Chamber and committees

I recommend that we close the petition under rule 15.7 of standing orders, on the basis that the Scottish Government recognises non-therapeutic male infant circumcision on religious grounds and does not regard male circumcision as comparable to female genital mutilation.

With your permission, convener, I will raise one matter at the outset of today’s public session. The documents that were furnished by Transport Scotland initially maintained that, for an unspecified period, I was the lead Scottish Government minister for infrastructure projects. That is wrong. I was never the lead minister. I was, of course, bound by collective responsibility and I was, for a while, copied into some material. That practice of receiving copied material ceased in 2018.

I took the matter up with the help of our clerks and then directly with Transport Scotland. That led to Transport Scotland acknowledging that the assertion that I was the lead minister was an error. It kindly apologised for the mistake, and I am happy to accept that apology, but I wish to make that clarification on the record.

I will, just to pursue the issue that was raised previously, about framework long-term contracts for your members so that they have guaranteed work—a pipeline, or a preparation pool, as it might otherwise be termed, of work—over seven or eight years. That is in contrast to the current position: I believe there are no road contracts in Scotland at all at the moment. If we want to get from where we are now to having framework contracts, should we be advocating to the Scottish Government that such an arrangement be deployed? Would you argue that, for that to work, there needs to be much more clarity about the work that will be available over that seven, eight or 10-year period?

Therefore, would you welcome three things? First, would you welcome early clarity on the mutual investment model contracts that are to be used for the central and northern sections of the A9? As I understand the situation, those are still subject to a caveat that they will be reviewed in 2025.

Secondly, would you welcome an early process for made orders relating to the A96 between Inverness and Auldearn, including the Nairn bypass section, so that that would form part of the preparation pool? That section is also a firm commitment of the Scottish Government. Finally, do you agree that, because disruption is a practical factor in relation to how the work is best carried out on the A9, and because you cannot do everything at once—otherwise, the A9 would have to be closed, which is just not possible—would it help to spread the disruption across the network? Would that point to industry desiring that the A96 contract go ahead concurrently with the A9, rather than the ludicrous prospect of having to wait until the A9 dualling is complete?

Whoever.

I hope that we hear from the minister and from the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland.

Would it help if the committee made a request to the current Scottish Government minister—I think that we are now on transport minister number 4 in the current parliamentary session—to see what specific ideas they can come up with? Excuse me, Angus. I may be teaching my granny how to suck eggs, but I am sure that the three of you must have pondered on many occasions how to advance the situation. The reply seems to be, “Well, we advertise posts but we don’t get the applications”. That seems a pretty pathetic approach.

I know from my work in the islands over many years as minister that there are a huge number of very able, knowledgeable and experienced people all over the islands. I feel that the current efforts to reach out to empower those people, to benefit from their local knowledge and direct experience of ferries, seamanship, Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd or HIAL and to get them involved not only on the board but in senior management positions are not enough. We need to disperse jobs to the islands. When I was the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Economy and Tourism, we managed to disperse a couple of Crofting Commission jobs to the Western Isles. My God, it was difficult—I can tell you that. The grand promises that you start off with get diluted as they go through the sausage machine.

This is a very long question, but it seems to me that so many other approaches could be taken. Could the councils play a structured role in coming up with specific recommendations of people who might be suitable to serve on the main bodies of CMAL, CalMac and HIAL? Elected councillors are often really plugged into their communities. Is that a way—it is not one that is currently used—in which we could reach out to empower people on the islands?

Have you had any feedback from people who have been keen to apply to play a part but have been rejected? Has there been any systematic review or consideration of that? Has any work been done to consider why that has happened? Many of us suspect that the selection process results in what we might call the usual suspects, with a pool of kenspeckle figures getting picked again and again, and that it discriminates against newcomers, outsiders, outliers and, basically, people who live on the islands. I am afraid that that is my view from having been involved in quite a lot of selection work over the years. Perhaps I am at fault as much as anybody else.

If you are saying, as you did just now, that a cohort of people have been spurned—unfairly, in your view—and that that has created ill feeling, what can we do about that? Can anything be done? Has anything been done about it? I am sure that the committee would be willing to pursue that if there are concrete, specific things that we might be able to do about it.

I support Mr Golden’s suggestion to close the petition. However, it would be remiss not to add that the response that we have had from the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service is tremendously detailed and might be an example to others who respond to the committee.

In its submission, the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service says that two individuals spent five hours studying what happened to the 47 cases concerned—I believe at my request—and that they have given a complete analysis of every single one of those and details of disposal. By my calculation, only 19 cases appeared to have led to a guilty plea and a sentence, with 28 cases either deserted, not called or having a not guilty plea accepted, but that is the justice system in operation. Therefore, in closing the petition, I would like to thank the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service for taking our request for information very seriously indeed and for the diligence with which it pursued that.

It is a live planning application. Having pondered that, I really cannot see how it would be correct for us to interfere in a process in which a clear set of rules has been established and the petitioners and others can submit their objections to the local authority for consideration within the determination.

We want to reach out to help petitioners in every case. However, in this instance, and this particular circumstance, I cannot see how—other than by interfering with legitimate existing proceedings—it would be for us to seek review of an on-going process. If people are dissatisfied at the end of it, they can lodge a further petition to Parliament on the perceived defects in that process. We have considered applications of that ilk before.

Lastly, I want to record that I am very grateful to the council for taking the time to give us an extensive briefing, not least on misinformation in the BBC’s reporting of the issue, which is unfortunate. I just wanted to allude to that while expressing our thanks to the council for pointing it out to us

I am very sorry. It is so easy to be rude to people who are attending online. I apologise.