Chamber and committees

The A9 dualling between Perth and Inverness is entirely excluded. The A96 section from Inverness and Smithton to Auldearn, east of Nairn, and the Nairn bypass are excluded, but the residue of the undualled A96 is not excluded and, indeed, that is subject to a review, the results of which are promised to be announced by the Government apparently fairly soon. What you say is nearly correct, but not absolutely accurate.

The clerks could consider following up the reference to Japan and other countries, too, if need be, because we would not want to leave any stone unturned.

Yes, we want to flag it up to the minister now, specifically saying—

I endorse what Rhoda Grant said. If she does not mind my saying so, if rock falls on the A890 have been a problem since she was at school, the issue did not arise yesterday. I can put it no more candidly than that.

To be serious, this is a Highland problem, and it has been highlighted very well. The community councils have replied. Plockton community council has pointed out that, when the road is closed, there is a 130-mile diversion. Who in the central belt would put up with that? The community council also refers to the closures because of rock landslides, which Rhoda Grant has referred to today, and the fact that the road surface is “an embarrassment” with

“potholes that look like World War 1 shell craters”.

I do like unvarnished prose, uncluttered by euphemism and Government jargon. However, the serious point is that, although Transport Scotland has said that the road does not meet the criteria, it has not said why it does not. It has listed the criteria, and, as Rhoda Grant said, some of the criteria appear absolutely to apply. The road links remote communities and key tourist areas—those two criteria are clearly met. Deploying said Government-style prose, Transport Scotland says:

“Although there is linkage in relation to the A890 with some of these criteria, it is our assessment that the A890 does not sufficiently meet the criteria to be incorporated into the strategic motorway and trunk road network”.

However, it does not say why. I think that our job is to tease out why it does not sufficiently meet those criteria.

As I said before, Highland Council covers an area larger than Belgium and 20 per cent larger than Wales and has a far larger road network than any other local authority—even Scottish Borders Council, which has a substantial one. The burden of maintenance of those local roads is massive. If the A890 is designated as a national trunk road, which I believe it should be, that would at least diminish the impossible burden that Highland Council’s roads department bears in relation to dealing with the pothole situation across the network.

I strongly endorse what Rhoda Grant has argued for today, and I think that we need to pursue this issue further. It might be difficult to do so but, at the end of the day, Transport Scotland has got to show that it understands and is sympathetic to the interests of the Highlands. At the moment, the strong feeling in the Highlands is that that is not the case on the part of that Glasgow-based quango.

As it happens, I have by sheer coincidence spent many hundreds of hours dealing with the Family Law (Scotland) Act 1985. I think that most practitioners feel that that is a very good piece of legislation. It sets out clear rules for the division of matrimonial property on divorce and therefore does not have the problems that are associated with the Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006, which deals with cohabitants as opposed to married couples. Not all cohabitants necessarily want to make a lifelong commitment, so they cannot be equiparated.

At the time of the passage of the 2006 act, I opined that the Parliament perhaps felt that cohabitants were getting the same rights as married couples; they were not. The act provides a clear discretion to sheriffs to determine what financial settlement is suitable. The sheriffs—Sheriff Pyle, for example—and Court of Session judges have said that that discretion is very wide. That makes it difficult for lawyers to advise, because it is not clear what a fair outcome should be. All of that means that it would be desirable to have law reform. After all, that is the purpose of the Parliament.

The recommendation that has been made to us is that we might think of closing the petition because the Scottish Government anticipates bringing forward legislation in the current parliamentary session. I checked that yesterday in the programme for government and saw that it is not in the 2023-24 legislative programme. That means that it will probably be at the coo’s tail and perhaps not even at the coo’s tail.

My suggestion, therefore, is very simple, and cuts through all the complexities of the substantive issues. It is that we write to the Scottish Government before we close the petition, asking whether it is still the case that there is to be a bill during this session of the Parliament and, if not, we should ask for a view from the Law Commission and others, including Scottish Government officials, as to when that bill is likely to be ready.

The bill will be substantially dependent on the commission, the Law Society of Scotland and practitioners coming forward with a thesis. I do not think it is something that MSPs can be expected to bring forward. It is highly technical and complicated.

A lot of work has been done, but it looks as if the bill will not be before us during this session of the Parliament. Out of respect for the petitioner, therefore, we should find out the facts, given the absence of the bill in the programme for the coming year, which was announced yesterday.

It is ironic that, in one respect at least, we have achieved what the petitioner wanted before the petition has even been considered. That must be something that—

Yes, I agree with that. It was very helpful to have Monica Lennon’s exposition at the beginning, so I thank her for that. I will refer to a couple of bits of the evidence and then make a couple of recommendations.

The Lord Advocate was very clear that it is not her role to deal with matters relating to pathology. She started off by saying:

“We do not have a role in the recruitment or training of pathologists”.

She went on to say:

“It is really for the professional body to consider the quality, efficacy and benefits of the imaging and to determine whether imaging should be utilised in the process being undertaken. If the Royal College of Pathologists has identified a means by which post mortems can be less invasive when undertaken using imaging, then I as the Lord Advocate ... would reasonably expect that the pathologist advising the Crown on that issue would explain that the process was available and should be used.”—[Official Report, Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee, 14 June 2023; c 10, 14.]

In a sense, the Lord Advocate is saying that it is not her job but, if she is advised by the experts in the pathology world that that is something that should happen, as it does apparently in England—and, we hear today, in Japan and elsewhere—she would pay heed to that in her role. That seems to be no more than common sense, and entirely logical and correct.

Therefore, with one caveat, we should take up the suggestion of writing to the Royal College of Pathologists to highlight the evidence session, point out the evidence from the practitioners in England, stress that scanning and other processes appear to be available in England but not here, ask for an explanation of why that is and get its views on these matters—perhaps orally, if necessary, but in the first instance in writing. As the petitioner very clearly argues, there is a gap in the Scottish system, which results in the petitioner’s conclusion that nobody appears to care, which struck me in her remarks.

The one caveat is that, as the petitioner pointed out, the fiscal service’s contract that the Lord Advocate referred to a couple of times expires in seven months. If that is the case, the committee may feel that the new service-level contract should refer to specific duties to enable the provision of scanning and so on to be available where appropriate. Working backwards from that, for that to happen, we might want to flag up to the minister that that approach is in our minds, subject to getting professional expert advice from the pathologists.

Finally, the clerks have flagged up that the pathologists say that some of the medical and clinical decisions may involve radiologists as well as, or instead of, pathologists. Perhaps the clerks could consider from whom we require to obtain the most relevant evidence, and whether it is one or the other, or both—I suspect that it is both.

I am sorry that I spoke for so long, convener.

I absolutely understand the points that my colleagues who have proposed a different approach make. At the end of the day, Mr Torrance’s argument that the Scottish Government is not going to change its position seems to me to be pretty much correct and not really open to doubt. The views that colleagues have expressed are perfectly legitimate, but they perhaps need to be pursued in the political arena, because I am not sure that, as a committee, we will get any further with that.

I absolutely agree that we could write to the relevant minister setting out the reservations that we perhaps all have about the approach, but I do not think that the approach will change; indeed, I am certain that it will not change. Therefore, we should probably close the petition, subject to the helpful suggestion of writing to the minister. I share the concerns, as I think we all do. There is a particular problem in the Highlands because of the distances between available opportunities, shall we say.

I endorse that. I was struck by the detailed response that the petitioner gave to the Scottish Government’s main response. As well as saying that the Scottish Government does not seem to be covering the issues that he believes are relevant, he says that the multi-agency working group to which the Scottish Government refers might not include the right people, and he goes through who they might be.

I do not know much about the area, but the petitioner is basically saying that there are young people between 16 and 25 who go to gyms and have access to steroids with no guidance or information about how to use them and what the risks are. I think that he is saying that people in that world, who are in charge of running gyms and have a medical background, for instance, should be involved in the multi-agency working group.

When we write to the Scottish Government, could we specifically ask about the range of suggestions that the petitioner made so that we can get answers on them now? I suspect that, if we did not, we would get the same points from the petitioner again, who might feel that we have not pursued the substantive and concrete points that he made in his response.

I endorse David Torrance’s suggestion and support Paul O’Kane’s comments.

I have heard from constituents who are parents of a child with profound disabilities, who feel that they cannot travel south of Inverness because there are no facilities on the A9 that are suitable for their child. I thought that I would mention that, because, although the petition relates to the situation in Tyndrum, which is over on the A82 in the west, the issue is one that substantially affects rural Scotland, as the petitioner herself says.