Seòmar agus comataidhean

With regard to the national fund element of the petition—the first of the three asks of the petition—I note that, the previous time this matter came before us, members suggested that we ask the Scottish Government about the upshot of its work with the UK Government to come up with a solution. In response to that, there has been a submission from the new cabinet secretary, who says that the Scottish Government is continuing to work with the UK Government. In that regard, I note that there is a new Secretary of State for Scotland.

I strongly believe that it is no use Scotland blaming London and London blaming Scotland. The people in the middle, some of whom are here today, are the ones who are suffering—in some cases, from the threat of bankruptcy—and are under severe pressure. I think that the blame-passing approach is just not good enough. We have a new Cabinet Secretary for Housing and a new Secretary of State for Scotland—Màiri McAllan and Douglas Alexander, respectively. Why do they not just meet and come up with a solution? The current situation cannot go on for ever. The longer it continues, the more it brings into disrepute the Scottish Government and the UK Government, which does nobody any good.

I acknowledge that time is short, but we still have about two thirds of a year to go, and we should try to use that time as best we can. I will explain to those members of the public who are here and have a direct interest in the matter that this committee does not have any budget; all that we can do is put pressure on the Governments to do the right thing. That is our job, and I think that we should invite the cabinet secretary to confirm that she will seek a meeting with her counterparts in the UK Government and not only come up with a solution but explain why people in Basildon have had money handed out to them while people in Scotland have not. She should also explain why the money is being restricted to monitoring and surveys and not to actual repair work. None of those questions has been answered at all.

I appreciate the constraints on the committee, and I will not be pleading for every petition to be kept open, for the reasons that you correctly set out, convener. However, in relation to this petition, a lot of human misery has been caused to people by RAAC through no fault whatsoever of their own. If I were one of the people watching the meeting today, I would be pretty disgusted if passing the buck was allowed to happen.

I hope that members will agree that there is more that could be done. The Governments talk all the time about working together positively, do they not? Well, let us see the proof. That is my suggestion.

It is par for the course, convener.

Will the contract be restored to GPs before the winter?

I would be obliged if you could come back to the committee with detailed answers on how many people you estimate will need the service; how many get it; how many get it in Dundee, in Liverpool, and in London; and what the costs are. It would be very helpful to have that information.

More generally on the health service, many people in Scotland believe that the money goes to the wrong places. It goes to far, far too many managers and bureaucrats and there are far too many medical quangos. Because of that, the money cannot be found to provide the direct services that everybody wishes for. There has not been any reform of the NHS since devolution began—that jaggedy thistle has not been grasped by anybody. Is it not about time that we had major reform, not to spend the money on managers and bureaucrats but to provide some sort of basic national service, at least? I believe that Mary Ramsay is in the gallery today; she has taken the time, again, to travel down to be with us.

I thank the cabinet secretary for his last answer, although he did not reply to my question, which was about when the pause will be lifted. Culloden engages with NHS Highland all the time—it has followed that recommendation for years and years—but it needs to know when the pause will be lifted. Will it be one year, two years, three years, four years or five years? If you cannot say, cabinet secretary, what are the civil service advising about it?

I agree. Plainly, you cannot press the button on a project until you are really certain about how much it will cost and what the design and the timescale will be. This building is an example of what can go wrong when you try to go ahead prematurely instead of festina lente, as the Romans might have said.

It has been brought to my attention by the submission from McGill’s—I have no judgment on or prior knowledge of this—that, as it says, the experts have costed the funding requirements for the SPT case at between £45 million and £400 million. I imagine that our colleagues here would disagree with that. However, the fact that McGill’s avers that experts say that that is the case means that, were the committee to take the petition further, we would have to pursue a very full investigation. With the best will in the world, I do not honestly think that we have the capacity or the time to do that. It is just a matter of fact that, between now and next year, we do not have the time to take evidence from all the people from whom we would require to take evidence.

Given that there is serious doubt about the cost, that there are severe pressures on finance—as has been pointed out, there is a massive shortfall in local government finance—and that people who are losing their jobs in some local authorities might regard their jobs as a greater priority than a scheme that has not yet been costed, I cannot see that we can do much today other than urge the petitioner to come back in the next session of Parliament and to continue to press the Government to work with SPT and other colleagues to devise a solution.

I should say that I have been in contact with Mr Jim Mackie, who, I believe, has been involved with the petition, or at least with issues surrounding the petition. As far as I can see, the petitioner responded on 15 January 2025, and I cannot see any further response to that. I mention that in case I am wrong, but the papers before me do not show any response to the petitioner. If I am wrong, maybe the clerks could let me know.

The reason why that seems significant is that the petitioner’s submission of 15 January contains some serious criticisms of SEPA—that its maps are inaccurate, that it does not give out any flood prevention advice, that it stymies schemes, that it makes it almost impossible to get sediment and gravel out of rivers, that it does not address the considerable barriers to doing any prevention work, that it does not involve communities at all—there is no community input whatsoever—and that it does not have a remit to assist communities in the design or building of flood defences. I mention only a few of the criticisms, as we do not have time to go through all of them. When a petitioner raises salient and serious criticisms, our job is to try to get answers. I know that there is pressure to close all petitions, but, in this case, I think that it would be very simple to ask SEPA to deliver a detailed response to each and every one of the petitioner’s various serious allegations.

The last thing that I will say is that I recently had a constituency case in which a scheme for affordable housing—around 20 units—took about 10 years to get through SEPA. It was supposed to be in a flooding area, but the houses were going to be built higher up than existing houses that have never been flooded—the development was in Nethy Bridge, where there has been no flooding since 1837. SEPA was a constant stumbling block to any progress whatsoever.

In rural Scotland—I am sure that Mr Mountain has experience of this—when you try to do things that everyone wants to do, such as build affordable housing, the proposals are blocked behind the scenes by quangos that will not come out and meet people, will not explain their actions and will rely solely on desktop information. I add that local anecdote merely by way of spice to support the petitioner’s criticism of SEPA.

I do not think that it would take up much more of the committee’s time if we were to wait for SEPA to provide the petitioner with a detailed forensic reply to every single one of his criticisms, and that would take matters further.

We are grateful for Ed Mountain’s factual input. I represent part of the River Spey, which is in my constituency, and I concur that water levels are at an all-time low. I add that many existing users have already been prejudiced by that, notably distilleries. I do not have a personal interest in the matter, unlike Mr Mountain, other than through being an avid consumer of those distilleries’ products. However, it seems reasonable to say that the existing users and businesses that have traditionally relied on access to the water supply should have their interests considered by all those whose job it is to oversee decisions in this regard.

There is an analogy with the pump storage situation, in which there is a plethora of pump storage applications and a lack of joint consideration of the overall impact that those will have on Loch Ness.

We should ask SEPA to comment specifically with regard to Mr Mountain’s evidence, which was interesting and, on the face of it, quite compelling. It would certainly be worrying if a massive extraction of water was permitted without consideration of the overall impact. I suggest that we write to SEPA, as Mr Mountain suggested, and that we include the petition as part of the thematic evidence session with the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Energy. I also suggest that, beforehand, we invite the cabinet secretary to respond to what Mr Mountain has said.

The lack of consideration of the cumulative impact of developments across the board—notably renewable developments in the Highlands—is a huge concern at the moment. Mr Mountain and I know that from attending a packed public meeting with Douglas Lumsden—he attended it as well, not as a participant but as a spectator from outwith the Highlands and Islands area.

Without labouring the point—I would never wish to do that, convener—I hope that the cabinet secretary and SEPA will opine on the issue before we hear oral evidence from the cabinet secretary.

I agree, convener. Both are very serious petitions indeed, and both raise points that are, I am sure, of huge concern to a broader number of people in Scotland. The basic principle is that, if someone commits rape, they are committing an adult offence and should be dealt with in the adult courts, rather than the children’s system, which is seen as the soft option. I am absolutely certain that the petitioners speak for a lot of people.

I just want to make the point that the impression that I gained from the Lord Advocate’s evidence—we pressed the Lord Advocate and her colleagues very strongly on this—was that a new approach is being taken to both involve the victim more in decisions that are taken, and to make more referrals to the adult system, rather than the children’s system. The Lord Advocate did not specifically say that, though—she did not quite, as I would say, spit it oot. However, I very much hope that the Lord Advocate, who, to be fair to her, obviously treats these matters extremely seriously, will get the message that the public expect that a stronger approach should be taken. That was my takeaway, which I wanted to put on the record.

Mr Russell makes a fair point—these things are certainly not new. What is perhaps a bit different about the situation facing those with an interest in Loch Ness is the cumulative impact of several proposals. If we were talking about just one or two, that would be one thing, but there are several. The companies that have replied have defended their own proposals, but that is not really what the main concern is—it is the cumulative impact of numerous proposals.

I support Mr Torrance’s recommendation, but I make the additional request that, as well as the impact on wild salmon, the minister also considers the other potential impacts, including on water levels and on users of the loch and the Caledonian canal.

At the weekend, I heard concerns in the constituency that I represent that water levels could be seriously depleted during certain periods of the operation of the intended pumped storage scheme. I do not know whether that is the case, but if that happens, an awful lot of the existing businesses that survive by providing boat trips in Loch Ness, or fishing and leisure craft, will be affected, as will those who use the Caledonian canal. They were there first, so they are entitled to have their interests considered.

I added that because the petitioners have raised a particular concern, but there are other issues, too. I should declare that I know Mr Shaw. I have engaged with him, and I know that he adopts a very forensic approach.