New Petitions

I am the chairperson of Staffin community council.

Good morning. I thank you for this opportunity to speak to this petition.Our community of Staffin is located on the north-east side of Skye. It is a fragile community, which relies on the benefits of the tourist industry to sustain and support our economy. We require an adequate infrastructure, which we do not have. The condition of the road as it is at present—I presented the committee convener with photographic evidence—will not continue to service our community.A traffic survey that was carried out in October 1999 gave the daily flow as 597 vehicles per day. That equates to 1,100 vehicles per day in August. We have stunning scenery with historical attractions and a culture and heritage on which the Scottish nation was built. The Old Man of Storr attracts 18,000 visitors annually. Duntulm Castle, which is the ancient seat of the clan MacDonald, attracts 30,000 visitors annually. The road was built in 1910—90 years ago—and can no longer sustain the volume of traffic indicated by the above statistics.We are a progressive community, which recently completed the Columba 1400 initiative and raised money towards the total cost of £2 million. The slipway cost £300,000, of which £10,000 was raised locally. Staffin is not a community that sits back on its laurels. It is a far-seeing, far-reaching community. However, we cannot access funding for the upgrading of this road, which is four miles long. That is why we require this committee's assistance in taking this petition to Sarah Boyack, to get support and funding for this stretch of road.Highland Council does not have the funding. Its revenue budget has gone from £28 million in 1993-94 to £18 million in 1999-2000. If you allow for inflation, that is a 50 per cent cut in its funding. Its resurfacing programme has gone from 35 years to 110 years; it will not be resurfaced in our lifetime. We require the committee's support to send this petition to the Scottish Executive. We require financial assistance and we require this to be made a priority. We hope that the committee will give us the support that we require to take this initiative forward.

Yes, and we also met various MSPs in Staffin. They have seen the state of the road.

We are still waiting for her reply.

The road is in such a poor state of repair at the moment that we imagine that, in six to 10 months, it will completely deteriorate, and it will no longer even be possible to deliver feedingstuffs for our local crofters or to transport animals. We are also greatly concerned that the fire tender, when it is completely full of water, has a heavy axle weight. Our community would be cut off from the fire service, from the ambulance service and from all medical services.

Thank you, convener and members, for the opportunity to come here today and state our case in favour of St Vigeans Primary School which, as we have already heard, is under threat of closure by Angus Council. The two-teacher school is a cost-effective, fully subscribed, successful rural school in an historical village with a distinctive character. The standard of education that it provides is very high.The main thrust of the council's argument for closure centres on the inadequacy of pupil toilet facilities and the cramped staffroom and office accommodation. Pupils have to walk outside the main school building to visit the toilets, which are of an inadequate standard. For many years, the parents have asked for action to be taken to improve the toilet facilities. Their requests have been ignored by the council, and the toilets have been allowed to deteriorate to their current inadequate condition.Parents considered that the council's initial documentation supporting its proposal is materially inaccurate, and that all the supposed facts favour the council's preferred option of closure. The council's documentation is far from comprehensive, and chooses to ignore factors that do not support closure.The council does not discuss any disadvantages of closing the school, other than to mention the disruption to the children's education. The council ignores the broader issues, such as the effects on the wider rural community. The council fails to make anything more than passing mention of demographic change. The parents consider that to be a significant factor, given the large amount of housing development in the catchment areas adjacent to that of St Vigeans.The council has considered alterations to the school buildings. They would include options that go beyond what is required to provide adequate facilities. Parents have received inadequate drawings of the proposals, and considered the associated costings to be grossly inflated. Estimates obtained by parents for alternative proposals are in the region of £70,000, as compared to the council's options of £250,000 or £400,000. Parents consider that the criteria used by the council are not based on proportionate advantage and are prejudicial to the case for the retention of the school.Parents call on the Scottish Parliament to take their views fully into account, and to support this excellent primary school.

The report that was presented to the education committee?

Yes, we have seen that.

There are a number of issues. The school participates fully in the village open day and the village hall, which works on a tight budget, relies heavily on the income that it gets when the school uses it. People in the area identify strongly with St Vigeans.

St Vigeans provides an excellent education. People elect to send their children to the school and the school has to refuse applications because it is at its capacity.

Yes.

We have asked the council for details of the costings. I believe that the breakdown of the council's figures adds up to only £190,000. The cost includes the replacement of doors, windows and partitions, which the parents do not think are essential elements of the upgrading. We do not understand how the council arrived at the figure of £250,000.

An important issue is that the school receives a large number of placement requests because of the high standard of education that its pupils receive. A number of pupils who had difficulty coping with the pressures in larger urban schools have moved to St Vigeans, where they have settled in well. I can think of two children in particular who have thrived in the environment of St Vigeans and whose personalities have changed.

Our submissions must be sent to the council by the end of August.

We have not been told when a decision will be made.

It has not been submitted yet.

My name is Alistair Sutherland, and I am a member of the Glencoe action group. Mr MacDonald is here today, but we agreed that I would present the paper on behalf of the action group, if that is in order.I have distributed papers indicating in bullet form what this is all about, and I will take members through those points. The petition is from residents in and around Glencoe, which is one of the most historic and important tourist areas in Scotland. The petition arises because of certain proposals from the National Trust for Scotland, which is the landowner of the major part of the area. The National Trust owns 5,680 hectares in Glencoe in trust for the public. For 65 years, it has enjoyed good relations with the people in and around the glen. In 1999, all that changed because of two developments, for which the trust had obtained permission and public finance and which, if they proceed, will alter radically the livelihoods of the owners of small business and the appearance of the famous glen.First, a new visitor centre will be built, which will probably displace a number of locally owned and run businesses. The existing centre consists of a snack bar and a shop that sells books and souvenirs, as well as a historical and geological exhibition. The new centre will have a 66-seat restaurant plus shops, which, it is feared, will sell crafts, mountain gear, luxury foods and knitwear, in addition to what is sold already. There will also be an exhibition area. No environmental or economic assessment was required by the planners or by those who committed funding to the project.The site for the new centre was acquired from the Forestry Commission for £218,000, without anyone else being allowed to offer for it. Scottish Natural Heritage contributed £175,000, which was 75 per cent of the total. This was the third time that SNH or its predecessor, the Countryside Commission for Scotland, had grant aided secret purchases from the Forestry Commission in Glencoe. I have listed the two other occasions in the paper. Grant aid and tax relief for the project have been estimated at £825,000.Under the second development, the entire floor and lower slopes of the pass of Glencoe will, by the exclusion of sheep, cattle and wild animals such as deer, be changed from open grazing land to scrub with trees such as birch and rowan. Access is likely to be restricted and the world-famous vistas of the glen will almost certainly be radically altered, at least when viewed from the main road.The Forestry Commission has awarded a grant of £338,000 for the first 60-hectare stage of the development, and the millennium forest trust—lottery money—has provided £148,000. If, as the papers that were filed for consultation indicate, the final project increases from 60 hectares to 767 hectares, the total cost to the Exchequer could be in excess of £3 million.You may ask what objections the local people could have to those proposals. I have listed them in the paper. There has been no adequate consultation on either development. The consultation about the visitor centre was about a concept very like the present centre, but at a very late stage it emerged that the concept had changed completely between consultation and the grant of planning permission. The chairman of the National Trust has likened the centre to a new supermarket, but supermarkets are not funded by grants and tax relief. The woodland regeneration scheme consultation consisted of a document that was made available in the local post office for a fortnight. Few people knew about it until it was too late.All the sheep farming tenancies have come to an end without any genuine attempt to re-let. No locals are now involved in the small trust sheep operation. No locals or even Highlanders are employed full time in the visitor centre or in the ranger service. Locals are given only seasonal part-time employment.Local tourism-related businesses fear that the near absence of any sort of animals and birds of prey, and the fact that tree cover will restrict visibility along roads and make access to the hills more difficult, will lessen the attraction of the glen. Plants and trees have their place, but not to the exclusion of everything else. Some plants thrive only on land that is grazed.The glen is the scene of the Glencoe massacre in 1692, which was one of the most important events in Scottish history. Some of the worst atrocities took place just where the new centre is being built. The descendants of the Inverigan MacDonalds, of whom the petitioner is one, clan Donald generally, and many Highlanders think that it is the wrong place for the new centre. The National Trust states that it stands for "places of historic interest."I have given you a breakdown of our calculations on the public finance that is involved, which are based on the National Trust's figures. I will not go through the figures in detail, but total public finance is anywhere between £1.5 million and £5 million.Local feeling is that the National Trust enjoys an over-cosy relationship with many state-controlled bodies. As I have said, acquisitions of land have taken place behind closed doors and the trust's woodland regeneration scheme has been waved through. Scottish Natural Heritage pays for a large percentage of everything and the perception is that the National Trust is not subject to the same restrictions that apply to tax-paying citizens.Finally, the petition is a plea for a review of the role of the National Trust. The trust has grown hugely from its idealistic and popular beginnings in Glencoe in 1936. It now owns 188,000 acres of Scotland and is one of Scotland's largest landowners. Government agencies pay for a large part of its operations. On its Highland properties, there is considerable friction between local populations and conservationists with a largely non-Highland agenda.I hope that that is sufficient background with which to present the petition.

No I have not.

On behalf of members of the action group, and anyone else with an interest, I am sure that that would be the right thing to do.

The background is that the present centre was built for the trust in the 1970s by the Countryside Commission for Scotland on land that the trust already owned. After it was built, there was a lot of opposition from the climbing community, whose members disliked looking down from the hills to see a great slab of tarmac and buildings in an area that they thought should have been left unspoilt. So, for many years, the trust was considering where to place the centre. I do not know of any other site in its ownership on which it considered siting the centre. I know that it considered siting it on someone else's land at one stage.

Yes. The old one will be demolished and the site will be grassed over.

My understanding is that the climbing community placed considerable pressure on the trust to remove the building from the current site.

That is right.

I cannot comment on what people were thinking about when they signed the petition, but most signatures were obtained in the River Coe Restaurant, where the owner is in severe danger of having his business wrecked. He would not obtain signatures without signatories understanding what they were signing.

I do not think that the petition presents an unbalanced picture. Mr Campbell is a member of the National Trust for Scotland and the Mountaineering Council of Scotland, and is regarded by the trust as the Mountaineering Council of Scotland's voice in the trust. Mr Campbell was 100 per cent in favour of the trust's proposals, as far as the woodland regeneration side was concerned. The balance of the meeting was not too bad. The majority of speakers were against the proposals, but there was one in favour.

Thank you, convener and members of the committee. I am the convener of the unions at North Lanarkshire Council and this is Graham McNab, the vice-convener.In June 1998, as members are probably aware, North Lanarkshire had a deficit. On 23 July, Donald Dewar presented us with a 19(b) notice, effectively closing our department and putting 1,600 members of our unions out of work. Over the past two years, there have been amendments to the 19(b) notice. It has not been lifted, which has meant that our members have had to transfer to different public-private partnerships. So far, we have lost three different partnerships through natural wastage. People are leaving the department because of uncertainty—we have lost up to 800 people. The partnerships were supposed to transfer jobs under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations, but I can assure members that those transfers did not go through properly and that people's rights have not been protected. The DLO is now performing well: last year, it made a profit of £1.6 million and the projected profit for this year is £1.4 million. In September, we are supposed to be transferring to a private partnership. I have no doubt that members are aware that councils have only to return a 6 per cent profit. Our department is producing that for the council and for the taxpayers of North Lanarkshire. The 19(b) notice should be overturned and replaced by a 19(a) notice, which many other councils in England and Wales have been given in the past, and which would have allowed us to turn the situation around. If a 19(a) notice were issued, we would be allowed to remain a DLO. We would be able to protect the workers and to ensure that the community in North Lanarkshire benefits from the money that is spent in North Lanarkshire. If everything is privatised, that money will go automatically into the pockets of private companies that will be brought in by North Lanarkshire Council. Our members will be transferred out of the council. They have been told that those transfers will be TUPE transfers, and that they will retain their pension rights. However, that sort of thing simply does not happen. Our petition asks the committee to talk to the appropriate ministers and committees, to ask them to reverse the decision that was made on the 19(b) notice and to turn it into a 19(a) notice. That would allow us to remain a DLO and to perform as we have done. We have documentation with us that backs up our figures—I did not just make them up in my head—together with a business plan, which I would like to present to members; perhaps they could examine the papers later.

A 19(b) notice states that the department will no longer continue. Donald Dewar issued it, when he was the Secretary of State for Scotland. Now he is the First Minister.

We are having a little difficulty trying to find out who is responsible. When we asked the Scottish Executive who could change the notice, it replied, the council. When we asked the council, it said the Scottish Executive. Perhaps the committee could clarify that point for us.

We lost £4.7 million in 1998, for which a lot of people blamed the work force and the bonus system that was in operation. However, as members can see, surpluses were put back into the council and the bonus system was examined. The management was changed drastically—new management was brought in to turn around the system. The same workers using the same bonus system made a surplus two years running. Therefore, the previous deficit was not the fault of the workers or of the bonus system.

Before 1998, we were in different authorities. Then we were brought in to the new North Lanarkshire Council. I am not aware of any council that made a loss in the area before then. My previous authority—Motherwell District Council—had made surpluses and had upgraded all its buildings with those surpluses. Therefore, there was plenty of money available—the business that moved to North Lanarkshire Council was healthy and so there should not have been a problem. Perhaps the deficit was the fault of the management.

That is to do with the window factory. The workers at that factory are part of the first major transfer to the public sector—it happened just last week, after a long argument about pension rights and whether or not those rights were transferred under TUPE. We argued that the transfers should have gone through with the workers' pension rights intact. Admitted body status is due to be signed by the end of July and that will allow companies to buy in to the local government pension schemes, which would have made the transfer of pension rights easier. At the time of transfer, the workers were still carrying out work for North Lanarkshire Council. We argued, therefore, that they were entitled to be part of that pension scheme. The council said, "No. There is no need for that." James Walker (Leith) Ltd took on the business and offered the guys a pension scheme that was worth less than the scheme that they were in before. That company expected them to just accept the new scheme. We did everything we could, but the council went ahead and transferred the men despite the problem about pension rights. From the start, TUPE has not protected the workers as far as the unions are concerned, but the council still went ahead with the transfer. Perhaps admitted body status would have helped, but it was delayed.

So far, North Lanarkshire DLO is the first to transfer. I know that Glasgow City Council is talking about transferring its housing stock, which will also be a TUPE transfer. However, North Lanarkshire DLO seems to be the guinea pig. Until now, the transfers have not gone well. Nearly all the people who went through the first two transfers no longer work for the companies to which they transferred. The council knows that those companies are using self-employed and scab labour—whatever you want to call it—on sites and it condones that behaviour. We have said repeatedly to the council that it should not go down the transfer road. Our members think that TUPE will protect them, but it will not. The council is allowing their conditions to be eroded so much that the men cannot work.

All the workers' conditions of service are supposed to transfer with them—the national agreement is supposed to ensure that. However, once they are employed by a private company, they have no protection in law. The TUPE regulations are supposed to ensure that employees have the same conditions after a transfer, but once the new contractor has a small group of people, it is easy to split them up and erode their conditions. If that happens in North Lanarkshire, it will happen in DLOs throughout Scotland and there will be a lot of very unhappy people.

I will leave these documents for you.

We would like to thank the Public Petitions Committee for allowing us to address it on the issues in our petition. I will introduce my two colleagues—Mr Jim Johnston, who is the vice-president of the TTA, and Mr Robert Geddes, who is the immediate past-president. Any questions on our petition may be addressed to any of us.The Scottish Executive—and, we believe, the Scottish Parliament—recognises that, for this country of ours to succeed in the future, we must grasp the opportunities that new technology offers, both in its development and as a wealth-creating platform in manufacturing to provide a sound economic base. As technical teachers, we feel that we must enthuse our pupils at an early age to study courses that will achieve that end. The craft, design and technology courses that we offer utilise the skills that pupils gain in English, mathematics and science; using a problem-solving approach, pupils build up their expertise in a variety of courses ranging from working with wood and metal through to designing electronic control systems on computers. The skills that we endeavour to foster in our pupils are readily sought by industry. In our new advanced higher graphic communication course, pupils are now expected to produce 3-D modelling layouts on AutoCAD, a commercial programme that is used worldwide for computer-aided draughting.We must stress that technology does not mean only computers—although access to the internet provides our pupils with an avenue to design web pages and it provides us with wider information on products for higher craft and design as well as technological studies.As members will have seen in our petition, we feel that more must be done to promote such courses. The difficulties that we face in education are illustrated by the following facts. Technological studies is one of only two subjects in secondary schools that introduce students to the study of electronics. As part of our drive continually to update our courses to take account of new developments in the outside world, the technological studies standard grade course was recently revamped. It was subjected to a consultation exercise, the course structure and accreditation levels were agreed and a new course was written. Sponsorship was attracted from the United Kingdom Offshore Operators Association for the provision, for every school in Scotland, of a basic stamp kit necessary for the course. Teachers were told, both formally and informally, that the course would run from June 2000. A national launch took place in February in Dundee. The courses were offered in schools, class lists were made up for them and then suddenly, in March, the course was postponed for a year by the Scottish Qualifications Authority without, as yet, any reason being given.It is in that climate that the TTA is asking the Public Petitions Committee to support it in its quest to ensure that pupils are given the opportunity to study the series of courses that we have highlighted and that they are supported to a high level in every school in Scotland, as our petition requests.

Yes.

Yes.

I am the director of Calton Athletic Recovery Group, on behalf of which I am presenting the petition to the committee. As it would take a lot more than two minutes to explain fully the discrimination against the group, I will stick to the main issue of discrimination in public funds.Why does such discrimination exist? We have a track record that is second to none and over the past year we have provided a service in communities across Scotland. Although we pride ourselves on being a community-based project, the reality is that, for the past three years, 95 per cent of our resources have been spent in other people's communities. We deliver services to a range of schools and provide rehabilitation for people across Scotland. Indeed, we are the only organisation that provides instant access to rehabilitation, despite being starved of statutory funds. In the past five years, we have self-generated £1 million, which has gone straight into initiatives at Calton Athletic. None of that money went to a professional fundraiser, who might have taken 20 per cent of it; everything went straight into the services, which have been—and still are—open to research and evaluation. However, the Scottish Executive has only now decided to evaluate all projects and initiatives. That is sad, as our funding ended in May. Despite that, our work has continued to the end of June and we have filled in the order book for schools across Scotland. In five years of bringing our services to schools, we have never had a complaint.It is strange to have reached a position where Calton Athletic is not included in the Scottish Parliament debate on drugs. Since 1985, we have provided a service with an international reputation. However, there is still a lot of misinformation. When I was explaining our situation to John McAllion, the convener of the Public Petitions Committee, whom I met a few years ago, he said, "David, I heard yesterday that you had shut." It is tragic to find that the Scottish Parliament is under the impression that Calton Athletic is not providing a service. Fifty primary schools in Edinburgh are aware that we are still providing a service, because we have visited them in the past two years.Much of the discrimination stems from Glasgow City Council, and I fear that some of it has come to the Scottish Parliament. I do not believe that the whole Scottish Parliament is against us; I believe that we have a lot of support, otherwise we would not have been able to provide a service to schools across Scotland, as far north as Inverness and Aberdeen and as far south as Dumfries and Galloway, as well as in the central areas of north and south Lanarkshire. However, there are some areas that we are socially excluded from.I am here today to look for an end to this discrimination. We are asking only for equal opportunities. If we had a level playing field, we could show exactly what we can do through research, evaluation and monitoring. The sad fact is that Calton Athletic is socially excluded from social inclusion, which is terrible, because the policy of social inclusion was designed for groups such as ours. I look to the Scottish Parliament to give us justice, to help us on to that level playing field and to let us live up to our track record.

That is a good question. A high-ranking police officer asked me the same question before we took part in the "Choices for Life" anti-drugs event at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre. We had to fight like mad to get on that agenda; we were successful through the co-operation of Jim Orr of the Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency. However, we were let down, because we thought that we were getting evaluated on the day that we were at the event; indeed, that evaluation would have told a story. Although the initiative did not get evaluated, 20 different schools—10 from Edinburgh and 10 from Glasgow—approached us after the event. The impact was tremendous.Someone asked whether the discrimination stemmed from my background or lack of academic qualifications. That is a good question; the answer is probably both, and it might also have something to do with professional jealousy—a lot of that goes on in the drugs field.

Sure thing. We sent the documentation to the Scottish Executive more than a year ago when the discrimination first happened, and were reassured that it would never happen again. Lo and behold, exactly the same thing happened a couple of months ago. Such an action does not discredit just Calton Athletic; it discredits people and families who want to get their kids off drugs and schools that want our services. The proof is available in black and white for everyone to read. The Scottish Drugs Forum asked the national drugs helpline to replace our particulars with a blank piece of paper. Although that is hardly credible in this day and age, that is exactly what happened. The national helpline sent us copies of the Scottish Drugs Forum's letter.