Hansard

Having been a member of the Public Petitions Committee throughout the third session of Parliament, I can honestly say that it has been the most rewarding and interesting committee on which I have served. The petitions that we have dealt with cover a very wide range of topics, and each committee agenda has contained a wide variety of subject matter. Indeed, if variety is the spice of life, the Public Petitions Committee has it in full.

It is not possible to do justice to all the work of the committee in the short time that has been allocated for this debate, but I will touch on three petitions that originated from my neck of the woods to highlight the importance to our citizens of a successful petitioning process.

During a meeting with a modern studies class at Dyce academy in Aberdeen, I explained the work of our committee, and said that we were keen to encourage more young people to become involved with it because the typical petitioner to date had been middle aged, middle class and male. I was therefore delighted when, a few weeks later, a petition was submitted by Laura Stebbings, on behalf of the Dyce academy fair trade group, that called on the Scottish Parliament

“to urge the Scottish Government to amend the Schools (Health Promotion and Nutrition) Act 2007 to allow pupils to act responsibly in respect to their own health and to learn about ‘fair trade’ through running stalls in their schools which sell FairTrade products.”

Because of that legislation, the pupils were no longer allowed to sell fair trade chocolate and, as that had been the most popular product on sale, the stall was no longer viable.

The committee was pleased to get confirmation from the Scottish Government that regulations allow products such as fair trade chocolate to be sold on limited occasions. The Minister for Children and Early Years clarified that in a letter to all directors of education, so the petition was concluded successfully, to the satisfaction of the petitioners, who recorded their satisfaction to the committee.

The petition by Tina McGeever and her husband, the late Michael Gray, on access to cancer treatment drugs, which has already been mentioned, should result in an easier journey for many future patients with terminal cancer. The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing has worked in collaboration with the petitioner and the committee, and that has resulted in important changes to the process for accessing cancer treatment drugs at NHS board level. As Bruce Crawford pointed out, as well as improving the process for exceptional prescribing—or individual patient treatment requests, to give the process its new, more patient-friendly name—new guidelines will result in better information being made available to patients, and should ensure more consistency in patient management and reduce the likelihood of postcode prescribing.

The petition has not yet been closed, because there is still work to do in monitoring the response of health boards to the new guidelines. It is an important and far-reaching petition, which has received praise from many cancer specialists. Its success is a fitting tribute to Michael Gray, who spoke to it very movingly at a time when he was gravely ill because he wanted a better deal for future patients in his situation.

The other petition that I want to mention, which sought improvements to school bus safety, also arose out of personal tragedy, as it was lodged by Ron Beaty after his granddaughter was seriously injured on alighting from a school bus. As a result of his efforts to raise awareness, Aberdeenshire Council has led the way in safety improvements and has put in place measures that, unfortunately, have still not been adopted by all councils in Scotland. Responsibility for the safety of school transport is split between the United Kingdom and Scottish Governments, but real progress finally became possible only after a meeting last October that the Public Petitions Committee arranged, when the UK transport minister indicated that powers on school transport could be devolved if the Scottish Government wished to take competence on that.

Unfortunately, progress has been very slow since then. The committee is frustrated by that, because we wished to see a positive outcome during the current parliamentary session. Hopefully, a discussion with the minister at our final meeting of the session on 8 March will move things forward.

I hope that, in the short time at my disposal, I have managed to convey to Parliament just how far reaching some of our work has been, and I hope that future petitions committees will have similar successes and will be instrumental in helping petitioners to benefit themselves and their fellow citizens.

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