Seòmar agus comataidhean

—it is defeat; it is simply a deferral of probable consideration.

The members of the next Parliament, including those of us who are not ourselves culled, can give it consideration.

The Government has provided quite a long response, but it does not seem to be much more than a patchwork of random actions and fairly modest grants for small pieces of work here and there. It does not really address the point that the petitioner stressed in her written submission of 5 January, which is that,

“Despite affecting at least 1 in 10 women and people assigned female at birth”—

females—

“Scotland does not collect national outcomes data for endometriosis. As a result, clinicians lack reliable evidence on:

• treatment effectiveness,

• treatment-related harm,

• complications and disease progression,

• and which patient groups are at highest risk of treatment failure.”

I noticed recent press coverage of the issue, in which it was pointed out that females who suffer from endometriosis suffer horrendously—they suffer years and years of unremitting pain.

Given the numbers involved, the Government’s apparent unwillingness to establish a database of outcomes is hard to understand. So determined is it to avoid doing so that it has pointed to all sorts of other things that seem to me to be inadequate substitutes.

There is just no time left. I hope that the ladies in the room and those outwith the Parliament who are interested in and affected by the matter will understand that, if the petition had been presented to us 12 months ago, we would certainly have taken evidence from the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health. She would have been here answering questions within a couple of weeks.

That is what should happen, and the petitioner can secure that by lodging a similar petition in the next parliamentary session. I am perfectly sure that the issue must be considered for the sake of women who suffer, as I understand it, unbelievable and unbearable pain.

Given the effluxion of time, we are unable to pursue the matter further, but the petitioner has raised an interesting point. I will say more about that in a minute. The Scottish Government has said that it has no plans to make any changes in the current parliamentary session, so nothing will happen in this session.

I want to make a very simple point. In England, the limit is £10,000, whereas it is £5,000 in Scotland. I looked in vain for an explanation, but the Scottish Government has not remarked on that point at all. I do not know the reason for that, but it is completely and utterly unacceptable.

I am no longer a practising solicitor, but, having observed the courts scene at the moment, I know that it is very difficult to get a criminal lawyer and that there are massive delays in the civil courts. Quite frankly, no individual can afford to go to court unless they are very well off or get legal aid, which people often do not get. Therefore, there is, of course, a case for raising the limit to £10,000 to allow people to avail themselves of the simple procedure, instead of having to deal with the extraordinary byzantine complexity of the ordinary cause or summary cause procedures, which are not much simpler. The current situation means that, in effect, there is no justice for individuals in that narrow band.

It is impossible to get a lawyer for that sum of money, because the legal fees involved would probably exceed the sum sued for in most cases. Lawyers will not take the case on and people go without remedies. We are in a country where there is a theoretical right of access to the courts but where, in practice, it does not exist. One simple way to address that, to a modest extent, is to do what the petitioner asks.

This is another petition where, if it were not for the fact that it is now 2026 and we are a few weeks away from dissolution, we would have had the justice minister here to answer some of the questions that, quite frankly, they have manifestly failed to answer in any way at all, which is quite abysmal, in my opinion.

I think that we should close the petition. However, in saying that, I am mindful that Laura Hansler, as the petitioner, has achieved an extraordinary number of things, and that shows the committee’s value in our Parliament as a voice for ordinary people to come here with something that they wish to see achieved.

In paying tribute to Laura Hansler, I want to run through some of the things that are unlikely to have happened were it not for the work that she—and she alone—instituted. First, she paved the way for evidence to be heard from Mr Grahame Barn of the Civil Engineering Contractors Association Scotland, which is the representative body of most of the civil engineering companies—or the large ones, at least. He said that Transport Scotland was

“the worst client to work for in the UK.”

Mr Barn also pointed out, in a forensic display of knowledge of procurement policy, that the particular mode of procurement employed by Transport Scotland had the effect of deterring bidders, which meant that the Tomatin to Moy tender was abortive because there was only one bidder, which was rejected because its bid was too high, at £170 million. Then, later, Transport Scotland retendered that, and I believe that the total cost is £308 million. It may be that the Auditor General for Scotland will wish to examine that, and it may be that I will be inviting him to do so.

It is clear that Transport Scotland then changed its contract to the new engineering contract, which Mr Barn referred to in his evidence—I think that that was in January, early in the inquiry. The evidence that the committee took and Laura Hansler’s efforts led to a major change in Transport Scotland’s procurement policy. Transport Scotland might say that it would have done that anyway, but if it did, I am not sure that I would be too quick to believe it and swallow that.

Secondly, when the committee began the investigation, which became a formal inquiry, there was no revised timetable. However, due to the pressure that was in part exerted by the committee, time after time, meeting after meeting, a revised timetable was produced in December 2023.

The Beatles wrote the song “The Long and Winding Road”, and the A9 is the long and winding road of the Highlands. It has been a long and winding tale, which was supposed to have been concluded by 2025 but will now not be concluded until 2035—and many of us doubt whether it will be concluded by then. Be that as it may, the revised timetable was extracted only because of the work that this committee has done.

The petitioner has pressed for a memorial garden, and she informed me informally that she had had discussions with one of the contractors, which was willing to carry out that work. It is abundantly clear that Transport Scotland has blocked that. I have no doubt that it will redact and conceal the advice that it has given to ministers, as it has frequently done, but the truth will out eventually, and I think that that will have been the case. It is ludicrous for the minister to say that it is up to the community, because the community has not got assets to carry out a contract of hundreds of thousands of pounds—that is for the birds. That issue will have to be revisited.

Lastly, the committee suggested in its report, and I think that this was substantially your idea, convener, that one of the problems since 2011, when Alex Neil first made the promise—he gave a very effective statement of his evidence, as the late Alex Salmond did in his last public appearance in the Parliament before he died—has been slippage. The scrutiny by the Parliament has been sporadic, intermittent and insufficient. That is why I hope that the committee—if it agrees with the convener’s suggestion and with the one that I am repeating now—will write to the incoming Presiding Officer of the next parliamentary session to suggest that there should be a bespoke committee, given the scale and importance of the contract. Its scale is bigger than that of any previous construction contract ever in Scotland. Such a committee would mean that the scrutiny was not sporadic and intermittent; it would be consistent, thorough and forensic, and there would be no hiding place.

I have a personal interest, because I hope to be around for some more terms yet as the representative of the good people of Inverness and Nairn, if they feel that that is a good idea. I am determined to be there at the cutting of the red tape ribbon when the dualled A9 opens. I would prefer that to be in the next session than in the one thereafter.

I very much endorse that approach, especially as the petitioner has outlined her pretty horrible experience. This is a relatively modern crime that has become a thing over the past few years, and I have increasing concern that, although it might not start off as too serious, it can very rapidly ruin people’s lives and even cause them to take their own lives, as has been the case in some of the circumstances that I have read about. It is a newish and alarming development in the sad history of sexual offences, so I very much want to hear the Scottish Government’s thoughts about how it can be tackled. We might also ask the Lord Advocate to offer advice about such matters.

Following on from that point, I am sure that the minister will know that several applications have been submitted for pump storage projects around Loch Ness. As we have heard, there are concerns about the salmon population, angling, recreational interests, and the level of the loch and the Caledonian canal.

There is a group of people who are broadly in favour of pump storage but who feel that the current planning rules do not allow the planning authority to take a holistic view of the cumulative impact—in fact, they prevent it from doing so.

Although I welcome SEPA’s working group, every time I hear about a working group, I think that something might happen in five years’ time if we are lucky, but this problem is here and now. The applications have been submitted and they have to be determined. The problem that the petitioners have is that the applications will all be determined without the council being able to do what the minister has said should be done, in a better system—namely, to take into account the cumulative impact.

How will we avoid decisions being taken that might have significant adverse impacts on the existing interests of salmon fishing, angling and—more widely—the marine environment, recreational interests and the interests of other loch users?

I strongly support that. The lack of response has been lamentable—woeful, actually—and not good enough. I very much endorse your recommendation, convener.

I truly hope that bodies will respond to the committee more timeously in future, in the next session of Parliament, and that, if they do not, they will be named and called out, because it is not fair to the petitioners that, when they come to us to be their voice, they do not get reasonably prompt, detailed and relevant answers. That has been too frequent an occurrence in this session of Parliament.

Oh, okay. In that case, I will go back to community ownership. The last petition was on the energy strategy in general, which also covers community ownership.

When I was the energy minister, although we did not have the legal power to require community ownership—that remains the case—we had a voluntary scheme that was sponsored by the renewable energy investment fund. That fund—REIF—was used to provide grants to communities to enable them to facilitate the purchase of a community share, on a commercial basis, from the developer. The way it worked was that, if the cost of the community share was, say, £100, REIF would provide £10 and the commercial banks that were involved—Triodos, Close Brothers and the Co-operative Bank—would provide £90. That meant that communities that did not have any money were able to leverage a loan through a Government grant, and the loan would be repaid from the income stream from the project.

Local Energy Scotland did the groundwork so that developers did not have to scamper around the country holding lots of extra meetings and negotiating with communities; that responsibility was taken away from them. That scheme worked extremely well until renewables obligation certificates were summarily withdrawn by the United Kingdom Government and the whole thing fell apart.

I have raised this before in the chamber and with the minister, but what puzzles me is that here we are, five years into the parliamentary session, and nothing has happened. I suggested on more than one occasion that the Scottish National Investment Bank could be encouraged to be involved. After all, we are talking about a commercial transaction, not a freebie. Such an arrangement would allow public money to lever in 1000 per cent more potential benefit.

Taking that approach would mean that people in communities that are presently hostile to such developments would see tangible benefits for them, their children and their grandchildren. That would help in some, but not all, cases—some people would see it as a bribe, but others would welcome it. There are mixed views.

What depresses me is that nothing has been happening for the past five years. Where are the voluntary schemes that, with help from officials, we managed to provide when I was in your shoes?

11:00

I was not going to ask about nuclear, but I think that, underlying all the objections, there is a series of wider principled concerns. That is really why I am asking the question; I think that a lot of people would like answers.

I will ask about community ownership in a minute but, before we leave the current topic, I will put one point to you, minister. Although the grid certainly requires to be upgraded, the costs of upgrading it were, this week, estimated at £4 trillion, although that figure is disputed by NESO. That is the scale of the cost. In addition, the timescale for that work will be much longer than Mr Miliband or anyone else who supports it has said will be the case. It will take decades. Is the problem, therefore, that, although there may be solutions in the future such as hydrogen and nuclear fission, and all sorts of possibilities, including more storage, it will be too slow?

Even if we support your policies and Mr Miliband’s policies, the grid upgrade process will inevitably take much longer than he says that it will. The transition from wood to coal took 200 years. The transition from coal to oil, according to Daniel Yergin, the world’s foremost energy expert, took 100 years. How can we expect to move from oil and gas to renewables in just a decade? It is just not on, is it? It is not going to happen. It is for the birds, and therefore the risks that I have described are very serious, and are growing in severity.