Chamber and committees

Thank you all for your responses. I understand that the issue is complex and multifaceted, and that the role of education is vital. A and E facilities not being available after 5 o’clock, where that occurs, is an obvious and very serious failing, and a gap in the service. I do not gainsay any of that: I accept it all. The petition is concerned with one aspect, and one aspect alone, although I am sure that the petitioner would welcome a much improved service in all those respects.

However, I go back to this question: given that what is involved is a potentially life-threatening condition, and one that the petitioner’s family lost their father to, does that not, when it comes to determining whether a pilot should be carried out, tend to push the balance towards conducting a proper test, as Mr Watson has said, with a set of pre-arranged and fixed criteria governing both the role of the Ambulance Service and the consultants and other clinicians involved? Surely, if a health board is willing to do that, it would be beneficial.

If, as the consistent evidence that we have heard from all four of you suggests, that does not work, then it does not work, but there seems to be a very strong presumption that people are not quite smart enough to be able to deal with complex matters. That could be interpreted as being somewhat dismissive—or a word that is even stronger than that, to be frank. After all, we are talking about a life-threatening condition. Some people, as Mr Watson said in his opening answer, lose their lives as a result of not coming under the FAST criteria.

Is the idea not worth trying? If it does not work, you will at least have tried it, and you will have a better cohort and evidence base on which to proceed as you focus largely on all the other issues that you have fairly and reasonably brought to our attention.

I am persuaded by what both of our visiting MSP colleagues say. I profoundly believe that the current system is inherently flawed, as the petitioners have maintained throughout the lengthy sequence of correspondence that I have read in preparation for this meeting.

We have a lot to learn from the Romans, including the first principle of natural justice: nemo iudex in causa sua—which means that no one can be a judge in their own cause.

The current basis of complaints in the health world and in education—for example, the GTC, which has been mentioned—is that the organisations deal with complaints against their employees, but it seems to me that their first instinct is usually to defend the system—the employee—against the complainant. It is almost a genuflection, and I have seen it time and again for 25 years.

I am grateful to the petitioners, because they have highlighted the existence of an inherent flaw. Child safeguarding is probably the most sensitive and important area that we could possibly conceive of, as both of our colleagues have said.

I find the cost argument to be utterly unconvincing. The petitioners have pointed out that the cost of the child abuse inquiry is likely to be £300 million. It seems to me that, in the future, we should try to tackle the cost of the existing system rather than worry about the cost of a national whistleblower’s office that will be minuscule in comparison with the cost of the damage that has resulted.

I strongly support the petition and I think that we should write to the minister. If colleagues are similarly minded, I feel that we have a sufficient evidential basis, particularly given the lengthy exchange that has taken place between the minister and the petitioners. There is no point in my rehashing it, but it is full of cogent relevant facts and material that the minister has not addressed in any way. Some of the very modest, minor work that the minister says is going on, such as making inquiries about what is happening at the moment, should have been done long ago, when the petition was first lodged. It is a bit late now.

There needs to be a whistleblower. We should not shilly-shally or dither and swither around but should instead urge the Government to get on with it and make that recommendation to the committee. Given that numerous members have registered their concerns about the issue, our impression is that there is widespread concern across the parties. Therefore we should get off the fence and recommend that there be a whistleblower. That should be considered in conjunction with the petitioners and others who can provide useful information about the whistleblower’s role, their remit and how the process would operate. As I have said, the costs would be very modest in comparison with the existing costs.

I was impressed by Mr Bibby and Mr MacGregor’s arguments, and by the range of support across political parties for ensuring that, in Scotland, we go back to the golden age that we enjoyed in our boyhood, convener—I thought that I had pulled rank in you in terms of age, but hey ho. As one moves gently towards the other end of life, nearer the crematorium stage, and as one suffers more from things such as arthritis and so on, and cannot do load-bearing exercise, an awful lot of people whose exercise consists of swimming cannot do other forms. The issue is not only about children and life-saving; it is beneficial in other ways.

I was also struck by Mr MacGregor’s point that all sports are beneficial if we take part in them. They are good for mental health, physical health, wellbeing, endorphins and all the rest of it. Believe it or not, I used to be quite active on that front myself. However, he made the salient point that swimming is different. It has far more benefits and a broader range of benefits than just life-saving and so on. Your comments are also entirely endorsed, convener, so I do not think that we should close the petition at all.

Moreover, towards the next election, I would not be surprised if the issue finds its way into the manifestos, certainly of the main parties. We have to make choices, and local authorities are the ones who have to make provision, but the passing of the buck by the Scottish Government to local authorities is not acceptable, really. It is just not on. You cannot pass the buck if you are in charge.

If the Government wants suggestions about saving money, I would ask why we do not have full swimming pools instead of empty cycle lanes all over the place? The Government seems to have unlimited funds to construct cycle lanes, which, as far as I can see, remain empty from dawn to dusk, not least because they are on steep hills, which nobody except Olympian cyclists can actually navigate. That is just one suggestion. I could come up with five or six others quite easily, but I will spare the committee that.

Holding a round-table discussion is the very least that we can do. I wonder whether we could pause and think about what else we might do, because, unlike so many other topics that are plainly the responsibility of local authorities, such as refuse collection, which are vital functions in themselves, swimming has a far broader range of benefits. We cannot just say that it is a matter for local authorities.

I know that other members have taken an acute interest in this and we could ask for their views about who to invite to a round-table discussion so that we do not exclude anyone. Liz Smith would be one example.

I do not think that there is any real alternative other than to close the petition, for the reasons that Mr Torrance has set out, so I would not oppose that. However, this is an area of lingering and continuous public concern, not only on salary levels but on the levels of some pay-offs that are made to very senior people, which are of telephone number amounts. It just never seems to end. I want to register the fact that the Government has completely failed to address the issue, and it just goes on and on. It is the same at Westminster, so it is not only a Scottish problem. It seems that, the more you get paid, the less accountable you are—we never see the top civil servants. Some of them get paid more than £200,000—or one of them does, anyway.

The petitioner has raised a legitimate area of public concern. A study would not necessarily advance the petition unless there was a will to do something aboot it, and I am afraid that there seems to be a lack of will to do anything about it. That is my impression. I know that petitioners get very angry when they think that their petition has been rejected out of hand, but I do not think that there is anything that we in the committee can do about it. I just thought that I would put that on the record.

It is a sort of modern version of Parkinson’s law: the more you get paid and the higher up you are in a quango, the less accountable you are.

We should write to the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Reform and Islands to highlight the issues that were raised during the committee’s consideration of the petition, including concerns about, first, the evidence base for designating a new national park, particularly regarding the impact of existing national parks; secondly, the lack of clarity and trust in the consultation process that is being conducted by NatureScot; and, thirdly, the need for an independent review of the existing national parks and their performance, which was what the petition called for inter alia.

During the committee’s evidence session with the cabinet secretary, she indicated that she had ruled out—apparently absolutely—holding a referendum of people living within whatever boundaries were proposed to be set for the national park. However, since then, Dumfries and Galloway Council has held a vote, the result of which, by a very substantial majority, was that there should be a local referendum. Therefore, in the committee’s letter to the rural secretary, can we ask whether she is aware of that vote, what her response is, and whether she will reconsider that decision in the light of the very clear expression of the opinion of local representatives.

Finally, out of respect, so that it is involved and given its knowledge of the area, could we write to the council to ask for the details of its decision and how it believes that matters might be progressed?

So, the compromise is that we make the Scottish Parliament great again, slowly. That is fine with me.

I entirely agree. It is symptomatic of a wider malaise about repeated delays and failure to meet timelines that have been promised to Parliament.

Therefore, I wonder whether we might also write to the permanent secretary and ask him what he is going to do about it. I am not defending ministers here—they are ultimately responsible—but they act on the basis of advice, and they will have had advice from senior officials that this could be done in this length of time. However, there has been repeated failure. Indeed, this is just one instance among a plethora of things.

I have never seen the permanent secretary—he is Mr Anonymous, is he not? We never see him, and I think that he is going anyway, but perhaps he could do us the service of explaining to us this endemic delay in the process of government, because it just brings us all down.

We need only contrast that with what the new President of the United States has been saying; we will see what happens, of course, but he is promising to do things straight away. I am not supporting him at all, but it is no wonder that people get fed up with Government when nothing happens for years after the date by which people were promised that things would happen. Of course people are disappointed about that. I really think that the permanent secretary has a bit of explaining to do, convener.

I entirely agree that there should be a debate in due course. However, prior to that point, and to inform both the debate and the committee’s work, it would be useful to glean more information. We could write to the Deputy First Minister to seek an update on any further action that the Scottish Government is taking in respect of the action points that were mentioned in her correspondence of 5 December 2024. We could also write to the leader of Glasgow City Council to ask that she meet the Fornethy survivors to discuss their continuing request for recognition of and redress for the abuse that they experienced at Fornethy house.

There seems to have been what we might call a tussle as to whether the Scottish Government or Glasgow City Council should pay. That is a pretty unseemly scrap, and it is preferable that it not take place. However, given that the Deputy First Minister seems to be trying to get the council to pay up, I think that we should find out what the council’s view is.

In my view, the Government should pay up anyway. If it wants to use its muscle to try to recover from Glasgow City Council, that is fair enough. The Government has the firepower, the lawyers and the taxpayers’ money to enable it to get the money back, but the Fornethy survivors do not. Why should they be in the position of begging for what they should have had in the first place? I am sorry, convener—those last remarks were unscripted.