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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 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.

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?

PE2101, on providing defibrillators for all primary and secondary schools in Scotland, was lodged by Peter Earl on behalf of Troqueer primary school.

We last considered the petition on 7 May 2025, when we agreed to invite the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health to give evidence.

During the oral evidence, the minister highlighted the importance of, as I said a short time ago, optimal defibrillator placement and pointed to the new PADmap tool, which shows the location of public access and identifies the areas where defibrillators are most needed.

The minister stated that, during a meeting with the First Minister and Rodger and Lesley Hill, the proposal in the petition was discussed. The DH9 Foundation, which is funded by Rodger and Lesley Hill, and the Save a Life for Scotland partnership subsequently recommended taking a data-driven and localised approach to increased defibrillator access.

The committee asked whether all children could be taught cardiopulmonary resuscitation in schools. The minister committed to discussing that with the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills.

Are there any suggestions as to how we might proceed?

Thank you. I think that Mr Golden raised the location of schools during questioning.

It would be dangerous for us to broaden the scope of our inquiry at this stage, but we should very much focus on getting results from the issues that we have made progress on. Given that the review took place at the end of the year, there is still a chance for us to get further commitment before the Parliament dissolves. Are we content to proceed on that basis?

Members indicated agreement.

Item 4 is the consideration of new petitions.

Before I introduce the first of our new petitions, I begin, as I always do, by noting that the Scottish Government is invited to express a view on new petitions and that we ask the Scottish Parliament information centre—the Scottish Parliament’s independent research service—to bottom out issues that are raised in the petitions that are before us.

As I explained earlier in the meeting, the committee’s current focus is to identify issues that we feel that we can make significant progress on before the end of the parliamentary session. There are only six meetings of the committee left, and the agenda for most of them is already set.

We could seek to achieve that in the time that remains to us. Depending on the outcome, we might feel that the petition requires a lot of work ahead, so it could be part of the legacy document that we leave to the next committee.

Do colleagues agree to keep the petition open and write to the cabinet secretary on that basis?

Members indicated agreement.

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?

Do colleagues agree that we should take those actions forward?

Members indicated agreement.