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That is extremely helpful. The reason I asked the question is that, in the evidence that Transport Scotland officials gave to the committee on 14 June, they implied that, back when the deadline was set, it was aspirational. That is just not true.

Well, yes. I will move swiftly on to the £14.7 billion. The second revelation that you have made again confounds the impression that Transport Scotland was intent to give, which was that this was all too difficult; that it was, perhaps, the politicians who had set an impossible task; and that Transport Scotland could not really be blamed for not having delivered it. You have said that the analysis in 2015 was that there was an unallocated amount in capital of £14.7 billion and that the estimates that were made at the time for dualling both the A9 and the A96 were broadly £6 billion, based on a figure of £30 million a mile. If you do the maths, you find that that was a conservative estimate. My point is that you are saying today that, in fact, there was masses of cash available and that, if 40 per cent of it was applied to the roads promises, they could and should have been delivered on time. Is that an adequate and correct summary?

Can you also give us a little more detail on that £14.7 billion if you are able to? What period did it cover and how was it worked out? Did officials provide you with that in a memo? To get to the truth of this, as is our task, we will need to see all those documents and many others. We can discuss that in due course, no doubt, but could you flesh out your evidence on the £14.7 billion a bit more?

Can we write to Police Scotland to ask how it intends to fund improvements to the ways in which digital evidence is submitted and, in particular, where the funding will come from to implement the digital evidence-sharing capability programme?

I wonder whether I might make an additional suggestion. My understanding is that dashcam technology is available throughout police forces in Wales and England. Scotland therefore appears to be the laggard. Reference has been made to the Welsh experience and the technology company Nextbase, which apparently provides some services free of charge, whereas the Scottish Government and Police Scotland tend to labour the costs of this. Plainly, there is a slight contradiction in the evidence that is before us.

Can we write to the UK Government or to police forces in England and Wales or their representatives to try to elicit information on their experience? They have implemented the technology already. How much did it cost them, what have the benefits been and what has been their experience and evaluation of it? It seems to me that, since they have done it, we should learn from them.

The A9 dualling between Perth and Inverness is entirely excluded. The A96 section from Inverness and Smithton to Auldearn, east of Nairn, and the Nairn bypass are excluded, but the residue of the undualled A96 is not excluded and, indeed, that is subject to a review, the results of which are promised to be announced by the Government apparently fairly soon. What you say is nearly correct, but not absolutely accurate.

Thank you very much for your evidence this morning. It has been informative, revelatory and quite explosive. My constituents want to know why we have not delivered our promises, and you are steering us towards the answers today. I just want to probe a couple of bits of that.

You said that the officials had provided you with the timing of when each section could be done. You read that out helpfully for the record. In other words, you did not say, “I want you to do this work by such and such”; you said, “When can it be done?”, and they provided you with the memo of 28 May 2012, which said that it could be done by 2025. Is that correct? It was not your deadline; it was when they said that the job could be completed by.

I have a short final question. Mr Neil, why do you think that the A9 dualling project has fallen so very far behind schedule?

We may need to ask your successors what they did—

I note the cabinet secretary’s response, which is brief. What it does not say is that, although the statement was made to the Scottish Parliament on 29 June that the proposals would not be going ahead, one of the Green MSPs said shortly afterwards that the Scottish Government was

“committed to bringing forward these proposals”,

so what was in the statement was immediately contradicted in the press. Since then, the cabinet secretary has said that she will bring forward other measures.

The industry itself is highly sceptical. The Scottish Fishermen’s Federation has talked about the measures being brought back in by the back door, and when I speak to fishing representatives in Clyde, Shetland, the Western Isles and elsewhere, as well as the SFF, I hear grave concern. Instead of closing the petition now—the issues have not really gone away, which is the point that I am making—could we write to the Scottish Government to seek an update on its alternative plans to enhance the protection of the marine environment and whether they will include HPMAs? That appears to be the case, even though such a move appears to have been ruled out.

In addition, could we specifically request the Scottish Government to tell us what engagement it is having with Duncan Macinnes and the Western Isles Fishermen’s Association, with Elaine Whyte and her colleagues in Clyde and with all the bodies that represent inshore fisheries? They have tremendous knowledge and are doing tremendous things, but they have just been completely skated over.

Finally, 37 per cent of our seas are already designated as marine protected areas, but there has been no mention by the Scottish Government whether there should be a review of the existing designations of MPAs. It has always seemed to me—as a logician, I would hope—that before you embark on a series of brand-new measures, you should work out how effective or otherwise the existing measures have been as well as the economic impacts. As a former fisheries minister, I know that the impacts issue is highly controversial, because the fishermen feel that they have never been properly assessed and are repeatedly underestimated. We need look only at the number of vessels closing—we are losing vessels all over Scotland. It is a dire situation.

I am sorry—perhaps I have gone on too long, but I feel that we should keep the petition open and ask in writing for a lot of detail. Indeed, I am pretty sure that that is what the petitioner and many others would want us to do.

I want to raise a wider issue about citizen participation. As we know, the purpose of this committee—good morning, minister—is to act on the side, as it were, of David versus Goliath, which is the Government.

It is a shame that the fleet was so prematurely deprived of Alex Neil, its admiral, but—[Laughter.]