Scottish Parliament e-Brief
Issue 52, 5th February 2001
SECTION 1 - BUSINESS THIS WEEK
1. THE CHAMBER
Wednesday 7th February
Thursday 8th February
2. COMMITTEE BUSINESS
Likely highlights in the Committee Chambers this week are:
For more details, see tomorrow’s Committee Brief.
SECTION 2 - NEWS
15 new Community School projects - which bring together under one roof education, social work, family support and health education services - will be created across Scotland next year.
The new programme will allow up to £9 million to be used for the new Community Schools over three years.
There are already 47 New Community School projects under way across 31 education authorities, involving more than 200 schools.
In Inverclyde, Port Glasgow High School and St Stephen's High School and their associated primaries (ten in total) will receive funding.
SCHOOLS OUT FOR DOMESTIC ABUSE
The campaign to prevent violence against women entered the classroom last week.
An educational prevention programme called Respect, created by the Zero Tolerance Trust, will be piloted over eight weeks in four schools in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Youth groups in the two cities will also be involved.
Respect encourages boys and girls to develop healthy relationships based on equality, and challenges the toleration of violence against women.
Social Justice Minister, Jackie Baillie said:
"We must ensure that we challenge attitudes forming in the next generation to prevent violence against women. A Zero Tolerance study showed just how shocking some of these views are.
"One in two boys and 1 in 3 girls thought there were some circumstances when it was okay to hit a woman or force her to have sex. And a significant minority of boys - 36 per cent - thought they might use violence in future relationships.
"Young people should grow up to expect equality in relationships and regard abuse as unacceptable. We will learn lessons from this approach to prevention and, if successful, roll the programme out to schools across Scotland."
SECTION 3 - NOTES ON THIS WEEK’S CHAMBER BUSINESS
Please note that this week’s business may be amended if opposition parties call a vote of no confidence in Transport Minister, Sarah Boyack. Whether or not this will take place, however, will not be known until later in the week.
Wednesday begins with an Executive debate on the Local Government Finance (Scotland) Order 2001 - the formal debate on the outcome of the financial settlement for local government.
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There is then a short debate on a Sewel motion on the UK Criminal Justice and Police Bill. This bill will enable nation-wide consistency on the disclosure of information for criminal proceedings; powers of seizure; and the execution of warrants.
The final item of business is, as always, Members Business. Today it’s a debate from Labour’s Cathy Peattie on the UN Year of Volunteering.
Thursday is the single member parties’ opposition day. It begins with a Green Party debate on Renewable Energy.
It is, obviously, Green Party policy to increase the use of Renewable Energy. At the time of writing, however, the motion has not been published and no further information is available.
The full text of the motion will appear in Section F of the Business Bulletin in due course. Alternatively, the full transcript of the debate will be available in the Official Report from 08:00 on Friday.
This is then followed by the Scottish Socialist Party’s debates. In a controversial move, the SSP has decided to use its time to hold 3 debates. (On, the National Health Service, Local Authority Housing Capital Debt, and Abolition of Council Tax.) This will have the effect of creating a series of debates consisting of front bench speakers only. Opportunities for backbench contributions will be very limited.
As regards the content of the debates, however, the NHS debate will concern the MMR vaccine, with the SSP calling for the immediate introduction of single vaccinations across the country.
The Local Authority Housing Capital Debt debate will, according to the motion, focus on local authority Capital Receipt Set-Aside Rules.
The Abolition of Council Tax debate returns to the SSP’s stated policy of abolishing Council Tax and introducing a "Scottish Service Tax." (Essentially a form of local income tax.) This was debated in the last SSP led debate on 30th March 2000 and was covered in e-Brief 12 (27th March 2000). Click here to read last year’s debate.
Question Time is followed by the Stage 3 debate of the Budget (Scotland) (No. 2) Bill. (See e-Briefs passim.)
The Budget is the formal way in which Scotland’s £19.7 billion of resources is spent in the financial year 2001 – 2002. The Bill represents the final stage in the new and open ways in which key decisions about resources are taken.
Wednesday’s debate is the final stage of the budgetary process, with amendments to the Bill being considered this Tuesday by the Finance Committee. The only amendment to be tabled is a technical amendment from the Executive. The substantive Bill, therefore, is fundamentally as it was laid to Parliament.
Member’s Business will discuss a motion from John Scott (CON) on the Non Payment of Redundancy Packages to Ailsa Troon Workers.
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