Scottish Parliament e-Brief
Issue 249, 6th June 2005

SECTION 1 - BUSINESS THIS WEEK

THE CHAMBER

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

SECTION 2 - NEWS

Helping people with their personal finances
Organisations across Scotland, from banks to local authorities, have been urged to work together to ensure everyone has access to financial services, such as bank accounts and insurance.

Deputy Communities Minister Johann Lamont called for action as she launched Scotland's first Financial Inclusion Forum today.  The Forum brings together key organisations to generate and share ideas to help people take control of their own finances.

Detailed distribution of £10 million to support financial inclusion was also announced today. Ten local authorities with the greatest concentration of financial exclusion will receive a share of this funding.  Inverclyde will receive £600,000 each year.

Full Story

Full Story

SECTION 3 - NOTES ON THIS WEEK’S CHAMBER BUSINESS

WEDNESDAY begins with an Executive Debate on the G8.

Already the subject of much debate, the Scottish Parliament is today hosting a "G8 International Parliamentarians' Conference" on development in Africa.  Holyrood has welcomed more than 80 international parliamentarians and policy-makers to draw up a list of recommendations for G8 leaders on the development challenges facing the African continent.

The conference will provide a platform at Holyrood for G8, African and European Parliamentarians to put forward their views on some of Africa's greatest challenges, along with representatives from the World Health Organisation, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and World Bank.

The main issues on the conference agenda will be HIV/AIDS, sexual and reproductive health issues and the empowerment of women.  Delegates will also debate the findings of the Report by the Commission for Africa, which was co-authored by Bob Geldof, one of the speakers at an Africa-focussed conference in the Parliament last month. The conference will also address a range of related topics, including sustainable development and agriculture, promoting peace and strengthening the capacity to trade and aid, trade and debt relief.

The conference will allow the parliamentarians to draw up recommendations and develop a declaration for G8 leaders, underpinned with their expectations, on what needs to be done to solve Africa's problems. 

The day concludes with a Member’s Business debate on Norway’s Centenary Celebrations from Rob Gibson (SNP).

THURSDAY morning begins with a Conservative Party debate on Health Issues with specific reference to the Kerr Report.

As is usual with opposition debates, no motion has yet been published.  As always, however, the motions will be published in Section F of the Business Bulletin in due course and a full transcript of the debates will be available in the Official Report from 08:00 on Friday.

As those who have been following the issue will know, an expert group, led by international cancer specialist Professor David Kerr, has recently published a framework for the future of the NHS in Scotland.  Representing the culmination of 14 months of investigation, it has produced a detailed set of recommendations on how the health service could be shaped over the coming decades.

The key recommendations are:

• All NHS Boards to put in place a systematic approach to caring for people (especially older people) with long term conditions with a view to managing their care at home or in the community and, where possible, without hospitalisation.

• Action in deprived areas, through anticipatory care, to prevent future ill-health and reduce health inequality.

• Manage demand for planned care to maximise use of capacity and to inform patient choice by streaming it from unscheduled care, treating day surgery as the norm (rather than inpatient surgery), enabling better community based access to diagnostics and developing referral management services.

• Support and encouragement for patients and their carers to manage their own health care needs and to help others with similar conditions.

• Implement urgently a national single information and communications technology system, including an electronic patient record and the development of tele-medicine, as a means to improve access, quality, develop clinical evidence and connect up the NHS.

• Empower multi-disciplinary teams in local casualty departments to provide the vast majority of hospital-based unscheduled care - networked by tele-medicine to consultant led emergency units.

• Concentrate specialised or complex care on fewer sites to secure clinical benefit or manage clinical risk.

• Develop networks of rural hospitals to ensure continued access to key elements of acute care and establish a Clinical School for Rural Health Care to ensure workforce development.

• Accelerate the development of regional planning for hospital based health services.

• Set a clear agenda for Community Health Partnerships working across the boundaries between primary and secondary care and with partners in social care to shift the balance of care.

The Kerr report assesses the current state of the NHS, and proposes a new model:

Click here to read the Kerr Report

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 Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Bill takes place.

It is estimated that there are over 28,000 charities in Scotland , 67% of which have an income of less than £25,000 per annum.

Charity law has developed differently in each of the jurisdictions of the United Kingdom .  In England and Wales, legislation concerning charities has been passed at numerous points over the past several centuries (the definition of a charity used by the Inland Revenue and the Charity Commission of England and Wales dates back to the Charitable Uses Act 1601), whilst in Scotland a “laissez faire” approach to charities existed until the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Act 1990.

Since the 1990 Act, there have been several reviews of charity law in Scotland culminating in the Scottish Charity Law Review Commission (“the McFadden Commission”), which reported in 2001.  After a lengthy consultation process, the Charities and Trustee Investment ( Scotland ) Bill was introduced on 15^th November 2004 .  The Bill removes the presumption of public benefit for all charities and introduces the two-part “Charity Test” - the first part being a list of 13 charitable purposes (such as the prevention or relief of poverty, the advancement of health and the advancement of the arts, heritage, culture or science), alongside a separate public benefit test.

The Bill also allows for a proportionate regulatory regime to be introduced by Ministers and introduces a new legal form for charities to take on corporate status, and limit liability for their members.

The day concludes with a Member’s Business debate on A Cure for ME? from Alex Fergusson (CON) .

[ HOME ] [ News ] [ Report to the People ] [ Interact ] [ Links ] [ E-Mail ]

[ Copyright ] [ Directgov ] [ Scottish Parliament ]

Previous Page