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Public health protection
13/06/2008
The Scottish Government's Public Health etc (Scotland) Bill has been passed by MSPs in the Parliament with the aim of offering better protection from the threat of infectious diseases and contamination.
The Bill's provisions have been subject to scrutiny and debate since last October, and involve strengthening health board and local authority powers to act when individuals, premises or any item pose a major risk to public health.
It will also ensure clarification of the roles and responsibilities for health protection at a local level.
The Bill also regulates the use of sunbeds and will:
- Ban the use of sunbeds by under 18s
- Ban the sale or hire of a sunbed to anyone under 18
- Require sunbed operators to provide users with information about the health risks of sunbed use
Public Health Minister Shona Robison said:
"In a world that is increasingly accessible, largely due to the ease of overseas travel, the threat of infectious diseases and contamination is an issue facing every country.
"This major piece of legislation will ensure appropriate measures are in place to safeguard the public from existing and emerging threats to public health.
"It also puts in place new laws, the first in the UK, which protect young people from the dangers of sunbeds and sends out a clear signal about the health risks to the wider public.
"Reform of our public health legislation from 1889 is long overdue and this Bill will equip Scotland for a healthy future."
Key provisions of the Bill are:
- Clarifying the roles and responsibilities of Scottish Ministers, health boards and local authorities for public health protection purposes
- Setting out notification arrangements for infectious diseases, organisms and health risk states
- Updating and strengthening existing powers of health boards to extend the exclusion of people from school and work, where there is a risk to public health, to a wider range of settings
- Introducing new powers to quarantine people in defined circumstances and where there is significant risk to public health, on order from a sheriff, while maintaining personal safeguards
- Updating existing powers to remove and detain in hospital a person suffering from a serious infectious disease or who has been contaminated, where there is a significant risk to public health, on order from a sheriff
- Updating existing powers to require a person to have the least intrusive or invasive medical examination possible to achieve the public health outcome, without consent, in defined circumstances and where there is significant risk to public health, on order from a sheriff
- Introducing a new power to require a person to be disinfected, disinfested or decontaminated, in defined circumstances and where there is significant risk to public health, on order from a sheriff
(All of the above powers would only be exercised where the person does not accept constraints voluntarily, posing a significant risk to public health).
- Introducing a flexible regulation-making power to prevent, protect against and control the spread of disease and contamination which will give effect to international obligations and recommendations