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The evidence that we have heard from our colleagues today indicates that there has been a lack of response from health boards. I do not know why that is, but that is the situation. Because that is the case, Katy Clark sought to obtain relevant information but has not received it. Were we to close the petition today, the petitioners could easily and legitimately lodge a fresh petition, calling for the data to be analysed. Rather than have all that delay and extra work, we might as well keep the petition open so that we can ask for the information that Katy Clark has, quite rightly, sought. I am aware of the evidence that Clare Adamson gave on behalf of her constituents. Plainly, those who are affected have been affected very profoundly.

There is a proposal, which is that fair notice be given to the cabinet secretary.

I suppose that I should declare that I am still on the roll of solicitors and am registered with the Law Society of Scotland, although that is more of an expense than an interest, albeit a merited expense.

The thesis of Mr Miller’s petition is that he is calling for the legislation to be amended to enable the dismissal of property factors or for other regulations to be laid that would achieve the same aim. It seems to me that two things should be said about that. First, I think that Mr Miller is concerned not about tenement properties but about housing estates with open land that requires maintenance. The difficult issue of green belt has been a running theme with which I grappled—unsuccessfully, I should confess—during my time in your shoes, minister.

Secondly, it seems to me that the nub of Mr Miller’s concern is not so much the issue of who is the factor but of how much they charge. In her evidence to the committee on 13 November 2024, Sarah Boyack cited an example in which the charges had increased dramatically, with quarterly fees rising from £300 to £800 pounds.

If I am right that the nub—the beef—of the issue is not so much who the factor is but what they are doing and whether they are fleecing the owners, the owners’ problem is that going through the ordinary cause procedure in the sheriff court is too expensive. I know that they are absolutely right about that and can say beyond peradventure that only the very rich or those who are on legal aid can litigate in ordinary cause courts and that the cost deters everyone else.

I understand, minister, that you are providing the orthodox answer—as perhaps I did; not always but too often—that there is a remedy. The orthodox answer is that people can go to court and that is fine, but they cannot go to court because they do not have the money to go to court, so that is a theoretical remedy and not a practical one.

I will suggest a possible solution, although I do not know whether it will fly. We have, as alternatives to the ordinary cause court, the small claims court and the summary cause court. The small claims court is intended as one to which parties can go to explain their case, first in writing and then in person to the sheriff, with no lawyers involved—at least, lawyers should not be involved, although companies often send King’s counsel. That is absurd, but that is what they do. Expenses are not usually awarded by that court unless there is an abuse of process. I am not talking about the summary cause court but about the small claims court, because summary cause is similar to ordinary procedure and practice, in which lawyers end up being involved.

There could be a stipulation regarding charges that are shown to be excessive in accordance with simple evidence given by a tradesman about the ordinary rates for that trade. A change from £300 to £800 per quarter is an absurd increase by any account. The example that Sarah Boyack cites is an increase of almost 300 per cent and we have no reason to doubt that that is correct.

Would the answer not be to confer privative jurisdiction on the small claims court and give the sheriff in that court the power under legislation, if, in his discretion, he finds that the factor has overcharged and abused the system and a claim has been completely excessive, to say, “Look, you’ve abused your power. You’re no longer the factor”? That could be set out quite simply in law as a matter of principle. I checked “Gloag on Contract” and I think that the claim would be dealt on a quantum meruit basis. I have no doubt that Jill Clark and Megan Stefaniak can correct me if I am mistaken on the law.

I do not expect the minister to be able to answer that, because I have not given her notice of my question—I thought of it only last night when I was looking at the committee papers. I wanted to set out my suggestion and I am grateful to the convener for allowing me to do so at some length.

Do not get me into even more trouble than I might already be in, convener. [Laughter.]

The serious point is that at least one practice in my constituency—Culloden medical practice, with which I have been working on the upgrade of its facilities—cannot accept, and is not accepting, new patients. More and more people are moving to the area within its curtilage, as it were, but the practice has said that it is full and it cannot take any more patients. That has caused enormous problems. The practice has worked for years and I have tried to support it and other practices in the constituency, but they feel that they have hit a brick wall, and I know that the issue is not unique to Inverness.

Spending 8 per cent of the budget on primary care and the rest of it on hospitals therefore seems to be an imbalance. I think that that is the meat of Dr Shotton’s point—she is arguing not so much for more expansion, but for general practice to be allocated a greater share. She has pointed out that, frankly, most of the daily legwork is done by our very hard-working general practitioners.

I wanted to make that point on the record, with the request that the clerks perhaps try to make it a bit more succinct and less wordy. I would like to get the cabinet secretary’s views on that and find out whether the Scottish Government might wish to emphasise primary care in the deployment of its capital budget in the future in order to help practices such as the one at Culloden.

I am pleased that the Inverness Courier, in its wisdom, has chosen to lodge the petition. I thank it for doing so and for championing the issue, which is of massive concern to everyone in Nairn as well as the wider north-east. In one way, it is quite a modest ask. It is not demanding that the whole project be completed by a certain time. It is simply asking for the Government to publish a clear timeline for the dualling of the A96 between Inverness and Nairn, and for the construction of a bypass for Nairn.

You have outlined the sad history of the work to dual the A96 by 2030. Thus far, £90 million has been spent on preparatory work for the dualling of the A96, but not one centimetre of tarmac has been laid. Many people, including me, find that almost incomprehensible.

In the Government response in defence of the lack of a timeline, a number of points are made, which I will cover briefly, in the hope that the cabinet secretary might appear before us to give evidence on that and other transport measures, as we might have mooted before. I hope that that will give her some indication of the issues with which she will be concerned and which will certainly be put to her.

The first point is on the made orders, which are an important milestone in the statutory process to determine which properties require to be compulsorily purchased and which ancillary roads need to be adjusted to fit in with the new road. Those are the two main made orders, although there are subsidiary ones. The response says that they were made on 12 March 2024, which is quite true.

There is something that the response does not say, however. I have a document here—I believe that we are not allowed to brandish documents, otherwise I would do so right now—from Transport Scotland. It is a 2016 document, which states that the made orders were expected to be published later that year. Well, that was 2016; we then got to 2024. What happened?

It used to be that draft made orders were displayed on the Transport Scotland website. They were displayed in draft, and they were ready for ages in draft. The year in the provisional date on this draft was 2-0-1-blank. In other words, it was planned that this work would be done nearly a decade ago. It was also promised in the 2011 manifesto and slightly before that by Alex Salmond.

The first point that I want to make is that no explanation has ever been given as to why there was a delay of eight years, which is the longest delay ever in respect of reaching this important stage of the proceedings. That is point 1.

The Cabinet Secretary for Transport has a personal enthusiasm for taking the issue on, to be fair to her. She is the fourth transport minister that we have had in four years, which is not terrific. Setting that aside, the submission says that the reason for the delay is that

“It is fundamental that ... authorities allow sufficient time to properly consider the range of procurement routes available”.

How much more time do they need? I do not want to be too political, but the Government has had four years of this parliamentary session, and I have raised the issue, as members will appreciate, fairly frequently during those four years. That is point 2.

There are two final points that I want to make. I do not want to go on forever, convener—I have a habit of doing that.

I support Mr Choudhury’s recommendations.

I thank the petitioner, Dr Shotton, who describes herself as a deep end GP working in the heart of Glasgow, which, I gather, has no shortage of health problems. In her submission, she says that only 8 per cent of the capital budget that is applied to health service capital projects goes to primary care and that the lion’s share goes to hospitals. We all want modern and efficient hospitals, and the announcement of capital funding for the Belford hospital at Fort William, the new University hospital Monklands and the Edinburgh eye pavilion is welcome. However, we all have our constituency needs and, following on from Dr Shotton’s analysis, I want to make a particular point on which I would be grateful for the cabinet secretary’s response.

In my constituency, the population is growing. Inverness is arguably the fastest-growing city in Britain, if not in Europe. I am sure that that has nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of the political representation. The problem is—

I am grateful to Mr Kerr for his contribution this morning. I find myself largely in agreement with it.

I should say that the witnesses that we heard from last week were not enthused about moving from FAST to BE FAST. To be fair to them, there were various reasons: they thought that it would bring people from the emergency department to the stroke department who would then be referred back to the emergency department. A separate issue was the overload problem that Mr Kerr mentioned. There was also a hint of a suggestion that the general public are not quite sophisticated or clever enough to cope with and spit out six letters as opposed to four. I must say that I was not particularly impressed by that argument. On the other hand, we have heard from a newly published document in America that BE FAST was found not to work as well as FAST. We will want to study that.

However, we should pursue the matter further. Perhaps we should write to NHS Fife seeking further information on the BE FAST pilot trial that it undertook. We heard in NHS Fife’s written submission that it undertook a pilot scheme, but it did not say what the findings were, including any available analysis and evaluation of the pilot.

We might also write to NHS Ayrshire and Arran, which offered to carry out a pilot—it was the only health board to make that offer, and it did so gratis; it was voluntary, not conscripted. The minister Jenni Minto said that she would be sympathetic to a pilot, although she did not go as far as advocating for it.

Were there a pilot in Ayrshire and Arran, it would have to be properly and rigorously set up so that its findings had statistical validity. That might involve a bit of thought and organisation by the experts—otherwise, to put it bluntly, it is rubbish in, rubbish out. If Ayrshire and Arran wants to do that, I think that we should contact the board and ask whether it would be willing to consider that further with the relevant bodies, with the Bundy family also contributing if they wish to do so.

We could also write to Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland and the Scottish Ambulance Service seeking further detail about the training programme and resources referred to during the round-table discussion and specifically about the guidance being produced for clinicians to increase awareness of atypical stroke symptoms, such as changes to balance and eyesight, that are absent from the FAST acronym but would be present in the BE FAST one.

Lastly, there would probably have to be some sort of public awareness campaign prior to the launch of the pilot so that people in Ayrshire and Arran are aware that it is happening. I think that a modest public awareness campaign would continue to create further interest and awareness nationally, because I am sure that newspapers and the media would cover that campaign very well in the way that, to be fair to them, they do. That in itself would be an opportunity to continue raising awareness and arguably, as Mr Kerr has said, to save further lives, which must be a good thing.

I am sure that all the witnesses will be well aware that the petition arose because of the tragic loss of the life of Tony Bundy. The petitioner stated that, when Tony suffered a stroke, his face and arms were unaffected and his speech was not slurred, and that meant that he passed the FAST test because face, arms, speech and time were not affected. The petitioner went on to say that the family is now raising awareness of the symptoms of stroke, including the inability to stand, which is balance, cold sweats, and eyes struggling to focus. That is where the B and the E come from—balance and eyes.

The evidence that you have all given is consistent: you do not think that, from the available studies and the evidence, the alteration of the awareness campaign from FAST to BE FAST would work. Mr Watson began by stating that there is a problem. To put that problem in layperson’s terms, the current system is not identifying all of those who might have suffered a stroke, but you think that FAST is best, and if we are to depart from that, it might make things worse, not better.

I can understand that. I am not a clinician, so it is not for me to second guess anybody. However, the committee wrote to all the health boards in Scotland and the written response from NHS Ayrshire and Arran describes the work that it has already done, which is quite substantial and quite impressive. I will not read it all out because it would take too long, but it says that

“the team at NHS Ayrshire and Arran would very much welcome the opportunity to be a pilot site if this was agreed.”

I have a point that I want to try out on you, to see what you say. Studies are one thing, but a health board is willing to carry out a pilot, and the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health, Jenni Minto, has said that it is up to health boards to do that. As I understand it, she is not standing in the way of a pilot, although I am not sure that she is advocating one. Given all that, would it not be sensible to actually try it out? I do not mean to be impertinent in any way. Your evidence and knowledge come from your experience as professionals and clinicians, but a layperson might say, “For goodness’ sake, give it a try.”

Studies are one thing and, as has been pointed out, studies from the USA may be of limited efficacy because of different circumstances and the profit element, but surely it would make sense to have a pilot scheme. If it were conducted under scrupulously pre-arranged terms, it might be possible to measure the outcome and see whether it actually works.

I know that that idea was promoted by Stephen Kerr and Alexander Stewart, two other MSPs who have been supportive of the family in this case. I would like to know from all the witnesses whether they think that that might be worth trying.

The petitioner has said that, on some points, he was

“satisfied with the answers given”

by the minister. The minister has taken an interest in the matter, all of which is to be welcomed. I think that the petition has probably gone as far as it should, and I agree that a ministerial statement would be of use. I particularly support the recommendation that, in closing the petition, we write to the minister to draw attention to the importance of financial support being available under future agri-environment and climate schemes in order to maintain and increase predator control.

I should say that I have known Alex Hogg as a friend for 25 years, and there are very few people in Scotland who know more about managing wildlife and the countryside than he and many of his colleagues in the Scottish Gamekeepers Association, of which I am a member. Indeed, I hope that I have paid my subscription.

The serious point is that Alex Hogg has made the case for funding very well. He says that, over the several decades during which he has worked, there has been a

“change in balance between predator and prey”.

Now, the predator has the whip hand, the prey is often unprotected, and there is not much that can be done about it. That results in carnage in the countryside, with the loss of livestock, particularly lambs, from foxes and other predators. It is essential that they are properly controlled. Mr Hogg concludes with the point that, if there is a specific strand in the new agri-environment schemes, that would help not only to control predators, which cause enormous damage, worry and stress to farmers, crofters and land managers, but to protect some of the species that are under threat, too. He makes that point in his submission.

The evidence that we have had from the Scottish Tourism Alliance, which you helpfully read out to us, deputy convener, should be pursued—namely, the recommendation that the Scottish Government should have power to challenge a local government decision. We need to explore that further.

The petitioner’s previous comments state that he was “fobbed off” with various excuses, and there has not really been any answer to that. On one occasion, he was told that he could not use the land because someone else might want it—for goodness’ sake, what sort of an excuse is that? I know that the Scottish Tourism Alliance represents a huge range of tourism bodies, so its voice is significant. The fact that it has chosen to respond with that specific suggestion makes me feel that we should pursue the matter further rather than close the petition at this juncture, to be fair to the petitioner. It may be that the Scottish Government will refuse to do that—I would not be surprised if it were to do so—but we should at least ask it.