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No. Thank you for letting me attend the meeting, convener.

Obviously, there is no paper trail but, when you were doing your investigation, Auditor General, did you ask the accountable officer who, at ministerial level, told them to proceed?

You have not directly asked the accountable officer whether they recall who made that decision.

Thank you. I will try and be as quick as I can.

At the start of the process, the NHS Scotland resource allocation committee—NRAC—settlement was not paid in full to NHS Highland. Is that the case now? In relation to the challenges coming down the road, obviously, there is Covid recovery, but there is also the taking on of maternity services on behalf of Grampian for Moray until Dr Gray’s hospital is restored. You also talked about the elective centre. How will you cope with those challenges, and are you receiving the funding that you require in order to deliver for the people of the Highlands?

That, and the level at which such decisions are taken. At what level would you expect a decision of such magnitude to be taken?

Thank you, convener—I appreciate that. I know that others have a lot more questions, so I will keep my questions quite short.

I am just seeking some clarification. Having listened to the discussion, I think that it is clear that communication between CMAL and Transport Scotland was documented. It was Transport Scotland that came back to CMAL with ministerial decisions, but is there any paperwork on Transport Scotland’s discussions with ministers to show how it put these things to ministers and which ministers responded?

So, there is no documentation on ministers’ decisions and how they were carried out.

I understand that this particular decision was taken within a day. Is that normal? How would you expect a decision of such magnitude to be taken within Government?

Thank you.

I just have a very quick comment.

I am reasonably disappointed by the Scottish Government’s response, in that it just goes over what it has said before. There is not an awful lot that is different in it.

I note that the National Services Division has not yet responded although, at the time of the previous meeting, it said that it was working with NHS Tayside and was due to meet it at the end of January. It also said that it might be able to consider a formal application in either May or June. It is important to keep the petition open until summer, so that we can see what conclusion the National Services Division reaches.

Mary Ramsay has pointed out that a number of people are affected by the condition, so it is important that we make some progress. Mary has also stated that she would be happy to give further evidence to the committee, if it wishes, and Ian Sharp, who has benefited from focused ultrasound treatment, has also made that offer.

I encourage the committee to keep the petition open and to keep scrutinising the issue in the hope that we make some progress.

I agree with everything that Liam McArthur has said. The news that there has been a pause is welcome, because that is what Prospect was asking for and, indeed, what the staff and communities were asking for—they want time to look at the alternative solutions.

Nobody is arguing that we do not need to improve safety; the argument was that HIAL’s proposals did not provide additional safety but were about centralisation. They would cause huge economic damage without providing the safety that people want.

I would be grateful if the committee would look at a number of things. The proposed discussions about Benbecula and Wick were overlooked because of the enormity of the proposals, which impacted all the airports. There is concern that the downgrading of Benbecula and Wick will go ahead. Those airports need safe surveillance and locally based air traffic control. Both Benbecula and Wick are looking at becoming satellite launch sites, so they need safe airspace.

Benbecula is also host to QinetiQ’s Hebrides range, which means that there is often a huge amount of air activity when tests are taking place. The Hebrides range also provides a potential solution, in that it has radar. HIAL could work with the range to provide that in Benbecula. That would be a very affordable course of action that would not cause huge disruption.

One of the issues in all of this was the recruitment of air traffic control staff. The air traffic control staff in Benbecula tend to be young, so that airport has staff into the future. They are local people—they are not going to move anywhere. They will be lost to HIAL if it ends air traffic control at Benbecula.

There is also talk of a new island’s impact assessment. Therefore, any downgrading of Benbecula should surely wait until that impact assessment has been done. That would be within the spirit of the law.

With regard to Wick, people will be aware of the closing of Dounreay and the need for an economic focus on the area. A lot of work is going on with renewables and with the maintenance of devices, but the area needs good air traffic links to other parts of the United Kingdom to be able to attract jobs. It is very important that it has a safe airspace. Indeed, we are trying to encourage more traffic there.

I will not repeat what the convener said about the CAA’s comments, but it would be well worth the committee speaking to the CAA to find out what is happening, including about Wick perhaps being managed from Orkney. There was some discussion about that, and the CAA was not keen.

HIAL used to be very good at staff recruitment. It used to recruit from local communities. It would train people up and those people stayed. HIAL had its biggest recruitment issue in Inverness, where people tended to be more mobile. The committee should make HIAL look at that again and ensure that it starts recruiting again, because that is one of its reasons for stepping back—it says that if it cannot recruit, it will continue with the position as it was.

I know that the petitioners were keen to see Digital Scotland’s second report published. HIAL has it so it would be useful if the committee would ask it to publish that report.

There is also the centralisation of radar surveillance at Inverness. That does not make sense given that we are to have air traffic control at the airports, so how that decision was reached could be scrutinised. I know that there are concerns in Shetland about that, because the airport there has its own radar and there might be an impact if radar were centralised at Inverness.

I agree about the other issues that have been mentioned, such as the use of New Century house—I do not want to repeat everything.