���˿���

Public Petitions Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Official Report 437KB pdf

---

New Petitions

---

Mental Health Services (PE1438)

Item 2 is consideration of two new petitions. First, PE1438, by Lynsey Pattie, is on improving services for people with mental illness. Members will have received a note from the clerk, a briefing from the Scottish Parliament information centre and the petition. I welcome the witness to the meeting and invite her to make a short presentation of around five minutes. After the presentation, I will kick off with a few questions and then open it up to additional questions from my colleagues.

I thank the committee for inviting me to give evidence on my petition. Mental health is an extremely important issue that is gradually coming to public light. Given that one in four people will suffer from a mental health problem at some time in their life, it is likely that everyone will be affected by it either personally or through family and friends.

I submitted this petition because, unfortunately, I am one of those one in four people. As someone with a mental health problem, I feel that the stigma in having a mental health issue is extremely strong and that there are not enough services of a high standard available. Although I emphasise that most care is now given in the community, I feel that the waiting time for seeing a mental health professional is too long. I understand that the Scottish Government is going to cut the waiting time to 18 weeks, but I think that that is still too long to wait. Every day, two people in Scotland die from suicide; if more people were seen quicker by a mental health professional, that statistic would be lower.

Although care in the community is encouraged, people with mental health problems sometimes go to hospital. From my experience and having heard the experiences of others, I believe that hospital is not the best place for getting better. There is a lack of activities for patients and any activities that are available are mostly not suitable for everyone. A wider variety of activities would keep patients stimulated and take their minds off their illness, even for a short period of time. There was no exercise group, but that sort of thing is essential because medication and lack of exercise can cause dramatic weight gain. Exercise has also been proven to help mental health.

My two biggest concerns about hospital are, first, that under-18s are admitted to adult wards. Those who are under 18 are already vulnerable because of their age, but the addition of a mental health problem makes them even more vulnerable. Having more child and adolescent wards would be beneficial. I also feel that a waiting time of 26 weeks to see a child and adolescent mental health professional is too long, especially as discovering a mental health problem quickly can sometimes allow it to be treated fully.

My second and biggest concern about hospital is that nurses sometimes have no time to help patients. That is especially true at night when the shifts change. A patient is more likely to be given a drug instead of being talked to; usually they are sedated with Valium without the problem itself ever being solved. The luckiest patients in hospital are those with families. Unless you know where to find information on benefits, services and other matters, you are left to fend for yourself.

When patients leave hospital, they should be given support to get back into the world. Many of them end up back in hospital because they cannot cope with being at home. Help should also be given when they go back to work, if they are ready to do so. Although there are groups that already do such work, they are not widely known or advertised. Having more groups that are specifically designed for mental health needs would greatly benefit the mentally ill, particularly given that disability living allowance is being cut for many people who suffer from mental health problems. They should also receive support from their mental health team, who should make regular visits and encourage the person in question. After all, it can be very hard to adjust to being at home again.

Finally—and most important—we need to address the stigma of mental ill health. From a young age, children are taught social education, starting with relationships in primary school and going right through to drugs and alcohol in secondary school. I feel that mental health should feature more heavily in such education, with the correct facts being given. I find it amazing and saddening that so many people have the wrong facts about mental health. For example, people think that schizophrenics have split personalities or are violent. By making information more easily available, those misconceptions would not happen.

In my opinion, the media are hugely to blame for this situation. Words such as “psycho” are used daily in newspapers for no other reason than to describe a footballer making a bad tackle. Just yesterday, I heard a news reporter calling a news story “bonkers” and someone else being called a “loony” because they had a different opinion. When there is a murder, people automatically assume that the person is mentally ill. The most recent example is Anders Breivik, who was not mentally ill. Why do we not focus on people such as Florence Nightingale, who had bipolar disorder, or Gandhi, who had depression and anxiety? Mental illness does not have to be portrayed as a negative personality trait. With the right help, even the most ill people can do the most amazing things.

Thank you for that very interesting presentation. I also note the example of Winston Churchill, who suffered from depression.

You have predicted my first question, which is about stigma. I have always been struck by a Scottish Health Education Department poster from the 1980s that said something like, “Six months after Mary had a nervous breakdown, her friends are still recovering.” I thought that that was a neat way of looking at stigma by association. Can you tell us a bit more about your experience of stigma and what you hope to achieve in that respect with your petition?

I know that people I have talked to have difficulty finding work if they disclose their mental illness, because employers might think that they are unreliable. In my opinion, people with mental health problems are no less or more reliable than anyone else. Anything could happen to anyone at any time.

I will ask a second question before I bring in my colleagues. When I spoke to some armed forces personnel recently, they told me that there are concerns that, when personnel who have been on the front line are discharged—when they leave the Army, the Royal Navy or the Royal Air Force—and come back into the community, their experience of acute anxiety from having been on the front line may not be picked up. Have you had experience of that with your colleagues or friends?

I work as a volunteer with the Scottish Association for Mental Health, which has just started a scheme with Poppyscotland to help troops who have just come back from the front line to get back into work and to help their mental health. That is something that I will probably be involved in in the future.

I should declare that, until recently, I was convener of the cross-party group on mental health and I am currently the deputy convener of that group.

I want to ask about the curriculum for excellence. Lynsey, you mentioned that there is a range of educational opportunities for children when they are at school. Do you think that there is not enough awareness of mental health issues in the education system? If there was more awareness, perhaps people would be able not only to recognise the symptoms but to look for support and assistance. They might even be able to develop their own solutions to episodes of poor mental health not only for themselves but for their friends.

I would say that there is not enough about mental health at school. In my experience, we got taught about depression and stress during exams, but we were not taught that it was okay to have a mental illness. Fortunately, I had a teacher who had depression and he talked to our class about it, but that was just in our class—it was not in the curriculum. I think that there needs to be more about a wide variety of mental illnesses. I have the feeling that more serious psychotic illnesses are not talked about because they can be seen as scary.

Nowadays, there are quite a lot of mental health first aid courses. My local college offers a mental health higher, which quite a few people, including some of my friends from school, are doing. I think that that is really good because, even if you do not know what to do later on, if you see something at the start you can help and you will know what is happening rather than be scared about it.

Do you think that the term “mental health” is too broad and can be too easily misunderstood? In my lifetime, the vocabulary attached to a number of conditions has changed, and public perception has changed with that change in vocabulary. The term “mental health” encompasses such a huge range of conditions that it is very easy for ordinary members of the public to misunderstand or be intimidated by people who experience such issues or, for whatever reason, to be unhelpful. Is there a need to try to crystallise a new vocabulary in the public domain that would help to change public perception? I worry slightly that, as long as the term “mental health” is used and can be employed in so many different ways, it will always be misunderstood.

I think that you would need to keep the term “mental health” because what we are talking about is an illness of the mind. You can have different labels, but I do not like labelling people by, for example, calling them a depressive or a schizophrenic. That is almost as if you are defining them by their illness. Personally, I am not my illness; an illness is just part of me. I would not want someone to call me by the illness that I have. I understand why some people might have anxiety if someone said that they were mentally ill, because the term covers such a broad range of conditions. However, I think that the term “mental health” needs to be kept because what we are talking about is an illness of the mind.

11:00

I notice from the papers that, as we heard, you are a volunteer with the Scottish Association for Mental Health. You must be commended for that. I have been happy to support the see me campaign—as I am sure all my colleagues have been—which deals with the stigma of mental health issues. There is also the choose life campaign, which is a Scottish Government-funded NHS initiative to address suicide and self-harm.

One of the key Government strategies is to encourage more peer-to-peer work with support from trained staff who have themselves recovered from mental illness. Would encouraging more of that be a way forward?

Definitely. That would be great. It is starting to happen in some SAMH places in my local area, North Lanarkshire. I have not heard whether it is a success yet, because it has just started, but it is a great idea.

Thank you very much for bringing the matter to our attention.

The Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003 was an attempt to shift the focus away from institutional care to community treatment and care. You seem to be quite critical of hospital treatment. Will you expand a little more on that issue? Also, do you think that there are issues to do with treatment in the community that need to be addressed? Are there obstacles to people’s needs being addressed in the community?

The issue is due to nursing cuts and nurses not having enough time. A lot of paperwork comes with mental health nursing. The nurses have to do a diary every day for each patient and, if there are 25 patients in a ward, that can take a long time, which is understandable.

If somebody needs to be in hospital, they are very ill. More talking needs to be done in hospital to work out the problem, rather than medication simply being used to sedate the patient. That is more an issue of time rather than the nurses not caring.

Is that your experience or the experience of people you have worked with through your SAMH volunteering?

It is my experience and that of people I have talked to.

Are you looking for more talking therapies in the hospital? You feel that people are being referred correctly to hospital because they have significant, severe illnesses that need to be treated urgently rather than treated over time in the community, but you are concerned most of all by what happens in the hospital. Is that correct?

Yes. What happens in hospital concerns me. People end up being in hospital a lot longer than they need to be because they are not talked to. Sometimes, people are just in to have their medication changed but end up being in for months.

People can become institutionalised. For example, at 10 o’clock, I want a cup of tea, because I got tea at 10 o’clock in hospital. A wee thing like that might not seem a big deal, but it has had an impact on my life because I need to drink tea at 10 o’clock. Wee things like that can change a person.

The other specific criticism that you mentioned in your opening remarks was the lack of particular provision for children and adolescents and the fact that young people have to go into adult wards. Was that your experience? My understanding was that there had been a significant move towards establishing separate wards for young people.

When I was in hospital, I was 17 and in an adult ward. The person closest to me in age was two years older than me but had been in hospital for a long time. I got good care—I had the same care as everyone else—but, obviously, I had different needs from the adults. I was a teenager. I was going through puberty and had different hormones as well as being ill. There need to be more wards just for children and adolescents, with specialists who can deal with the hormones of normal teenagers.

That would be quite scary, I would imagine.

Yes.

Thank you.

I should have said earlier that I welcome the petition, Lynsey. In your comments in the petition’s supplementary information, you referred to the 18-week referral time for a patient to see a consultant or specialist. Do you think that general practitioners have enough knowledge or experience of mental ill health to make such referrals? The 18-week timetable will kick in only after an individual is referred. From some of the experiences that have been related to me, I understand that sometimes general practitioners are not fully aware of the issues that individuals are trying to deal with and therefore either do not make correct assessments or, as you said, prescribe drugs rather than referring people on. Do general practitioners have enough knowledge to deal with mental health issues at surgery level?

No; I think that GPs need more knowledge of mental health issues. They mostly deal with physical issues. Sometimes, it can be hard for GPs to diagnose mental illness or even just to notice that someone is mentally ill, having a breakdown or having some sort of mental health issue. If GPs had more knowledge, a lot more people could be saved.

Thank you for bringing this to the attention of the Public Petitions Committee. I have some prior knowledge of the field, as I worked in social work for a while before coming to the Parliament. You mentioned younger children being admitted to adult wards, and it is quite scary that that still goes on. What really frightens me is that there is still a lack of community support. You mentioned nursing support within the NHS and we heard what you said about nursing staff feeling so low that they were not there to talk to you but were just there to medicate. I think that that happens in local authorities as well. It is a really difficult process for the person with the illness, but it is also a difficult process for the person’s family. It is difficult for the family to come to terms with things and be comforted, supported and guided through how they deal with their family member.

Eighteen weeks is still far too long for anybody to wait, and if we were able to tackle the load sooner, other areas in local government such as social work and the police would not necessarily have to go on red alert and be called on.

It is important for us to seek further information from some of the agencies that we have discussed so that we can take the petition further. I am extremely interested in it and I am extremely saddened by some of the details that we have heard today.

A general theme that is coming through is support in the community. In America, where therapy is fairly standard, there is almost no stigma attached to saying, “I am going for therapy.” If people do not get a job that they were after, for example, they go for therapy. I am not trivialising the issue; it is a different culture.

I am aware that, particularly in the third sector, people are putting a lot of work into studying for diplomas in counselling, for example. That is a long, hard struggle; a few friends of mine are currently doing that.

We need to make sure that counselling is available for people through statutory services, obviously, and through voluntary services. Does that link in with your view, Lynsey? Should there be a lot more support and counselling available in the community for those who are suffering from mental illness?

Yes, that is my view. If people can avoid hospital, that is the best way to go.

Anne McTaggart has helpfully suggested a way forward, which is that we should continue the petition and call on the Scottish Government and others for their views on it. The clerk has laid out a number of different groups that we could write to. Do committee members agree that we should continue the petition?

The Health and Sport Committee looked at this issue—not solely—in 2009, so I wonder whether it would be best to refer the petition to it, in the first stage, so that it could build on the evidence that it took before.

Although I respect what Chic Brodie suggested, I suggest that we have a first trawl through this issue and write to a number of organisations to seek their views before we pass it on to the Health and Sport Committee. There are issues that we may be able to draw out. The clerks have helpfully provided a list of organisations that they suggest we write to regarding the petition, and I have noted a couple of other organisations that we could write to.

The clerks have suggested that we write to the Scottish Government, the Scottish Association for Mental Health, the Scottish Recovery Network, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Penumbra and a selection of NHS boards. I suggest that we also write to the Renfrewshire organisation Recovery Across Mental Health, the Glasgow Association for Mental Health and, on the issue of GP referrals, the British Medical Association. Lynsey gave a startling response about GPs in local surgeries not always being aware of what they are looking for. It would be worth writing to the BMA to ask what its guidelines are for GPs for dealing with patients who present with what may be a mental illness, whatever it may be.

We will ask the various organisations their views on the petition. Do members have any other questions that they wish to have answered by the various organisations?

John Wilson mentioned education. Would it be possible to hear from people involved in education and the curriculum for excellence?

Taking up my point on the important role that the third sector plays, I think that it might also be useful to write to the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations. We will write to one voluntary organisation, but the SCVO is the umbrella body for the sector and it would be useful to get its views.

Are members happy with that course of action?

Members indicated agreement.

I thank Lynsey Pattie for her presentation. The committee members really enjoyed your comments and you have raised our awareness of the issue. As you heard, we will continue your petition and call on care organisations for their views on it. The clerks will keep you up to date with all the stages of development. Thank you again for coming along—I know that it is a daunting task.

11:13 Meeting suspended.

11:15 On resuming—

---

Betting and Loan Shops (Deprived Areas) (PE1439)

Our second new petition is PE1439, from Jonathan McColl, on betting and loan shops in deprived communities.

I welcome our witnesses, who are Jonathan McColl, from West Dunbartonshire Council, and Murdoch Cameron, who is the chairman of Balloch and Haldane community council.

Gil Paterson was interested in attending, but I do not think that we have him with us so far.

I invite Jonathan McColl to make an opening statement.

Before I begin, I should say that Gil Paterson was hoping to come along but I understand that he has to attend a meeting of another committee, which is discussing the budget. If that finishes early, he might appear. I also want to make it clear that although I am a member of West Dunbartonshire Council, I am not here representing it. I have lodged the petition in my own name.

Thank you for giving me this opportunity to raise this issue before a parliamentary committee. I also want to thank your clerking team, especially Mr Chris Hynd, who has been extremely helpful and has kept me informed at every stage.

I have raised the issue because I believe that we need to stop the proliferation of betting and high-interest loan shops in deprived communities across Scotland. You already know of the support that I have from individuals and groups from the rest of the UK; it is detailed in your papers. Supporting me today is Mr Murdoch Cameron of Balloch and Haldane community council, who is the convener of the West Dunbartonshire community councils forum, which represents all the community councils in the area.

It is my firm belief that betting and high-interest loan shops are targeting deprived areas, are taking advantage of low rents that have been caused by the current economic situation and are saturating our town centres.

It is important to note that I am not asking the committee to seek a change in legislation at this time. I understand how the system works, and if we are to come up with a fit-for-purpose solution, we will need robust evidence of a link between the number of those premises and levels of deprivation, coupled with evidence of a link between fixed-odds betting terminals and problem gambling, and statistical evidence for individual communities.

Research that was done in England and Wales by Geofutures and the National Centre for Social Research on behalf of Channel 4’s “Dispatches” shows that in affluent areas with low unemployment there are only five betting offices per 100,000 people, compared with 12 per 100,000 in areas with high unemployment.

The real issue is the relationship between so-called fixed-odds betting terminals and problem gambling, which has an adverse effect on families, communities and the wider local economy. In Dumbarton, there are two bookmakers from the same company a stone’s throw from each other, as well as other operators. As I understand it, that is because they are permitted to have only four fixed-odds betting terminals in any one shop, so opening two shops doubles their income from them.

Gambling Commission statistics from April 2008 to March 2011 show that, in the UK, around £1.2 billion was lost by people on those machines. It is possible to gamble £18,000 every hour on a single machine, because of how the timing on them is set up. Further research by Professor Jim Orford of the University of Birmingham suggests that in the UK, in the same period, people with a gambling addiction lost about £57 million on horse racing, £75 million on dog racing, £75 million in casinos and a staggering £297 million on fixed-odds betting machines. That is where the problem is.

As a councillor, it has been extremely frustrating for me over the past five years to see decisions of planning committees to refuse permission for such premises being quashed on appeal. We need the powers to help our communities to improve and flourish.

I am not anti-gambling but, given that we can use an overprovision policy to regulate the number of alcohol-licensed premises in order to help to protect those with alcohol addictions, I cannot see why, with the right evidential and statistical base, we could not regulate gambling in the same way.

I am also not anti-payday loan companies. I think that their interest charges are ridiculous and there are serious concerns about how those operations treat people who have trouble paying their loans back on time, but I also know that, used responsibly and carefully, they provide a service to people in emergency situations. Of course, I advise my constituents to join their local credit union as a much better alternative.

Bookmakers will tell you that there are procedures in place to protect people with problems and that, in extreme cases, they can intervene and stop people playing the machines. However, with the best will in the world, there is nothing they can do if the customer, caught in a downward spiral of addiction, simply moves on to one of the many betting premises on the same street that has not seen him in a while.

I am fortunate that I have never had an addiction and, therefore, I cannot possibly fully understand what sufferers go through. However, I know that people with an addiction such as problem gambling think differently from the rest of us. They do not reason in the same way, and running out of cash is often not enough to stop them, which is where the payday loan shops come in. What is to stop a person from popping next door to the payday loan shop and getting £200—which is a normal poor-credit-limit loan—and losing it in less than a minute on one of the machines?

Interest charges and late payment fees aside, you might not think it a serious issue to be losing an extra £200, but what if there are three or four payday loan shops in the area? With fixed-odds betting machines eating up to £300 a minute, that is a potential £800 lost in less than three minutes. With an average of around £25 interest for every £100 that is borrowed from those lenders, you are talking about someone potentially increasing their debt by £1,000 or more depending on the number of payday loan shops in their area. This is a serious issue, and I strongly believe that the Scottish Government needs to take a serious look at it.

I had a quick look at the Scottish Parliament information centre briefing that was prepared on the petition and saw that it notes that gambling is a reserved matter. I am aware of that, which is why I am not seeking any change to gambling legislation. I think that the matter can be dealt with by the Scottish Parliament through an overprovision policy in relation to planning.

That was helpful, thank you. Mr Cameron, if you want to speak at any stage, please indicate that you do.

Yes, convener—

I am sorry, that was not an invitation to make another five-minute speech. You are free to come in any time during the question-and-answer session.

Councillor McColl, do you feel that the current planning provisions give local authorities any controls in this area or are you looking for more powers on planning? I understand from the UK Government that article 4 directions give power to local authorities to control betting shops and so on by removing permitted development rights. Are you saying that that power is not being used, or do you want councils to have more powers around planning in order to give them more clout?

In practice, that power does not work. Our planning officers tell us that there are no grounds on which we can refuse permission. That is why, when we do so anyway, decisions are overturned on appeal to the Scottish Government. I am seeking a position that is similar to that which pertains with alcohol licensing, whereby provided that you have the proper statistical evidence, you can refuse on the ground of overprovision. The current legislation does not give us enough flexibility.

If I recall correctly from my past days on licensing boards, a decision on the ground of overprovision is open to appeal as well.

Increasingly, betting is done on the internet. Given that, how could we achieve what your petition seeks to achieve?

I agree that online gambling is increasing. Unfortunately, however, gambling is a reserved matter; there is nothing that the Scottish Parliament can do. In lodging the petition, I have to operate within the constraints on the Scottish Parliament. I feel that changes to the planning legislation could make a significant difference to the lives of people in our communities. Many of the people about whom we are talking do not have internet access, which means that it is not as easy for them to access online gambling. I know that my suggestion is only a small one, but I think that it would be a step in the right direction.

After hearing the R3 customer survey this morning, I think that payday loan shops are a major blight on what is happening economically.

Should there be more control over payday loan shops, as is the case in Australia and some states in America, where the systems involve people registering and the creation of databases that show how much they have been loaned? Might that be feasible?

I was not aware of that, but it certainly sounds as though a very sensible approach is being taken elsewhere. I am sure that Parliament and the Government will look at that, as there is a very serious problem. However, the petition sticks strictly to the issue of problem gambling and the links between access to payday loan shops and their proximity to many gambling premises.

You might want to check a company called Veritec Solutions, which issued the software in Australia and the States.

Welcome to the Scottish Parliament and thank you very much for your petition. In a recent parliamentary debate, on a motion in the name of John Mason, we debated exactly what you describe in your petition.

It is important that we refer the issue back to the Scottish Government and the UK Government to ask them to look at whether planning laws might help to eradicate the problem. More and more frequently—certainly in areas of Glasgow—betting shops are situated next to payday loans shops and there can be loads of them in a confined area. It is quite frightening.

Both John Wilson and I are on the cross-party group on credit unions, which has previously asked for investment in credit unions to try to assist communities. We have gone down that route in tackling the payday loans sharks.

I whole-heartedly agree with that point. To contact the UK Government would also be a positive step. As you will see in the paperwork, the petition was born out of my online discussions with Councillor Rowenna Davis, who represents a ward in Peckham, London. She got involved with a group called Gambling Reform and Society Perception, which lobbies on problem gambling issues.

Perhaps Mr Cameron might also want to give us his views on the petition.

Briefly, I concur with Mr McColl. I represent 10 community councils and there is no doubt from our discussions that such premises cause great misery to members of those communities.

According to the police, the FOB terminals, as they are called, are one of the main reasons for violence in gambling premises. I know that the high streets are going through difficult times and that businesses are failing, but it seems that every vacant premises is filled by one of these businesses, which, unfortunately, inflicts more misery on people.

I happen to know from personal experience—obviously, I will not go into details—that these loan-shark shops are really a terrible thing. Before you know where you are, you are hundreds and hundreds of pounds in debt. It is difficult to address how they might be controlled, but Mr Brodie’s suggestion might be one way. As experienced people, you will all know that gambling has been with us since time immemorial—since the Egyptians and right through, so it is nothing new—but it is on the increase on our televisions, on the internet and everywhere. More and more people are being dragged into gambling, which means misery and debt for many people.

Mr McColl made a good point about planning controls. If a council rules against an application and the matter goes to appeal, the council is impotent. However, would a provision that was analogous to the overprovision element in alcohol licensing be useful? Obviously, that is something that the UK Government would have to deal with.

Yes. Back when we had shipyards and steelworks, the workers flowed out and went into the pubs. To a certain extent, we still have too many pubs and we have licensed shops on nearly every corner. To get rid of some of those, there ought to be control over the number of premises that are provided with a licence.

The petition is clear about what it is calling for from the Scottish Government. I understand that the Government is consulting on national planning framework 3, so this is perhaps a good time for us to refer the petition to the Government to get its views. I think that that would be a sensible way forward. Do members who have not commented on the petition wish to do so?

11:30

I have a lot of sympathy for the petition and, as a former local councillor, I can relate to a lot of the points that have been raised about it. I was particularly interested to hear how betting shops can get round the limits on fixed-odds betting machines by opening another shop next door. I am concerned about that practice, which I had not picked up on. Again, as a former councillor, I am aware of the frustrations with regard to planning applications that have been refused by planning committees being approved on appeal, particularly in cases involving payday loan shops and betting shops.

Another issue that has concerned me for some time and which Chic Brodie touched on is the proliferation of online casino adverts on TV, but that is perhaps an issue for another day. However, such adverts clearly have an impact on families in deprived communities.

I know that the Minister for Energy, Enterprise and Tourism, Fergus Ewing, has made representations to the UK Government on payday loan companies. He said that in the chamber in response to a question some time ago, so I know that the Government is aware of the issue. However, given that the petition deals with such a significant issue, it may be worth asking the Minister for Local Government and Planning to respond to it, in addition to asking the Government to do so.

Most definitely. Does any other member wish to comment? Do either of our witnesses wish to add anything?

No. I thank the committee for taking on board my concerns and trying to find a way forward with them.

Please stay for a few seconds as we consider the next stage. My view is that we should certainly continue the petition. It has a lot of merit, particularly at a time when the Scottish Government is consulting on NPF3. I suggest that we take the actions that the clerks have laid out in paper 4, which includes contacting the Gambling Commission, the Office of Fair Trading and the Association of British Bookmakers. We can ask those bodies for their views on the petition. Do members agree with that suggestion?

Members indicated agreement.

I agree with Anne McTaggart that we should also write to the UK Government about the petition and get its view on it, the Gambling Act 2005 and payday loan companies. In that regard, I like Mr Cameron’s reference earlier to “loan-shark shops” in the high street. If only they were classified as loan sharks, we would not have so many of them. However, the rates that payday loan companies charge are a lot higher than those of loan sharks. As I said, we should write to the UK Government because it is mainly UK legislation that covers the issues that we have discussed—for example, the Gambling Act 2005. We should also write to the Financial Services Authority.

I do not know whether you have checked this, Mr McColl—I certainly have not—but do you think that bookmakers and payday loan companies might be under the same ownership in some cases?

I have absolutely no idea.

It might be worth checking.

When there is a verbatim report, I do not like to speculate, but I agree that it is certainly worth checking.

I agree with what you have suggested, convener. Just to prove that I am not curmudgeonly all the time, I say that the presentation on the petition was one of the best and most focused that I have heard on the Public Petitions Committee, and that it took a measured and sensible approach. I am happy with the recommendation that we continue the petition. My reticence about asking questions should not be taken as my being uninterested or unimpressed.

Praise from Jackson Carlaw is praise indeed.

I thank the witnesses for their evidence, which I think the committee enjoyed. It is a very good petition.

I suspend the meeting for one minute to allow our witnesses to leave.

11:34 Meeting suspended.

11:34 On resuming—