Chamber and committees

I put on record that the petitioner is a constituent of mine and he has discussed the petition with me, so I will let my colleagues make recommendations.

I wonder whether the committee could write to the Minister for Victims and Community Safety to ask how the petitioners and contributors to the petition can meaningfully engage with the consultation and to request that the committee be updated as the Scottish Government’s work progresses. Once we have done that, I am not sure that we could take the petition any further. Therefore, would the committee consider closing the petition, under rule 15.7 of standing orders, on the basis that the Scottish Government is progressing the issue that the petition raised?

In the light of the ombudsman’s comments, would the committee agree to write to the Scottish Government to ask whether it will consider undertaking a review of the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman Act 2022?

Were you ever advised by any officials that that date could not be met?

What did you understand when officials said that the 2025 date for completion was “challenging” and concerns were raised about it?

In her evidence to the committee, Màiri McAllan, who was the cabinet secretary at the time, said that the A9 dualling project was to be funded by a mixture of traditional capital funding and PFI and public-private partnership funding. Is that your recollection?

Thank you. I have no further questions.

Good morning, Mr Salmond. As First Minister, would you have expected to have been advised by ministers or officials if the dualling of the A9 was running behind schedule or over budget? Were you advised of that?

Has Food Standards Scotland undertaken any work to influence the school curriculum—in particular, relating to educating children on online nutrition-related misinformation on popular apps such as Instagram and TikTok?

That leads me to ask whether Food Standards Scotland has a strong social media presence. If you are trying to influence a certain age group, especially the younger generation, you need a strong social media presence. How do you measure that? You could measure how many hits your website gets or how many people look at your social media stuff. Do you do that?