The proceedings are
reported in the language in which they were spoken in the
committee. In addition, a transcription of the simultaneous
interpretation is included. Where contributors have supplied
corrections to their evidence, these are noted in the
transcript.
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Dechreuodd y cyfarfod am 09:30.
The meeting began at 09:30.
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Cyflwyniad,
Ymddiheuriadau, Dirprwyon a Datgan Buddiannau
Introductions, Apologies, Substitutions and Declarations of
Interest
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[1]
Dai Lloyd: A gaf i estyn croeso i chi gyd y bore yma i
gyfarfod diweddaraf y Pwyllgor Iechyd, Gofal Cymdeithasol a
Chwaraeon, yma yn y Cynulliad? A allaf yn arbennig, felly, estyn
croeso i’r tyst y bore yma, Andy McGuinness, i’r sesiwn
gyntaf? Mwy amdano fe yn y man. A allaf estyn hefyd groeso i fy
nghyd-Aelodau, ac a allaf ddatgan yr ydym wedi derbyn
ymddiheuriadau oddi wrth Lynne Neagle, a
hefyd mae Angela Burns wedi fy hysbysu y bydd hi hefyd yn hwyr? A
allaf yn bellach egluro bod y cyfarfod hwn yn ddwyieithog? Gellir
defnyddio’r clustffonau i glywed cyfieithu ar y pryd
o’r Gymraeg i’r Saesneg ar sianel 1, neu i glywed
cyfraniadau yn yr iaith wreiddiol yn well ar sianel 2. A allaf i
atgoffa pobl i ddiffodd eu ffonau symudol, ac unrhyw offer
electroneg arall a allai ymyrryd ag offer darlledu? Wrth gwrs, nid
ydym yn disgwyl larwm tân y bore yma. Os bydd yna larwm
tân, dylwn ddilyn cyfarwyddiadau’r tywyswyr yn yr
amgylchiadau hynny.
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Dai Lloyd: May I welcome you all this
morning to the latest meeting of the Health, Social Care and Sport
Committee, here in the Assembly? May I in particular, therefore,
welcome our witness this morning, Andy McGuinness, to this first
session? More about him later. May I also welcome my fellow
Members, and may I state that we’ve received apologies from
Lynne Neagle, and also Angela Burns has
informed us that she will also be late? May I further explain that
this meeting is bilingual? Headsets can be used to hear
simultaneous interpretation from Welsh to English on channel 1, or
contributions in the original language amplified on channel 2. May
I remind people to turn off their mobile phones and any other
electronic equipment that could affect the broadcasting equipment?
Of course, we’re not expecting a fire alarm this morning. If
there is an alarm, we should follow the instructions of the ushers
in those circumstances.
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09:31
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Bil Iechyd y Cyhoedd
(Cymru)—Cyfnod 1, Sesiwn Dystiolaeth 10—Crohn’s
and Colitis UK
Public Health (Wales) Bill—Stage 1 Evidence Session
10—Crohn’s and Colitis UK
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[2]
Dai Lloyd: Felly,
symudwn ymlaen yn gyflym i eitem 2
a’r craffu ar Bil Iechyd y Cyhoedd (Cymru) yng Nghyfnod
1. Dyma sesiwn dystiolaeth 10.
O’n blaenau ni, fel yr wyf wedi awgrymu eisoes, y mae’r
gymdeithas Crohn’s and Colitis UK. Croeso arbennig, felly, i
Andy McGuinness, swyddog polisi cymdeithasol a materion cyhoeddus.
Croeso; bore da i chi, Andy. Mae nifer ohonom wedi cyfarfod â
chi eisoes ac hefyd rydym wedi darllen eich papur sydd gerbron yr
ymchwiliad yma, sydd yn llawn syniadau grymus. Felly, yn ôl
ein traddodiad, fe awn ni yn syth at gwestiynau. Yn sylfaenol,
rydych chi wedi canolbwyntio, ac yn naturiol felly, ar yr adran yna
o Fil iechyd y cyhoedd sy’n ymwneud â thoiledau
cyhoeddus, ac felly fe fydd ein cwestiynau ni am yr hanner awr yma
yn sylfaenol ar doiledau hefyd. Mae Caroline Jones yn mynd i
ddechrau.
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Dai
Lloyd: So, moving on quickly,
therefore, to item 2 and the scrutiny of the Public Health (Wales)
Bill, Stage 1. This is evidence session 10. Before us, as
I’ve suggested already, we have the Crohn’s and Colitis
UK society. A special welcome, therefore, to Andy McGuinness, the
social policy and public affairs officer. Welcome; good morning to
you, Andy. A number of us have met you already, and also
we’ve read your paper that is before this inquiry, which is
full of robust ideas. So, according to our usual practice,
we’ll go straight to questions. Basically, you’ve
concentrated, naturally, on that section of the public health Bill
that relates to public toilets, so our questions for the next half
an hour will basically be based on toilets too. Caroline Jones is
going to start.
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[3]
Caroline Jones: Diolch, Chair. Good morning; bore da, Andy.
My first question is, when identifying the individual needs of
people within the community and those with specific health issues,
can you tell me how local authorities can communicate and engage
effectively during consultation with the public to ensure that the
community’s needs are met, including hard-to-reach
groups?
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[4]
Mr McGuinness: Thank you very much, and thank you very much
for having me. The legislation is pretty clear about the duties of
local authorities to consult widely. They have to look at all those
people within their local area who have an interest and a need for
access to toilets. Obviously, that’s not just traditional
public toilets, but access to toilets in the round. Obviously,
it’ll be working with national stakeholders like ourselves,
who certainly have an interest, but also some kind of expertise
within that, and also working with the local stakeholders that they
will come up with, whether that’s local forums or online. I
think there has to be a whole suite of avenues available to local
authorities to ensure that they’re not only assessing the
needs of local people about their toileting needs, but also their
demands, and addressing their dignity as well, and also tapping
into their knowledge.
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[5]
The Bill is clear that it’s not just looking at high fall
areas, but you also have to think about the geographical spread. As
a member and patient organisation with Crohn’s and Colitis
UK, we often find that the patient voice is the strongest and often
the most knowledgeable. So, it’s going to be different in
different areas, and I don’t think it’s the job of,
necessarily, the Government to put that down in writing about, you
know, what it has. Obviously, the guidance that will be issued by
the Government will be very clear on that, and one of the good
things about the Bill under this guise, rather than under the
previous committee, is that it’s actually been strengthened.
So, it’s not just guidance that they have to take note of,
it’s guidance that they have to implement, and that’s
one of the strengths of the Bill.
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[6]
Caroline Jones: Yes. So, the timing of the provision of
these toilets, that’s also important, isn’t it?
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[7]
Mr McGuinness: Yes, absolutely, and particularly with
traditional public toilets. They’re often open later than
toilets available in local buildings or through community toilet
schemes. That’s why I think we have to be very realistic in
this day and age: that, with toilets, it’s not just about
traditional public toilets; it’s a whole suite of toilets
that need to be available. But if there are toilets through a
community toilet scheme, or through public buildings, which is one
of the strengths of the Bill, they’re not always open.
Businesses close after 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.. If people are out
socialising, either before that or afterwards, they have toileting
needs as well. So, being aware that there needs to be a wide spread
of not only the types of toilets available, but also when
they’re open and accessible is crucial as well.
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[8]
Caroline Jones: Thank you. So, the provision of the toilets:
do you think that the information given out to the public is going
to be different between local authorities—you know, that the
approach taken by authorities is going to vary greatly?
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[9]
Mr McGuinness: At the moment, absolutely. I was trawling the
internet the other day, in preparation, to actually look at the
kind of access and information that is available to local people,
and going through the 22 local authority websites. Unfortunately,
it’s a mixed bag, completely. I think Cardiff is a very good
example, where you can put in your postcode and that information is
there. The toilets actually might be up to 0.5 mile away or more,
but at least that information is there. Some councils don’t
have any information on their websites. So, the information, even
if the toilets are there, which is an issue in itself, is not
easily accessible.
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[10]
I think one of the possibilities that the committee could recommend
to the Government to really boost and add something to the Bill
would be about access to the information. The Bill does require
that. But there’s no point having 22 different local
solutions about access to information. A lot of the provisions in
the Bill are stipulations for local government, and it’s for
them to implement. I think that the Government have an opportunity
to really take some of that heavy lifting off local authorities and
to provide access through a united one-Wales approach, which is
often what the Government tries to do with access to
data—have one cross-Wales approach, whether it’s
another united website or an app.
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[11]
Information about toilets is not just an issue in Wales; it’s
an issue across the UK because there is no unified approach to it.
It wouldn’t be hard to do. Local authorities have to provide
that information by creating these local toilet strategies and
supplying that information to the Government. Working with
stakeholders to create this would not only reduce the fixed costs
associated with providing information to the public, but whether
you are a local, travelling within Wales, or a tourist, not only
would it be the first one across the UK, but it would be a real
boon to the services available to local people and particularly
people with extra continence needs.
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[12]
It’s not a small amount of people. There are 15,000 people
across Wales who are diagnosed with Crohn’s disease and
ulcerative colitis. People with continence issues: roughly, if you
do the maths, there are 3 million people across the UK, so taking
into account Wales’s population, it’s about 150,000
people. It’s around 3 per cent to 5 per cent of the
population. So, it’s not a small amount of people, whether
you’re young, old or of working age and have continence
issues.
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[13]
Caroline Jones: Yes. So, how do you think this area of the
Bill can be strengthened?
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[14]
Mr McGuinness: About access to information?
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[15]
Caroline Jones: Access to information.
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[16]
Mr McGuinness: I would suggest putting, actually, in the
Bill about the Government working with local authorities,
collecting that information, and the Government having an oversight
and review function to not only collect that information, but also
to work to have some form of app or website, which would not only
allow easy access and free access to information, but also could be
used to do some form of gaps analysis.
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[17]
So, particularly, if you think about transport, for example, one of
the things that were strengthened under the last guise is that we
have to take account of trunk roads, which is fantastic, but if
you’ve got all 22 local authorities doing trunk roads in
their areas, you can quite easily imagine a situation where
it’s very sporadic and there are huge areas where toileting
needs are missed. So, I think there’s a real role for the
Government to have that oversight and overview role, to not only
collect that information and ensure that it’s available to
the public, but just to ensure that there is that gap analysis to
ensure that toileting needs are met across Wales, and not just in
specific areas that can afford it.
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[18]
Caroline Jones: Given the tremendous financial pressure on
local authority public services at the moment, how do you envisage
that these needs of toilet provision can be met effectively?
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[19]
Mr McGuinness: The reason why the toileting Part—Part
7—was needed was that there are not enough toilets in Wales.
There are not enough toilets across the UK. There’s analysis
by ITV Wales that, between 2004 and 2013, there was a 20 per cent
drop in public toilets, and I think they said that there were about
500 or so toilets. The Welsh Government say that there are 950
toilets that are accessible by the public—that’s both
normal, traditional public toilets and then toilets available
through community councils. And, from their conservative estimate,
there needs to be double that, and that’s regardless of
whether toilets have closed over the number of years or not.
There’s actually a question about whether there were ever
enough toilets in the country. So, you know, it’s a real
issue, particularly for people with continence needs, whether,
again, it’s a condition or due to their age. It’s a
real isolating and debilitating issue. People do not go out and
leave their homes due to either the real or perceived concerns
about toileting needs. So, firstly, it’s a real problem, and
if it wasn’t a problem there wouldn’t need to be a
national issue.
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[20]
However, you can’t get away from the fact that there are not
enough resources to go around, so we need to change our thinking
and our culture about accessing toilets. It’s not necessarily
about throwing money at it. There are a number of traditional
public toilets, but, if you think about the current supply of
toilets, there are quite a lot. You only have to go to all the
restaurants in the bay and think of all the restaurants and cafes
that are there; they’ve all got toilets for their customers,
but there are no public toilets there. So, if you’re a young
mother and don’t want to go into one of those buildings, you
don’t have a choice in the matter. Whereas, if they worked
constructively with the council and opened up that toilet supply,
they’ve got a whole multitude of toilets available to them.
So, it’s about thinking outside the box and not necessarily
just throwing money at an issue.
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[21]
But it’s also clear that local authorities need to do
something. I wouldn’t put it in terms that they need to be
made to do something, but they certainly need to be compelled to do
something. And don’t get me wrong; the local toilets strategy
will be a key way of doing that, not only in assessing the needs of
the local area, but hopefully increasing supply, and releasing and
making more accessible the toilets available through public
buildings is certainly part of that. But, like anything in life,
there are always going to be the ones that over-deliver and the
ones that under-deliver, and even the Welsh Government are clear
that, basically, because money is tight and because there’s
not a statutory duty, local authorities often prioritise and local
toilets are not there.
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[22]
It’s very clear that toilets are a public health issue, and
so I’d certainly like to see a statutory requirement to
ensure access to toilets. I wouldn’t necessarily go as far as
to say that they need to provide those toilets directly themselves,
because I think it would be a bit naïve to say that.
It’s really easy for organisations to come here and say
‘have a statutory duty to provide public
toilets’—you know, where’s the money?
Essentially, it’s really easy for us to say that, and
it’s really easy for the Government to say, ‘No, we
won’t do that’. You have to think a bit more
intelligently for us to come up with intelligible solutions. I
think part of that is ensuring that local authorities actually
deliver on their local toilets strategies. Again, if you take the
Government’s figures, there are 950 toilets available
currently. If you double that—well, if you think that they
need to increase by 50 per cent—each local authority needs to
provide an extra 22 toilets.
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09:45
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[23]
In some areas, that supply could be taken up by toilets in local
buildings, but some of them won’t be. Also, you’ve got
to think about the changing-places toilets, which often need extra
resources.
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[24]
Dai Lloyd: Before we go on, Julie, you’ve got a
question.
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[25]
Julie Morgan: Yes, I just wanted to pick up on what you
said. I just wondered if you could perhaps explain how a statutory
need to provide access is different to putting a sort of statutory
duty on the local authorities. I’m not quite sure of what we
will gain by that. If you could explain—.
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[26]
Mr McGuinness: Absolutely. The difference between a
statutory duty to provide is—. You could say it’s
semantics, but I think it’s a real difference. A statutory
duty to provide toilets means that local authorities have to
physically provide the toilets themselves. A statutory duty to
ensure access to toilets would mean that they’d have to work
with other partners to ensure and effectively deliver the local
toilets strategies.
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[27]
Whether you call it a statutory duty to ensure access to toilets
or, as we tried under the last guise of the Bill, to ensure that
local authorities simply deliver on the needs of the local people
that they’ve identified through the local toilets
strategies—. It’s a great part of the proposed
legislation, but it could, in some areas—I’m not saying
all areas, but at least in some areas—be quite easy that
these strategies will be put on the shelf. One of the
Government’s key arguments around the Bill is that, by
putting toilets a bit more front and centre, the level of scrutiny
and onus on it will mean that they will provide more toilets. Well,
essentially, we’ve already got that situation. Whether
they’re proposing, through cutting toilets or through local
scrutiny committees—. They often do investigations about
access to toilets, and yet toilets are still closing; toilets are
still being transferred. So, essentially, the wording would be just
to deliver, in a reasonable timescale—because we have to be
realistic—ensuring that, because they’ve got these
strategies, just to ensure that they deliver them and have
particular targets that they can deliver, because the needs are
great.
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[28]
Julie Morgan: Thank you. I understand that now.
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[29]
Dai Lloyd: There are several more questions and time is
trotting on. Caroline, question 4.
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[30]
Caroline Jones: Okay, thank you. How do you feel the Bill
can include third party organisations that receive public funding
to ensure that they provide access to toilet facilities?
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[31]
Mr McGuinness: That’s one of the key positives of the
Bill—that recognition that it’s not just local
authorities themselves; there is that local toilet supply in an
area and it’s freeing those toilets up. The only issue at the
moment is that those third parties, whether its museums, art
galleries, or any institution or building that receives public
funds, there is no obligation on them to actually work with local
authorities. As I’ve said before, there are a lot of duties
in here and a lot of work to do for local authorities. I think
there’s a role there for Government and also the legislation
to take away some of that heavy lifting.
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[32]
You can imagine a certain situation where the local authority,
through their local strategies, are saying to the museum or the art
gallery or whatever that might be, ‘Please allow your toilets
to be open to the public’, and they’ll refuse to do
that because there might be a cost element to that. There is no
compulsion for them, other than working as good local stakeholders,
as they might do, or we’d at least hope that they would, to
work constructively with local authorities. So, as I’ve asked
for in other pieces of legislation, is there to be a duty to
co-operate with local authorities to ensure that they can free up
access to toilets? Not only would that give some validation to the
local authorities’ calls, but also to the Bill and the
success of the Bill as well.
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[33]
Dai Lloyd: Mae’r ddau gwestiwn nesaf o dan ofal Dawn
Bowden.
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Dai Lloyd: The next two questions are
from Dawn Bowden.
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[34]
Dawn Bowden: Thank you. Morning, Andy. How are you?
Okay?
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[35]
Mr McGuinness: Hi there.
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[36]
Dawn Bowden: I just wanted to ask you a little bit about the
public facilities grant scheme. In your evidence, you talk about
the scheme and you talk about how the nature of its allocation has
changed. Can you perhaps tell us a little bit about how it’s
changed from being a specific ring-fenced grant to now being part
of the general revenue support grant, so that, actually, local
authorities don’t have to use it for toilet community schemes
and so on and so forth? Can you tell us a bit about the impact of
that and what kind of change you would want to see?
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[37]
Mr McGuinness: When the public facilities grant was first
introduced in 2009, it was ring-fenced and there was £200,000
available for local authorities to give to local businesses, which
was normally about £500 for them to open up their local
toilets. That was designed for private businesses—for cafes,
restaurants and the like. And then, I think it was in 2012 or 2013,
going from my notes, it was un-ring-fenced. So, if you cut
it—it doesn’t always have to be, it’s for
councils to bid towards, but it’s about £9,000 per
local authority for each of the 22 local authorities. So,
we’re not talking about a huge amount of money, but what
happened is that, because it was un-ring-fenced, local authorities,
through their own priorities, used it as they might. So, the number
of public toilet schemes across Wales is—. There are not very
many of them, unfortunately, and, even where there are, because
there’s only £500 available to local businesses,
whether they are cafes or restaurants, the take-up of that is not
particularly huge. And I think, going forward, if we’re going
to realise the real strengths of the Bill and the possibilities of
opening up the local supply of toilets, actually, doing something
about the public facilities grant is needed. It not only needs to
be ring-fenced again, but potentially the funding increased,
because we’re not talking a lot of money. And, again,
it’s providing another resource to local authorities to
enable them and actually provide a bit more impetus for them to
work.
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[38]
Dawn Bowden: Sorry, Andy, for cutting across you there. Is
the amount of money we’re talking about likely to be a great
enough incentive to get local businesses on board to open up their
toilets?
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[39]
Mr McGuinness: As a charity, we’ve not done any
research on that, but I was just thinking from my own perspective,
if I was a local business, a local café or restaurant,
£500, whilst it is an incentive—and also there are good
things and positives for your own business in opening up your
toilets, because you’ve got a higher footfall and people use
your toilets and think, ‘Oh, I might buy
something’—there is no compulsion to do so. So, you
could quite easily think that, ‘Actually, £500 is not a
lot of money. Why should I get involved in that? I’ll make my
life easier’. You know, business can be tough at the best of
times, whereas if you doubled that, hypothetically, it’s not
a huge amount of money for the Welsh Government to make available,
but it could make that big difference.
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[40]
Dawn Bowden: Unless every business decided to take part in
it, then it would be hugely expensive, wouldn’t it?
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[41]
Mr McGuinness: In all fairness, just because they apply to
take part in the scheme doesn’t mean that they get
accepted.
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[42]
Dawn Bowden: Can I just take it one step further, from the
other angle now, about users of toilets? Because one of the things
that would have to change—and I’d just welcome your
views on this—would be a bit of a cultural shift for
individuals who would actually feel a little bit embarrassed about
walking into an establishment that’s not a public toilet and
asking if they can use their toilets. Because you know as well as I
do, you walk up any high street and you’ll see a sign on a
café door saying, ‘Toilets for the use of customers
only’ and pubs do the same, and that kind of thing. So, there
would be quite a shift in culture, because we’ve now got used
to that idea that you can’t go somewhere, unless you’re
going to go in somewhere and sit down, have a coffee, buy
something, and use their toilets. What’s your thought in
terms of how we might shift that kind of culture,
really?
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[43]
Mr McGuinness: It’s a very good point that we
can’t get away from the fact that there are never going to be
enough traditional public toilets, and you need to take advantage
of the current supply in any one area. So, businesses, local
authorities, residents and tourists have to change their mentality
about using toilets. But also I think on the flipside of that is
making sure that there’s an adequate supply, because not
every person will necessarily feel comfortable in using certain
facilities, and also you’ve got to be mindful of certain
sensitivities around culture about going into pubs or certain other
institutions. So, I think that needs to be realised, and, through
local toilet strategies—
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[44]
Dawn Bowden: It’s about normalising it, isn’t
it?
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[45]
Mr McGuinness: But, also, normalising it, I would say that
people with continence issues have long got over the fact that any
toilet will do, essentially. We’ve got our own
‘can’t wait’ card that we provide to our members
in Crohn’s and Colitis UK, just so that, if people get caught
short and there is no public toilet or community council toilet
available, they show this card and, hopefully, it can allow access
to the toilets for staff members. We know, unfortunately,
that’s not always the case. There are instances where people
show the card and they don’t get access to that toilet and
they have an accident in public. That’s just horrendous.
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[46]
It just goes to and reinforces, whether real or perceived, that
thing about ‘I’m not going to leave my home because I
can’t access a toilet’. So, I think a change in culture
is certainly needed but, again, you can only access the toilets
that are available to you. Other than people, I think businesses
really have to change their culture about allowing people other
than their own patrons to use that toilet, and not only for the
greater good and for people’s needs. Because, if you’re
asking to use a toilet, you need to access a toilet. I just
can’t imagine a situation where someone would say
‘no’ to that, but, unfortunately, it happens.
That’s why things like the Public Health (Wales) Bill are
necessary, because those local solutions haven’t worked. We
need to change our mentality about that.
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[47]
Dawn Bowden: Thank you. Thank you, Chair.
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[48]
Dai Lloyd: Okay. Well, time is marching on. I think,
basically, we’ve covered the questions that Jayne and Julie
were going to ask. We’ll cut to the last question, with Rhun,
for the last four minutes.
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[49]
Rhun ap Iorwerth:
Mae’r cwestiwn yma yn ymwneud
â chostau. Mi ydych chi’n dweud yn eich tystiolaeth chi
na allwch chi gefnogi yr hyn y mae’r Bil yn ei ddweud
ynglŷn â chaniatáu codi ffi am ddefnyddio
toiledau. Mi allaf ddeall eich consyrn chi: y byddai’n well
gennych chi pe bai mynediad i doiledau i gyd am ddim. Ond sut ydych
chi yn balansio’r consyrn yna yn erbyn dadleuon bod codi ffi
yn fodd i gael dros rhai o’r problemau ariannol rydym ni wedi
eu trafod yma y bore yma, sef bod arian yn dynn ar awdurdodau
lleol, a bod codi ffi, o bosib, yn ffordd i gadw toiledau ar
agor?
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Rhun ap
Iorwerth: This question relates to costs. You said in
your evidence that you can’t support what the Bill says with
regard to allowing local authorities to charge for the use of
toilets. I can understand your concern that you would prefer it if
access to toilets would all be free of charge. But how would you
balance that concern against the arguments that charging a fee is a
way to overcome some of the financial problems that we’ve
discussed this morning, which is that funds are tight for local
authorities, and that charging is a way of overcoming some of those
barriers?
|
|
[50]
Mr McGuinness: It’s interesting. Much like with, say,
prescription charges in England—obviously, it’s free
here—if you ask people are they going to get access to the
drugs that they need or are they going to pay for it if they can
afford it, people will always say, ‘I will pay for it if I
can, because I get it’, even with the severely ill people
with long-term conditions that we deal with. In preparation for the
Public Health (Wales) Bill last year, we asked our own stakeholders
about whether they’d be happy to pay a small fee for
charging, and about 50 per cent of people said that, yes, they
would be. The reason is because those toilets are available. They
are actually there—physically there. They’re often
cleaner, and there’s a lack of anti-social behaviour. But,
again, it comes down to dignity and ensuring that, actually, this
toilet is part of something that will keep someone well. The reason
why prescriptions are free in Wales is that there’s an
indispensable idea that, actually, someone needs access to this to
keep them well, to make sure that they have a full and healthy
life. So, we would never support charging, because it’s a
barrier. It’s not only a barrier physically, but also
mentally as well. Particularly people with Crohn’s and
colitis, if they are experiencing a flare up—or even when
they’re not—they need access to a toilet up to 10 or 20
times a day. Also, people with stomas and colostomies need access
to toilets a lot of the time. If they have to charge for those,
even at 10p, 20p or 30p at a time, that’s a real barrier to
accessing something you really need. Also, just on a practical
level, it’s whether you have the change available, or—.
When you’ve got instant need and need access to a toilet or
you’re going to have an accident in public, you need that
toilet there and then, and any barrier whatsoever is a barrier for
using that toilet and accessing that resource that you need. So,
whilst it can be, in certain kinds of stations as well, highly
lucrative, I think that there’s a duty on local authorities
and businesses—and, again, it comes back to changing culture
to ensure that, whilst it is an option for local authorities, there
are alternatives to charging, particularly about utilising the
supply of toilets in an area.
|
|
10:00
|
|
[51]
Rhun ap Iorwerth: We know that, without it being a statutory
duty to have them, the reason that we have some public toilets
still open in parts of Wales is because local authorities have made
the decision that, ‘You know what? We’ll
charge’.
|
|
[52]
Mr McGuinness: I’d say it’s an avenue that local
authorities can take. It is not something that we’d ever go
down.
|
|
[53]
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you.
|
|
[54]
Dai Lloyd: Diolch yn fawr. Mae’r sesiwn wedi dod i
ben, felly mae’r hanner awr wedi pasio yn eithaf rhwydd.
Diolch yn fawr iawn i chi, Andy McGuinness, am eich tystiolaeth
ysgrifenedig, am y cyfarfodydd efo rhai ohonom ni ymlaen llaw ac,
wrth gwrs, am ateb y cwestiynau mewn modd mor raenus ac aeddfed y
bore yma. Fe allaf i ymhellach gyhoeddi y byddwch chi’n
derbyn trawsgrifiad o’r cyfarfod yma’r bore yma er mwyn
i chi allu cadarnhau bod beth rydych chi wedi ei ddweud yn
ffeithiol gywir. Gyda gymaint o hynny o eiriau, gallaf ddweud bod y
sesiwn yma o dystiolaeth ar ben, a gallaf gyhoeddi i fy
nghyd-Aelodau y bydd yna egwyl nawr am bum munud cyn y sesiwn
nesaf. Diolch yn fawr.
|
Dai Lloyd: Thank you very much. The
session has come to an end, so the half an hour has passed quite
easily. Thank you very much, Andy McGuinness, for your written
evidence, for the meetings with some of us beforehand and for
answering the questions in such a great and mature way. I can
further announce that you will be receiving a transcript of this
meeting this morning so that you can confirm that what you’ve
said is factually correct. With those few words, I can say that
this evidence session has come to an end, and I can announce to my
fellow Members that there will now be a five-minute break before
the next session. Thank you.
|
|
Gohiriwyd y cyfarfod rhwng
10:01 ac 10:06.
The meeting adjourned between 10:01 and 10:06.
|
|
Bil Iechyd y Cyhoedd
(Cymru)—Cyfnod 1, Sesiwn Dystiolaeth 11—Comisiynydd
Pobl Hŷn Cymru
Public Health (Wales) Bill—Stage 1 Evidence Session
11—
Older People’s Commissioner for Wales
|
|
[55]
Dai Lloyd: Croeso yn ôl i’r cyfarfod yma
o’r Pwyllgor Iechyd, Gofal Cymdeithasol a Chwaraeon. Rydym ni
ar eitem 3 y bore yma rŵan ar ôl yr egwyl yna—yr
ail sesiwn dystiolaeth y bore yma ar Fil Iechyd y Cyhoedd (Cymru)
Cyfnod 1; sesiwn dystiolaeth rhif 11 yn gyfan, ond yr ail am y bore
yma.
|
Dai Lloyd: Welcome back to this session
of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee. We are on item 3
this morning after that short break—the second evidence
session of this morning on the Public Health (Wales) Bill, Stage 1.
It’s evidence session No. 11 in total, but the second for
this morning.
|
|
[56]
Mae’n bleser croesawu
Comisiynydd Pobl Hŷn Cymru, Sarah
Rochira, i’r pwyllgor y bore yma i osod ei chyfraniad hi
gerbron. Rydym ni’n ymwybodol ein bod wedi derbyn tystiolaeth
ysgrifenedig gennych chi, wrth gwrs, yn naturiol, ac y mae Aelodau
wedi darllen pob manylyn yn drylwyr iawn ac y bydd y cwestiynau yn
dilyn o hynny. Awn yn syth
mewn i’r cwestiynau ar Fil iechyd y cyhoedd, yn amlwg yn
canolbwyntio ar yr adrannau hynny o’r Bil yr ydych chi wedi
sôn yn benodol amdanynt yn eich adroddiad chi. Felly, awn yn
syth mewn yn y lle cyntaf i’r adran yna sy’n ymwneud ag
unigedd ac arwahanrwydd ac y mae Jayne yn mynd i ddechrau cwestiynu
efo ni.
|
It gives me great pleasure to welcome the
Commissioner for Older People in Wales, Sarah Rochira, to the
committee meeting this morning to make her contribution to the
debate. We are aware that we have received written evidence from
you, and Members will have read every detail of it thoroughly and
the questions will stem from that. We’ll go straight into the
questions on the public health Bill, focusing naturally on those
areas of the Bill that you’ve mentioned specifically in your
report. So, we’ll turn to the section dealing with loneliness
and isolation and Jayne is going to start the questions.
|
|
[57]
Jayne Bryant:
Diolch, Chair. Morning, Sarah. The issue of social isolation and
loneliness has come to the fore in recent years and there have been
studies that have said that it’s as dangerous to your health
as smoking 15 cigarettes. I was just wondering if you could expand
on the significance of loneliness and social isolation as a public
health issue, and perhaps say about how many people you think will
likely be affected and what impact that would have on social
services within Wales.
|
|
[58]
Ms Rochira: Okay, thank you very much. When I started as
commissioner five years ago, we weren’t really talking about
loneliness and isolation at all. I was very clear, as were many
other organisations, that we needed it to be recognised as a
national issue and I think we’ve made great strides in,
actually, a relatively short period of time in doing that, and we
just recently had another debate in the Senedd about loneliness and
isolation. |I have to say that, in my experience and with the
people whom I meet, I think we need to change the title: it is
loneliness and isolation and the vulnerability that flows from
that. I have called it—and I’ve called it based on the
research I’ve seen and the evidence that other bodies are
providing me with and my own engagement—the major public
health issue of our time. In fact, I think, in the public health
Bill, it’s conspicuous in its absence in relation to focusing
on loneliness and isolation.
|
|
[59]
I think its scale and impact is vast and deep and growing as well.
I think there’s no simple explanation as to how we’ve
got to the position that we’ve got to. I think, very often,
it’s a cumulative impact of a range of things. Sometimes
it’s the unintended consequences of things that we’ve
done and all of those crystallising together. I have a particular
focus and interest, of course, in older people, but I’ve
always been very clear that it covers all ages and increasingly,
actually, I think we’re seeing reports, narratives, blogs,
evidence, coming out that talks about it as an intergenerational
issue. But, even if that wasn’t the case, we hope our younger
people will grow older. There’s a very strong focus on young
people in Wales, and rightly so, but what we want to ensure is
that, when they go into older age, they don’t become
vulnerable and, really, blighted by what I’ve called this
plague of loneliness and isolation. So it is a plague; it’s
plague on both our houses—young and old alike.
|
|
[60]
If you think about it from the older people’s perspective,
however, 75 per cent of older people, for example, talk about being
lonely and isolated. I think one of the most stark facts, in terms
of it being the silent killer, is the fact that it increases your
chance, by 45 per cent, of an early death. It’s stark and
it’s salutary. I think it shows just how significant the
impact of loneliness and isolation is on people’s physical
health and their overall mental well-being. I think one of the
reasons that it has, in a sense, come into its own in
Wales—because we do now recognise it, we are now talking
about it, we see it in the national indicators for Wales, which is
a really positive step, and we are going to have a strategy in
Wales—but I think one of the reasons we have recognised it
and pushed it right to the top of our agenda is because we are
talking about well-being, and it absolutely is part of our overall
ambition and drive around the overall well-being of the people of
Wales. So, I think its scale is huge, the depth of it is huge. And
it’s not just about the effect on individuals; it has also a
huge effect on the public purse, a huge effect in terms of demand
for increased services, and it has a huge effect on our local
economy and our national economy as well.
|
|
[61]
In fact, we’ve just had some more research published that was
funded—not published my me, I have to say, but published
through funding from the Big Lottery Fund—that quantifies
that even further. So if you look at that further research
that’s just out, it talks about the cost in Wales being
£2.6 billion a year. I know evidence is also being given to
the Finance Committee at the moment, and I know the focus of that
will be the resource constraints we have, but a price is being paid
through not focusing on this and not recognising it as the emerging
public health issue of our times. And I think the cost—.
What’s really interesting about this recent research is the
way it talks about the cost. So, the cost pressures that are placed
on public services, but also the lost opportunities, the loss of
benefit to society of people who become lonely and isolated. So,
just to give you an example of what that looks like, because
it’s a double loss: a gentleman, an older gentleman, might be
lonely, isolated and vulnerable, there might be a risk of crime in
his own home, or he’s one of the 120,000 people who were
scammed out of their life savings, but we’re also missing an
opportunity, perhaps, for him to volunteer in his local youth club
or become a mentor to a young person who might be struggling and
troubled. So, there’s a double missed opportunity there. It
is the one thing—and I’ve said this many times—I
thought not to see as commissioner, but we have to recognise it as
a public health issue, because that’s exactly what it is:
it’s a public health issue for our times.
|
|
[62]
The other reason I think we have to recognise it as such is I think
individuals are very reluctant to say, ‘I’m lonely,
I’m isolated, I’m vulnerable’. I’ve called
it—it’s the modern version, to steal from Oscar Wilde,
of the shame that dare not speak its name. Nobody wants to say,
‘I’m lonely and I’m vulnerable’, yet it is
of epidemic proportions across Wales. And increasingly, we’re
seeing people like GPs talking about it. I saw Dr Dave Minton
recently speak about it as part of the Gwent work on loneliness and
isolation. So, I think it’s got breadth, it’s got depth
to it—that figure of £2.6 billion—devastating to
individuals, making them more vulnerable to things like crime, a
huge cost to the public purse and to the wider economy as well. It
is the emerging public health issue of our times. So my simple
question, I guess, in terms of our first opportunity to lay out our
public health priorities in Wales is that it’s conspicuous by
its absence. And it’s important that we have it as a national
indicator. I’m clearly really pleased that that’s taken
place, I’m really pleased that we’re going to have a
strategy, but that’s not sufficient; we have to give it the
status that it deserves as that public health issue, and this is
our opportunity to do that.
|
|
[63]
Jayne Bryant: Thank you. I think you’ve eloquently and
forcefully put the case for it and the importance of it being a
public health issue. Do you think there are measures to address
loneliness and isolation that could be taken forward without
legislation? Do you have, perhaps, some good examples that are
happening within local authorities? I can speak for my own health
board, Aneurin Bevan, which is launching the Friend in Me campaign,
and I think it’ll be very successful. The Minister is coming
to the launch, I think, next week. They have volunteers,
they’re looking for volunteers, to match with lonely people
and their interests. So if you’ve got a volunteer who’s
doing gardening, they’re trying to match people that way, so
it has the double benefit that you were talking about. I know the
Robins scheme, as well, does something very similar where you have
older people, perhaps, who are quite isolated, volunteering through
Aneurin Bevan and Age Cymru to work within the hospital there in
the Royal Gwent and St Woolos. So, do you have any other local
examples that you could highlight to us that we can all follow?
|
|
10:15
|
|
[64]
Ms Rochira: Yes, I do—
|
|
[65]
Dai Lloyd: But briefly.
|
|
[66]
Ms Rochira: Okay. What I would say, to remind you, is that
when I gave evidence in my scrutiny session, I said, ‘I
don’t naturally default to legislation. It has its role, but
it’s not the only device that we should have’.
You’re absolutely right: there are other mechanisms that can
be used and the Ageing Well in Wales programme itself was about
just generating and encouraging activity at a local level.
We’ve seen public bodies across Wales as a result of that
finally understand that loneliness is part of their agenda. You
gave some great examples. The work of Men’s Sheds; many
fantastic third sector organisations across Wales; the Contact the
Elderly tea parties; and the work done by the campaign to end
loneliness—all of those are on the ground, using the
resources we’ve got, doing a myriad of different
things—and that’s probably appropriate—to make a
difference and to tackle this issue. But I hold the view that those
in and of themselves won’t be necessary. It’s the scale
and the impact of it.
|
|
[67]
What I have proposed I think is very proportionate, very moderate,
and I think that’s the right approach to take when you think
about, ‘Does legislation have a role within that?’ So,
all I’ve proposed is that that duty is placed on the public
service boards. That means this isn’t a non-negotiable issue;
it absolutely cements that. I think we’ve got the vehicles to
deliver it. What it says is: ‘You absolutely must address
this issue’. It is pulling down the health, wealth and
well-being of individuals, our communities and our country, both
now and, increasingly, in the future. So, I think that’s a
very proportionate response; it doesn’t build in new
mechanisms, new strategies, new delivery systems and costs; it uses
what we’ve already built in.
|
|
[68]
The other area that I should just touch on in there, I think, is
the strengthened role for Public Health Wales, and those are
conversations that I want to grow personally with Public Health
Wales, but I think those can be addressed through their own work
programmes and things like remit letters. So, I’m very
proportionate; I’m not building a huge new infrastructure in
terms of legislation.
|
|
[69]
But just to close, Chair, what I would say is: if I was an older
person looking at this, I would ask myself the question,
‘Where is loneliness and isolation?’ It is the big
public health issue. This is our first big public health Bill; what
message do we send to the public if we do not include it in that
most proportionate way in this legislation?
|
|
[70]
Dai Lloyd: Gyda rhagor o gwestiynau ar y manylion
deddfwriaethol—Julie.
|
Dai Lloyd: We have more questions on
the legislative details—Julie.
|
|
[71]
Julie Morgan: Diolch and bore da. You’ve talked about
some examples of good practice and you mentioned Men’s Sheds,
and I’m really pleased that there’s one in Rhiwbina
that’s had a bit of publicity lately. Would you say the
strength of that sort of initiative is that it does seem to come
from people themselves who are experiencing loneliness and get
together and try and do something about it? My other question is:
you’ve said what you propose for public service boards; how
are we going to ensure that that being a duty on them is actually
going to result in something?
|
|
[72]
Ms Rochira: To take your first question, there is sometimes
a need for what I would call a strategically consistent national
approach. For some things, that’s absolutely right and
proper. For other things, the phrase I would use is ‘let
1,000 flowers bloom’—different things, different
places. One size won’t fit all, and will rarely fit anybody.
Very often, it’s a combination of the two, which is my view
on public toilets. I think the 1,000 flowers that are starting to
bloom around loneliness and isolation are incredibly valuable, but
what I would say is that I think there are some underpinning
principles that probably run through all of them when they’re
impactful. I think the first is that they draw on the evidence that
we’re increasingly developing and drawing together about what
works. So, they’re evidence based.
|
|
[73]
The second thing I would say is that they’re very often
intergenerational in approach. I don’t want to build silos
around ages. This is an intergenerational issue, as I explained
before. And the third thing: in my experience, what they do is take
an asset-based approach that recognises the asset that sits within
the individual. If you go back to the five ways to well-being, one
of the ways to grow older in the very best possible way you can is
to continue to give. That’s why I always give the example of
a gentleman who could volunteer, for example. So, I think
that’s absolutely appropriate that 1,000 flowers bloom, but
with an evidence-based, intergenerational and asset-based approach.
On the point about how we know how well we’re doing, well, I
think that’s my point about Public Health Wales. I think
Public Health Wales has a role to play in terms of actually saying,
‘What is the scale of this? What is the impact of this? If
it’s a public health issue, how well are we doing on this
agenda within Wales?’ And also, I think, there’s a role
to play in helping to disseminate some of the evidence that I spoke
about earlier.
|
|
[74]
Dai Lloyd: I symud ymlaen, rydym yn sôn yn y Bil
iechyd y cyhoedd ynglŷn ag asesiadau effaith iechyd, ac mae
gan Rhun gwestiynau ar y mater yma.
|
Dai Lloyd: Moving on now. We’re
talking in the public health Bill about health impact assessments,
and Rhun has questions on this issue.
|
|
[75]
Rhun ap Iorwerth:
Rydych chi, yn eich tystiolaeth chi,
fel—mwy neu lai—pawb sydd wedi rhoi tystiolaeth inni,
yn croesawu’r cam tuag at alw am asesiadau effaith iechyd.
Eglurwch, os gallwch chi, eich barn chi y dylid cynnwys llesiant
hefyd yn yr asesiadau yma. Pam y mae hynny’n bwysig? Ac a oes
yna enghreifftiau o arferion da lle y mae hynny yn digwydd yn
barod?
|
Rhun ap
Iorwerth: In your evidence and, really, like everyone
who has given us evidence, you welcome the step in calling for
health impact assessments. Explain, if you can, your view about
including well-being in these assessments. Why is that important?
And are there examples of good practice where this is happening
already?
|
|
[76]
Ms Rochira: Just a few general comments about impact
assessments: I am strongly supportive of them and think the whole
concept of impact assessment is incredibly
important—important most of all when times are most difficult
and challenging and the issues are most complex. I think
that’s when they come into their own. I think Wales has a
long-standing history of understanding that, and we have a more
divergent approach in Wales than in England towards impact
assessment, for example. So, they are a really practical tool.
They’re a practical tool to prevent detriment—often
unintended, but detriment nonetheless—but also, although we
don’t use them enough in this way, to look for additional
beneficial interests and additionality within changes. So, I come
on the starting point of thinking that they are inherently a useful
tool.
|
|
[77]
The reason I think that it should be health and well-being is that
I think, if we don’t, we’re in danger of being out of
step with the way that we’re changing our thinking about
public service and outcomes within Wales. I know that it was
introduced—I think it was fairly late; I think it was in
Stage 3 of the Bill last time. I heard the evidence being given,
but since then, I think our world has changed—the work
we’ve done around well-being, the future generations Act,
particularly the public service boards and the well-being plans.
Our narrative has changed radically in Wales in a really short
period of time. You know we spoke last time about outcomes. I
think, at last, we’ve started to work out what the real
outcomes are. There’s still a way to go, but we’ve
shifted fundamentally. There’s a danger if we just focus on
health. I think there are a number of issues. One is that it feels
siloed. Health and well-being go intrinsically hand in hand. I
think it’s almost a little bit old-fashioned, if I’m
honest. I think we miss opportunities. I’ll just give you
some examples around those. We have the national indicators for
Wales. If we had a health and well-being impact assessment, we
could, in every decision we make—the little and the
big—be assessing our progress towards those; not just wait
four years for the plans to come out, but we could be asking
ourselves the question, ‘How will this decision help deliver
against this?’ Yes, avoid detrimental impact, but help
deliver. I think that’s impact assessment at its best.
Because, in my experience, the big outcomes are delivered not
through just one big action, but those everyday cumulative
decisions that we make. So, I think that’s really
important—continuous, ongoing, real-time assessment towards
those big goals.
|
|
[78]
The other point I would make in terms of not including health and
well-being hand in hand—actually, I would argue that health
is probably a sub-section of well-being, but I’m not hung up
on that—is that we need to avoid those unintended
consequences that I think may arise if we just focus on health.
I’ll just give you one example I was thinking about this
morning. So, the move towards digital telehealth, for example,
where you don’t see people anymore, but we do it through
electronic methods—an important part of future healthcare
provision. If you look at it just from a health impact assessment,
it probably ticks all the boxes; it’s great. But if you look
at it in the context of well-being, people don’t see
healthcare professionals anymore, and then in not seeing them, they
don’t raise the fact that they’re a victim of domestic
abuse, don’t raise the issue that they’re being scammed
or that they’re becoming lonely and vulnerable. So,
we’ve shifted our whole agenda towards well-being, but now
the proposal is just do this niche health—. I don’t see
it adding particularly additional costs. The principle is the same;
it’s what you ask yourself.
|
|
[79]
Rhun ap Iorwerth: What does
it actually mean in terms of this legislation, though—what
you’re asking for? Because we’ll be talking later on
this morning to witnesses who provide training in health impact
assessments. It is a discipline. What would need to change
in order to broaden that out to being a
health and well-being assessment? In actual terms, what does this
legislation need to do?
|
|
[80]
Ms Rochira: I think an integrated approach is important.
I’m not saying there should be a health page, and then do a
separate well-being impact assessment. I guess what I’m
saying is that you then build in another column into the document
that you use that talks about well-being. I would focus it back to
the well-being indicators that we’ve got, because we’ve
all accepted those, that’s what people are working towards.
What really I think fundamentally changes is the questions we ask
of ourselves of the impact of a decision on other broader policy
agendas. So, we don’t just say what impact this will have on
an individual’s health, but what it will have on their
overall well-being and the achievement of these goals for them, and
also the national outcomes framework as well. So, it’s not
another industry, it’s just an additional layer of
questioning and self-scrutiny in relation to the decisions that we
make.
|
|
[81]
Rhun ap Iorwerth:
You are talking, briefly, about both
mental well-being and physical well-being. I suppose it’s
easier to align physical well-being with the health bit.
|
|
[82]
Ms Rochira: Absolutely. I’m talking about mental and
physical, and I think also—and I think this is where
we’ve shifted our thinking around well-being
is—it’s not just the absence of mental or physical ill
health. Well-being is much more than that. A phrase I’ve
always used is: ‘Become a nation of people with great
hips—we’ve done the health bit—but with nowhere
to go, no way to get there and no desire to go on.’
That’s the well-being part of that. I have seen so many
examples of decisions that have been made, by a department often,
not even an organisation, that have those unintended consequences
on well-being for other people.
|
|
[83]
Rhun ap Iorwerth:
And you’d include things like
loneliness, which we’ve been talking about already,
presumably.
|
|
[84]
Ms Rochira: Absolutely. So, if the impact assessment says,
‘What impact will this decision have on—?’, and
list the following—at the moment we’ve got health.
I’m saying it’s narrow, it’s niche, it’s
starting to feel old-fashioned. It should say health and
well-being, because we know the indicators we would use. A good
impact assessment, fundamentally, is a thought process.
|
|
[85]
Rhun ap Iorwerth:
We’ll put that to our witnesses
later.
|
|
[86]
Dai Lloyd: That’s powerful stuff.
|
|
[87]
Yr adran olaf
rŷm ni’n mynd i drafod ydy’r angen i ddarparu
toiledau. Mae Caroline Jones yn mynd i arwain ar hyn.
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[88]
The last section that we’re going
to discuss is the need to provide toilets. Caroline Jones is going
to lead on this section of questions.
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[89]
Caroline Jones:
Diolch, Chair. Good morning, Sarah. Could
you tell me, please, what you consider the challenges would be in
taking into account the needs of the community in the provision of
toilets, specifically people with specific needs, and during
consultation and preparing a strategy? How do we reach people and
ensure that their needs are met?
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[90]
Ms Rochira: Sorry—I’m just thinking for a moment. I
think there are some challenges in reaching groups. We often talk
about hard-to-reach groups, don’t we? I don’t think I
like that phrase. I think, if you work really hard, you use
intermediaries and your networks, and you want to well enough, you
can reach out to most groups and ask them, not just what they
think, but what they think a good solution would be on issues. I
think people want to be, not just consulted with, but continually
engaged with on those issues. I can only speak from my own
engagement work, but we don’t seem to struggle to find
people. People never seem to struggle to tell me what they think,
and what they think ‘good’ would be. I think
consultation and engagement with older people across Wales is
hugely variable. I think there are some groups who are incredibly
marginalised, so, for example, elders from the black minority
ethnic communities, and people with dementia, for example. I
don’t think it is hard to hear from them, I’m just not
always sure people are good enough at knowing how to reach out to
them.
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[91]
So, I don’t necessarily see that as
being the hardest part of this agenda, nor necessarily, I think, do
I see assessing need being the hardest part. I think the hardest
part of it—. I guess what I’m saying
is—I’ve been very clear—I don’t think
what’s in the Bill is sufficient. I think there’s a
huge risk it will fail in its intent because of that insufficiency.
I think the real issue is how we ensure that people can access
public toilets in years to come. I don’t think duty to write
a strategy or just publicise progress is going to be sufficient to
be able to do that.
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10:30
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[92]
Might I just explain why I think
that’s the case? I think we all get the importance of public
toilets. I get it from my work, you get it from constituency work,
and there’s now a huge body of evidence that talks
about the link of public toilets with people’s individual
health and well-being, at a research level but also an individual
level, the link between public toilets and local economies, and
public toilets and wider economies. But despite all of that, we are
seeing our public toilets close across Wales. So, despite us
knowing that they are absolutely crucial to, for example, the
prevention agenda and those big policy agendas in Wales, they are
still going. And I’m not just saying this—the Wales
Audit Office said this as well in its report into the independence
of older people. In fact, they spoke about the effect of cuts
potentially proving to be a false economy for taxpayers. So,
despite knowing all of this, which we do, they are still going. So,
I hold the view—reluctantly, but I hold the view—that
unless we strengthen that to be a duty to ensure access to them, we
will continue to see those toilets disappear across Wales.
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[93]
If you look at the report from Wales Audit Office into the
independence of older people, there’s a very interesting
chart where they talk about the issues that older people say
maintain their independence, and at the top of that is public
toilets. And the funding cuts to public toilets are some of the
highest cuts you see across Wales. I have to say I would go even
further, because I think public toilets are so important. I would
go further, I would bring back some of the hypothecation around it
as well. I know that’s not popular with local government and
I understand why. Again, it’s not my general default mode
either, but, again, when you read the Wales Audit Office report,
you see evidence that when hypothecation was lifted, so the funding
for toilets started to slip as well. It’s bad for
individuals, it’s bad for our big policy drivers and intent
in Wales, and it’s bad for our local and it’s bad for
our wider economy. I think the Bill does not go far enough and I
think there is a real risk that it will fail in its intent.
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[94]
Caroline Jones: Okay, thank you. When assessing costs and
benefits by the Welsh Government of improving the provision of
toilets, do you think that the Welsh Government has adequately
taken into account the prevention agenda?
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[95]
Ms Rochira: Thank you for asking me that. The challenge, of
course, I get back—. What I get back from local authorities
on lots and lots of issues is, ‘But we can’t afford to
and there’s a cost’, and I absolutely understand that.
I don’t take away from those financial pressures, but I would
say a number of things, and these directly relate back to the
explanatory memorandum that sits behind the Bill. One is,
let’s not kid ourselves, the price is being paid anyway. The
gentleman I met in the Llŷn peninsula who was told to walk a
little every day after his stroke to maintain his health—he
has a prostate problem. He doesn’t walk—why? Because
they’ve closed the public toilets. It’s for want of a
nail—that sort of equivalent, in terms of people’s own
health. We’re paying a price anyway. It’s just not
necessary, and it’s on a different budget line, so it may not
show up.
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[96]
But if I look back in terms of the details that sit behind the
Bill, I think there are a number of issues. One in terms of the
costs that are identified, I think under option 4, assumes that
half of all new toilets are going to be new build. I don’t
think that that’s necessarily the most appropriate assumption
to make behind that. I’ll tell you why: I think there’s
a whole range of creative things that public bodies can look at and
I just jotted down some notes on those. So, there’s the use
of public buildings. I live in a village and it has a lovely
library in the park. If you want to go to the loo, you have to beg
for the key and if you’re lucky, you might get the key, and I
tell you what, it’s pretty humiliating. You’ve got to
be pretty steely nerved to say, ‘No, I desperately do need to
go.’ There’s a whole range of public buildings that we
have in different shapes or forms that are important—new
developments, for example bus stations that are being built, and
other new developments. And I think, under the Town and County
Planning Act 1990, people can already build these in as
requirements under agreed permitted developments. The role of town
and community councils, for example—. In the Groe car park in
Builth, there’s a fabulous upgraded set of public toilets,
which also have shower stops for lorry drivers. That’s a
community asset that’s been, what’s the phrase, sweated
to be much more than just the toilets?
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[97]
I think there’s something about revisiting the public
facilities grant and looking at the reasons why the uptake of that
hasn’t been as good as it might have been. So, I think there
are a whole range of options that are not reflected in the figures
that sit behind, which just talk about, ‘We’ve got to
build x many new toilets across Wales.’ I don’t think
that’s been thoroughly explored and you’re absolutely
right: what it doesn’t talk about is the price that is
already being paid. If I might, Chair, just very quickly build on a
couple of examples. So, the gentleman in the Llŷn
peninsula—he probably spent £50,000 on his health and
social care after his stroke. When he was told to walk, we decided
that the toilets wouldn’t be open, and that’s how we
undermined his health and his future well-being, and risked another
£50,000, as well as detriment to him. Or the ladies I met in,
I think it was Ebbw Vale, who told me that because the toilets
shut, basically, lock, stock and barrel, overnight, they
don’t go into their local town anymore, to the detriment of
the community. I was just out in Europe recently, collecting an
award for Wales on our work around older people, and I tell you
what, there are colleagues out there who absolutely have eyes on
the money that tourism can bring to a country, for example. None of
that is really taken into account within it.
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[98]
Dai Lloyd: Diolch am hynny. Mae Dawn yn mynd i barhau
efo’r math yma o thema. Dawn.
|
Dai Lloyd: Thank you very much. Dawn is
going to continue with this line of questioning. Dawn.
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[99]
Dawn Bowden: I think your evidence this morning’s been
very powerful, particularly around isolation and loneliness.
We’re going to be meeting tomorrow in Merthyr at the weekly
tea dance, which I think is one of those events that are quite easy
to set up in the community, which can get people involved in
socialising, and helping with that.
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[100] I just want to
move on. We’re still talking about toilets, but the Minister
talked about how, in the new strategy, if we are not going to be
able to find hundreds of thousands of pounds to build new toilets,
then we’ve got to convince businesses to open up their
facilities and so on. But one of the barriers to that is the kind
of cultural problem that people have, and you just alluded to it
yourself—like going into a local library and having to beg
for the key, and that sort of thing. People actually feel
embarrassed to go into businesses and premises that are not badged
as public toilets, and businesses themselves haven’t really
helped with that. They stick notices on the door, ‘These
toilets are for customers only’, and all of that kind of
thing. What more do you think we can do to actually change that
kind of cultural approach to the use of what, after all, is
probably the most natural biological function that all of us have
to perform, and yet everybody feels embarrassed about doing it.
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[101] Ms
Rochira: Absolutely. Just to pick up very quickly on the point
you made there about all of us, this is absolutely an all-age
issue. I note again from reading the notes at the back of the Bill
that it talks about some people being particularly impacted. Well,
find me someone who’s not particularly impacted on by public
toilets. It’s why it is a public health issue. It absolutely
is.
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[102] I suppose
you’re absolutely right. There are a couple of issues. In
terms of the PFG and why it wasn’t successful, I think we
need to go back and unpack that, and look at what exactly were the
barriers that you faced. If there were issues about embarrassment,
was it the way it was marketed? Was it that people maybe said one
thing but actually really implied another? Actually, I think the
place to start in this is public service itself. We are in no small
part a public service economy, and if we started and led by example
in our public buildings—those big signs, ‘Welcome
here’ and ‘Welcome. Do come in. Did you know
there’s a public toilet here? You’re free to use
it’. If we started and led by example I think others might
just follow.
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[103] We need a
transformational approach to this concept of going to the toilet
and public toilets. We’ve partly done it, because we’ve
recognised—. Who’d have thought ‘toilets’
and ‘public health Bill’? But rightly so. But we need
to follow that through, because actually transformational change is
as much about leadership and culture as it is about structure as
well. But let’s start in the public sector through our own
leadership.
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[104] Dawn
Bowden: Fair comment. Thank you, Chair.
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[105]
Dai Lloyd: Mae’r cwestiwn olaf, felly, yn yr adran
yma o dan law Julie Morgan.
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Dai Lloyd: And the final question in
this section is from Julie Morgan.
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[106] Julie Morgan: I think, Sarah,
you’ve told us your views—quite wide-ranging views. Do
you think there’s anything else that there should be in this
Bill that would improve things, particularly for older people? Is
there anything else you’d like to see in here?
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[107]
Ms Rochira: I think what I would say is that it’s important
we get the public health Bill passed. I absolutely want to see
loneliness and isolation included in there, and the other issues
that we’ve spoken about. Other than that, I think our focus
should be on passing the Bill, but more than that, remembering to
go back and check, just like you do and I do, and ask those
questions that say, ‘Did it deliver on its intent?’,
because ultimately, as older people will tell you, the proof of the
pudding will be in the eating.
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[108]
Dai Lloyd: Eating pudding is in another part of the public
health Bill, I think, but we’ll just let that one
go.
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[109]
Ms Rochira: Cake is an important public health issue.
[Laughter.]
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[110]
Dai Lloyd: Diolch yn fawr iawn i chi, Sarah, am eich
tystiolaeth fendigedig y bore yma—cwestiynau ac atebion ac,
mewn ffordd, syniadau newydd, a byddem ni’n edrych i
roi’r sylwadau yna gerbron y Gweinidog. Felly, mae hynny wedi
bod yn werthfawr iawn y bore yma. Diolch yn fawr iawn i chi am eich
presenoldeb a hefyd am eich tystiolaeth gerbron. Mae’r sesiwn
dystiolaeth yma ar ben. Gallaf gyhoeddi nawr y bydd yna egwyl
i’m cyd-Aelodau hefyd am chwarter awr. Byddem ni yn ôl
am 10.55 a.m. Diolch yn fawr.
|
Dai Lloyd: Thank you very much, Sarah,
for your excellent evidence this morning—some new questions
and answers and, in a way, ideas, and we will be looking to include
those comments in our report to the Minister. So, that’s been
very useful this morning. Thank you very much for your presence and
also your evidence. This session has come to an end. I can now
announce that there will be a brief break for my fellow Members for
15 minutes. We’ll be back at 10.55 a.m. Thank you.
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Gohiriwyd y cyfarfod rhwng 10:41 a
10:56.
The meeting adjourned between 10:41 and 10:56.
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Bil Iechyd y Cyhoedd
(Cymru)—Cyfnod 1, Sesiwn Dystiolaeth 12—Cymdeithas
Siopau Cyfleustra a Ffederasiwn Cenedlaethol Manwerthwyr Papurau
Newydd
Public Health (Wales) Bill—Stage 1 Evidence Session
12—Association of Convenience Stores and the National
Federation of Retail Newsagents
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[111]
Dai Lloyd: Croeso yn ôl i’m cyd-Aelodau
i’r sesiwn ddiweddaraf o’r Pwyllgor Iechyd, Gofal
Cymdeithasol a Chwaraeon yma yn y Cynulliad. Rydym ni wedi bod yn
derbyn tystiolaeth drwy’r bore ar Fil Iechyd y Cyhoedd
(Cymru), Cyfnod 1. O’n blaenau ni rŵan mae sesiwn
dystiolaeth rhif 12 yn y gyfres yma ar y Bil yma. O’n blaenau
ni mae cynrychiolwyr o Gymdeithas Siopau Cyfleustra a Ffederasiwn
Cenedlaethol y Manwerthwyr Papurau Newydd i roi’u tystiolaeth
nhw gerbron. A allaf groesawu’r tri ohonoch chi: Edward
Woodall, pennaeth polisi a materion cyhoeddus, Ray Monelle, llywydd
cenedlaethol, a John Parkinson, manwerthwr o ogledd Cymru ac aelod
o bwyllgor gwaith cenedlaethol Ffederasiwn Cenedlaethol y
Manwerthwyr Papurau Newydd? Croeso i’r tri ohonoch chi. Rydym
ni wedi derbyn eich papur chi gerbron ac felly gyda’ch
caniatâd awn ni’n syth i mewn i gwestiynau. Mae gyda ni
ryw hanner awr ac wedyn—yn syth mewn i gwestiynau ac wedyn
dyna fe, yn y bôn. Felly, gyda chymaint â hynny o
ragymadrodd gwnawn ni ddechrau’r cwestiynau efo Jayne
Bryant.
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Dai Lloyd: Welcome back to my fellow
Members to the latest session of the Health, Social Care and Sport
Committee here at the Assembly. We have received evidence
throughout the morning on the Public Health (Wales) Bill, Stage 1.
Before us now is evidence session No. 12 in this series on this
Bill. Before us we have representatives from the Association of
Convenience Stores and the National Federation of Retail Newsagents
to give their evidence. May I welcome the three of you: Edward
Woodall, head of policy and public affairs, Ray Monelle, national
president, and John Parkinson, a retailer from north Wales and a
member of the national executive committee of the National
Federation of Retail Newsagents? I welcome the three of you. We
have received your paper and, therefore, with your permission
we’ll go straight into questions. We have about half an hour
and then—we’ll go straight into questions and
that’s it, essentially. So, with those few words of
introduction we’ll start the questioning with Jayne
Bryant.
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[112] Jayne
Bryant: Diolch, Chair. Good morning. Just to start off on
tackling the illegal tobacco trade, we often hear about the
evidence around illegal tobacco and how, sometimes, it’s
accessed through retail premises. Perhaps you could talk a little
bit about the evidence around illegal tobacco accessing through
retail premises and also why you believe, in your evidence, that a
register of retailers would do little to tackle that.
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[113] Mr
Monelle: I’ll start, if you like. As a federation, and
for most responsible retailers, it is a big part of the business.
So, the majority, in most cases—. Any risk of putting their
business at risk is something that a responsible retailer would not
do, and we find that, in places where registration has been in
place, there’s been no benefit from the registration that has
come out of it. In most cases, the majority of the illicit tobacco
is by sources other than the responsible retailer. So, we cannot
see any benefits with registration. Responsible retailers are very
educated on what they can and cannot do. So, the signs are—.
We have fears about the education of trading standards and the lack
of response in us reporting evidence of illicit tobacco trading. I,
myself, have had one shop 50 yards from me raided three times and
found to sell illicit tobacco, but they’ve still not been
closed, fined or anything. So, we feel that registration is not the
answer. There are other routes for better success in trying to
stamp this out.
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[114] Mr
Woodall: There’s a lot to go at in terms of the illicit
market. It’s worth £2.4 billion in terms of lost
revenue and I think the evidence you heard from ASH was that it
makes up about 15 per cent of the Welsh market, which is huge. So,
we definitely, as an industry, want to see more done to tackle
that. But I think the registration scheme is probably barking
slightly up the wrong tree in terms of having retailers listed on a
register doesn’t mean, necessarily, that enforcement agencies
will go into those stores and find illicit tobacco. Often,
it’ll be the people who aren’t on the register who are
the biggest part of the problem, as we just explained.
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11:00
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[115] I think the area
where there is more focus and there is a solution in the Bill is
around restricted premises orders and the potential extension of
that measure to illicit tobacco offences, because, essentially,
that creates the same system as a register would have. So, if you
get caught selling illicit tobacco on three occasions, then you are
struck off and you are no longer allowed to trade for 12 months, or
whatever’s deemed appropriate by the magistrates. And that
system is much better, because we don’t have to go through
the cost—it cost the Scottish Government nearly £0.5
million to set up the registration scheme—and we don’t
have to go through the issues of retailers having to be on the
register and also pay to be on the register. So, I think
there’s a far simpler solution in this Bill, which
isn’t the registration scheme, it’s an extension of the
existing penalties.
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[116] Jayne
Bryant: Edward, you just mentioned the Scottish tobacco
retailers register: what impact do you think this has had on
retailers?
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[117] Mr
Woodall: I think the feedback we’ve received from
retailers in Scotland is that, in terms of burdens on their
businesses, it hasn’t had a particularly strong impact, and
the reasons for that are that there is no charge—it’s
free—and the way that they sign up is online. So, it’s
quite a simple process of typing in the details and managing that
process. Now, that’s still another administrative burden that
they have to do, it’s still another cost, and it’s
still another process, but it has been light touch. But, on the
other side, I’d say, equally: what’s been the benefit
of that registration scheme in Scotland? And there’s not much
I can report back. I asked the Scottish Government, or the
officials, about how many people had been taken off the list, but
their database doesn’t track that, so they can’t tell
me who’s been taken off the list and for what reason. Some of
our own industry trade press have done an investigation that
suggests five retailers have been taken off, but that’s not
necessarily in relation to illicit tobacco. So, yes, it’s
been light touch, yes, there’s no cost to that scheme in
Scotland, but we haven’t seen the benefits back, either.
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[118] Mr
Parkinson: Could I just add, I don’t think that—? A
lot of the illicit tobacco is actually going on Facebook as well as
through retail shops—irresponsible retail shops. I know a
shop in Colwyn Bay, it took nearly five years before it was closed
down. It was raided several times. It was eventually closed down,
but, in the meantime, a small kiosk three doors away closed its
doors forever, because it had lost so many sales to the shop three
doors away. So, responsible retailers aren’t going to—.
It’s not going to help. The register isn’t going to
help, because the responsible retailers would sign up to it, of
course, but the people on Facebook and the people who are selling
illicitly, you’re not going to touch them at all, not one
iota, unfortunately.
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[119] Jayne
Bryant: Okay. I’d like to move on to underage sales.
We’ve had some evidence to the committee that suggested that
the Bill would have a positive impact on tackling underage sales.
Perhaps you could give me your views on that, or the committee your
views.
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[120] Mr
Monelle: Yes. Talking to a lot of retailers, we
already—we advise, and, in most cases, our retailers use the
under-21 or under-25 rule. If there’s any doubt that
they’re of that age, then they are questioned and asked. I
can’t see how registration would change that. The biggest
fear we have at the moment is that plain packaging has increased
youth smoking. It’s made counterfeiting a lot easier, and
it’s made access to cigarettes a lot easier for youth
smoking. So, it is the illicit, but, for underage smoking, there is
no—. As far as we’ve done tests, we’ve looked and
we can see no reason why registration would change that. If
you’re a tobacco retailer, you already get test cases, so
that is already running, and it’s very successful. The
tobacco companies and independent companies do test purchases, so
there’s already a scheme to do that, and that is not the area
where most of the youth smoking is coming from, unfortunately. So,
again, we cannot see, really, how registration would change
that.
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[121] Jayne
Bryant: Okay. The registration fee that we’re talking
about in this Bill would be a one-off registration fee of £30
and, I think, £10 for additional premises. Why do you think
that that one-off fee of £30 would be unreasonable? All of
you want to—. Yes, okay, you go; you’ll all get a
chance, so it’s okay. [Laughter.]
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[122] Mr
Woodall: I think, from what we’ve modelled, the cost,
that works out, at £30 and £10 per additional store, at
around about £90,000 for the sector, based on there being
around 3,000 convenience stores in Wales. Of course, that figure
isn’t written on the face of the Bill, so that could go up.
It’s down to Welsh Ministers what they decide that fee might
be, and our experience of the other registration systems and
licensing systems suggests that fees tend to go up to manage that
process. So, I suppose there’s one concern there about
whether it will be £30 forever and what is that cost.
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[123] Equally, I
suppose you have to take that, the cost of the registration, as a
cumulative impact in other costs that retailers are facing.
They’re facing increases in business rates, they’re
facing increases in employment costs; that all has an impact on
their investment decisions and ways in which they operate their
business.
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[124] Equally, if you
take it directly in relation to tobacco—and I think the NFRN
have provided some interesting evidence on this about the margins
on tobacco products—the margins are very small for retailers
on tobacco products. They don’t make a significant amount.
So, you’d have to sell quite a high number of cigarettes to
cover that cost. So, it is an additional cost; I appreciate that it
is £30, but that does accumulate to quite a large amount. So,
just to be clear, the margins for tobacco would generally be under
10 per cent for a retailer.
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[125] Mr
Monelle: They average about 4.5 per cent.
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[126] Mr
Parkinson: I think small shops in particular have been hit very
hard over the last few years. I’ve taken stock off three
small shops that have closed in the last two years alone, just to
help them close with dignity. Margins on cigarettes are very low.
To cover the costs of a £30 registration, I would have to
actually sell 86 packets of cigarettes—£700 worth of
stock—just to pay for the £30, just to give you an
indication of how low the margins are. That’s on top of
minimum wage rates, which you can’t argue against, because
I’m all for it, but the costs fall on the small shops
disproportionately to the large shops, as with the £30. I
just think that, if you’re going to have a register, there
should be no charge whatsoever.
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[127] Jayne
Bryant: Okay, thank you. We’ve also had some responses
about, because tobacco is a harmful product, it should be subject
to additional control, such as the same, perhaps, as alcohol, for
example. What are your views on that?
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[128] Mr
Monelle: Basically, I’m in agreement with you. We
recognise that it’s classed—. There’s no reason
it should be identified as any different from alcohol. We’re
used to dealing with alcohol and we’re used to premises
dealing with that, so, the underage, it’s the same rules
exactly. So, as far as treating it in any different way, really, I
don’t believe we would argue against that. There are a lot of
reasons for that, but one of our biggest fears with all of it is
keeping trading standards up to date—with all the legislation
and all of it—because, as a body, their funding, I think, has
suffered over the last few years, and we find that they’ve a
lack of time and they’ve got to prioritise in a lot of areas.
But you can understand the fears and it’s very rare that we
see trading standards these days, which I think is a shame. But, as
far as treating it differently, then, to a large extent, it
shouldn’t be. I would argue that there is a good reason to
treat them similarly.
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[129] Mr
Woodall: I think we have to distinguish the differences between
how alcohol is regulated and how tobacco is regulated. Obviously we
have a very complex and costly system around alcohol licensing and
that’s very much associated with the anti-social behaviour
harm that alcohol has surrounding it. That isn’t the same as
tobacco, so I don’t think you can lump them into the same
system and have a licensing system for alcohol as you do for
tobacco—you have to distinguish those two.
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[130] Dai
Lloyd: Dawn.
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[131] Dawn
Bowden: Thank you, Chair. Can I just ask about the answer that
you gave Jayne just now about the very small margins on tobacco?
Why do you continue selling tobacco if those margins are that
small—it’s a genuine question—or is it that
tobacco, although it produces very, very low returns, actually gets
people into the shop? Is that the key issue really?
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[132] Mr
Parkinson: I think you’re correct in that small margins
bring the regular customer in. But, although it’s a small
margin, we have a lot of small shops that rely on a lot of small
margins. If you add all the small margins up together and you get a
reasonable turnover, you’re still making your living, but
it’s getting harder.
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[133] Dawn
Bowden: Okay, that’s fine.
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[134] Mr
Monelle: In the small independent trade, there are some
products that are actually loss leaders: the likes of PayPoint, et
cetera, we do, but it’s because we also provide a service to
the community. Community shops are getting less and less, so
whatever the community wants, the small independent will try and
supply. So, it is a case of, like John said, all those pennies add
up to pounds. So, it’s a hard trade to be in at the
moment.
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[135] Dawn
Bowden: Okay, thank you.
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[136] Dai
Lloyd: I think Angela’s questions have been addressed in
the comprehensive answers thus far, so we can move on to
Dawn’s question, even though that’s partially been
addressed as well.
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|
[137] Dawn
Bowden: It has partially, but it was—. The ACS commented,
in your evidence, that trading standards officers at the moment
don’t actually have the power to use RPOs to sanction
retailers on the sale of illicit tobacco. But there’s now
provision in the new Bill that would allow Ministers to specify
other tobacco offences that might count towards a restricted
premises order. To what extent do you think that might help address
some of the illicit and illegal tobacco trade?
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[138] Mr
Woodall: I think it would be extremely helpful on a couple of
fronts, just in the sense that that would remove the need for a
register in a sense, because you’d have a penalty system that
would have a three-strike system. If someone’s caught,
they’re removed from the system because they’re in
escalation. Because as it currently works, there is no escalation
in the system. So, if you look at the Chartered Trading Standards
Institute’s report, 56 per cent of offences that
they’ve dealt with have been dealt with via verbal or written
warnings. That’s pretty insufficient if there is someone
trading illegally. Let’s as quickly as possible remove them
from the market and close that business down. Let’s not wait
any further or give them a written warning. That’s why
there’s so many—
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[139] Dawn
Bowden: So, you’d like to see a strengthening of the
sanctions, really.
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|
[140] Mr
Woodall: I’d like to see a strengthening of the sanctions
so that there’s a clear escalation, there’s a clear
warning to the retailer that, if you continue to do this, we will
remove you from the market. That is a more effective penalty than a
fine, a letter or a written warning because it’s a threat to
their business. Fifteen per cent of their sales are around tobacco,
on average. Equally, with alcohol licences, there is a power that
exists where, if someone is selling illicit tobacco, you can remove
their alcohol licence. That’s not used. If that was used,
then there would be a serious plummet in the amount of illicit
tobacco sold through retail, because it would be a threat to their
livelihood. So, we strongly support the idea of getting away from
the register to a restricted premises order.
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[141] Dawn
Bowden: And making greater use of that.
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[142] Mr
Woodall: And making greater use of what we already have. Then,
it doesn’t load the cost on local authorities to manage a
register and it doesn’t load the cost on the retailer to pay
for a registration scheme that they won’t really see any
benefit from.
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|
[143] Dawn
Bowden: Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chair.
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[144]
Dai Lloyd: Mae’r ddau gwestiwn olaf o dan law Rhun ap
Iorwerth.
|
Dai Lloyd: The final two questions come
from Rhun ap Iorwerth.
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|
[145]
Rhun ap Iorwerth:
There are lots of different international
models of how to mark the fact that tobacco is a restricted
product. It’s not a tin of beans, it’s a product that
is harmful to health, and we particularly want to keep it out of
the hands of young people. If you go to Italy, for example, and
you’re pretty much going to the equivalent of an off-licence.
You can only buy tobacco in the shops with the T outside. What
would be your model, reflecting on the fact that this is a harmful,
restricted product that needs to be sold in places that are
properly designated? We can use the words
‘registration’ or ‘licensed’ or whatever.
What would be that model of yours?
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|
[146]
Mr Woodall: I think we’re in a pretty regulated market as
it stands in terms of health warnings on packets, display bands,
standardised packaging, and preventing underage sales.
There’s a pretty restricted market as it stands. Colleagues
mentioned earlier that, in terms of things like preventing underage
sales, we’ve made huge progress as an industry. It’s
showing in the national figures that people no longer gain access
to tobacco underage in shops. They’re more likely to do that
because they have got other people to buy it for them. So, I think
we’re already in a very restricted market and we
shouldn’t ignore the fact that there’s huge amounts of
legislation that already exists about tobacco.
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|
[147]
Rhun ap Iorwerth:
But that’s equally true for
alcohol. Nobody can just decide to sell alcohol; they’ll need
to go through a licensing process. Why shouldn’t that be the
case for tobacco?
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11:15
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[148] Mr Woodall: I
think there’s a clear distinction, which I mentioned earlier,
that the reason we have the alcohol licensing system we
have, and the objectives we have, is because there are issues
around antisocial behaviour around that product. That’s why
we have the objectives of protecting children from harm and
protecting people through, you know, reducing antisocial behaviour.
We have that specifically for that product for those reasons.
There’s no health objective—.
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[149] Rhun ap
Iorwerth: I wouldn’t necessarily—. I mean, no,
antisocial behaviour has become more associated with alcohol.
That’s a more recent development. Licensing was in place much
before then, more related to health. And, you know, there’s
nothing more dangerous than smoking.
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[150] Mr
Parkinson: The trouble with making more regulation is, as the
regulation has increased, so have the number of illicit sales
increased. The problem we really need to be tackling is the illicit
sales, because that is the booming market. There are people selling
on Facebook. I believe there are four people in my small area
selling cigarettes on Facebook. They’re in closed groups, so
I can’t access them. There are people selling in pubs and
clubs. That is where we really need to be targeting, because not
only are they selling cigarettes, but they’re also selling
tobacco with harmful additives in them as well.
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[151] Rhun ap
Iorwerth: And I wouldn’t disagree with you at all that
that needs to be sorted out now, absolutely.
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|
[152] Just turning to
another element, a suggestion has been made by Action on Smoking
and Health and the Directors of Public Protection Wales that a
register should also apply to the whole supply chain, if you like,
including tobacco manufacturers and distributers. What would be
your thoughts on that?
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[153] Mr
Woodall: I think you’d have to ask the tobacco
manufacturers.
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[154] Rhun ap
Iorwerth: But you wouldn’t have any
particular—?
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[155] Mr
Woodall: No.
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[156] Mr
Monelle: No, I’d have to think that through because,
initially, I can’t see unless—. There, again,
it’s the sanctions. So, it’s alright having
registration, but it’s the sanctions that go with it. So, at
the moment, it is very—. Those sanctions have got—. If
there is registration, you know, there’s got to be a clause
there, or something there, that if you don’t register
properly—. So, I think, that’s got to be very much in
place before anything else goes ahead. And at the moment, the signs
are that that isn’t there at all, really. I mean, as I said
before, a shop near me was raided three times and was not even
closed, not even fined, and each time there was over
£70,000-worth of illicit alcohol and tobacco.
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[157] Rhun ap
Iorwerth: If I could finish with a general question:
you’ll be aware, I’m sure, that the Bill in its last
guise included a controversial section on vaping, e-cigarettes,
which has now gone. Are there any other comments that you’d
like to make on what is or is not in this Bill relating to tobacco
and nicotine products in general?
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[158] Mr
Monelle: A very open question there. But, I mean, the vaping is
now going to grow more and more. There’s a lot of new
products: Heat Not Burn is a new one that’s just been
launched in this country, which is actually a tobacco product but
it’s not burned so the nicotine content’s not there. I
mean, as far as licensing and registration goes, it’s an area
that we were glad to see. A lot of these products now need proper
licensing and that because it’s another area where
there’s a lot of illicit vaping being brought in, and you see
some of these cheap vapouring tanks or equipment that are quite
harmful and you’ve seen some bad injuries as a result. So, as
far as that goes, control on that side, we can see, is coming in
line with tobacco. I think that’s an important area.
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[159] Mr
Woodall: I think we’ve always welcomed the harmonisation
of proxy purchasing issues on e-cigarettes with tobacco, so, you
know, making that an offence. That’s pretty standard.
Whenever we’ve polled our members on how they sell
e-cigarettes and vaping products, they sell them in exactly the
same way as they’d sell a tobacco product, with the age
restriction. They’re very used to that, so we’ve always
been supportive of harmonising the two regulations.
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|
[160] Mr
Monelle: But, I mean, with the vaping area at the moment, there
are vaping shops opening up all over the place and there’s
very little control on them at all. So, we would be happy were the
under-18 rule to be applied to them a lot more because, at the
moment, I’m told that a lot of these vaping shops
aren’t performing like a responsible newsagent or a
responsible retailer. So, I think that that needs to be brought in
line with cigarettes, but you know, again, it’s the sanctions
that go with it. Just a warning or a telling-off really
doesn’t work. In vaping, the profits are too high for them to
even worry about that.
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|
[161] Dai
Lloyd: That’s not for this
Bill. Okay. [Laughter.]
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|
[162]
Diolch yn fawr, a dyna ddiwedd y
sesiwn dystiolaeth. A allaf i ddiolch yn fawr i chi’ch
tri am eich tystiolaeth, a hefyd am y dystiolaeth ysgrifenedig y
gwnaethoch ei chyflwyno gerbron? Felly, er mwyn y cofnodion, a
allaf ddiolch unwaith eto i Edward Woodall, Ray Monelle a John
Parkinson am fod yma heddiw, ac am ateb y cwestiynau mewn ffordd
mor aeddfed a thrylwyr?
|
Thank you very much, and that’s the end
of the evidence session. May I thank the three of you for your
evidence, and also for the written evidence that you’ve
submitted beforehand? So, for the record, may I thank Edward Woodall, Ray Monelle and John
Parkinson for being here today, and for answering the questions in
such a mature and thorough way?
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|
[163]
Diolch yn fawr i chi a dyna ddiwedd y
sesiwn dystiolaeth yma. A gaf i gyhoeddi i fy nghyd-Aelodau y bydd
egwyl fach o bum munud nawr cyn i ni ddechrau efo’r tystion
nesaf? Diolch yn fawr iawn i chi.
|
Thank you very much. That’s the end of
this evidence session. May I announce to my fellow Members that
there will now be a short break of five minutes before we start
with the next witnesses? Thank you very much.
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|
Gohiriwyd y cyfarfod rhwng 11.20 a
11.25.
The meeting adjourned between 11.20 and 11.25.
|
|
Bil
Iechyd y Cyhoedd (Cymru)—Cyfnod 1, Sesiwn Dystiolaeth
13—Sefydliad Siartredig Iechyd yr Amgylchedd
Public Health (Wales) Bill—Stage 1 Evidence Session
13—Chartered Institute of Environmental Health
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|
[164]
Dai Lloyd: Bore da i chi i gyd a chroeso yn ôl
i’r sesiwn ddiweddaraf i gymryd tystiolaeth ynglŷn
â Bil iechyd y cyhoedd, Cyfnod 1. Rydym wedi cael tair sesiwn
eisoes y bore yma gyda gwahanol dystion ynghylch y Bil iechyd y
cyhoedd, a nawr mae sesiwn dystiolaeth rhif 13 o dan arweiniad
Sefydliad Siartredig Iechyd yr Amgylchedd. Croeso mawr i Julie
Barratt, sy’n amlwg o flynyddoedd yn ôl pan oeddem
ni’n ymdrin â’r maes ysmygu. Wrth gwrs, mae
Sefydliad Siartredig Iechyd yr Amgylchedd yn ymwneud â lot
mwy na hynny ond mae Bil iechyd y cyhoedd hefyd yn ymwneud ag
ysmygu a hefyd nifer o bethau eraill. Felly, croeso swyddogol i
Julie Barratt, cyfarwyddwr Cymru Sefydliad Siartredig Iechyd yr
Amgylchedd. Rydym wedi derbyn ac wedi darllen eich tystiolaeth
ysgrifenedig ac felly, fel sy’n arferol, fe awn ni’n
syth i gwestiynau. Mae’r cwestiynau cyffredinol cyntaf o dan
law Julie Morgan.
|
Dai Lloyd: Good morning to you all and
welcome back to this latest session. We’re hearing
evidence with regard to the public health Bill, Stage 1.
We’ve already had three sessions with different witnesses
with regard to this public health Bill and this is evidence session
number 13. We’re being led by the Chartered Institute of
Environmental Health. A very warm welcome to Julie Barratt, who is
familiar to us from years ago when we were dealing with smoking. Of
course, the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health deals with
much more than that, but the public health Bill also deals with
smoking and a number of other issues. So, an official welcome to
Julie Barratt, director for Wales for the Chartered Institute of
Environmental Health. We’ve received and read your written
evidence and, as usual, so we’ll go straight into questions.
The first set of general questions come from Julie Morgan.
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|
[165] Julie
Morgan: Thank you, Chair, and bore da. I was going to ask some
general questions to start with. First of all: what do you feel
about this Bill? Do you feel the opportunity’s been maximised
in terms of public health issues? Do you feel there should be more
in it or do you think its scope is fine? Could you give us your
general views on that?
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|
[166] Ms
Barratt: We’ve said in our evidence we very much welcome
this Bill. We’ve put a lot of work over the last couple of
years into getting the Bill into the condition it is and it’s
great that it’s been such a collaborative effort. There are
things we would like to see in there. I very much regret that
minimum unit pricing of alcohol is not in there, but we understand
why that is. We’d very much like to see a public health Bill
doing much more to tackle obesity in Wales but, again, I think
there is a huge issue around childhood obesity and what we can do
to deal with it and, possibly, it’s too much for a Bill like
this. It needs a bespoke piece of legislation, which looks at it in
the light of the well-being of future generations and so on. But as
it stands, I think this Bill takes us a long way forward.
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[167] Julie
Morgan: Right, thank you. So, on the issue of childhood
obesity, you think that could be dealt with elsewhere.
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[168] Ms
Barratt: I think it should be dealt with elsewhere. I think
there’s such a lot to do with childhood obesity. There are so
many players involved in it that aren’t involved in parts of
this Bill, like the education service and the health service, that
it probably needs a bespoke piece of legislation to which all those
parties can contribute.
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[169]
Julie Morgan: Right. Thank you. What about the level of resources
that are needed for this Bill, bearing in mind that local
authorities will have to deliver some of it? What do you feel about
the level of resources?
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[170]
Ms Barratt: We have consistently said—I think probably
every time we’ve appeared in front of the
committee—that there should be no further functions passed to
local authorities without the finance to deliver them. I am quite
heartened by this Bill. We’ve done a lot of work with the
chief environmental health adviser looking at the structure of the
Bill. From what we can see, the licensing conditions that are in
this are entirely consistent with the Hemming judgment, which means
that local authorities will be able to get enough resource through
the process of licensing to allow them to do enforcement, which
also means I think that this Bill will not be subject to challenge
around the issue of resources, and that’s extremely
important. So, we are content that, as it stands, this Bill will
generate enough income for local authorities to deliver the
functions that are in it.
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[171]
Julie Morgan: Right. Well, thank you very much. On the costs and
benefits that are set out in the regulatory impact assessment, do
you think those accurately reflect the financial needs of the
Bill?
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|
[172]
Ms Barratt: Yes, I think they do. I think that they’re fair
representation of where we are. Clearly, if, through regulation,
more special procedures were to be added into the Bill, which we
would also support, those special procedures would bring with them
their own finance stream through licensing in any event. So, I
think this is a Bill that has provision in it to allow a generation
of income to cover the functions that would flow through
it.
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|
[173]
Julie Morgan: Thank you. Very positive answers to those
questions.
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|
[174]
Dai Lloyd: Diolch yn fawr, Julie. Mi wnawn ni symud ymlaen
i adrannau penodol o fewn i Bil yma ac ysmygu ydy’r un
cyntaf. Jayne.
|
Dai Lloyd: Thank you, Julie.
We’ll now move on to specific sections within this Bill and
smoking is the first one. Jayne.
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|
[175] Jayne
Bryant: Diolch, Chair. Just moving on to smoke-free premises to
start with and the Bill’s definition of school grounds,
hospital grounds and public playgrounds. In your view, do you feel
that these are adequately made clear and are they comprehensive
enough for people to understand those definitions?
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|
11:30
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|
[176] Ms
Barratt: We have expressed in our evidence that we think the
definition of ‘play area’ should be extended. I think
it’s an anomaly that you see small children playing football
or playing rugby and parents standing on the touchline having a
cigarette—it seems, to me, ridiculous. There’s a mixed
message there that needs to be dealt with. We would like to see the
definition of ‘play area’ expanded so that it includes
an area around playing fields, which can just be fields with goal
posts or rugby posts in them. So, perhaps we need to be looking at
a boundary, say, within 10 metres, or something of that sort to
bring that very much into the ambit of the Bill.
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[177] We also think we
need to be looking at things like preschool
playgroups—smoking outside the gates and so on—because
children learn from what adults do and we need to remove that
visual signal from smoking, as well as the inhaling of second-hand
smoke.
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[178] Jayne
Bryant: You’ve given a couple of examples there. Are
there any others that you think should be smoke free?
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|
[179] Ms
Barratt: As we’ve said in our evidence, we’re
looking at the grounds of hospitals and medical facilities like
clinics. They should certainly be smoke free. It sends an absurd
message when you see members of staff in the national health
service standing outside hospitals smoking. You go past, for
instance, the Royal Gwent, and see entrances clustered with workmen
and with medical staff having a cigarette. Really, that is a very
poor message to be sending and it would be helpful if that was
stopped.
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[180] Jayne
Bryant: I think even outside of the grounds—it’s
not just outside the main entrance, is it? I certainly see that.
What about your views on enforcement issues relating to the ban on
smoking in outdoor areas? Do you think that that’s
sufficient?
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[181] Ms
Barratt: I think so. Local authorities in Wales now have
considerable experience of enforcing a ban on smoking. We started
with a ban on smoking in public places and we’ve moved on to
a ban on smoking in cars. There is considerable experience there
and it’s been done well on the whole. So, I would suggest
that the provisions there are right, they don’t need to be
tweaked and we can trust local authorities to deliver on them.
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|
[182] Jayne
Bryant: Okay, thank you. Just moving on now, still on tobacco,
but on to the tobacco retailers register. We’ve had evidence
from a number of witnesses around this. How do you feel that the
creation of a retailers register would strengthen the tobacco
control agenda?
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[183] Ms
Barratt: I think it’s extremely important, from an
enforcement point of view, that we know who the retailers are who,
lawfully, are retailing tobacco. Then, you can say, by exception,
‘If you’re not on the register, you’re not a
lawful retailer of tobacco’. And we need that really hard
line so that we can look at places where tobacco is being sold from
garages in residential areas and say, ‘Look, you can’t
be doing this, you’re not a lawful retailer of tobacco and
therefore you are committing an offence’.
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[184] The one concern
we have is that we don’t think that the wording of the Act
covers sufficiently well online retail sale in Wales from outside
Wales. We have covered that previously in the sunbed legislation
that was enacted by the Assembly. There is coverage for sunbeds
being sold into Wales by retailers from outside Wales and sunbeds
being hired into Wales from hirers outside Wales. I think we need
to replicate that provision so that we don’t find that online
retailers in Wales are covered by the legislation and online
retailers outside Wales are not.
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[185] Jayne
Bryant: That’s a very good point, actually. A good point,
well made, there. So, do you think that the Bill will do enough to
tackle this illegal trade that you’ve mentioned?
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[186] Ms
Barratt: It will certainly make a contribution to tackling the
illegal trade. It will give enforcement officers another weapon in
their toolkit, if you like, and it will throw into very sharp
relief those who are acting lawfully and those who are not. I think
that clear boundary is very important.
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[187] Jayne
Bryant: Do you have any views on the fit-and-proper-person
test, as suggested by some witnesses that we’ve had, and do
you think that could be strengthened with legislation?
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|
[188] Ms
Barratt: I would like to—when I say ‘I’, what
I mean is that the chartered institute that I represent would very
much like to see a fit-and-proper-person test. There are
individuals who have convictions that mean, to our mind, they
shouldn’t be selling tobacco, particularly where
they’ve sold tobacco or alcohol or other age-restricted
products in breach of that legislation—they shouldn’t
be selling cigarettes to children. We’ve seen that the
removal of alcohol licenses from certain premises for breaches of
legislation has been an extremely effective way of dealing with
sales to underage people. I think that a replication of that sort
of test would be very useful.
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|
[189] Jayne
Bryant: Thank you. We’ve had evidence from ASH and
Directors of Public Protection Wales, who suggest that the register
should apply to manufacturers and distributors of tobacco and
nicotine products. Do you think that would be a practical
suggestion as an addition to the Bill?
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|
[190] Ms
Barratt: Yes, we would support that. We would particularly
support wholesalers being included, places like cash-and-carries,
where they do sell to retailers for onward retail sale, but there
is also a provision for people who have a card, if you like, to buy
for their own personal use. We’re very anxious that they
shouldn’t fall through the gap. So, we would entirely support
what the directors of public protection say, yes.
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[191] Jayne
Bryant: We’ve heard evidence this morning, as well, from
a number of witnesses about the registration fees. I think
it’s a £30 one-off fee, and then £10. Do you
think that—? What are your views on that proposed
registration fee, and do you think that it would be recoverable for
retailers?
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|
[192] Ms
Barratt: In the great scheme of things, it’s a fairly
small amount of money. I think the issue is: can the local
authorities run a registration scheme for £30 and then a
£10 ongoing annual fee? The directors of public protection
are probably in a better position to answer that. But if £30
is enough to stop an individual selling tobacco, I think that their
business is in more difficulty than, possibly, this committee can
address.
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|
[193] Jayne
Bryant: Thank you for that. Just finally on the handing over of
tobacco to persons under 18: you’ve given evidence to the
committee on that. Do you have any further comments that you would
like to add?
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|
[194] Ms
Barratt: I think the point I made about online retail from
outside Wales is important. What we need is the retailers who are
selling tobacco online and having it delivered to
persons—there needs to be that duty to ensure that it’s
not delivered to persons under 18. Again, I would point to the
sunbed legislation, where we picked this up and covered it very
effectively. So, we do know how to do it, but we do need to make
sure that sales remotely are not made to individuals under the age
of 18.
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|
[195] Jayne
Bryant: Thank you. That’s very helpful, thanks.
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|
[196] Dai
Lloyd: Diolch yn fawr. Symud
ymlaen i’r adran nesaf, nawr, a hynny ydy: triniaethau
arbennig, fel tatŵio ac aciwbigo, a phob math o bethau eraill
yr ydym ni wedi bod yn clywed amdanyn nhw dros yr wythnosau
diwethaf. Mae Angela wedi bod yn arbenigo yn y maes.
|
Dai Lloyd: Thank you very much. Moving
on to the next session, with regard to special procedures such as
tattooing and acupuncture, and all kinds of other things that
we’ve been hearing about over the past few weeks. Angela has
been an expert in this field.
|
|
[197] Angela
Burns: A reluctant expert, I have to say. Good morning and
thank you very much for your evidence. I found it really
comprehensive and very interesting. I just wanted to test you on a
couple of the areas that you raise. In your response to the
committee, you started off with—or we started off
with—a question asking you about your views on creating a
national compulsory licensing system. So my first question to you,
actually, is going to be on practitioners. You said that you
thought that it was okay to have the exemptions for, say, doctors,
nurses, physios, I think it is—I can’t remember quite
that clearly. But we have, in fact, received evidence that says
that that probably is not, in other people’s views, the way
to go, and that we should have a blanket: anybody who wants to do
any of these nominated procedures must have a licence. Because, I
think it might have been the British Medical Association who made
the very strong point that you might have a doctor or a
physiotherapist who is very competent in their particular area. It
doesn’t mean to say that they’re going to suddenly
become an expert in one of the other procedures. And we can’t
rely upon their national bodies in regulating them, and I just
wanted to get your take on that.
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|
[198] Ms
Barratt: It’s an interesting view that they feel that
their national bodies aren’t competent to deal with someone,
and I think the evidential question is important: how do you know
who’s doing, and what they’re doing, and are they
acting within the scope of their competence? I would have expected
their professional bodies to be able to deal with them. I think,
it’s not—
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[199] Angela
Burns: Sorry, just to clarify my point slightly. I think it was
more a case of, for example—I’m going to pick on the
physiotherapist, so physiotherapists out there, please don’t
think you’re being hard done by—the chartered institute
of physiotherapy may not actually be aware that physiotherapists
might take up a more unusual body-modification procedure, and
therefore wouldn’t actually as a matter of writ have within
their standards something pertaining to that particular
body-modification procedure. There’s nothing to stop that
person, at the moment, from just picking it up and doing it,
because they’re one of the exempted persons on the Bill.
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[200] Ms
Barratt: I take your point, and it’s not a point—I
have it say—that the Chartered Institute of Environmental
Health would die in a ditch over.
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[201] Ms
Barratt: If there are professionals who can prove their
competence—so, they will be able to do it through their
professional body, they will have some sort of accreditation that
says that they can do it—well, fine. They can be issued with
a licence just like everybody else. They may baulk at the expense
at a personal level, but there’s no reason not to do it. What
we are more concerned about are those practitioners who have no
skills at all who are doing this sort of thing. They are the group
of people, I think, who we need to think about bringing into some
level of competence. So, fine, if there is a view that people who I
would have considered could and should be exempt—that’s
not a problem, and I don’t think it would be a problem for
them either, other than the financial implication, clearly. So far
as we are concerned, we’re more keen to get the more
unregulated end of the profession into a licensing scheme.
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[202] Angela
Burns: If I could just flip that question on its head then and
ask you: if we were to keep the list of exempted bodies, do you
feel that there are other bodies, such as, for example,
acupuncturists, who are regulated—would they be able to be
exempt as well or are you just happy with the ones who’ve
been nominated so far?
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[203] Ms
Barratt: I think that the ones who have been nominated are a
good starting point and if there are other professional bodies that
want to come forward and say, ‘Our members are competent;
this is how we can demonstrate the competence of our
members’, well, fine, they can be included on the list; it
can be a moveable feast. As people come forward and say,
‘Look, we are appropriate’, they can be included, but I
do think that the benefit of having a list is that if you’re
not on it, you are clearly off it and therefore subject to
control.
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[204] Angela
Burns: Can I then ask you if you have a view on whether local
authorities will have the resources to be able to manage and police
this kind of list and be able to get out there in the field and
actually see who is and isn’t being illegal in their
practice?
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[205] Ms
Barratt: I think the advantage of the way that this legislation
is set out is that we are currently looking at just four
procedures: electrolysis, tattooing, acupuncture and piercing,
which are already controlled by local government. Local government
already registers these premises. We know where they are and we
know who’s doing what. Therefore, that expertise is there.
The officers who are going out and doing it already have an
expertise. They know what they should be looking for and how people
should be practising because they’ve had that engagement
already. That, I think, is important because it allows us to
transfer very quickly from the situation where we are to the
situation where we want to be: where we take the practitioners,
check them and then issue licences. I think the value of this is
that there is a provision for adding more procedures or more
techniques, if you like, because I would advocate that sunbeds
should be included in this legislation by regulation, as we make
sure that we have the competence at practitioner level and the
capacity to go out and do the work. At the moment, as it stands, I
think we do have that.
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[206] Angela
Burns: You referred to techniques or practices and some are
variations on a theme and some are entirely new. So, could I ask
you what you think of the view that, actually, we should perhaps
have a more cover-all clause rather than identifying different
processes as they become fashionable, or whatever it may be? I
read, for example, about tashing, which is something that I
hadn’t been hugely aware of before, and things do ebb and
flow in terms of fashion. There are some witnesses who’ve
actually suggested that we should have a far more cover-all
statement that says, ‘Any procedure that pierces either the
skin or a mucus membrane’. I would be interested about your
take on that.
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[207] Ms
Barratt: I think that what you have at the moment is quite a
sophisticated tool: it identifies a procedure; it defines what the
procedure is and it says that if you’re carrying out this
procedure, you are subject to the regulation. If you go for a
rather more blunt instrument, for want of a better word, some of
the things that do concern us, loosely, would not be in there.
I’ll give you an example of cupping. Cupping is where you
heat a glass and put it on someone’s skin and it draws blood
out through the skin. That wouldn’t be caught by a
skin-piercing definition because the skin is not
pierced—blood is drawn through the skin by vacuum. I would
still be concerned about it as a process because clearly there is
all the blood-borne infection risk that goes with it, but that
definition doesn’t add it.
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[208] I also think
that you’re in danger of catching things that you don’t
want to catch at all, like the use of EpiPens by teachers on
children who might be suffering from an anaphylactic fit.
That’s piercing the skin, but you don’t want to be
catching something like that in a blunt instrument like a
cover-all. I think there’s always a danger of a blunt
instrument that then generates exceptions, which is nothing like as
sophisticated as a targeted instrument, which captures things as
the need arises?
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11:45
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[209] Angela
Burns: I think that’s really interesting and I entirely
take your point, but one of the reservations, perhaps, we might
have is that we’ve got the four identified procedures, and
there is capacity within the Bill to add other procedures as they
come along. And there are procedures already out there now that are
obviously very detrimental to public health—and I’ll
use the tashing one, because you have that in your
evidence—but there does appear to be reluctance by the
Minister to add procedures on the basis that, by adding a
procedure, you therefore are starting to exempt it, which gives it
a certain kudos and might, therefore, make it more popular. And we
had this discussion with her quite a lot over things like tongue
splitting, because I personally couldn’t understand why
that’s not part of it, because that’s obviously an
enormously invasive procedure on a person. But the view was that,
if you ban it, more people will want to do it. But from the
evidence that I read of yours, I kind of got the impression that
there’s an awful lot of stuff going on anyway that we just
simply don’t know about, underground. So, do you think that,
by not having a cover-all, we might have difficulty in adding more
procedures quickly enough, as and when they become a danger to
public health?
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[210] Ms
Barratt: I don’t think that’s the case. I think the
danger is, if we just go for a blanket ban on everything, I know
that environmental health officers, whose competence is assured by
CIEH, can deal with the four that we’ve identified. They can
certainly deal with sunbeds, because we’ve dealt with that as
part of the regulation. I would baulk at saying that they could
deal with tongue splitting, and I would baulk at saying that they
could deal with some of the other procedures that we know go on in
an underground kind of way. And I also think that, if we start
talking about piercing the skin, anything that pierces the skin,
you start introducing grey areas. At what point does piercing the
skin for therapeutic reasons become an assault? And who then is
responsible for dealing with it? I think it’s a bit of a
challenge for the magistrates’ court when you start coming up
with stuff like this and saying it’s part of a global
definition of just about everything; that’s not particularly
helpful. Local authority enforcement people need certainty, the
courts need certainty, and practitioners who are doing things need
certainty, because the lawful practitioners who want to operate
properly will want to know where the boundaries are and that they
are inside them. A whitewash, a very broad description of just
about anything, I think, leads to too much uncertainty.
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[211] Angela
Burns: I take your point. So, in that case—I know
you’ve referred to some of it in the paper, but perhaps for
the record—would there be other procedures you would like to
see added now? You mentioned cupping, and it had never even
occurred to me that that might be a procedure that could lead to
danger; I had just thought of it as one of those film-star fashion
things that they all seem to do. So, are there other procedures
today—you mentioned tashing in your paper?
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[212] Ms
Barratt: Tashing is one that concerns us, certainly, where
you’re introducing inert, or maybe not inert, material into a
tattoo. We’ve also grave reservations about sunbeds, so I
would like very much to see sunbeds, or use of artificial tanning
equipment, as I think the regulations would describe it, but
‘sunbeds’, I think, is a more generally accepted
definition. There has been a recent report, which has said there is
no safe non-therapeutic level of exposure to ultraviolet. That
being the case, I would very much like to see sunbeds in here, and
we know we have the capacity, and we know we have the skillset,
because we’ve done it with the sunbed regulations.
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[213] There are other
procedures coming along, and I think we need to look at the
evidence base and say, ‘Does this procedure actually pose a
risk to public health, or do we just think it does?’ There
was a recent report in the health protection report published by
Public Health England, which talks about needle-stick injuries to
practitioners who are doing microdermal rolling of skin, which I
think I talked about on the last occasion; it’s sort of like
a Carmen roller that you rub up and down your face and you get
spots of blood coming out of it. And it’s actually the
practitioners who are being injured by that, taking them apart to
clean them, post treatment.
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[214] I would also
like to see control of lasers brought within these regulations.
They are currently controlled by Healthcare Inspectorate Wales.
They are appearing more frequently in tattoo parlours, where people
go in to have tattoos that they either don’t like removed or
to have tattoos taken off to make space for more. They’re not
being used therapeutically, they’re being used purely for
aesthetic purposes, and I’d like to see those included in
this Bill. Whether it should be done now or whether we should get
the Bill up and running and then add, by regulation, more things, I
think that’s a question that’s open to debate. But as
we are satisfied, I think, that there is the need and the capacity
to deal with them, that’s when they should be introduced. And
they can be introduced quite quickly, because those are the
stumbling blocks—need and capacity.
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[215]
Angela Burns: Yes, I was very taken by the arguments in your paper,
actually, about the laser removal stuff. Earlier on, in your
evidence just now, you said about the four that are currently on
the face of the Bill. You’ve already got public health
officials who are able and willing to take those on, and have got
the training. So, would something, for example, like
lasers—would they be able to be incorporated really quickly
into the current remit?
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[216]
Ms Barratt: They would be able to be included fairly quickly,
because we as a professional body are capable of providing training
for our members, and those officers working in local government who
would be the enforcement officers, and there is training for laser
users out there. What is required is for enforcement officers to
make sure that those people in the non-therapeutic theatre who are
using them are trained to a level of competence. That training is
out there as well. So, it’s making sure that we can cover all
the bases before we create a criminal offence and find that people
are in a position of not being able to do something because they
can’t make themselves competent, and therefore will commit an
offence. We need to close that circle before we include stuff in
regulation.
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[217]
Angela Burns: My last question on this particular section,
actually, is about your evidence here about your being specifically
concerned that a person who may have convictions of sexual offences
would not be precluded from having a practitioner’s licence
and would be free to carry out intimate piercings. Could you expand
on that slightly?
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[218]
Ms Barratt: Yes. Intimate piercings by their nature are very
invasive and we know that children under 16—16-year-olds,
certainly, but Operation Seren tells us that children under 16 were
having intimate piercings. If you go to a doctor for an intimate
examination, you’re entitled to have a chaperone there, and
the doctor, or whoever is involved, will have had a criminal record
check at some point. We have practitioners who have had no checks
at all around sexual offences that they may have carried out, or
assaults that they may have carried out. But people are putting
themselves, and children are putting themselves, in an extremely
vulnerable position. Whilst I accept that the offences that are in
the regulations are important, they are about breaches of technical
legislation, if you like—the need to register and so on. We
need to make sure that the people who are carrying out these
procedures are actually fit to be carrying them out, and
don’t pose a risk to individuals in doing so. So, we think
that we should be having a data-barring check to ensure that people
who are doing intimate piercing have been checked to make sure they
have no relevant convictions of the type that I’ve alluded
to.
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[219]
Angela Burns: And do you have a riposte, then, for the Government,
whose view is that it is an infringement or an abrogation of the
rights, if you like, of a convicted person who could possibly be on
the register for a conviction that may not, for example, pertain to
young women. That was the kind of feedback we were getting back
from the lawyer in the session we had with the
Government.
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[220]
Ms Barratt: Well, it’s not just young women who have
intimate piercings. Young men have intimate piercings as
well.
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[221]
Angela Burns: We were told very strongly, and I think it took all
the committee aback slightly, that this was a Bill about public
health and not about safeguarding. Do you have a view that
you’d like to express about how much, or not, you think
safeguarding is part of public health protection?
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[222]
Ms Barratt: Safeguarding is very much part of public health
protection. We don’t just say that intimate piercing is about
the infections you might get from it. We talk about the decision to
have an intimate piercing made by someone who is competent to make
that decision, and who can ask themselves the right sort of
questions and can be relied upon to deliver the right sort of
aftercare when they’ve had that sort of piercing, and that it
should be done properly, by someone who is capable of doing it
properly. To my mind, if you are talking about someone who has a
conviction of the sort that we’ve talked about—assault
or a sexual offence—that sort of person may not be doing it
for decorative, aesthetic reasons. They may be doing it for all
sorts of other less, what can I say, desirable reasons? You know,
for reasons that are nothing to do with what we’re here for.
Therefore, I think that it is very much a public health issue that
those sorts of individuals with those sorts of convictions should
not be involved in this sort of procedure.
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[223] Angela Burns: Therefore, leading on to my last little bundle of
questions, which really is the one that is about appropriate
age—of course, the Government has very firmly put forward in
the Bill that the age of consent should be 16, and they cite the
UN—I always get it round the wrong way, but the
children’s rights Bill in the United Nations, and also the
freedom of expression, and they say that tattooing, which
apparently has an age 18 break-off, is a leftover from an
old-fashioned era. But, in your paper, you seem to be quite
clear that you’d like to see it as 18—there’d be
no confusion between tattooing and intimate piercings, because,
very often, it might be the same kind of establishments that offer
both and, I believe I’ve written this down correctly, because
I don’t think it was from another piece of evidence, but I
think you also make the point that 16-year-olds are still growing
physically. We did have a witness who said, ‘Oh, don’t
worry, if they don’t want a piercing, they can just remove
it,’ but I think your point is that, actually, you can remove
a piercing, but you can’t always remove the damage. So,
I’d really like to give the floor to you to tell us why you
think it should be 18, because, to be frank, I’m kind of with
you on this one, but I think we need to marshal all the arguments
we possibly can in order to make a change to this Bill.
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[224] Ms
Barratt: We think it should be 18, because, for the rest of the
procedures that we’re looking at, the public health
procedures, buying alcohol, smoking and having a tattoo, 18 is the
cut-off age. It would be an absurdity, in my view, that you could
walk into a tattoo parlour that also does piercing as a
16-year-old, and say, ‘Can I have a tattoo?’ ‘No,
you can’t, you’re not 18.’ ‘Right,
I’ll have an intimate piercing then.’ That’s a
complete nonsense. It throws the whole system into confusion. It
makes enforcement extremely difficult.
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[225] The point about
tattoos is, I think, you can see them. Even through Operation
Seren, we know that people had tattoos and their parents
didn’t know, but nobody knows you’ve had an intimate
piercing. So, you’re not going to find out about it until
you’re extremely ill. So, I would question the ability of
16-year-olds to properly look after, to keep clean, and to maintain
in a healthy condition, an intimate piercing.
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[226] You are right to
say that 16-year-olds are still growing, and some of the places
where intimate piercings take place will do damage that’s
permanent. The fact that you can take out and throw away the
piercing is neither here nor there. If you’ve got scar tissue
that will affect your response to various stimuli for the rest of
your life, that is highly detrimental. So, I would argue that 16 is
not old enough to make that decision—to make the decision to
do what you propose to do and then to look after it
properly—and I think to draw intimate piercing into line with
tattooing and the other procedures of this sort is the right and
sensible thing to do.
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[227] Angela
Burns: Do you have any further evidence that you might be able
to submit to us as a written paper for us to marshal our argument
on this? You’ve talked in terms of the underground procedures
that aren’t very well known about, and we had very powerful
evidence last week from Dr Olwen Williams about the coercive
control elements, about the fact that if you’re 16 and
you’re asking for these kinds of procedures—basically,
where have you been for the previous few years to have got to that
point? In your role as marshalling, if you like, public health, if
you have any other evidence there that you think would be of
benefit for us to have a look at about the fact that young people
asking for this are actually also in psychological and mental
danger, perhaps under the coercive control of older people, et
cetera, then it would be really useful, because I think this is a
big persuade we need to do.
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[228] Ms
Barratt: I don’t have any evidence about coercive
control, but I would point you to the outbreak control team report
on Operation Seren, which was the Newport tattooing and piercing
outbreak back last year, where the majority of the people who were
tattooed and pierced were children, by definition. They were
children who were looked after, which is another concern, and they
were having tattooing and piercing done at what we would consider
under age. So, that is very powerful, because it shows an
individual who offered cheap tattoos, two for a tenner,
effectively—tattoos and piercings—was a magnet for
children who wanted to have the procedures done for whatever
reason, and that individual focused his attention on these children
because they went there with no parental control, but very much
peer group pressure, Facebook group messaging and social media
messaging, which generated their footfall.
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[229] If I could just
go back to the point you were talking about about licensing, I
think one of the points we’d want to make that’s
extremely important is, when the licensing regime comes in, as we
very much hope it will, there must be no grandfather rights.
Everybody, current practitioners and new people, must all be
subject to the procedure, because what we want to make sure is that
those people out there practising now, but practising badly,
aren’t included on the register. They’ve either got to
up their game, improve their competence before they go on the
register, or else they stop practising. But what we don’t
want to see is the transfer of bad practitioners straight onto a
register. That becomes very difficult.
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12:00
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[230] Angela
Burns: Thank you.
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[231]
Dai Lloyd: Symudwn ymlaen i’r adran nesaf, a hynny
ydy asesiadau effaith ar iechyd, ac mae gan Rhun gwestiynau fan
hyn.
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Dai Lloyd: We move on to the next
section with regard to health impact assessments, and Rhun has
questions.
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[232]
Rhun ap Iorwerth:
Rydw i’n gwybod, yn amlwg, mi
ydych chi’n cefnogi’r elfen o’r Bil yma
sy’n mynnu y bydd yna ragor o asesiadau effaith iechyd yn
cael eu gwneud. Ond ydy’r Bil a’r ffordd mae o’n
delio â mater yr asesiadau yma yn mynd i sicrhau, ydych
chi’n meddwl, bod asesiadau yn fwy na dim ond tick-box
exercise?
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Rhun ap Iorwerth: I know, clearly, that
you support the element of this Bill that states that more health
impact assessments will be undertaken. But does the Bill and the
way it deals with the issues of these assessments ensure that the
assessments are more than just a tick-box exercise?
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[233] Ms
Barratt: Yes, I think it does. We are very cognisant with the
process of health impact assessment. We’ve done a lot of work
with the Wales health impact assessment support unit, and what we
know is that a properly constructed health impact assessment, done
by someone who is capable and competent of doing it, will actually
inform the decision-making process, subject to the decision maker
taking account of it. So, the requirement, I think, is that not
only is a health impact assessment done, but that it is a due
consideration for the decision maker, in the way that, if you look
at planning legislation, it will cite those things to which the
planning inspector or the committee making a decision have to pay
due regard. And, if they don’t give sufficient regard or due
regard to the health impact assessment, the decision is flawed.
That, I think, is the way to deal with it to make sure that health
impact assessments are pulled up to a level where they are
considered by decision makers and they’re not just a tick-box
exercise and everybody goes, ‘Well done, splendid;
there’s a lovely document that someone can look at at some
point’—they actually are there to make sure that
maximum benefit and minimum detriment arises from whatever it is
that they’re referring to.
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[234] Rhun ap
Iorwerth: I’m grateful for the information in your
written submission about the work that you’re doing to make
sure that we have the competencies in the people who are able to
conduct these assessments. With an expansion in the requirement for
assessments, will there be a capacity issue, either in the short or
the longer term?
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[235] Ms
Barratt: I don’t think so. As I say, we’ve got a
number of competent practitioners. I can update the figures,
actually: as of today, we’ve got 46 competent environmental
health practitioners who can do rapid health impact assessments.
There is a bespoke course being run by us for Natural Resources
Wales staff, at their request, and we are currently recruiting onto
another course. So, we were ahead of the curve, if you like; we
could see a need for competent practitioners and we’ve
started getting practitioners into local authorities who are
competent.
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[236] Wales Heads of
Environmental Health Group is very cognisant of the need to upskill
their staff and are strongly supporting the training programme
we’ve put together. So, until the point that everybody, or
every local authority or every group of local authorities, has a
competent practitioner, they’ll be sharing this skill set
across Wales, as a short-term measure, as we continue to upskill
environmental health.
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[237] The other thing
to point out is that Cardiff Metropolitan University is the
university where the environmental health degree is taught, and
they are also committed to including carrying out health impact
assessments and quality assessing health impact assessments as part
of the university degree course. So, we’ll be including that
for all new practitioners coming through.
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[238] Rhun ap
Iorwerth: We took some interesting evidence earlier today from
the older people’s commissioner—I’m not sure if
you were able to hear any of that.
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[239] Ms
Barratt: No, I was coming here.
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[240] Rhun ap
Iorwerth: Her opinion was that it’s time to expand health
impact assessments to being health and well-being impact
assessments, that there are assessments that need to be made of the
effect of developments on the general well-being and the mental
well-being of individuals and communities as well. What would your
thoughts be on that?
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[241] Ms
Barratt: My thoughts would be that that’s what they do.
Health, as a concept, is not just physical health, it’s
physical and mental health and it’s well-being. And any
environmental practitioner would recognise that as the definition
of health. It’s not purely in a national health sense;
it’s in the wider, global sense. So, all the determinants of
health would be included in a health impact assessment. Where, for
instance, you’re looking at noise from a plant, you
wouldn’t just look at the effect of noise, you’d look
at the effect of sleep deprivation and the effect of that on mental
health and well-being and family cohesiveness and the ability to
conduct relations and all that sort of stuff. So, it’s very
much part of a health impact assessment—health in the very
global sense is considered. If you wanted to call them
‘health and well-being assessments’ you could do that
without actually having to change anything.
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[242] Rhun ap Iorwerth: Would you like to see that? Would it be a
fairer reflection of what it is? Seeing as well-being has become
something that is fairly high on the agenda.
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[243]
Ms Barratt: I think it can be done. There’s no reason not
to do it, but it wouldn’t fundamentally change the process.
It would just, perhaps, change the way that they are recognised as
being more than just about physical health.
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[244]
Rhun ap Iorwerth:
Would it address things like—again,
something that came up in the evidence session earlier this morning
with the commissioner—loneliness and isolation, which, again,
have become recognised health issues, but you could perhaps put
under a broader well-being umbrella?
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[245]
Ms Barratt: I think it certainly does. If you look at something
like the development of a road that breaks up a community, one of
the things you would pick up in a health impact assessment would be
the breaks in a community, the inability of the individuals to
access things that they’ve been able to access before, the
effect that that has on the community cohesiveness, access to
facilities where individuals can go and relax and all the rest of
it, to meet up with colleagues, as so on. If you look at, say,
closure of a community centre, or a leisure centre, it goes far
beyond the detriment of not being able to take physical activity.
It goes to looking at the effect on individuals who may have gone
there just to socialise, have a cup of coffee, or to a mother and
baby club, and the impact it has on them. So, it could be
loneliness, it could be failing to access facilities or
information, or whatever it is, but that would all be caught in the
health impact assessment.
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[246]
Rhun ap Iorwerth:
Would it be anything more, in your mind,
than tokenism—something superficial—if this Bill were
to include health and well-being impact assessments? Would it be
something that you would genuinely be comfortable with, or would it
be a complication for the discipline that you’re very much
involved in? In terms of wanting to have this as a label, would
there need to be practical changes?
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[247]
Ms Barratt: No, there wouldn’t need to be practical
changes. I don’t think it’s tokenism; I think that
belittles well-being. It’s not just something we can tag on
the end of it and go, ‘Well, there you are’. If it
helps people who may not be acquainted with the full determinants
of health and well-being to realise that what they’ve got is
a document that goes beyond health and also deals with well-being,
then all well and good, there is some benefit to doing it. If there
is some evidence that suggests that, say, a planning inspector
doesn’t recognise a health impact assessment as dealing with
health and well-being, well, fine, put the name on it.
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[248]
Rhun ap Iorwerth:
But there wouldn’t be, as the
commissioner suggested, the need for another column for
well-being—to put it in simple terms—in that
assessment?
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[249]
Ms Barratt: I would have said not. Because well-being is integral
in the full concept of health.
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[250]
Rhun ap Iorwerth:
Thank you.
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[251]
Dai
Lloyd: Troi i’r adran olaf rydym ni eisiau cysidro y bore yma,
a, gan fod amser yn camu ymlaen, rhai cwestiynau byr a rhai atebion
byr efallai. Mae Julie yn mynd i ddechrau, ac wedyn mae Dawn yn
mynd i orffen. Julie.
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Dai
Lloyd: Turning to the last
section that we want to discuss this morning, and, because time is
against us I would ask for succinct questions and answers.
Julie’s going to start and then Dawn is going to conclude.
Julie.
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[252]
Julie Morgan: Yes, thank you very much, Chair. Could you tell us
what your views are about the proposals for the toilets strategy in
the Bill?
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[253]
Ms Barratt: Well, as I say in our evidence, we fully support
access to public toilets. Having had an elderly mother whose life
really was determined by ability to get from one place to another
via public toilets, I am fully cognisant of the need for it. I
think it’s not the strategy that we’re interested in,
it’s how the strategy is delivered that we’re
interested in. What I am concerned about is that local authorities
will produce strategies that will be marvellous documents and will
talk in glowing terms but will actually have no practical impact on
the ground. That is the greater concern. I think how we get from
strategy to delivery is the important issue.
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[254]
Julie Morgan: Is there anything, do you think, that could be put in
the Bill that would help that?
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[255]
Ms Barratt: We would very much like to see a system like occurs
in London at the moment, where any public building that has
toilets—or anyone like a pub, for instance, who might have
toilets—could make those available to members of the public.
We know it happens in places, but we also know in other places it
certainly doesn’t happen, and that toilet provision is
available for customers only, which is a difficulty. Wider access
to toilets generally would be a good thing. That having been said,
there’s no reason why that can’t be part of a local
toilets strategy in any event.
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[256]
Julie Morgan: And what about the resources that local authorities
have? Do you think that’s going to be a problem in terms of
implementing a strategy?
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[257]
Ms Barratt: I need to be clear that we are not a local authority
body.
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[258]
Julie Morgan: No, your views.
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[259] Ms
Barratt: My views are that local authorities are having
difficulty with resources. We know that. What we need is for them
to come up with a strategy that doesn’t say that it is in the
gift of local authorities only to deliver public toilets, but a
strategy that is much wider than that and brings in the private
sector, the third sector, and includes all of the toilets that they
have available in the provision. That doesn’t require local
authorities to spend money other than on the generation of the
strategy. It requires them to marshal the resources of other people
to deliver the strategy.
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[260] Julie
Morgan: Do you think that the provision in this Bill will
ensure the involvement of those different groups—the private
sector or the other groups you’ve mentioned?
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[261] Ms
Barratt: Well, it can’t ensure it. It requires very much
a willingness on the part of the private sector to be involved in a
strategy like this and, in some places, they will. In tourist
areas, clearly, there is a great desire to have a provision that
means that tourists can be in an area and know that there are
toilets. In other areas there’s less willingness. I think it
comes down to local relationships, building local need, social
responsibility—particularly corporate social responsibility,
with bigger chains—and playing on that and bringing that into
play.
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[262] Julie
Morgan: Thank you.
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[263]
Dai Lloyd: I orffen: Dawn.
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Dai Lloyd: To finish: Dawn.
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[264] Dawn
Bowden: Thank you. Just two quick questions, thank you, Chair,
just to finish off. I think you already identified in your evidence
that there was a need for specific groups to have access, but do
you think there’s anything more in the Bill that could be
done that would take a more robust approach to ensuring that the
specific needs of those identified groups can be recognised as
well?
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[265] Ms
Barratt: That’s not an area of expertise for me.
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[266] Dawn
Bowden: Okay.
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[267] Ms
Barratt: As it stands, I think the strategy should deal with
that rather than the Bill, because that allows for flexibility. The
strategy can be what local needs determine that it should be, and
every local strategy can be different, one from the other. The one
thing I would always say about legislation is that the allowing for
flexibility outside of the legislation is more important than
having legislation that is a set of extremely tight regulations. It
is probably better to divert that desire into the strategy than to
have it on the face of the Bill.
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[268] Dawn
Bowden: Yes. So, you’d need some very clear indications
within the Bill and then develop that as it goes.
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[269] Ms
Barratt: Yes.
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[270] Dawn
Bowden: Okay, I hear what you’re saying. In terms of
public information, any thoughts about what we can do to make sure
that the public are more—? If we get this strategy, and if
it’s delivered, and if we’ve got all these toilets
available to people, the key, then, is going to be making sure that
people know where they can go. Any thoughts about how that might be
developed—that public information?
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[271] Ms
Barratt: I think you’ve got a committee sitting at the
moment that is looking at things like social media and apps and all
that sort of thing. You know, a toilet finder. A toilet-finding app
is a good starting point. Social media is very good at dealing with
issues like that. So, as well as every local authority publishing
where toilets are available and having, say, a logo that says,
‘Toilet available here for public use’, you can look at
the use of social media apps, including the provision of toilets in
tourist maps and walkers’ maps and that sort of thing, just
to make sure that they’re there and they’re being
used.
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[272] Dawn
Bowden: Yes. Okay. That’s fine. Thank you very much,
Chair.
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[273]
Dai Lloyd: Diolch yn fawr, a dyna ddiwedd y sesiwn
dystiolaeth. A allaf i ddiolch yn fawr iawn i Julie Barratt,
unwaith eto, am gyflwyno ei thystiolaeth? Mae’n bwysig i
nodi’r gorffennol a thalu teyrnged unwaith eto i Julie ac i
Sefydliad Siartredig Iechyd yr Amgylchedd am eu rôl allweddol
nhw 10 mlynedd a mwy yn ôl nawr i gael y ddeddfwriaeth honno
a oedd yn gwahardd ysmygu mewn adeiladau cyhoeddus. Gwnaethoch chi
a’ch mudiad chwarae rhan blaengar iawn i helpu’r
sefydliad yma i ddod â’r ddeddfwriaeth honno i’w
lle. Rydym yn dal i adeiladu ar y ddeddfwriaeth honno. Felly,
diolch yn fawr iawn i chi am y gorffennol, a hefyd am y presennol.
Diolch yn fawr iawn i chi.
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Dai Lloyd: Thank you very much, and
that brings us to the end of that evidence session. May I thank you
very much, Julie Barratt, once again, for giving your evidence?
It’s important to note the past and pay tribute once again to
Julie and to the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health for
their key role 10 years and more ago in bringing forward that
legislation that prohibited smoking in public buildings. You and
your organisation played a vital role in helping this institution
to bring that legislation forward. We are still building on that
legislation. So, thank you very much for the past, and also for the
present contribution. Thank you.
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[274] Ms
Barratt: Thank you.
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12:14
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Papurau i’w
Nodi
Papers to Note
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[275]
Dai Lloyd: Symud ymlaen i’r eitem nesaf—eitem
6: papurau i’w nodi. Pawb yn hapus?
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Dai Lloyd: Moving on to the next
item—item 6: papers to note. Is everyone content?
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Cynnig o dan Reol
Sefydlog 17.42 i Benderfynu Gwahardd y Cyhoedd o’r
Cyfarfod
Motion under Standing Order 17.42 to Resolve
to Exclude the Public from the Meeting
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Cynnig:
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Motion:
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bod y pwyllgor yn penderfynu gwahardd y cyhoedd o
weddill y cyfarfod yn unol â Rheol Sefydlog
17.42(vi).
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that the committee
resolves to exclude the public from the remainder of the meeting in
accordance with Standing Order 17.42(vi).
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Cynigiwyd y cynnig.
Motion
moved.
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[276]
Dai Lloyd: Wedyn, symudwn ni i eitem 7 a’r cynnig o
dan Reol Sefydlog 17.42 i benderfynu gwahardd y cyhoedd o weddill y
cyfarfod. A yw pawb yn hapus inni fynd i mewn i sesiwn breifat i
drafod y dystiolaeth? Diolch yn fawr.
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Dai Lloyd: Then we’ll move on to
item 7 and the motion under Standing Order 17.42 to resolve to
exclude the public from the remainder of this meeting. Is everyone
content for us to go into private session to discuss the evidence?
Thank you very much.
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Derbyniwyd y cynnig.
Motion
agreed.
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Daeth rhan gyhoeddus y cyfarfod i ben am
12:14.
The public part of the meeting ended at
12:14.
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