Scottish Parliament e-Brief

Issue 100, 4^th February 2002

SECTION 1 - BUSINESS THIS WEEK

THE CHAMBER

IN COMMITTEE

The main items of business in the Committee Rooms this week are:

• Equal Opportunities considers progress on disability issues with Deputy Social Justice Minister Margaret Curran.
• Justice 1 begins the amendments stage of the Freedom of Information Bill.
• Health continues with the Tobacco Advertising Bill, with both Nicola Sturgeon (SNP) and Deputy Health Minister, Mary Mulligan, in attendance.
• Audit continues hearing from Health Boards and Trusts about the finances of the NHS.
• Rural Development gets an update from Rural Development Minister, Ross Finnie, on foot-&-mouth.

SECTION 2 - NEWS

KEY ROAD-BUILDING PROJECT ON THE MOVE
The tendering process for one of the country’s key road building projects has begun.

First Minister Jack McConnell joined Transport Minister Wendy Alexander at Eaglesham to mark the start of the process for the M77 and Glasgow Southern Orbital (GSO). He said he was keen to see work begin as quickly as possible.

Construction of this joint project is planned to start in early 2003 with completion in early 2005. Planning permission was granted in May last year.

Three contractors are being asked to bid for the contract to design, build and maintain the 15km section of the M77 and the 9.3 km stretch of dual carriageway from the proposed M77 extension at Malletsheugh, south of Newton Mearns, to the A726 at Philipshill, north-west of East Kilbride.

The GSO will bypass the conservation village of Eaglesham, removing around 80% of the traffic that normally goes through the village – effectively removing around 8,000 vehicles per day from Eaglesham.

The First Minister said:

"Transport is one of my five top priority areas. It not only makes for better urban and rural communities, it also provides vital links to enable our economy to prosper.

"This announcement demonstrates that we are pushing ahead with the investment in our transport system which is required to deliver the improvements which will make a real difference to Scotland’s travelling public."

The upgrade of this section of the A77 to motorway standard will extend the M77 Ayr Road Route to the Kilmarnock Bypass just south of Fenwick and will bring improved journey times and safety benefits to a route which has a high accident rate with a high proportion of serious and fatal accidents.

The GSO, which cannot be opened to traffic before completion of the M77, will provide a new section of dual carriageway linking the new section of M77 at Malletsheugh with the A726 at Philipshill. This link will bypass the conservation village of Eaglesham and is aimed at bringing a better living environment for those living along existing routes.

Full Story

PARLIAMENT AGREES FUNDING PROPOSALS FOR COUNCILS
An Order has been approved in the Scottish Parliament for record revenue grant funding of more than £6.5 billion for Scotland’s local authorities.

The Order commits substantial additional resources to deliver key policy priorities, including, for example:

• The modernisation of the teaching profession;
• Improved care services for older people;
• Enhanced concessionary travel schemes; and
• Extra resources for the police.

The Minister for Finance and Public Services, Andy Kerr, has also described a range of measures designed to enhance local government flexibility and autonomy in managing their financial affairs and to improve services. One such area will be a review of the capital control system to aid local authorities in making their own decisions on capital spending levels, tailored to meet the needs of their local communities.

The Local Government Settlement was announced in December. The settlement included, for the first time in recent years, provision towards general local authority pay and price inflation. This was argued for by local government.

The Order brings in resources for additional money for needs like:

• Pre-School Education, to ensure resources are made available to local authorities to enable them to provide by April 2002, a free, quality part-time pre-school education place for every 3 and 4 year old, whose parents wish it;
• Supporting People, to enable vulnerable people to live in the community;
• Adult Literacy, to raise levels of adult literacy and numeracy in Scotland, to more than double the annual capacity and help over 80,000 adults by 2004;
• Rough Sleepers Initiative, to ensure no one will have to sleep rough by 2003; and
• Out of school Care provision for children in deprived areas.

The allocations do not include provision for the Executive’s policy on personal nursing care, which will be confirmed separately, following discussions with CoSLA.

Councils will also confirm their budgets and Council Tax levels this month. However, they have already published indicative council tax levels for next year. The settlement allocations include full Executive provision for new burdens and should not, therefore, impact on these projections.

Local authorities require the consent of Scottish Ministers to incur liabilities to meet capital expenses. The formal consent (under section 94 of the Local Government(Scotland) Act 1973) issues annually and limits the amount of an authority's capital spending. In practice most capital spending is funded by local authority borrowing but authorities can also use capital receipts from the sale of assets and revenue to fund capital spending.

Full Story

SECTION 3 - NOTES ON THIS WEEK’S CHAMBER BUSINESS

WEDNESDAY afternoon begins with the third and final stage of the Community Care and Health (Scotland) Bill - the piece of legislation which will introduce free personal care.

While the issue of free personal care will undoubtedly dominate proceedings and the coverage of the debate, the Bill also contains a number of other significant measures, such as those surrounding carers.

The Bill has four parts:

Part 1 concerns charging for care. This is the enabling legislation which will give Ministers powers to issue regulations on care service charges, but it also sets out the legal framework for free personal care by amending existing legislation on local authority charging and capital disregards. It also covers:

• Promoting individual choice in contributing for care. This might involve making an extra payment to top-up a local authority contribution; or arranging with a local authority to defer the sale of a house;
• Arrangements for residential care outside Scotland; and
• An extension of direct payments for people not in residential care (this is where the user of the service is given funding to choose and pay for their own services themselves). This is a widely supported policy but one which, to date, has had a low take up by local authorities.

Finally, local authorities will have a duty to assess the individual needs of carers.

Part 2 is about joint working, a long term aim of community care policy. It will enable ministers to require NHS bodies and local authorities to enter into joint arrangements for service provision and resourcing. The conditions of transferred staff will be protected.

Parts 3 & 4 contain a variety of measures, all but one, however, are technical. The substantive measure is a requirement that all GPs, not just the principals in a practice, must be on a list maintained by the Trust.

Click here to read the Bill as amended at Stage 2
Click here for a list of the accompanying documents

Member's Business is from the SNP's Stewart Stevenson and is on the subject of the HM Prison Peterhead and Beacon Status.

THURSDAY is almost solely an opposition day. The morning is devoted to two debates from the SNP on Class Size and Pupil Attainment and The Road Network.

Again, at the time of writing, neither motion has been published and so no further details are available.

The full text of the motions should be available shortly in the Business Bulletin. Alternatively, the debate in full will be available from 08:00 on Friday in the Official Report.

These debates are followed in the afternoon, after Question Time and First Minister's Question Time, with stage 1 of the SNP's Alex Neil's Private Member's Bill, the Public Appointment's (Parliamentary Approval) Scotland Bill.

The Bill seeks to require Scottish Ministers to submit nominations for specified public appointments to the Scottish Parliament for confirmation. The Bill would also give the Parliament the right to question proposed appointees - similar to the system in the USA.

As readers of the Committee News will be aware, the Bill has had a far from easy ride. Members of the Equal Opportunities Committee expressed the concerns of the Commission for Racial Equality that such selection by Parliamentary Committee would "undermine anti-discrimination protection in relation to the selection procedure" and those of the Equality Network that "the Parliamentary hearing system proposed in the Bill may discourage some people from applying for public posts."

And, at the beginning of the month, the Local Government Committee, which is the lead committee considering the Bill, recommended that the Parliament should not approve its general principles.

The Committee concluded that the proposals contained in the Bill, if passed -

• Will deter people from diverse backgrounds from applying for public appointments;
• Will lead to a politicisation of the appointments process;
• Will slow down key appointments;
• Will blur the lines of ministerial accountability;
• Could render nominees for public appointments more vulnerable to discrimination than would otherwise be the case; and
• Depend excessively on changes to the Parliament's Standing Orders, which cannot be scrutinised at this stage.

It looks very unlikely, therefore, that the Bill will proceed past stage 1.

Click here to read the Bill in full
Click here to read the Policy Memorandum
Click here to read the Explanatory Notes

The day concludes with a Member's Business debate on Musical Instrument Instructors from Donald Gorrie (Lib Dem).

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