Seòmar agus comataidhean

The aims are very worthy and we all have great sympathy with them, because of the profound mental health problems that exist among young people in Scotland. It is a very serious point indeed.

In the light of the responses from Police Scotland and NatureScot that you have described—I will not repeat what you have said—there does not really seem to be any basis on which we can proceed further. Therefore, I suggest that we close the petition under rule 15.7 of the standing orders.

I am glad to hear that you watch daytime television.

Absolutely. Preferably not the general, vague answers that we are familiar with, but specific answers to the points that the petitioners have made. After all, that is our job. If we do not get specific answers, they can be sure that the committee will do its job.

In his evidence, Ian McKinnon—I should say that I have known him for 20 years—said:

“If we cannot provide the basics of litter collection, toilets and parking—and we are not doing that in our existing national parks—we should not be considering creating another one in the future.”—[Official Report, Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee, 30 October 2024; c 12.]

Is he not right?

I sympathise with Foysol Choudhury’s point, but I am not sure that prolonging the life of the petition will—

As a resident and representative of a large part of the Cairngorms national park, I beg to differ about that, and tend to agree with the 92 per cent of my constituents who said that the park is not performing well. I say that with some sadness, because it is not what one would wish.

However, to go back—and this is the last area that I want to address, convener—the beef of the petition is in point two, in which the petitioners call on the Scottish Government to

“Instruct an independent review on the operation of the current National Parks, including assessment of the economic impacts on businesses & industries within the two parks including, but not exclusive to, farming, forestry, crofting and angling.”

The parks have been in existence for 21 years. There has been no independent analysis of their performance. Yes, there are reports, and there are board members. However—and the petitioners make this point—board members are not allowed to express public criticism of the national park. One wonders what the point of board members is if they are gagged in that way—and I know that they are, because I know many of them and have watched that in operation, sadly.

The central point is, why are we creating another body, when there has been no proper, thorough and entirely independent analysis of how the two existing bodies have functioned over 21 years? When I say “independent analysis”, I do not mean, as Peter Rawcliffe suggested in his evidence to the committee, that some university should be appointed to carry out an independent review of the work that NatureScot does. I wonder which university will be picked for that and whether it will be one that will produce answers that are congenial to NatureScot, which, plainly, wants another national park and is not impartial in any way.

Surely the case for independent analysis is unassailable. With respect, the answers that have been given so far by you and NatureScot have been completely inadequate. The so-called benefits that you alluded to—the economic benefits—have been created by businesses and people in the national parks, not by the national parks themselves. As you said, a national park has very limited powers; therefore, the idea that hundreds of millions of pounds have accrued from the oeuvre, the efforts, the labour, and the input of the national park is for the birds.

The Scottish National Party did not include the new national park in its manifesto. It is a Bute House agreement legacy promise, and the Bute house agreement has been torn up. Why is the Scottish Government going ahead with this when there are so many so many more important things to do? If you are intent on going ahead with it, surely there must be a properly independent analysis—which is the central ask of the petitioners.

Yes. I am not familiar with the circumstances in the central belt of Scotland, but certainly in the north of Scotland, many rural communities have no bus services whatsoever. With the bus services in Inverness, which are provided by Stagecoach, the problem has not been one of regulation or otherwise; it has been a lack of drivers. Indeed, it is a very serious problem. The very detailed exchange that my constituency office has had with Stagecoach indicates that it has gone to great lengths to sort the problem, and it has recruited more drivers. I thought that I would make that point, convener, because I am genuinely unfamiliar with the issues that the members have raised, and I defer to their experience.

I certainly concur.

Regretfully, I agree that the committee cannot do much more. If there is a gap—I do not doubt that there is one—it will not be filled by the particular recommendation that the petitioners make, which is to have a kind of separate system. If there is a gap, the ask will not fill it.