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We will close the petition. We thank the petitioner very much for bringing the issue to us. Clearly, we are closing it on the basis of the response that we have received from the JCVI and the Scottish Government.

The second and final new petition, PE2044, which was lodged by Gillian Geddes, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to reinstate the £26 million that was pledged to colleges in the 2023-24 budget.

The clerk’s note provides an overview of the Education, Children and Young People Committee’s work on the issue as part of its pre-budget scrutiny. That committee raised further and higher education funding as a key theme in its pre-budget scrutiny letter and continued to pursue the issues in subsequent evidence sessions.

Last week, the committee issued its pre-budget scrutiny letter for the 2024-25 budget, which included college funding as one of its three main strands. In his response to the petition, the Minister for Higher and Further Education states:

“While I understand the disappointment on the need to take the £26 million saving, we have maintained the college sector’s core teaching funding allocation”.

His submission further states:

“the Scottish Government is committed to developing a new funding model for post-school education”.

In the light of the minister’s response, do members have any comments or suggestions for action?

Agenda item 2 is consideration of continued petitions. I am delighted to say that we are joined by our very good supporters and petition champions, Rhoda Grant and Monica Lennon.

Rhoda Grant joins us in relation to the first continued petition, PE1723, on essential tremor treatment in Scotland. The petition, which was lodged by Mary Ramsay, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to raise awareness of essential tremor and to support the introduction and use of a focused ultrasound scanner for treating people in Scotland who have the condition.

In her written submission, the petitioner states that the current treatment for essential tremor—deep brain stimulation—costs a minimum of £30,000, whereas the magnetic resonance-guided focused ultrasound service costs £10,000. Twenty-five patients were treated in Dundee with the MRgFUS over 18 months, with 14 of them being eligible for DBS but facing a two-and-a-half-year waiting list.

The national services division has shared that it received an updated application from the lead consultant neurologist working in NHS Tayside for a new MRI-focused ultrasound functional neurosurgery service to treat patients with essential tremor. The NHS Tayside executive leadership team advised that it was supportive in principle of the application but that a paper outlining the proposal in detail had not yet been submitted for executive approval so could not be progressed. The NSD advised that an application should be resubmitted for consideration in 2024-25.

I have to say, before I ask Rhoda Grant to speak, that I am quite sympathetic to what the petitioner said in her most recent submission. She does not put it in this way, but, as has been the case with other health-related issues, those affected being able to present evidence to the committee can sometimes be a powerful additional stimulant in our seeking to progress the aims of a petition.

Rhoda, over to you.

The very actions that the committee was considering taking are the ones that you have just proposed, so thank you very much for those suggestions. Are we happy to incorporate Rhoda Grant’s suggestions in relation to NHS Tayside?

Members indicated agreement.

I thank Monica Lennon for her contribution.

The second petition, PE1871, which was lodged by Karen McKeown on behalf of the shining lights for change group, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to carry out a full review of mental health services in Scotland, including the referral process, crisis support, risk assessments, safe plans, integrated services working together, first response support and the support that is available to families affected by suicide.

Following our evidence session with the then Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, the committee received additional details on the suicide prevention strategy, such as information about the outcomes framework and the reporting cycle.

Information about the mental health assessment units is provided in the submission. NHS Forth Valley, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, NHS Lothian and NHS Highland have dedicated units, whereas the remaining health boards have repurposed existing services or resources to provide 24/7 access to a senior clinical decision maker. It is noted that the redesign of urgent care programme will work on improving unplanned access to urgent assessment and care to provide support quickly, at the first time of reaching out and, where possible, close to home.

The recent submission from the Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport indicates that the first annual report on the suicide prevention strategy outcomes will be published in July 2024.

The petitioner has provided another written submission, which, once again, urges the committee to call for a review of mental health services. She feels that that is the only way to determine what is and is not working. She shares concerns about mental health support falling to the third sector, expressing that that is not appropriate in all cases, particularly for people in crisis. There has been some reaction from the Government in how it has moved forward with the petition’s aims.

We are joined by Monica Lennon, who has followed the petition with us through its various iterations. Is there anything that you would like to say to the committee before we consider our next move?

In which case, with that very entertaining polemic, are we content to embrace those suggestions? I quite like the idea that we encapsulate, in our further inquiries, the point about missed opportunity. This petition has been with us now since—when was it first lodged?—August 2021. Two years have gone by. Mr Ewing makes the point about applications being granted but nothing happening, which means that there have been two years of lost opportunity. There we go.

Yes, that would be sensible. It has been suggested that a number of things are in train and we sometimes leave open petitions just to see whether those things materialise. If we close the petition on that basis, we should make it clear that it will be possible to bring it back if they do not. Do members agree to close the petition?

Members indicated agreement.

The next petition is PE1990, which was lodged by Jordon Anderson. It calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to request the introduction of a monthly chamber session to allow young people to put questions to the First Minister and the Cabinet.

In our previous consideration, we agreed to write to key stakeholders—we delegated authority to me, as convener, to agree who those stakeholders might be. The Scottish Parliament information centre has provided a list of possible stakeholders, which is in the clerk’s note. However, since the petition was last considered, the committee has published its report, “Embedding Public Participation in the Work of the Parliament”, which includes a response to the recommendations made by the citizens panel. Colleagues will recall that one of those recommendations is very similar to what the petition calls for. Recommendation 14 is to

“Schedule specific time in the debating Chamber for individual public questions to be asked.”

As members will recall, we concluded in our report that

“We do not support the recommendation for a question time which is part of formal Parliamentary business, as we think it raises too many difficulties both of practice and principle … Having said all that, we would be willing to see the idea further explored, if there is cross-party support for doing so.”

The petitioner has provided information that supports his view that young people are becoming increasingly engaged in politics and need greater representation in it. Authority was delegated to me previously, but I want to bring that back to the committee, given our inquiry into the subject matter. We could write to a number of stakeholders, as identified by the clerks: the Scottish Youth Parliament, the Children’s Parliament, the National Union of Students, Who Cares? Scotland, the Scottish Commissioner for People with Learning Disabilities, Intercultural Youth Scotland, Children in Scotland and YouthLink Scotland.

Are we content to get their views, ahead of what I understand will be a session of the Scottish Youth Parliament here, at Holyrood, potentially next year? If there is sufficient interest, that might well be a route that we could recommend as a way forward for the petition. Are we content to continue on that basis?

The next petition is PE1981, which has been lodged by Caroline Gourlay, and continues a theme that we have just been discussing. It calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to strengthen legislation to stop perpetrators of domestic abuse who have been excluded from the matrimonial home by a court order being able to cause further trauma and distress to their victims by trying to force the sale of the property.

We previously considered the petition on 8 February, and members will note from our papers that we have received responses from the Scottish Law Commission, which indicates that the issue is one of the topics being considered as it determines the scope of review of civil remedies that are available for domestic abuse, and from Shared Parenting Scotland, which suggests that the Scottish Government could provide better public information on what communications are covered by exclusion orders. The response goes on to note that, in the case of child contact arrangements, third-party contact is likely to be in the interests of the child so long as the person or agency issuing the communication is doing it in a professional and non-threatening manner.

The Law Society of Scotland response notes that interdicts can last for lengthy periods and that there is a difficult balance to strike between the rights of a property owner and the rights of a victim of domestic abuse to be protected from their abuser. Therefore, the Law Society considers that a blanket position would not be appropriate and again stresses the importance of training for lawyers handling cases involving domestic abuse. Linked to its view on PE1968, the Law Society’s child and family law sub-committee view is that there is already a solid framework in the law that regard must be given in circumstances where there has been domestic abuse, and a full suite of powers is available to judges to deal with such matters.

I feel that we are in a similar position. Do colleagues have any suggestions?