Chamber and committees

You can have a final question, Mr Mountain.

You have identified some suggestions for how you feel funding for the project might be realised. In response to Mr Golden, who was looking at the climate change impact requirements that had to be assessed at the time, you talked about the fact that it is not roads but the products that drive on roads that are, potentially, the leading instigators of climate damage. If there are funding ways to do it, I am interested to know whether, in your mind, the inclusion of Greens in the Government who may well just be opposed to the principle of the road, irrespective of how fuel-efficient the vehicles on it are, is one of the key obstacles that prevents the Government that made the manifesto commitment from proceeding, or is there something else? In other words, is that one of the unspoken obstacles that, irrespective of whether a funding mechanism is identified, is potentially halting progress on that road?

PE2032 seeks to improve the support that is available to injured soldiers and veterans in Scotland and was lodged by James Brebner. It calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to improve the support that is provided by public bodies to injured soldiers and veterans in Scotland by ensuring that there are clear pathways for their injuries to be treated by appropriate consultants; establishing a veterans trauma network, similar to that which operates in England and Wales; ensuring all correspondence raising concerns or making complaints about their treatment from veterans to the Scottish Government is acknowledged and responded to; and reviewing and seeking to update the way in which the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman handles complaints from veterans about the health service.

Mr Brebner tells us that he was injured in the Falklands while serving with the Parachute Regiment, which has left him with severe leg pain.

In responding to the petition, the Scottish Government states that it is working with colleagues across the NHS and the veterans community to develop a Scottish veterans treatment pathway and that it has also been working with the Veterans Trauma Network in England to understand how a similar service might be applied in Scotland. The response also notes that all correspondence that is received by the Scottish Government is logged centrally, with the aim of providing a reply within 20 days of receipt, as well as highlighting the point that it would be a matter for the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman to comment on its own process and any potential review of how it handles complaints from veterans about the health service.

We have also received a submission from the petitioner commenting on the Scottish Government’s response, highlighting his continued concerns about the delay in establishing a trauma network and sharing his experience of trying to navigate the processes.

We have a very interesting petition before us. Do members have any comments or suggestions for action?

Under agenda item 4, we will consider continued petitions. The first such petition is PE1902, on an appeal process for community participation requests. Our parliamentary colleague Edward Mountain has stayed with us to assist in the consideration of the petition, on which he will make a representation. We have also received a submission from Rhoda Grant, to which I will refer in a moment.

The petition, which was lodged by Maria Aitken on behalf of Caithness Health Action Team, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to allow an appeal process for community participation requests under the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015.

We previously considered the petition on 18 January, when the committee agreed to write to the Scottish Government, and we have since received a response from the Minister for Community Wealth and Public Finance. The minister stated that the Scottish Community Development Centre is

“giving careful consideration to when an appeal could be made”,

how the process could be

“fair, open and transparent, and who would be best placed to manage that process.”

As I said, we have received a written submission from Rhoda Grant, who is unable to attend the meeting this morning. She has made the case for CHAT to be accepted by NHS Highland as a community organisation under the participation request process, and she has asked that the committee put the matter to NHS Highland. She has also requested that the committee keep the petition open until the Scottish Community Development Centre has published its proposals on an appeal process.

Before I ask committee members how they would like to proceed, I ask Edward Mountain whether he has any suggestions.

I am tempted to suggest that we keep the petition open and write to NHS Highland, as Rhoda Grant has suggested, seeking the inclusion of CHAT in its community participation representation. There is also a material basis for us to wait for the Scottish Community Development Centre to publish its proposal, so that we can be satisfied that progress will be made on those two fronts.

Are there any other suggestions, or are we content?

Are colleagues minded to accept that suggestion?

Members indicated agreement.

Martin Whitfield is not in the chamber, but he referred to John Mackintosh, and I do not want to let the opportunity pass to also pay tribute to him. As a young, active supporter of the Labour Party in the early 1970s, I was hugely attracted to John Mackintosh’s contribution to public life, and his premature death in the 1970s was a great loss to public life in Scotland. He had a lot to contribute and a lot was lost when he was no longer there to do so.

I have come to the debate at my time in life as a fair-minded man. I have no speech with me; I have notes that I have been making as I went along. I have heard the argument from Mr Brown and many others in the SNP and the Greens about the assault on the powers of the Scottish Parliament. I thought, “Well, I’ll come along this afternoon, because maybe there is something to it, and I would like to hear what the contributions of those who advocate this view are.”

I have always regarded Mr Hepburn as a fair-minded man. We came into this Parliament at the same time, and I have been very impressed with the work that he has done on skills and other areas of Government for which he has been responsible. However, this afternoon, he has done more of an impression of James Robertson Justice when he was playing the part of Sir Simon Sparrow in the “Doctor at Large” films, bouncing up, wiggling his finger and throwing his arms in huge gesticulation at the Opposition. For a minister who has so little to do in his portfolio not to have come with a better-articulated argument and to have been shown up by Clare Adamson, who made a better speech than he did on behalf of the Government department that he leads, was rather embarrassing. I looked beyond that to see whether more would be said from within the chamber.

I remember having arguments with Edward Heath, who used to go on—interestingly, I thought—about sovereignty. He said, “What is sovereignty? I keep hearing people in the Conservative Party talking about protecting sovereignty, as if it’s a little blue flame in a cupboard somewhere that we can all go to and pray before—as if sovereignty is something tangible you can touch.” He said that we were sharing sovereignty with the European Union, and I agreed with that view. We share sovereignty between the two Parliaments in the United Kingdom: the Scottish Parliament and the UK Parliament.

During the debate, I repeatedly heard Scottish National Party speakers stand up to talk about the need to respect, yet not one of their contributions gave any indication of when they respect the authority of the UK Parliament—not even when it is exercising responsibilities that are contained in the Scotland Act 1998 on which this Parliament is founded.

I was disappointed, too, in the contribution of Mr Bibby—and a little in that of Martin Whitfield, who gave one of his statesman-like addresses while dancing on the head of a pin. Mr Bibby did the classic Labour routine with which we are now becoming familiar. It is Keir Starmer’s and Anas Sarwar’s everyday chant: “Scotland and Britain need change. We are the change.” That is until we ask them what the change is, and then we are met with a great big blank canvas. In fact, in so far as we know what the change was going to be, Keir Starmer keeps abandoning it and then not replacing it with something else. When he was asked if he was in favour of something, we got, “Well, we hope to have a bill on all that.”

Mr Whitfield even said when challenged by Mr Robertson on the Sewel convention that the bill would allow us to have a discussion. We do not need the bill to have a discussion—we could have one this afternoon. When Mr Whitfield was asked what he thought personally, he was not able to tell us.

Neil Bibby said that Labour wants to protect the internal market and it accepts the argument for it. When Stephen Kerr asked,“Well, how?” he simply said, “We are going to have a discussion on it. We do not really know.”

It would be churlish of me not to respond. I believe that the convention is a convention and should be respected as such. So I hope that—

Jamie Hepburn rose—

I will give way to Mr Greer—

—even though I sometimes think that he brings all the sincerity of Draco Malfoy to our debates.