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?

We will be considering which petitions are likely to be kept open in the committee’s next couple of meetings, so I am content on this occasion to hold the petition open while we consider whether that would be the appropriate action. If it has to close, it will be for the reasons that we have suggested.

I thank Josh MacLeod in my parliamentary office for his very forceful representations to me on the matter.

PE2208, which was lodged by Joanna Kerr, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to place a statutory requirement on public bodies to collect statistics on the nationality, ethnicity, immigration status and religion of child sexual offenders, and to collate and publish the data annually.

As with the previous petition, I will begin our consideration by noting the committee’s disappointment at the Scottish Government’s delay in providing its response. The response was received only on Friday of last week, which has limited the petitioner’s opportunity to provide further evidence; therefore, all we have received recently is the Scottish Government’s very late submission.

However, the petitioner provided a written submission to the committee in December, and her written evidence highlights a similar UK public petition, which has now gathered more than a quarter of a million signatures. The submission highlights that police in England and Wales are now expected to collect the ethnicity and nationality data of individuals who are suspected of being members of grooming gangs or perpetrators of other group-based child sexual exploitation.

The Scottish Government’s response to the petition states that, given the number of public bodies in Scotland, placing a duty to collect data as set out in the petition would be difficult to implement and disproportionate to their wide and varied roles. The submission notes that, under the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2016, following arrest, a person is under no obligation to answer any question apart from their name, address, date and place of birth and nationality. The submission notes, however, that work is under way to align Police Scotland recording systems to capture ethnicity data for suspects. It also notes that criminal justice agencies record information based on operational needs or where there is a legal requirement. Therefore, agencies do not hold coded data on nationality, immigration status or religion unless the specific circumstances of the offences make it relevant for prosecution.

The Scottish Government has highlighted a programme of work that is taking place to improve data collection on child sexual abuse and exploitation. A short-life working group will bring together experts to consider a range of data sources that can be collated and analysed to build a more comprehensive picture of child sexual abuse and exploitation in Scotland.

Do colleagues have any suggestions for action?

That concludes today’s meeting.

Meeting closed at 11:08.

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?

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?

Do colleagues agree to close the petition on that basis and to note and accept Mr Ewing’s suggestion that we, within our competences, have a posthumous letter on our recommendation ready for the next Presiding Officer of the Parliament, if only to ensure that the issue does not recur as a running sore thereafter and that there is an opportunity for our recommendation to be factored into the proper scrutiny of the project by the colleagues who will have the responsibility to monitor it in the next parliamentary session?

Members indicated agreement.

That brings us to consideration of new petitions. I really highlight the difficulty that the committee faces. I have looked through the new petitions that we will consider this morning. Some of them raise substantive matters that the committee would, in ordinary circumstances, want to pick up and pursue. However, there is normally a gap of six months between each consideration of a petition in the committee. That lead time is required for the actions that we initiate and for us to collate and present the required responses to the committee. We have four or five meetings left before the end of the parliamentary session, in which we will be considering our legacy report and the petitions that we can hold open.

09:45

I say to some petitioners who might think, “Should our petition be held open?” that the parliamentary rules are such that, if we hold a petition open and it or any of its criteria is judged to be obsolete in any way, the new Parliament may close that petition and there would be an embargo of 12 months before it could be brought back to the Parliament. However, if we close a petition now, it can be lodged again immediately in May and it can be considered afresh in the new parliamentary session.

I think that that condition is less applicable to new petitions, because they are unlikely to be covering historical matters. I can think of a couple of petitions that have been open for more than five years where some of what underpins them may no longer be current.

Before any petition comes before the committee, we receive the Scottish Government’s initial review. I have to say that that has been a little slow in coming forth for a couple of the petitions that we are considering this morning—indeed, one response was received on Friday. We also get advice from the Scottish Parliament’s independent research body, the Scottish Parliament information centre, which allows the committee to be fully briefed about the issues that underpin a petition.