am curious as to why. We have got a briefing with all the list of people who have got transitional relief, which did include pubs and bed and breakfast, but did not include nurseries. I must also be interested in the perverse incentive not to improve your property, which I think. I think that the final point is that way in which there is nowhere for you to go. The margins in your business are such that you cannot address the ratio, you cannot increase the number of young people there for it to end up dealing with that. Without coming to a conclusion about what we think should happen, I do think my sense is that we would want to explore this a little further. I wonder if we should be right to the Scottish Government, COSLA and other childcare organisations that might have members who are aware of the kind of concerns that you highlight. Anything else, Brian? I have given some set again to constituency work the cost of the living wage introduction, which I think that we all agree with. The increase in business rates is not necessarily being reimbursed at the appropriate level through COSLA. I think that it is certainly something that we need to explore and maybe close as it loops on. Is there anything else that we could be righting to? As parenting organisations, it would be interesting to know that very much the margins, which are still with your while working, are paying out against the potential future earnings. If you stay in work, you will be able to improve later on. It certainly feels like the uniting nature of your business that it is very difficult to see how else you could recoup the costs and whether there are transitional arrangements for people looking at those. The results of the response from COSLA because they do not get a suitable answer, we need to go to the local authorities directly, which comes back to the point that the ladies have replied. We go directly to that. I would agree with that. I think that that would be straightforward. I think that if there are other organisations that are interested in this area that we think that we was well contacted in, we can do that. We can move that to clacks, maybe to see if there are other organisations. I think that you have certainly posed a lot of questions about what it might mean for a core bit of our commitment to people who are in work and the importance of childcare and high-quality childcare. I think that we might want to look at those questions. I thank you very much for your attendance. We will also come back to you once we have had responses to the questions that we are now asking. I thank you again for your attendance. Can we just suspend briefly? We can call a meeting back to order. We are now moving to agenda item 5. The final item on our agenda day is consideration of petition 1319 on improving youth football in Scotland. We have with us this morning Neil Doncaster of the Scottish Professional Football League and Andrew McKinley and Stuart Regan of the Scottish Football Association. We are also joined by James Donan MSP. I thank you all for attending this morning. I am keen for us to make the most of our time this morning, so we intend just to go straight to questions. We do, of course, have copies of written submissions from the witnesses and others that will inform our questions this morning. At the outset, I would also say that I am keen for us to use this session this morning to assist us in making progress on the petition and remind members that we will be debating the petition in the chamber at a future date. I also have to apologise and say that we are right up against time. We are not able to sit later than 20 to 12. Wherever we get to by 20 to 12, we will be stopping, because a power beyond me has determined that. I am sure that we will be able to use the time productively this morning. As I have said, I welcome you again to the meeting. I may start off by saying that you indicated the changes that you will make to remind clubs of their obligation to pay the minimum wage. What sanctions could clubs face if they fail to do this? Very much a matter for the HMRC. There is a body of football rules that we and the Scottish FFA are responsible for administering and ensuring that clubs adhere to. Then there is a body of law, which obviously applies to all businesses within Scotland and the UK. There are various agencies that are responsible for ensuring compliance with that law, so compliance with national minimum wage is something over which HMRC has primacy and they would deal with. Any sanctions would be very much at the behest of the HMRC. There is nothing within your rules that say that you would expect the clubs that you have within your organisation to comply with the law? No, to the contrary. We obviously expect that all our clubs will comply with the law, but it is a matter for the various agencies, Government agencies, who have primacy for ensuring compliance with the law to investigate and sanction any apparent breaches. It would be acceptable for you to have within your organisation clubs that do not comply with the law, except for somebody else to deal with that. There would be no sanction on them for not complying with the law from your point of view. I do not know why you would suggest that. There may well be a sanction, but the sanction would be imposed by HMRC. Well, I suppose that what I am trying to establish, if it were identified that there were clubs that were not paying the minimum wage, there is nothing you would do in terms of dealing with that club. You would not think that you would say to them that this is unacceptable. Convener, that is not the case at all. We have a role to deal with adjudication of all of our player contracts where we are asked to adjudicate and we do adjudicate. So, where there is a dispute between a club and a player over that player's contract, then we have a role in adjudicating and, if appropriate, ensuring proper payment by the club. Our role is to ensure that players get what they are entitled to under their contract, not to punish under the law, which is clearly the responsibility of HMRC if appropriate. I suppose that what I am interested in, I can understand of individual cases where people pursue the individual case. I think that this will be explored further by the very nature of your business. Young people, I suspect, are less likely to complain, and therefore, well with respect— So, we do get requests for adjudication and we do deal with those. I did not dispute that, but I am saying that in a culture where it is less likely for people to complain, I think that we accepted this earlier, that there are young people who may be willing to be exploited. There is a job to be done by the professional bodies to ensure that they are not exploited even when they might collude in their own exploitation. So, I get that you would support where somebody makes a complaint. I wonder whether you recognise you have a role in addressing the question that routinely clubs might not pay the minimum wage, and nobody is going to complain about it, but that you may see your role in having a way of encouraging good behaviour? Very good behaviour. That is absolutely the role of the SPFL in this area. We have had a recent seminar where we have invited all professional clubs in Scotland to attend, and we have walked them through the law and how they could ensure compliance. Clubs are keen to comply with the law. As you would expect, sometimes there are isolated instances where that does not happen. Where that is brought to our attention, we investigate, where we are asked to adjudicate on a contract, we do so. We had recent allegations around three of our clubs involving failure to pay national minimum wage. That was Queen's Park FC, Dundee FC and Stirling Albion FC. So, we investigated in each of those cases. In the case of Stirling Albion, we understand that a full payment has been made with the help of PFA Scotland to the one player where there was not compliance. In the case of Dundee, we understand that the club itself instigated a review of its player contracts and has rectified all of those instances of default. In the case of Queen's Park FC, they are in a somewhat different position. They are the only amateur club in the 42 club SPFL. It is fair to say that the standard player contracts that we use give them some issues as an amateur club. We are working with them to ensure that, where they have been incorrectly using the contract, they will be fully compliant from this summer. We are also working on a new player contract, which is specifically designed for part-time players, which will make it easier for clubs to ensure that they are compliant with the law in this area. We are consulting over the content of that contract at the moment. If it were established at a club routinely or even on more than one occasion, had not been paying the minimum wage, would you see yourself as having any role as a body in applying sanctions to that club? As I have mentioned on numerous occasions, the Government body that is responsible for sanctioning breaches of national minimum wage legislation and where they may occur in any business throughout the land is HMRC. We absolutely have a role in adjudicating on disputes between players and clubs, and we have a role in encouraging our best practice. We have a role in encouraging clubs to understand how the law applies, to help them to understand the law and to investigate whether there are allegations of deficiencies. However, if there is a pattern of poor behaviour, that is not your job to encourage people towards good behaviour, as you are saying, as a matter for HMRC and others. I am not suggesting that there is any pattern of bad behaviour, but I am not suggesting that there is any evidence of any... I did not ask you whether you thought that there was evidence of bad behaviour. I am saying that if there were a pattern of bad behaviour, would you have a role in it? I think that you have said that you encourage good behaviour, but you are not in a business of dealing with established patterns of poor behaviour. Can I come in here and say that at no stage has anybody identified a pattern of persistent behaviour in this area? If there was a club that was regularly paying below the minimum wage and had been challenged for not paying the minimum wage, the matter had been discussed, if that was persistent and knowingly breaches of the minimum wage, then clearly that brings you into an area where there may well be a disrepute issue. Now, that is a different test, but if there was a disrepute issue, then of course the football authorities would consider that. At no stage have we had any pattern taking place of regular breaches at an individual club level. If anybody has any evidence to suggest that one club or any particular club is regularly breaking the minimum wage, then of course that would be considered. I think that that issue of disrepute is a helpful notion to have given, as I have said earlier, the way in which young people in their families may allow themselves to be exploited. It does not mean that they should be exploited, but I will take in Brian Whick at this point. Changing regulation is one aspect, but I think that there has been a concern about the efforts to change the culture around the issues and your willingness to consider the issue across the board on a case-by-case basis. Do you refer to an adjudication mechanism but confirm that the focus would be on an individual case and ensuring payment due to a player is made? What are you doing to promote that mechanism and create an environment in which players can feel that they are being supported? In my view, it is a Government body's responsibility to look after the wellbeing of their members, especially in youth, in the current climate and for the long-term good of the sport. As has already been mentioned in this particular aspect, it is hugely unlikely that a young player will make a complaint against the club that they are playing for, given that they are trading on their dreams, if you like. I think that what I would like to get from you is how you feel about how you support players in this respect and look after their wellbeing. A couple of points. First, you have said that it is hugely unlikely that clubs would bring a request for adjudication, but that is not the case. Clubs do bring, so players do bring a request for adjudication that we deal with. We deal with a number of contractual disputes between clubs and players that are brought by players with the support of PFA Scotland, and we adjudicate on those. Where there is a dispute on a contract, we absolutely do adjudicate. They do not happen very frequently, but they do occur. They have not occurred in this area. I do not know why individual players like Ciaran Dorran, for example, have seen reporting in the press. We do not know why they have chosen to go down the route of talking openly in the press and engaging lawyers rather than simply coming to us and asking us to adjudicate on that contract. That would be a fairly straightforward thing to do, and we would certainly encourage any player who feels that they have any issue with their contract to come forward. In terms of support, I absolutely believe that young players in the care of clubs are supported on their journey through to what is hopefully a professional career. I would absolutely encourage all members of this committee to attend academies to see for themselves the work that is done to ask the young people in the care of clubs how they feel about the experience of being within the academy system. I would hope that the evidence that you would find is absolutely that there is a very positive culture in place, so I would urge you to the extent that you have not already gone to academies to do so. If you are unaware of why this particular player went to the press instead of you, why haven't you just asked him? I am not finished with my question yet. For me, you are saying that the players have brought this forward. I would be really interested to know what age group that applies to, because if it was me and there had been an issue like this, the first thing that I would have done as a governing body was go to that player and ask them why they went in that particular route and if there was anything that they could do to help them. The player in question clearly approached his own solicitor. His solicitor chose to approach us. Clearly, we have a role in adjudicating on any dispute that may arise. What we don't want to do is to prejudge that dispute. If a player chooses to engage external lawyers to bring forward a case on their behalf, that is absolutely a matter for them, but it would not be then appropriate to subvert that process and go other than through his lawyer. When we get legal correspondence in, how are lawyers responding kind? We need to be careful about dealing with an individual case where a person cannot defend themselves. We have been looking at patterns of concern in youth football, which is maybe the point that Brian was getting at. Good morning. Your submission outlines the total number of registrations that are processed in a year as 18,000 and details a number of types of registration that take place. Can you tell us, please, just so that we are clear in numbers how many of those registrations involve any kind of financial aspect with regard to payment of players? I do not have the breakdown like that. These are 18,000 transactions, because I was well aware that I said in December that there were 18,000 transactions and the question that was put around what were those transactions, these are the list of the different transactions. Going through them, there is a good number of those that have financial matters in them. What kind of financial matters are you referring to? In the registration, are you talking about salaries? Are you talking specifically about player contracts, as opposed to all of the other aspects? Any of the registration that involves finance, whether it is salary or contract, whatever? Anything that says they are around transfer, anything around contract, obviously not amateur, international clearances are likely to have cancellation of temporary transfer, so anything where it does not say amateur on it, that there could be a financial matter related to it. That is not a standard. There could be, but it does not mean that there is. Those points are not related to any financial matter, so there may be some that have finance, then some that do not. The original hearing was that you had 18,000 registrations. It was impossible to place all the details of contracts where you were saying a pound a week, which you think would have been a big red flag to people. The point that we are making is that the volume of disinterest, what proportion of those would have that bit at the end that said what the contract was? To be fair, if you are trying to identify how many of those contracts have finance in them to then identify, could we look at that smaller number of transactions? It is a very difficult point, because even a player who is on his contract earning a pound a week may not be breaching the minimum wage regulation, because he may be being paid an appearance fee and he may simply turn up to play a match and he may simply have that on a contract supplemented with an appearance fee. It is very difficult to say that what is on that contract is in any relation to the number of hours that are actually being paid. With respect, turning up is going to take more than 10 minutes to apply for a pound a week. The appearance fee could be in total greater than the minimum wage for the hours that that player is involved with the club, so it is very difficult to say. I suppose that the fundamental point and we really need to make progress, but it is simply not possible to be employed on a contract with even an hour and only be paid a pound a week. Simply not, the arithmetic does not allow it. What we are saying is that the only way that you will know whether a player is or whether a contract is compliant with national minimum wage or not is to look at how many hours that player has worked over the pay reference period and what their pay is over that pay reference period. That pay may be made up of a weekly wage and appearance money. Therefore, simply looking at a weekly wage will not tell you the information that you need in order to ascertain whether the national minimum wage legislation is being complied with or not. We do have to make progress in this, but I cannot imagine in what set of circumstances you could be employed and working so little that you still want to get a pound a week regardless of all the other payments that are available. He returns to a club and simply turns up for a match, does not train with the club, lives down south and turns up and gets an appearance fee if he is selected, then the total earnings from that player could be well ahead of the minimum wage, even if it says a pound a week on his contract. Therefore, it is why it is really difficult to draw conclusions. When you say that we should be looking at this information and dealing with them, it is not that simple. We have several thousand transactions and we simply cannot draw the conclusions that you are saying that we can draw by following the route that you are suggesting. We may need to get further information on what appearance money is and what you would get paid for turning up. I still find it almost impossible to conceive that you could turn up and get away in time to justify only getting paid a pound a week, but we can explore that further. That would not be the case. If you are paid a £200 appearance fee and a pound a week and you are playing a game, you would be fine with a national minimum wage. In that case, you would not have any national minimum wage, because a national minimum wage is a pound a week. Arosmetically, it is utterly impossible. You have to know how many hours they are working and what the overall pay is. They could not work an hour for a pound. We are not talking about simply getting a pound. We are talking about getting appearance money and the weekly wage. It is the total earnings. That is what the minimum wage will look at. It is the total earnings divided by the number of hours that are being paid. Therefore, you cannot draw the conclusions that you are drawing simply by looking at that contract figure. We have tried to stress that on several occasions. You seem to be fixated on the fact that clubs are somehow in breach of the legislation. They may not be. Where they are, and it is brought to our attention, it will be dealt with. HMRC has already followed through on the cases that have been brought to our attention. It is not really being fixated, but we are trying to understand how the national minimum wage applies uniquely to football when you end up with a contract that I do not think would exist in any other employment form. I would be really interested to know how many contracts you have got where somebody is on a pound a week and on appearance money because it sounds like a kind of Royal Rover scenario where somebody travels up from England and then gets too grand for playing for 20 minutes or something. The whole was very disappointed with the very first response because what it seemed to me was another case of carrying on from December that this is nothing to do with us. This is HMRC's business. You are responsible for a number of things and one of them is the reputation of Scottish football. For you to have a club that is paying somebody a pound a week or 10 pounds a week or anything similar to that and not be able to accept, hold your hands up and say, the very first thing that we would do is we would get in there and we would make sure that if that club repeated that that there would be sanctions to pay, we would want to know why they did it in the first place. Mr Reagan, you talked about if there was a culture of it, if there was a number of incidents, that would be then a dispute incident. Surely a pound a week contract from any club trying to con some young boy into signing a contract is bringing football into dispute? No, it's not, because it's not. You're assuming that the club has done it deliberately. The club may well be ignorant on the type of contract that it has to use and therefore the training and education that's been put in place through the seminars is designed to try and address that. There's a contract written there, right? Somebody's written it, lawyers, whoever, and on that contract it says a pound a week. Now somebody, the club has a responsibility to know what it is they're paying that child for because at the end of the day that's what it is, it's a child and what you're saying here is that's not a responsibility either. Excuse me, what we've actually said is that you cannot draw the conclusion that you're saying simply by looking at the pound a week figure. You've quoted one figure and that has been dealt with by HMRC. That's one incident and therefore what we wouldn't do is we wouldn't assume that one incident, which may well have happened as a result of human error, suddenly we leap to disrepute. That's not how it works. Can I ask one question which I think may well be a solution to this and that leads on from the point that the convener made. Surely the solution is that you have a system here where people go through the registers, right? They check to make sure that it's signed in the appropriate places it's dated, the names are correct, all that sort of stuff, right? Surely there is a boxer that says contract. They check the contract and if there's anything at all, even taking your Roy the Rover scenario, if there's anything at all that doesn't look like it's abiding by the law, it's red flagged and you look into it further, that cannot be a difficult thing to do and why does the SPFL pass on that responsibility to the SPF? Let me answer that first of all and then Neil may well have some additional comments. This book here sets out the Scottish FA rules and articles and there are the best part of 270 pages. In addition to that, there is the law of the land. We have working time directive, we have age discrimination, sex discrimination, we have health and safety laws, we have PVG laws. If the Scottish FA or the SPFL was to check every single rule and every single law for compliance, then we would not be able to promote, foster and develop the game of football which is our primary responsibility. We operate through exception. If matters are brought to our attention, we've got processes for dealing with them, we deal with exceptions, we don't micromanage, we're not in a position to micromanage every single part of the game. That is a crucial part of the relationship between a club and a player. What you're suggesting is that that's just another one of the things that the Government brings in to burden us with? Not at all. I've never said that and I fully accept that the contract is a key part between the employer and the individual. In terms of being responsible for checking, as we've already identified to you, it's not simple to draw conclusions from the point that you're making. Mr Dawn has asked why we have one single registration system that is administered by the Scottish FA rather than a separate one that is also administered by the SPFL. It's simply for efficiency. Why do you need two separate registration systems? Eligibility to play in our SPFL competitions arises by merit of an Scottish FA registration system. Having one system registration surely seems more efficient and more sensible all-round. We do know when we need to know. When there's an adjudication request, we absolutely get a hold of a copy of the contract from the Scottish FA and we adjudicate on the dispute. That's what happens. Thanks, Maurice Corry. Moin, gentlemen. You've indicated that you have provided club's guidance on compliance with minimum wage requirements. Does that guidance contain anything about what activities are to be undertaken by a player that should be included in any calculation of our work? For example, if a player is travelling to an away game, should the time they spend travelling be included in that calculation? That's a matter that is dealt with specifically under the new form of part-time contract that we are currently consulting on. It's intended that there will be two schedules within that contract which set out what activities are obligatory and what the player has to be paid for. That's part of his working hours and what activities may be voluntary and simply can't be demanded of the player and don't have to be paid for. We need to understand and clubs need to understand what are working hours. Actually, on a club by club player by player basis it may vary, but ultimately what is work needs to be well understood and the minimum wage needs to be applied. Okay, thank you. Okay, thanks. Good morning, gentlemen. One of the commitments that you've made previously was the introduction of a game time rule under which a player can leave a club if they've not played in a sufficient number of matches. Now, that rule has been set at 25 per cent, so for the record can you tell us how this number was reached and who was involved in discussions in setting that level? We had consultation at the time of the commissioner's report. We set up a group where we consulted across clubs within the game. We also put out for consultation to players within Club Academy Scotland. Based on all those responses, we went back with our response to the commissioner. One of those was around the fact that we should have a game time rule, and 25 per cent was thought as an approach. Now, it's something that we will monitor and look at that and see whether that is appropriate, but that was a percentage that we came up with. I'm not going to pretend that there was some magical science behind it. Okay, and in general the clubs were more happy with it. Yes, yes. Can I ask about, in your submission, you outlined some changes that we've brought about as part of Project Brave, including the introduction of summer football, which you say will necessitate change to the system of registrations, including the age groups for registration. You indicate that the detail of this change is currently being considered and is still to be finalised. As you know, the period of registration for players in a 15 to 17 age group is an issue of concern to a number of people. Is there any flexibility within the work on going at the moment to look again at this question of what happens to young people registered at 15 and then can't make their own decision about moving on at 16? I could start it. It is going to be looked at as part of that, so it's not a closed. That will be something that we will look at. You said that there is an issue here about somebody at 16 should be able to say I'm entitled to move on. I think that we've given the reasons and we've given them a few times now in submissions, and we've given them in our responses to why we need some at the moment as this is 15 to 16 to 17, but we think that it needs to be looked at as part of Project Brave. Following on from the previous question, your submission refers to the potential upheaval that could arise if this period was shortened and particularly expresses concern about this being disrupted to family life and education. I think that we've put this point before, but why is it that the business of the SFA and SPFL and not the parents of the young person or indeed to the young person themselves if they're over 16 to determine what best serves their family? I think that this goes back to the root of why we started out down this journey of a public petitions committee back in 2010, and we've been on the journey now for seven years, and the current questions that have been asked bear no relation to what is in the original six items that were set out in the public petition. In fact, two of the items, we've not discussed at all in all the periods that we've been in this committee, and it would be interesting to get the committee's view on where we are with some of those points, but as far as the registration of players is concerned, we mentioned at the very first meeting that compensation for training is a key part of the reason why clubs will actually continue to run an academy. If another club can simply come along and take a player after several years of training and development, then clubs will cease to focus on the development of young players, so a registration is a way of managing that. A registration is something that complies with FIFA guidelines and it's operated by most football associations across the world. We've made changes and improvements to the process, so for example, a player can leave the club if they don't wish to stay and return to the grassroots game. That option never existed, it's one of the improvements we've put in place as a result of being in dialogue with yourselves and the petitioners. We've also introduced the game time clause and we've set at 25 per cent. If a player feels he is not or parents feel he is not getting treated well by the club and not getting game time, again he can leave. He's got a 14-day window at the end of the season in which to do that and exercise that option. We've made specific changes to try and address the challenge, but if we were to remove registrations and allow players to be picked up by other clubs after several years, you've got a question, is that in the best interests of Scotland developing elite players? Whilst we've got to look at the rights of children, we've also got to look at the rights of potential elite performers and giving them the best possible chance of making it. The question of a club being able to retain a registration subject to compensation payment being made has come up before and in consideration of this committee. I want to establish as clearly as we possibly can what the position is in that regard and can you confirm what FIFA status statutes regulate the transfer of players and exactly what they state about that payment of compensation? There are two specific focus areas. One looks at domestic football and that's within Scotland. We agreed a training matrix again as a change and an improvement as a result of the dialogue that we've had with this committee and that was agreed two or three years ago now, possibly longer than that. Then there is cross-border compensation. If a player moves from country to country, there are guidelines that are put in place through FIFA that work across all countries. Depending on the movement of the player, we will operate the appropriate matrix. You haven't answered the question about what the state about the payment of compensation according to FIFA should be as a regulatory difference between what FIFA does. There's a different payment mechanism that maybe Andrew can pick up on but I'll just try to understand the question. Are you saying, do FIFA acknowledge that there should be compensation paid if a player moves? If you're asking that, the answer is yes, in the same way as there is domestic compensation paid if a player moves within Scotland. There are different models, different sums involved but there is a training compensation formula that works for cross-border and domestic. That was a question. Can I maybe just, when we're talking about FIFA, ask about concerns that have been expressed by yourselves about the implications of external regulation. Both PFA Scotland and FIFPRO have indicated that they do not consider that your status in FIFA would be at risk should national legislation regarding child welfare be applied to football. That was quite an important point, which was that somehow to suggest that there may need to be some kind of external view on what is happening around the wellbeing of young people in football would damage your prospects of saying in brief, would you accept that that suggestion is something that's simply not credible? What we were asked to do was to provide FIFA articles and statutes in relation to this whole topic of Government intervention in football. That's what we've done. We've set out the actual FIFA guidelines. We've given you several examples of where FIFA have intervened and suspended members for Government intervention. Whether FIFA would choose to intervene in any regulation by the Scottish Government into the Scottish affairs matter for FIFA, that would be up to them. We've simply drawn your attention to the articles and statutes. Would you accept that the evidence suggests that that is the idea that FIFA is going to come in and remove your status on the basis that the Scottish Government has said, you know what we think child protection and wellbeing should be centre of what you're doing and we think you should be policing or you should have a role in ensuring that clubs are not exploiting young people in the national minimum wage. There is no prospect of them coming in and addressing that. I think what we would identify to FIFA are all of the changes that we have made as a result of this discussion and the on-going dialogue, whether that's the introduction of a child wellbeing panel, the introduction of a training compensation matrix, changes to our scouting, the introduction of commitment letters, the renewal of schools football for players who are within academy, the creation of a child protection and wellbeing department, the reduction of the number of players through project brave, the introduction of a grass roots 28 day clause and the introduction of a game time clause, as well as the facilities improvements under point six of the original petition that we've not actually mentioned for several years. All of those changes we would flag to FIFA and it's unlikely if that was the case that FIFA would think that we were in any way breaching any of their regulations. Whether they choose to suspend us for government intervention, we can't comment on that. That's a matter for FIFA. You would accept that both PFA Scotland and FIFA Pro have said in their view that it wouldn't happen because the kind of intervention that that is to deal with is not dealing with something where the Scottish Government or indeed the Scottish Parliament thinks there are issues around child protection, there are issues around exploitation that we want to be part of a conversation of. The original characterisation of it was that it threatened your membership of FIFA for there to be any suggestion, as the Children's Commissioner has said, for external regulation of particularly around the wellbeing of young people, and that's something that the evidence tells us is not going to happen. It's a hypothetical question because we don't know what changes you would seek to impose and until that was actually put in place, FIFA wouldn't be able to make a comment. We know that the Children's Commissioner has written to FIFA flagging up concerns about the operation of Scottish football and there's been absolutely no response from FIFA or no comment, no request for information. On that basis, we assume that FIFA are content with the way that we're managing this issue in Scottish football, which is no different to how other associations operate. We can also work on the assumption that it's also hypothetical that they would come in and remove your status from FIFA on the basis that we think that it's legitimate for Government to look at the whole question of child protection in football. That is equally hypothetical. FIFA would take a dim view generally of external interference in the affairs of football associations. Do they take a dim view of exploitation of young people in the minority way? What view FIFA would take of any intervention here? We just can't, we can't know. No, but we would assume they would take a dim view of organisation not complying with the law of the land. As Stuart has just pointed out, all of the areas, all of the changes that have been delivered by the Scottish football authorities working with this committee over the last seven years, I would hope that that would demonstrate to FIFA, to people within the Scottish Government and to the world generally, that actually Scottish football does take its responsibilities very seriously, that a positive culture exists and talk of exploitation is simply wider than Mark. Before I ask my main question, I wonder if I could just return briefly to the minimum wage question. Is there anything in the registration contract that says that you will abide by the law and pay the player at least the minimum wage? One of the changes that we have introduced in recent times is a change to the registration form where clubs have to confirm that they are compliant with minimum wage legislation. That has been introduced as a recent initiative following this discussion. In the current form of the single player contract that is used by the SPFL and by players and clubs, it doesn't specifically mention the national minimum wage as it doesn't specifically mention any other law that may be relevant to that contract. However, in response to the dialogue here and concern over the issue, the new draft of the part-time player contract will specifically refer to the national minimum wage. That is part of our efforts to ensure that clubs who are trying to comply with national minimum wage legislation are better able to ensure that they do comply. Where is the new draft coming in? We hope that it will be in place this summer. It is currently being consulted on. The Scottish PFA have a draft of it. As soon as we are in a position to recommend it to our board, it will hopefully be approved and enrolled out for use by clubs. If I could go on to the convener's question about compensation, can I have your opinion on the suggestion made by the former children and young people commissioner Scotland? Do you only at the point where a player signs their first professional contract and how that complies with the regulations? What he suggested is not actually being alternative to what we have in place. What we have in place is the matrix. Our view is that, if you introduced something like that, what is likely to happen is that the bigger clubs would then take a punt and take players from the smaller clubs. There is no encouragement for them not to do that. That would then disencourage the smaller clubs to have academies. At the moment, our view is that this is a fairer system that is in place. That is an alternative system that we think is a fairer system. Is that the general view? I mean, if you look back at the role of clubs, we are all interested through Project Brave in developing homegrown talent that can go on and play for Scotland. One of the recommended ways to do that is through running an academy. If running that academy has no protection in place and the bigger clubs from Scotland or elsewhere can simply come in and take the best players, those clubs will just shut those academies down. From a children's rights perspective in terms of looking at elite players, we do not think that that is the best solution. If I could go back to Project Brave and explore the matrix a little bit further, you have indicated that the compensation matrix or reimbursement of training cost matrix is to be re-examined as part of Project Brave. What does that entail? Is it simply the levels of compensation or is it more than that? It may not be the levels, but the matrix is based on the status of a club. Through Project Brave, the status of clubs is likely to be different. We will have to change the matrix to deal with that. As part of that, we should look at it. As part of that, we should speak to clubs about what the alternatives might be and have that discussion with them. We have on-going discussions with clubs about rules and whether there are other ways to do things. Just briefly on the point that was raised about the minimum wage now being highlighted, will that then be one of the areas that has to be checked? Given that you have now said that it is going to be in the new... You appear to be deliberately either you are genuinely misunderstanding the position or it is deliberate. The fact is that you cannot know from the face of a contract whether a contract is national minimum wage compliant or not because it depends on how many hours the player will be working in that pay reference period. That will only be known to the club and the player. I am clearly being stupid here and I apologise for that then. I will just go back to the question that I asked you originally. If it does not say on the front of it that this is clearly above minimum wage, would that not then red flag it so that you could say, do not worry about that one, that is because such and such. If it is getting checked, then you have got a red flag against something, but you understand that it is secure and safe and it is working fine. What we are checking here is that, as the convener just said, that young boys are not being exploited. That is what we are checking. On the front of it, it says £1 a week. People should be able to say, what is this £1 a week? If they are not working in that pay reference period, then where is the breach? Can I come in and say that, if you as a club are ticking a registration form to say that you are complying with minimum wage legislation, which they will now have to do, and if you are submitting a contract that says they are paying £1 a week, the logical assumption from that is that there is something other than the £1 a week like an appearance fee to actually take them above the minimum wage legislation. Unless that is flagged by a young person or by an individual, then we have to assume that the club is abiding by the law in the way that we do for people on working time directives, on age discrimination, gender discrimination. We do not go through every club and ask for every employee, are you following all the laws? How many times do you think this harms? How many times do you have the £1 a week contracts or whatever it is and then the person gets paid by appearance? I suspect that it is a pretty minimal number and I suspect that it would not take much to have that checked and then you would get in touch with the club and say, let me just make sure that is this because so-and-so is getting, can you give us the details of that contract? That would not be an owner's task for the SFA or the SBFL. As we have continually tried to highlight, that does not address the point that you are trying to get to, so where do you draw the line? £1 a week, £5 a week, £10 a week, £7 a week, but minimum wage is the total earnings, it is not the figure that is in the contract. You seem to misunderstand what the minimum wage is. It is the hours multiplied by the players' earnings. If I sign a contract with you, I sign it from 9 o'clock in the morning on a Monday to 5 o'clock on a Friday and I expect to get X amount of money. It is a regulated work, which does include the points this gentleman was making about travelling time, it includes training evenings, it includes the match time and all of those things give the number of hours and the earnings divided by the hours will give you the minimum wage and whether or not it is above the legislation. He is shaking your head but that is actually the point. I am actually trying to be helpful here and say that this would be an easy way out that somebody checks and sees that it is a minimum wage and if it does not have the minimum wage on it then there is some reference point to where somebody can check to say that this is a minimum wage. If a club is ticking a form to say that they are abiding by the minimum wage legislation then who are we to actually assume that they are breaking the law because it is the same in lots of other areas. If that comes to our attention we deal with it. We cannot go and check every transaction on every contract for every player across every club. We would be operating a bureaucracy and where do you draw the line? What other legislation are we going to check? Working time directive? Working time directive? As I said, age discrimination, sex discrimination, health and safety, PVGs. You have just told us that you are going to have this specific new clause in about receiving the minimum wage. You have not told us that you are going to have anything in about sex discrimination or race discrimination or anything like that so you recognise that the minimum wage is an issue. Do not try and put it in along with everything else so that you cannot highlight it in the way that I am asking you to. We address this as a point because it has come up in this discussion and as an organisation we have tried to be helpful as we have for the last seven years with all of the other improvements that we have been made. We have deliberately taken a step to introduce a mechanism so that clubs do confirm on this point that they are compliant by the law. I am not sure that that is anything other than being helpful and positive towards the concerns of this committee. You are in a unique position to help to encourage the best of behaviour among clubs and to have a registration system that does not go furtnial. When you see this £1 a week thing, I would have thought that there would have been a next step just to check, are you getting a pay-ins? I do not know. I would assume that a pay-ins money is in contracts and will not be all that common among youngsters to get a pay-ins money. If you have a series of contracts that say a £1 a week, the presumption would be that there is not going to be a pay-ins money and that it would be a reasonable thing for you to check further. Do you have a pay-ins money in a contract? You would have, so it would be quite a simple thing to check in. Check what? The fact is that you do not know whether a contract is minimally compliant without knowing how many hours a player is working in that month, in that pay reference period. We can absolutely help to encourage clubs to be compliant, clubs want to be compliant, we are trying to educate them. It is a difficult area because you do need to know how many players the player is working for and what constitutes work will vary from club to club, what the players are required to do, as opposed to what they may wish to do, may be different. If we are working the assumption that the vast majority of contracts do not say a pound a week, then it feels to me that when you have got through this process of registration, that is fine, that is fine. Here is one that is a pound a week. Let us check if there is a pay-ins money in the contract. Let us ask the club what that actually means. I go back to the point that, no matter how little you are working, it is virtually impossible if you open your eyes and arrive at the football stadium to work for a pound worth of national minimum wage. Nevertheless, I suppose that the question that we would put back to you is something that we want to reflect on later. Having accepted this issue about the minimum wage, how can you positively be involved in encouraging good behaviour? That is really what we are asking you. We are not asking you to go back and check every single contract, but there are basic questions that you could ask to ensure that people are not trying to avoid the advice that you have been given them. We are positively engaged with clubs in encouraging good behaviour, compliance with the law, ensuring that clubs understand the law. It is a difficult area of the law. Where there is a request for adjudication, we deal with it, but we cannot be on the ground, at the training grounds, monitoring how many hours individual... Of course you can't, but you have a role in encouraging good behaviour. Can we do that? Can we perform that role? Understanding the context to repeat again around all of these issues, there are young people in their families who are willing to be exploited. Part of your job, in my view, is to ensure that that is not permitted, that you have a role in discouraging people trading on their own dreams, because that is the evidence that has been given to the committee, and we know from beyond here too. You suggested that other associations somehow monitor contracts and registrations that are put in front of them in this way. We do not believe that that is the case. Certainly, Andrew, you have had conversations with the football associations. You suggested that the FA did it, so I spoke to a senior person in the FA, and that is not my understanding from that conversation. To be fair to the FA, I guess, it is hardly a big deal for them at the top of their game, but they do not do it. The exploitation of young people must be part of the culture of football. I am talking specifically about that. This was a specific point that it was suggested to us that the FA do this, so why are not we doing it? I am saying that I spoke to the FA, and that is not our understanding. It was stated in the letter from real grassroots to this committee that the FA are doing this, and if they are doing it, why can't we? Our information is that the FA are not doing this, and that is not something that is monitored in the way that it was suggested. That is not going for something. It just feels to me that it is not all that difficult, and that you are in a privileged position to be able to improve the behaviour of clubs that has been identified as being, in some places, pretty unacceptable. I am going to ask Brian Whittle to come in with a couple of last questions, and then we can wind up. Just one thing for clarification. Salary and bonus are two different things. Salary is what you get paid when your age gets calculated on, not what potential bonus you might get. Yes, you are playing bonus. Yes, it is. Appearance fees are different to bonus. Bonus is if you win something. Appearance fees is actually if you play in the starting 11 of the team. Trust me on this one, having come from sport and worked with an awful lot of national governing bodies and come from a sales environment, bonus is not counted within salary. It is not bonus. Your misunderstanding the point of bonus is something that is in addition to your salary. Appearance fees are part of your earnings because they are given if you play in the team. That is why they are not counted in salary. However, my point is that having worked with many national governing bodies, the wellbeing of child protection young people in the sport and therefore the future of the sport for me is always Parliament, and my concern is that, through the responses that I have had so far, I do not think that that is in focus. I do not think that it is the focus of the SFA and the focus of the SPFL. What I am looking for is recognition that there has to be a culture change. I totally understand that you are working in a professional environment, but what I am looking for is reassurances from your about the wellbeing and looking after the wellbeing of children and child protection, and specifically if I can make an example of that, especially around the PVG checking. It is not good within football, it is not good within coaches, and you do not even have to have PVG checking for agents and referees, and I think that those are the things that we are looking for. I am looking for my indication from you. I would like to come in for a second and say that, earlier in this discussion and earlier in this evidence session, I have identified 10 fundamental improvements that we have made for the benefit of children in football as a result of on-going dialogue, despite the fact that the original petition and what we are now talking about are two completely separate things. We have moved on, and the committee over the last seven years has brought more and more and more topics to the table, and we have demonstrated in all of those cases that we are prepared to make changes and make improvements. We have done that, and I would say again that we are interested in young people's rights and the changes that we have made can demonstrate that, but at some point there has to be an acknowledgement that we have made those changes rather than continually criticise us for doing things that you feel are not looking after the best interests of children. Of course we are interested. You mentioned intermediaries. Intermediaries are not covered under the current PVG scheme. If Disclosure Scotland, as we are aware, is looking at this, includes intermediaries, we would fully support that, and we have said that in a seminar involving ministers and Disclosure Scotland. Of course we would do whatever we could to make that happen. All I am saying to you is that, in the responses that you have come to me, it has not been the wellbeing and looking after the children that I have come through, and that is really all that I am concerned about and that is what I am asking you for. What do you guys have that judgment on? You have hardly talked about it unless we prod you with a stick. You have hardly talked about it. It has always been procedure, and all that I am concerned about is the wellbeing. No, because you have asked about procedure. No, I have only asked about the wellbeing of the children. I think that your criticism is utterly unfair and shows a misunderstanding about the good work that is going on within Scottish football and within the clubs. I am very disappointed that someone from a sporting background such as yourself should wish to try and criticise all that good work. Can I say all of that good work? I criticised you. Can I say that, in seven years, we have had one single visit from representatives of the committee, and that was the children's commissioner attending one academy for one visit, and we got absolutely no feedback from that visit at all. I think that it would be very helpful, and the offer is open again to the committee, to come to the academies, talk to the families, talk to the children, talk to the clubs and actually hear it from them before you arrive at your conclusions, because there is a lot of good work going on at our clubs. I think that that is one of the things that we would certainly want to be doing, and I hear very much what you are saying around having a proper understanding of what is happening. I am going to ask one last question and maybe just can pull us together. I wonder what support has been put in place to assist non-professional clubs to accommodate those players coming out of the club academy system into youth and other recreational football, in that kind of journey back where maybe there has been a sense that they have not made it. Certainly now, if you are reducing the numbers, how are you going to deal with that transition? How are you going to support those clubs that might want to pick these young people up again? Some of the anecdotal evidence that I have heard is that when young people are picked up by clubs and then they want to have a better word to fail or don't make it, they then are lost to sport altogether. In terms of wellbeing and health, that would be a concern. Well, at the moment again you are speculating on what may be an issue. We have got no evidence and there are no instances to our knowledge of anyone flagging a concern to us that they have somehow been lost to the game of football. We have listened to the petitioners and we have listened to the committee. One of the fundamental recommendations of Project Brave is that we reduce the number of players in the system through reducing the number of centrally funded academies. Those clubs where elite academy status is not achieved may choose to continue to run a youth programme and fund it off their own volition. If that is the case, those players will not come out of the system. We are speculating on how and when those players will come back to the grass roots level, but in terms of specific initiatives, I can think of one and that is the initiative that is run by PFA Scotland who actually run trial events for players that are released from clubs to try and identify opportunities for them going forward. We ourselves have taken former players in for internships as another example of us trying to help. There are modern apprenticeship programmes that are running in conjunction with clubs and private providers and local colleges. So, again, some of those things would come out if you were able to visit academies and see the work that is going on. It was not meant to be a harsh question, to be honest, because I do recognise that tension between the needs of the elite young players and the football system and how Scottish football is going to improve against the experience of young people who do not make it. It was not meant to be anything other than how do we actually deal with that process with the tensions in the system between the two lots of aims, simply getting young people active and involved and producing elite sports people, which is a challenge across any sport. Some of the things that you have suggested there would be interesting to find out more about at later stage. Are there any final questions, Maurice? Do you have any idea of the average number of hours per month on the £1 contract that a young player actually does, excluding the appearance of time? Is it worth not having a look at that? Having that figure in your head? We have, as we said earlier on, we have thousands of transactions. Without understanding the hours involved in every single case, we are not able to provide that information. We have made change to ask clubs to comply with minimum wage legislation. Going in and trying to investigate and looking for shadows that may not be there is not a good use of football's time. We will not be a good idea basing the fact that we have the petition in front of us for you to come up with that information. It is an average. I will not ask you in detail what on average are they appearing during the time period. There is no average. They vary from week to week what work, if any, a player is carrying out for the club. It is only known to the club and the player. Unless you are at the training ground, unless we install a Scottish FA or an SPFL team at the training ground and at the stadium, monitoring exactly how many hours an individual player is working, we cannot know. It would be in your interest to do so to ask that question to them. Not for individual paters but for the club as a whole. Are you suggesting that we should put people into every single club in Scotland to identify that? What are you suggesting that we do? No, I am just saying on your question when you are reviewing. You are obviously taking a lot of interest. You say quite rightly in the clubs on how they are going forward, fine. One of the questions that I have been asking myself to make sure that I am not seen to be not paying correctly or meeting the minimum wage standards is that on average hours per week these kids are on the field, excluding the appearance time that you are talking about that. That is not difficult to calculate. It is not difficult to calculate as long as you are there seeing how many hours a player is playing. Or you can ask the club to ask you just to ask the clubs. Well, we are encouraging the clubs to be compliant. We are helping the clubs to be compliant. We are educating them about what the law is. But we cannot usurp. We wronged usurp the authority of HMRC to be the primary authority. It would not be a sensible statement. Would it not be a sensible for you guys to have that basic information in your books as they were knowledgeable to you so that we can answer that question? It is impossible to know how many hours a player is working for each week. That will only be known by the player and the club. It can only be known by the player and the club. Unless I am misunderstanding this and your explanation of your understanding of minimum wage, are those children being signed up on zero-hours contracts? What you are saying is that they do not play, they do not get paid and they get an appearance? I am not sure of the reference to children. Are we talking about professional football players? Young people, children, no. There is a separate between and this misunderstanding between a registration and a contract has pervaded much of the discussions that we have had over the seven years. A registration will apply to all players registered with the Scottish FFA whether they are professional or amateur and whatever age they are registered at. A contract will be a professional contract in the case of the SPFL sometimes for full-time players and sometimes for part-time players. Minimum wage legislation will clearly apply to professional players only because there is no payment for work for an amateur player and our focus is on ensuring that our member clubs are abiding by the law in this and other areas and we will assist them to do so. The earlier question that I asked was how many of the registrations that are filled in mentioned financial payments and you could not tell me. I am struggling to understand that whole system then. If you are talking about when they register, some payment is mentioned and you are saying that that is not the case. Am I correct in that? I will try to understand the question. Andrew has given evidence of approximately 18,000 separate transactions involving the Scottish FFA registration department and clearly a large number of those will have some financial element. Clearly there will be a number that will be purely amateur related where there is unlikely to be any financial information in there, but anything to do with a professional player will have a financial element. However, if a young person is on a contract of £1 a week that is effective as a zero-hours contract to get paid for their work, I am not going to get into generalisations about what is going on. Ultimately there is the law of the land in relation to national minimum wage and we are doing our utmost to ensure that clubs have the information available to them to understand what the law is and how it applies in the sphere of professional football. We have carried out a seminar to which all professional football clubs are invited. We will continue that education process. We are amending the professional contract that we give to clubs for use so that we have one that is specific for use for part-time players. That part-time contract, as it is drafted at the moment, makes specific reference to the national minimum wage. It also has individual schedules in it that can be completed by the club and the player to ensure that there is a complete understanding of what work is work and is to be paid for and what is other activity that is not being paid for. That has to be agreed between the club and the player and that is what will appear at the Scottish Fife as part of our registration process. You talked about this petition, growing legs. We could have a whole argument about what is working and what is not working and what you are obliged to do when you are at the football club that you are not getting paid for but you are obliged to do it. If you do not do it, then you will not get work and you will not get a game. The whole thing is... You do not want to do it, thank you. ...book. Okay, that is in itself a useful flag to the clubs from some of what we have picked up. Thank you very much, convener. Just on that last point that you have made there, some will go back to this £1 a week, £5 a week, £10 a week, whatever it is. If somebody is coming in every day training hard but not getting game time, they are getting a £1 a week. That should be the case if they are being obliged to... Please, let me answer your question. If they are being obliged to train and if they are then called up and obliged to play in a game, then that will be work and they should be paid at least the national minimum wage for that work. Yeah, but the point that I am making is that they might not get called up to play in a game, they might well be like many other children, sorry, young people that are there, they are training hard and they are not getting that... Sure. And if they are obliged to work in that week, whether it is training or any other sort of work that they are required to do, they should be paying the national minimum wage for that work irrespective of whether they play at the weekend or not. That was the point that I was trying to make here later on. Okay, thank you very much, convener. Okay, thanks very much. We are just about there in terms of time. Can I maybe just deal with this point about the petition that has gone on for a very long time? This is something that we have looked at as a committee in terms of not holding on to petitions too long, so it is not something that particularly we would necessarily want to do. But as long as there are issues that are material to the subject, I think it is legitimate for us to look at them and also hear what you are saying about the original petition. I suspect that it is grown arms and legs because there are issues that are emerging about a sport that we all care deeply about and the way in which young people who also care deeply about that sport may end up feeling that they have not been treated very well. I think that those are issues that are very powerful for our including, I would say, the intervention of the children and young people's commissioner. I recognise that there has been movement in progress by ourselves, which in itself would tell us that there had been issues to address. We are keen, first of all, to take up, I think, your invitation to go and visit academies, and that can be done as soon as it is suitable for you. We are keen to understand that we think we have a shared interest in ensuring that young people are not exploited and that child protection is in place and that we are supporting the sport itself. What our intention would be to draft up a report on the petition, and we also are hoping that we have a debate in chamber time. Of course, you will know from the petition's process that it is possible for us to close the petition and for a petition to come in, maybe on some of these other issues that went immediately relevant to the point where the petition was submitted. In my sense, it says that everybody in his room wants to make sure that football is developed by elite sports people, but we also do not do it on the back of a culture around football. There is evidence of that young people themselves and their families will accept things that they ought not to be encouraged to accept. We are interested in your role in discouraging people from being encouraged to do things against their own interests. I would hope that we would agree that we can get the academy stuff up and running and that there will be a debate in the chamber. If there are further points that you want to make as a consequence of today's discussions, I would be more than happy to hear from you. We recognise that you have already submitted quite a lot of evidence to us. Unless there are any further or last comments, can I— Convener, please. First of all, I do not think that we should forget the progress that we are making within Scottish football at an elite level. Our under-17s are currently ranked sixth in Europe and have played in four successive European finals tournaments. Our under-19 women's have qualified for European finals. Our women's A-squad have qualified for their first ever A-squad international tournament in Holland later this summer. Our under-21s have just beaten Brazil for the first time in a competitive match. We are making significant progress and it is a result of our collective investment of time into Scottish football at the elite end. I would like to make one more point if I can, and that is on the original petition. There were two references that we have not talked about in several years. One was increasing the educational target from two hours a week of physical activity to four. It would be helpful for us, because it is really important to Scottish football to hear what progress the committee has made in that area and where changes have been made. The second point is that the final point of the original petition talked about the introduction of artificial surfaces across Scottish football for the benefit of player development. I would like to say that we have made significant progress there thanks to the investment of cashback funding and Scottish Government support for the development of ORIAM, the national performance centre in Edinburgh. I think that it is worth acknowledging the progress that has been made in that area, as well as your focus on some of the areas where you have concerns. First of all, we recognise progress in Scottish football, even if it did not particularly feel like that last week, but we see that there are changes in support. In terms of the debate in the chamber, there is an opportunity to test what the Scottish Government is doing, and we will make sure that those questions are asked. We will certainly get a response from the Government, because the debate itself affords the opportunity for the Scottish Government to lay out what it is doing in terms of both the petition and, more genuinely, what it is doing around Scottish football. On the question of artificial surface, that is something that we can look at further. The debate that we would have in terms of the petition will allow for the opportunity to get a sense of how much progress has been made and what the things that still need to be addressed, both in terms of the wellbeing of young people and sustaining the sport in Scotland. I recognise the stresses between elite sport and grassroots, and it is a strange one for me to be on the other side of that argument. I am usually defending elite sport, I have to say. In drafting a report, I think that it would be helpful if we could come to some conclusions about what we think from the discussions in here and put forward some ideas to the boards that we think that, rather than I recognise that we get heated about this quite a lot, I am quite passionate about it, but I think that it is incumbent upon us to put forward some ideas as well. That would certainly be the intention. Once the committee debate has been carried out in my fair from the Scottish Government, then it will be possible for us to then reflect on the petition and produce a report on that and what the petition would then do. My understanding debate will not be until the beginning of the next session, so we did not want to squeeze it in at the end of a crowded business time in the chamber. That is something that will make sure that you have plenty of notice of. I thank you very much for your attendance and I will close the meeting.