Mae'r kom56m onw mellu peicain bwysig d сдaw i d infiddoriad y pleinsagisoedd o sefydlongi mewn rhoi popeth o champynyddiaeth haliaeth y� 2017 ama fy nifer oedd Iernan yn ffawr am tu teimlo iawn o ffordd a chelf clapping ac sawl MKT Dåig. Mae'r etym yn y ffordd llwyogi' ar gyfer heb yn meddyg nhw'n ei lle'n heb flynydd rhywbeth gwneud o'r gwaith i gynnig oiam mewn pethol.  I'm grateful that we'll be able to explore some of these issues this morning with Graeme Henderson, director of services and development at Penumbra, Carolyn Lochhead, public affairs manager at the Scottish Association for Mental Health, and Amy Woodhouse, head of policy, projections and participation in children for Scotland. I think that in order to meet the most of our time this morning I'm very grateful for you to be here, we will move straight to questions. The committee felt very strongly about the error in the evidence from the petitioner. It clearly was an issue here. If it wasn't about the question of confidentiality and sharing of information, what was it we could do to keep our young people safe? We hope that you may be able to help us in considering some of those issues. Perhaps if I can begin by asking what your views are in relation to support services currently in place to support young people with mental ill health. Gwitaeth ar gyfnodd. Gownaeth ateb restart. The opportunity to come and talk to you this morning. First off, I want to recognise the sad reason we are here. That is right, that we are exploring what more could be done to prevent unnecessary deaths. There are about 1 million children in Scotland and it is estimated that ten percent of them will have a diagnosable mental health problem which equates to a 100 000. so that is not an insignificant amount, it is quite a large number of children and young people were talking about. That is with a diagnosable problem so that is not just low mood stress with school or life, that's diagnosable problems. If we look at the children, adolescent and adolescent mental health service statistics that we have, we have some, we have statistics about staffing numbers, we have statistics about waiting times and they show a bit of a gap. We have about 1,000 staff in the CAMHS workforce, so that's one to every 10,000 young people. CAMHS see roughly about 4,000 referrals every quarter. 4,000 is against 100,000. We're really talking that the CAMHS workforce has a very, very small role within the overall support provision for children and people with mental health problems. I guess what we need to talk about this morning is what is the response to that and is that the whole picture. Given that we've got three representatives from the voluntary sector here this morning, we would say, no, that's not the whole picture and that statutory CAMHS services are only part of the story and part of the overall service provision for children and young people with mental health problems and that the voluntary sector has a huge role to play. I'd probably like to acknowledge particularly the role of youth work within this. Children in Scotland, as you may or may not be aware, are a membership organisation from the children's sector. We've got about 500 members across Scotland and many of whom are providing support to the 100,000 children that we're talking about and many more beyond that. They are strapped for cash, their services are short term but they are providing an absolutely vital role as part of this picture of support, not just for those with mental health problems but also in the prevention element of it, which is absolutely vital, if we're going to address the problem of the mental health of our youth in Scotland today because it is significant. If I could follow that up, I'd absolutely agree with what Amy is saying. I think that there are a couple of other points to be made about child and adolescent mental health services or CAMHS. Amy is absolutely right in the statistics that she quotes. It's important to remember that we only really have targets and statistics for the upper levels of CAMHS, so CAMHS is intended to be a four-tier system where you start with universal services, so schools and GPs and health visitors, and move up to more specialist services. We only really have data about referrals to tiers 3 and 4, so the more intensive sectors. What we do know about those is that people are waiting longer than they should, so only about 80 per cent of children and young people are seen within the 18-week target—a target that we feel is too long. We know that about one in five young people are rejected from CAMHS for one reason or another. We are grateful that the Scottish Government has recently asked us to look into that. We think that there's a lot to look into and we hope to discover what's going on and make some recommendations that are going to really improve that situation. I think that Amy is quite right to say that this can't all be about clinical services and NHS services. One of the things that we are particularly keen to see is the provision of support within schools. Most children—not all, but most children—are in schools already. That is where they are. Providing support in that place makes sense. We would like to see the provision of counselling for all secondary school-aged children. We think that that would go a long way to providing support where they are when they need it rather than having to go through what can be quite a tricky and complicated referral process. We know that there's about a quarter of a million children in Scotland who have no access to schools-based counselling. We know that there are 14 local authorities who have no on-site provision of school-based counselling and only 40 per cent of secondary schools have that provision. The Scottish Government is looking at that issue at the moment. We think that it is an urgent one. We know that elsewhere in the UK there is a guarantee of schools-based counselling, particularly in Wales, where they are quite far advanced and there is good evidence coming out that it makes a difference. We don't think that Scotland should be any different. We don't think that Scotland's children deserve any less, and we would really like to see some action on that. The young woman in the front of the petition was actually out of school and was in work, but she was under 18, I wonder, would you have a view on how that kind of model, which I understand, and I presume that some of that could be delivered by pastal care staff, but how would that fit for young people who are not in school but under 18? You have raised an important point. We know that CAMHS, across different NHS boards, is defined differently in some areas. It is provided up to age 18. In some areas, that is only if you are in full-time education and otherwise it stops at age 16. I think that there is a problem with people falling through those gaps. One of the things that we want to see is CAMHS to be extended up to age 25 if you are already in that system, because we know that the transition can be very difficult and, to be honest, is not always well managed. We know that we have heard from young people themselves via the Scottish Youth Parliament, which has done some excellent work on that. They feel that people of that age don't really fit into either child or adult services. What we really need in the longer term is a specialist service for that 16-25 age group to make sure that they do not keep falling through the gaps. I am moving away a wee bit from CAMHS into the services that the third sector can provide. One of the things that Penumbra has been providing since 1994 is open access youth services for mental health, including work in schools, an example of which would be in Fife, where we worked in all 19 secondary schools. For a cost of about £200,000 a year, so about £20,000 a school—sorry, £10,000 a school. To give you an example of the issues that were raised by young people—this was S4, S5 and S6, typically—in one term, we had 120 young people expressing suicidal thoughts. That service was closed by the council because of cuts, and that service has now been provided by another organisation, but on a much smaller scale. We are also currently doing work with primary three and four pupils around body confidence, because it is an issue that affects people at that age and later, and has a massive impact on their mental health and wellbeing. We also have a number of open access youth projects that were funded originally by the Choose Life programme, which started around 2005. However, as Amy said, the cuts and pressures on budgets from councils are having an impact on those services. I would like to ask you specifically about prescribing mental health drugs to under 18s. With that regard, to what extent do you believe that GPs have all the necessary training to support people with mental health generally and, more specifically, to make appropriate prescribing decisions to ensure that the young people are informed of the possible side effects of the medications? How much confidence do you have that GPs are actually equipped enough to deal with young people and prescribing drugs? I think that there are two points to be made about that. You are right to highlight the role of GPs.  We did some research with GPs a few years ago now, where GPs told us that they wanted to know more about mental health. They did not always feel like they had enough information. I think that just over half were aware of the sign guidance that exists on non-pharmaceutical approaches to depression, and we would like to see that awareness higher. There is an issue in supporting and training GPs more in mental health issues, and on the guidance around confidentiality and when they can break that confidentiality, one of the points that we made in our response was that, in fact, there is the facility to break confidentiality at the moment where a young person is potentially in danger, and we are not sure that that is widely understood. I do feel that there is another point to be made, though, about we want to see evidence-based treatment and support for children and young people, and in many cases that can be a referral to a psychological service or to another service. Medication has a role to play, and I worry sometimes about the impression that we give if we talk about medication for mental health in a way that is different than we talk about it for other areas. It has a role to play. Many people find it helpful in their support, and we should be careful not to stigmatise people who are prescribed medication. That said, GPs need more support and more training in mental health and in understanding the range of what is available. As I understand it, it is at the discretion of the individual GP about whether they would inform, for instance, parents or a close family member. Does that happen a lot to your knowledge?  I have heard of it happening. I have never seen any figures that would indicate what the scale of it is. No, not that I have seen. Anyone else would like to comment? Yes, please. I think that there are a couple of issues here. One is about confidence around talking about mental health. Certainly from my previous experience at the Mental Health Foundation, prior to my current post, working with the Royal College, that was an area that they identified themselves as lacking in feeling that they lacked in training in within their coast. Across the board, I think that there is definitely a need for more of that, and they would recognise that and support the opportunities for that. There is also the confidence about talking to children and young people. I think that this is an area where there could be more that is done. I know in some practices that they will have specific GPs that focus on that issue and that they will be the GP that young people are encouraged to make appointments with. There are also things that they can do about private spaces and signposting information, which I think is really important. The link worker role that exists within some GP practices is primarily for adults, but there is probably a lot of scope to extend that model for children and young people so that GPs know what options are available in their local areas so that more social prescribing approaches can happen. The other issue that the Royal College talks about a lot is the amount of time that they have with patients. Can you have detailed, complex conversations about mental health within 10 minutes? No, you cannot. Young people probably are not aware of their rights to ask for a double appointment, for example. Even 20 minutes, you will not be able to cover everything, but I think that if young people were aware of that and knew what they were entitled to, that might be something that could help as well. It is also about how we talk to young people about what GP services are about and how your rights can be met and how you can get the most out of them. There is quite a lot there, in addition to what Caroline McLean said as well. I would like to say that, given that we all have mental health, it should be mandatory that GPs have mental health training. Yesterday, at the bi-annual forum of the mental health strategy, there were several from the Royal College of GPs and A&E consultants who mentioned the fact that they had not had mental health training since they did their university training. Those were people in their 50s, so a long time ago, since they had the training, I think that GPs are not aware of other options and struggling to come up with a solution might then revert to medication as the only answer. It clearly is not the only answer. There are other options for people. Good morning, panel. I think that just following on from my colleague Rona Mackay's questioning, I would just want to clarify what the current guidelines are in place for GPs to support young people with mental health. One, are they fit for purpose? Two, do you think that they are being adhered to in practice? I can maybe start on that. There is a mix of sign and nice guidelines that exist for medical staff in general. There is a specific sign guideline on non-pharmaceutical approaches to depression—that is not specific to children and young people—and there are nice guidance for children and young people that relate to depression and to social anxiety. There are not further nice guidelines or sign guidelines that relate specifically to mental health in children and young people, and that is possibly an area that we should look at. I think that you have had evidence from the GMC about their guidelines, which I am less familiar with. In terms of how much they are adhered to, I do not know that there is a lot of evidence about that. I certainly know that we hear from GPs that they would like to know more about mental health and about how to support children and young people in particular, but I do not know that there is a lot of evidence about how strictly the guidelines are actually adhered to. In addition to that, as a child rights organisation, we always advocate, ask children and young people what would help them and what would make services more accessible for them. Also in the spirit of things from the past that are still relevant today, I would point you towards the work of the Paul Hamlin Foundation. They had a five-year, five million-pound programme a couple of years ago looking specifically at this issue about how GPs should be supporting young people aged 16 to 25 and produced a series of guides for how practice could be improved. They are written from the perspective of the young people themselves about what they felt would be helpful.  It backs up what the GMC says in its guidance, but it provides a bit of assurance that we are covering what children and young people need to make informed decisions, because if that is all based on young people having capacity to make decisions about their care and treatment, we all have a duty to ensure that they are given all the information that they need and forms that are clear and understandable to them so that they can make those decisions. It goes beyond the technical side of medications to how we have conversations with children and young people about what they mean for them and their lives. Earlier, some of the services that we provide, one of the services that we worked with in Glasgow, was a peer mentoring service for S3, S4, S5 and S6. That was a project that trained S5 and S6 pupils to be peer mentors to S3 and S4, because what pupils and young people tell us is that they get a lot of information from their peers, and, when they get whatever the issue might be, they will talk to their peers before they talk to anyone else. That is why peer mentoring and supporting young people to become peers would be a helpful way forward. GPs, as we all know, have little time to talk to people, and, as Amy said previously, even a 20 minute session would not be an adequate time to talk through some mental health issues. I wonder what your view was of the link worker programme and to what extent are general practices in Scotland currently participating in that programme? Primarily, a link worker project has just started up in Murray. Six workers across 13 GP practices have been going for about a year, and the evidence that is coming back from that is that the bulk of the issues that are being referred to link workers from GPs relate to social issues, mainly around housing, poverty and family relationships. Mental health is probably about 20 per cent of the referrals that are coming through. We also have a wellbeing centre in Murray, which then takes referrals from the link workers, as well as having a walk-in facility. I know that there are other link worker programmes around the country, but this is the one that we have in Murray. We also provide link work services, particularly in North Lanarkshire. We were very involved with the initial pilot that was led by the Alliance and the deep end GPs, which you are probably aware of. We think that there is a lot of benefit in the model, not least because it begins to address some of the issues that you may raise about the time available with GPs, but also because the job of the link worker is to really be embedded in the local community and have that sense of what is available locally, what are the strengths and the assets that people can benefit from. Mental health tends to be one of the big issues that is raised in the broadest sense. It can be a specific mental health problem but it can be an issue like bereavement, it can be related to debt, it can be related to employment. It offers the opportunity to really explore issues and look for what is going to help the person at this time and to allow them to lead that conversation. It is very much about identifying their goals and helping them to link into what is available. We certainly see more and more GPs starting to engage with that and indeed more IGBs beginning to commission those models. It is something that has a lot of potential, just making sure that people can get access to the services that exist. I do not really have much to add to that, apart from the point that you need the services to exist in order for the link model approach to work. That requires a strong community sector that is there to provide support to young people or adults where they live. There are models that involve a self-help support approach as well, so that is life coaching and a little bit more of the talking therapy aspect to it. There are slightly different models and there might be scope to explore that more too for young people. It certainly adds considerably to what the practice can offer when they know what is available within their local communities. The time that it takes to find that out is not readily available at the moment, so it is invaluable where it exists. Just before I start, I think that I probably need to declare an interest that I manage services at the Pride, mental health up to tier 3-4. As you are aware, it has been widely reported that there has been a significant increase in the rate of antidepressants described to under 18s in the recent years, and the Scottish Government's explanation for that is that the number of young people seeking help has gone up. First of all, do you agree with that explanation, or do you think that there are other factors such as access to other therapies that should be considered? I think that we have absolutely seen an increase over the years of young people seeking help for mental health. We have got figures that demonstrate that the rate is going up. There is some evidence that the rate of emotional issues in young people is going up, particularly in young girls. They are experiencing increasing emotional issues. The issue of trying to unpick how much of that is due to the fact that we are more open as a society about mental health and how much of that is due to a genuine increase in incidence is a difficult one, and I will not pretend that I have the answers. I think that certainly what we want to make sure is that when young people do take the very, often very difficult step and quite brave step of seeking help that they get a good response and the correct response and an evidence-based response. That is about the issues that we have discussed already about making sure that GPs and others that they speak to have the confidence and the awareness and the tools at their disposal to make a good decision about where to refer them or what to prescribe them if that is appropriate. I think that an issue that we have not touched on yet so far is about the confidence of people around children and young people in actually having conversations about mental health. We recently surveyed staff working in schools and got over 3,000 responses. We heard from about two thirds of teachers, particularly, that they did not feel that they had enough training in mental health to allow them to do their job properly. We worry about that. We worry about the level of confidence and knowledge of mental health around children and young people generally, as well as making sure that the actual services are there. Certainly, if we look at the CAMHS stats, we see that there are more people waiting at the end of the quarter to start treatment in CAMHS than actually do start treatment during that quarter. That suggests that demand is outstripping the services that are currently available. I absolutely agree with Carolyn's point about concerns about teenage girls. We know from the health behaviour school-age children study that that is longitudinal evidence that something happens when girls in Scotland hit their teenage years and that their mental health deteriorates quite significantly. We do not fully understand why, if that is to do with increased pressures in society, social media has given a lot of responsibility for this. I am sure that it plays its role. Schools clearly have a factor to play and we know that relationships across the board are really important. Having that trusted relationship in your life seems to be a really important protective factor. It does not surprise me with those statistics. That does not mean that they are right. We know that it is not easy to know what the correct rate of prescribing for antidepressants should be. I remember when there used to be a heat target for reducing antidepressant prescribing. That was felt to be a good thing, but we did not really know what the right rate should be. I guess that is the same for children and young people in recognition that it is probably the right thing for some children and young people. Are we doing enough to prevent that from happening? The key to that is that if it gets to the stage where a young person is needing a prescription of antidepressants, we have left it too late. We need to focus on what we can do to stop their mental health getting to that point. That is not easy, but I think that we have a role to play. I know that early years are very, very important in terms of building resilience and good detachments. We know this now. We have evidence about this now. If we were going to follow what we should be doing to put more into the early years and parental support, we would make a difference. I think that as children get older, their mental health awareness, so that they understand about their own mental health, is absolutely key. They know the things that are likely to make their moods deteriorate, and they know the things that are also helpful in terms of boosting them and keeping them well. However, that one trusted adult is absolutely vital. We know that that can be the protective factor that makes all the difference. How do we, as a society, ensure that we can have that? That is working now. Thinking about the rise in mental health problems being disclosed by young people, I think differently about what people disclose. Quite often, they do not disclose mental health problems, but they disclose distress of some kind. One of the things that we were discussing yesterday at the mental health biennial forum was the people who present to whether it is GPs or A&E, and they expose or disclose distress or unhappiness or whatever it might be, but they do not get to the point of having a diagnosed mental health problem. Therefore, they do not enter the mental health system, but they often can be unable to access other services, so they go away without a solution to whatever distress there is. I think that it is important that the stress-beef intervention pilots that are running gather that information in relation to mental health, not just in relation to general distress. I looked very hard at what the GMC had said and what the other contributors to our inquiries had said. Two things came out for me. One is the statement by the GMC that they should only prescribe medicines if they have adequate knowledge of the patient's health and are satisfied that they serve the patient's needs. I suppose that my question to you then is what would you say was the amount of time you needed to spend with a young person before you could make that adequate decision? The second one was that they stated very clearly in the letter that the doctors should disclose information if it is necessary to protect the young person from risk of death or serious harm, which we would all recognise as safeguarding procedures that are mandatory training for most third sector organisations that has to be regularly updated. What I did not get out of that is whether GPs are required to undertake that mandatory training on a regular basis. If so, whether the information sharing regulations that most of us are bound by and that we recognise and explain to a young person are regularly undertaken, I wonder what your understanding of those two things was and your response to the GMC's comments. In terms of the time, that is really difficult to say. I suppose that it is how well the GP already knows the young person. If we look back at the golden era where everybody knew their family practitioner and you had had that relationship with them, then potentially, although there are issues about that as well. If you know them too well and you know their family, are you feeling able to talk about mental health or something that is potentially stigmatising? I think that the point is that 10 minutes is not probably going to do it. Is it for something that is as sensitive as that? In my previous show, I did a lot of work around long-term conditions in mental health and talked to people with multiple issues that they used to go to the GP practice with. The mental health one was always the one that was left till the last. That was almost as if they were leaving the door and another thing, doctor. It is not easy to talk about. It is not easy to talk that you are struggling, that you are having difficulties with a stranger and with somebody who is in a professional role that has more power than you. I do not know what the answer is, other than more time, other than the doctors that make efforts within their practices to become inclusive and welcoming for children and young people. They feel like safe spaces, perhaps having other professionals like nurses or link workers or youth workers based within practices that can have those conversations. The clinics, some have young adolescent clinics that they can have drop-ins and talk about sexual health and other issues. Extending that to ensure that they are available for mid-ath I think would be helpful. In terms of the duty to share information, I do not know about the technicalities of practice within Scotland, so I would probably be able to step in my mark by going into that. However, we have very good suicide intervention training in Scotland through assist and storm, and there was great pressures to ensure that high proportions of the workforce in general were trained in that. It would be very interesting to see the proportion of primary care staff and GPs in particular that had specific training on those standardised packages that we have in Scotland. I am sure that there will be ways of finding that out, but I do not know myself. We mentioned that yesterday about the training packages, including the mental health first aid training assist and storm. There was originally a target, the Scottish Government target, of 50 per cent of front-line staff, and it would appear that that 50 per cent target was reached, and that it achieved 52 per cent. Now that the target has gone, we need the target to be 100 per cent. There is no target now, so the target was achieved. It would appear that that box had been ticked. My view would be that 100 per cent of front-line practitioners should have the training that you assist in the mental health first aid storm. That is something that we can pursue. Angus MacDonald Okay, thanks, convener, and good morning to the panel. I think that it was Karen Lochhead who mentioned the Scottish Youth Parliament earlier, and we know that its members favour an increased focus on social prescribing opportunities, either as an alternative to or to complement medical interventions such as peer-to-peer support, which has already been mentioned by Graham Henderson, also talking to youth workers, information centres and counselling. I wonder if you could expand on the views that you have already articulated this morning of those alternatives. Are you aware of any good practice that currently exists that has not already been mentioned this morning? The youth parliament has done some excellent work on mental health in recent years. Their report, Our Generation's Epidemic, was one of the factors that really pushed Sam H towards campaigning specifically on children and young people's mental health. I think that they have done a great job of highlighting both the problems and potential solutions. We absolutely agree that social prescribing, links work, peer support and all of the approaches that you have mentioned should be more available and should be developed so that they are available to people when they are the best option. I am a little wary of presenting those as alternatives to medication, as if medication is always a bad thing. I think that there is an evidence base, as we have said, on medication, and that people should be given the right treatment and should not be made to feel stigmatised for it, but there is absolutely a wide range of approaches that should be more available, particularly the need for counselling to be available in schools. There are some good examples of peer work going on where young people can support each other. I think that as long as those young people who are doing the supporting are themselves properly supported and trained, that can also be really helpful. I absolutely support the suggestions that the youth Parliament has made. I would probably say that it is worth asking young people themselves about what has helped them. I will throw in digital spaces here, because we need to recognise that that is where young people get a lot of peer support online. We need to be aware of that and we need to be aware of that. We talk a lot about the risks associated with social media, but there are also great opportunities if you are living in a remote part of Scotland on a croft and do not have the opportunity to go to a youth centre in your local community. Online space is invaluable for connecting you with others who have had similar experiences to you and getting that peer support, which is absolutely vital. We have a responsibility to tool ourselves up with the knowledge about the places that young people are going to do that so that we can support them and encourage them to the ones that are good and that are supportive and that we steer them away from the ones that are very risky and damaging, and certainly in the area of self-harm and suicide prevention, there are ones that are risky and damaging. Most young people live their lives equally online and offline in a very seamless manner. I certainly think that, particularly in mental health professionals and public sector in general, they are not necessarily fully equipped with an understanding of how they use those spaces. Social prescribing should be aware of that as well and see that as an option that is available to them. It is certainly a great resource if it can be life-saving. I know that it can save people's lives, so I know that. I will give an example from our fifth service, where we had a closed managed Facebook group that the young people themselves requested. They supported each other through the closed managed Facebook group. It was managed by the Penumbra workers to make sure that there was no inappropriate behaviour on the Facebook group, but that was requested by the young people. Another initiative that we are involved in, as I mentioned earlier, is the work with young school children, primary 3 and 4, around body confidence. That is a huge issue for young people. A lot of that information and pressure come from social media, so there is a need to educate people and focus on body confidence and not negative body images, which is the prevailing approach in the general media. I am really pleased to hear you praise the Scottish Youth Parliament on the work that they have done in this so far. I had a question time in my constituency in the high school a couple of weeks ago. Of the three questions, that was the one that was of most concern to the high school pupils. If I could skip on to the Scottish Government's 10-year mental health strategy that was introduced earlier this year, I believe that CAMHS has already been mentioned this morning. I believe that part of that strategy was a £15 million increase in the budget for CAMHS. I am not entirely sure of that. I do not have that figure in front of me, but I think that it was £15 million. I am probably not the answer to that, but is that enough to support schools-based counselling services that have already been mentioned? I am surprised that schools-based counselling services are not included in the mental health strategy, as you mentioned earlier. I would like to start, then. There is a general lack of resources identified in the strategy. There is a lack of outcomes and targets identified in the strategy. There is a specific issue around the lack of resources directed at children and young people. What we have seen in the last strategy has been a focus on NHS and medical interventions. There is no focus on non-NHS or non-medical interventions, upstream interventions, interventions with younger people. We wait until they are diagnosed with an illness and then we put in support. It is not adequate to put in £15 million or £100 million. None of those figures are adequate because they should be much more of the resource directed at children and young people. I think that it is about £1 billion that we spend on mental health. Yesterday, there was a call from someone asking for 50 per cent of that money to be spent on children and young people. That is a good place to start. Through early intervention. Most mental health problems start in adolescence. If not, treated early will continue on into adult life and have hugely debilitating effects for the rest of many people's lives and be responsible for the health inequalities that people with mental health problems experience and end up in them dying younger. There is an imperative not just because children and young people have a right to good mental health here and now but also is a prevention for the extra costs into their adult life, both emotionally, socially and financially. We could make a very strong case for a much higher proportion of the overall budget getting put towards children and young people. You are not going to get any complaints from us about that. It is worth bearing in mind that there are other parts of the Government that are partially funding mental health responses. I mentioned youth work before, but the other one that is worth being aware of is the pupil equity fund. It is funding to address the poverty-related attainment gap and can be funded to undertake activities around literacy numeracy or health and wellbeing. A lot of schools are choosing to use their money to invest in school-based counselling, mental health support and pupil support within the schools and are contributing part of the response to the issue. Whether that is right or wrong is open for debate. Whose responsibility should this be to fund this? Should it all lie within the mental health units within Government? Or should it be across the whole Government? There is an argument to say that mental health is everybody's business. Mental health is education's business, mental health is community's business and mental health is fishery's business in some way or another. We should all be funding it across all parts of Government, making a contribution, and that might have a better chance in terms of reaching the total that we need to respond to. One caveat to Amy's point about mental health being everyone's business then becomes nobody's business. One of the things that we spoke about yesterday was doing a mental health impact assessment across all policy areas of the Scottish Government.  I think that there are some other points to be made about the issue of school space counselling that you raised. We know that the strategy contains a commitment to review school space counselling, which is very welcome. From our perspective, we know that children in Northern Ireland and Wales already have a guaranteed right to that, and to a lesser extent they do in England. That seems fairly clear to us that there is no reason at all that Scotland's children should not also have that right. We would like to see that acted on very quickly. In terms of the budget, we have previously called for the CAMHS budget to be doubled, I think that the point that has been raised about would that be enough? No, but it would be a good start. I do think that there are good actions in the mental health strategy relating to children and young people's mental health, but I do think that it is worth looking at—we saw just this week a green paper published at Westminster level about children and young people's mental health, which builds on the existing £1.4 billion of additional money that has been made available for children and young people's mental health, and commits to recruiting 1,700 more therapists and supervisors, and to ensuring that an additional 70,000 children and young people will obtain support from mental health services. Some of that has been rolled out quite slowly, it has only been rolled out in areas of the country, so I would not want to overemphasise what is happening there, but I do think that it is worth looking at what is happening in other areas of the country and asking ourselves, are we doing enough? Can we be learning from other areas? Is there more that we can do? Going back to the specific petition, the question that has been in my mind since hearing that evidence is that when a person's mental health deteriorates to a point where medication is required, is there not a question around the competence of that person to manage their own medication? Is that an issue about capacity? My point is that this was a tragic case at the extreme, but if medication is required, we are then passing on that competence, that ability of the patient themselves, to manage their own medication. If their mental health is deteriorated to a point where they need medication, from a GP's perspective, we should be passing that competence along. I suppose that, as a children's organisation, I probably have to think about this in terms of a child rights perspective, and I think that there are several rights here that are relevant. Obviously, as we have mentioned earlier, there is the right to have a say about matters that affect you and your life, and the fundamental importance of children and young people as individual citizens in and of their own right, and if they have the ability to make decisions that they should be, particularly at the age of 16, they should be able to do that when they have many other decisions to vote to get married, etc. Decisions about their care in principle are absolutely fundamentally important as well. I suppose that one of the other articles, which is very relevant here, is that adults should do what is best for you, and that is article 3. Are we doing enough to ensure—this is a point that I have said earlier—that young people who are vulnerable because of their mental health, I absolutely recognise that, and are being given all the support that they need to enable them to make those decisions. There may be a role for advocacy so that they have some adult who may be one step removed from the mental health practitioner or the GP who can talk through those options with them and come up with a plan with them, so it is not just their decision by themselves. I recognise that it could be a difficult decision, particularly when you are being offered medication or nothing. That is Hobson's choice in many respects for some young people when they are considering the side effects that might be associated with that. I would be very reluctant to talk about that. The implications of what you are saying is that, if you have a mental health problem, you do not have the capacity to make decisions about your care and fundamentally disagree with that. Everybody with mental health problems deserves the support from some professionals to help them to make those decisions and work through that in a very rights-based way so that they are entitled to make those choices and have choices that are going to help them with their care and treatment. The petitioner was that, if she had known her daughter had the tablets prescribed to her, even if she did not agree or was concerned about the fact that she was taking the tablets, she would have known to look for the side effects and to understand them rather than to not understand them and she would have managed her medication. She would have supported to manage her medication, so it was not some hostile person denying a young person their rights, but more information could have provided the support that clearly was not available in the system to her. What was available in the system to her is medicine. I wonder whether, linked to that, if you have not got that guarantee, if there is not some supportive person that can help to manage your medication, should there be limits on how many tablets you have prescribed at a time? I think that I would be extremely concerned if we were to go down the road of assuming that a young person with a mental health problem lacks capacity. With respect, I did not say that. I understand that and I am responding to Mr Vittle's question. Well, I think that it is not the lack capacity that there is a position of distress, anxiety, that has brought them to that position, where we will all have known people who have been in those circumstances. If I break my leg and I am distressed by it, I do not expect somebody just to say, well, get on with it. There would be supports that you would put in place that would not be medical provision, but it would be an understanding that you need support because you have been shocked or whatever. I think that that question of how somebody feels when they finally get to the point where they get to adopt should be recognised. I mean, I am assuming that it is recognised. I have spoken to GPs and they know that it is recognised. It is not just simply a question of handing them over to tablets and saying, I have confidence that you can deal with that yourself. I just wonder whether there is an issue here about GP practices under phenomenal pressure. Yes, they can prescribe because they are allowed to do that. They have not got time to do the things that would, whether they should be in place, a hierarchy of interventions by the GP before they get to the point of prescribing tablets. Absolutely, and the point that I was about to go on to make was about points that we have made before about the importance of reviewing prescriptions when they are made to make sure that people are not given a prescription and then left for a long time, that they should be reviewed quickly and indeed that they should not be made unless they are in line with evidence-based guidelines. I think that there was a point in the earlier question suggesting that if a young person has got to the point of being prescribed mental health medication, is there a question about their ability to manage their medication and that is the point that I was responding to? I would have great concerns about making a blanket assumption that those young people would not have the capacity to manage their own medication. I do think that what is really important is that GPs are aware of the guidance on whether they should prescribe and how much they should prescribe and at what point they ought to be breaching confidentiality. When I read the evidence from the petitioner, those were the questions that were going through my mind. I think that there is a point about the excellent work of the youth Parliament and the evidence that they expressed concern about young people if they did not feel that their confidentiality was going to be respected, would they come forward for help at all? That is a genuine point. We also have to recognise that not everybody has supportive parents who want to or who will understand the issues, not everybody has supportive parents who will help them to manage medication if they were put in that position. We need to look at every case individually, but we also need to make sure that the guidance that we already have for GPs and other professionals on how those cases should be managed is well known and is followed. I was not suggesting for one second that there should be a blanket policy here of not saying that there is no capacity there, but that question has to be in a GP's head when handing over medication around the ability to manage that medication. I was just purely on the same subject just to follow up on what has been said. I think that this goes back to a much earlier question about GP's training and competency and this whole issue and the fact that there does not seem to be a standard framework for them. It is not like prescribing somebody a course of antibiotics and saying, if you do not feel better, come back. They surely must know that if a young person is at the point where they have to go and receive medication, it has to be followed through. They cannot just be given a load of tablets that they have to deal with. Surely in the GP's mind that that must not be the correct way, and I wonder what your views on that were from a professional capacity of a doctor handing out tablets to clearly someone with mental health issues? Absolutely. In the evidence that we originally submitted to the committee, we reviewed some of the guidance that exists for GP's. Obviously, I am very wary of talking about an individual case where I do not have all the facts, but I think that it is really important to ask where the guidelines followed, both in terms of considering whether to involve parents and whether to breach that confidentiality, which doctors can do. They have that right and, indeed, I would say duty. Whether the guidelines were followed in terms of what to prescribe and how much to prescribe, those are really important guidelines. They should be well understood and should be followed. I am not sure that they always are. An additional question that I think would be useful for doctors to ask young people in this case is, do you have an adult you trust in your life that you can tell about this? What do we do with looked after children? What do we do with young carers who are taking on that caring role? What do we do with children who do not have a positive relationship with their parents? Is there somebody else that is in your life? Do you have an anti or a granny? Is there some adult that can support you through this? Can I tell them about it? We can share information if we have young people's consent. Are they asking that question? Would they be the first place to start? Are they always undot know if they are? I think that what we are dealing with here is the differential between going in for a mental health consultation, which in general terms, with a young person, you would probably allow an hour to talk to a young person and a 10-minute GP appointment. I do not see it in my papers here, but I am sure that I read in previous papers that the petitionist's daughter actually refused or declined psychological support at the time. Am I correct in saying that? Does anybody recall? I am sure that the question that supports us is whether we immediately then go to, and I do not think that we want to second guess what was decided within an individual consultation, but I think that the question that we are asking is how does that build through, because perhaps in some circumstances people repel all borders in the first stage but then can be persuaded or encouraged? My point here is that the nice guidelines are very clear about the prescription of medicines, particularly around antidepressant medication, around the process that GPs or others should take. It certainly indicates that they should be seen within a week of prescription, that they should be encouraged to other things. I suppose that this comes back round to this whole business of training and updating, because we do seem to have a gap here in terms of the treatment of young people. I wholly support their right to confidentiality and I wholly support the fact that young people should have the right to make decisions and they should feel able to attend without feeling that whatever they say is going to be passed on to all and sundry, but the safeguarding requirements should be paramount in terms of information sharing and particularly things like the nice guidelines are there for a very specific reason as a result of the evidence base that has been looked at. I wondered from your perspective whether you think that in terms of the way we treat guidelines with young people in the way that we are making decisions and strategies, whether you think that there is adequate adherence to the evidence base that is out there for young people and whether, particularly in terms of mental health, when young people go and ask for help, whether we need a much more robust response that is a little bit more than just a guideline that may or may not have been read recently or thought about recently, whether we need something much more robust, because we certainly have a huge increase in the number of young people who are seeking that kind of help. As Amy indicated earlier, we do not entirely understand why, but we are perhaps responding adequately to some of this and I just wondered what your thoughts on what you think should be done around that. Adequate adherence to evidence base and guidelines, the GMC would be the best place to find out that information in terms of complaints that have been brought forward. In general practice, I do not have that information myself that I can illuminate on. In terms of the more robust response, we wholeheartedly agree that we need to do more in ensuring that support is available across the whole of the tiered model approach, which has been around for quite a long time, so that you have the low-level prevention work and the awareness raising work that we have talked about in schools and community settings. Clearly, if you are familiar with this one, the new road service ramps up or down as required and the needs of the children and young people are required. Probably where we are at the moment is that we have specialist services, which are very small and overstretched and with CAMHS. We have some awareness raising happening at the lower level but very little in the middle. I think that that is a real gap and should be the focus. It is one that quite often primary care fills but does not seem to be much of an offer in terms of other than medication for children and young people with primary care at the moment. I should mention that Audit Scotland is currently doing an audit of children and adolescent mental health services, which is due to report September time. That will be invaluable evidence. It is a challenge, but it is looking across that whole tiered approach—I do not know the extent to which it will get into the community-based stuff—but that will give us a picture of what mental health services for children and young people look like in Scotland that we do not really currently have. That will show where the gaps are as well and we will be able to use that to advocate for change. I would look out for that when it comes, if you are not already aware of it. On the point about the guidelines, I think that it is a frustration that we already have good, well-written evidence-based guidelines that are not always adhered to and that do not always have good awareness. Like Amy says, I think that the GMC would be the place to look for factual information on awareness and adherence. I think that there is a question for the GMC and the Royal Colleges about how we increase that awareness and make sure that people are working to it. I think that absolutely there is an issue about not just the guidelines but also the support that is available. When you recognise that a young person is in need of some kind of help, do you know what is available? Is there enough available? Certainly one of the things that I would hope to look at in the coming months as part of the audit that I mentioned earlier is about the threshold and the criteria for CAMHS, which varies across the country, in terms of what a particular CAMHS service provides, which can be different in different areas, and what threshold do you have to make to qualify for it? In some areas, it sounds to me as if you have to be really quite unwell to get access to CAMHS. Is that the right approach? If it is, then what else are we making available for those people who clearly need some help, but do not perhaps meet that rather steep threshold? Specifically in relation to the guidelines for GPs who dispense our prescribed psychotrophic medication, it may be possible to have a guideline that says that you do not just prescribe medication that there should be something else that is done, whether that is access to a supportive adult or to a nurse follow-up quicker than a month, or to another service, a talking therapy, but that might be possible as a guideline. In relation to the safeguarding requirements, as a service provider, all of our staff are required under contract to adhere to safeguarding rules. I am not sure if the same applies in other areas. The nice guidance for children and young people on depression says that they should be offered a psychological therapy as well as an antidepressant, so that again is a point about the awareness of guidance. Thank you very much. I think that there is an issue around my mother's generation, where we are routinely offered antidepressants and the world has moved on and said that there should be presumption against that. I knew that idea that perhaps what we should be exploring further is the possibility to put further steps in. I am not saying that there is nothing about it to stick them around when people need medication that they get it, but the inappropriate use of medication is a historic fact that people did not really address the questions around about mental health and simple as it will give you a tablet and you can deal with that. Therefore, there is a whole load of people getting tablets that perhaps it was not appropriate. I have to say that I was concerned—I am not sure whether it was a petitioner or a later one—where the sponsor of the Scottish Government to the increased prescribing of drugs was saying that this was good because it meant that more people were coming forward. What it might mean is that under-pressure GPs are prescribing to people who are coming forward with mental health, as might be something that we would want to explore. How we take this forward has been really useful and explores a whole range of challenges for MD working with young people with mental health issues. I have been told anecdotally that young people have to refer themselves to cameras, so what if they went and there were some physically wrong with them, they would be referred to a consultant but they have to do it themselves. I think that it might be something that we might want to explore, but there is a question about that no target any longer in training is also something that perhaps I want to highlight. In terms of taking this forward, I think that we have already discussed the possibility of perhaps inviting the minister for mental health, but I think that that would be something that we should agree to do. Is there anything else? Maybe we can check back on the official report and things that have come up that it might be worth our presuming. We did get responses from the GMC and so on, but it might be something that we want to just remind ourselves of ahead of any meeting with the minister. I would like to go back to the GMC to ask them about safeguard training, to ask them about their adherence to guidelines. Their response was very full and it is quite clear within their own expectations that all those things are there, but there is a difference between them being there and whether it is done, because I think that there is an enormous amount of pressure on GPs at the moment and most of them are not paediatric specialists. It is a big piece of very specialist work that they probably have had minimal experience of, and I would like to know what kind of requirements there are or what kind of percentages, if they have got that, of GPs that are doing their safeguard training and updating on mental health. I do not know why that is perhaps more the colleges would be aware of that. I think that there is a distinction between the GMC and the college. You might know more about it than me, but maybe we want to just to check where we would get that information from, Brian. I think that almost following on from that, I think that one of the things that I would be interested to find out is the access to CPD and that is generally across the health board. It might be available, but do they have the time and capacity to access this? As we said earlier on, if you have 30 or 40 years into being a GP, those services have moved on dramatically in that time. The CPD is compulsory for registration, but you are not necessarily going to cover every subject. It is about what, if any, mandatory CPD is there. The balance between GPs who are unaware of what training is and those who are under such phenomenal pressure that they are simply managing a process and are not really doing—I mean, I have met the privilege of meeting with one of the GP practices in one area, and that was really the point that we were making, that they are under the caution terms of appointments, that they are not really necessary at the time. That whole thing with the link worker in depend GP surgeries—it is on a small part of the provision, but it might be something that we can look at further. We would invite the Minister for Mental Health to explore the issues that are highlighted in the petition and recognise again that the petition itself comes from very difficult tragic circumstances and it may not be the solution, which is simply around the issue of confidentiality. I think that it highlights a number of other issues that we would want to look at so that we can protect the young people and keep them safe. Is it an issue for health and social care partnerships as well to maybe in their local area issue guidelines or more than that? If a young person goes and is prescribed, then it is a requirement that they are signposted locally to some counselling. I do not know if that is within their remit. It may be something that, in asking the minister to come in, we should ask what they see as their role for the local health and social care partnerships. It does all come back to safeguarding because information sharing, which has been a huge element of discussion over the last few years, and the underpinning of the safeguarding guidelines that are produced by every local government area, NHS area, is that question about when do you share information and you share information when you have reason to believe that the young person's life may be in danger or that they may be endangering somebody else. It is that decision making that is crucial because independent and confidential access and the right to that independent and confidential access is paramount, but the safeguarding procedure overlays that. That is the point at which you decide whether or not you need to tell somebody about what is going on with somebody. In the petitioner's case and in many of the cases that would relate to that, for me that is the crux of the problem. I think that it is important to remember that it is 16-year-olds who can be talking about safeguarding applies to vulnerable adults as well. Yes, 16-year-olds are very, very young. Yes. It is also how visible it is to somebody. It is not necessarily, I guess, if somebody is in a total crisis, you can spot that, but somebody is quite calm as they present themselves. They suffer a bit from stress. Somebody has suggested a few lanshys. That is also about training, because assist training, truly suicidal people are extremely calm. They are not head up. That is about being able to spot and understand what is going on. I think that there is loads for us then to explore the Minister for Mental Health round this whole question of how we address support for young people and ensure that they get the appropriate support and treatment if it is deemed necessary. I thank our panel very much again for being here. I think that we found that very useful, and obviously we look forward to the further consideration of this petition, and I suspend the meeting briefly until I have witnesses to leave the table. If I can call the meeting back to order again. We are moving on to agenda item 2, a new petition. In petition 1674 on managing the cat population in Scotland was lodged by Ellie Stirling. The petition calls for a review of the code of practice under the Wildlife and Natural Environment Scotland Act 2011 to control the domestic cat population and protect the Scottish wildcat. We shall take evidence on the petition from Ellie Stirling. I welcome you to the committee. The committee members have a copy of your petition and a written submission that you provided to support the petition. You have the opportunity to make a brief opening statement of up to about five minutes, and after that the committee will ask a few questions to help inform our consideration of the petition. I hand over to you. Thank you very much. It is a privilege to have this opportunity. I really appreciate it. Change of tack, except I did work on my paid life as a clinical psychologist in the mental health service in England and Scotland, so it was a very interesting discussion to hear. Having said that, I think that it is relevant to the petition I am bringing I am not paid to do the work that I do now but I work virtually full-time as you do when you retire. In environmental work and for some reason I seem to be attached to cats and as I worked with very vulnerable people in vulnerable circumstances I tended towards trying to help those cats living in vulnerable circumstances. So for the 20 years since I moved back to Scotland, I have been doing trap new to return, which some of you may know as an approach that is used universally, but it has been used by the Scottish Wildcat Action to try to limit the number of cats of the domestic species that crossbreed with the wildcat. I have been doing that for the welfare of cats for about 20 years. To be honest, I suppose that I should not have been surprised but I found that it is really quite a war zone out there. There are animals living in circumstances that you would not dream of for your own pet at home. Now you may not have pets, but those of you who do know that people who keep pets, dogs, cats, rabbits, whatever, do tend to see them as a vulnerable and important member of the family, vulnerable in the sense of that we have a responsibility to keep them safe and meet their needs as we do our children. That is not happening for the cats out there. A lot of people think that feral cats are different species from our cats at home. They are not. They are exactly the same cats that they just are uncared for. I have been doing that for a few years, maybe 10 years before I noticed the areas where I had neutered all the cats and started to fill up with cats again. Those turned out to be cats that were coming from the pet cat population. A bit late in the day, I did some research and found some studies that you have references to in your papers. They were telling me that there is a minority of pet cat owners who still do not neuter their cats. Pet organisations have made great headway to say that 90 per cent of owners neuter their cats now, but 13 per cent in Scotland do not. That is fine. We will just keep nudging and nudging and we will get there. However, it is not happening. I looked at more figures and it showed that the number of homes available for cats had stalled in 2013. It is not getting any higher and, if anything, it is going down. The point is that 10 per cent of the cat owners are producing enough new animals to increase the pet cat population over two times every four years. It is simple arithmetic, is it not? Where are these cats going? They are overspilling. There are not enough homes for them. I can talk about the figures later if you like, but they are overspilling into Backstreet's countryside. By this time, I have shoveled alongside the Scottish Wildcat project and was helping them as best I could with TNR techniques and discovered the crucial importance for controlling our domestic cats, stray and feral population for us to save the wildcat in Scotland. The research that I did, and it is only to my shame that I did it this year, has brought me to this point today. It seems to me that we are at a tipping point and a decision point. If we go on the way we are and the cats are still produced and join the already enormous and growing feral and stray population, it would seem that the wildcat does not have a chance whether it is reintroduced or whether it is existing animals, plus the horrendous welfare implications for the cats themselves, or whether we look at new measures which I understand would have to be looked at carefully, but we look at new measures which would seem to be a basic necessity for good cat care, good cat health, which is nurturing and ID-chipping. Veterinary professionals support nurturing and ID-chipping as basic essentials of good cat healthcare, so do all the cat and pet welfare organisations support it and do it with their own cats. To sum up, I think that what has brought me here is that I think that Scotland is in a unique position. We have the wildcat to think about and a big responsibility. There are less of them than there are tigers, yet poorer countries than ours are doing a lot more conservation-wise to help tigers. We need to be helping the Scottish Wildcat Action project with its legacy, which is it can do the start. It can backbreed the wildcats that we have left, but we have to do the rest. We have to create a habitat that is safe for them to thrive in in the future. To my view, and most other people who signed my petition, they agree that we have a responsibility to keep our domestic cats safe as well and not let the carnage and waste of lives happen. I would not like to see Scotland on the wrong side of history, so I brought this petition to you to hopefully share the thinking. Have you asked me questions now? I have very much for that, and I will ask Angus to open up. Okay, thank you. Good morning, Ellie. In your submission that you have written to the Scottish Government, Cabinet Secretary, the cross-party group on animal welfare and your regional MSPs, as well as discussing with your constituency MSP, Graham Day, can you ask what feedback you received from all these approaches? Yes, I think that I have written three times now to the Cabinet Secretary for the Environment and Received Responses back to the animal welfare section, not from the conservation section of government, which I did wonder about, but it came from animal welfare. Support from my own MSP in the sense that I have had regional and my own constituency MSP write to the Cabinet Secretary for me and got very much a standard response back, which is the Government's position is that cats really aren't an issue and go about their own business and look after themselves and don't cause humans any difficulties. I would beg to differ that the evidence suggests that they cause some nuisance to some people and distress to others who care about animals and, of course, have a conservation impact that's of international importance. I would say that probably the letters I've had back have perhaps shown that I would like to see an update in the Government's information and awareness about the issues I'm raising and perhaps that would lead to some different thinking. Cross-party group on animal welfare, I met with a convener some months ago and received positive, good listening, and all the MSPs who have taken the trouble to write back to me, have written to all of them now. All who have written back have been recognising the importance of the twin issues that I've raised, the animal welfare and the conservation side. I think that their main concerns have been about the compulsory, apparently compulsory nature of what the steps that would need to be taken, if that's what you asked. I hope I've answered. That's fine, thanks. Looking at the notes that we have, or the briefing that we have, the figures are quite staggering. There's 400,000 feral cats and 286,000 new kittens a year, so you can see why there's the overspill that you were talking about in your opening remarks. That's fine. I'll leave it at that. Thank you. Good morning, Ellie. I have to say that I was a bit shocked. I didn't know all this about cats, so it made for very interesting reading. You state that within the code of practice and the SNH guidance notes on native range ownership and degree of control are ill-defined and open to interpretation. I note your comment that own domestic cats that roam freely are considered to be under the human control—something that my husband might disagree with, I have to say. That is if they are expected to return to the owners. Can you expand on this point? Would you have an example of how you consider the definitions could be better defined? Yes. When I did the research earlier this year, I was quite stunned to find that definition, too. Cats, dogs and farmed animals are all classified as non-native species. That general term to be under human control is applied to all those species. For farmed stock, horses and other sorts of kept animals can be fenced in, so that would be a simple way of keeping them under human control. Under the legislation, the code of practice says that you kept a horse and a tree fell down and broke the fencing and the horse escaped. You could possibly be open to—it would be a criminal prosecution—you would be open to criminal prosecution for not maintaining your fencing or not checking it, or the responsibility would be on you, because it is a strict liability of fence, to demonstrate that you checked the fence yesterday and it was perfectly all right, but it was a storm overnight. With dogs, there is human control to do with leads, training and what have you, with cats. What your husband has said to you is what everyone who's read my petition has said to me. Frontline, war weary cat rescue volunteers all say to me, is that if you know cat behaviour, then cats are not under human control in the way that dogs are. You can't just call and they come back. Some cats are, but very few. Cat behaviour varies along a continuum. There are issues of welfare whereby you can't contain cats legally in the way you could a horse. You can't fence it in, you can't shut it in—that would be a welfare issue. Totally right. The middle-of-the-road solution to me and to the veterinary professionals to conservationists is to cat owners, or at least to 90 per cent of them. The middle-of-the-road answer to that seems to be, if your cat is neutered, then it's free of the hormonially driven behaviour, which is what drives wandering, roaming, territorial fighting, transmission of disease, and obviously for female cats producing two to three litres a year of five kittens each, which is a ticket to early death and to not coming back, because cats move out and colonise new areas when they produce young. I've suggested that a simple change of wording in the code of practice under human control—redefining it from expected to return, which is subjective anyway—to something objective and pragmatic that you can observe, or touch, or feel, or measure, which is sensible. It's neutered, and if a cat's neutered, then that satisfies the vast majority of cat livers, everybody who's a vet professional, everybody who's a member of the public who doesn't like cats, because if you don't like cats you don't want there to be 60 living next door to you. It seems to be to be a middle of the road requirement to have a cat neutered, and therefore it's regarded as under human control. How would you include in that for obviously breeders, showers, all that kind, so would they have to be specially licensed under that arrangement? The first step that I would think about, obviously I've not worked in those areas of licensing, but there would be nothing to stop a person being a breeder of cats. So there's no constraint, there's no compulsion to not breed. You could be a breeder of cats, but you would apply for a licence that would exempt you from the non-native species legislation. So your freedoms aren't being curtailed. The issue would then be whoever sets the conditions of the licence. Then that happens every day with licences that are issued for conservation purposes, interference with protected wild species. Licences are issued for interference with those, but the conditions have to be followed by the developers. I would envisage it being the same for breeders. There would be conditions that if your licence to breed cats, as happens in France, as I understand it, one condition to be a breeder is that you must have undergone a set piece of training that probably a local college would provide or something of that sort. There would be a scope for younger people who want to work with animals to come and work with you at your breeding establishment and learn the tools of the trade and learn about cat welfare and the importance of vaccination, because I haven't mentioned vaccination yet, but it's hugely important from an epidemiological point of view. You say that you believe that a new approach is required because, as you've stated, there's 10 per cent of cat owners who don't have the cat's neuter despite appeals such as the snip and chip appeal. I wonder if you have any views on other ways in which the benefits of neutering can be promoted, specifically through perhaps veterinarians and animal welfare charities? Thank you for the question. Yes, it's one that, that reasoning that you've outlined, relying on the voluntary approach, I suppose that sums up, is what I've relied on until recently, and all my colleagues in front-line animal rescue, cat rescue rely on, is that we would nudge towards good advice, good veterinary intervention being taken on board by everyone who feels that a responsible cat owner. The trouble with it is that it seems to have gone as far as it can go. From the studies, the cat population group, which is a UK-wide group, works PDSA, People's Dispensary for Sick Animals, as a member of that, as are eight other pet organisations, they produce a report each year, which is a snapshot of cat ownership. They've been reporting a nudging up of neutered rate amongst cat owners up until the last two or three years, and it's now stalled. Then it was up to UK-wide, they were saying last year, 2016, we've reached 93% neutered rate, it's back down to 90% this year. Now a lot of that is a facsimile of the approach, it's a you-gov opinion poll, those of you who are scientifically minded know that opinion polls measure public opinion, they don't go out and count cats, so it's a huge difference. The people who sit at home and say yes, I'll put my name on a panel and I'll be happy to be consulted by you-gov and answer the questions, are the people who are connected up to the world. The people I meet are not connected to that same world, so it's probably a huge underestimate of unneutered cats. It's worrying to think that the voluntary approach has gone as far as it can go. I think that the people I meet and the front-line cat rescue workers I meet confirm it. The people who don't have their cats neutered are people who perhaps live in very socially marginalised positions themselves, who perhaps live without a lot of social resources, such as contact with emails, such as networks where people can friends and family can encourage them to have their cats neutered. They're the same people who perhaps have lots of other social problems and it's not to blame those people, but if we don't bring those people on board, what the vets are telling us is that we risk a huge explosion, not my word, an explosion of the cat population, that brings with it potential for unvaccinated cats and most are unvaccinated, even the neutered ones. Feline diseases run rife when overpopulation is the case, so we're actually putting the neutered pet cats at risk. Yours and mine at home are at risk because of the actions of the few who don't get neutered. I thought hard about this and I thought about, for example, the people who used to still smoke in public places. Until we reached the point of saying that even that affects the health of us all because we're all breathing the smoke. That's a similar argument to my mind of the people who are not neutering their cats. It's not just their cats who are suffering and they are suffering. If you want to ask me later about any of the conditions, I'll happily tell you, but they are suffering. The risk is increasing to the rest of the 90 per cent of people's own cats through disease transmission and through still territorial fights and cats that are wandering and ranging and suffering. Just from my own information, do you think that there's a possibility or an idea of maybe compulsory registering pet cats with pet animals? The way that I would think about that, tell me if I'm wrong, would be like what happened with dog microchipping just recently is that all dogs are microchipped and therefore have to be microchipped. Therefore, by definition, the microchip is registered on a managed database. If something similar happened for cats or if the same system happened for cats, then there would be a managed database. What also happens with dogs is that if your dog produces offspring, so if a cat produces offspring, you would have to register and you would be responsible for the microchipping and we could say neutering of the offspring as well as your own cat. If you're keeping a cat that's producing offspring and you're not registered as a breeder, you would presumably be very quickly encouraged to register as a breeder and therefore you would be responsible for the neutering and microchipping of the offspring. That's the case for other pets. I don't know about horses, but I do know about horses but not in such detail and there are passport systems for horses that track exactly what their health conditions are, but cats or the species that are neutering and vaccinating are the basic necessities of the population health, not just the individual cat health. That's the issue. I should declare an interest as a member of a cross-party group on animal welfare. Good morning. In just following on from my colleague Brian Whittle, in response to our written parliamentary question on neutering, microchipping and registration of cats, the cabinet secretary said that we do not consider these actions should be compulsory for cats. Can I have your response on that? I would suggest that a lot of that is to do with quite genuinely people in the government not having had time, as we were all shocked. Well, I was shocked at the statistics that you've said. You were not having had time to process that. I've written a lot of stuff down. People don't always have time to read things in such depth. I think that if someone did read it in depth, they would see that you have figures from me—you obviously have—because you've asked the questions about whether it's under half a million or nearly a million unneutered cats in Scotland where we're doubling the population every four years. It's going to take us to over two million cats in four years' time, but that's been happening all this time. The number of homes isn't going up, it's going down, if anything. There are new issues like that to take on board. I'd given you those figures, but I hadn't done the graph. That's just the graph of the figures that I gave you, which I'll leave with you if you care to accept it, which shows the orange that you can't probably see, but the orange is the additional cats each year, year on year, on top of the cats that are in the population. The blue is just the existing population of cats. That's a conservative estimate. That doesn't take into account the cats offspring then start having kittens the following year. It's exponential if you include that. If your cat has five kittens and two or three of them are female, they produce five kittens each twice a year, but I haven't even counted that. The other thing to bear in mind is that a fair proportion, maybe over half of the 90 per cent who say they neuter their cats, have already let them have litters before they neutered them, so I haven't counted those kittens either. The graph is exponential there, but it's even more so. I would say that if Government had time to take on board those facts and statistics, I would say that the other thing that I would like them to have time to consider is to update their model of cat behaviour because, and I don't know whether this is animal welfare section or conservation and wildlife section, but the model of animal behaviour for cats needs to have incorporated in it the understanding that there are widely roaming species, probably as widely roaming as the wildcat if they're not neutered, and so they're not under human control if they're unneutered. They cannot be expected to come back. The fact that the wildcat may be in the north of Scotland now, but the number of domestic cats that become fferyl under there, they can be neutered and that can be stabilised, but domestic cats are roaming, moving in cars, being taken in by people into those areas, they'll recolonise just in the way I experienced in the last 20 years. So, neutering for cats, why would we apply it to some cats if we think it's so important to their welfare and not apply it to all cats, owned cats? It is important to their welfare. Why would we not ask for it to be true for all cats and therefore we can also protect the Scottish wildcat? Briefly on it on a second point. In the second part of your submission, you include a proposal from the Scottish Wildcat Action and a Meredith. In answer to another parliamentary question, the cabinet secretary suggested that this had not been submitted to the Scottish Government, thus no response was given. Can I ask for your understanding of whether or how this was presented to the Scottish Government? Do you know anything in the background of that? Yes. I actually made a typing error when I was putting in my evidence. That's the paper there. Professor Anna Meredith is a professor of zoological and conservation medicine at Edinburgh University and she was invited to convene the cat population control group for the Scottish Wildcat Action and was invited by them to put together a paper, so it's fully referenced and totally up-to-date. That was 2016 that was taken to the Scottish Government, but I believe it wasn't animal welfare, it would be conservation and wildlife. It's there, it's with the Scottish Government, so I can't explain that. Unless it's as simple as there are different sections of government obviously and the one may not know what the other has, it is probably essential, because it contains the research, authenticated and referenced that I've presented to you in the best way that I could. You've listed five things in the petition that you would like to see happen through any review of the code of practice, which I won't detail, because they're already in the petition. How would you see those five things administered and enforced, and have you considered the cost of enforcement? You're referring to—I've asked for—sorry, I'm perhaps not understanding—five items through the code of practice, the native range guidance associated with the 2011 act. Would you like me to list them? Number one, a neutered cat to be defined as under human control, and exempt from NNS legislation. Are you with me now? Thank you. I've got it now. Bottom of second page on my petition. Sorry. You'd like me to— Just explain how you'd like to see the five asks happen through any review of the code of practice. Yeah, practicalities of how— Yeah, and also whether you've considered the cost of enforcement. Yes, right. Number one, I think that we've possibly covered in that a simple redefinition within the code of practice as under human control from expected to return to neutered and preferably neutered and ID-chipped. That wouldn't require a change in law. That would require an amendment to the code of practice, so we're not—we couldn't be accused of criminalising people. We're just redefining the code of practice. Secondly, the all-owned cat has been neutered, microchipped and registered, and the cost to be borne by the owner. The one with cost implications, obviously, although the majority of people bear their own cost, the majority of owners bear their responsibility for their own cost. Cat welfare organisations and generic pet welfare organisations all tell me in recent two to three years that neutering is such an important priority for them. They actually will provide free neutering for people. It's available if it's needed. You don't have to go through a demeaning income assessment test. You're not asked awkward questions. If you need it, you will get your cat neutered. You can make a £5 donation to some of the schemes. If you want, you don't have to. Most of this is not about cost. There may be an issue of if there's an immediate surge in the demand on veterinary professionals to provide the neutering. That would need to be thought about. There would be a surge on financial resources of the charities providing that. All the charities that I know require neutering and don't sign over cats until they're neutered or kittens until they're neutered anyway. However, you can access free neutering. I can't imagine that people would be coming forward in a huge flood in one go if it was staged over the next one or two years. I did do some costings at one stage. I haven't brought them with me. There would be, if everybody came at once, a cost implication. The licensed exemption scheme, in the case of microchipping dogs, I know that breeders are now classed as breeders if their dog has offspring and they register with the kennel club. It would be really helpful if some thought could be given as to what body that would involve for cats. However, I don't think that it should be local authorities, as some of the thinking in England has gone along the lines of. They don't have the resources. Certainly the way that the discussion about cat population control in England has gone is that it seems to be asking local authorities to sus out the repeat sellers of kittens and ensure that they become registered as breeders. I don't think that they're going to be terribly comfortable that they're being asked to take on that role, even if they have the resources, because that's almost been asked to take on a policing of the system role. I don't think that this should be seen as policing bad behaviour. Here's a psychologist speaking. It should be seen as we're all trying to get everybody on the side of good behaviour, and it's really important in Scotland because we have got the wildcat to think about, and we care about our cats. Full stop. Of course it's not just a wildcat. Are you aware of any other countries in Northern Europe that have a similar problem and have any countries in Northern Europe already implemented what you're asking for? In terms of mandatory and nutrient. I know that when you say Northern Europe, certainly in some of the states in America it's been introduced and in Australia it's been introduced and there's restrictions on keeping pets all together in Australia in some areas because of the decimation and complete loss of native wildlife. Northern Europe varies as I understand it. There are various policies in different countries, but I understand that there are parts of I can't name you the country, but there certainly are examples in Europe where, for example, no culling of feral and homeless cats has been introduced and trap new to return has been adopted as a policy in order, Italy for example, has got a no cull policy and a very pro trap new to return policy and there's a study somewhere in one of these papers that shows it does work if you work at it positively, but it only works if you turn off the tap at the other end and the tap is stopping people producing more kittens. I couldn't tell you whether the law has requires people to be registered as breeders and prevents people keeping un-neuter cats otherwise in Italy, but they have found it works and that's the humane approach to cat control. Thank you very much for that. I think that that has been again very useful and very interesting. I wonder if members have a view on the action that we might want to take on the petition. Brian? I think that it may be useful to seek the views of, for example, the NSPCA and other organisations like that just to get their perspective. Animal welfare organisations, I think, there's cats protection among others, so we can maybe just get the clats to clear what the ones would be. I'm quite interested in the conservation side, so it may be that we should look into the conservation bodies as well. Any others? Sorry? Vets as well. I think that we should write the Scottish Government again and just ask, particularly around this confusion about whether they've actually read the report, so we might want to write to a number of the policy areas and just see what the commentary is. I think that if we write to the minister and then becomes an obligation to them to draw the different aspects together around to see what seems to be suggest compartmentalised the way it's been. I hate to be a pedantic convener, but I don't like to contradict my colleague Brian Whittle, but can we make it the SSPCA rather than the RSPCA? A, you'd like to contradict him and be your quite right in this regard. It's very important. I think that I've seen it in your briefing notice that some of those suggestions were there. There's been some good publicity supporting the proposal. The Sunday Herald's environment correspondent at a special report sometime back, and he did some good investigative journalism, spoke to the SSPCA. Why not speak to the RSPCA as well? Because they're on the cat population control group, and they've done a lot of work at the UK level, and they're the ones who produced in 2014 the first report that caught my attention that said, we have a catastrophe looming, because they started looking at cat population increase and available homes levelling off, which is a recipe for disaster, but nobody's looked at the continuing trends since. It's a group called the Cat Population Control Group, and people's dispensary for sick animals, RSPCA and various organisations are in that. You might come to a PDA. If there are further suggestions, we'll take them on board, but the key thing is that we're trying to draw together across the expertise in animal welfare and conservation, and the bodies were identified, but emphasising to the minister that it isn't just one thing or the other, it's actually the way that the connection between the two is. I think it would be good to write to the PDSA, because obviously from a charitable point of view, they pick up and that question again about a search, you know, the PDSA would probably have a view on how that would be coped with, so I think that would be good. I could say that that would make sense, because they're the ones who commissioned the UGOV annual report, so they've got the data at their fingertips. We can ensure that the claps get a wide range of views and the information that you were displaying there during one of the answers. We can obviously make sure that that's circulated and made available as well. With that, I thank you very much again for your attendance. I think that that was very useful and I suspend the meeting briefly until I witness to leave the table before we continue. Thank you. Back to order again. We're going on to agenda item 3, a new petition where we're not taking evidence. The petition is petition 1672 by Hugh Paterson, which is calling on the Scottish Parliament to our Scottish Government to consider remedial action in terms of the law relating to prescription and limitation. Members have a copy of the petition and a spice briefing. The petition background information outlines that the petition relates to prescription and principally negative prescription, which extinguishes legal rights after the passage of time. The petition expresses concern over how the current law of negative prescription applies to some claims for damages where the purchase of a property has gone wrong and the purchaser has not received good legal title to all or part of it. The relevant legislation on prescription is the Prescription and Limitation Scotland Act 1973. Aspects of the law of negative prescription under this act have recently been reviewed by the Scottish Law Commission, and a report was published recommending various reforms to Scottish ministers in July of this year. The Scottish Government is taking forward those recommendations through a commitment to a bill in prescription as set out in this year's programme to government. Members may wish to note that the petitioner responded to the Scottish Law Commission's discussion paper, which informed the recommendations in the final report. While the commission considered the issue raised by the petitioner, a decision was made not to recommend changing the law in this area. I wonder if members have any comments or suggestions for action. Michelle? It is a very interesting one because the legal terminology is quite complicated and there are very good reasons why these things are in place. I have some empathy for the petitioner, but I also have some empathy for the commission. What occurred to me when I was going through the papers is that there might be a simple solution to this that does not require a change to the law. However, in terms of the changes that are occurring with land registration, one of the problems is that when you buy a property and it is registered, you do not receive notification of that registration. As an owner, and particularly where you are mortgaged or whatever, the title deed goes to the mortgage holder. Perhaps the simple solution would be that at the time of registration, the purchaser receives a letter of notification specifying what has gone into the land registry and, therefore, you know immediately at that time whether or not your title has been adequately registered. At that time, you would then challenge it rather than wait until 25 or 30 years down the line when you come to sell the property and discover that the registration was not complete. I wonder whether we could ask the Government whether they could look at that concept, because that would then not require any change to negative prescription, but it would protect the registration and the possible failure of registration. The Scottish Government has also highlighted that, instead of a court claim for damages, a complaint could be made against a solicitor. However, solicitors may not even be there at that point. I have been dealing recently with a few problems with transfer of properties and inspection titles, etc. It is extremely difficult to take an action against a solicitor, especially 25 years down the line. I think that we need a much simpler solution. It is very costly as well, taking on a solicitor. Perhaps it is very unfair when you, in good faith, have purchased a property and done all the right things and paid the solicitor to do the job to find yourself 25 years down the line, trying to fight something that had happened. An interesting one is that I do agree with Michelle in terms of looking for a solution that does not require massive change to the law. I think that we should be writing to the Scottish Government. I also quickly need to understand from the organismen what their view of that is, because there is obviously an issue with taking court action 25 to 30 years down the line. I wonder if the Scottish Government would be the first sensible place to go first, because the Law Commission is its job to look at those things and to give advice. The Scottish Government has decided to take particular advice and I do not think to act in a way of suggesting a position to get a sense of that first. The thinking behind that is that they have spent some time in this and they have tried to get the balance of those issues right and it would be useful to get a sense from the Scottish Government why, in the end, that is the view that they are taking. There are very good reasons for negative prescription. You cannot have an open-ended situation where people can always go back and revisit things. You have to have an end point. 20 years is a pretty long end point by anybody's standards. That is about ensuring that obvious things do not go missing. That is why I say that I have empathy on both sides. I can understand and I think that there is a need for negative prescription to have a close date. It is really important. Can we agree then that we would write to the Scottish Government and maybe we can highlight in that suggestion that was made by Michelle Ballantyne to get a sense of what was the thinking around their final conclusions and then we can revisit it. It is clearly something that is not an issue to come across every day. At one level, it is technical, but for the people who have been caught up in it, it is far beyond technical. It is an interesting one for us to ask the Scottish Government its views on. Is that agreed? In that case, if we can move on. The fourth and final item today is consideration of five continued petitions. The first petition for consideration under this item is petition 1458 on register of interests for members of the Scotland's judiciary. We last considered the petition in June when we took evidence from Lord Carlyway, the Lord President. We agreed to reflect on that evidence and we have a briefing note that summarises the issues that came up in that evidence session. We also have two submissions from the petitioner, which convey his response to the evidence and provide information about some additional developments in relation to the recusal of judges. As members are aware, the petition has been under consideration for five years. We have a good understanding of the arguments that have been put forward, both for and against the introduction of a register of interests for judges and there has been some movement. Any comments on action that we should now be taking? As you rightly pointed out, the petition has been on-going for five years to this date. It is worth noting that it was originally based on the consideration of a register of pecuniary interests of judges built in New Zealand, which was subsequently dropped after we started taking evidence on Peter Cherby's petition. It is fair to say that we have taken extensive evidence on this petition over the past five years, not least from the former Lord President, Lord Gill, the current Lord President, Lord Carlyway, as well as judicial complaints of yours, Moe Alley and Gillian Thomson. We appreciate the time that they have taken with this committee. I think that it is fair to say that this petition has already secured a result to the extent that there is now more transparency with the publication of judicial recusals, which did not happen before. It is worth pointing out that it still does not happen in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, so Mr Cherby should be proud that his petition has achieved that. However, I note that the petitioner suggested that we take evidence from Baranus Hale, president of the UK Supreme Court, as well as a new judicial complaints reviewer. With regard to taking evidence from Baranus Hale, I feel that we could be stretching the bounds of the petition, which urged the Scottish Government to create a register of judiciary interests in Scotland. I am not sure whether we have the remit to extend to the UK Supreme Court. Mr Cherby, you might be advised to take that aspect to the UK Parliament's Petitions Committee, which might have more remit there. I am sensing that we have an agreement to the approach that has been outlined by Angus there, so that we would not be taking further evidence, but we might try to draw together our conclusions and then we can perhaps write to the Scottish Government and get a response from them, but we also recognise that progress has been made. Can we agree that the letter is drafted and that the conclusions that it draws, we can agree that in private when it comes to that item, it will also be in the public domain once it has been considered? I agree, convener. I think that we have to move this forward. It has been on-going for five years, and I could sense from Mr Cherby's recent submission that there was a slight degree of frustration there, which I would share. The letter that we were writing would also go to the Lord President. However, we understand that, but I think that there should also be recognition that there has been some progress. If that is agreed, those decisions are agreed. We can move on to the next petition. The next continued petition is petition 1651 by Marion Brown on prescribed drug dependence and withdrawal. We will last consider this petition on 29 June 2017 and agreed to write to the Scottish Government, the British Medical Association, the all-party parliamentary group for prescribed drug dependence, the Scottish Association for Mental Health and the Samaritans. Responses have now been received as well as written submission to the petitioner, and information is included in our meeting papers. The Scottish Government's written submission highlighted that the significant rise in the number of people being prescribed and to depressants can be attributed to a reduction in stigma attached to mental health, better diagnosis and treatment of depression, and reflects the sustained rise in demand for mental health services across Scotland. The petitioner re-emphasised her concerns that people are taking antidepressants over a longer period of time because they have not been supported to come off them safely. The petitioner also highlighted that, while sign guidelines recommend initial alternatives to antidepressants, in all but the most severe case of depression, those alternatives are often not available and that waiting times for non-pharmological treatment is to make a mockery of the application of the sign guidance. Members will recall from previous consideration of the petition that the British Medical Association published an analysis report focused on prescription drugs with an established dependence potential and withdrawal effects. One of the recommendations in the report is for the UK Government to work with the devolved nations to introduce a national 24-hour helpline for prescribed drug dependence. The Scottish Government has indicated that it does not have the resources available to fund such a helpline. The committee may also wish to note that the Welsh Assembly is currently considering a similar petition and that a number of recent news articles have highlighted the issues raised in the petition. The petitioner has also brought to her attention the recent publication by the NHS information service division of statistics for deaths by suicide in the period from 2009 to 2015. The report notes that of the 5,119 individuals who died from suicide in this period over half, 59 per cent, had at least one mental health drug prescription dispensed within 12 months of death and over four out of five of those individuals were prescribed an antidepressant drug, either alone or in combination with other medication. The report also notes that the most common form of recorded contact with medical services was a mental health prescription. I wonder if members have any comments. I think that it is interesting that we perhaps connect into our earlier discussion, because I was concerned when I read this that the Scottish Government's submission implied that the fact that there was more prescription suggested that that was something that there is more awareness when in fact it may be that people are more likely to be prescribed inappropriately. We do not know whether the truth of that is, of course, but I thought that that was... I do not think that correlation is not necessarily the same as a causal link. I think that there was kind of conclusions at best at anecdotal. I think that within all of that there is good work being done, but also within that I think there is more things to be explored. I wonder, given the previous petition that we were discussing about bringing in the mental health minister and whether we could at the same time maybe ask her about this particular petition as well. I think that it would be good to have her here and to cover both, but I do not think that we should cover them together. I think that we should take them separately because one relates very much to children and young people and how we work with children and young people and the services of children and young people, and whether she could cope with one after the other. I do not know, but it would be logical to do that. It is scheduled one after the other with plenty of time for her to be able to address those questions. I do think that there is a connection, or it feels to me as if there is a connection that if people are... because of whatever circumstance they end up being prescribed prescription drugs, but there is not a means by which they then come off them or supported in them. Those statistics have been highlighted, petitioner. I do not understand. I would not pretend to be able to interpret them properly, but it would be useful to have that conversation. I think that it obviously is very heavily linked because, as we were hearing earlier, the majority of problems start within adolescence, and some of these will have been a continuation of a problem that was not solved in the first place. I think that we should... And the minister would be able to bring along the relevant officials along with her that would ensure that it would have that sort of background stats. I think that it is a hugely important issue, so I think that at this stage it would be good to have the minister and we can ask the relevant questions. Is that great? I think that the information provided by the petitioner again does give us a lot of food for thought about why the petition matters so much to her and to try and tease out the issue about appropriate. Clearly, as I think it said earlier, it is very important to underline that, for some people, it is necessary to be prescribed drugs and ought not to stick them around them, but there is a question of whether people have been supported to come back off them or whether they are inappropriately prescribed in the first place. Thank you very much for that, and again thank the petitioner for their interest. If we can move on to the next petition, which is petition 1654, by Ian Munn, on forestry regulation. At last consideration of this petition on 22 June 2017, we agreed to write to the Scottish Government, Confor, the Forestry Commission Scotland, the Forestry Contracts Association, the Scottish Timber Trade Association, the Woodland Trust, the Royal Scottish Forestry Society and relevant local authorities. Responses have now been received, as well as a written submission from the petitioner, and that information is included in our meeting papers. The committee asked the Scottish Government what progress has been made on the road by sea timber transport initiative and what the benefits and limitations are of such initiatives. The Scottish Government's response highlighted that it provides a subsidy for timber link, which moves 800,000 to 100,000 tonnes of timber by sea from Argyll to Ayrshire, removing up to 1 million lorry miles per annum from the road network. The Scottish Government's response recognised, however, that in the majority of cases where timber is shipped to market, at least some part of the rural road network will need to be used. The committee also asked the Scottish Government whether it intended to introduce measures on consultation in the forestry sector in either primary or secondary legislation, with introduction of the Forestry and Land Management Scotland Bill. The Government's written submission confirmed that it had no plans to do so reporting the strong culture of collaborative working that currently exists between local authorities and the forestry sector on a non-statutory basis, as well as a high level of consultation and guidance in the sector. That was also reflected in the majority of written submissions received. The petitioner, however, re-emphasised the importance of including timber transport in the bill, as the industry has been shown as either not being able to or willing to self-regulate. I should thank all those substantial responses from local authorities and others, which have really helped out our thinking in this regard. I wonder if people have any comments on petition angus? Yes, thanks. I understand the petitioner's frustration on the issue. However, judging by the responses that we have received from stakeholders, albeit some with a vested interest in the industry, it would seem that thanks to schemes such as the Scottish Strategic Timbers Transport Scheme, significant progress has been made on the issue. Given that the majority of respondents do not support or recognise the need for statutory measures to be implemented, I think that there is a strong argument to close the petition under rule 15.7. Do you have other views? Yes, I would support that. We have received a fantastic response and, from that, you can only deduce that there is a strong argument to close. It is clear that local authorities have power when it comes to forestry routes and so on to sort things out in their own area and put in traffic restrictions. That has been working and I do not think that there is any need for statutory legislation. I have a huge empathy with the petitioner living in rural area where we get a lot of timber transport movement. There is no doubt that his frustrations are real and are shared by much of the population, but the issue here is that you cannot bring legislation that will solve most of those problems. Agreement has to be place by place. It is not a one-size-fits-all. It has to be individual solutions for individual areas and a lot of that is achieved through relationships and through negotiation and through agreement. That is the only way to do it and we have to encourage that. I think that the good response that we had is indicative of the work that is going on underneath to actually do that. I think that where the petitioner requires to damage to private property, I suppose that the reminder would be that if there is damage to private property, he has the same rights to claim against that as usually would for any damage that occurs to private property. I know that that can be difficult sometimes, but maybe that is what he needs to do or what people need to do. I understand that a lot of those damages are verge ripping, which is difficult. It is due to the nature of many of our roads, which are quite narrow. I think that that is just going to be an on-going problem, but it is just the reality of the world that we are living at the moment, sadly. No, I think that it is something that we will all keep working at and I wholeheartedly support the fact that there is nowhere to go with this at this time other than to close it. It is specialised that the Scottish Government has indicated that they are not going to deal with this. There are no plans to do anything with it, so it seems to me that there is nowhere left to go. I will start with two things. There was a certain skepticism in the path that the petitioner about whether the responses had been co-ordinated, but nevertheless whether they have been or not, there is a very strong feeling that the petition should not be taken forward, but also that idea of responsibility, whether it should be a lever or something. I suppose that, except in the view that we should close the petition, it does not close down the possibility for individual members of the Parliament to put down amendments to the Transport Bill to test these things further, to see whether there is a legislative route. That is another possibility for the petitioner that we would not be able to take forward, but it would then be a matter for individual MSPs who have been presented with this case to maybe think about whether that is something that they could take forward. With that, I sense that there is an agreement that we should be closing the petition under rule 15.7 of standing orders on the basis that the majority of written responses received and not support the action called for in the petition, but we would want to thank the petitioner again for highlighting those issues and getting a response, which it seeks to reassure around the responsibilities for the industry to work together with local authorities and others. Is that agreed? When we write to the petitioner advising him of our decision, will there be a section included in the letter giving him the advice that one option is to attempt to secure amendments in the Forestry Management Bill? Yes, you can do that. In reporting what has been said, I think that if we are going to do that, it may be possible that somebody might take up at stage 2, but certainly at stage 3. At stage 2, I believe, it was with committee yesterday, was it not? Yes, so time is really tight. I do not realise that. It would be at stage 3, where it is slightly more difficult to secure that response, but however that would be an option. The other thing is that it has been minded that there will be a Forestry Management Strategy coming out of the bill, and therefore that might be the place that the petitioner might want to influence the shape of that. With that, we can thank the petitioner again and move on to the next petition, which is petition 1656, by Rob McDowell, with threats, results and sitting members of Parliament, their staff and families. We will last consider this petition on 22 June 2017 and agreed to write to the Scottish Government, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, the Faculty of Advocates, the Law Society of Scotland, Police Scotland and the Scottish Sentencing Council. The responses have now been received and are included within our meeting papers. The majority of responses received highlighted that existing common law and statutory legislation currently in place, which provides for the prosecution of assaults and threatening behaviour committed against anyone, including parliamentarians, their staff and families. Police Scotland's written submission highlighted that the statutory aggravations being called for by the petitioner could complement the existing protective security measures to mitigate risk to parliamentarians. However, the Scottish Government is of the view that there would be significant challenges in setting out, in statute, all the aggravating and mitigating factors for a court to consider in sentencing and offending. I wonder if members have any comments. I haven't changed my view. I think that the law sufficiently covers this already. It's a question of applying it, not creating new ones. There is a law there that is covered. I think that the responses that we have had make it clear that this could be used. I think that we should close the petition. I don't think that it is anywhere else for it to go. I have heard similar. Other public servants, the police and the fire brigade and the service. The same conclusion has been reached in the law covers. I think that there has sometimes been a member who, when the emergency workers legislation went through, felt that there was a need to signal the value that we place in people running towards danger. For example, if a firefighter has been assaulted, is there a fire or somebody who is going to a road traffic accident? The point was made when everybody who works needs service can be at risk. I suppose that on the balance in terms of elected representatives, I would be comforted about the law. I think that what we might be more thinking about is the kinds of issues that we make sure that particular staff are safe and that it is legitimate to assess security risks to our staff and any risks that we might take ourselves. When I first got elected, I took two surges on my own in a place where nobody was keeping an eye on that. That just wouldn't happen anymore. I think that there has been a lot of progress in terms of protecting people against incidents. That is maybe as important as ensuring that if there is an incident taking place, it is taking seriously by the courts. It is important that we do not end up with a siege mentality as well. The majority of people are decent. I think that we have quite robust laws around how people behave. The issue is about how we implement them. I think that my sense from the petition that it has been well-motivated recognising that, particularly that parliamentary staff can be vulnerable and can be seen as a target. On all too many occasions, front-line staff and phone can be subject to abuse, and that is something that is probably quite generally true in the public sector, not to be treated that way. We recognise the motivations of it, but we agree that we would close the petition under rule 15.7, on the basis of existing legislation. Common law is considered to provide sufficient protection to related members, staff and family members. Is that agreed? The final petition on the agenda item today is petition 1658, on the competition for those who suffered a neurological disability following the administration of the Plucerix vaccine between 1988 and 1992. The petition is requested that we defer a consideration of the petition until a future meeting, as I understand that she would like to attend and observe our discussion of our petition. I think that we might want to give further comments before we consider the petition. I agree that we should consider her request that it be deferred, and I wonder if members are content with the deferred consideration of the petition to our meeting on 21 December. In that case, I thank people for their attendance and close the meeting.