Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee 26 November 2025
The second item on our agenda is consideration of continued petitions. The first petition is PE2099, an extraordinarily important petition on which the committee has previously engaged and has undertaken a site visit to the neonatal intensive care unit in Wishaw, where we were pleased to meet the petitioner, Lynn McRitchie.
The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to stop the planned downgrading of established and high-performing specialist neonatal intensive care services across NHS Scotland from level 3 to level 2 and to commission an independent review of that decision in the light of contradictory expert opinions on centralised services.
At our previous consideration of the petition, the committee agreed to take evidence from the British Association of Perinatal Medicine’s best start perinatal sub-group, and the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health. We will hear from the minister at a subsequent meeting, but at today’s meeting we will take evidence first from Dr Stephen Wardle, the president of the British Association of Perinatal Medicine, who joins us online, and then from members of the best start perinatal sub-group.
Good morning, Dr Wardle. I see that all the graphics on your background image have been reversed, so we are seeing all the text behind you the wrong way round. It is difficult to work out what it all says—those who are following the proceedings can puzzle over what it means.
We are also joined by our colleagues Clare Adamson and Monica Lennon. If there is time after committee members have asked their questions, I will invite both of them to put their questions to the witness.
Dr Wardle, is there anything that you would like to say by way of introduction?