 Felly maewn gwneud yn gyngor i fy ystafell i ddangos i mi ddych chi na'r Cymru yw, ac ynogi, ond y ddangosol mae'r ddweithio'r ddathesol goweru mewn oedd yn gweithio'n photoahol ac mae'n gweithio'n cymorth ganfawr gyda'r system sylwll. Dywodraeth y ddweithio i gyngor i fy mhrig, Rhewn i'n gyngor am Maryl M. Johnson a'r Rhewn i ddweithio eu rhaiad i fy mianfaith. Ieidwch i Yn Môn, yn tym ni'n meddwlol newydd. Mae cymdeithasach yn hunain, y cymdeithio, I invite a Countability Scotland to speak to the petition. The petition is PE1538 by Dr Richard Burton on behalf of Countability Scotland and Transparency in SPSO investigations. Members have a note by the clerk, the spice briefing and the petition, and Dr Burton has provided extra briefing which is in our additional papers. I welcome Peter Stewart-Blacker, who is the chairman for Countability Scotland to the meeting. We are very welcome. If I invite you to address the committee for a maximum of five minutes, after which I will ask some questions and then I invite my committee colleagues to ask further questions. Thank you, convener. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I've got the hardest job, I think, here. I've got to try and make the equivalent of a train-time table exciting to you, so apologies for this. Administrative justice is the foundation of social justice. Without that, we will not have a fair society. It is important that the Government machine is held to account effectively. The ombudsman is effectively the public voice to Parliament. A complainant needs the facts of a full complaint so that he can understand how to effectively make that complaint. Some of our members have had the investigations that have not been given the full facts of the case. The correspondence between the ombudsman and the bodies under jurisdiction have been kept secret in line with the ombudsman's act. The problem with the definition of secret is that it seems to be applied in many ways. The ombudsman has got a very tight grip on this. We need the definition to be properly defined, and we therefore are looking for a change in the act to give us that definition more accurately. The ombudsman has precluded many of our complainants. They have been trying to get the correspondence so that they can rebut the arguments that are put by the bodies under jurisdiction without knowing what the other side is saying. It is not like that. We do not have the advantages of a court of law where you have both sides of an argument put. We do not have that. It is possible to properly define private. The Welsh manages it by getting the complainants where there is information that is sensitive and needs to be kept away from the public. They ask them to sign a non-disclosure document. That way, the people who are involved in the complainants can defend themselves properly and see the facts that are put behind them. We need a transparent, wholly transparent system that we do not have. What we are looking for is all the evidence to be available to both sides so that when a decision is made by the ombudsman, they can understand the facts and time is taken to explain to the complainants when they have not been found for. We need understanding. Without the understanding, it causes people huge amounts of stress. We have members who are stressed and have great difficulty in doing this sort of thing. We are not heard and we are not given effective administrative justice. The ombudsman has been in power since 2002. Nobody has independently investigated any of the cases for their effectiveness and quality of the justice that he delivers or does not. We need real justice so that we can deliver social justice to the people of Scotland. Thank you for your evidence. I have two questions for you. What would the effect be if your petition was accepted and fooled by the Scottish Government? It would allow the justice to be delivered and it would allow the complainants to have that satisfaction. The Gibralty's ombudsman has a success rate or a satisfaction rate, which we do not know what the ombudsman's recent success rates are, but they are in the low 50s. The Gibralty's ombudsman achieves a satisfaction rate in excess of 95%. By the way that he investigates it, it is done in private, but they are given both sides of the argument. That way, the Gibralty's ombudsman only finds for 25% of his complainants, but yet has a 95% satisfaction rate. That is what we are looking for, to deliver effective justice. My final question is, what evidence do you have that change is required? We have 100 members who all agree with the statement that the ombudsman fails to adequately and effectively investigate. There is no easy recourse to justice. The only recourse they have is to judicial review. None of our members, and they don't get legal aid, they don't get any recourse. Effectively, that avenue is blocked, so there is no effective remedy. Do you have any evidence at worse, your membership? It is very difficult, because we are rather like the train timetable, not a very popular thing. The press is not desperately interested in this. We find each other, and it is extremely difficult to find evidence out with that, because we are a small membership of 100 people, but it is still 100 people who have sought us out. I have some sympathy with anything that is free, open and transparent, which has been evident from previous petitions. You are also asking whether you can be made aware of the content of any verbal communications. That is an extremely difficult thing to do, isn't it? It may be difficult, but I do not see why the notes of a conversation which you would have thought, if there was an operation that was like the Ombudsman, I presume will record telephone conversations, and some sort of praise of that would be relatively easily achieved with modern technology. I think that people put different interpretations on the stress of particular words, and indeed the interpretation of particular words. I wonder if I can talk about the process now. The SPSO Act 2002 was developed in 2002. Has there been any review of the process at all in the last 12 years? Not independently, I know. So there has been no need in your opinion, or is there a need for you? I think that there is considerable need for review. An organisation like the SPSO cannot go without some form of check or balance or review. The Ombudsman is very easy for him to say that everything is all right in the garden, but unless somebody goes in and inspects whether the weeds are growing or not, we need that reassurance. He has gained more and more importance within the Scottish Government machine, and I understand that he is being given more responsibility. We just need that confidence and reassurance that things are not being dealt with properly, and we have a membership that says that that is not the case. The SPSO is becoming increasingly important within the Scottish Government machine, and yet in our briefing it says that, in the exercise of the SPSO's statutory functions, the SPSO is not subject to the direction or control of any member of the Scottish Government or indeed the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. Who does that report to? That is the problem. He reports to nobody. He is entirely independent, but without some form of review, there is nobody there in place to review him. There is no audit for financial and effectiveness, but it is not actually looking at the operations. One of my overused analogies is that the SPSO is a beans factory. It produces—it has a wonderful machine that can take the beans in, it can cook them, it can can them, it can put them in. However, at the other end of it, there is no quality control. Nobody tastes the beans, and that is what we feel that is necessary. Is there some form of check and balance to know that he is doing the job? I am talking about checks and balances. You are asking for a free, independent, impartial and open review of complaints. How do you think that most complainants would feel if the guarantee of confidentiality was removed and that there might be some issues within a complaint that are not desirable or required to be made to the public? I do not think that the removal of confidentiality is necessary here. You can keep it in place. The Welsh one, they sign a non-disclosure agreement, so it does not need to be put in the public domain. If it was part of the situation where they were in breach of a non-confidentiality agreement, it would not be put into the public domain, but it would allow a proper investigation to be carried out because the complainant would have the same access to the facts as the ombudsman and does the body under jurisdiction. There is a transparent process. In the development of fairness, I can understand that, and I appreciate and agree with it. Is it possible that the SPSO could argue, through its frame of reference, that it wishes its deliberations or information to be confidential? For what reason? That is what we do not understand. We do not understand why there is any need for most of those things. I think that there is a reason. Is not it possible that that is what they would argue? I am sure that they will, but we do not understand it. If the ombudsman is meant to be impartial and fair and all the other things, and therefore transparent, we do not understand why he cannot be open with us. Let me give you a couple of questions on the efficacy of the SPSO. The complainant will be contacted within two weeks by the complainants of your who are dealing with the case. Does that happen? I am sure that it does happen, but it is going back to the beans factory. It moves one department to the other seamlessly. Unless the quality of the work that is being done by those reviewers, then you can have the most brilliant process in the world, but without review and without inclusion of something like ISO 9001, where there are external reviewers looking at not only the process by which it goes through, but the effectiveness of the decisions that are made by that. ISO 9001 has been started to be introduced into some of the government departments, which is something that we would welcome. On that, we talked about response within two weeks. There is also the advice that we have been given that they normally provide an update for the complainant in writing, and we will decide within a 10-week period, although it can be much shorter than that. The reason that I am asking about the efficiencies is what goes along with that, the quality of the people who are handling the complaints. How many people are involved with the SPSO? Is it just one? Or what is the organisation? In terms of constitution, a number of people who are handling complaints. From the Ombudsman's point of view, they have a whole process that I am sure the Ombudsman could answer. I am not really… In general, they get back to people within 10 weeks with a decision, do they? Yes, but you can deliver a can of beans in three minutes. If it is inedible, you might as well not have delivered that. The producer might argue that they are inedible. If he does not have a quality control department, how can he possibly… That is the question that I was asking about in terms of efficiency and therefore the quality of the reviewers. The whole concept of unconscious and competence comes into this point. If somebody does not understand, you do not know what you do not know. If you have a reviewer who is completely unconscious of a subject, one of the one, if they have no idea about a building and they are dealing with a complaint about buildings, they can produce a fantastic report that misses the point. You talked about quality control in your analogy of your bean factory, but there is a quality control, as you will know in the system, in that the local government regeneration committee takes evidence on a annual basis on the quality of the work that is being carried out. First of all, we are aware of that. Secondly, are you calling for a change in the legislation in which case our colleagues on that committee might be better placed to look at that in more detail? We need initially to get some change and clarification of this. We need to understand the whole complaint. If you go to a court of law, you hear both the case for the prosecution and the defence. We do not get to see the other side's information. We do not get a chance to rebut that. That is why we are looking for something to disclose the documents, but we are happy to sign a agreement of non-disclosure and with the penalties that would do that. We are looking for a change in the legislation. Secondly, have you or any of your colleagues attended the gallery when the local government regeneration committee was analysing the performance of the SPSO in its yearly meeting? Some have watched it on television, but the majority have watched it on television. In some you are looking for either a change in the procedure or a change in the legislation to allow you to have access to the documentation. Would it be useful if we referred the petition to the local government regeneration committee, which has a responsibility directly in that area? Yes, we are very happy to have that. We are always keen to get quality control from petitioners as well, so that is important to know that. Before I go to summation, can I just check whether my other two colleagues wish to ask any further points at this stage? Angus MacDonald? Yes, thanks, convener. I was just doing some short comments. I think that it is fair to say that we have had similar incidences highlighted to us that this committee has a lack of accountability of bodies with a perception that there is no proper checks and balances. It certainly defeats the purpose of the SPSO if it is not wholly transparent or at least if there is that perception. In the larger scale, perhaps we need to look at whether the monitoring by the local government and regeneration committee is robust enough, but that is maybe something that they could look at themselves. Just for some clarification, you stated that there has been no review of the process. Did you also state that there has been no independent review of any of the cases? The process has been reviewed. Jerry White reviewed the actual handling and wrote a report, the Ombusman went out of the border to get somebody who was independent, but he was specifically excluded from looking at case work. Again, we have somebody who is looking at a process. They have monitored the process, but at the end of the day it is about the justice that is delivered or not. That has never been done anywhere in Scotland. As far as you are aware, there is no process for inspecting previous cases. There has been no independent inquiry into the actual quality of the case work. What we are not asking for is to review the decisions of the Ombusman. It is purely to look in terms of an examiner of quality of decision not to change it. That has been led a lot. You cannot look at the Ombusman's decisions because he is independent. If you do not set out to change any of his decisions, then you are not interfering in any way in his process. You are merely checking that the man is doing the job that he has been asked to do. In the presentation of the petition under investigation procedure, we do in any case know from experience that the SPSO can inadvertently misrepresent details of the accusation. We also know from experience that the BUJ bodies under jurisdiction can provide false evidence, presenting second hand evidence from lower levels in the organisation. Where is your evidence for that? I would need to ask Dr Burton to answer that in a week. I think that that is essential because that is a very serious accusation. At the end of the day, it is about how we as complainants see it. It is without the evidence on the other side and decisions are the problem with the Ombusman. I can really talk from my own personal experience of the Ombusman's decisions that they are made sometimes without reason. Sometimes it is just written in my opinion this. It is not weighed in any way. When there are two competing facts, there is no attempt to say, Mr X said this and Mr Y said that and I come out with my favour Mr Y's argument. There is never any reason or very seldom any reason given that there is no weighing of evidence, there is no judgment. It is just in my opinion this is excellent. In my own case I got the world expert on the computer system versus another accountant. The Ombusman just wrote and said that in my opinion I favour this guy. There was no reason given why he was dismissing the world expert on this particular system. It is that degree of certainty. Thank you for that, unless my colleagues have any other questions to me now, which you may not come to summation before we have stopped taking questions from yourself and we are now looking at the next steps. I indicated earlier whether you would favour a referral to local government and regeneration and you did. My suggestion to my colleagues is that we refer this petition with all the evidence that we have taken to our colleagues in the local government who have a yearly responsibility on this particular area. Are colleagues agreeable to that suggestion? Can you just say that I have two concerns? I have just asked you a question about serious accusations and it appears that we do not have sufficient evidence base, but then of course that will happen if we have, as we have had with another situation with the GCR, we do not have openness and transparency. I do think that we should write the local government committee. I also think that it is time that we have a review of this service because if we seek openness and transparency and recognise the need for public participation in all aspects of our life, then there should be no hint of closed information, subject of course to the individuals involved who are looking for confidentiality. David Torrance, I am happy for you to go to local government and regeneration committee. I am just picking up on Chick Brody's point regarding a review of the service. I think that there is a lot of merit in that. I am not quite sure how we will go about requesting that or perhaps indicating to the Scottish Government that it might be a good idea, but if we are speaking to the Scottish Government from this committee, I think that we should also highlight the petitioner's comment regarding a brief amendment to the act to the effect that complainants should be allowed to see all exchanges between the SPSO and the bodies that they are complained about, albeit if it is redacted. That should be highlighted to the Scottish Government at the time. That is a good point. It is perfectly competent for us to refer the petition to the local government regeneration committee and, at the same time, to the Scottish Government with the comments that Angus MacDonald and others at Chick Brody have raised. It is perfectly competent to do if the committee is so minded. Is that agreed? That is the way forward. As you have picked up Mr Stewart, we are very keen to make sure that your petition is looked at very seriously, so we are referring to the local government and regeneration committee and, at the same time, we are asking the Scottish Government for its views. All the evidence that we have taken today and in written form will go to our colleagues at local government. You will be kept up to date with developments and probably the next step will be the clerk for the local government committee who will keep you up to date. I thank you for coming along and giving evidence to the committee. As you can see, we have taken on board your comments in a very serious fashion. Thank you very much for putting forward the petition. Perhaps you can thank the members of your association as well. I will suspend for two minutes until I am going to put Mr Stewart Blacker to leave. Thank you very much. Good morning, if I could just resume our committee. We are on agenda item 2, consideration of current petition. The next item of business is an evidence session with the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network sign as part of the committee's consideration of PE1463 by Llorian Cleaver on effective thyroid and adrenal testing diagnoses and treatment. Members have a note by the clerk and a submission from the petitioner. I can welcome our representatives from sign. We have John Cancella, who is the chair, Sara Twaddle, who is the director and Roberta James, who is the programme lead. I can also welcome Elaine Smith, who has had a long-standing interest in this subject. Thank you very much for coming along and helping the committee's consideration today. I invite Mr Cancella to make a brief opening statement of around two to three minutes, after which I will move to questions. Hello, my name is John Cancella. I am a professor of critical care in University of Glasgow, but I am the chairman of the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network. The Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network was set up in 1993. It was set up with a council of representatives of the college, their faculties and other interested bodies. That remains to this day that there is an eye chair for council, which is a decision-making body of sign guidelines. Sign guidelines became part of NHS Scotland in 2005 and were part of healthcare improvements Scotland. We produce, on the synthesis of the evidence, clinical guidelines for clinicians and patients based on an evaluation of the evidence. A committee guideline group is set up in response to a request for a guideline. That consists of clinicians, people who may not be clinicians, it might involve people like health economists, it will involve lay representatives and the guideline group over a period of two years effectively produces a comprehensive guideline regarding specific clinical questions. Clinical questions have to be pertinent to Scotland, there has to be a health need, there has to be some evidence for that and there has to be a reasonable expectation that a guideline will produce changes in healthcare and improve the health of the patient group involved. That is what sign does. I also want to say to my colleagues, please feel free to intervene at any time by catching my eye. I should probably just flag up to my committee colleagues that you won't necessarily be experts on the technicalities of the petition but you are here to talk about the sign process. If you happen to be an expert on the petition, you are all well and good but I am not necessarily assuming that you will be. Obviously, I do not know exactly all the details of your background. My first question is in terms of guideline development, which I am interested in. What factors are taken into consideration when you are looking at guideline development? As John Lennon said, we accept proposals and you can do that through our website. We accept proposals from healthcare professionals, we accept them from patient organisations, from patients themselves. We take those proposals into Sign Council. We have a scoping search done. We look at the high-level background evidence. Sign Council can then look at the topics and question, look at what kind of evidence there is to answer the questions that John Lennon outlined, the proposals that we need to fit. We have a process of prioritising topics that we think are suitable for a clinical guideline. If we think that the topics are unsuitable for a guideline, we have other avenues within healthcare improvement Scotland that we can ask colleagues to look at them if a standard or set of indicators or an evidence note or something else would be more suitable. We work within the bigger organisation with our colleagues. Once we have decided that the topic is suitable for a guideline, we use Sign Council to appoint a chair from somewhere in Scotland, a healthcare professional currently working in NHS Scotland. We go about forming a guideline development group, a multidisciplinary geographically representative group of people who can help to ask the pertinent clinical questions and help to look at the evidence that we find. We have a group within Sign. We have information specialists who will take the questions and look at published literature, and we critically appraise all the literature that we find and summarise it so that the guideline development group can look back and see if it answers the questions that they have asked. We then summarise the evidence and make recommendations if there is enough evidence and the evidence is pertinent to the population of Scotland. That is how we end up with a guideline. I said earlier that you would not necessarily be experts on the petition, so I will try to steer away from technical aspects of that, but if I am struggling, I am sure that Elaine Smith could help out. Have you been approached by the petitioners to develop guidelines in the area that they are concerned about? I spoke to the petitioner on the phone a while back and explained how we accepted proposals, but I have not seen a proposal yet. In theory, there is nothing that jumps out to you that would say that this could not be a potential guideline or area of work for sign. Elaine Smith? It is briefly on that point, convener. You mentioned the kinds of ways that you can look into this. Could the committee request be put forward to you? Absolutely. Anybody can make a request. That is a very useful point. I can first ask if any of my colleagues wish to make contributions. We will start with Chick Brody. In terms of looking at what we did, I think that you are very supportive of the petition. Is that our patient advocacy that claims that those with on-going symptoms often go on to be misdiagnosed? Can you tell me—may I ask—whether there would be any scope to develop guidelines for subsets or a specific subset of patients, i.e. those with on-going symptoms? In terms of how we develop guidelines, the crucial thing is that there is an evidence base under which to base recommendations. As Roberta described, we would undertake a systematic review of the evidence. If there was evidence that was pertinent to those subgroups and that could be included, it is essential that you cannot produce an evidence-based guideline without having that evidence base to base it upon. Has there been any other circumstances or have there been any other circumstances where subsets, as I just mentioned, in other diseases or illnesses have been looked at by sign? Absolutely. Almost all our guidelines would include the evidence that was relevant to subsets of patients. It is particularly a case now that we are increasingly looking at multi-morbidity as part of our guideline development process. Can I ask Sarah Toad a particular point? You talked about evidence. As you know, we have done a lot of work in this area. In fact, we had an open session with practitioners and the petitioners. Could evidence be concerns from patients that might not necessarily be accepted by medical practitioners? As part of our guideline development process, we actively seek and engage with patient groups to have patient information included, so that would be patient concerns. That is a qualitative type of research. We include that. When the guideline development groups are determining the recommendations made on the basis of that evidence, that would be actively reviewed as part of that process. Presumably, you would compare and contrast with your colleagues across not just Europe but the world. For example, the World Health Organization happens within the European Commission and so on. Is that an active part of your day-to-day job developing guidelines? We actively seek information that is in the public domain from across the world. Information that is from WHO and other organisations. If it is in the public domain and it is pertinent to the question, it would be considered. There may be elements—there are particular characteristics in Scotland, but I would assume that what we would select in day-to-day life for health of Scots will not be that different in comparison across the world. On that point, would the big issues around vitamin D deficiency, which also affects patients with thyroid problems, be something that would make this whole issue more pertinent to Scotland? That was one question. When you look at the Scoping Report of Healthcare Improvement Scotland, it was carried out for this committee. For example, in that Scoping Report, it talks about desiccated thyroid hormone, but it can be prescribed in the national health service prescription as a special product. GPs do not do that for various reasons. If sign guidelines may be looked into that, but 49 per cent of patients in a study preferred desiccated thyroid, and a lot of that was to do with weight. If they took weight on their own without tiredness and everything else, then that is a major problem in Scotland's weight issues. If they signed guidelines, where to allow GPs to perhaps think about prescribing desiccated thyroid on women, that might have a big effect on weight. There may be issues particularly to Scotland, but apart from that, healthcare has also devolved to Scotland in the first place. Those are two points, but my other point is back to what my colleague Chick Brody was asking me about. There are admittedly 15 per cent of patients with thyroid problems who are unwell and who do not. What are we doing about those 15 per cent? Is there an issue there as well for those people? It might be helpful if I went into a bit more detail about how the guideline is developed. I think that that would address all the questions that you are asking. Although we have a proposal, it will be a broad idea, a broad remit, of what a guideline should cover, and when we get the multidisciplinary group together with all the people involved, the healthcare professionals, the lay input and other professionals—the health economists, if you like—once we get all those people round the table, we then start asking the questions. Those are the kind of questions that people will bring up because when we have GPs and we have patients and we have people who are working at the co-face, if you like, they see the questions that they need answered. Those are the questions that will ultimately appear to be answered in the guideline. The flip side of that is, as Sarah said, if you ask those questions and you are not able to find any evidence to answer them, you are then not able to make a recommendation, and our recommendation would be that further research is needed in those areas. I think that that probably is something as well. We definitely need further research. I think that the committee knows the research that Lorraine Cleaver has been doing. Her self is quite intense. I think that the issue of further research is also a big issue. I am still on the evidence base. I think that with regard to the most recent submission from the petitioner, Lorraine Cleaver, which seeks to draw our attention to a perceived inadequate evidence base for the current approach to treating hypothyroidism, in which she mentions her recent submission, I urge the committee and Sine to take particular note of the funding of Healthcare Improvement Scotland's scoping report on hypothyroidism and the guidelines on the use of thyroid function tests that are based on generally poor quality, non-peer-reviewed evidence. As we know, Sine does not have any kind of guidelines for hypothyroidism. Instead, doctors are guided by the statement from the RCP, which recommends that patients with on-going symptoms should be investigated further. Will concerns about the evidence base for the standard approach to diagnosis and treatment prompt a review of the current approach? There is a difference between the evidence that is out there and the product that Sine produces. For clinical evidence from clinical trials investigations, research that is carried out in patients in clinical environment testing and comparing investigations or treatments is the clinical evidence that we then use to synthesise guidelines. The guideline itself is not effectively evidence, it is a synthesis of evidence and a summary and recommendations based on that evidence. We have a difficulty, but if in the larger world there is not good quality clinical studies, when we come to do a guideline, we are not in position to make high-quality recommendations on that. Can I bring in David Torrance and Annie Leane to me? Good morning, everyone. Could I ask a guideline development group? Could you give me more in-depth make-up of how it is made up and to what extent it is involved with patient opinion groups? If I think about, for instance, something like a stroke, if there is a guideline being developed on stroke, we would have stroke physicians, specialist nurses, we would maybe have clinical psychologists, neurologists, all of the people who would see a patient on their journey. We would then have our lay representatives, and we have had all of these different people in the past. They may be previous patients, carers or they may be representing chest heart and stroke or something like that. It is really trying to get a representative of everyone who would see the patient in their journey of care—GPs, pharmacists. In terms of the patient voice, if we find it difficult, so if it is a guideline that we are developing, we find that the patient group is difficult to reach, say, children with autism, we would then take further steps to do some focus groups or work with schools or work with patient organisations to get more of an opinion from the people, the patients and the carers. If the petitioners were unsuccessful in getting signed guidelines, are there any alternative routes that could go down? Within Healthcare Improvement Scotland, there are a number of evidence parts of the organisation that produce different types of recommendations for NHS Scotland. The committee has already seen some of the outputs in terms of work from the Scottish Health Technologies Group. We are also developing a number of approaches to developing consensus guidelines on consensus recommendations for NHS Scotland, where there is a sparse or absent evidence base. Instead of doing the systematic review of evidence that is signed on an ongoing basis, we will bring together a group of people with a similar sort of composition to that described by Roberta, who would be reaching a consensus of how to manage a condition. If you have not got any evidence on which to guide you, you can bring people together, representative of all the different groups, who work together. It is a scientific methodology that they use in order to derive a consensus for the management of conditions. That is a new type of work that we are just developing in the present. That is quite interesting, but back to the evidence. I am not quite clear, so would you call for evidence or would you specifically ask certain people to supply you with evidence? The reason that I ask that is that there is evidence abroad that is different to evidence in this country. There is some suggestion that we are working, although we have brilliant NHS, obviously, in much to be envied in many ways. However, we are working 40 years behind on thyroid issues. That is a particular problem, because it is a very much a woman's issue. There are gender issues in there, too. How would you gather the evidence to make a decision? Secondly, could you produce sign guidelines that actually put the patient first? One of the problems with thyroid testing is that the patient's signs and symptoms are ignored by many in the medical profession and they simply look at blood tests, which cannot always be relied upon. Not only that, the results of the blood tests are actually different in this country. Some of the results that you have in this country would be immediately put on replacement therapy if you were in America or even other parts of Europe—Cuba, for example. However, in this country, you would not be. There are a number of people who are, in fact, told by GPs that they are borderline, including a number of my relatives being told that they are borderline. They clearly have thyroid issues, their weight gain, difficulty conceiving, hair falling out, but they are getting no treatment. I am asking—I suppose back to the question—how the patient is presenting in this field is the most important thing. Dr Anthony Toft said that in some of the evidence that he has written up. In terms of the evidence, when we do a systematic review of the evidence, we take evidence from across the world. We do not request it. It is done in terms of searching of electronic databases, which medicine has many very high-quality covering evidence from across the world. The only restriction that we place on the evidence is that it is in the English language because the cost of translation of scientific evidence is phenomenal. In terms of having a patient-centred guideline—I hope that we always have patient-centred guidelines—that is why we have actively included patient representatives and lay persons on the guidelines right from the start. We considered an exemplar across the world in terms of patient involvement in guideline development. In part of the evidence that we have, there was a comment that the sign should take particular note of the finding of HIS. HIS's report on hypothyroidism, that the guidelines on the use of thyroid function tests are based on, and I quote, generally poor quality and non-pure review evidence. How sure can we be that the guidelines will be adequate? The inadequacy of guidelines, and you know better than I, could cause further harm to thyroid patients. Perhaps what auditing is going on, what checks and balances are built in, to make sure that the guidelines will be secure and will not cause further harm? Clearly, the sign has got an enviable reputation around the world for the high-quality guidelines. The pressure is always to produce guidelines that are reliable, and the evidence has weighed up in a number of ways, in a way that it was gathered in the scientific methodology and robustness of it. One of the issues, as you mentioned, was peer review, whether it is published in journals that have also peer reviewed the information before it is out there. Therefore, you end up with making guidelines on the basis of high-quality evidence, and the strength of the recommendation depends on the quality of the evidence that has been assessed. Therefore, if there is a danger of it, if the evidence is not of high quality, and if other people did the same investigations, you would not get the same answer. We are very keen not to produce guidelines that prove to be erroneous. Therefore, the guideline can only be written when you are confident that the question can be answered when there is sufficient robust evidence out there, otherwise you make mistakes. That is perhaps a reputational response. I understand the answer. I think that we are applying only to English-speaking specialists, and that, because of cost, we are not looking at what might be produced elsewhere because of translation costs. That seems to be an extremely dangerous situation to be in, where there might be perfectly explicable treatments from non-English-speaking countries. The majority of the language in which medicine is practising is English, and almost all of the leading journals in the world are in English. Many of the countries in Europe and around the rest of the world produce high-quality evidence that is produced in their journals in English, so there are very few sources of robust evidence that are not in English language and have not already been translated. I think that we could have continued this for some considerable time, but thank you very much today. We are now going to summation unless any of my colleagues have any urgent final questions that have not been covered. As you know, at the stage now, we have finished asking questions or taking questions. There is obviously a lot of information that we need to absorb. My suggestion to the committee is that we ask the clerk of our committee to go away and analyse the evidence that we have taken today and in the past to come back very quickly with a paper that we can look at next steps, because there is obviously a number of complex things that we need to look at. I think that today has been very useful and given us a really good insight into not just sign but other options that may be open to the petitioners. I certainly feel that that is a bit of a breakthrough for the petitioners and all the work that they have done. However, as always, I am open to suggestions and contributions from committee members. Chip Rowley. Sorry, I may have misunderstood what you said, but are we asking sign to go off and prepare draft guidelines? Is that what we are doing? We could ask the committee clerk to do an in-depth look at next options, but it is, of course, competent for us to refer this to sign now. We have heard from our witnesses that that is competent for this committee to do, and we can do both. We can both ask the clerk to do an in-depth analysis and refer this immediately to sign. You have heard my previous comments about pipelines and how long it takes things to be done, so I suggest that we do, but I suggest that we ask sign to produce guidelines now, notwithstanding the parallel running of an in-depth report by the quarter. Thank you for that. Thanks, convener. I would agree with those two actions. Given that this petition has been dragging on for some time and time is of the essence, we should immediately refer it to sign. It goes without saying that we will provide sign with all the evidence that we have taken, which you might not be party to in front of this particular meeting, but we have had lots of in-depth information, and we have had lots of written reports from across the world, indeed, that we would want to pass on to sign. David Torrance? I am happy to go along with both recommendations, convener. Thank you very much. As you can hear, we are actively dealing with this petition in that we will look for comprehensive support from our clerk on various options that are open to us, but immediately we are going to refer this to ourselves to analyse potential sign guidelines in the future, and we will give you all the information that we have had sight of. Thanks very much for coming along. It has been very informative, certainly to me, and I am sure to all the committee members the information that you have provided us with. Obviously, our aim is to make sure that we do as good a job as we can for the petitioners who have given us some harrowing stories of the difficulties that they have faced over many, many years. I can also thank Elaine Smith for again coming along and helping us to guide us today and dealing with this very tricky and involved petition. I am going to thank you finally for coming along and giving us evidence today. I do appreciate giving up your time. Thank you very much, and I will suspend the meeting for two minutes until our witnesses to change round. If we can restart our committee, we are on agenda item 3, consideration of a new petition. The next item of business is consideration of another new petition, and again, the committee will obtain evidence from the petitioner. The petition is PE1535 by Alexander Fraser on teaching sustainability and banning plastic bags. Members have a note by the clerk, the spice briefing and the petitioner. I welcome the petitioner. Thank you very much for coming along today. Can I invite Mr Fraser to speak for around five minutes, after which I will ask some questions and then I will pass over to my colleagues. I would like to begin today by thanking the convener and committee for inviting me here today to give evidence to my petition. The environment is the most precious thing we have. It is what supports us and gives us the ability to live, and yet it is under direct threat from us. Therefore, my petition is directly seeking to address the two simplest things we can do to help protect it, to educate the next generation on the environment, and to ban all single-use plastic bags. Therefore, in my opening statement, I will address separately the two things that my petition calls into question. The first part of my petition calls on the Scottish Government to make teaching sustainability in the environment mandatory in secondary schools. Currently, it is not required part of the curriculum to teach about the environment and sustainability. The decision on what to teach about this topic is left in the hands of local authorities and schools, and in my opinion, this must change as many school children go without teaching in this area as a result. Making the teaching of sustainability in the environment mandatory will help Scotland guarantee an overlooked right of children. Article 29, Party of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, states that education should include the development of respect for the natural environment. That means that all children should receive teaching on how to care for and protect the environment, something overlooked in many countries, including Scotland. The word environment in words that affect only apparent experiences and outcomes, SOC 4080, SOC 4090 and SOC 410A in the social studies part of the curriculum for excellence. For example, SOC 4080 states, I can discuss sustainability of key natural resources and analyse the possible implications for human activity. This experience and outcome is nonspecific and is often taught as how can we keep using oil for as long as possible, which is the complete opposite of what we must be doing to protect the environment. Another one, SOC 410A states, I can develop my understanding of the interaction between humans and the environment by describing and assessing the impact of human activity on an area. This is also nonspecific, and it's where you could teach children how they can help stop climate change. However, in my school, we decided to study the Transalaskan pipe climate instead, something that we in Scotland can't change. We should be teaching children things they can do on a day-to-day basis to protect the environment. We should be teaching them things such as walking instead of taking a car and maintaining good gardens to promote plant and wildlife diversity. This could be taught in relevant subjects such as geography or personal and social education. I believe that it should be taught as part of the broad general education at around fourth level so that children are mature enough to understand the issues being taught. The second part of my petition calls on the Scottish Government to ban all disposable plastic bags in supermarkets and shops. Currently, plastic bags take around 400 to 1,000 years to degrade and they are produced and used globally at a rate of £500 billion to £1 trillion a year. They are already banned in many countries throughout the developed world, such as Germany, Australia and, as recently as 30 September, California joined a line of other US states in banning plastic bags. They are even banned in some of the poorest developing nations in the world, such as Somalia, Botswana and Uganda. Countries that have to deal with famine, drought and disease took the time to ban plastic bags. It is no wonder when we examine their environmental impact. Worldwide, they kill nearly 100,000 turtles and other marine wildlife every year because they are mistaken for food and it is worse when they begin to break down and all their toxins are released into the soil and little parts that tear off in the wind are swallowed by other wildlife, ranging from birds to hedgehogs. The plastic bags that we use here do not just affect us in Scotland but everywhere. Thanks to the wind, plastic bags end up all over the planet. This is no more visible than the Great Pacific Garbage Patch where rubbish, a lot of which is plastic bags, have ended up in an area of 700,000 kilometres squared, the size of Texas. The Scottish Government is attempting to take action but their actions do not go far enough. The 5p mandatory charge on carrier bags was a step in the right direction but it is by no means the final step. Recent data has shown that supermarkets have seen a reduction in plastic bags used by around 80% to 90% since the legislation came into effect. If nine-tenths of the population can ditch their plastic bags in a matter of weeks, why can't the rest? When I started this petition three months ago after a nudge from one of my subjects at school, I never thought that it would get this far or get as much support as it has. From conversations that I have had with teachers, friends and families, I have heard one consistent message that there is an appetite to protect the environment and for Scotland to set an example to the rest of the world doing it. I believe that the two points outlined in my petition can set us on that path and help protect the environment. Thank you very much for your very articulate evidence that you have given today. You are possibly the youngest petitioner that we have had in the past few years, so congratulations for coming along today. You have probably touched in your answer to my first question, which was that the Scottish Government policy of 5p has altered the use of plastic bags. Does that fully satisfy your petition in terms of the plastic bag element, or do you think that there is still some way to go yet? I do not think that it fully satisfies my petition. Ultimately, my end goal would be to see no more plastic bag use. One point that I would add to what I mentioned in my statement is that just because there is a 5p mandatory charge and it may be reducing them, I personally have not seen any hard evidence to suggest that charging for the bags is going to reduce their environmental impact. To my knowledge, plastic bags are still going to be produced, they are still going to end up getting left on the street and they are still going to harm wildlife and the environment. Thank you for that. The second element of your petition was about the teaching of sustainability in schools. We have had another number of petitions about having wider laid-down curriculum aspects across Scotland. Have you done any research for other schools and other local authorities across Scotland to find out whether they are teaching more in-depth work on sustainability? I do not have any research on other schools across Scotland. I can only speak for my own school. My own school is fairly good with the environment. We are a very active member of the equal schools. I would say that because it is not mandatory, I have heard from many teachers that there are schools throughout the country who do not see it as vital an issue as teaching maths or English or a language, for example, and therefore said it aside and do not give it much time. The experiences and outcomes that I mentioned in my opening statement, I cannot remember spending any more than two weeks on them in second year. That was practically the entirety of our teaching on the environment for that year. I thank you for coming along today. You may be the youngest, but you are certainly one of the more articulate that we have had in front of us. I plan to bring forward a member's bill on litter when I entered Parliament. That was overtaken by the Government's action on a litter programme. I do not know how successful that has been, but is 5p enough of a charge to mitigate the use of carrier bags? Personally, I would say no. In my opinion, people who are just going into a shop maybe in the evening or in the morning to grab a pint of milk or something for their dinner, and they are only spending £5, they are not going to think twice about leaving the house for 5p. They are not going to get in their car and all of a sudden think, oh, I have left my reusable bag in the house, I am going to nip in and get it. They are just going to pay the 5p. Personally, I would be looking at something more substantial, still going to environment charges to help to clean up plastic bags to help the environment. Maybe something around 20p, I think. Anything between 10p and 20p is going to make people think twice, I think. That is what you are more looking at. I am not sure that 5p is quite enough to change people's attitudes straight away. Just on the same subject, there is another route that we could go down, and I am not sure what the cost is, but the biodegradability of bags is really not, as far as I am aware, entered the spectrum of the argument about plastic inverted common bags. Are you aware of any conversations, reports, etc that have taken that into consideration? No, I think that that is one alley that we could go down in terms of mitigating the use and harm of plastic bags and other plastic products. I do not think at the moment that there is a completely biodegradable bag that works fast, so it can be seen on the street one day, and then by the next week it is just faded into the soil. Anything that we do have, such as compost bags, is not strong enough to carry the heavy goods items that you would be buying in shops. I think that there would need to be a lot of research and a lot of scientific work done to try to come up with a strong plastic bag that biodegrades quickly if that was a route that we wanted to go down, but it would be costly and it would need to be able to do the job. It is not just plastic bags, is it? We know the problem with plastic bags, but packaging of all sorts can impact the environment. Why have you just focused on plastic bags? Possibly they are the biggest menace. You are more likely to see on the street other than cans of beer on a Saturday night or something like that. They are something that you would see more often than the packaging that you have bought your meeting. If you are buying food products at the shop and you are taking them home to cook or to have, in your home you are not going to want to litter it in your home and you are going to put them in the bin. Whereas plastic bags, they are more likely to end up on the street and end up in rubbish, because they can contain a lot of other plastics. I agree with you, to some extent, but they do not have the prorogative of littering all the streets. They are also outside takeaway shops and other shops, packaging that could be construed to impact the environment. One last question. In terms of the curriculum, I think that it is right that there are basics within the curriculum that teachers are trained in and we need to secure for economic sustainability. The national planning framework has a clear indicator of environment sustainability. How aware do you think that the teaching profession is? I will put you on the spot, because I know that you are at one school, so it does not just include your school. How aware do you think that the teaching profession is of this as an important topic? I think that they are aware. I definitely think that they are aware, given everything that we see in the news on global warming and climate change. I do think that they are aware of the issues, but I do not think that they feel as obliged to teach it as much as they would do other subjects. I thank you for that. I thank you. I thank you, convener, and I thank you for the outset that your petition is commendable and clearly well researched. However, as I understand it, sustainable and environmental issues are included in the curriculum for excellence through the guidance, experiences and outcomes, at least from preschool to S3. As far as I know, although I stand to be corrected, only religious education is mandatory. I was just wondering, have you taken this to your own local education authority, and has it been raised with the education committee? I haven't, no. You haven't? Would you consider doing that when you go back? I think that it is something that I would consider. If I can just add the point that speaking from my own school and from many other schools and nurseries that I know of, they do try to make an effort with extracurricular clubs like the Equal Schools movement, but speaking from my work over the past four years in our Equal Schools movement, there is only so much that we can do. I mean, we are a group of about 30 trying to teach sustainability and the environment to a school of 1,400 pupils. It is just not physically possible for us. Like religion, it needs to be taught much stronger in the curriculum. As you say, there is only so much that some individuals can do. However, it might be an idea if teachers took a leaf out of the Government's book, where it is working towards a policy that all ministers are climate change ministers no matter what their portfolio is. Extending that to the teachers would suggest that all teachers should be climate change teachers as well, whether they are covering English or maths, et cetera. That is clearly a way forward that should be considered. That is a way forward that should be considered. That would be good to so that all teachers have the knowledge and if they feel that they can, they can even link it into their subject as well. Thank you for that. Any other members wish to contribute? We are now at the stage of summation before we look at them. David Torrance. Thank you, convener. Good morning, Alexander. Your petition has been well presented. Going back to the teaching in schools, how much there are so many different, just in my own area, so many different voluntary groups out there or organisations who come into high schools play a huge active role. How important do you feel that is for education systems to give them easier access into schools to take part in the curriculum of excellence? I think that that is a huge part. I think that in our equal schools group, in our school, we try to get as many environmental groups in as possible. I do not know how widespread that is across all schools. I think that it does need to be made easier. Again, like my point earlier, there is only so much that these expert groups can do. There are only so many classes and people that they can teach in a day. They are not there for a whole year. They are there in different schools across the day. There are only so many people who can speak to them and spread their knowledge. They are experts in the field, so they probably know more and can get better information out than teachers could. That is something that could need to change, like Scottish Government ministers, all becoming climate change ministers. Just one other question, Alexander. Going back to plastic bags issue, in all the recent beach cleans and things that I have done, the two highest ones are polystyrene and plastic bags. Would it be acceptable to replace plastic bags with paper bags and the packaging and a lot of the goods that we receive with cardboard? Would it make a huge difference? I am not sure how big of a difference it would make. Certainly from a disposal point of view, it is much easier to recycle. The problem that you would have would be making sure that people did recycle it. If you were to make it all paper and all cardboard, that would be good, but there is then no concrete way that you can say that they will be recycled and disposed of responsibly. You end up in the same place as the carrier bags, where instead of plastic on your beaches, you could have cardboard and paper on your beaches. Can I just come in, Alexander? A lot of the kills that we are now are promoting recycling. You have different types of bins. I think that in five we have now five, if I am correct, and our recycling rates have gone up to 70-75 per cent. Things like cardboard and paper are very easy to put when in a bin that is designated for it. Do you not think that would help the issue? I think that it would help the issue. People would feel that it would become easier for them to dispose of responsibly. Maybe they would think that, with a plastic bag, they would think that they could leave it in a litter bin where it would end up in landfill and pollute the environment, or just leave it on my street where it would pollute the environment. The cardboard and paper proposal that you are mentioning is what you would have. It would give people two options that were one that was a better option, where they can recycle it and have it not harm the environment, or they can still drop it and have it harm the environment. I think that that is a good way forward, and it gives people better options. Whether it solves the problem or not, I do not know. I wish to be in conflict with my colleague on the rights. Surely, as a keen environmentalist, which she obviously is, and also very knowledgeable about it, we have come to an argument about trees versus oil, haven't we? Why would you want paper and cardboard and destroy the environments and the contribution that trees make to the environment? I think that is the straight point. You would have not been cutting down a lot more trees if you were to replace plastic with paper and cardboard. As recyclable as they are, you are all of a sudden saving one resource to completely drain the other when deforestation is already as bad as it is. Are there any conflict in the committee on this one? Are the committee concluded questions? We are now concluding our questioning, and we are now at the summation where we look at the next steps. I think that this has been an excellent petition. Again, I would praise you for your contribution today. It is not easy coming for committees as we have all been the other side of the committees, and they are not sometimes very pleasant. There are really two issues here. The first is the issue on plastic bags. It seems to me sensible that we do right to the Scottish Government because clearly they have a key role here. I think that organisations such as Zero Waste Scotland and the Scottish Retail consortium will have sensible things to say on it. If the committee agreeable would like to write to them and we can discuss this when we get the information back at a future meeting, the clerks will keep you up to date of how the petition is going. On the issue of sustainability, it would make sense to write to the Scottish Government to ask an update on the work of the learning for sustainability implementation group. It is also useful to write to some headteacher organisations to get their views. To check whether the committee is agreeable to use course action, we are taking an enthusiastic interest in your petition. We will seek all those groups and we will discuss them at a later date once we have the information back and keep you up to date. I thank you again for coming along and giving us excellent contribution. I will suspend for one minute to let Alexander Leif. Thank you very much. If I could just resume our committee, we are on agenda item 4, consideration of current petitions. The next item is consideration of further seven current petitions. The first one is PE1477 by Jamie Ray on behalf of the throat cancer foundation on agenda neutral HPV vaccination. Members have a note by the clerk, and the JCVI interim statement could ask Angus Macdonald for his contributions. Yes, thanks, convener. Certainly it should be welcomed at the JCVI interim report recommends the targeted extension of the HPV vaccine to the MSM group aged 16 to 40, who are attending genital urinary medicine and HIV clinics in the UK. However, it is disappointing that there has been no discussion about the significant added value of vaccination before initial HPV infection. It has to be highlighted that there is increasing support for vaccinating boys from a very wide range of public health patients and other organisations, including Professor Heather Cubie of Edinburgh University and Professor Margaret Stanley of Cambridge University. Clearly, we have to await the formal guidance from the JCVI. However, it would be good if Scotland could lead the way on introducing an HPV immunisation programme, which includes adolescent boys as well as girls. Thank you very much for that. Would other members wish to come to me? In general, I agree with Angus Macdonald. However, I have a note that is necessarily related to the situation in which girls are being vaccinated in the 11 to 15-year-old—I cannot remember what it is for—and there have been certain severe consequences. I cannot remember what it is for, but I just cannot pronounce it. This concerns me, because we do not have guidelines on what the consequences of these injections may have on individuals and what the authorisation process is at that age skill. In the particular case, I am a constituency case that I have, it is a concern that even three, five or ten girls can be impacted by injections. I just want to be extremely careful that the appropriate authorisation is there and the appropriate checks are there to make sure that there is no consequential damage to girls or boys. I will put you along with both statements. I point out to Mr Brodie that vaccination of adolescent males is already under way in Australia and the United States. Presumably, a number of checks have been made there. There has been a suggestion that we seek the petitioner's view on the JCVI's interim statement and consider it again once we have got the information back. Does that tie in with your recommendation, Mr Whedon? Yes, I am content with that. David Hards? I am content with that. I am content with that. Thank you very much. We are going to seek the petitioner's view on the interim statement and consider the petition again in the near future, as soon as we get the information back. The next petition is PE1500 by Stuart Hauston, OBE, on behalf of RSPB Scotland on the Golden Eagle as a national bird of Scotland. Members have a note by the clerk and submissions. This is quite a significant petition in that was, as the name suggests, our PE1500. There has obviously been a bit of debate about national symbols. There is one view that we seek time to debate this in the chamber in our plenary session. Obviously, there are time constraints on that in that we cannot have one. Obviously, every week we would wish one. Certainly, in the past, having plenaries has been very effective. Members may have different views, because clearly we could ask individual members to pursue a motion, which could then be debated and discussed. Or we could ask RSPB to contact Visit Scotland, business leaders and SVO to look at the wider interests and support for the designation of national symbols. I would really just like to seek the views of the committee on the various steps. I am somewhat amused this week. I bought one of those stone pheasants. It is beautiful that my granddaughter calls Geoffrey. I do not know why it is Geoffrey, but Geoffrey is the pheasant. I was surprised to get a photograph from my good lady saying, look at this, and there is a lady pheasant. She could not understand why she was getting no reaction, but I am so tempted to say that she could move to the pheasant. I do believe that he might be worthwhile debating this and listening to a rerun of Jackson Carlaw's statements. Thanks, Mr Rowdy. I was really wondering what that story was going about. I stopped in time. I am not sure if I debated at this point in time. It is helpful, but if it is the will of the committee, then, fair enough, I would certainly be lost to close the petition given the importance of it. If a debate would help to move it on, I would be happy to go with that. Was the committee's permission then to seek a bid at the convener's group or via the clerk to have a future plenary session so that we can debate that in more detail? I move to the next petition, which is PE1513 by Ron Park. On equal rights for unmarried fathers and PE1528 by John Ronald on child court reform, members have a note by the clerk and submissions. Any votes, first of all, from members before we look at next steps? This is a very tenuous issue. I have a couple of situations where fathers are being denied access to their children. I would really like to see this pursued to a conclusion. I am a number of constituents who have been denied access to their children, so I would like to take this all the way. I think that it is fair to say that this is an extremely difficult issue, and I think that we took some very good evidence. Obviously, it is very difficult for families in those circumstances. There is some suggestion that, because of the courts reform Scotland bill, it made provision for specialist family law sheriffs that there may be an argument on that basis for closing the petitions on the basis that, hopefully, there is going to be some change ahead because of the changes that are identified in the legislation. If members are not happy with that, then we need to think of another practical next step to see how we can manage both those current petitions. The courts reform Scotland bill is going through Parliament as we speak, and it has just been passed. I am not sure when the actual implementation date is, but I think that it is got royal scent, so it will just be a case of when the bill is implemented. I think that there are some positive changes on the horizon. One thing that we can do, obviously, is that, first of all, it is possible that, if we close the petition, a further petition could be opened after 12 months, and we can analyse how this new legislation is working. David Torrance? I am still happy to continue. I genuinely like to see when it is going to come into position how effective it will be. That is what I was just going to suggest. If members clearly feel that this is important not to close it, would members then wish to continue the two petitions until the bill is enacted and we can see how it works in practice? To take evidence, yes. Perhaps we can come back in a six-month period. I think that we are talking about both P.E.1513 and P.E.1528. Is that agreeable that we continue this and look at it in light of the working of the Corsifarm Scotland Act as it now is? The next petition is by John Ronald. That is P.E.1529 on the enforcement of child court orders. There are a number of things that we could do, obviously. We could request further information, or we could close the petition on the basis that the sponsors received by the committee and the Scottish Government are not supportive of what the petitioner seeks, which is the establishment of a new Government agency to oversee enforcement. Again, I think that this is a very good petition. We found this on many occasions so that a good petition goes up and the Government has made it quite clear that it is not going to enact it. Then we have a difficulty of to then go with the petition. Can I seek the views of the committee? Again, as I understand it, part of the bill is going through. On the basis of what we have done with P.E.1528 and P.E.1531, unless the advice is to the contrary strongly, we are waiting until it is enacted. On the basis of what we have dealt with previously, P.E.1513 and P.E.1528, that is a separate petition, P.E.1529. That was the enforcement of child court orders. I am not sure that the courts reform Scotland Act would have any bearing on that particular petition. David Torrance? Can we ask for further information on it? I mean, we could, if it is helpful, we could ask Spice to double check that there is no impact on the new legislation with what? I am being advised that there is no impact on the courts reform Scotland Act in this. Thanks, Mdall. Yeah, I think that if the new act has no bearing on this petition then we have no option. But to close it, given that the Scottish Government is not supportive. Are you agreeable, Chip Rowney? Yeah. So I think that this was a very good petition and it is regrettable that I cannot see any further work that we can do in this petition, but could I thank the petitioner for the work that is being carried out? On the basis that the Scottish Government is not supportive of its aims, we have no choice but to close the petition. The next petition is PE1524 by James Ffarlane on free wi-fi in Scottish Public Buildings. Members are note by the clerk and the submissions. Given that the Scottish Government has responded positively to the concept of developing national standards of guidance, the committee will wish to press the Government to ask whether it will undertake the work. Therefore, I would suggest that we write to the Scottish Government again because I think that we are pushing an open door that is very supportive for the terms of the petition. Thank you for that. The final current petition today is PE1525 by Catherine Fraser on access to justice. Members are note by the clerk and the submissions. As I have flagged up before, members will know that Catherine Fraser is a constituent of mine and has approached me in advance of this appearing. I was interested in the Scottish Human Rights Commission analysis of this petition where it said in a summarised review that denial of legal aid deprives the applicant to present a case fairly and they call it an unacceptable inequality of arms. They feel that this may be a violation of article 6 of the European Charter of Human Rights. You will also note that I think that legal aid has only been awarded four times since 2007 and there is obviously internal Scottish criteria for this, which was developed following a test case. Members will know that I have an element of interest in this, but it might be useful to invite the new cabinet secretary for justice to come along and have a discussion about it, because I think that it is much wider than access to legal aid for defamation. There is a much wider issue about access to legal aid generally, and I think that the law society reflected that in its submission. Again, it is important to think that the committee has their views well. I am not sure that bringing the new justice secretary along will necessarily present a change of view. We had a fairly lengthy discussion about this, but I am not sure where we are going to go with this in terms of it. I mean, I know that we had the SHRC view, but I am not sure where this is going to go. One option, because I am clearly trying to work on a basis of consensus, and members will know that because I have had a particular interest, I have probably a slight different view on this. One option is to refer it to the justice committee, who will obviously be looking at this matter in due course and to prevent all the evidence that you know to them. Would that be acceptable? Obviously, we cannot dictate their programme, so I cannot promise the committee that this is an act of consideration in the work programme and merely think that they are the committee that has responsibility for that. I would be happy to go with that recommendation on the condition that it is not parked by the other committee. Perhaps we could defer a decision on this until we have some discussion with the Clarence for justice. I think that that is perfectly acceptable if the committee would rather get some further information. We are going to defer consideration of P1525 until the Clarence for justice discussion. We cannot obviously dictate what another committee does, but we will come back with further information at a future meeting. That is agreeable. I think that that concludes all our current petitions. If I can formally close the meeting and if the committee can just stay behind for a second, I have a couple of items that I just wish to discuss.