What's up this week

Well, committee meeting tomorrow afternoon. Agenda actually not that bad compared with recent weeks. Did get slightly worried that I had maybe left some petitions off by mistake!
Two oral presentations from petitioners on NHS interpretation/translation services and on availability on NHS of low dose naltrexone.
Visiting the committee this week is Johannes Fritz from the University of Erlangen in Germany who is undertaking a research project on behalf of the Petitions Committee of the German Bundestag on e-petitioning. This follows up an earlier visit from Ralf Lindner at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research two years ago. Johannes will watch the committee's meeting tomorrow afternoon and then I'll have a sit down and blether with him on Wednesday morning before he meets Convener in afternoon. He also has other meetings lined up with various academics. Looking forward to sharing some ideas and thoughts on how public petitioning progress are being developed by the committee here and in Germany.
Also on horizon are discussions with the blood donation services in Germany and Greece in connection with petition before the committee at present. This will follow on from the videoconference held with Paris last week (see post below).
Fergus, Clerk to the PPC

Videoconference with Paris

The Committee has gone international again, this time with a videoconference with Paris. Frank McAveety (convener), Anne McLaughlin and Robin Harper heard from Dr Gilles Folléa, Leslie Sobaga and Sophie Skotnicki about how France has been promoting and encouraging blood donation (and eventually succeeded) for the best part of the last 10 years. Dr Folléa is one of the top heads of the Etablissement Français du Sang (EFS), the equivalent of the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service.

The videoconference was on the back of petition PE1274 by Andrew Dannet which seeks to introduce a scheme to pay people each time they donate blood and to consider other measures to encourage more people to donate.

We received valuable information based on the French experience which will no doubt assist the Committee's work on the petition. We learned that in France, there are 156 sites where people can donate blood with 85% of these sites being mobile (going from town to town), all this backed up by local and national awareness campaigns pretty much throughout the year. One good idea that they have is that when people donate blood they are asked to make another appointment so that it is not just a one off (men can give blood up to 6 times a year and women up to 4). Donors are then reminded of the appointment by text message.

This was a videoconf which was well worth it and the petition will be back before the Committee in April.

Just to show you how international we really are, la vidéoconference a apporté des éléments neufs et innovateurs qui vont sans nul doute aider le comité dans ses délibérations. L’approche française est certainement un succès et les examples donnés, à la fois simples et pratiques, illustrent une bonne utilisation d’outils informatiques. Par example, lorsque quelqu’un donne du sang, on demande à cette personne de reprendre aussitôt un rendez-vous pour une prochaine fois. Le donneur recevra ensuite un message par texto pour lui rappeler du jour et l’heure du rendez-vous. Simple et efficace!

Merci

Clerking team

Understanding Parliament conference

Last Saturday (21st), over 100 people from small, local community groups around Scotland came together for the 1st ever "Understanding and Influencing Your Parliament" conference. For nearly everyone who came along, this was their first experience of engaging with the Parliament.

The petitions process was at the heart of what we had to share with them. We started the day in the Chamber with five speakers giving short presentations about the Parliament, the Scottish Government and what it is like to be an MSP - especially how constituents can help Members to do their jobs. As the Presiding Officer emphasized, the day was all about "people power". We wanted to show our delegates how they are at the heart of Scotland's political processes, and how they can use them to get their voices heard on their issues. One delegate coined the phrase "a citizens' democracy", which sparked lively debate from our panel. Here you can see petitioner Tina McGeever talking with some of the delegates.

We were delighted to welcome Michelle Stewart, one of our petitioners, to speak in the Chamber. Michelle's input - from the heart and without any notes - clearly showed why she was named as Campaigner of the Year earlier in the week.

Networking in the Garden Lobby had started first thing over coffee and continued over the lunch break. Delegates had a chance to go on a quick tour of Holyrood and to get their pictures taken for use in their local papers, newsletters and websites.

In the afternoon, it was back to the hard work with two workshops.

Fergus and Frank McAveety led sessions on petitions, sharing their knowledge and experience. As delegates departed at the end of the day, many of them mentioned that they were away to think about or even draft a petition so they must have captured everyone's imagination!

Michelle stayed on and we were joined by Tina McGeevor as well - they both contributed to sessions about how to run a campaign. Feedback has been very positive with comments about how much people learnt on the day and how pleased they were to experience their "open and accessible Parliament" in action. This event really showed how the Committee and the Education and Community Partnerships team can work together, with other Members and colleagues of course, to promote the work of the Parliament and how people can get involved, as flagged in the Committee's recent inquiry report. I suspect we'll be called on to run the conference again, judging by its success. Well, at least it keeps Fergus and Frank out of the CD shops on a Saturday afternoon.

Rosemary Everett, Head of Education and Community Partnership Team

Vietnamese delegation

A delegation from the Office of National Assembly of Vietnam visits the Parliament this week for a series of meetings and discussions. The main objective of the visit is to provide an opportunity to learn about the development of devolution in Scotland, relations with the UK Parliament and the other devolved institutions, the role of an MSPs, the support services involved in the work of the Parliament such as information and research, the legislative process and the work of parliamentary committees, the scrutiny role of the Parliament.
I will be meeting the delegation on Wednesday when we will have a blether about our public petitioning process. I met with a similar delegation 12 months ago - I must have said something that interested them!
The group comprises parliamentary officials and I am looking forward to meeting with them.
Fergus, Clerk to the PPC

Tuesday's meeting

A long meeting on Tuesday afternoon, started at 2.00 and ran on until 5.20 pm. At one point I was thinking about the advert that was on the telly years ago for a well known make of tea which featured chimpanzees. The advert had the Houses of Parliament in the background and the chimps are dressed in suits. Anyway, the key line in the advert was "Let's make it an all night sitting" as they pour another cup of tea. In my head on Tuesday, this was funny!
If anyone is still reading this post well here goes. Three oral evidence sessions and you can read posts about the cancer drugs and fairtrade food in schools petitions (see posts below from Frank McAveety and Nanette Milne). The third oral evidence session was on reducing levels of stillbirths and neonatal deaths (PE1291).
It is quite incredible the breadth of subjects which are covered at one meeting. On Tuesday the committee considered 20 petitions on 18 different subjects. It is interesting to watch the discussion amongst committee members change so quickly from one subject to another and for the petition to move forward in a constructive way through the identification of further questions to ask.
All the letters arising from Tuesday were issued yesterday. These are inviting written submissions from a wide range of bodies. Most of these petitions will now roll forward to the meeting the committee is having in February 2010 at which it will consider only current petitions. There are around 40 petitions down for discussion at that meeting. Gulp!
We now turn our minds to the next meeting on 1 December with the papers going out early next week. As the second best band to come out of Scotland (AWB - Blue Nile first, Sutherland Brothers third) once sung, Lets Go Round Again! (me, Edinburgh Oden circa 1981!).
Fergus, Clerk to the PPC

Tina McGeever petition

I thought you would welcome a post on the outcome of our discussion yesterday afternoon on Tina McGeever's access to cancer drugs petition (PE1108). As you know, the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing, Nicola Sturgeon MSP, was giving evidence to the committee on progress and action by the Scottish Government in taking forward the conclusions of our inquiry report.

This, I thought, was a really useful and helpful discussion with the Cab Sec in terms of getting clarity and details of what practical steps are being taken to improve the processes at a very local level for patients accessing cancer treatment drugs. The petition came forward on the back of the experience of Tina and her late husband Michael Gray.

It was encouraging yesterday to hear the steps being taken on a number of fronts such as improving local liaison between the health board, clinician and patient, more (and better quality) information for patients on exceptional prescribing to be renamed individual patient treatment requests).

We welcome and appreciate the work that has been done and will be continue to be done by the Scot Govt and we are pleased to have been able to assist in this. Of course we will continue to consider the petition but I think yesterday took us all a good way forward to bringing about the necessary improvements. That is what we are working together to achieve.

You can listen to Tina being interviewed after the meeting on Radio Scotland i-player (about 16m 40s in).

You can also watch the archive of yesterday discussion with the Cab Sec on Holyrood TV (this was the first petition on the agenda).

Frank McAveety MSP, Convener

Visit this week

Another visit this week. A Commonwealth Parliamentary Association delegation of around 50 elected members will visit the Parliament on Wednesday and Thursday for a series of meetings with MSPs and officials. Highlight of the visit will of course be a discussion on public petitions! The delegation is made up of elected members from a wide range of countries - Australia. Cameroon, Pakistan, Malawi, Ghana, Sri Lanka, Brunei Darussalam, Namibia and many others.
This will be another great opportunity for the committee to talk about and demonstrate the importance of an effective and relevant public petitioning process. The delegation asked that discussing public petitioning was on the programme for their visit.