Chamber and committees

?It is an interesting suggestion and, indeed, the work that has been carried out to highlight it to relevant authorities has been useful. However, we should close the petition under rule 15.7 of standing orders, on the basis that the committee’s report on participation considered a similar recommendation and concluded that

“We do not support the recommendation for a question time which is part of formal Parliamentary business, as we think it raises too many difficulties both of practice and principle”.

I agree. We have done an extensive piece of work looking at the issue, and it is valid to have conducted that. Unfortunately, we have reached the end of the road and, therefore, we should close the petition under rule 15.7 of standing orders, on the basis that consideration has been given to appoint island residents to the boards of public organisations that are responsible for delivering lifeline services to island communities, and that the Scottish Government has stated:

“regardless of what other skills may be required, applicants are asked to demonstrate a knowledge and understanding of how lifeline services affect our island communities.”

As a final follow-up, should we write to regional health boards to ask what options for support and reimbursement are available to community healthcare staff who are required to use their personal vehicle as part of their role?

We should first write to the national health service regional health boards and the Scottish Ambulance Service seeking information on any local stroke awareness pilots that they have undertaken, including their outcomes. In addition, we should write to the Scottish Government highlighting the contributions from Mr Stewart and Mr Kerr on data, on consideration of trials and on commissioning research, and to seek an update on its work to establish existing levels of awareness of stroke symptoms and whether that includes consideration of the awareness among clinical staff of symptoms beyond those captured by the FAST test.

I agree that there is quite a lot in this matter. For decades, perhaps, many of our buildings have been unnecessarily demolished, in my view, across the whole of Scotland.

Initially, we should write to the Scottish Government to ask how it can be confident that existing powers contained in the building standards legislation and supporting guidance are sufficient to protect listed buildings from unnecessary demolition. Furthermore, we should ask it how local authorities should determine whether partial or total demolition is the only appropriate solution to address a safety risk in cases that are considered to be urgent. In addition, we should ask it what level of community engagement might be appropriate for local authorities and whether it has considered producing additional guidance to set out the minimum structural evidence required and the provision of appropriate expertise in cases where a listed building is being assessed against the Building (Scotland) Act 2003.

We should write to the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs to seek further details on the work that is being undertaken to consider longer-term funding options for charities that play a vital role in the seizure of drugs and criminal assets.

Further work needs to be carried out on the petition to understand how the voucher scheme is working—or not, as the case may be. It may be down to access to broadband. Even if someone can pay for a service, if they cannot actually get that service, it is slightly irrelevant that they can get a voucher for it.

We should write to the Scottish Government to ask whether, in the light of the low uptake of vouchers, it believes that the Scottish broadband voucher scheme is an adequate approach to providing connections to properties in rural Scotland.

We have done some work on the petition and, ultimately, from the evidence that you have just highlighted, we should close the petition under rule 15.7 of standing orders on the basis that Police Scotland already has powers to address any unlawful behaviour that may arise in the vicinity of migrant accommodation as a result of protest activity.

I agree. Lots of homework is done via mobile phone on Google Classrooms and that is commonly used in classes as well—pupils use it to find out what the homework is and then work off that. It might be interesting to find out how individual schools have implemented restrictions on the wi-fi to limit the apps that pupils can access. As a parallel issue, there seems to be a growing increase in panic attacks among pupils in schools, and one of the ways in which those are mitigated and helped is by calling the parent. Without a phone, that will be difficult to do.

Again, that is anecdotal, but it would be useful to hear more about those issues.

I wonder whether there is just a little bit more in this. I appreciate that the guidance has been updated but, given that this is a new petition, is it worth giving this issue a bit more of an airing to find out more evidence? The petition calls for the most extreme form of a ban, but there may be other variations that produce results. There is probably a gap when it comes to how confident the Scottish Government is that schools are collecting data on mobile phone misuse and understanding the scale of the problem. It would be useful to hear from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland, the Association of Headteachers and Deputes in Scotland and School Leaders Scotland, in addition to any individual schools that have applied some form of a ban, which may be state schools or independent schools, and the educational attainment results arising from that.