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The petition is important, and we will take forward the issues that it raises.

That makes perfect sense.

PE1902, which was lodged by Maria Aitken on behalf of Caithness Health Action Team, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to allow an appeal process for community participation requests under the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015.

At our previous consideration of the petition, we identified that work is on-going to identify the possibility of an appeal process as part of the Scottish Government’s review of the 2015 act. The Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth has informed us that the Scottish Community Development Centre’s working group continued its work through 2022 to explore the potential for an appeal or review process for participation requests and it will bring its findings to the Scottish Government for full consideration.

As I mentioned earlier, we have Rhoda Grant with us this morning. Rhoda, is there anything further that you would like to suggest to the committee, given that information?

Our final new petition, PE1978, which was lodged by Cristina Rosique-Esplugas—I apologise if that was not the correct pronunciation—calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to allow raw drinking milk to be sold in Scotland, which would bring it in line with England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and allow farmers the opportunity to sell unpasteurised drinking milk.

Cristina Rosique-Esplugas highlights in her submission that the sale of raw drinking milk is permitted in the rest of the UK, as well as in most European countries. She believes that it is time for raw milk to stop being considered a public health hazard, and notes that measures can be put in place to control food safety, as is the case with many other food products.

Responding on behalf of the Scottish Government, Food Standards Scotland states that raw drinking milk has historically been recognised as high risk to public health due to its association with a number of food poisoning outbreaks in Scotland. It notes that mandatory pasteurisation of cows’ drinking milk was introduced in 1983 and was extended to drinking milk from all farmed animals in 2006. It suggests that, since then, illnesses linked to the consumption of raw milk in Scotland have virtually disappeared.

Food Standards Scotland also highlights the report of the UK Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food in 2018, which concluded that there had been an increase in the microbiological risk associated with the consumption of raw drinking milk in the UK. As a result, there are no plans to lift the ban on direct sales of raw drinking milk in Scotland.

Do members have any comments or suggestions as to how we might proceed? There seems to be very clear guidance from the Scottish Government in this instance.

How do colleagues feel about that? Obviously, we could explore the matter further with Food Standards Scotland, but the direction in relation to Scotland seems to be pretty clear, so I am not sure that that would lead to a productive route forward.

For the record, I should say that we are joined by two of our parliamentary colleagues—Foysol Choudhury and Rhoda Grant, who has so missed us that she is joining us in relation to three petitions, two of which we will consider jointly. Foysol Choudhury joins us in relation to the petition that we now move to consider. PE1891, lodged by Lewis Alexander Condy, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to ensure that all children will have had the opportunity to learn to swim by making it a statutory requirement to provide lessons in the primary school curriculum. I will invite Mr Choudhury to comment in a moment.

We last considered the petition a year ago, on 19 January 2022. As a committee, we offer our sincere apologies to the petitioner for not bringing the petition back for further consideration in our schedule before now. However, at our last consideration, we agreed to write to the Scottish Government, and I am pleased to say that we have now received a response from the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills. In her response, she restates that

“there is no mandatory curriculum in Scotland therefore local authorities and individual schools have the flexibility to decide upon the content of their own lessons at the local level.”

However, the cabinet secretary goes on to offer information about Scottish Swimming’s national learn to swim framework and the delivery model pilot schemes that are taking place over the course of 2022-23

“to help educate and provide opportunities for children across Scotland to experience the water in a fun, safe and inclusive approach.”

The cabinet secretary has also highlighted the launch of the Water Safety Scotland and Education Scotland educational resource for schools

“to provide a consistent level of learning across Scotland’s educational institutions”.

I welcome Mr Choudhury. As is normal practice when colleagues join our meetings, I am happy to offer him the opportunity to comment on the petition and to speak to the committee.

I think that we can accommodate all that. Are we content to proceed on that basis?

Members indicated agreement.

It is clearly reassuring to those of us on the committee that the Scottish National Party is such a broad church in terms of the views and personalities that it incorporates. The committee is largely agreed on what we think the final outcome might be, but I take the point that we have reached a conclusion without actually understanding why there is a variation. In the first instance, it might be useful for us to have some further understanding of why that variation occurs. Are you content with our pursuing it on that basis, Mr Torrance?

It is not so much that you are withdrawing your recommendations as it is that we are deferring them subject to that further advice being received.

Perhaps we could explore that. [Interruption.] I wonder how to pursue that in the round. NHS Grampian has said that it has not been able to implement the MAT standards in police custody without explaining to us why that is the case, so I wonder whether we might pursue that point directly with NHS Grampian in the first instance, as an example of a health board that is struggling.