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You are right. Lots of friends of mine who are orthopaedic surgeons say that they are over the moon if they have an all-day operating list. They do not get to operate as an orthopaedic surgeon or general surgeon. I used to be an orthopaedic trainee, and those guys train so that they can operate. If they are just getting a day a week of operating time, that is simply not good enough. It is not the fault of the surgeons. They are desperate to operate, but many of them are not getting to do so. If you are not getting into theatre to operate on patients, how on earth can we clear the backlog?

We will certainly come on to that.

The national workforce strategy refers to

“collaborative working across RCGP, CfSD, Scottish Government, Health Board Interface Groups and other relevant stakeholders to identify new opportunities for redesign of ways of working that can be applied nationally to challenges across the interface. Potential examples for scoping may include referral guidelines, IT, Community Treatment and Care services and unscheduled care.”

What have you done with that IT? Speaking as a national health service worker, it is appalling.

That is great, but if it takes me 15 minutes to get into my computer in the morning and I cannot access basic stuff from the hospital, and I am not able to access other data sets when I am working in the hospital, what is the point of all of that additional stuff when the basics are not being done?

I declare an interest as a practising NHS general practitioner.

More than 840 Scots are on waiting lists currently, one in three cancer patients is not being seen within 62 days and out-patient waits of more than one year have gone up by 11,000. If we look at our workforce, there are more than 4,000 nursing vacancies in NHS Scotland, and whole-time equivalent GP numbers have decreased by 42. Katie Cuthbertson, why are we not seeing significant improvements?

Okay. I turn to lung screening. A number of years ago, I spoke to the then health secretary about the potential for purchasing mobile lung screening CT machines that could go to the north of our country and rural and island areas to provide lung screening at not a great cost. Where are we with that?

On the issue of filming, I am glad that the minister and Gillian Mackay are both willing to discuss this. It is potentially even more intimidating than a protest to be filmed walking into somewhere and for that to be put on social media. Given the quality of cameras, filming can be done from a very large distance away or even, potentially, from a different property. Therefore, although we would not want to have every single potential behaviour listed, having an example or listing one thing that is particularly intimidating or that would particularly cause harassment is important.

Thank you, minister. You spoke of your hesitancy. Will you outline a bit more clearly what exactly you are concerned about? My other question is whether you have taken legal advice on the issue. If a zone is not clearly defined for people on the ground and they are standing 190m instead of 200m away, could that lack of clarity be a reason that is used in defence of the people who are protesting?

The wording of sections 4 and 5 means that an offence would occur not only where a person has the intention to influence, prevent access or cause harassment but, beyond that, where a person is “reckless”. It means not only that people should not attempt to protest against abortion services but that they will require to be actively vigilant, beyond their normal, everyday considerations, to ensure that their actions do not have that implication.

My position is that that is an unduly onerous burden on the general public. For example, if family members are leaving the Queen Elizabeth university hospital in Glasgow and they have been told that their grandfather is about to die in hospital, it is not unreasonable for them to stop within or just outside the grounds and pray or silently contemplate what they have just been told. That activity might be covered by the bill if people who are walking past feel that their praying is intended to intimidate.

The committee heard the police say that they are not the thought police and will never ask what somebody is thinking. My amendments 17 and 18 seek to require that an effect be objectively “reasonably foreseeable”. There should not be an offence

“where it is not reasonably foreseeable”

that an act would cause the effect. I believe that my amendments would avoid imposing an onerous burden on the public while retaining the principles of the bill. Reasonable foreseeability is a common test in Scots law and the reasonableness test appears in similar existing legislation such as the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service told the committee that guidelines that are issued to Police Scotland around the bill will require satisfaction of intent or recklessness beyond reasonable doubt. My position is that the reasonableness test should be specified in the bill for absolute clarity and for the sake of proportionality.

I move amendment 17.

I declare an interest as a practising national health service GP.

I thank the minister for her remarks. This is not a debate on abortion. I firmly believe that women have a right to access healthcare without fear or intimidation.

Amendment 38 seeks to remove section 10 of the bill. My position is that the definition of “protected premises” should not be capable of modification by secondary legislation. My concern is that, if there are changes to abortion service delivery that mean that new settings, such as pharmacies and GP surgeries, are approved to provide abortion services under the 1967 act, safe access zones could be established around them, which would take the extent and number of zones beyond what is reasonable and proportionate.

Safe access zones could cover significantly larger areas than the initial 30 sites. I am thinking of GP surgeries and pharmacies, but we could even be talking about Amazon warehouses in the future. Although I acknowledge that the bill requires consultation with the provider, the operator and, where considered appropriate, the health board and local authority, I do not consider that there is sufficient scrutiny for such potentially wide-reaching consequences. The modification of the meaning of “protected premises” should happen only by way of primary legislation, with full parliamentary scrutiny. As the minister says, we do not know what abortion care will look like in the coming decades.

Committee members will recall that the stage 1 report highlighted the likelihood of the future extension of the definition impacting on the rights to protest or undertake vigils that are set out in articles 9, 10 and 11 of the European convention on human rights. The stage 1 report recommended that any changes to the definition

“should be subject to a further enhanced level of parliamentary scrutiny to that currently provided by the Bill.”

The deletion of section 10 would remove the power of the Scottish ministers to amend the definition without introducing new primary legislation. In other words, there would be full parliamentary scrutiny. Remember, Governments can change, and a future Government might extend the definition, despite the minister saying right now that that is not the intention. I genuinely believe that such an extension would be a significant change, and significant change requires significant scrutiny.

Will the minister take an intervention, maybe at the end?