Hansard

This debate is helpful as it concerns a number of issues that are fairly intractable. Many years ago, when I was a councillor, the police had a big educational effort in one of the tougher parts of Edinburgh about not vandalising telephone boxes. Children were told that the next time that their granny fell ill, she might not get the ambulance that she desperately needed because the local telephone box had been vandalised. The net result of this campaign in the schools in the area was a marked increase in the vandalism of telephone boxes. The issue is complicated and human nature is a funny thing.

Wearing another hat, I visited Hewlett-Packard in South Queensferry. Hewlett-Packard is a world leader in the electronic subtleties of the business of tracking telephone calls. It was clear to me that effective systems could be put in place to track calls and get back to the people who made them. That could be developed and, despite what happened to the telephone boxes, combined with an educational programme to try to point out to children that abuse of the 999 service is dangerous to people.

We have to pursue the question of mobile phones. I will reveal my prejudices and say that I am sort of anti mobile phones. Mobile phones could be equipped with some sort of locking device to prevent the owner buzzing 999 accidentally.

I recently opened a telephone arrangement that is run by Hanover housing association for a number of different housing associations and councils and acts as a helpline for people in sheltered housing. That idea could be extended in the light of what Linda Fabiani said about non-emergency but quite serious phone calls. The police and social work services could be involved in the scheme, as well as the support services for the mostly elderly or handicapped people to whom the service is available. The development of such a system would be helpful. The house in Corstorphine provides a good service to quite distant parts of Scotland, and therefore systems can be set up in such a way that one is still helping local communities. The idea of having a massive call centre for the whole of Scotland is pretty daunting and unattractive.

There is scope for developing another service to relieve the pressure on the 999 service. I am quite happy to support a motion that we should encourage people who have a real emergency to use the 999 service, and we should do what we can to take other people away from that line. We will have to learn from our mistakes and experiment with genuine educational schemes that reduce misbehaviour.

It has been useful to debate this issue and I hope that the minister will mull over the ideas that have been suggested.