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Our final petition today, PE2185, is on the introduction of stronger safeguards regarding the use of digital material in court proceedings. I have to assume that the three remaining guests in the gallery have suffered through our entire proceedings only to find that their petition is the last of those that we are considering today. Notwithstanding that, I hope that we can do something positive to assist.

The petition, which was lodged by Christopher Simpson, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to amend the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 to ensure that any digital material that is presented in court, such as photos or screenshots, is verifiably sourced, timestamped and able to be independently authenticated before being considered admissible, unless both parties agree otherwise.

Regarding current court procedures, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service has explained to our SPICe researchers that

“before any item attains evidential status its provenance must be established; an item is meaningless unless its source is in some way proved”.

If the defence and the prosecution do not agree on the provenance of an item, whether digital or not, there is a process in place that enables parties to challenge the evidence and lead their own rebuttal.

The Scottish Government indicates that the gathering and presentation of evidence are matters for Police Scotland and COPFS. The Government does not consider the action that is called for by the petition to be necessary on account of existing safeguards, which are meant to ensure that concerns about the authenticity of any digital evidence can be raised and investigated.

However, in an additional submission, the petitioner shares his distressing experience and reiterates that

“individuals can be subjected to lengthy investigations and restrictions based on unverified or fabricated digital material.”

Discussions about the provenance of evidence take place after a person has been charged, and the petitioner sees that as a gap in the legislation. He insists that all digital evidence must be verifiably sourced, timestamped and authenticated before it reaches court.

Do colleagues have any suggestions for action?

Indeed. The last time I checked, President Trump had not lodged a petition with the Scottish Parliament in relation to the digital evidence at the BBC but, actually, I would not put it past him, because he seems to be quite free in doing that sort of thing.

We will keep the petition open, notwithstanding the time that is left to us in this session of Parliament, and hope that we can advance further information in relation to the points that are raised as a consequence of the additional submission from the petitioner.

I would like to invite our colleagues who have joined us this morning to put questions to you.

Thank you very much, Dr Wardle. I hope that none of that seemed unduly testy. I realise that we strayed into various areas and, obviously, it is an emotive subject. However, I am grateful for the range of evidence that you have supplied us with, all of which will help to inform the committee as we review the petition and consider our recommendations, or otherwise, as we go forward. I am very grateful to you.

Would you like to add anything, or are you content with everything that you have contributed?

This is an emotive subject—we can all understand that. Our job is not to ignore that, but to approach the issue in as professional and dispassionate a manner as possible in order to ensure that there is a proper opportunity to discuss the aims of the petition and that Parliament and the Scottish Government ultimately come to the right decisions.

What are the types of local and national factors and constraints that the British Association of Perinatal Medicine would expect to be taken into account when implementing its framework’s recommendations? Are you confident that those have been adequately taken into account in the proposals that have emerged in Scotland?

It is not always the case that the outcome is a happy one. In the scenario that I mentioned, the baby could have been transferred from Wishaw to Aberdeen and, in the worst-case scenario, it might not have been possible for the father, who was also concerned about his wife, to be present in the event that things did not work out well. We are talking about considerable distances. You say that adequate capacity will be available in the larger units, but I do not know whether my parliamentary colleagues are terribly sure that that has been the pattern when other services have been centralised.

People felt that Bliss was completely distant, and that what they got was simply a pro forma advancement of Bliss’s view, without that having been subject to any direct engagement whatsoever.

Davy Russell, I apologise for interrupting your line of questioning. Please continue.

I should say that I do not think that Inverness is one of the eight units currently.

Maurice Golden, you were going to raise issues around this area. Do you want to pursue anything on the back of what Fergus Ewing has just asked about?

Petition PE2017, lodged by Margaret Reid, calls on the Parliament to urge the Government to amend section 24 of the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003 to extend maternal mental health support beyond one year, to introduce a family liaison function at mental health units across all health boards, to introduce specialised perinatal community teams that meet perinatal quality network standard type 1 across all health boards, and to establish a mother and baby unit in the north-east of Scotland.

The then Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport, Maree Todd, wrote to the committee in February. The submission outlined that work is under way to produce a draft service specification for clinical perinatal services and stated that the draft specification should be published this year. She also set out the allocation of funding to support the most severely ill women in the perinatal period closer to home in the north of Scotland.

Douglas Lumsden, is there anything you wish to say to the committee at this stage of our consideration of the petition?