 I can call meeting Torda, and can I welcome you to this, the third meeting of the Public Petitions Committee in 2017. Can I remind members and others in the room to switch phones and other devices to silence? We can then move to item 1 on the agenda, which is the decision on taking business in private. It's proposed that we take item 4, consideration of a paper in private. Is that agreed? Thank you. We can now move to agenda item 2 on current petitions and we're taking evidence on petition 1319, improving youth football in Scotland. The first petition will be considered today as an improving youth football in Scotland. We will take evidence on this petition from Tam Bailey, Children and Young People's Commissioner in Scotland. Members have background papers including previous submissions from the commissioner. Can I welcome Tam Bailey to the meeting? To meet the most of our time this morning, we'll just move straight to questions. I'm aware that you were already giving evidence yesterday to the health and wellbeing committee on related issues around football. Thank you for hearing me today because it was unavoidable missing the original session in December. We absolutely understood the reasons for that, and I very much appreciate your being here. Can I maybe start off? As a means of starting, I noticed the view that you reached in your submission of 26th of July last year in which you set out your overall impression as being at the SFA and SPFL. I've gone as far as I'm prepared to be able to do within their governing structures and that, for real change to occur, external regulation has to be imposed. Will you comment on this and whether there's anything that you would now add to that overall impression? I think that I would reinforce that overall impression. I'll just go back a little. I came in at this as an issue in 2010 when the Petitions Committee contacted me to see whether the issues that were raised by the petition had any issues with children's rights. At that time, the issue was around children not being allowed to play for their school football team. Was this a breach of their rights? It was a fairly straightforward answer, yes, it was. Since then, the petition and the matters that were covered by the petition have covered many areas, in fact, some of which were covered by the committee. I've been dealing with it over that period of time. The issues that have come are about the compensation scheme, which is a well-meaning scheme to try and compensate clubs for time that they've spent training children. There's an issue with 15-year-olds being held to three-year contracts. There's an issue now about minimum wage and who knew what, when, regard to that. For me, there's also an issue about football agents. There has been some positive movement, and I've given the SFA and the SPFL credit where I think that that is due, so they have now moved on children being allowed to play for the football teams unreservedly. It took six years, because it was only last year, that they agreed to have that written in to the guidance that's given to clubs. That gives you an idea of how torturous this process has been to try and address the issues. They have appointed a wellbeing and protection officer and a children's rights officer within the SFA, and I welcome that. They've initiated a complaints process in 2015, and that was one of the recommendations from my report. Having said that, they gave evidence earlier this week, the SFA, through Andrew McKinley, that that hasn't been used since it was set up. We've had the success in terms of they're now allowed to play for the school football team, but they remain outstanding matters, and these are the ones that I really want to address today, which is a compensation scheme, 15-year-olds and three-year contracts, minimum wage and football agents involvement with children. I think that we have a number of questions, but we'll make sure that if we haven't got to the questions that you particularly want to make a comment on, and I'll give you an opportunity at the end probably to sum up on those questions. Can I maybe just ask, in relation to the question of external regulation, have you had any substantial conversations with the Scottish Government about their role in relation to what seems to be—if you've got to the end of your position with self-regulation, has there been a discussion about what the then alternatives would be? I've had some discussion with the Scottish Government, and I have to say the thinking is at a very early stage. My message to the Government is that they're going to have to get involved in some shape or form, because my estimation and my experience of having dealings with SFA and SPFL is that they've got structures that will not allow or they're not willing to make the necessary changes that have to happen. That's why I think they are intransigent on some of these other matters. The factor that contaminates it continually, and it was obvious in the evidence that was given in the last time, is money. To my mind, when money comes into the equation, then the best interests of children tend to be less of a central focus. That's been my major concern, to keep the focus on the best interests of children and young people who are involved in the game. When money becomes part of the considerations, as it was made quite clear in the evidence in the last time, then the best interests of children tend to take second place. There's an issue about them regarding young people as an asset to their clubs, which is part of their problem. Do you think that the other issue is the willingness of young people and their parents to almost deny themselves their own rights because of the nature of football, which might be unique? Football is a national sport. When we conducted interviews with children, it's obvious that they love it. They're passionate about it, and they're passionate about realising their dreams. Those clubs have access to those dreams in the palm of their hands. I think that that leaves those young people vulnerable to exploitation, vulnerable to the power imbalances, the enormous power imbalances between the children in one hand and the clubs in the other. Some of the things that we have been proposing is to try and redress some of that power imbalance. In fact, it was that whole area that the Health and Sport Committee wanted to concentrate on about the impact that that has on children who are in and around the clubs, who are associated with the clubs. Unfortunately, some of the evidence is that people who choose to try and sexually abuse children are the very circumstances that they'll look for—power imbalances, unfettered access to children and young people. We know not just from football, but from countless other areas that those are the kind of circumstances that people who have ill intent on their children will seek to exploit. I wanted to ask you about the registration period for players in the 15 to 17-year-old age group, which has been flagged up as an issue of concern by yourself. The SFA and the SPFL have noted some concerns about the impact on players in having shorter registration periods for players in the age group. Those include the potential negative impact on players' wellbeing if they were to move clubs in this period, and a second is the question of a possible knock-on effect of top talent being taken by clubs within the English Premier League. Can you expand on your views on that issue? That is tied in to the whole way that the compensation scheme is administered. As soon as a child signs with a club, there's a price in their head because that price is the cost of the compensation to another club to release that child to play for them, and it mounts. To me, it gets in the way of decisions in terms of the best interests of children, but it's particularly pernicious for 15-year-olds because at age 15 the clubs then use those excuses to say, we are protecting children from the rich clubs from down south to uproot the family, or they say that we can't predict that talent will always blossom by the age of 15, so we will hold on to that child so that we can reap some reward from our investment. Those are the words that are continually used. Mr Doncaster and Zevins previously said time and time again that, in their view, the balance was just about right. The balance between the best interests of the child and the incentivisation for the clubs to invest. I don't think that's the case at all. As far as I can see, all of the power is with the clubs and very little with children and young people. I've got contact recently from parents of children who are caught in this bind, who are held on at age 15, and they don't know what to do, because if they raise a concern with the club, that may jeopardise their career prospects, and they don't want to do that. In fact, there's a fear factor in children being able to reasonably raise complaints, especially when the odds are so heavily stacked in favour of the clubs and not of the children. I take a real issue when I hear that this balance has been struck and it's just the right balance. It is. It's the right balance in favour of the clubs, not of the children. Do you think that the issue is getting worse, or has it always been at the same level in terms of the numbers of children that are being held back? I can't say. What I can say is that the reasons for it coming from the SPFL is that, if you dismantle it, the whole thing will collapse about us. In fact, when I asked under evidence, they said that they wouldn't change it at all. That's the inflexibility of the positioning of the clubs. They are not interested in changing it, and that has proven to be one of the main areas of not being able to seek any movement on. I don't know any other situation where you can hold a child aged 15 for three years against her will. It just begs us to believe. Maurice Cawritch, you might pursue the question of compensation. Good morning, Mr Bailey. Turning to the issue of compensation, the Scottish Schools Football Association commented recently that, with the re-investment of costs remaining, there are a number of risks. Those include a child being regarded as a commodity, the implication of a child being owned by a club and the risk of such payments being used as a leverage. Is that a risk that you recognise and share, considering the comments that you have just made? Given the operation of the compensation scheme, I would describe it as a price on a child's head. In fact, Fraser Wishart, when he gave evidence in 22nd, described the situation of that being the case up to the age of 23, where that has to be dealt with somehow. The triggering of the payments in one of my communications, I recommend that the payments are not triggered until the signing of a professional contract. However, I am mindful of people who are within the game who have said that there must be a better way of doing this. That is what we said in evidence to you, and I believe that. However, I think that it needs people within the game to come up with alternative. However, as it sits just now, it works against the best interests of children. It does not really take the interest of children at heart. No, not at all. Staying with compensation in previous evidence, we have heard that having a system of compensation is a FIFA requirement. However, as you know, suggestions have been made about possible alternatives to the current system, including that compensation should only be payable when a young player first signs a professional contract. Those discussions are taking place against the backdrop of the project brave initiative, which, among other things, would involve a reduction of the number of players in the academy system. Have you been involved in any discussions about project brave and the opportunities that it could present to address the issues under the compensation system? Not directly, although I welcome the intention of project brave because we have got something like 3,200 children who are part of the academy system in a population of 5.6 million. Germany, with a similar system and a population of over 70 million, has got 4,500. There is something not right there in terms of the number of youngsters that we include in that. What they are doing is building up false expectations that they will become professional football players. The purpose of it is to allow the clubs to scoop up as many youngsters as possible to be part of that in the hope that that spreads the net of a valuable nugget being realised and that the club benefits from that. That is my interpretation of it. I welcome the narrowing down of the number of young people that we would see as being part of that. How quickly will it be implemented? I do not know. That was certainly a point that was raised in previous evidence sessions. Good morning, Mr Bailey. I think that you fairly alluded to quite a lot of the points that I will be fairly passionate about. In youth sport, for me, the first rule is to ensure the welfare of the child. Ensure that the child can enjoy playing sport and have a long-term relationship with sport. That is based on what we would all like to see happen. I am presuming from your evidence so far that you would suggest that the current system gets in the way of a block to that sort of ethos. Just to redress us, there are thousands of people in football who are there for very good reason and who do have the best interests of children at heart. The way that the system is set up creates these power imbalances, which, when things are not working, there is no way to sort it. The person who suffers as a result, in my mind, is the children involved. I do not think that it is beyond the ken or beyond the capability of our clubs to organise it in a different way so that, in fact, it was not stacked so heavily in favour of the clubs. One of the things that is raised, obviously, is the fact that if we dismantle the system or change the system, that would leave our country's system open to plunder from south of the border. What is the reality? If our kids were not held to a three-year contract, in your view, what would actually happen? I think that you would have to look at that through the lens, not of what would happen to the football clubs but what would happen to the children. The children would have the opportunity to move clubs. Even now there are strictures about whether they can move from one academy club to the other, where there is no agreement between those clubs. They made quite a big thing of changing the rules that children could walk away from club academy and become part of the grassroots youth football. That is not freedom of movement, as I would recognise it. I think that you have to start with what is in the best interests of the children. Our clubs, in any case, live next door to very rich neighbours. At some point, that dynamic will kick in. I guess what I am getting at here is, are we just shunting the problem south of the border? I was going to come on to the FA, because today in Parliament there is a debate on a vote of no confidence in the FA. There are very similar issues in relation to the administration and the structures and governance within the FA, as I think that we have within Scottish football. I am pleased that the Parliament has taken a keen interest. It is a select committee who is looking at it. There is exactly the same kind of dynamic in England as we are experiencing in Scotland, and they might well be fearful of the rich clubs from elsewhere. It is a bigger issue than just Scotland. Thanks very much, Maurice Corry. I would like to ask a fairly general question about the welfare consideration in respect of children and young people playing football in the club academy Scotland structure. A number of suggestions have been made about welfare when it comes to playing for school teams, or the length of registration period for players aged 15 to 17. In your submission to the Health and Sport Committee, you commented on power imbalances in the current youth football system. What would a balanced system look like in terms of welfare considering what we have been discussing? I would remove the capacity of clubs to hold on to youngsters for three years at age 15 for a start. I welcome the appointment of the wellbeing and protection officers and the children's rights officers in the clubs. I have re-issued the need to comply with procedures, but doing that needs more than that. It needs constant monitoring. When we come on to some of the other matters, my experience of the authorities is that they take rather a light touch to the monitoring of the behaviour of the clubs. I would like to see that over mapped the procedures to have very strong monitoring and implementation. I think that that will need more than what they have done just now, but they are moving in the right direction. I will give them credit for that. How long has this been going on for? I have been involved in this since 2010, when the petition was first raised. It was later on in that year, and then we gave evidence in 2011. That is why I gave the example of that it took six years to get movement on what was a fairly straightforward matter. Should children be allowed to play for their school team regardless of whether they are signed for a club, the answer is yes. Of course they should, but it took us six years to get that agreement without any conditions attached to it. Originally, when they changed it, the condition was that subject to welfare considerations, which would be assessed by the club. I am just wondering about the time that it has taken to see any small changes at all. How optimistic are you that the changes that we are talking about today will take place in a shorter timescale? Optimistic, given that we are now talking about it, what is happening in England is coming to light? Do you think that things will move faster? I have no confidence whatsoever in any self-regulation and the changes that are required to be imposed. I have changed my position on that. I originally came to committee to say that self-regulation is always the best way. I believe that, but in this instance, I think that the structures and the governance are such that you will not get the changes. That is the view of the ex-chairpersons and chief executives of the FA. That is their hope. I will read it out later on, but I will refer to it. What they have said regarding the FA is that it has been given more than enough time to reform and they now ask Parliament to take it on board to recognise that further promises of change are not serious and legislate as necessary, including the appointment of a regulator to achieve the changes that are so desperately needed. I am calling for a regulator. I think that we need to have a governance review in terms of some of the changes that are required. I do not have confidence in the authorities to change in the way that they need to. Do you think that that is a reflection of the entities that are the SFA and the SPFL that are made up of the football clubs? Is it the competition within the football clubs? The lack of trust there is the problem. Presumably, the administrators are trying to manage a problem. Is the core issue that they cannot get the club's security to change? I do not know the inner workings of the SPFL and the SFA, but what I know is that it has been commented numerous times about vested interests and that vested interest being about businesses that need to make money to survive. I have heard at once that I have heard at half a dozen times about turkeys not voting for Christmas and that has been said to me in private. That colours my view about the capacity for the authorities to change in the way that they need to. It may be that, although our focus has been on the SFA and the SPFL, there is at least some recognition of what they are having to deal with, which is the tensions among the clubs. Presumably, they are competing for talent. I do not know that level of detail, so it is stuffy hope for me to comment. Something that came out, not particularly what we had expected to be looking at, but in the last evidence session was around the question of agents. I think that concerns that we felt, and I am sure that you must have felt, on hearing that it was possible for some to operate as an agent, apparently, without any great scrutiny of them and the access that they have to young people at the very point when, as you say, they have aspirations and ambitions. I welcomed the comments of Andrew McKinley when he said that he accepts that they need to look at self-declaration. That is in response to agents and whether they are fit persons to conduct their business or not. He suspected that the review would look at those issues. I welcomed that. However, what he did not say is that, as early as February last year, I had raised that very issue about child protection checks on children and young people. I raised it in the context of evidence that had been previously given to the committee by a representative, Jim Sinclair, a representative of Rangers Football Club, when he declared that he had paid £35,000 for a child. I was aware of press reports of agents and I wanted to be assured that proper child protection checks were carried out on those. The response that I got from SPFL and SFA was that they had great concern that there is continuing allegation and innuendo without any substantiation. I then re-sent them some of my evidence and said that they would continue to investigate all matters brought to their attention with appropriate evidence of a rule breach. That was all last year, so I was writing to them in February. I should have known better, because, on record, there is a letter in response to Scott Robertson who is one of the petitioners who raised the very issue of payments that were over and above the compensation scheme. The response from SPFL at that time is that the payment of the greater sum and priority for SPFL rules would not be a breach of those rules. Therefore, and in the absence of any complaints from the player or either club involved, I cannot see why SPFL would wish to pursue the issue. In other words, even when the rules are not being adhered to, it becomes not a rule breach. So I define myself around in circles trying to actually get some accountability for the behaviour of, in this instance, it would be agents who are involved in football, but I do welcome now the attention that the SFA is going to give to that if only they had done it when I had asked earlier. Was there an issue there that the defence seems to be well nobody complained about it? Well, nobody complained. I mean, if you can imagine the situation where a large payment has been made between one club and another for a player, in what basis do they think that somebody is going to complain about that? Especially if it appears that it's not within the rules of SPFL, as it was at that time. It just lacks credibility that somebody would complain in no circumstances. There's a lack of, for me, curiosity about what's happening in our game. So timing again, and I'll come on to this in the minimum wage, timing again, things get reported in the press and there's no action taken by our authorities. They are charged with the responsibility of maintaining and imposing standards and yet they're sitting back waiting for so-called complaints to be made. In this instance, I can't imagine the circumstances that either party would want to complain about it, so it doesn't happen. The agent's not going to complain and the young person may not want to put their own career or their chances at risk by complaining. It doesn't feel a very odd view of the world. They only address, as long as somebody nobody complains about the law being broken, the law enforcement agents don't have to do anything about it. The clubs are unlikely to complain and the receiving clubs certainly won't, unless they think that they should have got more, but it's out with the rules anyway. Or sorry, they say that it's not a breach of the rules. This is the level of interaction that you have, or that I've, and the petitioners, have experienced with SFA and SPFL. It's desperately frustrating. I've tried to get our authorities to take the responsibility that they're charged with. I've probably gone over this again, but I'm concerned that I don't know who's in charge. We're looking at SPFL and SFA and the vibe that I'm getting is that they're not the ones that are in charge. It's the clubs that are in charge. For me, the SPFL and the SFA in this particular matter might be fairly toothless. Well, those are questions that you might want to re-ask SPFL and SFA, but in my mind it needs a review of governance. Because money is the driving factor that part of that review should actually be about the flow of money in this whole system that we have, because it comes back to time and time again about the investment of the clubs and the need for the clubs to get return on that investment. In this instance, from my point of view, it's through young people. I wanted to ask you about the issue of parental involvement in particular relation to the agent's contracts. Do you know, is there any, and have you had sight of any of those contracts to see? No, I don't know that level of detail, but what I do know, we have got concerned parents who see the sons in most instances who are caught in this three-year transfer or three-year contract. Also, if you imagine you're a parent with a child who's got talent that might and you wanted to blossom, parents can sometimes be blinded to some of the implications, later implications. Of course, we would all want our children to have access to the potential riches that are becoming a professional football player. That's what I said earlier. I think that that makes people vulnerable in those circumstances, because really they're chasing a dream and some of those dreams will become reality in many, many instances, too many, they just won't. I just wondered if you knew whether parents had to sign the contract as well and if they really understood what they were signing? I've got a recent communication of signing a forum that was blank because it needed to be filled in later. I would be remiss on me to comment and make some blanket statement about how those contracts are signed. We certainly recommended, when we did the original report, that there was a lack of understanding on the children's part of their rights and the parents involved in that. We suggested that there needs to be more information given up front to the children and the parents who are involved. We recommended the use of the professional footballers association information, because that's actually quite helpful. However, in the heat of the moment, in the excitement of it all, you can just imagine how all this gets. When we asked for children to wear their contracts, they didn't have them. They're carried along with their passion and their love of the game. I see you would be. The paperwork gets lost in all of that. I'll ask you about the national minimum wage issue. I'm sure that you'll have expected that you've seen the evidence, which you can. To say that I think that the committee was surprised that those organisations didn't seem to think that it was something that they needed to be aware of, that clubs were offering contracts of £1 a week, I think, would be to understate it. Do you want to say something about the question of the national minimum wage and the expectations that you would have in order to protect young people from being exploited? I share the surprise of the committee. In fact, I noted the direct question that was asked by Ronar, where Neil Doncaster said, No, I did not have knowledge of the clubs paying £1 a week. I've got letters here dating back to 1 December 2014, when a part of the petitioners to SPFR highlighted the reports and the papers of a contract of £1 per week. There's a response to that from Neil Doncaster, which says that they can't comment on it because they've got a adjudication role, so they're not able to comment on it. The petitioners then wrote again on the 13th of January, 23rd of January, with a copy of the contract. I understand that that was given by recorded delivery, but there wasn't a response to that. There was another communication highlighting similar issues on 12 September 2016. That did get a response, and there was an exchange. I share the surprise to say that no, they did not know about it because it was a response to the more recent reports in the daily record of the clubs that had been highlighted there, so yes. I'm surprised at that. Do you think that if they've got a registration scheme, it would be reasonable for any registration scheme to look at the contracts and to check whether the contract is within the law in terms of the national minimum wage? Yes, and in fact, in his evidence, Mr Doncaster went on to say that where there are allegations that any club is not paying that wage, we will look carefully at those allegations. The system itself is registering young people with those contracts? If they say that they will look at the allegations, then yes. I would be interested to know whether they would look at the allegations that were flagged up to them. That would be worthwhile seeking a response. Are there any other questions? I don't know if there's anything final that you want to say, Mr Bailey, about those questions. I think that we've got a lot from and a lot there that's, I think, quite challenging. I suppose that one thing that I was interested in around is the question of agents. To relate back to the point that was made earlier, if the SPFL and SFA will respond to complaints, should there not be a greater expectation in relation to child protection that you don't wait for somebody to complain but that you put in place measures to protect young people in the first place? Absolutely. The thing that's lacking here is that any proactivity is as far as I can see on the part of our authorities. Time and again, they have said, well, nobody's complained to us, so therefore there's nothing for us to do with, nothing for us to deal with. That, to me, is not how an overarching authority should be behaving. They should be proactive in setting standards and expecting their members and everybody else to be adhering to that. I come back to a statement that I made earlier, which is that I believe that it needs a governance review. In fact, on the original, I checked the original petition, and they were asking for an audit process and accountability of all public funds in Scottish football. I would suggest all funds in Scottish football, and I think that it's worth—there's an urgency to this now, because, of course, there's the allegations of historic sexual abuse, so there has to be a response to that. Yes, I welcome the SFA in setting up their inquiry, but to my mind, unless they deal with some of the power imbalances and the desire to have exact control over children and young people, they will still leave themselves open to people who might want to exploit that power imbalance. I think that what we've got to be sure here—footballs have got a huge capacity to do a lot of good, and, as you've mentioned, Mr Bailey, there's an awful lot of very good people out there doing some fantastic work. The SPFL Trust is doing some great work, but somehow or other we've lost the way to top of the tree here, and the way that we look at children's welfare has to be looked at. For me, chair, we've got to be careful not to make any knee-jerk reaction in terms of making changes that have unintended consequences, but without question the welfare of the child and the best interests of the child are not being looked after here. I suggested to the health committee that they link in with yourselves, and I do likewise, because this has gone on for a very long period of time with, like I said, not a lot of movement on things that really count in this, and we have to try and get some movement. By your points about power imbalances, because the silence, perhaps some of the evidence that has come when people have finally spoken out about their own experience, which is obviously a more specific issue than about contracts and so on, but the unique thing about football is that people have such ambitions and such dreams that they silence themselves, and there are those circumstances that allow bad things to happen. It's not to say that the vast majority of people involved in football care deeply about the sport, care deeply about nurturing young talent and all the rest of it, but if we don't get it right, we create opportunities for those who don't want to do that. The leadership should come from the top, and this is where I'm pitching my comments. That's where it should come from. In terms of that, I thank you very much for that. I think that that's been extremely helpful. Perhaps I've raised a whole series of more questions for those who thought that maybe this position would finally get closed, but there seem so many things there that have come through, and I wonder if we have suggestions about how we might take this forward. My gut is, I would like to see the SFA and the SPFL back in here, quite frankly, because it's come to light, obviously, that some of the evidence that was given has been less than forthright and perhaps even less than truthful. I think that I would be interested in hearing what the Scottish Government has to say as well. We may want to reflect how that's done, and perhaps have an opportunity to reflect further on what we've heard here and some of the issues around what was known about the question of national minimum wage needs to be addressed as well. Perhaps we could take an opportunity to think about how we would take it forward in terms of who we would invite and so on, but we would certainly very keen that that would be done transparently in public and that we would take the opportunity particularly to reflect on the very strong messages that have come from the children and young persons commissioner, which is very significant, I think, around the welfare and rights of young people and that imbalance of power. If that's agreed, we just agree that we would be putting in another session at a later stage, really, to have them reflect on the evidence and see how we would take it forward from them. I thank Mr Bell again and to suspend the meeting. If we can call the meeting back to order and can we move to petition 1605, whistleblowing in the NHS, a safer way to report mismanagement and bullying. The next petition for consideration is petition 1605 by Pete Gregson on behalf of kids not suits on whistleblowing in the NHS. The meeting papers include a note by the clerk, which summarises submissions received from the organisations represented at today's meeting and the petitioners' response to those submissions. Members have copies of those submissions. Members will recall that we agreed to invite evidence from the chief executive of NHS Scotland, the city of Edinburgh council, public concern at work and Unison Scotland. Paul Grabe, the chief executive of NHS Scotland, will appear before the committee at our meeting on 2 March. In attendance this morning are Christy Louise Campbell, head of strategy interim and Laura Callumdor, governance and compliance manager from the city of Edinburgh council strategy and insight division. Kathy James, the chief executive and Andrew Pepper Parsons, head of policy from public concern at work. Tam Hiddleston, secretary of the Scottish healthcare branch of Unison Scotland. I welcome you all to the meeting. I will allow up to five minutes each if anyone wishes to provide a brief opening statement, otherwise I will move straight to questions. Part of the petition questions the service that public concern at work provides to staff across NHS Scotland. It might help to explain a little bit about public concern at work to the committee, would that make sense? We are an independent charity and a legal advice centre. We were set up almost 25 years ago now. At the heart of our mission is to encourage workplace whistleblowing in order to prevent disaster and damage so that you get a safe environment for people to speak up, so that staff are listened to, so that you prevent the kind of scandals that unfortunately are all too common in the newspapers, the mid-staffisher type scandal. We do that. We work our mission. We do that by providing free independent advice to any UK worker across the UK, legally privileged advice, but we also support organisations in their whistleblowing arrangements and we do public policy and research. Our work in the NHS was put together in our submission, some of the work that we have done in the NHS in England. More recently, of course, we have been providing the national confidential alert line for the Scottish Government and we have been working on the new agenda in England for the freedom to speak up guardians and the national guardian that has recently been put into place in England to try and improve policy and culture around speaking up in the workplace in the NHS. We have been working with Health Education England to train the freedom to speak up guardians. In the NHS in England, we have trained around 165 of those individual posts, people who have picked up that post in the NHS in England, and we have got 100 or so more to train. We are involved in how to improve speak up culture, specifically in the NHS, but also across any sector in the UK. We are an important safety net to whistleblowing arrangements that organisations put into place locally. We are always going to be an option for a member of staff to take advice about if they are unsure whether or how to raise their concern. We are a safety net for them to explore their options. We were never set up and the contract that we have with NHS Scotland is not intended to be a reporting line. A reporting line is taking the information and feeding it back into the organisation or to another part of the system in order to get the information addressed. We are trying to help the individual to think about where they might go in that system in order to help them to make an informed decision. We are also aware, because we are a legal advice centre about the legal rights that individuals have around whistleblowing. That is part of our advice, but the real focus of our advice is how we get the information to somebody who can do something about it with the least risk to the individual and the best chance that the information will be listened to, addressed and acted upon. This petition is seeking a more enhanced service than was commissioned by NHS Scotland. I entirely agree that the independent investigation process is an absolutely essential part of good whistleblowing arrangements, but it is not part of the offer and the service that we provide, so I think that there is a mismatch in relation to what has been commissioned and what is being asked for in this petition. Thanks very much, that is very helpful. Can I maybe ask—this is a starting point to ask the representative of each of the bodies here this morning following what you have said, to give an overview of their experience working with the system that they currently experience, both strengths and weaknesses, if there are any? I am the head of strategy for the City of Edinburgh Council in our whistleblowing arrangements independently within our division, reporting directly to the chief executive, monitoring officer and committee. Prior to the implementation of the new arrangements in 2013-14, we had what I describe as a standard public interest disclosure policy for staff. What we found through that was that we were not receiving and we were not able, culturally, to encourage staff to raise their concerns as we would have liked to. We changed our policy on whistleblowing to not only incorporate the elements of the act itself, but to broaden that out so that we were providing colleagues with a really independent strong mechanism to raise any serious concerns that they may have, that they may feel uncomfortable raising through the normal channels, normal management lines, etc. What we did was procure an independent whistleblowing hotline arrangement, so colleagues in the City of Edinburgh Council can contact an external body to raise their whistleblowing concerns. The concerns that are logged with them are categorised either as minor or major, and where there is a major matter of concern, the whistleblowing provider will have an option to investigate that on our behalf and take those findings to the chief executive and committee. Over the period of time that we have had the new arrangements in place, we have had around 53 disclosures, which is around a few each year. There is no pattern or trend to that. The most significant number are not major disclosures, but we have had 11 major reports, some of which have led to criminal convictions. What we have found throughout the process and having that independent approach, which is unique in Scotland for any local authority, is that we have actively built the culture and trust around the staff's concept of their ability to raise concerns and that they are now able to see how those are addressed very openly with our own committee system and with our elected members. I am certainly not going to disagree with the local council on how they have decided to go forward with the particular hotline. Within the NHS, certainly from a trade union perspective, we have always encouraged our staff and our members to raise any issues. We have robust policies within the NHS, agreed in partnership with the trade unions over the years, where the staff should feel valued and protected and able to raise those concerns. I think that the whistleblowing culture within the NHS is relatively new. The helpline is new, so it is still bedding in. We need to raise more awareness that that is there at this point in time. There have been references within the papers that the amount of calls has dropped, and I think that raises the question that we need to promote it a bit more. Certainly, sitting where we are from a unison perspective at this point in time, we see the continuation of the current arrangements, along with the independent national officer, as the preferred option going forward. Do you think that there is an issue of the distinction between whistleblowing and complaining? If you are a trade union member, you have a complaint and there is a system for that. Do you think that sometimes the two things are conflated that people may whistleblow in factus about their individual treatment in the workplace? That is looked at very carefully, if there is ever a whistleblowing incident raised. I have dealt with an employer as a union activist in a whistleblowing case. When you see the information, it can be that at times it should be raised through another policy, and that can be advised back to the member of staff, whether it is a grievance or through the bullying or harassment policy, which everybody takes very seriously. There is still that distinction of separating the two, whether it is a whistleblowing, a major incident or something that can be dealt with through your current board's policies and procedures. Have we not been to diminish any of those complaints? If I were being devil's advocate, is there an issue for the union around fixatious complaints or complaints that are part of a pattern of behaviour against one of your members? That is the problematic part of the whistleblowing about the fixatious complaint. Depending on whether we are representing a member, it will not be that we will go full pelt and support that. We will do a lot of investigating to make sure that the concerns that are being raised are evidenced and there is background evidence to that, but that is a problem that not just the trade unions but the help boards of us will go forward. Thank you very much for that. That is very helpful. Angus MacDonald I can direct this to the City of Edinburgh council representatives. Good morning Laura, good morning Kirsty Louise. Your submission is quite positive about the impact of the hotline and you have covered it already, but it mentions developing confidence that there is a safe mechanism for reporting concerns and it also makes reference to the external independent third party. Do you have any evidence that links the independence of the service provider to the developing confidence of the system and why it is proving to be successful? I think that we have anecdotal evidence to link the arrangement of taking forward an independent hotline and the investigation process to that building of confidence in our arrangements in terms of whistleblowing and how we deal with concerns and complaints across the piece. From the period of time since the hotline has been in place, every request that has come in and every disclosure that has come in of which there are 53 have been fully investigated and that includes the non-qualifying disclosures of which we are talking about here of which there are 14 and all of those have been placed back into the appropriate investigation process. What our colleagues are seeing and that anecdotal feedback is that we openly every quarter speak at our Governance Risk Invest Value Committee about the disclosures that have been made, whether they are major, minor or non-qualifying disclosures and identify that we have actively investigated those. We give a sense to committee and in public in reports of those outcomes and we also show that where we have changed policy, procedure or on actions being taken really visibly and that has been welcomed and we have seen through staff feedback anecdotally on the back of some of the focus groups that we have been doing that that has been a welcomed approach. That visibility and transparency across the organisation has added a sense of confidence to the staff. When you report back to the committee, do you identify what the issue was in each case? We report on, so we have similar to here, we take some items in private and some in public. In public, we give a sense of all the disclosures and whether they have been investigated and whether they are closed. For all our elected members on the committee, we give an overview of exactly what the concern was that was raised, who undertook the investigation, whether we did that internally, whether we did that through our external provider, what the outcome of that investigation was and also how we fed back to the whistleblower themselves, whether they were not known to us but known to the provider or were happy to share their details and then they have the opportunity to then say that they were satisfied with the outcome, they felt that they had been heard etc or that there were still underlying issues. Any of our committee members can also get a full copy of the investigation report that we carry out. Okay, that's great, thanks. Brian Whittle? Yeah, thank you. Just a point you made earlier, it strikes me the terminology around whistleblowing is quite emotive and that actually it's an issue that is raising health and safety issues to the benefit of healthcare professionals, patients and health board trusts. Have you received any feedback or do you hold any data that compares and contrasts confidence in the current facility to what the council previously had in place? I think that the confidence that I can see in the data is in the public interest disclosure policy that we had previously before we implemented those arrangements across an eight-year period. We had three public interest disclosures over the period since 2014 when the hotline was in place. We've had 53 contacts to our whistleblowing hotline of those. There were 11 major investigations into matters raised by colleagues and that to me shows a sense of confidence in the new arrangements and that colleagues feel that there is a trusted route for them to raise those concerns. Yeah, just to follow on from what you've been saying there, you know the term developing confidence suggests that there isn't yet full confidence in the system. I wonder if you would agree with that and also if you have identified any areas of improvement that would improve that aspect and really get it up and running and that people would be confident with it? I think that we're about to go into a new promotional element of whistleblowing itself, so I think that there's still for us an element of ensuring that everybody is fully aware of the policy and how they can engage with that. While we've reached a huge number of our staff, I think that we still have some work to do with our really, really out there in the front-line colleagues so that they fully understand what the service is about. I think that our feedback loop could be better in terms of how we let colleagues know when our investigations have resulted in, for example, a change in policy or a change in the way we're working. For me, there's an element of greater conversations and promotional activity as we continue to build confidence and shift our culture. Has that started? It has. We reviewed our whistleblowing arrangements. We asked employment law specialists to review them for us at the end of the pilot because we like to be in a learning culture where we're constantly thinking about how we can improve what we've got out there available for colleagues. They came back with some suggestions around promotion and those are actively under way as part of our own improvement plan in progress. Just ask Laura if there are any issues surrounding the governance of the system that you want to flag up anything at all that's been problematic. Not really. Initially, when we launched the pilot in May 2014, it was a very new way of approaching this type of disclosure from members of staff. To be absolutely honest with you, it wasn't easy in those very early months, those early months of engagement with colleagues across the organisation at all levels. We worked very hard with colleagues in many different services in terms of promotion and explaining what we were attempting to do, that this is a really useful risk management tool. It's about all of us doing things better. It's about transparency. It benefits us all if we know when something's going on in the organisation that we wouldn't be happy with or comfortable with. There was a good deal of, I suppose, persuasion around that. We had to operate in a very independent way. It's quite difficult, of course, with the hierarchy in line management and so on, perhaps having to have challenging conversations with people who would be senior to us in some cases. Gradually, during the course of the pilot, which lasted a year, we developed extremely good working relationships with colleagues in areas where we had frequent contact with HR, for example. As you can imagine, there's a lot of interaction with HR, especially looking at a lot of the backgrounds perhaps and previous cases and so on. We've developed a very good working relationship with our external provider. We've developed a partnership working with them during the course of the pilot, and the contract is commercially procured. The pilot provider was successful through the procurement process, so we're still working with them for the next couple of years. In the background of your submission, you condensed the three paragraphs of timescale involved. The petition was considered in April 2013, and through various exercises, the policy and hotline were launched simultaneously in May 2014. I'll tell you just over a year later. Can you expand on the amount of work and resources that were involved in achieving this? Were there any significant obstacles or challenges that you faced? I do, because we weren't involved at the very start. I became involved when we actually launched during the arrangements with the provider in setting up how we would work together. From my perspective, it all worked very well. We worked in partnership to develop the way we would work together. On the first day that we launched the service, we received a major disclosure, which led to a protracted investigation involving Police Scotland in certain aspects. The biggest challenge that we faced was day one launch major disclosure, huge investigation, and we weren't ready for it. We learned a lot, a huge learning curve in those early months. That was probably with hindsight. I think that the people who were working with it at the time were keen to launch the service as quickly as possible. With hindsight, we probably weren't as prepared as we should have been to launch on that particular day. Apart from that, we survived it. We had a very good outcome. It was a very difficult investigation, which eventually led to criminal conviction. Through that experience being thrown at the deep end and having to deal with things as they came up, we formed a very good way. It really informed up the processes and developed the service going forward. We are aware of the case that you are referring to. It is a steep learning curve right enough if the first call is on the first day. It is useful to note that that particular case had already been raised through the old public interest disclosure policy a month before. The whistleblower was very concerned that the issues that they raised were not being dealt with through that old route. It led them on the day of launch to contact our external provider and disclose all of the information again to them. That is helpful. Those questions might want to focus on the public concern at work in unison. Both unison and public concern at work submissions acknowledge that there is work to do to improve outcomes for whistleblowers and that it is encouraging to see ways in which that has been taken forward. I wonder if I can ask your view on whether anything can be learned from other organisations that are operating in that kind of work? Certainly, in the banking sector, there is now a new approach in relation to whistleblowing. The financial conduct authority has put in some very specific rules that mirror what is being said by colleagues here from Edinburgh Council around the structure that you need for whistleblowing arrangements. The real measure of success with any whistleblowing arrangement is that staff trust the organisation to do something about the issue that has been raised and to treat them fairly and not to treat them badly. Having really good structure in governance processes and senior leadership being committed to this and having the kind of reporting and process that is being talked about there is absolutely front and centre of getting good whistleblowing arrangements to work. The banking sector might be a place to look at the types of processes that it might be sensible to expect NHS boards to put in place. You have, of course, got the new whistleblowing champions and I would have thought that that is the kind of forum for these sorts of discussions perhaps to take place around what sort of structure to put into board reporting on whistleblowing. The NHS in England, of course, also has this additional, they have the national officer but they also have a freedom to speak up guardian in every single NHS secondary trust at the moment but likely to go through to primary care as well. That is having somebody who has the responsibility to receive the concerns and to be in touch with the senior governance part of the organisation, the board, the chief executive, the whistleblowing champion or the NED that might be responsible for whistleblowing so that you get that real sense that the information is being dealt with and there is the protection for the individual. It is quite interesting that banking is coming at it from a rules-based and the NHS is coming at it from a person-centred focus. I think that the two can probably learn from one another to meld the two together and maybe there is an opportunity for some more structure around what you expect of boards in Scotland as opposed to the more light-touch approach that perhaps is in place at the moment. That might be a way to look at it. I wonder if Mr Paper passes your position in terms of policy. Have you been looking at international models and what happens in other countries around this kind of work? It is probably fair to say that the UK is leading in this area. In Europe the Dutch model has a house of the bell ringers but it is the same kind of thing which is an amalgamation between a regulator and a advice centre. It is fair to say that the UK is leading the way in terms of what is expected of organisations. In Europe the debate is really around having a law that protects whistleblowers and having a directive that pushes member states into setting up a legal framework. We are ahead of the game in that sense because we have a legal framework that says more about putting it back to the organisations, the employers and the regulators to make sure that they are listening to the concerns that are being raised. I can't answer about what other organisations we should be looking at or whether they are being looked at now but we always have to be willing to learn and look elsewhere. A caveat to that is that, if we relate between the local council and the health, there are two entirely different employers, two entirely different terms and conditions and policies, procedures and therefore issues. It is no always best to compare the two because there will be entirely different concerns raised, whether they are medical or health-related concerns but, in answer to your question, we should always be willing to look elsewhere and always look to implement new ways within our organisations that will assist our staff. To that effect, unison has recently developed an app where our staff and members can raise concerns through the app, where it comes back to unison regionally, but also the same email or the same message goes to the director of nursing within that particular health board. We are moving on with the digital age, if you like, and the technological age. That has proved very helpful at the early initiations just now. That is an interesting point. In another inquiry that I was involved in in the oil industry, one of the things that emerged was people's reluctance to make any complaints because of vulnerability in terms of work. However, the role of the trade union has been a safe intermediary for people. How does that fit into whistleblowing, which is about the individual? That is something that we can address with Paul Gray, but thank you for that. There is a temptation to assume that everybody wants to raise things anonymously all via some sort of electronic means, but I do not think that that is always the case. Having access to advice in an independent space is important, whether that is through us or the trade union. It is advice about how to take it forward, and it is supposed to take it forward on my behalf. There is less email and digital engagement and more telephone calls to the hotline provider. I could add one little bit to that. There has been some research by the University of Greenwich and the ACCA that looks at channels that are needed to make a good whistleblowing system. The ACCA is the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants. They are an accounting body, the ACCA. They say that a multitude of channels is what you need because what you are doing is building trust. At one point, the anonymous channel may be the one that people use. Perhaps that is a sign if there are lots of anonymous concerns that people are not quite sure because that is what they will choose if they do not feel that they are going to be protected. They will choose anonymity. At another point, a telephone line, at another point, an independent appointed person might be, an ombudsman type person might be the choice, but it will ebb and flow as new initiatives go out, as there is more incentive into the system or more promotion of the system. You need that multitude because this is about trust, and people's trust will change over time. It is not ecstatic. Maurice Corry I will ask Mr Hiddleston a very interesting point. The relation with the integrated joint boards, the health and local authority staff, there are issues about the different contracts. I understand all that because I was chair of the Argyll and Bute one integrated board. What are the main problems there in relation to the subject that we are talking about for the two sectors of staff? I think that it is just culturally and historically. It has been different employers. They are now integrated boards, but the employers remain the same. You have your local council and you have your helpers. They are vastly different terms and conditions. Just as I explained, there are different issues. This is going to exacerbate the problem of whistleblowing and where they go to. I think that that is something that we all need to learn from. The IGBs have proved problematic already in other areas. That is going to just add on to that. I think that we are in its infancy at this point in time, but that is something that we need to keep in mind going forward. Do you see a resolution to that? I cannot answer the resolution at this point in time. In my day, trade union job, my health board is not one of the territories, so I am not involved in the IGBs. I do not have a lot of experience in the problems. We just get that through your health committee, who I am representing today. I cannot answer a lot on what the resolution is going to be on that. I note that the unison submission suggests that any criticisms need to be considered in full context. One of the factors that puts forward as a possible explanation is the awareness of the helpline may be low. What, in your view, would be the reason for a lack of awareness of the facility, and what could be done to increase awareness? Are there any initiatives in place to address that? One of the reasons is that, historically, we have had robust policies and procedures to report any issues of malpractice, bullying and harassment, etc. That is relatively new. It has been promoted, but we definitely agree that it has to be promoted better. It has to be promoted wider across the organisation. The implementation of the independent national officer alongside the current helpline would see a further push for that. The question about being relatively low is, historically, within the health boards or staff, they feel obliged to raise it through their line manager. That is just the culture that it has been. They feel obliged to raise it through that structure. Like I said, the whistleblown is relatively a new thing within the health service in the past four or five years. It is definitely a case that we need to promote it further. We do that within the trade unions. We advise our members to either contact ourselves or raise it individually with the support of us. We continue to do that through our members' meetings and newsletters and websites, etc. It is well publicised. We just hope that it will increase the use of the helpline at this point in time. There has been a 75 per cent drop in the calls to the helpline since it was established. Is it more of an issue of confidence in the helpline rather than awareness? I cannot answer about the confidence in the helpline. There will be positive and negative feedback from helplines or hotlines. Call them what you want. I really cannot answer on the reasons why they may have dropped. That may be the awareness that we talked about previously, that we need to promote it more. It goes back to the issue that our staff in the health service feel the rather policies. They may feel that what their case is is not a major whistelblin, and it goes through the rest of our policies. That is the only answer that I can give you for the dropping number. I can answer that question around the dropping numbers, because there was a huge spike in the first six months. There were 73 cases in the first six months. 57 of those were private employment matters. There has been a better understanding of what the line is about, and the concerns that come through are more along the lines of public interest issues, and less private issues are coming through to seek advice. That sense that this is about whistelblowing, not about grievances, is perhaps recognised in that drop-in figures. There has been an average of approximately 17 calls every six months to the line through the six-month reporting, and that is coming out in the next six-month report as well, a similar number of public interest issues where an individual is seeking advice. I would also add that the real measure of what is happening on the ground is what is happening within each trust board and the numbers that they are receiving to their internal whistelblowing-designated contacts. They have all got good whistelblowing arrangements. They have all got designated individuals who are signposted as the place to go to raise a concern. That is where the investigation takes place. Some sense of the activity at board level would be the real measure of success in relation to this process. There may be an issue that we can address with Paul Gray about why so many people with private grievances felt the need to go to a whistelblowing line that would suggest that they had not had anywhere to go before. Perhaps. I am not suggesting that private grievances are not incredibly important and need to be dealt with as well as whistelblowing concerns. However, there is a need to separate the two out. Perhaps at the beginning of the process it was a little unclear whether it was a bullying line or a whistelblowing line. Therefore, lots of people with bullying issues came through. Bullying issues need to be dealt with, but not necessarily through the whistelblowing process. When we do training on the issue to help managers who are receiving these calls to understand the issues and to unpack some of the complex matters that can be presented in a whistelblowing issue, we help them to think about where it is whistelblowing and where it is a grievance, and not just assuming it is a grievance because that is what the individual is saying. You need to look at the information on what it is that they have seen and whether there is a safety issue, a malpractice, a wrongdoing issue hidden in amongst a dispute that might have been going on for a long period of time. There is a need for training in this area of managers to get this right. That is really important. I am going back a bit to what Mr Hiddleston was saying. I am interested in the comments that some concerns might be normalised or low-level and do not want full-scale referral. How do you think that that reflects on the existing mechanism in that sense? How can that be dealt with? It is a regular occurrence and it is just one of these things. I think that that is a challenge that any organisation looking at whistelblowing policy, looking at whistelblowing in their organisation will face. When is it an informal process that a manager and a line manager that you pay to do a management job should deal with? When should it be escalated up to a more formal process? Some of that will depend on the individual and perhaps whether they have a good relationship with their manager or not and whether they feel that that manager is going to listen. Some of it will depend on the manager actually having insight into the processes, understanding perhaps when it is a serious issue and when it should be bypassing the management line. That is one of the reasons that whistelblowing can present a challenge to organisations because it breaks through that hierarchy. We find that that is quite difficult to impress upon a manager, that there will be some occasions where your staff will go somewhere else and you should be encouraging that. That is not necessarily a comfortable position for a manager to have and particularly in healthcare where you have very strong systems for reporting, you have datics reporting, you have serious incident reporting. The whistelblowing cuts across all of those structures and that can be a challenge in healthcare and in other industries. In some sense it is quite subjective, it is an element of judgment and in that sense it does not achieve exactly what the whistelblower might want. Is that what you? I think that the point is to have flexibility and that can feel uncomfortable to a manager, it can feel uncomfortable to somebody who is trying to put structure into an organisation because you are breaking down that structure by saying on occasion it is fine to break the management line. That is absolutely essential in whistelblowing, you have to have that sense that it does not have to go through one channel because that is the check and balance. Do you think that the managers are taking it on board in that sense? Do you think that they are aware that this is how the system works or do you think that they have been defensive? I think that there is always more to be done to train managers in every aspect of our work and on the advice line that is where things can so easily go wrong is that the management line something has not been listened to, something has not been dealt with or it is the management line where the wrong doing is happening and that can feel very difficult to break ranks. Thank you. Following on from the last question, there has been much debate about the independent national whistelblowing officer, can I ask your views on this role and in particular the level of independence that will be involved and do you have any concerns about a potential conflict of interest? That is very open to Cathy, yes? Sorry, I think probably yourself and Mr Hiddleston might be. Looking at the role that has just been put in place in England, which is the national guardian, that is sitting in the regulator and actually it is funded by NHS England, by the regulator, the Care Quality Commission and I think probably NHS Improvement which was monitor which was the financial regulator. It is a kind of tripartate system to build that independence and the guardian has a board from which has representatives from each one of those organisations. It is obviously a challenge to set up something that is truly independent when it is part of government but we do it with regulators. It should not be beyond possibility to do it with this kind of role. What I would really impress is that from this outset there is a sense of what sort of cases the role will take on because I think that is one of the challenges with the national guardian in England. It is that that has not been sorted before the role is in place, which creates uncertainty and uncertainty can breed mistrust. Having learning from the journey that the national guardian is going along in England will, I do not doubt, improve the process for the appointment of a similar role in Scotland. Mr Hiddleston, would you like to remember? Cymru unison fully supports the implementation of the independent national officer but we have to make sure that that officer has the appropriate powers to be able to go forward and feed back to organisations and investigate. There should be on-going discussions as well about this officer and the remit where it should be just being held. We have local care providers as well, so there is still a lot to be considered about this officer going forward. Our position is that this officer is going to be vital in sitting alongside the current helpline to be able to fully establish this role going forward. It will be new and obviously there will be teeding problems probably, but we see this as a seriously good addition to the current personal blown arrangements that are being built in place. I wondered whether the petitioner was asking for an ombudsman to replace us as a service, the alert line. I think that there is a problem with that in the sense that any regulatory body will have a duty to investigate, and so you are taking away that kind of access to independent advice. If people will want to get advice but they will not be able to get that necessarily from a regulatory body. I would also add that I think that any regulatory body that has statutory powers needs to make sure that it does not duplicate the work of other regulators wherever possible. I think that is also a key point. That the health care safety investigation branch is also a new development in England and combining what is being done in that branch with a national officer in Scotland would be really innovative. The investigation piece that is definitely missing in terms of the ability to tap into an independent investigation from the individual's perspective is missing across the UK, so I think that that kind of approach would be really innovative and would, I think, really make a step change in relation to the trust and confidence in the arrangements. Any final question? I do not know if anybody wants to make any final comments that they feel have not been able to make. I think that it was mentioned about the DATIC system that we currently have. Unison broadly supports that process, however it needs to be strengthened and reviewed in line with and the else that we are doing at this point in time around about whistleblowing the Unison duty care app. It is a good system, but it needs strengthened. At the very minimum, we need to get feedback from that system back to the staff member who raises incidents throughout that. We are working in partnership with our employers to try and do that as best as possible. I am interested in people's views, but I suspect that what we would want to do is wait until we hear from the chief executive secretary of the NHS Scotland on 2 March before considering options for action. One area that I am interested in is the question that you have highlighted, if you are going to get into joint boards, where do people go so that their experience suffers as a consequence of what you describe as two very cultures coming together. That is a particular issue, but I think that there are quite a number of issues raised there that we want to proceed with the chief executive. Is there any other points that we want to make? No. In that case, thank you very much indeed. I think that we learned a lot today, and I appreciate very much the time that you have taken to be with us. If there is anything further, as the petition proceeds that you want to feed in, please feel free to do so, or anything from this particular session as well. Thank you very much for your attendance, and I will just suspend briefly. If we can call me back to order, and we are now moving to agenda item 3, current petitions in which we are not taking further evidence at this stage. Petition 1595 on a moratorium on shared space schemes. The next petition for consideration is petition 1595 by Sandy Taylor, which calls for a moratorium on shared space schemes. Members will recall that, when we last considered this petition, we took evidence from the minister. As part of that evidence session, it was agreed that a seminar would be helpful to progress the issues raised by the petition. We also considered the understanding of shared space schemes that Sustrans uses in respect of the role of controlled crossings. We have had a response from the minister and a submission from the petitioner, and I would invite members to make comments or any suggestions for what action we might take on this petition. Rona Mackay, can I register an interest in this petition? The petitioner is a constituent, and I am heavily involved in his local campaign, so I just wanted to say that. For me, the thing at the centre of the petition is the definition of what a shared space is. There was a suggestion that there would be movement, but the minister suggested that it was possible to have a shared space and crossings. It seems to be some confusion at the heart of the petition. My understanding is that the minister sought clarification from Sustrans about whether or not a safety crossing could be included in a shared space. It subsequently said yes. We need to dig a bit deeper into that to find out more about that, and the information contained in the letter from the minister on the submission from the petitioner. It is quite a major thing. It is an on-going issue. The local issue is on-going, and there could be changes within the weeks in it. From the wider perspective, we need to get clarification from Sustrans on the safety crossing element at shared spaces, because that is the really contentious issue for less-able and vulnerable people who are finding it difficult to navigate across the road. The minister's letter mentions the seminar, so I think that maybe we could get an idea of when that is going to take place and where that fits into the whole petition. I want a stronger commitment from the transport minister that that is being progressed with some degree of urgency. The petitioner also makes the point that the suggestion is that we have discussed that it is possible to have a shared space with safety crossings, but they seem to have resiled from that position, so I think that we need a bit of clarity. Do you think that we need clarification on that? Definitely. That is a key issue. I am presuming that if a local authority wanted to access the funding, a shared space project would bring with it, but felt that they could not access that funding if they wanted to put in a safety crossing, you can see from the point of view of a local authority that they might want to access the funding, but it is causing issues locally. For the wider issue, that is what needs to be known. For the local issue, it is going to happen retrospectively, because it is already in place and it has already been done, so now the campaign is calling for the safety crossings to go in, but certainly for the wider issue of shared spaces in general, that would be a key point. If we presume that everybody in this world is pretty rational, you can imagine that people who are promoting shared spaces are not wanting to create vulnerabilities for people with mobility issues or sight issues. It would be interesting to know from Sustran's straightforward clarification on that and what the intent behind it was and whether it is possible to have it. It feels to me to be perfectly rational and logical that you have a shared space, but that takes in the needs not just of the people who are capable of navigating those situations, but of the people who have particular needs. Would that seem fair to me? Is there anything else, Brian? We will be looking for an update from the Scottish Government on indicative timings for the seminar. I would assume that we would be expecting an invitation to that as well. Again, as we have said, we have seen clarifications from Sustran's about the very issue that is at the heart of this, which is how that balance is struck to meet the concerns of the petitioner, who, in his further submission, makes very clear what the problem is. I think that it is reasonable to get the same clarity from Sustran's. If that is agreed, we can then move on to petition 1610, an upgrade on the A75. I welcome Finlay Carson, who is the MSP for Galloway and Westam Frees for this item. The last current petition in the agenda today is petition 1610 by Matt Halliday on the upgrade of the A75. Members will see that we have a response from the Minister for Transport and Islands. That notes that the Scottish Government is undertaking two relevant courses of action in relation to the A75, including a local traffic management study and giving consideration to improvements to the A77 south of Gvern. Members will see from the papers that we have received two submissions in support of the petition from David Mundell MP and Richard Arclas MP. The petitioner has provided a written submission, which notes his dissatisfaction with the Scottish Government's response. In his view, the Scottish Government's progress on addressing the condition of the A75 is too slow. I wonder if members have comments or suggestions for action. I wonder if members have comments or suggestions for action. I wonder if members have comments or suggestions for action. At a time when the traffic was fairly heavy, this is almost one of the ones that I was involved with right at the start when we went to the conference down in Finlay's constituency. I agree that the progress seems to be very slow here. I think that it would be valuable for the committee to witness this for themselves, to witness the traffic that can build up on that road for themselves. Given that it is a euro route and the potential loss of business, for the port of Stranvar, and given that the other ports south of the border have been, the infrastructure has been upgraded quite significantly. My own personal view is that this upgrade of the A75 is essential and is well overdue. If there is not any other member of the committee at Dr Finlay, if you want to say something. I have firstly got to declare an interest, not only as MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries, which contains the bulk of the A75. I have spent the last 49 years living two or three metres away from it. I have seen the increase in traffic over the years. Both the current and past Scottish Governments have failed to address the issues that we have had here. I have got a little bit of history—I hope that you do not mind just going through very briefly. It was back in the 1960s that the ferry transport from Stranvar really started to increase. As we moved to the likes of roll-on, roll-off, the Stranvar crossing to Belfast was described as the short sea crossing. That, along with the removal of the railway line, has just seen an increase in traffic right from when the ferry started. We now have seven days a week sailing from two ferry terminals at Cairn Rhine. The number of vehicles, both light vehicles and more concerningly the very heavy HDVs, the ferries can disgodge up to 1,000 cars at one time, but generally that is a mixture of cars and HDVs. You can imagine at certain points of the day that it is very busy with nose-to-tail HDVs, and there are very few opportunities for cars to make progress on the whole route between Stranvar and Gretna. There were certain improvements carried out and, without being political, during the days, if we can remember, of Ian Lange and Sir Hector Monroe when the likes of Glenloes, Newton Stewart, Gatehouse of Fleet, Castle Douglas, Dumfries and Anon all received their bypasses. In effect, they were probably the most difficult bits to do. We have some section of the A75 that could have been upgraded since then, and all we have seen is small schemes that have tended to be single or three-lane carriages, and a lot of people's views make some of those improvements more dangerous than they were before. Back in 2006, the Dumfries and Galloway Council, while it was a Labour Government, put together the South West Scotland Transport Partnership regional transport strategy where it highlighted the priorities of transport in Dumfries and Galloway with a beauty campaign directly or in partnership to improve, in particular the A75 euro route, to maintain the ferry ports and the towns along those routes. The methodology considered the likely benefits of the transport interventions in terms of how well they contributed to Dumfries and Galloway's wider economic, social and environmental policy objectives. The priority reflected that. At that time, back in 2006, during the A75 between Dumfries and Gretna was priority 4, and during the A75 between Starrar and Dumfries was priority 5. However, we have seen no action in that being taken at all. One of the things that makes it even more unbelievable is that the Starratic and Ryan is part of route E18 and the whole A75 is part of what we call the Euro route. Now, the European design standard for routes that are identified to that level is preferably to the standard of a motorway or at least an express road. That is certainly not what we have got, and many people describe it as the goat track. There is the economic and social aspect of the dangers of the road. The transport minister talked about a local transport survey, and that was in particular for the villages of Springhome and Crockettford, which are the only two villages that a main trunk road, the Euro route, goes through. You can travel all the way through Belfast to Barcelona and not pass through 30-mile-an-hour limits. Never mind 30-mile-an-hour limits where there are people living within yards of a road car in these huge HGVs. Recently, you may have seen that a freedom of information request to identify how many HGVs were speeding on the A75 was rejected because Police Scotland suggested that it would cost more than £600 and the information officer turned it down. I do not see any benefit in a local transport survey that will identify speeds but will then not make them public. There is not only the economic impact on the reduction in businesses' usings, but we are starting to see that now. As Mr Whittle suggested, the upgrades of the road structure to Haisham and Holyhead have actually seen a drop in the vehicles using Cairn Rhine, which is something that is very concerning. The last thing that we need is the Freeson Galloway to become even more than the Forgotten Park of Scotland. Going back to the spring home in Crockett Ford, those communities who have lived with the road passing right past their doorsteps for years and years are now not sure that they can only consider an accident rate, but a risk assessment but also take into account the quality of life of the people who have to live right next to this route. There has been no action at all. It is all being talked about. We have had a transport summit, which has only emphasised the issues that we have with the A75, but there is no clear direction forward. As the petitioner suggests, the local transport survey is disrespectful for the people who have been working hard to see some action taken on this road. It is about time that some action was taken and there was a plan to move forward, rather than putting it off and putting it off. The economic impact on Freeson Galloway is not just about what we can do in the future, but if it is not done, Freeson Galloway will not be open for business at all. I do not know whether there are comments from other committee members. The evidence seems compelling that something needs to be done quickly. It is not an area that I am particularly familiar with, but reading this and listening to Finlay, it would seem that it needs urgent attention. The Scottish Government letter is like the worst kind of civil service letter, with all due respect to the people who wrote it. It is a collaborative review, there are stakeholders who would do this and that. It does not really get a sense of whether there is something very active going on. Now, I might be unfair and maybe characterised, they might want to be cautious because they will have their own constraints, but it feels as if it is reiterating a review of, rather than urgent action points. Especially even through the submission of the papers, it is obvious that there has been review after review after review, with out actually coming to a conclusion of what has to happen. As I said, it sounds very compelling, as I said, that having been on the road itself, I think that it would probably be to the benefit of all the committee to witness it for themselves, but it just seems that we have to move forward somehow and move forward quickly. It says here that Transport Scotland is currently considering the responses to the draft reports and the final report is scheduled for publication by the end of the year. I am just not clear why it would take such a long time to consider the draft report. As long as you lock in time into the situation, we will not respond to that until the end of the year, and I think that that is certainly a concern that I would have. There is a suggestion that we do. I think that we could probably match it in with some engagement things that we would want to do anyway, but I think that that might be a useful suggestion. It is perspective. What can we logistically do? What can we practically do? I am inclined to have an interview with the Transport Minister, quite frankly, as well. I know that we have already done that, so I am inclined to find out what the thought process behind the Government has at the moment. With some of it, it is the sense of how high up the level of priority it is. We all understand the pressures that the Government is under in choosing between different projects. For ourselves, it would be useful to see what the issues are, because it would then give us a sense of what the draft force is literally behind this for local communities, and that would perhaps inform our engagement with the Minister, but finally you were wanting to say something. It is all about timing. We have a road. If you look at the number of cars and HGVs on it and you average that over a 24-hour period, it probably looks like it does not warrant an upgrade. However, what is going to be appreciated, and I think that Brian's comments about coming down actually experiencing it, is when we get these huge volumes of lorries and cars coming off ferries, or two ferries, at Cairn Rhine, I drive my daughter home from Dumfries on a Tuesday night after her ice hockey and it is frightening the speed and the corn voids of these lorries at 11 o'clock at night. I say back to the spring home of Crockett Ford, the bare minimum that we will be looking for is a bypass for these communities. You can do all the surveys that you like. Probably the figures do not add up in terms of a 24-hour period, but the short bursts of intense traffic and the frustration that that brings to drivers, not only those commuting from Belfast to Carlisle are travelling through our region, but the people who have got to work every day and travel that road, because A75 is the road. It is the main artery. We are not looking at multiple options. It is the only way to get east to west. The surveys in the face of it do not appear to justify an upgrade, but that does not actually show the whole picture. That is true on transport issues more generally. You will get even resistance to putting crossings up on that horrible thing where they say that there have not been any fatalities. As you said, there should be a risk assessment of the potential for that, but I think that the point that you make in itself is that I can see that idea of traffic coming and bursts when ferries are arriving. I think that that visit would be a useful one. Having been an operator on that road over the years, about 20 years ago, we had the same problem then, and we as hauliers were campaigning on an item to get that road upgraded. I would suggest that we get the RHA and the FTA—the Road Haul Association and the Freight Transport Association—for us, because they are the people whose members use that road. Those who do local work were involved in multi-drop deliveries from St-Ra to Carlisle. I had all sorts of issues over that road. If we are going to go down, would it be worth it to go to the ferry operators themselves as part of that visit to speak to the ferry operators and get their input into that as well? I think that we can ask the clerks to scope out what a visit like that would be and, hopefully, with some public engagement in it as well. On the representative organisations in the minister, I think that once we have had the visit, we can maybe think about what that would look like, but I think that there are a number of important issues there. Again, it is the kind of thing where, depending on our experience in our visit, it may be that there are local people who themselves might be able to contribute to that. They can clearly contribute through their elected members if they do not want to, but that might be some kind of possibility as well. I think that there are a number of things there that we can take forward. If there is nothing else, I am sorry, Finlay. I can add a bit more weight to it. Because it is a single carriageway, there are accident blocks and black spots right along the length. If we have a serious accident, it can result in that main road being closed for seven or eight hours. If you are a haulier and you are transporting a perishable good, which is time constraint, if you miss the ferry and that happens on a regular basis, you are going to automatically select a different route. Even if that route may be longer and more expensive, if you know that you are going to get there on time, we are also seeing hauliers that are making decisions based on the closures of the A75. I am sure that you will all be aware that it is a regular occurrence. All you need is a car accident or whatever. The whole routes closed or the diversions are so long that anybody trying to get to a ferry on time is going to cause a problem. There is also the impact of just the single carriageway being closed for long periods of time. There are economic issues that are environmental issues that people are taking in logical routes that might put them on the road longer. Those are things that we can usefully explore. That is helpful, but I would suggest that the clerks scope out a visit for us. Subsequent to that visit, we can then look at this option. In terms of an evidence-giving session, there are some clear issues that we want to take forward. If that is agreed, I thank Finlay for his attendance and can I close the meeting?