Seòmar agus comataidhean

I suggest to the clerks that we add this to the list of petitions that we will give further consideration to. We will leave just a handful of petitions open for the new Parliament to consider, and we will have a further meeting in which we will have to decide which petitions, from a shortlist, we would recommend that action for. I am minded to add the petition to that list.

Yes, it will allow that. Are colleagues agreed that we will defer a final decision on the petition, on the basis that we will add it to the list of petitions that we will consider leaving open for the next parliamentary session?

Do members agree to close the petition?

Members indicated agreement.

In the face of your eloquence and in view of the tragic circumstances that underpinned the petition—which might otherwise have been avoided, for all we know—that is a very focused additional inquiry, so I am minded, if the committee is willing, to hold the petition open by exception and to make that specific request of the Scottish Government. I do not think that we can go any wider, given that we want to see what action we can get. We have certainly been able to highlight the issue through the evidence of the petition’s having been raised and the contribution that you have made.

If colleagues are content, we will hold the petition open, by exception, and we will seek to clarify the specific point that Jackie Baillie has raised with the Scottish Government.

We will therefore hold the petition open and act on that basis. I thank Jackie Baillie for her contribution and the people in the gallery for being with us this morning.

Thank you, Mr Golden. Are colleagues content to close the petition?

Members indicated agreement.

Mr Ewing, the long and winding road, as ever, leads us to your door. Thank you for your contribution on the petition. Are you making a formal proposal to close the petition and to establish in practice the criteria that we might indicate as the basis for its closure?

I have had constituency casework during the past couple of sessions of Parliament—other members might have had such casework, too—which had its genesis in issues that have arisen on power of attorney. I do not know how widespread this is, but local authorities have become progressively underresourced and certain areas simply have not been prioritised, because the focus has had to be elsewhere.

I am not presenting this issue as the only example in that regard, but I have found that there have been matters on which I might historically have expected the local authority to take a more active role. However, frankly, the resourcing to do so does not exist now, and certain things have been excused or passed over as a result.

There are issues to be considered, and were it not for the time left in this parliamentary session, and the fact that we have had a number of petitions relating to issues arising on power of attorney, this might have been a very interesting area for the committee to have explored in more detail.

I hope that the petition will return and that the issues in it can be pursued during the next parliamentary session but we have a recommendation to close it on the basis that has been suggested.

Are colleagues content with that?

Members indicated agreement.

The work of the Scottish Government’s inquiry is on-going. Therefore, it might be worthwhile for the petitioner to wait for that to conclude and then resubmit a new petition to the next Parliament, in the light of whatever arises from that. At that point, the new committee could consider it and potentially pursue it.

Are colleagues content, notwithstanding the importance of the issue, to support Mr Torrance’s recommendation?

Members indicated agreement.

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?