Seòmar agus comataidhean

You referred to the consultation about whether or not the threshold should rise above the 50MW level. The consultation does not give an indication of where the Government thinks it might usefully end up. We know that, in England it is at 100MW for wind and solar, and there are views about whether it might be variable across different energy disciplines. Why was the Government shy about indicating what its thinking is on what the threshold might be?

It would be very helpful to have any further detail on that review, including the timescales that are envisaged for it.

We are in our final few minutes, Mr Ewing.

Thank you, Meghan. Colleagues, are we content to support Davy Russell’s recommendation that we keep the petition open and pull together the various outstanding themes into a submission to the minister?

Members indicated agreement.

Are colleagues agreed to that course of action?

Members indicated agreement.

We thank all the petitioners for raising their issues with us. We have made greater progress on some than on others, but the time that is left to us in this session does not allow us to do more.

One issue that we discussed at the meeting that I referred to earlier sits rather apart, so I will discuss it separately. PE2071, which was lodged by Sally Witcher, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to take action to protect people from airborne infections in health and social care settings—specifically, to improve air quality in health and social care settings through addressing ventilation, air filtration and sterilisation; to reintroduce routine mask wearing in those settings, particularly using respiratory masks; to reintroduce routine Covid testing; to ensure that staff manuals fully cover the prevention of airborne infection; to support ill staff to stay at home; and to provide public health information on the use of respiratory masks and high-efficiency particulate air—HEPA—filtration against airborne infections.

We last considered the petition on 5 March 2025, when we agreed to write to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care. In a response issued by the chief nursing officer directorate, the Scottish Government reiterated that it has no role in the development of the “National Infection Prevention and Control Manual”, or NIPCM, or the “Care Home Infection and Control Manual”, the CH NIPCM.

The petition notes that antimicrobial resistance and healthcare associated infection Scotland are the national clinical infection prevention and control experts, and it highlights the ARHAI’s response.

During the evidence session in September 2025, the cabinet secretary said that he would write to the committee with a timescale for publication of the infection prevention and control strategy. In his letter of 30 October, the cabinet secretary stated that a 10-year IPC strategic vision and priorities statement was being developed collaboratively by the Scottish Government’s IPC strategic development and oversight group by spring 2026.

In her most recent submission, the petitioner considers that the pandemic and its cumulative health impacts remain on-going and that that is being ignored by the Government. She notes that, this winter, the NHS has again been overwhelmed by airborne infection, and she argues that much of that could have been avoided had the actions and measures suggested in the petition been put in place. She adds that she can still find no evidence of expert input and quality assurance on infection prevention and control, and she questions the accuracy and completeness of ARHAI’s advice.

We have the petitioner’s further submission and the follow-up from the cabinet secretary, which confirms that the infection control strategy will be published by spring this year. Do colleagues have any views on what more we are able to do at this stage, given that the cabinet secretary’s letter says that a document will be published in spring 2026, which will be after the Parliament has dissolved?

I thank the petitioner for raising the issues, and I hope that they can be pursued when Parliament reassembles.

We will move on to consider a number of petitions that raise concerns and call for action on issues that are related to emergency cardiac and stroke care. Since the last formal consideration of each of the petitions, the committee has taken oral evidence from the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health on the themes that were raised across them. That session took place on 12 November 2025.

PE1989, which was lodged by Mary Montague, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to support the provision of defibrillators in public spaces and workplaces. We last considered the petition on 7 May 2025, which was ahead of the evidence session. During oral evidence, the minister highlighted the importance of optimal defibrillator placement and pointed to the new PADmap tool, which shows the location of public access defibrillators and identifies the areas where defibrillators are most needed. The evidence session highlighted that the location, ease of access and continued upkeep of defibrillators are all important considerations, and the committee noted that there is a reliance on community fundraising and external sponsorship to provide and maintain public defibrillators. The issue of bystander confidence was raised during the evidence session with the minister, which highlighted the importance of engagement work with stakeholders through Save a life for Scotland.

The minister gave some interesting evidence about how deficiencies in the PADmap tool can be addressed, but she also gave some fairly structured arguments about why taking the blanket approach that defibrillators should be located in any one particular place might not prove to be appropriate. Do colleagues have any suggestions on how we might proceed in the light of the evidence that we heard?

The next continued petition is PE2048, which was lodged by James Anthony Bundy. It calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to increase awareness of the symptoms of stroke by reviewing its promotion of the FAST—face, arms, speech, time—campaign and ensuring that stroke awareness campaigns include all the symptoms of a potential stroke. We previously considered the petition at our meeting on 25 February and agreed to write to the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health, NHS Fife, NHS Ayrshire and Arran, Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland, the Scottish Ambulance Service and the Chartered Institute of Marketing. The committee previously heard concerns, which are not universally shared, that moving from FAST to BE FAST—balance, eyes, face, arms, speech, time—could produce false positives and have a concerning impact on clinicians’ ability to treat strokes.

A submission that was received from NHS Forth Valley mentioned a range of FAST stroke awareness initiatives that it has been supporting locally, and it highlighted that its emergency department has been using the BE FAST stroke assessment tool since early 2024. However, it underlined that it has not yet been able to undertake any formal evaluation of the impact of those initiatives.

At the evidence session in November, the minister, Jenni Minto, said that the Government

“will converse with the health board to understand what it is doing, where it is in the pilot and when we can expect the report.”—[Official Report, Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee, 12 November 2025; c 18.]

We found the minister’s suggestion that the Government is keeping its current position under review quite encouraging, because that had not been expressed to us in writing. Additionally, we were impressed by the fact that the minister had been actively engaged with the issue and had met a number of the individuals concerned with the proposal.

The minister highlighted that, following a meeting with the petitioner, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care asked the stroke specialty adviser to the chief medical officer to review stroke awareness education for clinical staff. That led to the Scottish Government developing and funding an education package for general practices, emergency departments and the Scottish Ambulance Service that also covers the less common but important presentations of stroke, including symptoms relating to certain presentations of loss of balance and visual field defects—the B and E aspects of BE FAST.

This is another important petition that we have considered. Do colleagues have any comments or suggestions for action?