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Do you think that it might be published before the autumn of 2027?

I believe that the petitioner is with us in the public gallery today. The issues continue to be important, but, given the cabinet secretary’s response, I suspect that we can do nothing further in the time that is available to us. Do colleagues agree with the suggestion that the petition be resubmitted in the new parliamentary session but that we reluctantly close it at this point?

Members indicated agreement.

The next continued petition is PE2048, which was lodged by James Anthony Bundy. It calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to increase awareness of the symptoms of stroke by reviewing its promotion of the FAST—face, arms, speech, time—campaign and ensuring that stroke awareness campaigns include all the symptoms of a potential stroke. We previously considered the petition at our meeting on 25 February and agreed to write to the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health, NHS Fife, NHS Ayrshire and Arran, Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland, the Scottish Ambulance Service and the Chartered Institute of Marketing. The committee previously heard concerns, which are not universally shared, that moving from FAST to BE FAST—balance, eyes, face, arms, speech, time—could produce false positives and have a concerning impact on clinicians’ ability to treat strokes.

A submission that was received from NHS Forth Valley mentioned a range of FAST stroke awareness initiatives that it has been supporting locally, and it highlighted that its emergency department has been using the BE FAST stroke assessment tool since early 2024. However, it underlined that it has not yet been able to undertake any formal evaluation of the impact of those initiatives.

At the evidence session in November, the minister, Jenni Minto, said that the Government

“will converse with the health board to understand what it is doing, where it is in the pilot and when we can expect the report.”—[Official Report, Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee, 12 November 2025; c 18.]

We found the minister’s suggestion that the Government is keeping its current position under review quite encouraging, because that had not been expressed to us in writing. Additionally, we were impressed by the fact that the minister had been actively engaged with the issue and had met a number of the individuals concerned with the proposal.

The minister highlighted that, following a meeting with the petitioner, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care asked the stroke specialty adviser to the chief medical officer to review stroke awareness education for clinical staff. That led to the Scottish Government developing and funding an education package for general practices, emergency departments and the Scottish Ambulance Service that also covers the less common but important presentations of stroke, including symptoms relating to certain presentations of loss of balance and visual field defects—the B and E aspects of BE FAST.

This is another important petition that we have considered. Do colleagues have any comments or suggestions for action?

We thank the petitioner for submitting the petition.

If I may return briefly to PE1989, for the avoidance of doubt, I assumed that, when Mr Golden said that his view on the petition was similar to Mr Torrance’s, he meant that he was in favour of closing the petition. Are colleagues content with that proposal?

Members indicated agreement.

The next continued petition is PE2067, which is another one concerning an issue that is well known to the Parliament. It was lodged by Sharon Duncan following the death of her son and our colleague David Hill. It calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to commission research to establish how many people aged 14-35 are affected by conditions that cause young sudden cardiac death; to clarify the number of people who die annually in Scotland from those conditions; and to set up a pilot study to establish if voluntary screening can reduce deaths.

We last considered the petition on 5 March 2025, when we agreed to write to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care and to the Italian embassy. We then took evidence from the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health on 12 November and agreed to consider the evidence at a future meeting.

The submission from the consulate general of Italy in Edinburgh highlights evidence of screening leading to an 89 per cent decrease in the incident rate of sudden cardiac death among young competitive athletes—a figure that I think the committee found quite compelling. The Scottish Government has reiterated that it adheres to UK National Screening Committee guidance in this area; the UK NSC evidence summary shows that international guidelines do not recommend population-level screening, although they support pre-participation screening in competitive athletes. We understand that the UK NSC considered the study highlighted by the consulate general of Italy in its 2019 review, and it is now conducting a new review of relevant evidence over the following three years.

At the evidence-taking session in November, the minister informed us that the 2025 Scottish cardiac audit programme has included

“data on inherited cardiac conditions for the first time”.

Additionally, we heard that work is on-going

“to develop a proof of concept for a sudden cardiac death registry”—[Official Report, Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee, 12 November 2025; c 3.],

with the aim of including preliminary data in next year’s Scottish cardiac audit programme.

We also heard from the British Heart Foundation that it has funded clinical nurse specialist sudden cardiac death roles in order to expand and roll out a successful west of Scotland pilot to implement a new clinical pathway for sudden unexpected death, sudden cardiac death and out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. The aim is to achieve full national coverage by the end of the 24-month period, with progress being monitored throughout.

In the light of all that, do colleagues have any suggestions as to how we might proceed with the petition?

The first of the new petitions is on an important public policy matter that is in the eye of the public at present. PE2190, which was lodged by Mandy McGurk, calls on the Scottish Parliament to commission an independent grooming gang inquiry to identify and understand the prevalence of child grooming in Scotland.

In its response to the petition, the Scottish Government states that it is prepared to give every consideration to an inquiry if it is deemed to be necessary. The response highlights the national child sexual abuse and exploitation strategic group, which brings together key services and expert stakeholders. The submission notes that there is currently no comprehensive national data on the prevalence of child abuse in Scotland. Therefore, the Scottish Government is working to address that.

To review its operations and response to the issue, Police Scotland has taken forward a series of actions such as creating a timeline of action on child sexual exploitation since 2012.

After the Scottish Government issued its initial response to the petition, it announced that an independent national review of responses to group-based child sexual abuse and exploitation would take place. The review has begun, and ministers plan to update the Parliament more fully on the review by the end of February. Additionally, the Scottish Government has announced financial investment and support for victims and families who are impacted by sexual offending; access to training for professionals; and improvements to Police Scotland’s forensic capabilities.

Clearly, important issues are raised in the petition.

PE2196, which was lodged by Leanne Kelly on behalf of the root the rot campaign, calls on the Scottish Parliament to act on early sexual offending in young people and to prevent future offending by taking tougher action on gateway offences such as unsolicited sexual images and peer assaults; educating young people at school about consent and online harms; creating a culture of parental accountability; introducing a youth monitoring register for offences committed by young people; and providing real support for victims of all sexual offences.

The Scottish Government’s response to the petition sets out frameworks and approaches that aim to address the issues that are raised in the petition. The frameworks and approaches include the equally safe programme, which focuses on gender-based violence; bairn’s hoose, which provides a child-centred approach to delivering justice care and recovery for children; mentors in violence prevention, which is a peer mentoring programme in secondary schools; and the Parent Club website, which provides online information to parents. The Scottish Government states that it has no intention of introducing a youth monitoring register.

The petitioner has provided two written submissions to the committee. She states that the petition addresses a critical gap in the response to early offending in Scotland, where non-contact offences are minimised, interventions are delayed and parental accountability is inconsistent. The petitioner’s second written submission states that, although the Scottish Government has outlined relevant frameworks, it has not demonstrated that those measures prevent sexual harm in practice. The submission provides a number of illustrative examples for our consideration. The petitioner concludes by stating that, when early sexual offending by adults or children is minimised, escalation is not an accident but a predictable outcome.

Do members have any comments or suggestions for action?

That brings us to the end of our session in public. On Wednesday 21 January, the second meeting of 2026—an additional meeting of the committee, as colleagues will be aware—will take place.

11:54

Meeting continued in private until 11.59.

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.

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?