Seòmar agus comataidhean

I am grateful to the petitioner for raising the matter. It is an interesting topic, and one can certainly understand the petitioner’s strength of feeling.

However, I think that we have looked into it in a fairly thorough fashion and, in the light of the fact that we are moving towards the fag end of the current session of Parliament and therefore have no scope to do much more than we have done, I suggest that we close the petition under rule 15.7 of standing orders, for the following four reasons.

Councils have the power to make management rules under the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982, and 11 of the 13 of the local authorities that responded to us have in place cemetery management rules to either exclude non-assistance dogs from cemeteries or require them to be on a leash or kept under close control.

A number of local authorities raised challenges that they face in enforcing existing cemetery management rules. They also stated that a new law would need money to fund enforcement—that is a practical reality, I guess. Finally, the Control of Dogs (Scotland) Act 2010 and the Dog Fouling (Scotland) Act 2003 require dogs to be kept under control and provide that, where a dog does its business in a public space, the person who is responsible must clear it up.

In the light of all those arguments, and with thanks to the petitioner, I propose that we close the petition.

Yes.

When will the other report be published? That is the general review, so I am told.

I want to pursue that point and the questions that Mr Lawrence posed on BE FAST, which includes visual and balance problems, as opposed to FAST. It is a fact that FAST does not necessarily pick up those eye and balance symptoms of the stroke that caused the death of the person concerned, so we are talking about people dying.

I have a couple of questions on the Forth Valley pilot. When will it be completed and reported on? Will the report cover the reservations about moving from FAST to BE FAST? To put it a bit too crudely, the reservations were that—bear with me—the public were too stupid to understand BE FAST because there is too much information there for it to grasp. That is basically what the experts say. FAST has four things to remember whereas BE FAST has six, and six is too many. I do not think that that is the case. Can that be specifically analysed in the Forth Valley study? If not, the pilot will be a bit of a waste of time.

The second criticism that you made, minister, was that BE FAST might result in a large number of people being referred to a hospital for no purpose because there is nothing wrong with them, which would cause an increase in workload in already stretched health services. That is a practical point, and I accept it.

Will those two arguments be tested in the pilot? If not, a sceptic would say that we are not really much further forward and that we have missed the opportunity for the pilot to analyse whether those two objections are real or overstated by clinicians and experts.

We are all in favour of conversing.

I appreciate the point about treating people with dignity, and I appreciate that it is a very sensitive topic and there are people with different views. However, I want to probe a wee bit further and take us through the consequences of the new policy. If a biological man is recorded as a biological man but declares to be a woman, how would that person be treated as the person goes through the criminal justice system? Would that person be treated as a man or as a woman when it comes to prosecution and—assuming that prosecution leads to a guilty finding—the sentence?

To follow up on Mr Golden’s question, three years is a long time. Has the Scottish Government recommended that the UK NSC speed up the review?

I will pursue the point that my colleague Davy Russell raised about the internal organisation of the police. I have no detailed knowledge of this but I understand from the website that, within the police, there is the Scottish Women’s Development Forum and the Scottish LGBTI Police Association. That is fair enough. However, I have been advised that, also within the police, there is an organisation called Police SEEN—sex equality and equity network—UK, representing those who describe themselves as “sex realists”, but attempts to have the organisation recognised by Police Scotland have not been agreed to. Is that correct? Will you talk me through that?

I get the sense that the ethos of the police is to be as supportive as possible, to recognise different views and not to get involved in some of the stuff that we have seen about public bodies disciplining people because they are deemed to hold unacceptable views, which has led to a tremendous outcry in the public, and rightly so. I am looking for some assurance that Police Scotland is understanding of, sympathetic to and supportive of those officers who have particular views, including those who feel, as I and many others do, that biological males should not be housed in women’s prisons and who take a sex realist point of view, while recognising, as the deputy chief constable said, the need to be sensitive and fair and to treat other people as you wish to be treated yourself.

That will be communicated to staff after the final report, which will follow the September 2024 review and the June 2025 interim update, which I understand was provided. When will that final report be made public?

I would be happy to begin the relationship, which would be very exciting.