Petition 01451, Public Petitions Committee hearing

At some point you will be able to see it for yourself, if you didn't already see it (it will pop up here at some point: there will also be a transcript). It follows directly after a petition on treatment for congenital heart patients. If you go to boil the kettle, you might miss it: they dispose of it in under a minute. They decided to refer the petition to the Health & Sport Committee.

The clerk of the public petitions committee also replied to my email yesterday, saying:

At this stage, the Note by the Clerk is essentially just the SPICe briefing.  It will be up to the Committee to decide tomorrow what action to take on the petition and that will include from whom to seek views.

 Clearly nervous about considering the merits of a petition so opposed to the Government's preferred direction of travel that they have handed back the chalice to the Health & Sport Committee.

(There was a write-up today from Magnus Gardham at the Herald. He includes a reminder that the Scottish Government wishes to make Scotland smoke-free by 2030. He is downbeat at the prospects of the petition being successful – but I did point out to him that the public petitions committee looked set to call on tobacco-funded interests to speak in our favour.)

Seeking assistance from the devil?

This has gone to all members of the Public Petitions Committee, for their information:

Dear [Public Petitions Committee Clerk]

I refer to the Note by the Clerk (http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/S4_PublicPetitionsCommittee/Meeting%20Papers/Papers_20121127.pdf) in respect of my petition, 01451.

You point out that the Scottish Government does not seem prepared to consider reviewing the smoking ban, partly in the light of its adherence to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. You may not be familiar with Article 5.3 of this convention, which is set out briefly at http://www.who.int/fctc/guidelines/article_5_3.pdf. As follows: 

"in setting and implementing their public health policies with respect to tobacco control, Parties shall act to protect these policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry in accordance with national law”.  

In other words, groups associated with the tobacco industry are considered to be unreliable, constituting an automatic conflict of interest. For background notes describing opposition to smoking ban, however, your note relies almost exclusively upon sources funded by the tobacco industry (the TMA and Forest). You also suggest that TMA and Forest are suitable bodies that the committee could approach for their view of the petition.

I would suggest that the Scottish Government's commitment to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control would predispose it to distrusting and failing to take seriously any views presented by either the TMA or Forest. Is it possible to seek views that the Scottish Government would be forced to consider seriously on their merits and without prejudice? 

For example, you refer to a report by the University of Glamorgan (this may not be the same one but it is on a similar theme by the same author), in other words by an authority outside the normal range of those consulted by Scottish Government but one relevant to this issue as the paper is published within Building Services Engineering Research & Technology. 

Seeking views in support of the petition only from sources that the Government inherently rejects as untrustworthy is unfair to the petitioners. I would urge you to seek views from sources that are not associated with the tobacco industry as outlined above.

The clerk's note claims in a note to paragraph 19 that they have 'not been able to access' the research from the University of Glamorgan on the efficacy of ventilation, even though we supplied it to the Public Petitions Committee on disc. It seems they will do anything rather than ask us for information! – even admit that the Scottish Parliamentary Information Centre (SPICe) researchers can't find something.

The Public Petitions Committee meets at 10 am, Committee Room 1.

Progress to smoke-free mental health: Scottish Government rides roughshod over consultation findings

A mental health project has given its ringing endorsement to work currently being done to create a smoke-free mental health service in Scotland.

Freedom to Choose Scotland has issued a press release on this project following last week's Written Answers. In answer to Richard Simpson MSP, Health Secretary, Shona Robison gave this answer (emphasis added):

In March 2010, following extensive consultation with key stakeholders, we announced that new guidance would be prepared to help mental health residential service providers move towards establishing smoke-free environments. The aim of this guidance, which is being developed by NHS Health Scotland in consultation with key stakeholders and service users, will be to drive change at a pace which is acceptable to individual services, and, most importantly, to the service users themselves.

As we stated in the press release, supported with references, the consultation results in no way endorsed this course of action, with over 50 per cent of respondents (including over 80 per cent of patient groups) voting to retain the smoking ban exemption that has existed for psychiatric facilities since the smoking ban came in, and only 12 per cent of respondents voting for 'guidance' (meaning effectively bringing in changes to smoking provisions laid down by health boards piecemeal and through the back door). The notion that this is intended to do anything recommended by patients on this issue is breathtakingly inaccurate.

Also referred to in the press release is mention of 'residential' service providers. The public consultation did not refer to any difference between acute and continuing care patients, although an earlier consultation with service providers found that almost half had reservations with imposing a smoking ban on continuing care patients even though most of them thought a ban would be appropriate for acute patients. The word 'residential' (rather than 'clinical') suggests strongly that a comprehensive smoking ban for all services including continuing care services is now planned.

Digital Feat pronounced the following in their account: 

In January 2009, the Scottish Government consulted stakeholders, service users and the public on the best way to achieve smoke-free mental health services in Scotland. The consultation sought views on the production of detailed guidance without the need to amend existing legislation. As no clear consensus emerged on how to move towards smoke-free mental health services, guidance was viewed as a solution which avoided legislative bureaucracy and could effect change quickly.

Author Duncan doesn't observe that many people in the consultation expressed open disagreement with the very idea of smoke-free mental health services. In other words although respondents were asked whether they wanted to keep the current exemption, it seems clear from the rest of the consultation that the question was how, not whether, mental health services should go smoke-free. Duncan clearly has no problem with further change being managed a) in spite of service users' wishes, clearly expressed in the Consultation, and b) without being subject to Parliamentary scrutiny.

Freedom to Choose (Scotland) last year mounted a petition on this consultation in 2009. Our final submission to the Public Petitions Committee is here. The petition was closed in September 2009 without any of its concerns being publicly aired. Why am I surprised?

They never listen.

Official In Scotland Too: The smoking ban did it

Press reports abound yesterday and today of the 737 pubs that have closed in Scotland since the smoking ban was implemented on 26 March 2006. For once the story (in the form of a report for the Save our Pubs and Clubs Campaign) says that the smoking ban is to blame for these closures.

Predictably the response has come that the story has much to do with supermarket prices, property prices, changing habits and anything else but the smoking ban. (Actually I think it fair to say that the legislation was brought in because in spite of a 30-year decline in smoking rates, change was not happening fast enough for those who wanted to bring smoking rates down.)

Of course the trading situation is difficult for the pubs, but the point is that the smoking ban changed pubs from an ideal meeting place for people who wanted to meet friends, colleagues and family for a drink and a chat, to an irrelevance. Smokers made up a larger proportion of pub customers than of the general population. An attack on smokers was bound to hurt the trade (and a significant proportion of cafeterias). The people who wrote the report have been accused of being apologists for the tobacco industry, but it doesn't take tobacco funding to tell you that a smoking ban will put smokers off. In areas and among groups of friends where almost everyone smokes (and some pubs will tell you that nine-tenths of their customers smoke) it just seems more trouble than it's worth to have to keep going outside to smoke.

THE SOLUTION?

Freedom to Choose (Scotland) Chairman Eddie Douthwaite was quoted in the STV version of the story as follows:

Eddie Douthwaite of Freedom to Choose (Scotland) believes that modern air filtration methods mean that the smoking ban should be amended.

He said: "Modern air filtration technology is a far cry from the 'ventilation' considered unable to extract toxins or particulate matter from the air when the introduction of a smoking ban was debated in 2005.  

"These air filtration products are currently fitted in aircraft and in hospitals, where they can remove particulate contamination together with airborne viruses, spores, and bacteria. Their use in the hospitality industry as an alternative to smoking bans is surely a step in the right direction especially as the indoor air quality would be far better than the air outdoors.

 "The Scottish Government should accept that new technology has provided a solution that could eliminate any need for this socially divisive and economically disastrous smoking ban."

HISTORY OF THE CAMPAIGN
Freedom to Choose (Scotland) submitted a petition in 2007 to the Scottish Parliament calling for a review of the smoking ban, and the introduction of Regulated Indoor Air Quality Standards. Such a standard would require the use of air-cleaning equipment if air quality did not meet specific standards, and would cover airborne pollution from any source.

In essence the Scottish Parliament agreed to close the petition and to bring its concerns to any future post-legislative scrutiny of the legislation. (The petition was considered jointly with another petition on the smoking ban from the CISWO (Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation) club in Glenrothes, calling for designated smoking rooms to be allowed – their evidence included trading figures from licensed clubs in the area.)

These are the terms in which the case was effectively dismissed by the Health & Sport Committee.

Smoking, Health and Social Care (Scotland) Act 2005 (PE1037 and PE1042)

Dr Simpson: ...I have just one comment on air pollution. It is interesting that when Kenny Gibson and I made the original proposal for a bill to ban smoking in pubs and restaurants, which was rejected by the health minister at the time, the alternative to such a ban was the installation in premises of air filtration and anti-pollution systems. We now know from information that was provided as a result of freedom of information requests to the tobacco companies in America that such systems do not filter carcinogens from the air. I put on record the fact that, as we tackle smoking problems in the future, we will again face one of the most powerful global industries, so we should be extremely careful not to be duped into taking voluntary measures to curtail smoking that could subsequently be circumvented by the tobacco industry.

Helen Eadie (Dunfermline East) (Lab): It is important to consider all the issues in detail. That is why I agree that when post-legislative scrutiny of the 2005 act is undertaken, consideration of the issues that the petitions raise should be right up there with consideration of the other impacts of the smoking ban. It is right and proper for consideration of such matters to feed into that scrutiny.

The Convener: Without prejudging the post-legislative scrutiny, I think that it would be appropriate for the issues that the petitions raise to be considered along with other issues, such as the impact of the ban on businesses. Are members content with that approach? [my emphasis]

THERE HAS BEEN NO POST LEGISLATIVE SCRUTINY TO DATE ON THIS SUBJECT. In the meantime the Scottish Government has steam-rollered on with more jewels from the tobacco control agenda, such as the tobacco display ban. 

An example of suitable equipment for tackling irritants in smoke is Air Manager, a link obtained from a government web site. It can take out particles down to 0.01 micron and 99.9 per cent of bacteria, spores and viruses. It takes out not only smoke but the rest of the muck too. 

Thankfully at least STV has been able to recognise that people should know that there is a viable alternative to the smoking ban.