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The second item on our agenda is consideration of continued petitions. The first petition is PE2099, an extraordinarily important petition on which the committee has previously engaged and has undertaken a site visit to the neonatal intensive care unit in Wishaw, where we were pleased to meet the petitioner, Lynn McRitchie.

The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to stop the planned downgrading of established and high-performing specialist neonatal intensive care services across NHS Scotland from level 3 to level 2 and to commission an independent review of that decision in the light of contradictory expert opinions on centralised services.

At our previous consideration of the petition, the committee agreed to take evidence from the British Association of Perinatal Medicine’s best start perinatal sub-group, and the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health. We will hear from the minister at a subsequent meeting, but at today’s meeting we will take evidence first from Dr Stephen Wardle, the president of the British Association of Perinatal Medicine, who joins us online, and then from members of the best start perinatal sub-group.

Good morning, Dr Wardle. I see that all the graphics on your background image have been reversed, so we are seeing all the text behind you the wrong way round. It is difficult to work out what it all says—those who are following the proceedings can puzzle over what it means.

We are also joined by our colleagues Clare Adamson and Monica Lennon. If there is time after committee members have asked their questions, I will invite both of them to put their questions to the witness.

Dr Wardle, is there anything that you would like to say by way of introduction?

Good morning, and welcome to the 18th meeting of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee in 2025. I apologise for our starting slightly late. We will be joined by a galaxy of parliamentary talent from different parties during the course of the meeting. As always, I hope that time will permit those who wish to contribute to our proceedings to have the opportunity to do so.

Our first item of business is the always rather technical one of agreeing that we will consider the evidence that we have heard this morning in private under agenda items 4 and 5. Are colleagues content with that proposal?

Members indicated agreement.

I invite my two parliamentary colleagues to contribute a question.

You must draw your questions to a conclusion, Ms Lennon.

I will draw the evidence session to a conclusion, but thank you both very much for your concise and informed evidence.

These are highly emotional and emotive issues. I hope that at no time would you get the impression that the committee is anything other than respectful of your clinical experience and the experience that you brought to any review. However, in pursuing the aims of the petitioner, I often say that we are at a magnificent advantage in this committee in that we are not following any party’s political election manifesto; we are following the aims of a petition that has been lodged by people who are concerned. Our job is to take that argument as far as we possibly can. I am very grateful to you both for your time. I will suspend the meeting briefly before we move to the next agenda item.

Welcome back. Our colleague Maurice Golden is no longer with us, as he has to leave to move amendments at another committee.

As we move on to consider other petitions, I have to say, as convener—and this is very difficult to admit—that we have 119 or so petitions still open, and very few committee meetings left before Parliament dissolves in next April, with the last sitting day of the Parliament being 26 March. Therefore, the committee has to determine what more we can do in respect of open petitions, even if what we decide might disappoint petitioners. There are petitions that we still think have merit and which might even be progressed; with others, it might be best if a fresh petition were lodged at the commencement of the next parliamentary session in May 2026.

We will now look at four petitions that were part of a thematic healthcare evidence-taking session that we had with the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, Neil Gray: PE1723, on essential tremor treatment in Scotland; PE1871, on a full review of mental health services; PE2017, on extending the period that specialist perinatal mental health support is made available beyond one year; and PE2070, on stopping same-day-only general practitioner appointments.

Our health-themed evidence session looked at the themes of patient experience; diagnostic and treatment pathways; capacity, skills and training; sustainability of funding and health service infrastructure; and post Covid-19 impacts and response. We were, to a greater or lesser extent, able to explore those issues with the cabinet secretary and to follow up further matters in writing.

This morning, we are considering the petitions that sat under the first of those themes—that is, patient experience. The committee has explored the specific issues raised in the petitions through written evidence from stakeholders and ministers, and the thematic issues were also explored in our recent oral evidence-taking session with the cabinet secretary.

During that thematic evidence-taking session, we raised the fact that a number of the petitions highlight a gap between policy, strategies and people’s experience of services. The cabinet secretary accepted that there can be gaps between policy and delivery—indeed, that was the very subject of the evidence session that we have just held—and noted that there can be a variation in delivery between health boards for geographical or demographic reasons.

We are joined again by Monica Lennon, who will speak to the petition on the full review of mental health services, and I will invite her to say a few words after I have summarised the petition. We are also joined by our colleague Douglas Lumsden, who will speak to PE2017 on perinatal mental health support.

The first of the petitions in this section is PE1723, which has been lodged by Mary Ramsay and calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to raise awareness of essential tremor and to support the introduction and use of a focused ultrasound scanner for treating people in Scotland who have the condition.

The cabinet secretary confirmed to us that the ultrasound service is being provided in Tayside, and the written follow-up confirms that between April 2023 and April 2025 47 patients have been treated in Dundee, and that no patients have been referred to England for that treatment. During oral evidence, the cabinet secretary stated that, if it were found that a service had a level of demand that would merit expanded provision beyond one specialist service in Scotland, the Scottish Government would consider that. Therefore, considerable progress has been made on that petition.

PE1871, on a full review of mental health services, has been lodged by Karen McKeown, who we heard from earlier in the parliamentary session, on behalf of the shining lights for change group. It calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to carry out a full review of mental health services in Scotland, including the referral process; crisis support; risk assessment; safe plans; integrated services working together; first response support; and the support available to families affected by suicide.

We have pursued the issues that the petitioner has raised. In our oral evidence session, the cabinet secretary highlighted the Government’s focus on preventing people from moving into a mental health crisis in the first place by looking at whole-family support and addressing poverty and social factors in order to reduce the acute level of mental health need.

The then Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport, Maree Todd, wrote to the committee in October 2024 to respond to a range of concerns raised by the petitioner, including data on effectiveness and consistency, admittance to mental health acute beds, workforce wellbeing, and training for the wider mental health and wellbeing workforce. The petitioner has provided a written submission highlighting outstanding issues in relation to data collection and reiterates her call for a review of mental health services.

Monica Lennon, do you wish to make any brief comments at this stage in the consideration of the petition?

I think it is fair to say that no petitioner has been more assiduous in keeping committee members abreast of developments, some of which have been outwith this committee: they have been the direct result of her own intervention.

Our next petition is PE1976, lodged by Derek James Brown, which calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to require council tax discounts to be backdated to the date on which a person was certified as being severely mentally impaired when they then go on to qualify for a relevant benefit.

We last considered the petition in March, when we agreed to write to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government. We were struck by the merits of the petition. The cabinet secretary’s response to the committee states that the Scottish Government appreciates the concerns that the committee has raised and that it agrees in principle with the argument that is presented by the petitioner. The submission confirms that the Government is

“exploring legislative options and intends to introduce proposals in the coming months”

to address the issue raised in the petition. The petitioner has warmly welcomed the cabinet secretary’s response, and he hopes and trusts that the Scottish Government’s work will lead to the adoption of the request that was made in the petition.

In this instance, we have had an encouraging response from the Government. Given that, I hope that the aims of the petition can be fulfilled. In the light of the circumstances that we have been returning to all morning, does Mr Torrance have a proposal for the committee’s consideration?

Thank you, Mr Ewing. Due to your erudition, Latin is used more frequently in this committee than it is in any other committee of the Parliament. In any event—mea culpa, nostra culpa or whatever—are we content to keep the petition open and to pursue the issues as described?

Members indicated agreement.

PE2132, lodged by The Inverness Courier, calls on the Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to publish a clear timeline for dualling the A96 between Inverness and Nairn and for the construction of a bypass for Nairn, and to ensure that that timeline is made public by Easter 2025.

In fact, we last considered the petition after Easter 2025, when we wrote to the Cabinet Secretary for Transport. The response informed us that the Scottish ministers took title of the land acquired through the general vesting declaration—or GVD—process on 21 April.

As for a timetable for progress, the cabinet secretary stated that that would be set in line with available budgets, following completion of the work to determine the most suitable procurement option for delivering the schemes. The cabinet secretary indicated that that work would align with the work on assessing the mutual investment model—the MIM—for the dualling of the A9. Therefore, the decision on the use of the MIM for the A96 would be considered alongside or following the A9 decision, which the cabinet secretary expected “later in 2025”. Since then, there have been no further public updates regarding that work.

Do colleagues have any suggestions on how we might act?