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Okay. The answer is no, then—you are not giving that assurance, cabinet secretary, I am afraid.

Surely, if we assume a capital budget of £4 billion to £6 billion for the years ahead—that is what it has been historically—there is more than enough money to fund the project from existing capital. Cabinet secretary, are you not able to say that, if the consultation concludes that public finance is not the right option, you will nonetheless be able to provide the assurance that the funding can come from the existing capital budget, which is plainly more than sufficient to do the work, provided that the Highlands are treated as a priority?

The figure of £100 million comes from adding the compulsory purchase costs, which you have estimated and mentioned, to Transport Scotland’s figure of £90 million that applies to the whole A96 project and was valid last summer. However, that is a detail.

Has there not been, sadly, a delay in the processing of the various milestones of that project? I refer you to the Transport Scotland document of February 2016, which I have here. It states that the draft road orders and compulsory purchase orders were to have been issued in 2016. However, those were not finalised until 2024. The process took eight years, which in itself must be a record.

Has not the Scottish Government deliberately delayed the completion of the necessary statutory processes? It seems, even now, to be unwilling to give a categorical, unambiguous assurance that the promises that we have made collectively, as individuals and politicians, for the past 14 years will in fact be funded by the Scottish Government. Meanwhile, projects in other parts of Scotland are going ahead. Has that delay not been quite deliberate, cabinet secretary?

Can I just address that?

Gillian Martin has taken a close interest in the petition and, from statements in and outside the chamber, I know that she has a keen interest in pursuing that work.

I am aware of a number of dynamic developments that are taking place at the moment. For example, the Republic of Ireland now mandates community benefit at a rate, in effect, of €8,000 per megawatt. That is compulsory. Here, the £5,000 per megawatt rate is not mandatory because there are no legal powers to mandate it, as has been noted by the Scottish Government.

However, there is movement. Just yesterday, a senior official at Highlands and Islands Enterprise informed me that SSEN Transmission is to set up a model of community benefit for upgrades to pylons and infrastructure. That is a new development, and I am keen to find out more about it.

In addition, at least one offshore wind developer—BlueFloat Energy, together with Nadara—is considering and promoting community ownership for offshore wind. That is an example that many other projects may wish to follow, so it could have enormous importance.

Finally, coupled with that, I understand that the UK Government is not unsympathetic to some kind of scheme for community ownership, and one wonders whether that might be one of the most practical purposes for funding from Great British Energy, possibly alongside the Scottish National Investment Bank.

HIE has a close interest in taking all of that forward, because much of the activity is in the Highlands and Islands.

Although I appreciate that we are moving towards the end of this session of Parliament, all of those developments—and probably others of which I am unaware—mean that I am keen to write again to the Acting Minister for Climate Action to ask for further information as to when the energy strategy and just transition plan will be published and whether, specifically, it will contain proposals for community ownership, and to ask for some detail of the work that is being done with the UK Government and for a ministerial statement at some point, perhaps in the autumn.

Community ownership is an idea for which the time has come—interest in it is growing throughout the country, and concern is growing about some aspects, including visual impacts, of renewable energy in Aberdeenshire, the Highlands and many other places south of Scotland.

If we do not get on with it now, Scotland and Britain will be missing a trick. I am sorry to go on about it for so long, but I think that there are compelling reasons to keep the petition open and to allow the petitioners the full opportunity to benefit from what seems to be a congenial political environment.

A great deal of material has been provided since we last met, and it is only fair to allude to some of it. I was astonished to see that NatureScot is arguing that it does not have enough information about the extent to which there is predation of hares. Of course we have that information. It actually has the temerity to say that

“several more years’ worth of data are needed before this survey can provide a clearer picture of the distribution and numbers of mountain hares. ”

Unfortunately, that seems to be an argument for doing little. However, we have had two submissions from Barry Blyther very recently—on 4 and 14 March—and I gather that he might have further information for the committee that he has not yet had the opportunity to convey to us. Therefore, I suggest that we give him the opportunity to provide that additional information, which I believe might be quite positive, indicating some supportive action from the minister and, to be fair, from NatureScot.

A copious submission from Barry and Roxanne Blyther, explains the pretty sad situation that, because of the inability to allow their male eagle, Stanley, to practise its natural activities in flying, it has been unable to mate with the female. That is pretty sad and “heart wrenching”, as Barry puts it. In the interests of encouraging avian amour but also to make a serious point, I say that it is pretty sad when NatureScot prevents nature from taking its natural course. It is a bit perverse, if you come to think of it, because that should be exactly what it encourages.

Having said all that, we should debate the matter in the chamber on the basis of the principle that Barry Blyther and his colleagues were not provided with the opportunity to be heard when the mountain hare ban was introduced. The current minister has gone further than previous ministers in admitting that that was entirely wrong and indefensible. It has taken far too long to get to that stage, and we should have a debate, but we do not need to do that if the minister will take sufficient action. I do not think that sufficient action can be taken through guidance—primary legislation is almost certainly required—and I do not see why that action cannot be taken through one of the bills that is progressing through Parliament, such as the Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill. If there is a will, there is a way. It is a very simple thing to do, so why does the Government not just do it?

We should write to the Acting Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero and Energy to seek an update on the Scottish Government’s work on the guidance and to clarify how we can rectify the mischief that plainly occurred.

Excuse me if I am repeating a matter that is on the record, but I believe that the committee also agreed to write to the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee to raise the point of principle, to indicate that we are minded to have a debate and to ask for its views on the matter, because I think that it arose in connection with another amendment that was sought to be lodged at stage 3 without the opportunity for proper consideration.

We should say that we are minded to have a debate, unless, of course, action can be taken to sort out the issue without one, thereby avoiding the embarrassment that that would cause to the Government for not admitting that it got this wrong. Why can the Government not just admit that it got it wrong? There is no defence whatsoever—it is a slam dunk, politically speaking.

I hope that my candour will be noted by my friend Jim Fairlie, the minister, and that he will resort to the Churchillian “Action this day”.

It seems reasonable. If I have interpreted the hand signals correctly, Mr Blyther has indicated that he will provide the information quickly.

Yes, briefly. I agree entirely with Mr Golden. The law exists, but, if it is not enforced, it is just words on a page and the worry is that that might be applicable in this instance. In particularly tragic circumstances, the petitioner buried his three-year-old son in a cemetery just opposite his home and visits the cemetery every day, and he says that hundreds of people visit with dogs and that it is more or less a dog’s toilet. That is not appropriate for cemeteries—it is just not. We cannot allow that to happen.

I think that Mr Golden’s suggestion that we should not just let this go is correct, and we should ask for information about whether the law is being enforced. Otherwise, I suspect that the issue will come back again, and people will ask why we did not at least try to find out what local authorities were doing about it.

As I am sure we all know, some cemeteries are particularly large, and I can well imagine that they might be used for dog walking. However, it is not really appropriate to use cemeteries for dog walking, any more than it is appropriate to have dogs in fields with livestock. That is another serious problem that is not properly addressed by the law, even after the passing of the relevant members’ bill, because it does not require dogs to be kept on a leash.

I am sorry to be a bit long winded, but I think that we should pursue the issue.

To be fair to the cabinet secretary, she has said:

“I remain open minded towards the proposal”,

so this is not a case of the Government saying, “No, we’re not doing that.” If it had said that, our response at this stage of a parliamentary session might be to leave the matter to the next election, when people can vote for parties that will do what they feel is correct in a democracy. We are not at that stage. If the cabinet secretary thinks that what the petition proposes can be done, why can it not be done soon, before the next election? Why can we not just do things in this Parliament, with this Government?

I agree with that. We should write to the cabinet secretary to seek further data on the extent to which sexual assaults involving strangulation have been treated differently. We should find out in how many cases that was found to have been the case and what analysis has been done of those statistics. Do such statistics exist? Is that information retained properly?

As Mr Golden said, the sheriff court has limited sentencing powers. It has been a long time since I was in the sheriff court—three decades—but I think that it is possible for a sheriff to remit sentencing to the High Court if he feels that the maximum sentence that he has the power to give is inadequate.

Be that as it may, I would have thought that every such case should be dealt with under solemn proceedings, not least because, as the petitioner points out, non-fatal strangulation often signals a heightened risk of homicide. It is quite staggering that a BBC survey showed that 40 per cent of women aged 18 to 39 in the UK reported experiencing choking, strangulation or gagging during sex. That is a hugely worrying percentage. We should therefore seek further data from the cabinet secretary.

We should also seek details of when officials will meet partners, because, in our view, the matter should be approached with great urgency and not be left to drift for months, as so many things do. We should ask whether officials and the cabinet secretary will engage directly with the petitioner and get a timeline for the work.

When asking for all that, we could indicate that we might well be minded to hear evidence from the cabinet secretary, given the interest in the issue. All the other countries in the UK seem to have taken action to deal with it, so why are we at the coo’s tail? Although the current system can work in theory, I feel instinctively that, in practice, it is probably not working as it should.

I am grateful to Tess White for setting out these extremely serious matters with such lucidity. I wanted to supplement Mr Golden’s suggestions with those remarks.