Scottish Parliament e-Brief
Issue 12, 27th March 2000
SECTION ONE - THIS WEEK’S BUSINESS
THE CHAMBER
Wednesday
Thursday
For short briefings on the main debates, see section 3.
COMMITTEES
Education, Culture & Sport
Health and Community Care
Justice & Home Affairs*
Local Government
Social Inclusion, Housing & the Voluntary Sector
Transport & the Environment
Please note that the Equal Opportunities, Procedures, Public Petitions, Rural Affairs and Subordinate Legislation Committees will also meet..
* To be held in private
SECTION TWO - NEWS
WHAT THE BUDGET MEANS FOR SCOTLAND
It is very important to note that the additional money for public services announced in last Tuesday’s budget is based on the application of the Barnett formula – how the money is spent is a matter for the Executive itself. Donald Dewar has, however, stated in the press that he intends to stick to the Chancellor’s plans.
Scotland will benefit from an additional £2.4 Billion over the next four years as a result of this budget.
The consequential increase for Scotland because of the increased health spending for the UK as a whole means an additional £173 million this April. This rises to £268 million in 2001-02, £687 million in 2002-2003 and £1140 million in 2003-2004.
The increased spending consequentials for this year (i.e. from this Saturday) are as follows:
Over the four year period, 2000-2004, there will also be an increase in funds for new businesses of £8.7 million.
SECTION THREE - NOTES ON THIS WEEK’S DEBATES
SCOTTISH SERVICE TAX
The two single member parties in the Parliament choose the topics for this Thursday’s debates. The Scottish Socialist Party will use their time to debate the Scottish Service Tax – a form of local Income Tax and a key plank of their overall economic package for Scotland.
The Executive has raised a number of objections to these plans. The three main criticisms of the Scottish Service Tax are:
Fiscal flight: high earners, whose Scottish Service Tax contribution would be essential to ensure the required income for local services, could leave the country. This is compounded by the fact that high earners in England would pay considerably less.
Costs of administration: making these kinds of changes to the taxation system will be costly in administrative terms. The Executive prefers to spend money on services rather than on administration.
Compromise the impact of UK fiscal policy in terms of demand management: concerns have been expressed over a local authority setting a rate of Local Income Tax at variance with the UK Treasury and thus upsetting macroeconomic objectives.
HOME ENERGY EFFICIENCY
The Scottish Green Party have identified Home Energy Efficiency as the topic for their debate.
Sustainable Development
The cross-cutting powers of the Scottish Parliament, and the holistic approach of the Executive gives more opportunity than ever before to link the environment and sustainable development into other key policy areas, such as social inclusion, health, lifelong learning, education and enterprise.
When we are faced with unemployment, poverty and social exclusion, sustainable development and the protection of the environment may be seen by some as less of a priority. In fact sustainable development is integral to social justice.
Sustainable development is about social justice and the most urgent environmental concerns come from those who cope with a poor quality of life, conditioned by their environment from damp homes to noise and dust from mines and quarries.
As with all things relating to the environment and sustainable development, it is necessary to look at the ‘big picture’. Cultural attitudes and lifestyle choices are as much of the environmental problem as big heavy industry.
The Scottish Executive is committed to working for the efficient use of resources:
Waste Minimisation
Waste means we are using up natural resources that could have been saved. Everything that is thrown away, rather than reused represents a lost resource. In Scotland we produce 3 million tons of household waste each year. This represents half a tonne for every single person. Put another way, an average person puts about ten times of his or her weight of waste in the dustbin each year. Shops and offices produce a further two million tonnes and industries seven million tonnes a year. The cost of dealing with all this waste is huge.
The National Waste Strategy adopted by Scottish Executive sets out basic principles that need to be followed. Following these will require change from local authorities and commercial and industrial waste producers – but attitudes of individuals need to change too.
Everyone is guilty of throwing away things without a thought for the implications, and education has a role to help children grow up with better habits than their parents have. The key objective must be to increase people’s awareness of the waste they produce.
The National Waste Strategy proposes that Area Waste Plans should be prepared by groups of local authorities and LEC’s in conjunction with waste producers and the waste industry. These first plans should be completed by the end of 2000
The EC Landfill Directive requires that Scotland must reduce the amount of biodegradable municipal waste sent to landfill. The first target set by the EC is that this waste should reduced to three-quarters of the 1995 figure by 2006. This is clearly a stringent target - but is important.
Energy in the Home
Efficient use of energy in our homes has clear benefits for the wider environment. Heat that seeps through un-insulated roof and draughty windows is precious energy being wasted. Modern lifestyles mean we make little regard to the small decisions on our lives that collectively could make a big difference to the volume of fossil fuels burned to generate electricity, or a reduction in the volume of gas consumed.
Inefficient behaviours coupled with the poor design, construction and repair of building leads to a huge amount of wasted energy by domestic household each year.
Fuel poverty is extensive throughout Scotland and improved energy efficiency will benefit those on low incomes, particularly the elderly the most.
The Scottish Executive regularly promotes advice on how families can become more energy efficient, ranging from encouraging more insulation to the use of low energy light bulbs.
ADULTS WITH INCAPACITY BILL: STAGE 3 DEBATE
Since the mid-1980s, a number of individuals and organisations representing the interests of adults unable to varying degrees of managing their own affairs, have campaigned for reform of the law governing the appointment of individuals to manage the affairs of adults with incapacity. The Scottish Law Commission considered the paper and issued a Report on Incapable Adults in 1995, including a draft bill. In 1997, concerned organisations set up the Alliance for the Promotion of the Incapable Adults Bill, and no less than 70 organisations are now part of this alliance.
In response to this, the Scottish Executive included the Adults with Incapacity Bill in the first legislative programme of the Parliament.
Who is incapable?
The measures in the Bill will apply to adults (in Scotland, this means 16 or over) who are incapable of acting, taking or understanding decisions, or retaining memory of decisions because of mental disorder or because of a physical disability which makes them unable to communicate. ‘Incapacity’ is a legal term, as is ‘mental disorder’ which includes personality disorder and learning disability as well as mental health problems.
Incapacity can be short or long-term, and very severe or relatively mild: for example, some people with a mild learning disability. The Executive estimates that 100,000 people in Scotland are incapacitated: 60,000 through dementia, 20,000 due to severe learning disability, and 20,000 through accident or illness.
What’s in the Bill?
The Bill has seven parts, the last of which is the usual miscellaneous provisions.
The positive case for reform
It is always dangerous to argue by extremes, but much of the law in this area is seriously outdated. Whilst the majority dates from the nineteenth century, the worst example is the 1585 Tutors-at-Law Act, which allows the appointment to look after a person’s affairs of the nearest male relative on the father’s side. This Act was used only last year.
The Executive’s policy memorandum makes the following points in its case for reform:
The general principles regarding intervention will be that the intervention should produce a benefit to the person concerned; should be the least restrictive of the person’s freedom relative to its purpose; should encourage people to use existing skills or acquire new skills; must take account of the person’s present and past wishes, where these can be ascertained; and should consult the nearest relative, carer, guardian or attorney.
On guardianship, the Bill replaces the current fragmentation with a new flexible system capable of exercising any combination of welfare and financial powers.
The euthanasia question
Perhaps the most controversial issue in recent weeks has been that of so-called passive euthanasia. A number of organisations, but particularly the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC), expressed concerns regarding the provisions relating to medical care and treatment, Part 5 of the Bill. Part 5 provides a general authority to give medical treatment. Their argument has been that a provision specifically prohibiting the withdrawal of treatment – ‘failure to act’ in a person’s interest – should be expressed in the Bill.
The Executive has argued forcefully that it remains completely opposed to euthanasia, and that nothing in the Bill changes this.
The Scottish Executive has no plans to change the law in respect of euthanasia. An act of euthanasia, in which the injuries are not self-inflicted, would be regarded as the deliberate killing of another, and would be dealt with under Scots law, under the criminal law of homicide. Nothing in this bill changes that position. Any health professional, like any other individual who acted by any means—be it by withholding treatment or by denying basic care such as food and drink—with the objective of euthanasia, would be open to prosecution under criminal law. That is the general position, and this bill does not alter it.
Discussion of the circumstances in which it might be in a person’s best interests to have treatment withdrawn came to prominence in England following the case in 1993 of Tony Bland, a victim of the Hillsborough stadium disaster who was in a Persistent Vegetative State (PVS). The matter was considered by the Scottish Law Commission, then a clarification in Scots law arose in 1996 in the case of Law NHS Trust v. Lord Advocate. This concerned a patient in PVS.
The Inner House of the Court of Session determined:
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