Chamber and committees

That makes a lot of sense. I am attracted by the idea that it be made an explicit part of the commissioner’s functions, perhaps even on a statutory basis, as that would avoid our having to create a new public body.

Let us assume that that happens, and that it helps things to be done more quickly, as opposed to what is happening in the Edinburgh Academy case, in which we are looking at events that took place decades ago. What happens if the commissioner or whistleblowing officer says this and that should happen but the local authorities, for example, do not agree? Where would the matter go from there? Would it go to ministers or to the press? These may be sensitive matters. How would a dispute between the whistleblowing officer and the relevant public authority be handled or resolved?

I just want to emphasise the latter part of that suggestion and say that we interfere with crofters’ traditional extraction of peat at our peril.

I can certainly see Mr Torrance’s argument, because the reply that we have from the Scottish Government is quite complete in the sense that, as I read it, it is saying there are no real ways in which a definitive test can be issued at the moment. That is the challenge. It is not that there is not a desire perhaps to have a test if a test worked, but a test does not work. My reading of it is that the UKNSC is due to review the recommendation in the next 12 months. That sounds to me as if the review is to start in 12 months and it might take quite a lot longer. I wonder whether there would be any harm in the meantime in signifying our general concern and interest because prostate cancer is such a widespread cancer. I suggest that we do not close the petition at this stage, but it may be that we would close it after a further response.

We could write to the UK National Screening Committee to ask whether it will consider the findings of the TRANSFORM study; how frequently its decision not to recommend population screening for prostate cancer will be reviewed; and how it decides the frequency with which it reviews recommendations. I stress the urgency here because there are so many men who will be affected by this in their lifetime—I think that I read somewhere that it is eight out of 10, which is an incredibly high proportion—and the screening tests that are available for so many conditions and diseases have been one of the tremendous advances in society over the past 20 years and have saved lives in so many cases. The lack of a valid method for the prostate seems to be a matter of real urgency.

Good morning, cabinet secretary and witnesses. In his evidence, Alex Neil said that he believed that there was more than sufficient capital to deliver the project. He also set out a detailed statement about when each of the sections of the A9 was to be dualled. Why was that not adhered to? It was breached right from the start.

I appreciate that you were not responsible. I was part of the Government for a while, so I had a collective responsibility and I have never sought to shrug away from that. However, I never had a portfolio responsibility.

Why did it take five years from the critical watershed decision of the ONS, on which no statement was made to Parliament about how significant that was, even though you now say that that was the absolute critical moment? Why did it then take until 2019 for there to be a private finance plan? That was five years during which most of the work, or a very substantial proportion of it, according to Alex Neil’s plan, was supposed to have been done.

—all this work was supposed to have gone on and we have only seen two of the sections. Those are welcome, of course, but there is a complete absence of an explanation, cabinet secretary, about what went wrong. Can I just ask one final question?

It did not go ahead then either, did it? Has there been any review of the failure to adhere to the plan? Has there been any internal review by the Scottish Government—or anybody else, for that matter—as to why the timetable slipped and why there has been a failure to implement the very clear pledges that the Scottish National Party made repeatedly to the electorate at every election?

I understand all that, but with respect, that was not what I asked. I asked whether there was any review of any sort into the failure to deliver on our pledges in Government. Was there any review or not?

I thought that Mr Barnett’s comments were apposite and that we could perhaps learn from the cited example of the experience in England.

I want to ask about the establishment of an independent national whistleblowing officer. First, how would that help to address the concerns? Secondly, would a new public body be required to fulfil that function, or could that be made an explicit function of the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland?

Well, there would be civil unrest if the crofters were denied the right to extract peat from their own land. I think that that would be unthinkable to many of us.