Scottish Parliament e-Brief
Issue 42, 13th November 2000
SECTION 1 - BUSINESS THIS WEEK
THE CHAMBER
Wednesday 15th November
Thursday 16th November
This may change. See section 3 for details.
COMMITTEE BUSINESS
The highlights of this week’s committee business are:
For a fuller account on the work of the committees, please see tomorrow’s Committee Brief.
SECTION 2 - NEWS
£12 MILLION TO CLOSE GLASGOW'S OUTDATED HOMELESS HOSTELS
Glasgow's old style homeless hostels are to be phased out as part of a programme to tackle street homelessness in the city.
Over £12 million will help to replace them with supported accommodation which better meets the needs of homeless people, according to Social Justice Minister Jackie Baillie.
She was responding to recommendations in the Glasgow Review Team report on street homelessness. The Team - which includes Glasgow City Council, Greater Glasgow Health Board, Glasgow Council for Single Homeless, The Big Issue, and Strathclyde Police - has been looking at ways of improving accommodation provision and ensuring that rough sleepers with health, drugs, or alcohol problems get the support they need.
The report finds that 6,500 people in Glasgow have experience of sleeping rough or living in a hostel every year. Each night, 2,000 people are accommodated in large homeless hostels - many of which are unsuited to dealing with the complex problems they face.
Some of the main recommendation are:
The full report is also available at: www.scotland.gov.uk/homelessness
Deputy Minister for Education, Europe and External Affairs Nicol Stephen joined Holocaust survivor Ernest Levy in Edinburgh last Thursday to launch a teaching pack for schools designed to combat racism and prejudice.
The pack, aimed at 10 and 11 year-olds, tells the story of the Holocaust through Ernest Levy's eyes. It describes how his family received the "knock on the door" and had to leave their home in Bratislava for Hungary, his time in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1944 and his eventual liberation.
The teaching pack, to be used in the run up to the first UK Holocaust Memorial Day next January was designed to help eradicate attitudes of prejudice by starting with the youngest members of society.
THOUSANDS WILL BENEFIT FROM NEW STUDENT SUPPORT PACKAGE - ALEXANDER
Almost half of Scottish students will be better off under measures announced by Minister for Enterprise Lifelong Learning, Wendy Alexander.
Thousands of low and middle income families will benefit from changes to the Higher Education means-test. Up to 45% of Scottish students could benefit from additional student support.
The detailed proposals follow the Scottish Executive's consultation on student support, Scotland the Learning Nation - Helping Students
The means test package includes:
SECTION 3 - NOTES ON THIS WEEK’S CHAMBER BUSINESS
The main business on Wednesday afternoon is a debate on the Executive’s policies on Social Justice.
This is followed by debate of a private members motion on the Glasgow & West Coast of Scotland Rail Infrastructure tabled by Sandra White.
Thursday is an opposition day and the morning is given over to SNP led debates on Community Care and Housing Stock Transfer.
As mentioned in Section 1, there is a question over whether the Community Care debate will be postponed. The reason is that the Health Committee and Community Care Committee will be bringing forward a report on community care for publication shortly. MSPs who sit on the Health Committee have expressed concern that holding a debate on this issue in advance of the publication of the report would mean that they would be in danger of revealing the content of a private report and have asked the SNP to postpone the debate.
After question time, there will be an Executive debate on the consequences for Scotland of the Chancellor’s pre-budget report;
Member’s Business will be a debate on compensation for Mesothelioma victims from myself.
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