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PE1988, lodged by Sue Wallis, calls on the Scottish Government to review the process for allowing raw sewage discharge from homes into Scottish coastal waters; provide additional funding to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency for enforcement; and introduce legislation to ban households from discharging raw sewage.

The SPICe briefing states that financial responsibility for the provision of private sewage treatment rests with the individual home owner or community. The Scottish Government response states that there are no plans to provide additional funds to Scottish Water to provide connections to households with private sewerage arrangements during the current investment period but households have the option to connect to the public network at their own expense and Scottish Water will make a reasonable contribution towards the costs of that project, should a new main be required. The submission states that the current register of septic tanks held by SEPA is incomplete and the number of unauthorised discharges is likely to be high. The Scottish Government notes that SEPA is reviewing its regulation of private sewerage systems.

The petitioner highlights the difference in approach to unauthorised disposals compared with that to dog fouling, where fines are issued to those who do not clear up after their dogs. She shares her experience of reporting issues to SEPA in 2019 and expresses concern that nothing has changed in almost four years. The petitioner questions the method of registering private water discharge with SEPA at the point of house sale: in her experience, several of the properties have been sold, but no change has happened as a result.

Do members have comments or suggestions for action?

Are there any other comments? I have to say that, because the dog fouling issue was before the public eye, it led to a change in practice. I cannot help but feel that, if every member of the public was similarly subjected to the voiding of raw sewage into water, there would be much more public concern and engagement on the issue. The parallel that has been drawn is certainly valid. It is quite a visual parallel, and it leads me to believe that we should pursue the issue quite a bit further to see where we get with it.

The fact that the petitioner is satisfied with the progress and the response received gives weight to that recommendation. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

We thank the petitioner for raising the issue with us. As with all petitions that are closed, if, in due course, the petitioner feels that the commitments or evidence that we have received do not lead to a satisfactory outcome, they are entitled to bring the issue back by way of a fresh petition after 12 months.

PE1939, lodged by Suzanne Thornton, calls on the Scottish Government to demonstrate a commitment to health equality for young males born between 1 September 1997 and 1 September 2006 by allowing them to access the human papillomavirus vaccine via the national health service.

We previously considered the petition on 26 October 2022. At that point, we agreed to write to various organisations to gather further information on the issues raised. Members will be aware from our papers that we have received responses from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, Young Scot and the Teenage Cancer Trust. Importantly, in its response, the JCVI set out the reasons why a time-limited catch-up programme for boys was not pursued when the HPV vaccination was extended in 2018. The reasons provided included the different epidemiological situation now compared with when the programme for girls was launched; the good levels of herd immunity as a result of the girls’ programme; and the priority of extending the routine adolescent programme to boys while maintaining high uptake among girls. The JCVI also states that it has no plans to review the need for and value of a catch-up of the HPV immunisation programme for males aged 25 and under, as it believes that that would not be cost-effective.

I also draw members’ attention to the response from the Teenage Cancer Trust, which notes a disparity between the uptake rates of vaccination between males and females of 7.9 per cent and calls for the Scottish Government to include plans for monitoring uptake to be included in the 10-year cancer strategy.

Do members have any comments or suggestions?

No, that is a fair point. Mr Stewart, are you happy for us to leave the petition open while we pursue that point?

I note also the Teenage Cancer Trust recommendation in relation to the 10-year cancer strategy and the disparity that the trust had identified. That is not so much something for a response, but we should certainly write to the Scottish Government to draw its attention to the Teenage Cancer Trust’s representation.

Yes.

Given your experience—I now have some direct experience, as well—in what way did you find that the inability to access this particular treatment resulted in a different pathway through and out of the pandemic to that of other people? Clearly, bigger concerns still rested with people who are immunosuppressed, even as they saw everybody else acting more normally.

I am grateful for that. Implicit in what you are saying is a sense among the community of those who are affected in this way that the lighthouse of public attention has maybe swung away and people who are in this position are left to cope on their own, without the same attention that there was when this was a much more general and widespread affliction that was being felt by a much wider community across the country. I appreciate and understand that.

To move away from anything that is so personal to you, do you have any knowledge of whether immunosuppressed people have disproportionately experienced morbidity as a result of the pandemic, or does the exceptional care that they are having to take make it difficult to draw any statistical conclusion or evidence in that regard?

Various members of the committee have at different times served on the Parliament’s health committee, so we are familiar with the commissioning process and the way in which these things progress. From time to time, we have all lodged questions to ministers about the availability of product and, of course, they have always deferred to NICE, the Scottish Medicines Consortium and the processes that are at play in that regard.

I suppose that ministers’ argument would be that, were they to act by exception, that would be at the cost of diverting resource away from treatments that have been through the commissioning process and been recommended to them. What would you say to them, as ministers who have to come to decisions in relation to the commissioning authorities, in the face of that conundrum?