Scottish Parliament e-Brief
Issue 35, 18th September 2000
SECTION 1 - BUSINESS THIS WEEK
THE CHAMBER
Wednesday 20th September
Thursday 21st September 2000
See section 3 for briefings on the main debates.
COMMITTEE HIGHLIGHTS
For a fuller account of the work of the Committees, please see tomorrow’s Committee Brief.
SECTION 2 - NEWS
ADULTS WITH INCAPACITY ACT MOVES NEARER TO IMPLEMENTATION
The implementation of the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000 was brought a step nearer on Friday with the publication for consultation of draft codes of practice and draft regulations.
The announcement was made by Minister for Justice Jim Wallace in the Scottish Parliament in response to a Question from Scott Barrie MSP.
Mr Wallace said:
"I have today published for consultation the following documents:
1. Draft codes of practice for:
2. Draft regulations on:
3. Guidance note on completion of certificates under section 15(3)(c) or 16(3)(c).
"Copies are being circulated to all the organisations on the Scottish Executive's consultation list in relation to Adults with Incapacity. The consultation period will last for 3 months.
"In addition a draft code of practice for interveners and guardians, draft regulations related to aspects of guardianship, a draft code of practice on medical treatment and draft regulations prescribing certificates of incapacity will shortly be published.
"Draft regulations for the medical treatments which require safeguards and proposals for those safeguards will be published once the views of the Millan Committee are published later this year. The full 3 months for consultation responses on these documents will also be allowed."
The Act received Royal Assent on 9 May 2000. It was the fifth Act to receive Royal Assent. It will be implemented in phases between April 2001 and April 2002.
The Act protects the rights and interests of adults who are incapable of managing their own affairs. Up to 100,000 adults in Scotland and their relatives and carers are affected by incapacity at any time. The Act deals with the management of their property, financial affairs and personal welfare, including medical treatment.
The codes of practice and regulations will come into effect at the same time as the relevant provisions of the Act.
The codes of practice are for those who have functions conferred on them by the Act and will offer guidance on the legislation itself and offer further practical information. They support in particular Parts 2 and 3 of the Act which will come into effect on 1 April 2001. Under Part 2, people who want to make arrangements for their affairs to be looked after in the event of their future incapacity will be able to appoint continuing or welfare attorneys of their own choosing. Under Part 3 someone caring for an adult with incapacity will be able to apply to the Public Guardian for authority to have access to the adult's funds, to use for the adult's benefit. The codes of practice and regulations published today set out proposed details of how these arrangements are to operate and how the various safeguards for the adult will work.
The documents can also be read and downloaded from the Website: www.scotland.gov.uk/justice/incapacity
CHILDREN COME FIRST IN FAMILY LAW REFORM
Children's welfare is at the heart of reforms set out last week by Justice Minister Jim Wallace, including clearer rights and responsibilities for parents and shortening waiting periods for divorce.
The Family Law White paper, Parents and Children, sets out how the Executive aims to provide a supportive framework for parents to care for children, better counselling and mediation between parents who face difficulties and to minimise the harm to children if marriages do fail.
Mr Wallace said:
"I am committed to a safer, fairer and more open Scotland. Marriage remains a central concept of our family law, and nothing in our proposals will change that. However, we must also take into account that many couples choose not to marry but to live together. In such circumstances, the important factor is the stability of the relationship in which they bring up children.
"It is crucial that children know who has responsibility for them and it is crucial that parents and organisations know about their responsibilities to the children. At the moment we just don't have that clarity.
"18,000 children a year are born to unmarried couples. But in many areas, such as decisions about the child's education or medical treatment, many parents don't realise that the unmarried father has no parental responsibilities and rights even if he is registered as the father. We propose to give those fathers rights and responsibilities.
"Children suffer most when their parents break up. Long, acrimonious divorces just increase this harm. That's why we are offering better support to families through mediation schemes. But it is a fact that divorces do happen. Therefore we will shorten the waiting periods before divorce, so that parents do not need to resort to painful acrimony to speed up the break.
On Parental responsibilities
"Parental responsibilities and rights will follow automatically on joint registration of the birth. Fathers who have jointly registered the birth of a child with the mother have already shown commitment to the child. They need to be given the formal parental responsibilities and rights that go with their commitment and to be encouraged to take these seriously.
"Step-parents should be able to acquire parental responsibilities and rights by agreement with those who already have such rights. We propose to confine these agreements to married stepparents.
On support for counselling and mediation
"It is far better for families if couples can be reconciled. That's why in the last year we increased funding for counselling and mediation groups increased by 40 per cent between 1999-2000 and the current year, from £512,000 to £718,000. Further increases are in prospect.
"In recognition of their importance we are also developing a strategy to put their funding on a more secure footing. We will underpin this in due course with a more specific mechanism which will provide targeted funding for these specific bodies.
On Separation periods for divorce
"The period of separation will be reduced from two years to one year with consent, and from five years to 2 years without consent.
"This proposal has the welfare of children at its heart. It recognises that couples may be using fault grounds to speed up divorce, and that this unnecessarily increases acrimony, with detrimental effects on children.
"The intention of the change is to encourage couples with children to wait until a year's separation has elapsed rather than proceed on fault grounds. The fault grounds will remain available for those who genuinely need a quick divorce, though we are asking whether these should be merged into a single 'behaviour' ground.
"We expect that the overall number of divorces will remain the same as at present after an initial increase immediately at the outset, followed by a compensating decrease.
On Domestic Abuse
"Domestic abuse is unacceptable, whether committed among married parties or not. That is why we are going to extend the power of arrest on matrimonial interdicts to three years, where requested. At present, a power of arrest attached to a matrimonial interdict would cease when the couple ceased to be married. Our changes will extend the power to cover spouses, whether married or separated, divorcees, cohabitants and ex-cohabitants. We will rename the interdict to "domestic interdict".
"There will also be a clearer and fairer regime for occupancy of the shared home. On all these proposals we will be having a full discussion with Maureen MacMillan and the Justice Committee to co-ordinate our proposals with theirs."
Up until 1995, unmarried fathers could acquire parental responsibilities and rights in 2 ways: by court order or by marriage to the mother.
The 1995 Act added a third way - an agreement made with the mother and registered in the Books of Council and Session. That provision has had very little impact. Only 335 agreements were made in 1999. That is only 335 agreements for a possible total of 18,000 children of unmarried parents who showed sufficient commitment to register the birth of the child jointly that year.
In Scotland most divorces of couples without children proceed on separation grounds. However, the position is different for couples with children. There has been a growing tendency for couples with children to resort to the accusation of unreasonable behaviour to constitute the grounds for divorce. In 1998 (the latest year for which full statistics are available) 54 per cent of divorces of couples with children proceeded on the 'fault' grounds.
The proposals on separation periods follow recommendations by the Scottish Law Commission in 1989 that the separation periods should be shortened. The Commission consulted and the Scottish Office did so again in the paper Improving Scottish Family Law. The majority of respondents supported the proposals.
The White Paper Parents and Children, the consultation paper Improving Scottish Family Law, the responses to the consultation (and an analysis of the responses) together with the 2 Scottish Law Commission reports are available on the Scottish Executive website at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/familylaw/
SECTION 3 - NOTES ON THIS WEEK’S DEBATES
PUBLIC HEALTH
Scotland’s health is poor in comparison to the rest of the United Kingdom and Europe. Inverclyde’s public health is poor compared to the rest of Scotland. Far too many Scots die prematurely from preventable diseases and there are major differences in quality of life and life expectancy between the rich and poor.
This is the Parliament’s second debate on public health. On 1st September 1999 there was an Executive Debate on public health, in which Susan Deacon outlined the Executive’s commitment to, and plans for public health policy in Scotland.
This debate comes shortly after the publication of the Chief Medical Officer's Annual Report for 1999. The main theme of Sir David Carter's annual health of the nation report is the importance of promoting the health and well-being of children and their families.
The report shows that in 1999:
Integrated policy for Public Health
Public health requires an integrated agenda. We recognise that a person’s health can be affected by many different factors, including where they live and what life chances they have. We need a comprehensive, cross-cutting approach that reaches deep into our policies and practices and into our culture and attitudes.
Reducing health inequalities is vital to our public health agenda. Health inequalities are clearly seen in Scotland between men and women, between the affluent and the deprived, and between different parts of Scotland. Research in England has also shown that there are also inequalities by ethnic group (no equivalent Scottish research has been carried out yet).
There are many issues which affect public health, including:
Social Exclusion: Scotland’s relatively high rate of poverty and deprivation play a part in contributing to Scotland’s poor health record. The link between ill-health and poverty is starkly reflected in higher rates of coronary heart disease, stroke, cancer and mental illness among the most deprived groups. Mortality rates from coronary heart disease for those from the most deprived areas are more than 2.5 times that of people from the least deprived. Mortality rates for lung cancer show a similar level of discrepancy between social classes.
Housing: Good quality, energy-efficient housing which is cheap to heat is vital to health. The highest risks to health in housing are attached to cold, damp and mouldy conditions. Cold is statistically associated with an excess of winter deaths and Scotland has a disproportionate number of excess deaths compared with the rest of the UK. Additionally, anxiety and depression increase with the number of housing problems.
A good quality environment: from air pollution in cities to organophosphates in rural areas, to the global effects of ozone layer decline leading to exposure to ultraviolet radiation, the environment impacts on our health. Other factors are litter, noise, pollution of bathing water and lead in drinking water. The Transport Bill, the public transport fund and the investment of £1.7 billion for sustained improvement in water quality across Scotland have been introduced to address this.
The Executive’s Public Health Objectives
The milestone policy document ‘Towards a Healthier Scotland’, published in 1999, set out a comprehensive programme of action to improve health in Scotland - recognising the need to change both lifestyle and life circumstances.
In September 1999 the Scottish Parliament agreed the key priority of promoting better health, endorsed the principles of the 'Towards a Healthier Scotland' as the foundation for action to improve the health of the people of Scotland, and called upon the Executive to work in partnership with relevant organisations to implement measures to achieve this aim.
The objective is to tackle the underlying causes of ill health rather than treat its effects.
Ambitious targets have been set. By 2010 the aim to:
On 11th September Susan Deacon announced that all of the extra tobacco tax revenues coming to Scotland - some £26 million – would be used to fund the biggest ever single investment in health improvement measures.
The Executive is committed to a course of action to improve health.
These measures build on those already underway including:
Healthy Lifestyle Initiatives
These include:
Raising the Profile of Public Health
To drive forward the agenda for improving health, it is necessary to ensure that we have in place the right people and structures to support it. A major review of public health in Scotland was published by the Chief Medical Officer in December and a major review of the role of public health nurses - community nurses, health visitors and midwives - is currently being undertaken by the Chief Nursing Officer. This is now being built on and enhancing public health through:
Further Reading
HOUSING STOCK TRANSFER
The inquiry by the Social Inclusion, Housing & Voluntary Sector Committee into housing stock transfer turned into a marathon lasting many months.
The report, when it came, was supportive of the Executive’s proposals. It makes a number of constructive criticisms and suggestions for improvement.
Background and Principles
‘The Committee acknowledges that much of the social housing stock in Scotland is in an unacceptable condition and that major additional resources are urgently required to tackle this problem. The Committee also welcomes the vision of community ownership of social housing and endorses the principle of stock transfer being a primary method of accessing major additional capital investment and moving towards effective community ownership. The Committee further believes that more work is required on alternatives to whole stock transfer as a means to improving the condition of Scottish social housing.
‘[The Committee] believe that although stock transfer facilitates tenant involvement in decision making, it is important that the underlying objectives are clearly spelled out and that evaluation criteria for the policy should be established. Reviews of the operation of the policy against the objectives should be held and reported to the Scottish Parliament. In addition, the Scottish Executive should issue guidance on stock transfers as a matter of urgency to support the development of practice in areas requiring technical, policy and legal clarity.
Process and Practicalities
‘The Committee feels strongly that tenants should be involved at all levels of planning and decision making in relation to the future of housing stock…also urge that tenants should be supported by independent advisors, selected by them but funded by the local authority, to support them through the process…are concerned to ensure that there is a best practice approach to tenant and community involvement and therefore urge the Scottish Executive to produce guidance on how this may be achieved. The Committee heard several examples of good practice in tenant and community consultation and involvement and recommends the establishment of some vehicle to facilitate the exchange of this kind of good practice.
‘The Committee believes that the Scottish Executive should clarify its intentions on the issue of assisting local authorities with any residual debt remaining after stock transfer…note that in terms of future investment, there is a desire on behalf of the Scottish Executive to utilise capital investment from the private sector. The Committee recommends that the Scottish Executive should compare the costs associated with direct borrowing from the private sector with other forms of financing.
‘The Committee welcomes the Scottish Executive's intention to protect the rights of homeless people following housing stock transfers…believe that the current regulatory framework needs developing to address issues such as the effective scrutiny of transfers, value for money, guarantees about access to housing for those in greatest need and the appropriateness of the current Registered Social Landlord scheme in this context. The Committee also strongly recommends that Scottish Homes (or its' successors) should have the primary role in regulating Registered Social Landlords.
The Wider Context
‘The Committee believes that housing stock transfer signals a key change in the delivery of housing services. Local authorities will be expected to operate as the main strategic body at the local level with a greater role, greater powers and more resources to plan, commission, contract and monitor local housing services.
‘[The Committee] wish to draw attention to the effect that stock transfer has on those already employed in the housing sector and in creating new employment opportunities. The Committee believes that employees and their trade unions should be involved in the process of decision making regarding housing related services - to this end, an independent staff advisor acceptable to the trade unions and funded by the local authority should be appointed at the earliest possible opportunity. The Committee believes that the protection of staff interests both immediately following stock transfer and in the future is essential.
‘[The Committee] believe that new investment opportunities could improve employment prospects in the construction sector and benefit communities in need of regeneration. However, the Committee urges that adequate preparation, training and monitoring be put in place at the local level to exploit the possible benefits.
‘The Committee believes that judgements about rents are crucial to decision making about stock transfers…believe that rents should be affordable and stable with longer term and wider guarantees than are currently normally available. The Committee notes that rent levels are also of long term significance to landlords, lenders and the Scottish Executive…believe that Housing Benefit is an important factor and, as a reserved power impacting on the devolved power of housing, further work may be required in conjunction with the appropriate Committee in the UK Parliament.’
There are no less than 63 recommendations, many of them very technical. An example is the arcane dispute around Tenanted Market Valuation (TMV) and Discounted Cashflow (DCF) as valuation techniques. These are some of the more politically significant findings:
‘Major additional resources are urgently required to tackle the condition of much of the municipal housing stock in Scotland.
The Committee endorses the principle of stock transfer as a primary method of accessing major additional capital investment and moving towards effective community ownership of social housing.
The Committee endorses the objective that involving tenants in the management of, and decision-making relating to, their homes is a key underlying principle which should underpin housing policy in the rented sector.
The Committee endorses the objective of tenant-led community ownership and rejects the view that stock transfer is the same as privatisation.
Guidance on stock transfers should be published as a matter of urgency in order to provide a level of consistency and a benchmark on good practice. Such guidance should take account of all the recommendations in this report and be reviewed regularly to incorporate good practice.
The Scottish Executive should examine and make public its examination of ways in which additional finance can be obtained to deal with the condition of social housing, both stock transfer and any alternatives.
Where alternatives represent both a means to social inclusion and community regeneration, and also good value for public money, the Executive should consider assistance with relief of housing debt.
The Scottish Executive should consult on and establish a model for the maximum number of housing units to be managed by a Registered Social Landlord (RSL) beyond which they would not normally be eligible to take on houses through Council stock transfer. This should not exclude the possibility of staged transfers.’
Further information
The Social Inclusion, Housing and Voluntary Sector committee report into housing stock transfer can be read by clicking on: http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/official_report/cttee/social-00/sor00-03v1-01.htm
SPENDING STRATEGY FOR SCOTLAND
£3.4 Billion for Scotland
This Wednesday, Finance Minister Jack McConnell will lay out Labour’s plans for investing the £3.4 billion the Scottish Executive received from the UK Government’s Spending Review 2000.
Full details of the Executive’s Spending Strategy will be detailed in the Ministerial statement of Wednesday.
Full details will be available from the Scottish Executive website. The full transcript of the statement and debate will be available from the Scottish Parliament website from 08:00 on Thursday.
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