Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning, and welcome to the first meeting in 2026 of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee. We have just six meetings left after this one to deal with what is still a very considerable number of petitions, and it will be a difficult task, given the importance underlying many of them. Therefore, a lot of what we will be trying to do is to identify what we can still hope to achieve in the balance of time left to us.

Agenda item 1 is a decision on taking business in private. Are members content to take in private item 5, to consider changes to the determination on the proper form of petitions, and item 6, to consider the evidence that we hear today?

Members indicated agreement.

Agenda item 2 is the next in our series of themed sessions with cabinet secretaries to try to do justice to as many petitions as possible. This morning’s themed session is on energy and, of course, relates to energy-related petitions. I have to say that, other than by their use of word “energy”, they are hardly connected at all with regard to their scope and range of concerns, unlike some of the justice or health petitions, where there was an obvious thematic connection. They raise quite complicated and sometimes quite technical issues, too.

We are joined by the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Energy, Gillian Martin, and by the following Scottish Government officials: Catherine Williams, deputy director, onshore electricity, strategy and consents; Robert Martin, head of legislative change and governance; and Antonia Georgieva, head of battery energy storage systems—which are a plague on my constituency, if I am allowed to say so, but such issues will no doubt be touched on as we progress. A very warm welcome to you all, and thank you very much for joining us this morning.

This morning’s evidence-taking session will cover a number of petitions: PE1864, on increasing the ability of communities to influence planning decisions for onshore wind farms; PE1885, on making offering community-shared ownership mandatory for all wind farm development planning proposals; PE2095, on improving the public consultation processes for energy infrastructure projects; PE2109, on halting any further pumped storage hydro schemes on Scottish lochs holding wild Atlantic salmon; PE2157, on updating planning advice for energy storage issues to ensure that it includes clear guidance for the location of battery energy storage systems near residences and communities; PE2159, on halting the production of hydrogen from fresh water; and PE2160, on introducing an energy strategy.

Cabinet secretary, I understand that you would like to start off this morning’s proceedings with a short introductory statement.

Thank you. I will make a couple of points before I bring in colleagues. Although I talked about the petitions being quite technically varied, community engagement is an underlying theme, which is sometimes prominent and sometimes discrete.

In relation to outages as a result of last week’s weather event, you said that, mercifully, we have been much more fortunate than we were a year ago. Was that in any way due to resilience planning in the interim, or were we just luckier this time than we were the previous time we had bad weather?

Before you continue, does Fergus Ewing want to come in on that issue?

I will bring in Mr Ewing in a second, but there are a couple of questions that I would like to follow up on, given that Mr Golden has been kind enough to reference my constituency and the Whitelee wind farm, of which members of the community are all immensely proud.

It has been an interesting journey, which, in some ways, is typical of what happens with such developments. I can remember the community having very fierce objections to it, yet anybody who has been born during the lifetime of its existence simply accepts the fact that it is there. I might include in the community benefit of the wind farm the incredible leisure opportunities that have been provided in its precincts, which include the visitor centre and the bike trails. Those facilities are very widely used.

Having said that, although the people of Eaglesham and Waterfoot thought that the community benefit would all go to their areas, as Mr Golden said, that was not the case. As a resident of Waterfoot, I can say that we are very proud of our park bench, which appears to be the only community benefit that we received, because the council moved in and decided that it would assume responsibility for the community benefit, which now goes to the entire council area, including parts of the Leverndale valley such as Barrhead, Uplawmoor and Neilston that do not see the Whitelee wind farm, unlike the people of Castlemilk. Sometimes, as you say, the benefit can be quite widely spread. Of course, as some suspect, a council could start to use the benefit to subsidise its own core spending as opposed to delivering the incremental benefit that I think many people would hope would transpire. Have you come across that sentiment, which might be widely held?

I will now bring in Fergus Ewing.

I will bring Fergus Ewing in in a moment, but we have a petition on pump storage hydro in Scotland and wild salmon—PE2109—and I want to touch on an issue arising from that. How do you set out that impact assessments on hydro projects should take into account the overall or cumulative effect on salmon populations?

I will draw that conversation to a conclusion.

I am not sure whether we touched on this earlier, but is there a date by which you anticipate the new energy strategy being published?

We continue this morning’s meeting by considering a number of petitions that raise concerns and call for action on healthcare matters. Colleagues will remember that, on 24 September, we took evidence from the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social on several themes. After the evidence session, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care followed up in writing to the committee on some outstanding issues.

This morning, we will consider the petitions that sit under the theme of capacity, skills and training. Then, we will consider a petition on the theme of post-Covid-19 impact and response. The committee has explored the specific issues that are raised in the petitions by seeking written evidence from stakeholders and ministers. The thematic issues were also explored in our recent oral evidence session with the cabinet secretary.

I will provide an overview of the evidence that we have received on each petition since it was last considered. We will then decide what action to take on those petitions.

PE2053, which was lodged by Peter Cawston on behalf of Scottish general practitioners at the deep end, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to take action to ensure that the number and hours of current community link workers serving the poorest communities are not cut in the next financial year and to take binding steps to secure long-term funding for community link workers in GP practices across Scotland.

The petition was last considered in October 2024, ahead of the oral evidence session with the cabinet secretary. We wrote to the Scottish Government, and the response stated that the Scottish Government was exploring the potential to baseline the primary care improvement fund, via which most community link worker services are funded, starting from the 2026-27 financial year. The written response also confirmed that officials had begun a review of the CLW policy, overseen by the CLW advisory group, and that any changes arising from that two-year review would be introduced in a phased manner. In the evidence that he gave, the cabinet secretary confirmed that the review was still under way.

PE2078, which was lodged by Ryan McNaughton, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to create a new body responsible for the inspection, assessment and licensing of private ambulance service providers or to encompass the clinical governance management of private companies in Scotland into Healthcare Improvement Scotland.

We last considered the petition in February last year, when we agreed to write to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care. In his response, the cabinet secretary stated that engagement with Healthcare Improvement Scotland and the scoping of relevant stakeholders began in 2024 but that it was paused and was due to resume in 2025. At the evidence session on the petition, he stated his understanding that the matter would go to public consultation in 2026, in the next parliamentary session.

PE2091, which was lodged by Kirsty Solman on behalf of Stand with Kyle Now, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to provide funding to enable a child and adolescent mental health service support worker and a school nurse to be placed in our secondary schools. We considered the petition in April last year and agreed to write to the Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport. The minister’s response stated that, for the first time, the 18-week CAMHS standard had been met, with 90.6 per cent of children and young people starting treatment within 18 weeks of referral. The submission also highlighted the work that was under way that will create better cohesion between school nursing teams and associated services such as CAMHS.

PE2126, which was lodged by Gemma Clark, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to ensure that abortion services are available up to the 24th week of pregnancy across all NHS health boards in Scotland. We last considered the petition in February last year and wrote to the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health.

The minister states that her expectation is for a service to be established within the national health service, but the Government is not unwilling to consider commissioning a non-NHS organisation to deliver it instead. The minister indicated that a number of private providers were contacted as part of the work of NHS National Services Scotland’s national services division, but they indicated that they would not be able to host the service.

We received a submission from Abortion Rights Scotland, which strongly believes that such a service should be provided within the NHS, by NHS staff.

The petitioner states that, despite the minister’s assurance, back in November 2025, that the Government was working with health boards to ensure that a service was to be implemented as swiftly as possible, no information about the recommended service model has been shared, and she remains concerned about a lack of transparency in the Government’s approach to the matter.

PE2128, which was lodged by Christy Esslemont, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to provide additional funding to reduce waiting times for post-mastectomy delayed breast reconstructions, to ensure that waiting time information is accurate and to assess whether the communications section of the waiting times guidance is being followed by health boards.

We last considered the petition on 19 February 2025, when we agreed to write to the Scottish Government. During the evidence session that we held with the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, he recognised the issue that had been raised by the petitioner and highlighted the demand for cancer treatment services. The cabinet secretary stated that the Scottish Government was working with relevant health boards to ensure the recruitment of specialist surgeons.

In respect of the petitions that I have just identified—PE2053, PE2078, PE2091, PE2126 and PE2128—do colleagues have any suggestions as to what we are now able to do?

We understand the issues that underpinned the submission of the petition in the first place—they are known to us in Parliament. Do members agree to proceed on the basis that has been outlined?

Members indicated agreement.