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We should keep the petition open, but in doing so, I would like us to write to Social Security Scotland to highlight the concerns of the petitioner and the recommendations for improving its system that are set out in Macmillan Cancer Support’s submission. It recommends regularly publishing processing times for benefit applications broken down by condition, ensuring that processing times for special rules cases are kept to the minimum period of around a few days, reducing the processing times for applications for non-terminal patients to 11 weeks or less and considering maximising the use of paper-based assessments and making greater use of evidence from medical professionals to limit the need for unnecessary face-to-face assessments.

As the Scottish Government is already considering the speed limits for HGVs, and as Transport Scotland has indicated its willingness to engage directly with the petitioner on the matter, I think that we could maybe close the petition under rule 15.7 of standing orders.

Can we write to the Scottish Government to ask what public body might be involved so that we could contact that body directly to see whether it would support the proposal?

I think that we should write to NatureScot to seek reassurance that its processes are in place for licence refusals and that the reasons for any refusal are transparent and clear to the recipient, and are applied consistently across Scotland. We could also ask whether NatureScot has appropriate guidance for staff on the procedure for licence refusal to ensure that the issues raised by the petitioner in regard to transparency and clarity have been addressed by consistent procedures.

I would like to keep the petition open and write to the Scottish Government to highlight that evidence session and the report from the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse in England and Wales. We should state that the report notes the findings of that inquiry and the issues that have been identified as requiring further consideration, and highlight that the petitioner’s experience reflects many of the findings of that inquiry and the issues that it identified. We should also highlight that, in Scotland, there are no plans to extend the scope of the inquiry into the abuse of children in care and there is currently a gap in progressing consideration of the issues related to the response of religious organisations who have been informed of allegations of abuse against children who were not in care.

Minister, Audit Scotland highlighted the 5.1 per cent vacancy rate in the sector. How difficult has Brexit, along with United Kingdom immigration policy, made it for employers to recruit staff in this area?

You mentioned that there are nearly 1,200 employers, which must be difficult to control. However, Audit Scotland highlighted that 20 per cent of workers are not on permanent contracts, 11 per cent are on zero-hours contracts and 13 per cent work more than 50 hours a week. What is your view on establishing national minimum standards of pay and conditions for all social care workers, regardless of what sector they work in?

Good morning, minister. What evaluation has the Scottish Government made of the impact of the current commissioning arrangements on the social care workforce, and how could and should those be addressed?

You apply selection criteria, such as weight loss, before admitting patients to Shouldice hospital. What is the rationale behind that? Are those selection criteria really important to your success rate?

Good afternoon from Scotland, Dr Spencer Netto. You have impressive results with regard to low recurrence of hernias. However, systematic reviews of randomised controlled trials, which are the gold standard for robust health intervention evidence, show that hernia recurrence rates are lower for mesh repairs than they are for non-mesh repairs. I know that that does not apply to you, so what are you doing that is different from what other hospitals are doing?