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We thank the petitioner, who will, I hope, understand why we have acted as we have, given the options that are available to us.

That concludes the public part of the meeting. Our next meeting will take place on 5 February.

The only question in my mind is the time that is left to us in this parliamentary session. I am slightly concerned that it could be another six to nine months before we consider the petition again, which would then leave us up against the dissolution of Parliament. To give the petition some chance of life, I think that we would be better making the referral to the NZET Committee now so that the committee has some headroom within the life of the parliamentary session to advance the petition’s aims and objectives. That is just one thought.

Thank you very much, Mr MacGregor. I will bring in colleagues in a second but, unusually, I would like to take the initiative here. The Scottish Government’s response is a cop-out, and I think that it is a dangerous cop-out. I will spare Mr Torrance, but I did not realise that Mr Ewing and I grew up in a golden age of public availability of swimming. I can recall swimming pools in communities everywhere back in those days, as well as outdoor pools. It is a great shame to revisit some of the places that used to have outdoor pools to find that they are now car parks or something completely different.

Touching on Mr MacGregor’s point about learning how to swim at primary school, I particularly remember that quite a lot of my classmates were terrified, but they were learning to swim together at an age when they could overcome that fear and learn how to swim. If you do not do it then, the peer-group pressure that builds up on you as an older person having to admit that you cannot swim or trying to learn to swim at a much later date is probably an obstacle to a number of people seeking to learn how to swim.

We are an island nation. We are surrounded by water, and people should have the ability to swim for their own self-preservation and because it might be vital in the saving of somebody else’s life—simply not having a fear of the water might mean that they could be moved to assist.

I am interested to hear colleagues’ contributions, but I am minded to keep the petition open and, potentially, to convene a round table on the subject at hand, to include Scottish Swimming. It would be helpful to have such a meeting, and I would be grateful for some suggestions from Mr Bibby and Mr MacGregor of others that we might think to include.

It would also be useful to have some idea from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities of the pressures that councils feel are uniquely associated with swimming pools and the costs associated with that, because there will be a balance between long-established and newer facilities and those that are in schools.

We could give some additional thought to others that we might contact.

We can certainly do that. Scottish Swimming is underwriting the petition.

On a point that Mr Bibby made in his advice, the clerks inform me that, in its response to the petition, the Scottish Government told us that the Barnett consequentials were spent on a range of measures, including local government pay offers, additional costs relating to the resettlement of Ukrainians and additional capital funding for the national health service.

I gather that we are all content with those actions.

That brings us to PE2068, which was lodged by John Dare, and calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to commission an independent review of public sector salaries of more than £100,000 per annum and to introduce an appropriate cap.

We last considered the petition at our meeting on 20 March 2024, when we agreed to write to the Scottish Government seeking a fuller response to the issues that are raised in the petition. The Government response reiterates that pay restraint for the highest paid, and targeted uplifts for the lowest paid, have been key principles of the Scottish Government’s approach to public sector pay for many years and states that many public sector staff earning more than £100,000 are highly qualified and experienced.

The Scottish Government’s review of the chief executive framework was published in October 2024 and states that the framework will be updated with the review’s recommendations. The review found that pay restraint for higher-paid employees has been achieved and recommends that restraint should continue on a looser basis. The Scottish Government is of the view that undertaking an independent review of all senior pay of more than £100,000 across the public sector would, it itself, come at a significant cost and therefore does not feel that conducting an independent review would be a good use of public money at this time.

Do members have any comments or suggestions for action?

In the light of that, are we content to close the petition?

That is a fair and reasonable point. The same situation has occurred previously. The committee is not expressing a view about the merits or otherwise of the petition, with which we might be very sympathetic; the issue is whether, in light of the information that we have been able to gather, we feel that there is a route forward for the committee to advance the petition’s aims. Mr Torrance’s conclusion, which Mr Ewing supports, is that the blunt fact is that the Scottish Government is not minded to do anything on the issue. Therefore, there is nothing more that the committee can do, however much we may have direct sympathy with the petition’s aims and regret having to close it.

Mr Golden has made some suggestions. Do colleagues have any other suggestions? Are we content to proceed on the basis that Mr Golden has identified?

Members indicated agreement.

Agenda item 3 is consideration of new petitions. Mr Ruskell has been sitting very patiently with us, so I will go straight to the second of the two new petitions, so that he can be released from the meeting to attend to other business.

As I always do, I say to anyone who might be tuning in to the committee because their petition is being considered for the first time, that, in advance of consideration, the committee invites the Scottish Parliament’s independent research unit, the Scottish Parliament information centre, to give us an understanding of the issues that have been raised. We also invite the Scottish Government to give us a preliminary view on the issues that have been raised, which may or may not influence the committee’s conclusions. We do both those things because, historically, when the committee considered a petition for the first time, those were the two things that we said that we would do and that delayed our consideration. So, for those who are watching, those actions have already taken place.