Chamber and committees

Thank you, Regina; that is really helpful. Thank you, convener. I will leave it there.

Thank you, Regina—that is helpful. What about for adults? Was there any discussion about a spouse, a sibling or anyone like that having a say?

Thank you. That is really helpful and clear. It is much appreciated.

You mentioned that, as part of the review, you would have a discussion about changing aspects around language. Are you in a position to elaborate on that for us?

That is helpful, and we have some of the same issues with waiting times for accessing gender identity clinics, whether a person is going down a medical or surgical route or another route.

There is an issue with healthcare provision beyond that which is directly related to gender reassignment. One of the questions put to the committee was how we can guarantee that trans men will still be on the right registers for cervical screenings and similar tests, and that trans women will still be on the right lists to get prostate tests. Do you have any experience or do you know of processes that we can learn from so that we do not allow trans people to fall through health gaps that are not related to medical interventions for their gender reassignment?

Those are the questions that we are trying to grapple with. Learning what not to do is as important as learning what to do.

I will ask another question so that we can learn from your experiences on the criminal offence and its relationship to revoking a GRC. Are you aware of any instance of someone who has revoked their GRC having had any hint of criminality in their initial self-declaration, or has that not occurred in the Irish experience?

Good afternoon, senator. Thank you very much for being with us today, and for your evidence and your answers so far.

I am interested in exploring unintended consequences and lessons learned, along similar lines to some of the questions from Pam Duncan-Glancy and Rachael Hamilton.

One area that we have heard evidence on, and heard people’s concerns around, is misaligned public services, particularly in health. Rachael Hamilton was talking about prisons, but there are questions around health. In the Irish experience, as far as you are aware, have there been any instances of trans women or trans men not being able to access healthcare provision, for example because of gender marker conflicts on health records?

Absolutely. One of my final points was going to be about data trusts and the ownership of data. Those are interesting questions that I do not know whether anyone has got to grips with, although I know that interesting thinking is going on around that. However, that is probably not a topic for today.

We are moving towards a digital economy in which everything relies on some kind of digital connectivity, whether it involves food production, livestock monitoring, traffic management or whatever.

There are interesting opportunities to think differently about broadband, mobile connectivity provision and charging. For example, there is a very clear desire for universal provision. How do you see a future Scotland doing universal provision?

Thank you, cabinet secretary; I will leave it there.

Good morning, cabinet secretary, and thank you for what you have said so far. I have a couple of questions that follow on from Fiona Hyslop’s questions. In our town centre and retail sector inquiry, which we are coming to the end of, and in thinking back over the winter, it has become clear that resilience is an issue. It is important to have infrastructure in place, but there is an issue about how we build into that infrastructure the resilience to cope with bad weather events such as storm Arwen and ensure that businesses and residents can move to omnichannel or multimodal interactions, whether that is home working or bricks and clicks in retail.

How does the Scottish Government ensure that we have not only the infrastructure but the support that backs up that infrastructure to ensure access to reliable and resilient connections, and fast access to the maintenance that is required if there are connectivity issues?