 I welcome you to the 7th meeting of the Public Petitions Committee in this session. I remind members and others in the room to switch phones and other devices to silent. We have today received apologies from Morris Corry. Edward Mountain is attending in Morris's place as the committee substitutes and I invite to welcome you to our meeting. Can I ask you to declare any relevant interests? I am a farmer, and I have an interest in a fishery on the river spay. Those are my interests. Can we now move on to agenda item number one, the consideration of new petitions. Petition 1623 on unelected church appointees on local authority education committees. Our first item in agenda today is petition PE1623, lodged by Spencer Files on behalf of the Scottish Secular Society. It calls for a change to current practice provided under section 124 of the Local Government Scotland Act 1973, which requires that local authorities, education committees must include members nominated by various churches. The petition collected over 700 signatures and received 48 comments, mostly in support of its aims. Can I welcome Mr Files to the meeting, and he is accompanied by Professor Paul Braterman of the Scottish Secular Society. I thank you for attending today, and I can now provide you with the opportunity for a short opening statement, after which we will move to questions from the committee. First of all, I thank you for inviting us, convener, and my thanks to the rest of the committee as well. At present, every council education committee in Scotland is required by law to include three full voting members nominated by churches. Voters and their elected representatives have no choice in this matter. This legal requirement dates back to 1929 and is present form to 1973. It is so broadly worded that it could actually apply to any future education system. We believe that this current system is out of place and does not reflect a constantly evolving, rapidly modernising Scottish democracy. We would not dream of allowing churches to impose its members on this Parliament's education and skills committee, for instance, but that is exactly what we do with Scottish councils. The future of Scottish education is currently under active discussion, and we believe that this would be the perfect time to review the status quo. One major consideration is the fact that parents who hold no belief now represent the majority amongst primary school parents. This has created a democratic deficit across representation within local authorities. To address this change in demographic, we respectfully suggest that the simplest change would be to relax the requirement. We would like to see the law allowing not compelling local authorities, elected members, to appoint up to three representatives and to decide whether or not they should give them voting powers, much as they do right now for parent teacher councils and representatives. We actually gauged the view of all of Scotland's MSPs by writing directly to them. We found that we did have some considerable cross-party support in our responses. If I could just quote and make some comments here as to some of the responses that we received, we had comments such as there may well be merit in looking at this afresh again. There should be a greater amount of autonomy in choosing the best people whether or not they be religious. I am broadly supportive of the concept of members of the education committee being elected members, and it is up to each local authority to decide who should be on education committees. Finally, the last one was the status quo is currently anachronism. Professors of the petition include supporters, including Professor Damon Glover, who was scientific advisers to discuss his Government in the European Union, the clergy letter project, which is an organisation of 15,000 ordained clergy, a global representative body, the Secretary of the Glasgow Unitarian Church and the Glasgow Theosophical Society. A petition statement shows that the present situation is undemocratic, unjust and encroaches on human rights and is highly problematic in its actual enforcement. It infringes on local autonomy and is actually the opposite of participatory democracy. It is unnecessary since denominational schools have their own separate mechanisms of governance. Many churches are already involved to some extent with more schools across Scotland, including non-denominational schools. Believers, like everyone else, can and should vote and take part in public debate and stand for office. However, unlike what we are challenging today, religion in this case should be afforded no privilege to those and against those who hold no belief. It infringes on local autonomy because laws handed down by central government in the case of 1973 and 1994 Westminster governments are imposed on local councils irrespective of the council's wishes and needs. It is certainly not participatory democracy. The broader community is not involved and the appointees are answerable only to their own churches. Finally, many councils have difficulty filling the actual positions. There are some in our view that have some questionable appointments. If the system was meeting a legitimate need, this problem would surely never arise in the first place. The Church of Scotland admits, in its own response to the petition, that there is an element of reform that is required. The simplest one, we believe, is the one that we suggested. Scotland's regions are highly diverse. We believe that local councils themselves are the best people to judge what their local needs are. They have a local mandate already in place for them from the voting system, and they should be free to use that. In conclusion, we would respectfully ask you to seek opinions from organisations that represent non-believing as well as believing bodies. From organisations concerned with schoolings, concerned with human rights, such as time for inclusive education on the Equality and Human Rights Commission, with a view to forwarding our petition to the Education and Skills Committee. Thank you very much for your statement. I have a couple of questions before I open up to my colleagues. First of all, you will be aware that, in response to a previous petition on the issue in February 2014, the Scottish Government indicated its support for, quote, the involvement of religious representatives in the decision making process by councils in relation to education and did not, at that time, quote, have any plans to change the existing provisions. As you mentioned, they are currently undertaking a governance review of Scottish education. You see that as a means by which you might make your views known and can highlight the sole question of education committees. Secondly, did you seek the views of individual local authorities on what they thought of the mechanism that currently applies to them in terms of education? To answer your first question, yes, we are actually participating in consultations, so we have been invited along through the Equalities Network and other bodies. We have had representation. They are on going approaches, as you know at the moment, so we have chucked our all-in for one of a better term. Regarding the local education authorities themselves, we did not receive any responses from many of them because they believe that this matter should be referred back to the Government because it is a matter of legislation. Like most things that are politically sensitive or administratively sensitive, we did not really expect them to have a statement on the issue itself, so that is where we sat. Although it would be the case that local authorities, if they feel strongly about particular bits of legislation's impacts and then would meet their views known, there would be evidence of this. I just wonder if you are aware of a local authority level, if there are individual local authorities who are saying that they are not happy with this or that they are concerned. We talked about maybe the difficulty in filling places. Yes, what we did, we did a freedom of information request on how these places are actually filled and out of them, what we found on nine of them, that they really struggled to fill the places. They had to go out to newspaper advertisements. They were basically left with some churches being the only ones that would actually stand up and do the job because they were the only ones around or the only ones that were willing to do it. For them, that must be, if you are any large budgetary holder or policy maker or decision maker, that must be really frustrating. The only feedback that we really got in that sense was in the sense that it was the way that they actually go about the recruitment process, not how they felt about the people who were actually on or formed part of the committee itself. One of the key things that really raised that said was how problematic that system actually is and how they find it difficult to get the right people to come in and participate. It does not suggest, however, that there is a drive by people who are religious to get themselves on to committees and to because of some suggestions, obviously, that they have a disproportionate influence or an appropriate influence. You are saying that if they have difficulties recruiting, it would suggest that it is not that kind of drive by the churches and others. Which is the base of our argument then. If the need is not being filled, if that current piece of legislation is not being mandated, then surely that is a suggestion that the process is beginning to fall apart, that it is not working. Maybe that is also because of the changing landscape of religion in the Scottish, in our country, is the fact that maybe 100 years ago, when these things really mattered, when 99.9 per cent of the population were of some religion, now we are finding that it is more than half actually make up, no religion. So maybe that is a reflection of the changing dynamic, is the fact that this is becoming more difficult for local authorities to meet that need. Angus Macdonald. Can we take the next question and bring in then? Thanks, convener. Good morning, gentlemen. On the background information to your petition, you referred to the recruitment process and you say that in 17 out of 32 cases, there is reason for concern about the way in which the system is operating. Without referring to any specific cases, can I ask you to expand on that statement? Paul, that's right. Sorry, can you speak up just a little bit more? I'm sorry, I've got a bit of a call to this. I'll repeat the question. In the background information to your petition, you referred to the recruitment process and in your statement you say that in 17 out of 32 cases, there is reason for concern about the way in which the system is operating. So without going into any specific details or cases, can I ask you both to expand on these concerns? Certainly. In 15 cases out of 32 local authorities, the position is actually filled by a newspaper advertisement. In eight of those cases, there was only one response to the advertisement. As for problematic appointments, there are to our knowledge at least six cases where one of the appointees, usually the third appointee, is a committed creationist, young earth creationist and therefore committed to denying key elements of the curriculum for excellence being taught in the schools that are supposed to administer. In one case, the third nominee is there because the church first requested to nominate, never got around to responding and is a member of a church as mediated to the Assemblers of God, which asks people to vote for Donald Trump. In one case, the third nominee nominated himself just after having lost his seat in an election on the strength of his involvement with the Boys Brigade. I think that this illustrates the kind of problems that we have. Having served on the Falkirk Council Education Committee, I have been following clearly the developments on that committee. However, as I recall, it is not the case in some local authorities, including Falkirk for a while. Church appointees do not have any voting rights on education committees. Would that be acceptable if that were to be the case in all local authorities to you? I think that our argument is not the presence of members of the church being on the education committees. It is the mechanism in which they appear on the committees. That is what we are seeking to broaden. If someone from the Catholic Church or the Church of Scotland or a Unitarian is the best person for the job, the most qualified and is there by the will of the local authority, that is the case. That is an open democratic participatory nature of approaching the issue, but to go back and say that you can have this position because you are religious and that is the only qualification that exists in this case, we think needs to be amended. What they do when they are there, if it is the will of the local authority and the people in that locality, then that is the will of that locality. However, as it stands, there is a huge imbalance. Demographically, there is a huge imbalance, especially when you look at how the different religions are now spread around Scotland. If you take Glasgow, for instance, there is a large concentration of people within the Muslim community, but they are not equally represented on these education boards, whereas if you go to the highlands, it is very different. These are things that no one is actually looking at at the moment. They are not being addressed, so we think that the best way forward to address this is to make them all equal from the outset and appoint them purely based on qualification. Brian Whitter. Your petition refers to the 2011 consensus, which indicates that 56 per cent of the population have a religious affiliation. From your petition, it also says that the census figures show a steady decline in religious affiliation among Scots. I wonder if you could provide us with more information on that trend and how you might be able to demonstrate that. Of course, we actually used your own evidence. We used the Scottish household surveys and the social attitudes surveys, which are now consistently showing that those who claim to have no belief are over 50 per cent every year. That is on a trajectory as well. If you look within the demographic and look at those parents who are now sending their children to primary school, that goes up to 64 per cent. Again, I believe that this is on the Scottish social attitudes survey of 2014. The data certainly suggests that the census is great offering a substrate, but it does not move with the times. Right now, the times are moving very fast. Those who openly claim to have no religious affiliation are now the majority in Scotland. Your petition sets out your views on the current system. What work have you done to understand whether your views and concerns are shared by pupils, parents and others with their interests in the delivery of the education system? The petition is part of it. We run our own membership system. We also run a Facebook group, which is the quickest and fastest way of connecting to everybody. We constantly canvass our members on our Facebook group. We also have discussions every first Thursday in the Theosophical Society in Glasgow. Recently, we invite education is so long, we invite people from different faiths, from those of no faiths, and we always ask these questions. Although we have no precise methodical approach or scientific approach to looking at this, we do have a sense of opinion that comes back anecdotally, and certainly through the secular society itself, through the complaints system that we have from parents regarding all sorts of issues with religion in schools. This is a factor that consistently comes up. For us, to make any difference or to have any influence at what happens at school and ground level, we have to go further up the tree, to the top of the tree, at the hierarchy there. Part of that is the local education authorities. The influence that we believe that some religious representatives may have, especially those where they may hold the balance of power in some local education authorities. I would find it difficult to believe that anyone who is religious or is responsible to their church can decouple their religion in these conversations. It should drive part of what they are and who they are, but it comes back to our original point. There are many people out there who do not hold their belief feel that they are not being fairly represented. Even looking at this on paper, it is difficult to argue that, by our figures, the largest majority do not hold their belief system, then why, on every single one of the 29 local health authorities, is there a Catholic, is there a Protestant, is there A in other, but that is one privilege for them, but not for the no-belief group. We would not do this with literature, with science, we would not impose a scientist or a teacher on to any other group, but we do it with religion and we think that now is a good time to start to change, start looking at that and examining it. Thank you, convener. Good morning. In its submission, the Church of Scotland's Church and Society Council comments on parent pupil and teacher representatives on education committees also being unelected. I appreciate that you may have answered that already, but just to clarify, what is your position on being unelected representatives other than Church representatives on education committees? It comes back to my point earlier. If that is a need that needs to be met, if the local authorities believe that that is a requirement, then I think that it would be a smarter move to have a broader net. By doing so, you would have someone who has a more specialist professional interest in it. For instance, my colleague Paul is a professor in chemistry and an emeritus from Glasgow University to the University of Texas and has spent his entire life considering it the best needs of the education of the child. Now, as he pointed out earlier on, you have someone whose qualification is the fact that they worked with the boys brigade or you have an individual like Professor Bremen here. Not to say that, but if you have two people that you want to competitively interview who is going to have the biggest impact and add more value to the system, those are the kind of requirements that we really should be taking into consideration. We would like that to be relaxed, so local education authorities can then reach out to those type of people. Thank you for that. Can I just move on? Another submission, Andrew Strachan, makes the point that if those appointments were removed, there might be an impact on schools who provide faith-based education for local authorities. Our briefing information notes that the current provision reflects the historical roots of school education as a religious concern. What consideration have you given to the impact that a change to the provisions of the ones that you're suggesting might have on schools with a particular religious ethos? Well, we're primarily talking about non-denominational schools, so our faith schools is probably a different argument for a different day. We don't believe. Again, this would then validate our point of view. If that local authority decided that the rules were changed, legislation was relaxed, and they didn't make a change, then that's fine, because that's what they're telling us their needs to meet the needs of that. It's giving them the option to do so. We currently don't do that. We restrict it, we nado the aperture, and we just think that it should be widened. Okay, thank you. That's a slightly different point, though, from the one that Professor Braytonman was making, which there are some people whose views are such that they ought not to be on an education committee. I see Professor Braytonman's view, and I support it, in the sense that even those who are of a particular religious nomination and hold a belief in a world view, there are some conflicting issues within some. You'll get this with any system. You're not going to get 100 per cent of everything running smoothly 100 per cent of the time. We have identified under our freedom of information request that there are younger creationists on some of those committees, and it is a worry because they are very proactive in their beliefs. Your view, in essence, is that it shouldn't really be a matter for local authorities. You said that the concern now is that it's not a matter for local authorities, it's imposed on them, but your view is that people with those kinds of views ought not to serve them. No, not really. That's kind of moving the argument slightly there, because our argument is that by default those views would be taken into consideration before that individual was elected onto the committee. If the local authority then accepted somebody with those views, then that's what they accept. You thought that Donald Trump should be presently could be. Exactly, we see that happens. Do you also think that there is an issue around, if there was only 20 per cent of the population had religious views and it went down to 10 per cent, should that not mean that we have a responsibility to protect those views or to respect them? We do that in the public sphere, we do that legislatively, we do that in every other area, but our biggest responsibility is to uphold the principles of democracy. I think that that has to be more critical than anything else, and within that system of democracy they will naturally be protected as a group anyway. Right now we have checks and balances in place, we have laws that make sure that we don't discriminate against such groups, but at the moment the balance is unweighted in the favour of those who are religious, against those who are not religious, and we need to draw some middle line here. We need to get to a point where it is a win-win for everybody. We are cautious as secularism is a two-way street, and part of our resource is freedom of religion and freedom from religion, and we want to make sure that those freedoms for both parties are always upheld, but unfortunately this just happens to be one where we think that the balance is skewed in the favour of the other. The balance of views in our society is a whole. Your figures around the sense isn't... Is this really to test the arguments here? Of course, yes. The figures around the number of people who are religious views are not core issues. Why would there be a core issue if we were agreeing that we should protect the religious views? No, all religious views. There should always be a platform, and there should always be a society that permits the manifestation of the expression of a religious perspective. That is freedom of speech. That is what you want to see. If you believe in that and you are projecting that somewhere, like on this committee, it is up to that committee whether or not that holds anyway. If you are religious and you sit on an education committee, and that forms part of who you are and you want to project what you are attempting to influence or change or help with, then that's normal discourse. That's fine, but the argument, that's not the argument. The argument is how you get on that seat in the first place, not how religion is perceived or treated in society. That's not an argument. If you're religious and you want to put your name on the ballot box for anything, you can do that anywhere in our society. You can do it with local education committees. If you come out with something that your colleagues on that education committee think is maybe a little bit off the wall or a little bit absurd, then if they voted you on, then that's really nothing more to do with us. That's between them and the committee because the process of getting them on to the committee is the issue that we have. Not what they say when they're there, it's what happens, but we have identified, unfortunately, through the freedom of information, that some of the beliefs that are held are contradicted to the curriculum for excellence. I would see that as being a little bit of an issue, especially in the teaching of biology. If you're a younger creationist and you believe Earth is 6,000 years old and you don't believe that we came down from the trees on to the savannah, then you may run into some issue, but that, like I say, is maybe one or two out of every hundred. There would be a question extent to which any individual education committee could determine the curriculum in individual schools anyway, but that's maybe something that we want to explore. Do you have anybody else's any other questions? I probably do. I think that if we have an issue with what you just said, that if they do happen to have a view that goes against the curriculum for excellence, surely by your own definition that should preclude them from standing for office? No, it doesn't, because that would then be the decision of the local education authority to decide whether or not that person's views were acceptable and that they were qualified to sit on that committee. But if it's views that contradict the implementation of the curriculum for excellence, which has already been set out, then that's another matter that they have to consider. All this is about widening the opportunity for local education authorities to enhance the valuing quality of what they offer and what they do and what they are. Right now we believe that they are constrained purely because of what we see as an historical anomaly that actually, I appreciate you look for evidence, you look for the checks and balances, the data, the methodology. There's actually none of that takes place for the qualification of religious representatives on. There is no constant mandating whether or not they are effective, whether or not they do have an impact. Nobody measures it, nobody quantifies it, it's not qualitative. It just happens to be there because it's something we've always done and we continue to do it. That seems to be the reaction and that was actually the reaction that I received from many of your colleagues as well when I wrote out to them on behalf of the Secular Society. Very quickly, that elected councillors are responsible to the electorate. The representatives of churches are beholden only to the church that nominated them. In the case of two of the representatives that's Catholic Church, Church of Scotland, in case of the third representative, it's very often just the only church that showed up. This is a very curious situation, a lack of accountability, a lack of power without responsibility. You wouldn't have lay members on education committees. The logic of that position is you wouldn't have lay members on an education committee. The idea that perhaps you might bring in a very significant academic experience, but it's a very strong argument for groups that support young people with special needs parents, who have direct experience of the importance of education but the logic of that position is that you wouldn't have lay members on the committee. The logic is that you wouldn't have lay members on the committee by what you've just said. I would somewhat disagree with that because that's two steps forward because we've passed the process of those who are allowed to make the decision. I understand what you're saying but that comes next in our opinion and that really is not much to do with us. What we're saying is that it doesn't matter what the education committee decides to do next. For us, what matters is that they can look beyond religious representatives to have whoever they feel fit to do so or most qualified to sit on those committees. That's really the basis of our argument. Lynn, thank you very much for that. I think that we've had a reasonable consideration of the issues and you've had the opportunity to flag up the key issues for you. We also want to consider what action we might now take because clearly there are questions and I suppose it would be useful to know whether the Scottish Government still takes the same view. Maybe we want you to contact them. It's your first quote of call to see whether there's a change in attitude or a change of approach from the Government. And whether it would be worthwhile knowing actually do local authorities find this a problem? Would they see the suggestion that local authorities might decide it for themselves or are there other groups that we might ask to take of you? Would we then therefore write out to every local authority and ask their opinion? I suppose we could contact COSLA if that's the easiest way to do it because they would know through their education community whether there was a kind of a strength of feeling around us or differences in different areas and perhaps again just to test whether this is something that is beyond particular interest of your organisation to write out a range of organisations tasking their views? Yes. I mean, I'm very supportive of your petition and I think we need to seek the widest range of views to bring this forward. We have a suggestion in our own briefing at paragraph 8 of the organisations that we might want to write out to. I wonder if people agree with those groups. I wonder whether they want me to read them out. I think that that would be fair to contact all of them. We received submissions on this in the past. You might want to contact, as we've said, the Scottish Government COSLA, the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, the Association of Directors of Education Scotland, the Church of Scotland Education Committee, the Scottish Catholic Education Service, the EIS, Interfaith Scotland, the Muslim Council of Scotland, the Quality and Human Rights Commission Scotland and the Humanist Society of Scotland. OK. Just to clarify, are we going to ask the Scottish Government its position because they're not really covering it specifically in their review? Yes. Well, I think there are two things we might ask them. First of all, have they changed the position but secondly, what are they doing in order to address this question through their governance review because I think it's one thing for you to be speaking to the Quality Network but whether you've been invited to give evidence or a view to the Scottish Government is something quite different. OK. Are those actions agreed, Dennis, or anything else? Agreed. In that case, can I thank you for your evidence this morning. I appreciate your time and we will, of course, batch and due course with progressive made with your petition. Thank you very much. OK, thank you. I'm meeting back to order. Our second petition today is 1619 on diabetes continues glucose monitoring sensors. The business next petition we consider today, petition 1619, is by Stuart Knox. The petition calls for continuous glucose monitoring sensors to be made available on the NHS to all patients with type 1 diabetes. Mr Knox was invited to provide oral evidence today but was unable to attend. Members have a copy of the petition and a spice briefing. I wonder if members have any comments or suggestions. I sit on the diabetes cross-party group and this is discussed a lot. For me, I think that the specifics of this is around the worry of during sleep when there's the potential for, especially in young children, for the depletion of the sugar levels to a point where it's right up to loss of life and there's a lot of evidence around obviously continued monitoring and there's a lot of real innovation out there but it seems to be piecemeal in terms of availability on the NHS and there certainly is in the group, the diabetes group, a call for this, a strong call for this and it seems to me logical that if this type of innovation is available to some and certainly there's compelling evidence that if we can save lives here it seems to me that it should be available across the NHS. Just to clarify, it is available to some on the NHS but what grounds would take it's good to people? I think it's because it's especially the one they mentioned here that the freestyle Libra one is very new. It's a new innovation and it hasn't yet made its way across the whole of the NHS trusts but it would seem to me that evidence suggests that this is a treatment that can potentially save lives and should be available. Do we have other views? I'm just looking at the answer to the question that the health secretary gave on the 8th of November and you can all see it there where she says work is currently on going to develop a national approach for the use of the CGM and we recognise the speed of development of this technology I think it might be worthwhile just to write to her and ask her how that work is proceeding and if we could get an approximate kind of timescale on when a decision will be taken on it. I might suggest that we write to the Scottish Government and Diabetes Organisations and specifically Diabetes UK Scotland but I don't know if there are others we could find out if there are others who have a view. The other suggestion that's been made we spoke before about how we may be engaged with the decision particularly since we've not had an oral evidence session but actually may be finding a way of going out and speaking to some of those organisations or more about it than others with your interest in the cross-party group but it would be worthwhile perhaps doing a wee bit of work around speaking to various groups about the issues and challenges and indeed the way in which technology may be offering some very positive hope for the future. The cross-party group is extremely well attended so if you are looking for people to speak to about this they tend to be all in that room. We will agree that then so we are going to contact Diabetes organisations but we may be trying to wee bit of work around engaging around the issues that have also been flagged up by the petition. That agreed? Okay, thank you. We can then move on. The next petition is Petition 1621 on sepsis awareness diagnosis and treatment. This is a new petition by James Robertson calling for the awareness of the early signs of sepsis to be increased among Scottish health professionals and the public. The petition was not open for collecting signatures. Mr Robertson was in right to provide oral evidence to the committee today but was unable to attend. Members have a copy of the petition and a copy of the briefing note. It might be worthwhile highlighting that the petition arises out of the petitioners personal experiences. In the petition Mr Robertson explains that he is concerned that NHS Scotland is not doing as much to raise awareness of sepsis as has been done in England. To address this the petition suggests the following three steps. Working group to increase awareness among clinicians and the public of early identification, diagnosis and management of sepsis. Working with relevant charities to develop and distribute guidance on sepsis in pre-hospital and hospital settings. Encouraging Scottish intercollegiate guidance network, guidelines network to review its guidance on sepsis and giving consideration to recent national institute for clinical excellent guidelines as part of this review. Members of any comments or suggestions, it does seem to me to be highlighting a very important issue too. Can I register an interest in this? Mr Robertson is a constituent of mine and he asked me to give his apologies for not coming today. That's perfectly understandable. Are there suggest dashes we might take on this? It seems you always do this but it seems to be that we should be writing to the Scottish Government to see the physician on this. I'm quite interested in seeing where they think the difference is in terms of what's happening south of the border compared to what's happening up here and what protocols they have that a suggestion is that are the better than the ones that are currently happening here. We would write to the Scottish Government perhaps the health boards to see the differences in different parts of Scotland. There's also a suggestion that we contact healthcare improvement Scotland and the UK sepsis trust. I'm not aware what other organisations around us there might be but they might have an overview of the different bits of the United Kingdom and what's been done in different places. I agree with all of that. It is an incredibly important subject and we just need to widen the net and get as many views and information as possible. It's crucial that this is expanded as widely as it could be. Is that agreed? As quickly as possible because I think that sepsis there is growing issues with it and we need to move forward rather than delay on it. If that's agreed then. Thank you. If we can then move on to agenda item 2 which is the consideration of continued petitions. The first of these is petition 1603 on ensuring greater scrutiny guidance and consultation on armed forces visits to schools in Scotland. When we last considered this petition by Quakers in Scotland and Forces Watch we agreed to seek further information from a range of organisations including the Scottish Government, local authorities, the Scottish Youth Parliament, the Children and Young People's Commissioner Scotland and the Ministry of Defence. We have received a number of responses and also have a further submission from the petitioners. The petitioners urged the committee to consider the issues raised from a child welfare and rights perspective and offer some suggestions to further action that the committee may wish to consider. I understand that Forces Watch have also prepared a comparison of the responses local authorities gave about the armed forces visits when they received the FYI responses from the MOD for each local authority. They consider that this shows that there are discrepancies between the two sets of information which illustrates their concern that no one has a full picture of what's happening with armed forces visits in state schools. We also have information from Forces Watch about visits to state schools and independent schools. We have also got a very significant amount of correspondence on this matter. I wonder what members' views are on the responses that we have received and suggestions for further action. I just go on record as saying that I think we've got to be careful here especially when we heard evidence the last time that we've got to make sure we understand that a career in the armed forces is legitimate a career is anything anything else. I think that for me the question seemed to be around specific targeting of a demographic and I think as such I don't think so far the evidence has been particularly clear on this. Can I make an observation? I was in the army for 12 years one is currently a serving soldier and I've actually undertaken when I was in the army visits to schools. None of those visits were the intention of recruiting people on the visit was to make them aware of the opportunities that the army offered and the Minister of State for Armed Forces made it clear that there is no specific recruiting that goes on during the visits. If people want to follow up on the visit to see what the forces have to offer that is a completely different process and I think to suggest that the army are deliberately going in to target specific people in specific areas is entirely against my experience of when I was doing it in the armed services. Can I ask if you talked about the opportunities that the armed service provide would you be talking in realistic terms about what some of the risks of a life in the armed forces were? Is that one of the contentious deputations that that element of it is not discussed when you go in? I think that everyone is aware and is currently very aware with the fact that the armed services have been almost on continuous operations for 10 years of the risks involved and that is made aware to people of where you could be deployed but there are also skills that the armed services offer and there are skills and trades that you can get within the army which are recognised as civilian trades. In fact, the recent visit to Fort George I was explained all those skills that work in conjunction with UHI and how they're working to develop that. So I think people are inherently aware of the risks that if you go into the armed services you may be called to serve in places where you do put your life on the line and I'm certainly aware of that when I joined up and my son was aware of that and when he consequently went to Afghanistan it was proved that there were risks but I mean you know I think it's pretty disingenuous to suggest that that's hidden or that it's deliberately targeted to recruit people. Other views? I inherently disagree with both of my colleagues in the committee. I think that we should look at the response from the Children's Commissioner in Scotland. We're talking about people under the age of 18 here and I think to say that it's just a career like any other career is disingenuous because it has risks that other careers don't have. Some of the comments from the Scottish Youth Parliament's submission states that some of the schools and the children found it an unpleasant experience where the so-called career was being glorified by playing top gun music etc and comments like we'll make you a man etc there's just no place for that in our schools and so I inherently disagree I just do not think there's a place for the military going to schools any time at all. The Scottish Youth Parliament's submission suggested that of 49 people that have been consulted, 27 had experienced a visit, 17 found it to be positive, 8 found it to be not to be positive and 2 were unsure so I think we're in danger here of as I said I think from your perspective I understand how you're coming from here I think that be careful here I would be a part if I thought that the armed forces were specifically going to target a demographic that's another huge huge I think one at a time that would be a concern and I would like to know if that was the case but I also think that we have to accept that the army is a very legitimate career for people to pursue and they have as much right as anybody else to describe a career in schools as anybody else and I also think that from what I gather from the evidence parents have the ability they're forewarned and have the ability to take the children out of that particular or career opportunity Angus MacDonald As you say we've certainly received extensive submissions including a large number from local authorities obviously from the Scottish Government and from the Children's Commissioner and there are some salient points from from Tam Bailey the Children and Young People's Commissioner one of the second last paragraph in the submission says my final point relates to the petitioner's suggestion that parents' guardians are consulted as to whether they are happy for their child to take part in armed forces at schools I would suggest that children in secondary schools would generally be assumed capable of providing informed consent to activities in their own right as long as they were provided with balanced information before doing so and then the submission from the Scottish Government also highlights that the local authorities and schools are responsible for considering the arrangements under which any potential employer offers professional advice on career opportunities to pupils that this should be appropriate to their age and maturity and be done in a way which does not seek to exert undue or inappropriate influence but there's clearly a suggestion that there may be undue or inappropriate influence being exerted and that's been denied in some quarters so I think there's an argument to perhaps I mean I know we have had extensive information and submissions received but there's maybe the petitioner's urgentness to seek further information from organisations that they've suggested but I think there's merit in doing that although it's prolonging the petition but I think given the seriousness of the issue I think there's merit in doing that Okay, thanks. I mean I do think clearly there are a range of views in the committee so see if Solomon's wisdom appears anytime soon in terms of dealing with that but I think that probably it's broadly representative of the views of our communities as well that first of all it's a legitimate profession but are in particular groups of young people I suppose the best case is really trying to get the evidence to establish what the process is I mean I was a little disappointed to understand the pressures of the local authorities but I think they played it with a very just back the thing back without really engaging with what the issues were around confidence for people that there wasn't inappropriate access to young people in particular community so I feel that I'm going to suggest that we should be looking for more information that would be worthwhile because there's a separate argument whether they should be there at all but if they are there, are they there on a transparent basis in everybody's confidence that they're not disproportionately targeting particular groups and that's really I think where we need to get the evidence from Edward convener can I suggest I mean I don't know who of this committee has been on a school visit where the armed forces are there as well as collecting evidence and I suggest that actually it might be worthwhile seeing what the armed forces do when they go there and how they present it firsthand so you actually know what's going on because I think that with the graceful of the world what I'm reading and read in the papers here doesn't reflect my understanding of what goes on on the visit I mean I think that's something people may wish to explore it is true I think what Brian says that the Scottish Youth Parliament's has highlighted that the majority of the young people who were consulted didn't have an issue about the visit but nevertheless there is still this question about confidence that particular groups are not being targeted and that the way in which the armed forces are represented don't identify the risk factors that it involves I think people may want to take up that offer but might I suggest we also do look for responses from parents, teachers, schools, children's rights organisations young people's organisations veterans bodies they may have a particular view as well on how they were recruited themselves and their awareness of those questions another suggestion is the careers bodies such as schools development Scotland who themselves are engaged in trying to get employers into schools so what guidance do they apply what kind of are companies that offer low skill, low wages poor conditions do we make sure they are not targeted in particular vulnerable communities where there are higher levels of unemployment as well that maybe takes us way beyond the remit of the petition however that's agreed then I think there are a number of issues there that are clearly we still want to have some sense that people have confidence in the process in the way in which young people come into contact with the armed forces in school visits that's agreed okay if we can then move on to petition 1605 on whistleblowing in the NHS a safer way to report mismanagement and bullying this petition is one of three on our agenda by Peter Gregson on behalf of kids not suits the petition calls for a whistleblowing hotline to be established to replace the existing help line service at our previous consideration of this petition following evidence from the petitioner we need to write to the Scottish Government NHS boards, the City of Edinburgh Council unions, the Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust which operates a hotline facility and Public Concern at Work the provider of the current national confidential alert line we've received a number of responses including from 10 health boards the Scottish Government Public Concern at Work we also have a submission from City of Edinburgh Council which provides an explanation of how its hotline facility operates the petitioner has provided a response to these questions in which he suggests that there is an element of confusion in distinguishing between a helpline and a hotline there has been quite extensive coverage of this issue since we first considered the petition including an article by the chief executive of NHS Scotland which subsequently was covered in topical questions at the end of September so do members of any views on actions to be taken on this petition thank you thank you excuse me since this petition was first discussed by this committee I've actually become more aware of issues in my own health board area so I'm intrigued by the chief executive of NHS Forth Valley's comments in her submission that in her final paragraph in which she says to change the existing whistleblowing arrangements and external arrangements are not a solution now I've found a petitioner's response very helpful and indeed the submission from Rob Wilson as well who both reiterate that current measures are inadequate and from what I'm seeing locally that would suggest it would certainly seem to be the case so I'd be keen to explore further the establishment of an independent national officer for whistleblowing across health and social care located in the SPSO office so was that suggestion that's been put forward I think by Unison and others it would be a basis to invite the chief executive of NHS Scotland to perhaps come in and give evidence and other evidence to take order I agree with that but I'm also interested in those who would be the potential whistleblowers and I, the ones at the coalface I'm really interested in what their particular view would be in that and how would be engaged with obviously we can't bring lots and lots of them in as their particular organisation we could speak to who would represent at the end of the day it's the one to the coalface who would be whistleblowing and I think to get a balanced view to get the chief executive in might not be the most balanced one I wonder whether the unions are very often a kind of a safe place for people to go in order to make complaints they don't want to make them public themselves whether they would have any views on that and they might even have by definition a whistleblower is perhaps not the person before a committee and although there are some people here who clearly have waved their own anonymity to talk about the problems they've had in the past and I do think we're wrestling with this question of helpline, hotline, there's quite a lot there it looks as if the advice you're getting is to go back to where you've already been and you've not really had the matter resolved so taking on board to Angus suggestion I think it would be useful to invite in the chief executive of NHS Scotland and other relevant stakeholders and again taking on Brian's point about people who look at the cold face and there are a number of organisations including Public Concern at Work and City of Edinburgh Council have been identified in the petition we don't particularly want it to be re-run of past difficulties with whistleblowing that perhaps Mr Pettisher himself highlighted I don't think that that would be the purpose of it but it would be to try and get down to what the process and systems that actually do what intended to do a process that people find not particularly useful and helpful and any other suggestions? I think Angus summed it up for me I would agree entirely with what he said and I think the unions should be consulted as well Is that agreed then? I think definitely Unison Scotland should be invited particularly given when I read the submissions the worrying fact that there's a significant drop in calls to the helpline and it would be good to get to the because there's clearly still issues out there so it would be good to get the bottom of why there's been such a drop also the submission from the City of Edinburgh Council who have implemented a hotline it seems to be working pretty well it would be good to get some evidence from them as to you know on how exactly they implemented it and how they've made it a success Is that agreed then? Yes Thank you very much for that We're now moving on to petition 1606 enforcing Scottish councils to collaborate regionally on schools and roads This is the second of Mr Gregson's petitions It calls for local authority budgets to be set to encourage councils to work collaboratively on the provision of education and transport At our previous consideration we agreed to write to the Scottish Government COSLA and the local government and communities committee The Scottish Government notes that negotiations on the local government finance settlement are under way and that quote reform opportunities are such as those raised by the petitioner will be discussed within that context The local government committee referred to the ministers confirmation that Scottish Government plans to consult in a bill to quote decentralise local authority functions budget and democratic oversight to local communities Do members have any views and suggested actions on this petition? I will close the petition on the basis that the Royal Religious and what you said about the Scottish Government's on-going review and that this could well form part of it so I don't see any merit in continuing this particular petition Any other views? Would you close it before the review the results of the review are out? You can bring it back My position would be first of all there's a settlement on how people are going to work together under the new community empowerment there's a big issue around schools governance and taking them out of local authority control these will be issues that will be tested very significantly by the Parliament over the next period I'm just wondering whether this petition that basically says they should work together is simply recognising something that's already happening it's not challenging the current view other views we've got Brian's and maybe I mean I think that it's not going to push anything forward this petition from where it's going at the moment Angus? I agree I think we should close the petition I don't think I see any merit in carrying it forward I suggest that and we are highlighting the fact that these are issues that have been flagged up to the Scottish Government local government committees aware of it too we know that there's going to be a debate around this particular round questions and governance in schools but that we close the petition under rule 15.7 of standing orders on the basis that there are current and forthcoming consultation opportunities that will allow the issues raised by the petitioner to be taken forward ok thank you so we can move on to petition 1607 on congestion charging in major Scottish cities petition 1607 is the third of Mr Gregg's petitions at our last consideration we agreed to write Scottish Government, COSLA, the Scottish local government partnership and the mayor of London we've received responses from COSLA and the Scottish Government plus a submission from the petitioner the Scottish Government maintains the position against road pricing now and in the future COSLA suggests that the issue might be discussed when the third report on policies and proposals is published the petitioner repeats his query as to why current legislation isn't used by local authorities do members have any suggestions for action in this petition Angus well it's probably a fear factor as far as the local authorities are concerned I know when I was on Falkirk council in the city of Edinburgh council were planning on introducing a congestion charges we were all for it in Falkirk but I wonder if we would have been so in favour of it had it been actually in Falkirk so it's probably a reluctance on the local authorities to take a bold decision in that regard so you know there's is there something about the legislation that makes it more difficult for them is there something in it it's not just we'll look what happened to Edinburgh, let's not go there but is there something else within the legislation that's causing them problems do you think could well be is that a difficulty you have so much more experience in this is that a difficult thing to approach from my point of view no it didn't seem to be it was just a reluctance to take bold measures you don't want to challenge your boat or something it's a radical step it's I think local authorities are looking at other measures I mean reducing well where in Glasgow your car parking is expensive I think there are issues around Edinburgh that's reduced at speed limit to 20 miles an hour in the city centres people are taking different measures perhaps address some of the same problems and the introduction of more parking rides and things like that you know could help but would it be worth just checking is there some block in the current legislation to by local authorities as we could just address that specific question to Corsola I don't know if they answered it the other option is to defer further consideration of the petition until it becomes clear whether relevant issues will be included within the RPP3 I think we could do both convener seek clarification and defer because clearly there may be measures in the RPP3 that will assist councils local authorities to take action okay, is that agreed? okay, thank you very much if we can then move on to petition 1608 on holy-owned national private pharmaceuticals petition 1608 is a continued petition lodged by Martin Keatings and calling for the establishment and ownership of a medical manufacturing organisation in Scotland to provide manufacturing of drugs out of patent and to develop and research new drugs in line with the needs of the Scottish population at our previous consideration we agreed to write to the Scottish Government the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry and the British Generics Manufacturers Association the ABPI said it did not have any concern in principle to what the petitioner was suggesting but ultimately for the Scottish Government to assess the benefits and costs for such an enterprise where the Scottish Government's response it doesn't consider the proposal to be feasible or sustainable it considers the existing arrangements and policies work well but says that it will consider any future policy changes following the Montgomery review and I wonder what member suggestions are on how we proceed with this petition to the petition I think that the Scottish Government's views have been set there in the bullet points the arguments for not doing it and I think the Montgomery review you know should answer some of these but I don't see any merit in keeping this petition going I think that the petitions been answered sufficiently by the Scottish Government response anyone else? I have to agree I think the whole principle of the the petition flies in the face of what's currently happening there's nothing to stop a pharmaceutical company setting up in Scotland as it is apart from the fact that it would cost a fortune to do that and I think we're already well served I can't see how this petition can go anywhere I would agree with that I mean presumably it may be an issue in the future that political parties who are seeking election to put that in their manifest or something that they would have done a bit work on and identified and we know that there will be findings in the Montgomery review which may inform future decisions but have we agreed that at the time being that we agreed to close the petition? Okay, thank you very much if we can then move on to petition 1609 on NHS Scotland treatments the next petition is petition 1609 on NHS Scotland treatments by Robert Marks petition calls on the NHS to refuse treatments to patients with what are considered to be self-inflicted illnesses and conditions and for the financial savings to be allocated to other areas of NHS Scotland our last consideration of this petition we agreed to write to the Scottish Government seeking its views on the action called for by the petition and information what measures the Scottish Government is taking to promote preventative care and early intervention our response has been received and the Scottish Government notes that current health policy seeks to engage citizens positively in improving their health rather than sanction them for the choices they make it also outlined a number of its preventative and early intervention healthcare initiatives and its views on the most cost effective and ethical way to treat illnesses and I wonder members have any comments or suggestions on next stages I think ethically you cannot drug somebody on their personal decisions and when they become ill or maybe not taking treatments that they recommended to them and I don't think our society would ever agree to non-treatment of an illness I cannot see where this petition can go and personally I would like to close the petition I agree with Brian I think on grounds of compassion that it's not something that anyone would be in a position to sign up to so I think you should close the petition any other views I agree with both my colleagues in that case we're agreeing to close the petition understanding order rule 15.7 in the basis that current health care policy is aimed at prevention and early intervention and the Scottish Government has set out its view on the most cost effective and ethical way to treat illnesses and with the emphasis on preventative help we would hope that that way you would address the problems that perhaps have motivated the petition is that agreed? okay finally petition 1610 on upgrade of the A75 the final petition on the agenda today is petition 1610 by Matt Halliday calling on an upgrade of the A75 members have a submission from the Scottish Government providing an update following the transport summit held in Dumfries on 22 August 2016 members have advised that the Minister for Transport in Ireland has announced an update to strategic transport project review and a review of the national transport strategy options for dualling the A75 will be considered as part of these reviews the Scottish Government could not provide a timetable for this process but said it would keep the committee informed members also have a submission from the petitioner who has expressed concern of the uncertain time frame for making a decision on this issue Mr Halliday is concerned that the local region is negatively affected by the current condition of the A75 and the impact may worsen if action is not taken to upgrade the road soon do members have any comments or suggestions? I mean the last time I was at the summit the transport minister chaired and some of the actions that he took away from that was to consider a range of inputs from the floor I think the fact that we mentioned before this is a euro route I think that we mentioned before that there is a high volume of articulated lorries passing through some small villages and not all those villages have speed cameras and the like I think that there is also the impact or potential impact on Stranvarra's port if this part of the euro route is not dualled given that there is evidence that another couple of ports south of the border have had significant investment in development and that there is this perceived threat to Stranvarra I would personally like to move this on quite swiftly and I would like to suggest that we request the transport minister to come in and give us an update on all the possibilities of courses to bring in the MSPs that represent that specific area because they have more information than I do on this but I think that it's something that needs to be brought to the fore and pushed on Of course any MSP would be free to come to the petitions committee and we have had experience of that with other petitions so that would be an invitation that people would be aware of the question is about not having an absolute timetable so it would be worthwhile writing to the minister to say given the uncertain concern we would expect a timetable and if that's not a forthcoming or if it continues to be we're not very sure it's something that we could consider further in the new year they're having a review I don't know how long reviews normally take but I'm sure people locally would want to know it was an active review as opposed to long grass I think if I remember correctly and the minister suggested that there would be a reply to the conference by the turn of the year which is why I'm suggesting that we ask the minister to come here and perhaps update us on where they are I would be happy to defer it until the new year and then ask for a further update and I'm not sure what merit it would be in bringing the minister here before the end of the year we wouldn't be able to do that might I suggest that what we do is we write to the minister saying in general terms from the committee we would want some certainty around timetable they must have one even if they've not made it public their own officials must be working to an expectation of when they should be reporting and if they can share that information with us and if we continue to say that we don't have a timescale then I think at that point we can make a decision perhaps when we get that response whether we would have the minister in I agree we have concluded all the items in the agenda and can I thank you all for your attendance close the meeting