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In his evidence, Ian McKinnon—I should say that I have known him for 20 years—said:

“If we cannot provide the basics of litter collection, toilets and parking—and we are not doing that in our existing national parks—we should not be considering creating another one in the future.”—[Official Report, Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee, 30 October 2024; c 12.]

Is he not right?

I sympathise with Foysol Choudhury’s point, but I am not sure that prolonging the life of the petition will—

As a resident and representative of a large part of the Cairngorms national park, I beg to differ about that, and tend to agree with the 92 per cent of my constituents who said that the park is not performing well. I say that with some sadness, because it is not what one would wish.

However, to go back—and this is the last area that I want to address, convener—the beef of the petition is in point two, in which the petitioners call on the Scottish Government to

“Instruct an independent review on the operation of the current National Parks, including assessment of the economic impacts on businesses & industries within the two parks including, but not exclusive to, farming, forestry, crofting and angling.”

The parks have been in existence for 21 years. There has been no independent analysis of their performance. Yes, there are reports, and there are board members. However—and the petitioners make this point—board members are not allowed to express public criticism of the national park. One wonders what the point of board members is if they are gagged in that way—and I know that they are, because I know many of them and have watched that in operation, sadly.

The central point is, why are we creating another body, when there has been no proper, thorough and entirely independent analysis of how the two existing bodies have functioned over 21 years? When I say “independent analysis”, I do not mean, as Peter Rawcliffe suggested in his evidence to the committee, that some university should be appointed to carry out an independent review of the work that NatureScot does. I wonder which university will be picked for that and whether it will be one that will produce answers that are congenial to NatureScot, which, plainly, wants another national park and is not impartial in any way.

Surely the case for independent analysis is unassailable. With respect, the answers that have been given so far by you and NatureScot have been completely inadequate. The so-called benefits that you alluded to—the economic benefits—have been created by businesses and people in the national parks, not by the national parks themselves. As you said, a national park has very limited powers; therefore, the idea that hundreds of millions of pounds have accrued from the oeuvre, the efforts, the labour, and the input of the national park is for the birds.

The Scottish National Party did not include the new national park in its manifesto. It is a Bute House agreement legacy promise, and the Bute house agreement has been torn up. Why is the Scottish Government going ahead with this when there are so many so many more important things to do? If you are intent on going ahead with it, surely there must be a properly independent analysis—which is the central ask of the petitioners.

Yes. I am not familiar with the circumstances in the central belt of Scotland, but certainly in the north of Scotland, many rural communities have no bus services whatsoever. With the bus services in Inverness, which are provided by Stagecoach, the problem has not been one of regulation or otherwise; it has been a lack of drivers. Indeed, it is a very serious problem. The very detailed exchange that my constituency office has had with Stagecoach indicates that it has gone to great lengths to sort the problem, and it has recruited more drivers. I thought that I would make that point, convener, because I am genuinely unfamiliar with the issues that the members have raised, and I defer to their experience.

I certainly concur.

Regretfully, I agree that the committee cannot do much more. If there is a gap—I do not doubt that there is one—it will not be filled by the particular recommendation that the petitioners make, which is to have a kind of separate system. If there is a gap, the ask will not fill it.

or benefit the aims of it.

I endorse what the convener and Jackie Baillie have said. Plainly, thanks to the courage and campaigning efforts of Sir Chris Hoy, this has been very much a matter of public debate and concern. It affects a huge number of people, including men in the west of Scotland and furth of the west of Scotland.

In addition to what has been said, I note that the submission from the screening committee is dated 20 February 2024, and we are now some distance away from then. The NSC commissioned an analysis of screening in response to submissions of six proposals for screening of various categories of people who might be thought to be at particular risk—I will not go through them all now. Given the urgency of the matter, I would very much like to know the timescale for the completion of those studies. When will they conclude? Will they drift on for ever while more people die, or is a time limit being placed on those efforts by the UK Government and the Scottish Government, I hope, working together?

I second David Torrance’s suggestion and support further examination of the consequences of pump storage, as Edward Mountain has eloquently set out, not least because of the potential for disturbance of the habitat of my most famous, albeit elusive, constituent, Nessie.

There is a great deal of support for pump storage schemes in principle, and I am among the most enthusiastic of supporters. I should say for transparency that I am due to speak to Mr Shaw later and have been in correspondence with him about the issue.

The concern about the impact of pump storage schemes is an enduring one, and the right time to bottom out the issues is now, not when it is too late. I do not know what the answers are. Mr Mountain has expertise in this area, and so do many other people. I have had many discussions, over many years, with the Ness District Salmon Fishery Board and others who are interested in the success of our wild salmon sector. The petition addresses an enduring concern that will not go away. We must bottom things out. This is the time for the Government to get to grips with the issue.

I have a supplementary suggestion to make. I would like to find out what work has been done by the developers. Plainly, all the developers will have commissioned their own research. In the interests of openness and transparency, I suggest that we write to the developers, including the developers of the project in question, and to SSE. I suspect that they will have already commissioned reports on the impacts on wild salmon. In order that we can have a proper debate, we should ask them to make those reports public, to avoid any suggestion that any unwelcome or inconvenient truths that might have emerged from those reports are being kept secret. We need to get to grips with the issue. If we do not, others in decades to come might well question what we were doing.

Are you ruling out a local referendum, cabinet secretary?