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Surely we should be responding to what did happen rather than what should have happened. It is another example of the system failing that people have come up against. The system has not been working as it should, so we would not expect you to dismiss that and say that it should have been done differently. That is what it sounds like.

There do not have to be records. I know that from my own constituents. What someone has to prove is that, on the balance of probability, something was more likely to have happened than not. I am aware of payments being made to people who have not been able to find records but who have been able to put together other circumstantial evidence to support an application. In this case, we have a great many people from various parts of Scotland, particularly in the Glasgow area, who are able to corroborate and confirm that the experiences that other people are talking about are the same as theirs.

That starts to look to me like something that would meet that test or certainly that should get far enough through the process to allow Redress Scotland to make an analysis of the evidence. However, because of the individual nature of the applications going forward, we are not looking at that collective picture. To me, that is not consistent with what your predecessor meant when he recognised that this is a grey area, that these issues are very difficult and that they would have to be looked at in detail. If they cannot even be looked at in detail, how do you work out whether they meet the balance of probabilities test?

Redress Scotland works for you. Redress Scotland works for the Government.

I agree, and I think that we would get a better quality of response if the petition came back in a different form. The reality is that, if we were to contact organisations or local authorities on the current premise, we would move into what would be quite a political space around funding rather than something constructive. From my limited experience of the committee, it works best when there is a defined goal or something that is achievable at the end of the petition.

I strongly support the aims of the petition. I see the problem regularly as a constituency MSP, particularly with vulnerable and elderly patients, including those who have to travel, and those with long-term chronic conditions, who are all struggling to interact with the same-day policy.

It would be worth while trying to find out how prevalent the issue is across the country. We could achieve that by writing to the Scottish Government to ask how many GP practices are now operating with a same-day-only appointment system. We should also seek its views on the health and care experience survey results and on NHS England’s recent change to the GP contract, which now states that patients should be offered an assessment of need or signposted to an appropriate service at their first contact with the practice, with practices no longer being able to request that the patient contact them at a later time. We could ask the Scottish Government whether it is looking at a similar approach and, if it is, whether there is flexibility to make a similar change in the existing general medical services contract.

I do not want to add unduly to the committee’s workload, but I would also be interested in knowing the views of health boards across Scotland on the issue, as they have a responsibility in relation to primary care. There are examples around the country of poor access to primary care causing wider challenges in the health service, with higher numbers of people than average presenting, for example, at accident and emergency. I would be keen to ask health boards whether this practice is happening in the areas that they are responsible for and how common they think it is.

Then we go back to what the previous Deputy First Minister said, which was that people would be believed and that that was going to be the core of this whole process. Now we are hearing that that is not the case, and that cannot be right. I cannot sign up to that—I am sorry.

With due respect, at the point at which this matter was being considered, the second most senior person in the Scottish Government believed that these people would be eligible to apply. Also, the more they found out about the situation, the less credible they found the outcome of the report that you are now pushing as providing closure.

John Swinney—his words are there, and I am sure that he will correct them if he has changed his mind since—did not accept the argument that parents had chosen to take their children there as if it were a holiday camp.

The guidance can change.

How can I have confidence in the scheme, though, if the people that those who introduced the scheme thought would not face a barrier to accessing it cannot access it? Confidence works both ways. It is a challenge that the records do not exist, but to say that, on the balance of probabilities, there is insufficient evidence that people were somewhere they say they were—when lots of other people say they were there and seem to understand that as being how those things worked at the time—is also a challenge.

I do not think that people have any expectations—