Seòmar agus comataidhean

I endorse what Rhoda Grant said. If she does not mind my saying so, if rock falls on the A890 have been a problem since she was at school, the issue did not arise yesterday. I can put it no more candidly than that.

To be serious, this is a Highland problem, and it has been highlighted very well. The community councils have replied. Plockton community council has pointed out that, when the road is closed, there is a 130-mile diversion. Who in the central belt would put up with that? The community council also refers to the closures because of rock landslides, which Rhoda Grant has referred to today, and the fact that the road surface is “an embarrassment” with

“potholes that look like World War 1 shell craters”.

I do like unvarnished prose, uncluttered by euphemism and Government jargon. However, the serious point is that, although Transport Scotland has said that the road does not meet the criteria, it has not said why it does not. It has listed the criteria, and, as Rhoda Grant said, some of the criteria appear absolutely to apply. The road links remote communities and key tourist areas—those two criteria are clearly met. Deploying said Government-style prose, Transport Scotland says:

“Although there is linkage in relation to the A890 with some of these criteria, it is our assessment that the A890 does not sufficiently meet the criteria to be incorporated into the strategic motorway and trunk road network”.

However, it does not say why. I think that our job is to tease out why it does not sufficiently meet those criteria.

As I said before, Highland Council covers an area larger than Belgium and 20 per cent larger than Wales and has a far larger road network than any other local authority—even Scottish Borders Council, which has a substantial one. The burden of maintenance of those local roads is massive. If the A890 is designated as a national trunk road, which I believe it should be, that would at least diminish the impossible burden that Highland Council’s roads department bears in relation to dealing with the pothole situation across the network.

I strongly endorse what Rhoda Grant has argued for today, and I think that we need to pursue this issue further. It might be difficult to do so but, at the end of the day, Transport Scotland has got to show that it understands and is sympathetic to the interests of the Highlands. At the moment, the strong feeling in the Highlands is that that is not the case on the part of that Glasgow-based quango.

As it happens, I have by sheer coincidence spent many hundreds of hours dealing with the Family Law (Scotland) Act 1985. I think that most practitioners feel that that is a very good piece of legislation. It sets out clear rules for the division of matrimonial property on divorce and therefore does not have the problems that are associated with the Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006, which deals with cohabitants as opposed to married couples. Not all cohabitants necessarily want to make a lifelong commitment, so they cannot be equiparated.

At the time of the passage of the 2006 act, I opined that the Parliament perhaps felt that cohabitants were getting the same rights as married couples; they were not. The act provides a clear discretion to sheriffs to determine what financial settlement is suitable. The sheriffs—Sheriff Pyle, for example—and Court of Session judges have said that that discretion is very wide. That makes it difficult for lawyers to advise, because it is not clear what a fair outcome should be. All of that means that it would be desirable to have law reform. After all, that is the purpose of the Parliament.

The recommendation that has been made to us is that we might think of closing the petition because the Scottish Government anticipates bringing forward legislation in the current parliamentary session. I checked that yesterday in the programme for government and saw that it is not in the 2023-24 legislative programme. That means that it will probably be at the coo’s tail and perhaps not even at the coo’s tail.

My suggestion, therefore, is very simple, and cuts through all the complexities of the substantive issues. It is that we write to the Scottish Government before we close the petition, asking whether it is still the case that there is to be a bill during this session of the Parliament and, if not, we should ask for a view from the Law Commission and others, including Scottish Government officials, as to when that bill is likely to be ready.

The bill will be substantially dependent on the commission, the Law Society of Scotland and practitioners coming forward with a thesis. I do not think it is something that MSPs can be expected to bring forward. It is highly technical and complicated.

A lot of work has been done, but it looks as if the bill will not be before us during this session of the Parliament. Out of respect for the petitioner, therefore, we should find out the facts, given the absence of the bill in the programme for the coming year, which was announced yesterday.

It is ironic that, in one respect at least, we have achieved what the petitioner wanted before the petition has even been considered. That must be something that—

I am grateful to Jackie Baillie for shedding light on the new information that there are linkages between Covid-19 and thrombosis, as well as other linkages, which would suggest that there is a need for further consideration of what preventative interventions may be appropriate in identifying cases where there is a risk predisposition. It would be well worth putting to that to the minister.

I am new to this and I do not know the petitioner, but having read through the papers, I picked up that the loss of his daughter was a crushing blow. He has been through the mill. One death is one too many and I bear that in mind when I refer to numbers. However, there is a clear conflict between the figures that he has provided, which indicate that there are 11,400 deaths per annum in Scotland, whereas the figures in the Scottish Government’s submission indicate that there were 380 deaths from blood clots in 2021 and a total of 1,925 where blood clots were mentioned on the death certificate—380 as an underlying cause and 1,545 as a contributory cause. In turn, the petitioner replied saying that:

“It is not the first time the Scottish Government has quoted one set of figures when there are other figures which reflect the case I put forward”.

I would be interested to learn more about that and to tease out why the figures that he refers to are roughly 10 times greater than the figures that the Scottish Government uses.

Whether or not there have been 1,000 or 10,000 deaths, it is such a serious thing; the consequences can be fatal in serious cases. Whether there is a public information campaign or other specific actions that are taken on the basis of proper clinical considerations about preventative action, we need more information on the matter from the Scottish Government. I do not have a view on whether we want to do that by letter or in an evidence session.

It is perhaps for the committee to consider the matter later, but my first reaction would be to recommend that you as Lord Advocate make a specific series of recommendations about how the injustice suffered by the parents can be remedied. I will admit that it is not a straightforward matter, but then I have discovered that very few things in Government are. Nonetheless, this is an important issue, and just because something is difficult does not mean that Governments can fail to discharge their functions.

From memory, the figure that was provided in the tender for Tomatin to Moy as the estimated value of the contract was £115 million. Can you explain from your industry knowledge whether that represented a detailed estimate after ground investigations had been done? In other words, how robust is that figure as an accurate indication or estimate of the likely cost of the project?

The point that I am making is that it is perhaps wrong to postulate that £115 million was a proper estimate at all; it was more or less a stab in the dark. We do not actually know whether that figure was a valid basis for a yardstick of value. Is that a fair comment?

Well, they do not really have much choice, do they?

Seriously, I want to ask one further question. As the petitioner rightly said, nine sections out of 11 have not been done. Only one of those has not had a design sorted out—essentially, the Dunkeld section. Three sections have had ministerial approval, but four have gone to what is called made orders, which means that they have gone through the legal process. The legal process for two of those four sections was completed well over a year ago—coming up for two years ago, I think.

Am I right in saying that absolutely nothing—apart from an unwillingness to devote sufficient funding—prevented the Scottish Government from progressing those four sections immediately after completion of the made orders, had there been a necessary will to implement the promised dualling of the A9? The made order means that you have sorted out compulsory purchase and ancillary roads orders; that you have gone through the process of consultation; that you have your design route; and that everything has been sorted out and is ready to roll—“shovel-ready” is the phrase. Given your knowledge of the practicalities about how those sorts of things work, is that an oversimplification or is it a fair comment and correct explanation?

I have just been refused some information—or, at least, information has been refused under FOI legislation—on the grounds of internal candour. That is the information about which I am talking. It is specifically about the interchange between you and the Scottish Government on value for money and the sufficiency of Scottish Government funding. As long as that information is not published, there will be unanswered questions, frustration, anger and irritation. That just will not go away so the sooner that the Scottish Government does what it did in the Holyrood inquiry in 2003, and the more recent Salmond inquiry, and publishes the available advice notes, the better for our work and, more important, the public interest.

I understand that those are all complex matters, and I know that you have been in regular dialogue with CECA, which you meet several times a year. What I do not understand—I do not say this to be recriminatory—is that you have admitted mea culpa, that the system is broken and that it is not fit for purpose, which is patently the case and has been obvious for quite a long time. Surely, therefore, particularly over the past couple of years of this parliamentary session, the advice about precisely how the contract should be changed—to perhaps some form of contract as set out by Mr Barn—so that risk sharing is used, should have been given back in 2021, at the latest. Why have we not made more progress more quickly? Mr Barn referred to glacial progress. Is he right about that as well?