Hansard

I thank Jackie Baillie for her kind words. It is always useful to start nicely if you are going to make a case for a petition to be continued. I will be interested to hear what committee members feel about it. I should underline something that is true for all petitions. There is a pressure to move petitions on because other petitioners are in a queue waiting to come in. It is a matter of balancing the rights of petitioners against the rights of new petitioners. That is the pressure that is operating and it becomes more intense as we get towards the end of a session. It is not a reflection of the significance of the individual petitions, but a kind of balanced judgement. For what it is worth, even though the petitioners are concerned about the process, significant achievements have been made—the fact that the working group was established and has produced recommendations, which are out for consultation. If I thought that there was nowhere for the petitioners to go, I would be more concerned, but it is clear that it would be a question of saying that they should engage with the consultation and highlight their concerns and issues around it to make it a live consultation, rather than a tick-box exercise. There would be greater force to a new petition, if they are disappointed, having engaged actively with the process. The Scottish Government is looking at the issue, as the petitioners wanted, even though there are flaws with the process. It is not a closed book to them, but something that they can engage with. Therefore, the judgment is whether the committee can add anything by holding on. The force of a new petition that said, “We engaged with this in good faith and nothing happened”, would be very powerful. I emphasise to the petitioners that none of that is in any way a reflection of the seriousness with which we take their concerns about an area that they have highlighted to the committee over a period of time, which had probably not been given sufficient focus in the past. I very much agree with Jackie Baillie that, whatever comes out of Covid, in the new session there has to be a strategy to deal with issues around mental health and how those are dealt with. If, as the petitioners contend, there has been inappropriate use of prescriptions or drugs that are not then monitored closely, that is a huge area that will develop in the next period. The decision to close would not in any way undermine the significance of what has been said. As I said, I will be interested to hear what committee members think, but I emphasise and underline that, even if we close the petition, the issue is clearly not going away. There is a vehicle for it to be pursued and there are further options to come back to the Public Petitions Committee.