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Are colleagues content to close the petition?

Members indicated agreement.

It is also open to the petitioner and any individual affected to contact their local councillor, their local MSP or their local MP, who are, after all, elected to represent them and assist them should such incidents arise. However, I think that there is no option for the committee but to close the petition.

Good morning, and welcome to the second meeting of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee in 2026. This is an additional meeting, in recognition of the fact that the parliamentary session does not have much life left in it and there are very few meetings of the committee left. As of this morning, 68 active petitions were still before the committee. We have to be careful as to how we proceed.

The meeting is largely being held to consider the outstanding new petitions that we have before us, but agenda item 1 is to consider continued petitions. The only continued petition is PE1992, which was lodged by Laura Hansler, on dualling the A9 and improving road safety. The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to deliver on the commitment that it made in 2011 and address safety concerns on the A9 by publishing a revised timetable and detailed plan for dualling each section, completing the dualling work by 2025 and creating a memorial to those who have lost their lives in road traffic incidents on the A9.

We previously considered the petition on 4 October 2023, when we heard evidence from Alex Neil, former Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure and Capital Investment. The committee agreed to undertake an inquiry into the A9 dualling project, and we took evidence over a number of evidence sessions as part of that work.

We published the inquiry report on 1 November 2024, and we received a Scottish Government response on 9 January last year. Members then had an opportunity on 16 January last year—almost a year ago to the day—to debate a committee motion on the issues that were raised.

In its response to the report, the Government indicated that it expected to make a decision late last year on whether to complete the A9 dualling programme using the resource-funded mutual investment model contracts or whether to adopt an alternative approach.

Following publication of the draft budget for 2026-27, Fiona Hyslop, the Cabinet Secretary for Transport, provided an update to Parliament last week, in which she stated that the Government’s updated financial modelling indicated that the cost of MIM contracts was about 28 per cent higher than the cost of equivalent capital-funded contracts, which represents an increase from the 16 per cent difference that it estimated in 2023. The Government has therefore concluded that, as MIM contracts provide poorer value for money, it will progress the A9 dualling programme to completion using capital-funded contracts.

Alongside that update from the cabinet secretary, the Scottish Government published its 2026 A9 dualling delivery plan. That is based on the establishment of a framework agreement, under which five contracts are to be procured in order to deliver the remaining projects that have not yet reached procurement. The Government also indicated that all the milestones that were set out in its 2023 plan were delivered as per that plan.

On the third ask of the petition, the Government’s response to the inquiry report states that, although it sympathises with everyone who is affected by road fatalities, it is unable to be directly involved in a proposal for or decision on a memorial, which it considers should be

“a matter for communities and private individuals to progress with landowners and appropriate planning authorities”.

The dualling of the A9 will undoubtedly continue to dominate the national agenda in the next session of Parliament—and, indeed, in the session after that, given the completion date of 2035. However, the committee must consider whether there is anything more that we can practicably do in the time remaining, given everything that we can rightly claim to have achieved in relation to the progress that the Government has announced to date, in light of the inquiry that we held.

Before I invite colleagues to comment, I welcome David Torrance, who is joining us online, rather than being here with us in the committee room. Do colleagues have any comments or suggestions?

Are there any other comments or thoughts? If not, are colleagues content to support Mr Golden’s recommendation?

Members indicated agreement.

I will be supporting that particular bill, and I hope that those matters can be duly addressed, but that is a debate for another place, I think.

PE2206, which was lodged by Jack McConnel, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to review the single-lane road weighting in the road maintenance funding formula and to either consider increasing it or adapt the formula to reflect static or similar overheads for any road width, and to conduct an assessment of single-lane road overhead costs for rural local authorities and their impact on funding formulas across all road-related allocations.

We received a very succinct response from the Scottish Government, which, somewhat disappointingly, only minimally engages with the core issues of the petition. That is certainly the case with the second ask, which is on assessing costs. Essentially, we are informed that the needs-based formula, which is used to distribute the quantum of funding available for local government, is subject to constant review and is agreed each year with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. The Government states that it is always open to suggestions to improve the funding formula but that any such proposals must go through COSLA in the first instance.

Do colleagues have any suggestions for action?

That brings us to consideration of new petitions. I really highlight the difficulty that the committee faces. I have looked through the new petitions that we will consider this morning. Some of them raise substantive matters that the committee would, in ordinary circumstances, want to pick up and pursue. However, there is normally a gap of six months between each consideration of a petition in the committee. That lead time is required for the actions that we initiate and for us to collate and present the required responses to the committee. We have four or five meetings left before the end of the parliamentary session, in which we will be considering our legacy report and the petitions that we can hold open.

09:45

I say to some petitioners who might think, “Should our petition be held open?” that the parliamentary rules are such that, if we hold a petition open and it or any of its criteria is judged to be obsolete in any way, the new Parliament may close that petition and there would be an embargo of 12 months before it could be brought back to the Parliament. However, if we close a petition now, it can be lodged again immediately in May and it can be considered afresh in the new parliamentary session.

I think that that condition is less applicable to new petitions, because they are unlikely to be covering historical matters. I can think of a couple of petitions that have been open for more than five years where some of what underpins them may no longer be current.

Before any petition comes before the committee, we receive the Scottish Government’s initial review. I have to say that that has been a little slow in coming forth for a couple of the petitions that we are considering this morning—indeed, one response was received on Friday. We also get advice from the Scottish Parliament’s independent research body, the Scottish Parliament information centre, which allows the committee to be fully briefed about the issues that underpin a petition.

I think that we privately explored that before the meeting, Mr Russell. There is not an open consultation at the moment, but there is a website that the petitioner could independently contact in relation to the issue that has been raised. That is one route. Alternatively, of course, it would be possible for a fresh petition to be brought in the next session of Parliament.

PE2199, which was lodged by Timothy Bowles, urges the Scottish Government to provide robust back-up or alternative means to ensure that remote communities are able to contact emergency services in the event of complete power failure.

The traditional landline telephone network—the public switched telephone network, or PSTN—is being replaced by voice over internet protocol technology across the United Kingdom. VoIP uses a broadband internet connection to make phone calls. That leaves users more vulnerable in a power cut because, as the SPICe briefing shows, the digital system works in a power cut only if battery back-up is available.

Because telecommunications are a reserved power under the terms of the Scotland Act 1998, the Scottish Government states that it is unable to intervene directly to provide back-up along the lines requested by the petition, or indeed to instruct providers to do so. However, it points to Ofcom guidance that advises providers to have at least one solution available to consumers to access emergency services for a minimum of one hour in the event of a power outage.

The Scottish Government also mentions that its new national islands plan acknowledges that more can be done to strengthen resilience across Scotland. It adds that the plan includes a commitment to work with local authorities and other key stakeholders to capture and apply learning from disruption affecting island communities, in order to strengthen its preparedness and response planning, including in relation to digital infrastructure.

Finally, the committee received a submission from Consumer Scotland, which highlights the extensive work that it has been doing in this area. It states that it continues to engage with the Scottish Government and local stakeholders to improve data sharing, in order to enable providers

“to more easily identify consumers who need support”.

Do colleagues have any suggestions for action?

I am very much of that view. Given the length of time that the committee has left, I would very much encourage the petitioner to lodge the petition again immediately when the new Parliament convenes. I hope that the new petitions committee, with time ahead of it, will be able to explore some of the issues that have been raised.

With some regret, I feel that we have to close the petition at this point, but I strongly recommend that it be resubmitted to the committee on the other side of the election. Are members content with that?

Members indicated agreement.