Scottish Parliament e-Brief, Issue 242

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

Minister orders audit of sex offender cases
Scotland's council, prison and police chiefs have been instructed to review all their medium and high risk sex offender cases following publication today of the Social Work Inspection Agency (SWIA) report on James Campbell.

Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson has written to local authority Chief Executives, the Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service, and Chief Constables, asking them to ensure that, in light of the report, they are confident that:

Sex offenders in their area have been subject to comprehensive and competent risk assessments; and
Appropriate arrangements for supervising such offenders are in place and being kept under regular review. These arrangements must include effective local procedures for managing sex offender accommodation.

The Minister will also be asking agencies to ensure that the broader lessons and recommendations from the report are used to improve working practices across Scotland to minimise the risk of similar cases occurring elsewhere.

Each report will be required to be submitted to the SWIA, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons and HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary by the end of September. At that time, SWIA will also be undertaking a planned inspection of North and South Lanarkshire criminal justice social work grouping, during which it will audit the performance of the authorities in applying the lessons from today's report.

Tackling child health inequalities
Phase Two of the Starting Well project, which aims to help vulnerable families improve confidence in parental skills and give children the best start in life, has been launched.

The Executive will provide over £1.6 million to Starting Well until the end of March 2006. An independent evaluation of Phase One of Starting Well is also published today.

Phase one of Starting Well was launched in Glasgow in 2000 with the long-term aim of improving child health and families' well-being in two deprived areas of Glasgow (Greater Easterhouse and Gorbals/Govanhill/North Toryglen). It was given £3 million of support from the Scottish Executive. A further £1.6 million was allocated for the transition year to plan Phase Two of Starting Well. The Executive has committed £1,609,000 of funding to the Starting Well project until the end of March 2006 (Phase Two). Phase Two of the project will be extended so it covers the whole of Glasgow City by March 2006.

Usually new mothers will receive a minimum of six contacts over five years with the health visiting service, but with Starting Well they were offered about 34 contacts with the home visiting teams over the first three years. The support is offered by a mixed-skill team which includes health visitors, lay health support workers (employed from the local communities), community nursery nurses, a bilingual worker and community support facilitators. The families are offered wide-ranging support from home-based debt advice, baby massage, respite childcare, advice on community facilities, employment advice, to accompanying the mother to hospital appointments.

Starting Well is a partnership between NHS Greater Glasgow, NHS Health Scotland, Glasgow City Council, One Plus, the local community and voluntary organisations.

SECTION 3 - NOTES ON THIS WEEK’S CHAMBER BUSINESS

WEDNESDAY begins with Stage 3 of the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Bill.

This proposes to merge the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council (SHEFC) and the Scottish Further Education Funding Council (SFEFC) to create the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council (SFHEFC). The Bill intends to create the single body which will have a duty to provide “coherent strategic decision making” at a national level covering both sectors.

The Bill also sets out the general duties of both Scottish Ministers and of the new Funding Council, with Ministers having high level responsibilities for the policy context. It also explains the specific responsibilities of the new Funding Council in terms of allocation and administration of funding to the funded bodies.

The new Council will have the power to attend and address any governing body meeting of a funded body which relates to the issue of financial support. It will also have a duty on the Council to work and share information with certain key bodies, as well as placing a duty on these bodies to provide information as reasonably required by the Council. (Section 22 set outs the key bodies included in these provisions.)

A new provision on fees (section 8) is also included to allow for possible fee changes by Ministers i.e. a maximum fee level set and different fee levels for different courses. It allows Ministers to use the conditions of grant to control tuition fees. They will be able to set the fee levels by subordinate legislation, which is subject to the affirmative procedure. The Bill will also give Ministers the power to enable the Executive to channel additional funds to the new Funding Council for specific purposes (set out in the bill) and areas of importance, for example the support of collaboration.

The day concludes with a Member’s Business debate on the Boundaries of Cairngorms National Park from John Swinney (SNP).

THURSDAY morning begins with a Health Committee Debate on Access to Dental Health Services in Scotland.

The motion asks the Parliament to commend to the Scottish Executive the Health Committee commissioned research report, Access to Dental Health Services in Scotland. It also urges the Executive to use the report to inform the implementation of its dental strategy.

The research team was asked to survey the population of Scottish dentists with the aim of:

Identifying their contribution to the provision of National Health Service dental services in Scotland; and
Identifying areas where the availability of such services is insufficient to meet the need or demand.

The report found that, overall, Dumfries & Galloway and Borders had the worst access in terms of availability, accessibility and accommodation, and Lanarkshire and Argyll & Clyde had the best access. The problem issues varied between Health Boards, rural and urban areas, and between primary and secondary care services.

Solutions to the problems of access identified in the report are, it concluded, "likely to be required to operate at two levels."

"While local commissioning of services should be sufficiently flexible to allow services to correct problems of access at the local level," it continues, "a broader national strategy is required to ensure that practitioners receive adequate incentives to commit to NHSScotland. Increasing NHSScotland provision overall is unlikely to be achieved with the type of incentives currently available."

This is followed by General Question Time and First Minister’s Question Time.

In the afternoon, after Themed Question Time (for the featured departments, see Section 1 above), Stage 3 of the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Bill begins.

This creates Bòrd na Gàidhlig as a statutory body which:

Will produce a national Gaelic plan;
Can require Scottish Public Authorities to produce Gaelic language plans (taking account of the number of Gaelic speakers);
Can issue guidance on Gaelic education; and
Can advise on Gaelic issues.

The Bòrd will exercise its functions with a view to securing the status of Gaelic as an official language of Scotland. Although campaigners for Gaelic have proposed that the Bill specifically state that Gaelic has “equal validity” or “equal status” with English, this is not included in the Bill.

The Scottish census in 2001 found that 93,282 people have some knowledge of Gaelic and of these, 58,652 people can speak the language. The Scottish census in 1991 found that 66,320 people could speak Gaelic, compared with 254,415 speakers in 1891. Local authorities with the highest proportion of those with some knowledge of Gaelic speakers are Eilean Siar (70%), Highland (9%) and Argyll and Bute (7%). There are also around 10,000 people in Glasgow and 6,000 in Edinburgh with some knowledge of Gaelic.

The day concludes with a Member’s Business debate on Protected Geographical Indicator Status for Scotch Whisky from Andrew Arbuckle (LD).

Wednesday 20th April 2005
14:35 – 17:00	Stage 3 Debate: Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Bill
17:00 - 17:30	Member’s Business: Boundaries of Cairngorms National Park (John Swinney (SNP))

Thursday 21st April 2005
09:15 – 11:40	Health Committee Debate: Access to Dental Health Services in Scotland
11:40 - 12:00	General Question Time
12:00 – 12:30	First Minister's Question Time
14:15 – 14:55	Themed Question Time: * Education and Young People, Tourism, Culture and Sport; * Finance and Public Services and Communities
14:55 – 17:00	Stage 3 Debate: Gaelic Language (Scotland) Bill
17:00 – 17:30	Member’s Business: Protected Geographical Indicator Status for Scotch Whisky (Andrew Arbuckle (LD))

Tuesday 19th April 2005
AM	Subordinate Legislation	The Inquiry into the regulatory framework in Scotland hears from Minister for Parliamentary Business, Margaret Curran.
	Finance	Minister for Finance and Public Reform, Tom McCabe, gives evidence on the Infrastructure Investment Plan.
PM	Communities Committee	Four panels of witnesses from across the housing spectrum give Stage 1 evidence on the Housing (Scotland) Bill.
	Justice 2	Senior Scottish Prison Service officials and prison Governors give evidence on the Management of Offenders etc. (Scotland) Bill.
	Local Government and Transport	Three panels of witnesses give evidence on the Licensing (Scotland) Bill.
Wednesday 20th April 2005
AM	Communities	Stage 2 of the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Bill begins.
	Education	A wide-ranging meeting sees an update on the Executive’s child protection reform programme, a briefing on Disclosures and consideration of responses from local authorities regarding school transport policy.
	Justice 1	Stage 2 of the Protection of Children and Prevention of Sexual Offences (Scotland) Bill begins.
	Public Petitions	New Petitions cover topics including: local government boundaries; the consideration of health issues when considering planning applications for mobile phone masts; and compensation for property values affected by windfarm developments. The Committee also returns to the Petition on egg stamping.
	Environment and Rural Development	Academics and figures from local government give Stage 1 evidence on the Environmental Assessment (Scotland) Bill.