Chamber and committees

You also talked about people closing ranks and your belief that you were not given all the facts or information.

As a mother of a family—a grieving mother—it is so important that you are given that respect and support. We have to trust organisations like the police to deliver that service, but obviously in this situation that was a massive failing.

And support the family.

That would be very acceptable. The strength of feeling on the matter is immense, and we have found out today that there is cross-party support for the petition. Thousands of individuals have made the petition part of their process and there is no doubt that there has been neglect of that process. That is coming through very strongly from the petitioner. Having the petitioner here would give us much more clarity. I also think that your idea of having the Minister for Transport come to the committee would be useful.

We need to get information from other organisations that are affected by the situation. Organisations such as the Society of Chief Officers of Transportation in Scotland have a part to play in this, as does the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation and even the Road Haulage Association. Those are the organisations whose members are using the road and are suffering from the situation. This morning, we have heard MSPs speak eloquently about the dangers on the road and what is possible.

I like the idea of this committee considering an inquiry if it is not possible to for another committee of the Parliament to do one. That could be investigated by the clerks, as you suggest. We should not lose sight of the fact that this committee has an opportunity to ensure that something is done on the matter. That would be my suggestion, as well as your own.

Thank you.

Is any other legislation in Scotland or the UK been raised with the petitioner? He is trying to achieve something, and we know that people are trying to achieve other things as well, such as through the circular economy bill and the UK extended producer responsibility scheme. What impact could they have on the petition and on how you plan to go forward?

We have asked questions about the petition in the past and we have received some assurances. However, there are a number of issues that we might still want to ask about. It might be advantageous to write to Social Security Scotland to ask whether it intends to set targets for application processing times for special and normal rules cases. That is vitally important for an application process. If we have targets, we will get an answer as to where we are, and there are other options that we can look at thereafter.

It is important that we collate as much information on this topic as we can. If we contact those agencies and organisations that you indicated, convener, they will be able to give us their views on any action that may be required. That will enable us to take a much better and a more holistic approach to challenging the issues raised by the petition. As Carol Mochan has said, the law requires updating. It has been decades since the issue has been examined in that way. By collecting that information and putting it all together we will have a much better picture as to how the issue is being approached across those organisations in Scotland.

This is a very important issue. We have heard about some areas in the submissions that we have already received, but we need to get more information. We should write to the Scottish Government highlighting the online systems that have been introduced in Australia and in the Netherlands and seek information on what considerations have been given to developing a similar service in Scotland for parents who have separated. It would be very useful for us to collate information on other countries that have put that in place.

It might be quite useful for us to seek the views of some of the organisations that we have here in Scotland, such as the Law Society of Scotland, the Family Law Association, the Scottish Legal Aid Board, the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service, Relationships Scotland and the family law committee of the Scottish Civil Justice Council, to find out where we can take the petition. Those are my suggestions, convener.

I think that we need to write to COSLA to ask which of the local authorities are yet to roll out the mentors in violence prevention programme in secondary schools, requesting information about what challenges have prevented implementation and details of work planned to address those. We should ask what challenges local government faces in embedding schools-based prevention of violence against women and girls.

We should also write to Rape Crisis Scotland to request information on its reporting mechanisms for its equally safe at school—ESAS—strategy and whether its planned work with local authorities has resulted in an increase in ESAS activities across Scotland. That information would be very useful and clarify where we are in this whole process. As you have indicated, convener, this is an immensely important issue. If measures are embedded at school level, that will help to prevent gender-based violence once pupils have left school.