Scottish Parliament e-Brief, Issue 179

Scottish Parliament e-Brief
Issue 179, 24^th November 2003

SECTION 1 - BUSINESS THIS WEEK

THE CHAMBER

Wednesday 26^th November 2003
14:35 – 17:00	Previous Procedures Committee Debate: Report on the Founding Principles of the Scottish Parliament
17:00 – 17:30	Member’s Business: European Parliament Seat Numbers (Nicola Sturgeon (SNP))

Thursday 27^th November 2003
09:30 – 12:00	Executive Debate: Violence Against Women
12:00 – 12:30	First Minister's Question Time
14:30 – 15:10	Question Time
15:10 – 17:00	Executive Debate: Physical Activity – The Need for Improvement and the Cost of Failure
17:00 – 17:30	Member’s Business: World AIDS Day 2003 (Des McNulty (LAB))

IN COMMITTEE
This week’s likely highlights in the Committee Corridors include:

Tuesday 25^th November 2003
AM	Audit	The Committee will receive a briefing from the Auditor General for Scotland (AGS) on his report entitled Catering for Patients.
	Finance	Members will consider the November Monthly Report from the Presiding Officer on the Scottish Parliamentary Building Project.
	Standards	The Committee will consider an application to establish a Cross-Party Group (CPG) in the Scottish Parliament on Sexual Health and will look at a request from the Convener of the CPG on Drug Misuse to revise the remit of the Group.
PM	Health	Evidence on the draft Regulations for the Primary Medical Services (Scotland) Bill comes from Deputy Minister for Health and Community Care Minister, Tom McCabe.
	Justice 2	The issue of Fingerprint evidence is revisited.
	Local Government and Transport	The Committee continues looking into the Rail Industry in Scotland, before taking Stage 1 evidence on the Antisocial Behaviour etc. (Scotland) Bill from a raft of witnesses from the fields of Environmental Health, Social Work and the Children’s Hearing System.
Wednesday 26^th November 2003
AM	Public Petitions	New petitions to be considered cover the topics of the childhood vaccination programme, HMP Peterhead and bullying in schools. Current petitions to be considered further include those on fluoridation of the public water supply and the review and closure of sub post offices.
	Education	The Committee continues to take Stage 1 evidence on the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Bill.
	Justice 1	Stage 1 evidence on the Criminal Procedure (Amendment) (Scotland) Bill comes from officials of the Executive and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and an academic from the University of Edinburgh.

SECTION 2 – NEWS

Move to end “postcode prescribing”
A strengthened role for the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) will ensure that “unique drugs” will be made available simultaneously across Scotland.

The new arrangements for the provision of drugs like Imatinib or Glivec, used in the treatment of leukaemia, will mean they can quickly pass into mainstream use once approved by the SMC. The SMC comprises representatives of drug and therapeutic committees from all 15 Health Boards and was set up in 2002 to provide a single authoritative source of advice on the effectiveness of new drugs.

In its new strengthened role from Spring 2004:

There will be an agreed national programme for "unique" drugs with a requirement for every health board to make it available at the same time across Scotland;
There will be a new mechanism to give the SMC up to 12 months’ notice of innovative drugs which are in the pipeline;
There will be greater representation on the SMC of Board Chief Executives and Directors of Finance to ensure national implementation of all decisions; and
Each board will continue to have discretion over SMC-approved drugs for which there are already effective alternative treatments.

The SMC currently considers around 80 new drugs a year.

It will now classify them into:

(a) Unique drugs for specific conditions which, if approved by the SMC, will be introduced uniformly across Scotland. Normally this will be within three months; and
(b) Drugs for conditions where alternative drugs with the same clinical properties already exist. Implementation of such drugs approved by the SMC will be for Boards to decide according to local needs.

Boards currently spend £846 million a year on drugs. The vast majority of this is on existing treatments.

Full story

Scottish Music Centre goes global
The Scottish Music Centre (SMC) is being re-launched as a centre which will serve all genres of music, with its resources and expertise accessible on the worldwide web.

Since its inception in 1968, the Centre has gone from strength to strength, and funding from the Scottish Arts Council and others has allowed the Centre to expand from a classical music archive to one encompassing all genres.

Full Story

SECTION 3 - NOTES ON THIS WEEK’S CHAMBER BUSINESS

WEDNESDAY begins with a debate from the previous Procedures Committee (i.e. the one which existed prior to its reconstitution after the 2003 election) on its Report on the Founding Principles of the Scottish Parliament.

Two years in the making, the report represents a major study into whether the pre-devolution aspirations of the Consultative Steering Group (CSG) had been realised by the Scottish Parliament as it neared the end of its first four-year session.

These founding principles are that:

The Scottish Parliament should embody and reflect the sharing of power between the people of Scotland, the legislators and the Scottish Executive;
The Scottish Executive should be accountable to the Scottish Parliament and the Parliament and the Executive should be accountable to the people of Scotland;
The Scottish Parliament should be accessible, open, responsive and develop procedures which make possible a participative approach to the development, consideration and scrutiny of policy and legislation; and
The Scottish Parliament in its operation and its appointments should recognise the need to promote equal opportunities for all.

The wide-ranging, five volume report makes 135 recommendations on issues including the need for:

A less pressurised legislative process;
Full openness in the legislative process;
Greater transparency in the Committee process and the work of the Parliamentary Corporate Body, Bureau and Conveners' group;
Civil service reform;
Greater scrutiny of QUANGOs; and
Greater “connection” with less advantaged groups as part of the drive to deliver social justice.

Click here to read the report in full

The day concludes with a Member’s Business debate on European Parliament Seat Numbers from the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon.

THURSDAY morning sees an Executive debate on Violence Against Women.

Minister for Communities, Margaret Curran, will use the debate to take stock of progress the Executive has made on the issue to date and set out her agenda for future work.

It will also allow members to debate the statistics on the number of domestic abuse incidents recorded by police which the Scottish Executive are due to publish later this week. A research report into the effectiveness of legislation to protect victims of domestic abuse will also be published in the next few days.

Also likely to feature is today’s announcement that Scottish Women's Aid is to receive extra core funding to ensure critical services to assist women fleeing domestic abuse continue.

Deputy Minister for Communities, Mary Mulligan, made the announcement during her address to the Scottish Women’s Aid (SWA) annual conference in Edinburgh. In her address, the Minister also elaborated on the piloting of domestic abuse courts in Glasgow. The pilots, which are being led by the Procurator Fiscals Service, the Courts Service, the Executive and the police, are expected to be operational by April 2004 with the first cases being heard in June. These domestic abuse courts pilot will initially be confined to summary cases from One Division of Strathclyde Police and will be fast-tracked by the police to a designated Procurator Fiscal Depute and will be dealt with by two specialist sheriffs.

25^th November has been recognised as International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women by the United Nations. It also marks the start of an international campaign of 16 days of activism against gender-based violence.

This is followed by First Minister’s Question Time.

In the afternoon, after Question Time, there is an Executive debate on Physical Activity – The Need for Improvement and the Cost of Failure.

This will give the Parliament the opportunity to debate the progress which made on the Executive’s strategy for physical activity: Let’s Make Scotland More Active.

The Strategy, published by the Executive in February 2003, has as its overall aims:

To facilitate the development of co-ordinated and sustained national and local physical activity policies and programmes;
To stimulate demand for increased regular physical activity in men and women of all ages and conditions in all domains (leisure time, transport, work) and settings (school, community, home, workplace);
To develop a stronger and bigger workforce to support people in their efforts to get more active, such as coaches, teachers, leaders and counsellors;
To improve the environments used for activity such as paths, playgrounds, cycle ways, sport facilities and pools; and
To promote health-related issues through physical activity such as no tobacco use, healthy eating and reduction of stress and social isolation.

The Executive is tackling these aims by:

The appointment of a National Physical Activity Co-ordinator – Mary Allison is already in post;
The development of four action plans in the areas of Active Homes; Active Schools, Active Communities and Active Workplaces; and
A new healthy living brand for physical activity which will tie in with the Executive’s health improvement strategy.

Click here to read the Strategy in Full

The day is rounded off with a Member’s Debate on World AIDS Day 2003 from Labour’s Des McNulty.

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