���˿���

PE2090, lodged by Stephen Henson, is on updating the legislation on granting permission for digital display boards.

I see that some people are leaving the room—I gather that they were attending especially to hear consideration of the petition on national parks. I thank them for being with us this morning.

PE2090 calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to update the Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) (Scotland) (Regulations) 1984 to require application for express consent to advertise using a digital display, including where a site has been upgraded from a traditional paper-based display.

The SPICe briefing that we received notes that large digital display boards are very likely to fall into the “express consent” category of planning regulations, which means that permission must be obtained before they can be installed. It also notes that many local authorities already set limits on where digital advertising displays can be located.

In responding to the petition, the Scottish Government details the requirements for notification of a planning application for digital advertising, including the statutory requirement for a planning authority to notify in writing any neighbours whose property is within 20m of the site of the application. Therefore, the Scottish Government considers that the existing provisions are appropriate and that there is no requirement to amend them at this time.

We have also received a submission from the petitioner, which notes that many of the notification requirements mean that members of the public must be proactive, for example by checking online planning portals for submissions of new applications.

Do members have any comments or suggestions for action?

Do members have any other thoughts?

I quite like digital display boards. I have a few in my constituency. They tended to replace roller display boards, where the picture changed, or ones with slats that used to turn. Now, it is all modern tech.

We will keep the petition open, and we will seek to find out the views of the bodies concerned on digital display boards. It is perfectly possible that they could be located in much more intrusive locations, which could be of consequence to people locally.

I thank Monica Lennon for her contribution to the aims of the petition. You gave a heartfelt tribute on behalf of your constituent, who is the petitioner. You are quite right that over the years, the committee has been fortunate in the number of courageous people who have come forward to lodge a petition on the back of their experience. The committee has been able to give additional voice to the aims of those petitions, profile them and take them forward. Of the long list, you alluded to Elaine Holmes and Olive McIlroy on transvaginal mesh, but we should also acknowledge Amanda Kopel, who was successful in lobbying for changes to legislation in support of those who are diagnosed early with dementia, and our former colleague Elaine Smith, who was proactive on issues relating to women’s health and took those issues forward with the committee.

The petitioner is in the excellent company of women who have been at the forefront of ensuring that we are able to advance issues that have resulted in a material change in the way that the Scottish Government and Scottish public life approaches them. In light of that, we should write to the United Kingdom National Screening Committee to seek an update on its work to gather further evidence on the benefits of HPV self-sampling, including work to assess and validate a test for HPV self-sampling in the UK. Are there any other suggestions from colleagues?

PE1902, which has been lodged by Maria Aitken on behalf of the Caithness Health Action Team, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to allow an appeal process for community participation requests under the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015. We last considered the petition at our meeting on 4 October 2023, although it is very vivid in my mind.

Although we would not ordinarily intervene in an individual case that prompted a petition, our parliamentary colleague Edward Mountain suggested that we pursue the issue directly. We have now received a response from NHS Highland, which is available in the meeting papers. In the light of that response, do members have any comments or suggestions for action?

Okay. At this point, I welcome Fergus Ewing, who has joined us. I explained earlier why you would be a little bit late to join us. It is good to see you now.

No—that is fine.

I do not want to lose sight of the issue of consent. The research that Dr Fossey put together came to the view that there was no evidence of parental consent—at least, no documented evidence. Have you come to the conclusion that there is such evidence?

Okay. I might come back with other thoughts later, but I will now bring in Fergus Ewing.

You challenged the suggestion that there was any diminution in focus. I made that suggestion only because, when we read the papers and saw the timeline, it seemed that, all the way through until about 2018, everyone was still adhering to an expectation that the road would be delivered as initially forecast. There was no change in the public perception after that date, but, from reading the paperwork, a sense creeps in that there was a feeling that other funding models might need to be explored—a feeling of, “How might we go about that?” It is not clear from the paperwork whether it was ministers who were driving a review or whether a review was being suggested to them.

Keith Brown, who was pretty experienced and had a track record in relation to the delivery of national infrastructure projects, left the responsibility at that point and was succeeded, I think, by Michael Matheson. From reading the paperwork, we feel slightly confused about what happened at that point. We cannot point to anything in particular, but it looks as though something happened at that point that is not in the public domain, the discussion around which led to a delay.

We can certainly ask the Government to confirm the sustainability of any funding that it is making available.