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Our first new petition is PE2188, lodged by Claire Sparrow, which calls on the Parliament to urge the Government to extend the national entitlement card scheme to include ferry travel for people aged 60 and over. The Scottish Government’s response to the petition highlights the publication of “Islands Connectivity Plan—Strategic Approach” in May and the expanded concessionary ferry travel for under-22s only. The response states that the Scottish Government does not consider the ask of the petition to be achievable, as it is not affordable to expand ferry concessions any further to include over-60s at this time, beyond what is already provided.

The petitioner has provided two written submissions, which highlight that ferry travel is essential for older adults living on islands. They sometimes must travel to attend healthcare appointments that are not available locally—I can think of islands even in the west of Scotland where that is the case—to purchase groceries and other necessities, and to maintain social and family connections.

The petitioner states that older island residents are effectively excluded from the same freedom of movement that their mainland counterparts enjoy. She points out that, under the current arrangements, island residents must first pay for ferry travel before they can access a bus service to which free bus entitlement applies. The petitioner states that that is not simply a matter of inconvenience; it is a matter of geographical inequality and social isolation.

Before we consider whether the committee can do anything in the time that is available to us, I ask Mr McArthur whether he would like to offer a few comments.

That is Mr Torrance’s recommendation. Are we content with his proposal?

Members indicated agreement.

That is how the affairs of the United States are conducted, currently.

That brings us to the end of that item. I hope that the petitioner is content with our taking forward the petition on that basis.

With the lower number of specialist centres, would the call on the service not be considerably greater than is the current experience?

Right—so we have two of the posse of co-chairs with us this morning. I am grateful to both of you for joining us. Would you like to make any opening remarks, or are you happy for us to move to questions?

It might be helpful if you could explain that on the record. The committee has gone through that previously, but it would not be unhelpful to hear it again.

That is helpful.

Although there is a pattern to them, a lot of our questions cut across one another and are relevant to various points. Obviously, we are going to discuss why we went from having eight units to having just three, following a recommended reduction to between three and five. However, following our visit to Wishaw, my question is: how does the framework aim to maximise the experience of babies and parents—that is, the human aspect—alongside maximising clinical outcomes and cost-effectiveness?

The unit in Wishaw is an award-winning facility with highly experienced staff and is at a geographical point that is accessible for everybody in the south of Scotland. We know that some of the larger units that exist are turning people away because they do not have capacity, which raises the prospect that somebody from Lanarkshire could end up in Aberdeen.

In Wishaw, we spoke to a father who said that, following the birth of their child, his wife was left in a life-threatening situation and that, if the unit in Wishaw had not existed, he would have had to decide whether to stay with his wife, whose life was at risk, or stay with his baby, who might have been in Aberdeen. That would have been an awful choice to make. The human dynamic in such circumstances seems to be at risk.

As I said, there is an award-winning facility in Wishaw and, when we visited it, we saw that the quality of care that is provided is outstanding. To us, as laypeople, it seemed difficult to square the circle.

Davy, did you want to follow up on any questions?

I want to touch on something that Monica Lennon asked about and which came up quite a bit when we were on our visit. The review group included representatives from Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and, coincidentally, the three centres are to be in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Lanarkshire was not represented. I understand that people from Lanarkshire were invited, but they took the view that, because there was a material interest, it might be prejudicial for them to take part, not realising that, in fact, it was potentially prejudicial for them not to take part. Notwithstanding their view of how that might have been interpreted, could that not have been challenged to ensure that the review group was more representative of all of Scotland, rather than just of the centres of excellence that ultimately benefited from the outcome of the review?

I have to say that, on our visit to Wishaw, everybody we spoke to was scathing of the contribution of Bliss.