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I entirely agree that the petition should be kept open and that evidence should be taken from the minister, so I am entirely satisfied with that suggestion.

I want to make two points. First, if there are to be three units, that means that the whole of the Highlands, including Morayshire, Argyll and the isles will not have such a facility. We should reflect on that, because there are very strong feelings in hospitals there that face potential closure. That has been a very live issue, particularly in Wick and Elgin, over the years. My late wife was involved in saving the maternity unit in Moray many decades ago.

Secondly, I ask Jackie Baillie to clarify something, either now or, if she needs to get more information, later. You indicated that the performance of the Wishaw unit was the best, not just in Scotland but in the whole of the UK. I am interested to know, either now or later, but certainly before we take evidence from the minister, what the statistical evidential basis is for that judgment.

I agree with those comments, but I also reflect on the fact that imprisonment serves various necessary purposes. Those include incapacitation to protect the public, deterrence against future crime, rehabilitation—which is important and challenging—and punishment. Punishment is the price that people pay in losing their liberty for committing a very serious crime. It cannot be morally justifiable to somehow elide punishment as a justification for imprisonment. The public would find it difficult to agree that punishment is not appropriate where someone commits a rape or a murder. Punishment is a necessary—though not the sole—function of imprisonment, and, in my humble opinion, it must always be so.

Yes, I do.

I do not demur from that recommendation. However, the controversy regarding the expected content of the Scottish Government's bill will not recede. The controversy may actually intensify once people grasp that the bill may not achieve what a great many people believe that it should achieve and that they want it to achieve, although that may just be a personal observation.

For the reasons that the convener and Mr Golden have given, there is nothing further that we can do with the petition at this stage.

This petition is similar to one of the previous petitions, in that we have received a substantive supplementary written submission from the petitioner commenting on the Scottish Government’s response. In that submission, dated 5 September, which is fairly recent, the petitioner makes some fairly fundamental criticisms of the Scottish Government’s response. For example, the petitioner suggests that there is perhaps an inappropriate closeness between the Scottish Government and the GTCS, as evidenced by the fact that, within 24 hours of the petition’s publication, Scottish Government staff had emailed senior figures at the GTCS, which raises questions about the independence of the GTCS.

What is more significant is that the Scottish Government’s response referred to the PSA criticism, and the PSA has, as you said, convener, made a very detailed report. It added other criticisms, incidentally. For example, it said that the five-year rule is entirely arbitrary, which is absolutely correct. However, the Scottish Government did not actually mention the fact that the PSA report was fairly critical with regard to how these reports are normally shaped. In fact, it was very critical indeed. The Scottish Government also did not say that the equivalent of the GTCS in England was abolished in 2012—it just does not mention that at all. Therefore, plainly, that is something that could be done. I am not advocating for that—I am not taking a side on this—but, to give voice to the petitioner, we should go back to the Scottish Government to ask for a specific response on the points that the petitioner has made, and to ask what exactly is going to be done to address those criticisms, in the light of the fact that the report from the professional standards authority, which, as I understand it, is an independent body, was critical in numerous aspects.

It all looks to me as though there is potential substance to the petitioner’s claim that there is a very cosy relationship between all these bodies and that their leaders pass between them, so that the independence is theoretical, not real. I am not suggesting that we call on the minister to give evidence, because I am aware of the timetable pressure. I would have called for that had we been earlier in the parliamentary session. However, I think that we should make those requests of the Scottish Government for a specific response to the petitioner and to hear what it feels must be done in relation to pursuing the PSA recommendations, rather than it just drifting away and nothing happening, which is often the case.

Well—festina lente, you know.

I speak in support of what my colleague Ed Mountain said. I, too, have constituents who have profound concerns about the way in which complaints are dealt with. They feel that they are kept in the dark. No information is ever given to them about anything, and they are left feeling completely impotent. That might be because of GDPR or the law, and it might not be; I do not know.

What I know is that the system is inherently wrong: public bodies are failing to observe the first basic principle of any justice system, which is nemo judex in causa sua. To put it in plain English, they are marking their own jotters. Any public body, when facing criticism, will circle the wagons and defend itself. That is an instinct. It is very simple: there is an inherent conflict of interest between defending its own interests as a public body and dealing with a complaint from a third party.

This petition has been on the go for three years. To supplement what Mr Mountain has said—I drew this to the convener’s and the clerks’ attention prior to the meeting—I point out that fairly recently, on 26 September, we published the petitioners’ supplementary submission. In that submission, they make new substantive points. The first is about the growing support of MSPs; they mention all the MSPs who have supported the petition. Then, they talk about the GTCS and the patent defects of its filtering out of child safeguarding referrals at the initial stage. The defect is that the GTCS basically goes what with the education authority says—so much so that, according to the submission, the statistics show that

“only 26% of referrals received from the public”

were investigated

“compared with 92% of employer referrals.”

That was the finding of the Professional Standard Authority, which is, itself, independent and which also criticised the system, having

“found that the GTCS relied solely on the referral information”.

No one acting in any judicial capacity can rely on hearing only one side of the case. That is a breach of a second principle of natural law: audi alteram partem, which, as Latin scholars will know, means “listen to both sides of the case”. It could not be more elementary and yet, three years on, we are no further forward.

I accept entirely that we are moving towards the end of this parliamentary session. However, there are six months left in it. I hope that colleagues feel that this is fair: given the cross-party support for the petition, its obvious strong points and the petitioners submission in September, the least that we should do is invite the Scottish Government to respond specifically to the points that were made in that submission. It sets a good example: as the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee, we must ensure that the Scottish Government responds to the other side of the case.

I know that we are under a lot of pressure to close petitions and I will not be arguing that every petition should be kept open. There are only two this morning that I think that about—which, for me, is a very modest bag—and this is one of them. It has an extremely strong case and, three years later, we are not any further forward.

Mr Lumsden has raised some salient points, many of which I agree with. Those include the threat to the stability of the grid from the impending closure of nuclear stations and the uncertainty surrounding Peterhead. Without base load and back-up, it is more difficult to provide stability and synchronicity—and, therefore, inertia—to the grid. This is a technical topic, where more facts, more scientific analysis and less politics would be extremely useful in Britain.

Aside from that, the Robert Gordon University report, which I think was written by Paul de Leeuw, whom I know, warned that the oil and gas industry in the UK could lose 400 jobs every fortnight, which is a staggering figure. There is a lot more that could be said, in particular that Britain cannot have industry unless energy costs are on a par with those of our European neighbours, at least—which they are not. Therefore, industry is likely to cease to exist in Britain, where it is energy intensive, within the next five years. That is a point that one does not hear very much.

I have raised a few issues, and my suggestion as to what we do with the petition is this. I hesitate to recommend closing the petition, although I know that the pressure is there. Instead, we should write to the Government, suggesting that there should be a full debate on the matter in the Parliament. I suggest that we have two full days on energy, or at least one day, which would allow us to have a proper debate, with lengthy contributions from people—from all parties—who have an interest in the topic. It is a complicated, wide-ranging debate.

The idea that we cannot have an energy policy because of developments, as Mr Lumsden has described, is absurd. There are developments all the time. That is not a reason for not having a policy; it is a pretext.

It is reasonable for us to suggest that the degree of interest in the matter is such that there should be a parliamentary debate on it. I note that the petitioner is a student studying the economics of renewable energy at Heriot-Watt University, and she has made a lot of useful points to us. We should raise the issues with the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Energy at the thematic evidence session that we will be having soon. That will probably have to be quite a long session. I am sure that many members would wish to participate, and rightly so.

I have two issues with regard to the first area we are looking at—patient experience. The cabinet secretary is well aware that I have raised the issue of vaccination services incessantly since 2022, because the general practitioner contract was taken away from GPs and centralised in 2018. Not only has that been a complete catastrophe in the Highlands; as the cabinet secretary knows, it is also believed to have directly led to the death of an infant—not in my constituency, but in the Highlands—because the mother did not get notice of the necessary vaccine for the pertussis virus, or whooping cough, at the right time.

Cabinet secretary, despite my raising that matter with you and the First Minister, and despite the fact that, as I understand it, you have now said that the contract should be returned to GPs, it still has not been. Therefore, people from all over the Highlands have to travel to Inverness. It is sometimes a journey that they cannot make themselves, because of infirmity, because they lack access to a car or other means of transport or because they have to get their parent or friend to take time off work. Is centralisation not completely wrong? Why did the Scottish Government allow it to happen in the first place? When will such services be restored to GPs?

I raise a question of which I have given notice to the cabinet secretary regarding the pause on capital funding for new primary care, and the particular example, in my constituency, of the Culloden medical practice, which has been seeking to move to new purpose-built premises for many years. It is the only practice in the Highlands that has had to close its books to new patients, simply because of the huge pressure of the number of patients on its list. I know that similar pressures might well exist in other parts of Scotland—most of the parts of Midlothian, for example—so this is not only about my constituency, but about a wider issue.

The practice has a tough decision to make. Does it wait for the new premises that it really needs or go for a temporary solution of portakabins, which will cost £300,000 pounds? It does not know, because it does not know when the pause will be lifted. Not only is the pause preventing the service to people in my constituency, who cannot get into the practice, but the practice itself is hamstrung, because it is not armed with information to enable it to make an informed, rational decision.

Cabinet secretary, I suggest that the money can easily be found from the public sector heat decarbonisation fund of £200 million, through which, in one case, the Scottish Government saw fit to spend an estimated £3,560,000 on a building worth £275,000—so, 13 times more than the building’s value. Instead of throwing money away on such ridiculous, preposterous expenditure, it would be better to spend it on the health service, which is really important to people’s lives in Scotland right now.