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I support the proposal that we carry out a further inquiry into the matter. It is a broader national consideration as well, because I know—certainly from previous representations that I have had from Railfuture Scotland—that there is a deep concern that Transport Scotland is attitudinally predisposed to heavily overengineering solutions for trunk-road building, and that it has an attitudinal dislike of rail development. It will, for example, overly analyse and put onerous requirements on rail programmes but will take forward elaborate schemes for trunk-road construction.

There is a general consideration with regard to how transparent Transport Scotland is in developing such projects, and a broader national consideration about policy and how accountable the agency is. In this particular instance, there is deep concern about the coastal route along Loch Lomond side being damaged.

I am mindful that Sir Robert Grieve, who, along with Tom Weir, was one of the masterminds of the national park project back in the 1970s, said that he did not want the area to end up like the Italian lakes, built up from end to end. It would be a real travesty if the project were to go ahead and destroy the spirit in which the national park was created.

I note the comments that have been made so far about trying to understand the reasoning and the causal factors behind the figures. Nonetheless, “Scotland’s Suicide Prevention Action Plan: Every Life Matters” from 2018 set a target of a 20 per cent reduction by this year. Although we do not have the figures for this year, the trend broadly suggests that the target is unlikely to be met. Why will it not be met?

Thank you very much for the impressive set of recommendations so far. I found your comments compelling—you made really good points. Practical barriers seem to be having a chilling effect on engagement. Perhaps there should be statutory protection for people who want to engage in parliamentary business in some capacity, in the same way that jury duty is legally protected. People are not compelled to attend in the same way, but a protection could allow people who wanted to to engage on an issue—it could give them a legal right to do that and, for example, their employer could not discriminate against them for doing that or prevent them from doing it. It might be over the top as a solution, but it might be worth considering whether we need a statutory right for citizens to engage.

That is an interesting point. Yesterday, we had a stage 1 debate for the Moveable Transactions (Scotland) Bill. That was a Scottish Law Commission bill that, on the face of it, was dry and technical. It related to people being able to raise finance and secure debts against moveable assets. It is primarily geared towards businesses. For example, it would enable them to raise finance against barrels of whisky or fleets of vehicles, not just land and buildings.

However, it rapidly became apparent that one of the unintended consequences of the bill was that it could open up an entire irregular lending market to consumers. Backstreet lenders could use household goods as collateral against which to raise finance or secure debts. It would be virtual pawn broking.

That became obvious only at the last point because the consultation on the bill had been focused on the banking and legal sectors. It was only because the money advice agencies brought through lived experience at the last minute that we realised that we could be opening up an explosion of unintended consequences and that the Government realised that it would have to amend the bill at stage 2 to take out consumers.

I wonder whether that is a symptom of a wider issue. Because there is such an echo chamber at times, people are not necessarily aware when they draft legislation that there are wider consequences. It could have been devastating for families if predatory lending practices had been introduced.

That is an example from a debate in Parliament yesterday where the improvement recommended would have resulted in better-quality legislation at an earlier stage if we had been able to engage with people who are at the sharp end of predatory lending practices.

I fully agree with what has been said. There is nothing to add.

I agree. The concept is interesting. The only similar example that I can think of is that Poppy Scotland converted an old truck into a mobile exhibition about the first world war. It went around Scotland and it was incredibly successful at educating people, especially young people. It was almost like a mobile museum and it was very well put together.

A Parliament bus could be a wider thing, because a large part of the issue is that a lot of people do not know where the Parliament fits in relation to the broader range of concerns that they might have about local government issues and UK Parliament issues. We potentially have a broader educational opportunity to discuss more generally the roles of the councillor, the MSP and the member of the UK Parliament in relation to local issues and needs and how people can engage effectively with all the institutions in our democratic society. A bus could be part of a broader enterprise that could be quite successful. It would be worth testing that out.

The point about the Parliament’s function in relation to holding power to account is really important. It all merges into one blob in the mind of the public, so teasing that out would be useful.

I have often thought that it would be good to have a long-running fly-on-the-wall documentary that got into the mechanics of how Parliament operates day to day, like “Inside Central Station” on the BBC. It would be a long-running programme, but it would be a kind of public service broadcasting thing that covered councils and both Parliaments and dealt with what they are like day to day—not in a political sense, but in the mechanical sense of how it all operates. That would be a very effective tool for making the public aware of how the Parliament actually works day to day, so that people were not seeing only the political theatre. I keep pitching that to the BBC, but I do not think that it is going to take me on.

It is an interesting question. I have had the opportunity to participate in Prime Minister’s questions, and I know that the Prime Minister does not get advance sight of the questions. The order paper has numbers and members’ names; it is just sudden death, which is why there is a stack of notes that is gone through frantically. Frequently, the response will be something like, “That’s a really interesting point—I’ll get my officials or the relevant minister to respond.” That is usually quite good for constituency issues, because it can result in such matters getting escalated very rapidly, and you can get quite a decent outcome.

I therefore wonder whether there should be something else, instead of having some preamble in the Business Bulletin, which then leads to a pre-scripted response. Sometimes, though, that can be helpful; if you want a detailed answer on something, you might well volunteer to give the minister the information in advance. I just think that a different format would be an interesting way of changing things up a bit and could improve the relevance of responses—or, perhaps, make people keener to respond.

I am Paul Sweeney and I am an MSP from Glasgow.

Oh, is it? I must have missed that one.

I am sympathetic to that point, because the issue of contempt for Parliament is not well enforced, which I have found to be quite frustrating, particularly in the chamber. Enhanced powers for the Presiding Officer to compel relevant, timely and succinct answers would be good. Sometimes, responses can be almost antisocial, as they consume time—they can, in effect, become filibustering, with someone havering on for a minute and a half without getting to the point, which is designed to push other questions off the shelf, so the minister has to answer fewer questions. In other legislatures, such as the Irish Dáil, the equivalent of the Presiding Officer has the power to stop a minister if that is happening.

People should treat the chamber with the respect that they would treat a courtroom, in the sense that they should give relevant and punchy answers, and the questions should be succinct and to the point, too, and should not go off on a minute-long preamble. It might be possible to tighten up the standing orders to make the Parliament more rigorous with regard to how questions are addressed.