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Constituents who have contacted me have raised a wider issue that merits investigation. The use of such products and the potential defects that result in significant chronic pain and other medical complications are not well understood, but the significant level of anecdotal evidence merits formal investigation. Insufficient effort has been put in to achieve that, so the petition is worth while. It would be reasonable to initiate inquiries with the cabinet secretary in the first instance by inviting him to say how the Government will proceed with a formal investigation.

I agree that the current planning framework is not well defined enough in respect of ancient woodlands, and it could benefit from being enhanced, as proposed by the petitioners, to turn ancient woodlands into what are in effect enforced wilderness. As that would be beneficial from a policy perspective, there is a legitimate basis to keeping the petition open.

I thank everyone for their enlightening submissions. In particular, I note that the budget for the project has already been approved by Transport Scotland. I would like to know whether that is a general provision or whether the detailed specification is locked in, by which I mean: is the budget conditional on there being an automatic dependent surveillance broadcast system, or could there be a primary and secondary radar system?

I note that the Prospect trade union held a strike at the end of July, which escalated matters. It would be worth finding out what the latest situation is in that regard. We could find out whether the workforce and their representatives would be willing to make a submission on the issue.

Those are the key things that it would be good to know at this point.

The concerns raised by the petitioners are incredibly important and colleagues’ submissions today have been enlightening. I am curious about the role of NHS health boards in those areas and how accountable they actually are. That is the elephant in the room here, is it not? They are meant to be the democratic voice of stakeholders in those regions, but it is clear that they are not performing that role effectively, given that this issue is now arising from groups that have been formed more organically underneath that structure. Consideration needs to be given to how effective health boards are in representing the interests of their areas. Should the committee write to ask the health boards how they can respond to the concerns raised by the petitioners and how they can redesign their services to respond to the issues raised by the petitioners?

How transparent are the appointments to those health boards? Is there an election process that is well known about? Should they not be considered to be as important as local council elections, for example, with regard to developing representation? That is therefore an element to consider: how democratic and accountable are health boards? They are quite opaque.

I resist the move to close the petition. The issue seems prima facie to be reserved, but significant provisions are in devolved legislation, and particularly the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019. That act provides for establishing bus services improvement partnerships, which probably represent the weakest form of regulation after a purely laissez-faire system. The act also contains provisions on franchising and direct public ownership. The Scottish Government has significant regulatory capacity when defining a bus franchise—for example, it can insist on the achievement of certain service standards. That depends not necessarily on legislation but on how well designed a franchise agreement is.

There are significant financial incentives. About 45 per cent of all bus company turnover in Scotland is from public subsidy, and provisions or conditionality could be attached to that public subsidy, which is from the Scottish Government. New vehicles that were procured could be required to meet a certain quality of specification, which would provide such capability in a service.

Given those factors alone, there are significant provisions for the Scottish Parliament as a legislature to design a better service standard that would meet the petitioner’s concerns. The issue is not solely about reserved powers. The committee also has capacity to engage with the Scotland Office and ask what efforts it might make to amend legislation at Westminster to back up any action. There is a breadth of opportunity for us to pursue the petition.

I am generally supportive of the idea of dualling the national trunk road network for safety reasons. That is sometimes conflated with environmental concerns, but the safety implications of dualling on trunk roads are critical.

Elena Whitham raised a wider point about rail substitution. A wider assessment of the ability to move freight from the ports at Cairnryan and Stranraer on to rail is worthy of consideration.

What is lacking, certainly on the west coast, is a port strategy generally. There needs to be consideration of the utilisation of some of the Firth of Clyde ports further north, such as the port at Greenock, for moving freight on to the motorway network. That would help to relieve pressure on the Ayrshire trunk road network.

I think that all these things are considered in isolation, so perhaps it might be worth writing to the relevant ministers to ask for this to be considered in the strategic transport projects review. We need to look at things in a wider sense, because there is no consideration of ports infrastructure in the west of Scotland and how that is managed. It is, in effect, a free market, but that has significant public costs that are not properly accounted for.

The issue has been raised in debates in other Parliaments, particularly in relation to myalgic encephalomyelitis. Lyme disease is a contributory factor to the long-term chronic illness that is defined as ME. It might be of interest to better understand the interaction between the research on the two subjects, because the disease is another condition that people often feel is not taken seriously by the medical profession. That might be worth considering, as part of our consideration of the petition.

I have an additional point, convener. My experience of dealing with planning applications locally is that online consultations have become more of a feature. In many cases, the online facility has increased participation in planning consultations, just because the physical logistics of attending are much more straightforward. This might be an opportunity to ask whether a study has been done of the effectiveness of that procedure. It might be good to consider having online facilities as well as physical facilities. We could ask the Government whether it has reviewed the effectiveness of the way in which consultations have been undertaken.

In its submission, the Scottish Government is basically saying that it would need a submission from the petitioner on why the grounds would justify the use of RPM, which is seen as quite an unusual and anachronistic process in current times. Generally, the matter would be referred to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. However, given the historical nature of this absolutely horrific activity, the RPM would seem to be the more appropriate process, given that it involves the First Minister alone making a discretionary decision to refer the matter to the Queen for a pardon. That means that it does not need to go through a particularly onerous legalistic exercise to determine harms, the merits and demerits of cases, and so on. The historical facts of the horrific nature of this past superstitious activity would simply be accepted, and a political decision would be made at the First Minister’s discretion once the Government was equipped with a briefing of the historical incidents and their nature. I think that such an exercise would be more straightforward in realising the aims of the petitioner’s request.

Absolutely. That sounds like a reasonable course of action.