Seòmar agus comataidhean

We should write to the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs to seek further details on the work that is being undertaken to consider longer-term funding options for charities that play a vital role in the seizure of drugs and criminal assets.

?It is an interesting suggestion and, indeed, the work that has been carried out to highlight it to relevant authorities has been useful. However, we should close the petition under rule 15.7 of standing orders, on the basis that the committee’s report on participation considered a similar recommendation and concluded that

“We do not support the recommendation for a question time which is part of formal Parliamentary business, as we think it raises too many difficulties both of practice and principle”.

Further work needs to be carried out on the petition to understand how the voucher scheme is working—or not, as the case may be. It may be down to access to broadband. Even if someone can pay for a service, if they cannot actually get that service, it is slightly irrelevant that they can get a voucher for it.

We should write to the Scottish Government to ask whether, in the light of the low uptake of vouchers, it believes that the Scottish broadband voucher scheme is an adequate approach to providing connections to properties in rural Scotland.

We have done some work on the petition and, ultimately, from the evidence that you have just highlighted, we should close the petition under rule 15.7 of standing orders on the basis that Police Scotland already has powers to address any unlawful behaviour that may arise in the vicinity of migrant accommodation as a result of protest activity.

I agree. Lots of homework is done via mobile phone on Google Classrooms and that is commonly used in classes as well—pupils use it to find out what the homework is and then work off that. It might be interesting to find out how individual schools have implemented restrictions on the wi-fi to limit the apps that pupils can access. As a parallel issue, there seems to be a growing increase in panic attacks among pupils in schools, and one of the ways in which those are mitigated and helped is by calling the parent. Without a phone, that will be difficult to do.

Again, that is anecdotal, but it would be useful to hear more about those issues.

I wonder whether there is just a little bit more in this. I appreciate that the guidance has been updated but, given that this is a new petition, is it worth giving this issue a bit more of an airing to find out more evidence? The petition calls for the most extreme form of a ban, but there may be other variations that produce results. There is probably a gap when it comes to how confident the Scottish Government is that schools are collecting data on mobile phone misuse and understanding the scale of the problem. It would be useful to hear from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland, the Association of Headteachers and Deputes in Scotland and School Leaders Scotland, in addition to any individual schools that have applied some form of a ban, which may be state schools or independent schools, and the educational attainment results arising from that.

Ring fencing?

The timetabling of debates is a matter for the Parliamentary Bureau to discuss, and I am sure that the member can discuss the matter of ensuring that the topic is debated in Parliament with her business manager.

There are several aspects that we need to unpack. Several different actors are involved in energy infrastructure, and it would be useful to get opinions from them.

First, on the Scottish Government’s position, it would be useful to understand what discussions and engagement it has had with the UK Government on regulatory powers that would put pre-application engagement for electricity transmission on a statutory footing.

In addition, it would be useful to know what the Scottish Government’s position is on pre-application engagement. My understanding is that—it would be useful to have clarification on this point—pre-application engagement could reduce public participation and make it easier for energy infrastructure to be rolled out without community involvement, but I stand to be corrected on that.

It would also be useful to get the Scottish Government to outline how it sees public participation with regard to decision making in that area and, ultimately, to understand how it considers that that could be improved. That links to the second bullet point in the petition, which is about community liaison and public participation. That is where that aspect gets quite complicated.

The UK Government has a role in providing licence conditions for the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets, so we should get a position from it as the energy regulator. We should also get a position from the national energy systems operator on how it might highlight the current Kintore to Tealing infrastructure and infrastructure that might be required in future in that place. I think that it has a role in highlighting future infrastructure. There is also a role, as we have heard, for the transmission operators and, potentially, for the distribution network operators, who might be doing smaller-scale energy infrastructure.

There is quite a lot to understand in how all this pieces together. A member of a community might not fully appreciate all the different stakeholders that are involved in delivering energy infrastructure.

I think that we have progressed the petition as far as possible. I recommend that we close the petition under rule 15.7 of standing orders, on the basis that the Scottish Government does not intend to take forward the specific proposal contained in the petition at this time, given the wide range of law, duties on public bodies and national guidance that exists to protect children from harm, including that caused by alcohol.