Chamber and committees

I will move on to the first question. How does the cabinet secretary see the NHS’s ability to recover from the problems of Covid, which were, plainly, all-engulfing? What is his personal commentary on how successful—or otherwise—the NHS has been in restoring the full provision of services to patients across Scotland?

That will happen next February, then. Can people wait until then?

That is very diplomatically put. However, I think that the ministers would regard me not as a marriage guidance counsellor but more of an agony uncle.

Will the contract be restored to GPs before the winter?

I would be obliged if you could come back to the committee with detailed answers on how many people you estimate will need the service; how many get it; how many get it in Dundee, in Liverpool, and in London; and what the costs are. It would be very helpful to have that information.

More generally on the health service, many people in Scotland believe that the money goes to the wrong places. It goes to far, far too many managers and bureaucrats and there are far too many medical quangos. Because of that, the money cannot be found to provide the direct services that everybody wishes for. There has not been any reform of the NHS since devolution began—that jaggedy thistle has not been grasped by anybody. Is it not about time that we had major reform, not to spend the money on managers and bureaucrats but to provide some sort of basic national service, at least? I believe that Mary Ramsay is in the gallery today; she has taken the time, again, to travel down to be with us.

I thank the cabinet secretary for his last answer, although he did not reply to my question, which was about when the pause will be lifted. Culloden engages with NHS Highland all the time—it has followed that recommendation for years and years—but it needs to know when the pause will be lifted. Will it be one year, two years, three years, four years or five years? If you cannot say, cabinet secretary, what are the civil service advising about it?

I agree. Plainly, you cannot press the button on a project until you are really certain about how much it will cost and what the design and the timescale will be. This building is an example of what can go wrong when you try to go ahead prematurely instead of festina lente, as the Romans might have said.

It has been brought to my attention by the submission from McGill’s—I have no judgment on or prior knowledge of this—that, as it says, the experts have costed the funding requirements for the SPT case at between £45 million and £400 million. I imagine that our colleagues here would disagree with that. However, the fact that McGill’s avers that experts say that that is the case means that, were the committee to take the petition further, we would have to pursue a very full investigation. With the best will in the world, I do not honestly think that we have the capacity or the time to do that. It is just a matter of fact that, between now and next year, we do not have the time to take evidence from all the people from whom we would require to take evidence.

Given that there is serious doubt about the cost, that there are severe pressures on finance—as has been pointed out, there is a massive shortfall in local government finance—and that people who are losing their jobs in some local authorities might regard their jobs as a greater priority than a scheme that has not yet been costed, I cannot see that we can do much today other than urge the petitioner to come back in the next session of Parliament and to continue to press the Government to work with SPT and other colleagues to devise a solution.

I should say that I have been in contact with Mr Jim Mackie, who, I believe, has been involved with the petition, or at least with issues surrounding the petition. As far as I can see, the petitioner responded on 15 January 2025, and I cannot see any further response to that. I mention that in case I am wrong, but the papers before me do not show any response to the petitioner. If I am wrong, maybe the clerks could let me know.

The reason why that seems significant is that the petitioner’s submission of 15 January contains some serious criticisms of SEPA—that its maps are inaccurate, that it does not give out any flood prevention advice, that it stymies schemes, that it makes it almost impossible to get sediment and gravel out of rivers, that it does not address the considerable barriers to doing any prevention work, that it does not involve communities at all—there is no community input whatsoever—and that it does not have a remit to assist communities in the design or building of flood defences. I mention only a few of the criticisms, as we do not have time to go through all of them. When a petitioner raises salient and serious criticisms, our job is to try to get answers. I know that there is pressure to close all petitions, but, in this case, I think that it would be very simple to ask SEPA to deliver a detailed response to each and every one of the petitioner’s various serious allegations.

The last thing that I will say is that I recently had a constituency case in which a scheme for affordable housing—around 20 units—took about 10 years to get through SEPA. It was supposed to be in a flooding area, but the houses were going to be built higher up than existing houses that have never been flooded—the development was in Nethy Bridge, where there has been no flooding since 1837. SEPA was a constant stumbling block to any progress whatsoever.

In rural Scotland—I am sure that Mr Mountain has experience of this—when you try to do things that everyone wants to do, such as build affordable housing, the proposals are blocked behind the scenes by quangos that will not come out and meet people, will not explain their actions and will rely solely on desktop information. I add that local anecdote merely by way of spice to support the petitioner’s criticism of SEPA.

I do not think that it would take up much more of the committee’s time if we were to wait for SEPA to provide the petitioner with a detailed forensic reply to every single one of his criticisms, and that would take matters further.

We are grateful for Ed Mountain’s factual input. I represent part of the River Spey, which is in my constituency, and I concur that water levels are at an all-time low. I add that many existing users have already been prejudiced by that, notably distilleries. I do not have a personal interest in the matter, unlike Mr Mountain, other than through being an avid consumer of those distilleries’ products. However, it seems reasonable to say that the existing users and businesses that have traditionally relied on access to the water supply should have their interests considered by all those whose job it is to oversee decisions in this regard.

There is an analogy with the pump storage situation, in which there is a plethora of pump storage applications and a lack of joint consideration of the overall impact that those will have on Loch Ness.

We should ask SEPA to comment specifically with regard to Mr Mountain’s evidence, which was interesting and, on the face of it, quite compelling. It would certainly be worrying if a massive extraction of water was permitted without consideration of the overall impact. I suggest that we write to SEPA, as Mr Mountain suggested, and that we include the petition as part of the thematic evidence session with the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Energy. I also suggest that, beforehand, we invite the cabinet secretary to respond to what Mr Mountain has said.

The lack of consideration of the cumulative impact of developments across the board—notably renewable developments in the Highlands—is a huge concern at the moment. Mr Mountain and I know that from attending a packed public meeting with Douglas Lumsden—he attended it as well, not as a participant but as a spectator from outwith the Highlands and Islands area.

Without labouring the point—I would never wish to do that, convener—I hope that the cabinet secretary and SEPA will opine on the issue before we hear oral evidence from the cabinet secretary.

I am completely partial, because I know and am friendly with the petitioner Deborah Carmichael, but I wish to say that she and her colleagues have been spectacularly successful in aim 1—to prevent the creation of further national parks, which, frankly, at the moment, Scotland needs like a hole in the head.

The Government’s decision to decline an independent review of national parks is ridiculous. There is no accountability; board members are not allowed to speak out, and, if they do, they are disciplined. The annual report is simply what the park says. The idea that that is in any way an independent review is completely ludicrous and preposterous. There must be an independent review of national parks, because many people in my constituency—I reside in the national park—feel that it is not doing a good job. That is why, when asked, in an opinion poll, the question, “Do you think that the national park is doing a good job?”, 3 per cent said yes and 92 per cent said no, which speaks for itself.

Congratulations to Deborah Carmichael for a very successful petition with a successful outcome of persuading the Government to drop this absurd proposal.