Chamber and committees

Thank you, convener. Good morning, Nicola. Was a decision ever taken during your tenure as First Minister to deprioritise investment in dualling the A9 project?

Thank you for that answer, but I wish to press you on a couple more points, please. The preparatory work, the design work, choosing the preferred route, the progress to made orders, the compulsory purchase orders and the ancillary roads orders are all very time consuming and complex, as you alluded to earlier. However, do you not feel, as I do, that some of the 11 sections could and should have moved into procurement much earlier, and that that is a failure?

It is. I am very grateful for Monica Lennon’s work in taking up this matter so diligently, which is a credit to her. We should write to the Scottish Government to highlight the HM chief inspector of prosecution’s view that consideration of the delivery model for forensic pathology is required, and that the Scottish Government should lead that work. In passing, I note that it was evident that the Crown Office and the Lord Advocate passed the buck in their evidence by saying that it is primarily a matter of medical evidence. They were, if you like, not taking the lead, so the Scottish Government should take the lead in that regard.

In addition, we should highlight the issues and suggested improvements to pathology services that were raised during the committee’s consideration of the petition, including the lack of clear direction and fragmented nature of the service, which is leading to challenges in resolving issues as they arise and the inconsistent and unclear communication with the next of kin, as well as the suggestions that tissue samples are returned to the next of kin and that CT scanners are used as an alternative to invasive post mortems. Thanks to the petitioners, Monica Lennon and the committee’s work, we have had a lot of evidence about each of those issues, so there is no point in rehearsing all that.

We should also highlight concerns in forensic pathology services about value for money, affordability, sustainability and contractual terms, as noted in the HM Inspectorate of Prosecution in Scotland’s annual report. We should highlight COPFS’s call for a national forensic pathology service.

We should recommend that the Scottish Government brings together service providers, the Crown Office and stakeholders to consider the key challenges that face pathology services as identified in the petition and the inspectorate’s report, takes ownership of and leads the development of a delivery model for pathology services, and ensures that any delivery model facilitates continuous and long-term improvement of pathology services.

In conclusion, that is all a bit dry—it is MSP-speak—but at its heart is the concern that the next of kin’s wishes should be respected and taken into account, and that they should be treated with dignity and respect in the desperately difficult situation that they face.

We should write to the Scottish Government to ask how it can be confident that specialist diagnostic testing and treatment, as set out by the petitioner, are available when required and, secondly, that healthcare providers are aware of the possible side effects of Covid-19 vaccines and apply that knowledge when considering treatment for symptoms that might have arisen as a result of the vaccination.

By way of comment, I add that I recently read in one of the more serious newspapers of doubts about one of the Covid vaccines being raised by a reputable organisation. I will not go into the details, because that would not be appropriate; I just wanted to mention it, as it is the subject of some current controversy. We need to drill down a little more and write to the Scottish Government to raise those concerns.

Therefore, one understands it.

For that reason, I have a series of suggestions. Given that the issue seems to be primarily a local government responsibility, we should write to the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities to seek further detail on best practice for local authorities regarding the presence and behaviour of dogs in cemeteries. We should also write to Police Scotland to request information on the breakdown of offences under the Dog Fouling (Scotland) Act 2003 and the Control of Dogs (Scotland) Act 2010, specifically in relation to those that have taken place in cemeteries, in order to ascertain whether there is any pattern of enforcement by the police in this matter.

Furthermore, we should write to the Scottish Government, seeking an update on the implementation of the Burial and Cremation (Scotland) Act 2016, and specifically on whether proposed regulations for the management of burial grounds might address the issues raised by the petition.

There is a lot of ground to cover, so I will just read the text from our briefing paper.

Yes, I tend to agree that we have exhausted every avenue, so I suggest that we close the petition under rule 15.7 of standing orders on the basis that the Scottish Government will not widen the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry’s remit to include abuse in different settings, that the Government has taken steps to raise the profile of the national guidance for child protection with religious organisations and, finally, that the Scottish Government is monitoring national data to track implementation of the national guidance.

As the convener said, our focus is not so much on trying to carry out a post-mortem; the focus is more on prognosis than on diagnosis. It is about how we can put this right as quickly as possible. Do you, as a seasoned and experienced politician, think that it is fair to say that other parts of Scotland have done quite well from transport infrastructure projects over the 25 years of devolution during which both of us have been servants in the Parliament? I am thinking of the Borders railway, the Aberdeen western peripheral route, the massive improvements to the M74 and the M8 and the magnificent Forth crossing—and, well, Edinburgh chose the trams. Other parts of Scotland have had massive investment, which is welcome, but do you agree that it is now, if you like, the turn of the Highlands?

I was going to make exactly the same point that Mr Golden just made.

References have been made to the revised completion date of 2035, and many people—including the petitioner, who is with us today, and MSPs from all parties but one—are due to meet John Swinney to urge him to accelerate the date and complete the project before 2035. As you said, every single section has now gone to made orders, with the possible exception of Dunkeld. Therefore, nothing is stopping the scheduling of the completion of the various sections as quickly as the work can be done.

The contractors’ representative has always said that the companies can rise to the occasion and do the work more quickly if they are given the contracts and if the funding is available. Do you agree that that is a reasonable objective and that, if it is at all practical, it would be very desirable indeed—in the light of the failure to meet the original 2025 deadline—to bring the completion date forward from 2035, so that people can see it in our expected lifespan?