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In your opening statement, you talked about protests. I want to separate out traditional protests, involving placards and shouting, because we have heard clear evidence that no one is in favour of that.

I want to come to the issue of silent prayer, which I directly asked the police about. They said that they would not ask someone why they were there if they were standing silently, and that they would certainly not ask what they were praying or thinking about. The police do not want to get into that. Given that the bill includes silent prayer, but that it does not seem as though the police would do anything about that, I am a bit confused as to how that would work in practice.

Finally, medicine moves on and things change. We now see women accessing abortion services in very different ways than they did only 10 years ago, for example. GPs and pharmacies provide services, along with other places. The bill allows scope for expansion into those areas, and we heard from the minister that that enables a flexible approach. However, if you were to expand the legislation to cover GP and pharmacy services at 200m, a lot of Scotland would be covered, which would be very different to your tightly drawn-up list of 30 sites. What reassurances do we have that such scenarios would not happen?

The bill talks about intentionally or recklessly influencing another person. Would the bill cover staff who go to work for a completely different reason but who are, as we have heard in evidence, affected by abortion protests?

Thank you for coming, minister. I declare an interest as a practising general practitioner in the national health service.

I have a few questions. My primary concern comes from evidence that I have heard about the right to protest for other reasons. When the police and a defence solicitor were here, I specifically asked about our right to go, for instance, to a hospital to protest against Eljamel to say that what he did was unacceptable. There was also some discussion about situations where an employer was trying to prevent some protest from happening because they did not like it.

The bill talks about intentionally or recklessly influencing someone’s decision. We have seen people outside Parliament protesting against Eljamel who have been wearing scrubs with blood on them, and I suppose that, from a distance, one could be concerned. That might be deemed to be “reckless” in relation to influencing people. What is your take on the fact that the police and the solicitor said that the bill would prevent other forms of protest?

I will read out a paragraph from a letter that Catriona McMillan wrote to the committee on behalf of the Law Society of Scotland. It states:

“If the committee remains concerned that the Bill may be used to, or set a precedent for, curbing other legitimate protests it may wish to consider the suggestion we have made in our written evidence that overarching principles be included on the face of the Bill to assist with the proper balancing exercises required for ECHR compliance—in this case, the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly (articles 10 and 11 ECHR)”.

Do you agree with the Law Society’s suggestion, which is to put the overarching principles on the face of the bill?

Thank you for coming to talk to us about the bill. I declare an interest as a practicing NHS GP.

My question is similar to the one that I asked the minister earlier. In your opening statement, you talked about how you would not support any curtailment of protests for other, very legitimate reasons. How do you square that with what the police and the solicitor who came before us said when I asked whether I would be able to, for example, go and protest about Mr Eljamel, which is a legitimate protest to engage in? They said that they felt that the bill would not allow me to do that.

Perhaps it would not be about leaving out the ability to do that, but about making it so that it is not just at ministerial discretion and that Parliament might be involved in some way.

The bill has the ability to be extended to other places, such as general practices or pharmacies. We certainly heard evidence from other people suggesting that those areas might be protected.

My concern is that, if we have 200m around every GP practice and pharmacy, most of Scotland might be covered by the bill. I am therefore asking about the proportionality of that extension. Hospitals and clinics are different, and that extension into other areas would be of concern.

I want to separate out “protest”—which is people with placards and pictures and shouting and screaming—and “silent prayer”. They are two very different things. Everyone we heard from said that protest, in the form that I described, is unacceptable. The silent prayer part is where people disagree. When I asked the police, they said that they would not ask why somebody was there, and that they certainly would not ask what they were thinking or whether they were praying. If the police are not going to enforce it in any way, which is what it sounded like, could you explain having that in the bill?

You have referred to the letter from the Law Society. I will paraphrase what it says. Towards the end, it says that you could include the overarching principles in the bill to make it clearer. Might you be willing to do that?