Good morning, and welcome to the 17th meeting of the Citizen's Participation and Public Petitions Committee in 2023. Just before we move to the substantive items and the agenda, can I ask under item 1 if members are content for us to take a discussion of the evidence that we hear today in item 4 in private? The first of those is petition number 1947 to address Scotland's culture of youth violence. This was lodged by Alex Acain and calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to address the disturbing culture of youth violence in Scotland. The committee met two groups with an Edinburgh-based youth group 6 VT, just off the grass market, and also visited Milton in Glasgow to meet the petitioner and families with direct experience of the issues raised in the petition, who had come from further afield, I should say, than just from the immediate Milton community. I'd like to once again thank everyone who took the time to speak with us, the young people that we met here in Edinburgh, but particularly the people that we met in Milton, who in some instances were still recovering from what had been really graphic and quite in some respects unbelievable levels of violence. Their parents, who you could sense the bewilderment and how distraught, continued to be at what they saw as an inability to secure the environment for their children, the on-going environment for their children or for there to be any sense of justice associated with that. I really again want to thank all those who took the time to come and meet with me, the committee, and it was with Alexander Stewart, who was my colleague on the committee at the time. This morning, we are joined by two University of Glasgow academics, Dr Fern Gillan, a research associate and Dr Susan Batchelor, a senior lecturer in communication. Welcome and good morning to you both. I'm going to ask a general question, but I just want to preamble it with the evidence that we heard. It was interesting here in Edinburgh, the real sense of security that the young people that we met felt through being able to come together in the sixth VT facility to share their experience, but to gain strength as a group in their ability to withstand the torment or the violence that they had previously experienced. They were very keen to be there. It was obviously an unusual environment for them, frankly, to be sitting giving evidence to anything, and we tried to, at that meeting, make it as much of a sort of discussion with prompts as we possibly could. When we met with the families in Milton, coincidentally, there was talk later in Parliament that day and it was difficult. I think that I did contribute on the back of what we heard, but it was just chilling. There we heard about the way in which violence is organised by appointment, people being lured to a place where others have been gathered with video on their phones to record the violence that takes place, and then almost with impunity to feel that they can post that in the knowledge or at least in their perceived knowledge that there is no recrimination that is going to follow. It was deeply distressing. It was said that two of those that we met had been left in such an appalling state that those who found them weren't sure that they would survive, but they had, but not without enormous trauma to them. Those who had siblings, had siblings who felt they'd failed in some way in protecting or that they had a duty to step in and seek reparative justice, restorative justice, sorry, the parents who just felt that they'd failed and that when they'd gone looking for help, the system then failed them. In a sense, they felt that while there was lots of sympathy from authorities, from the police and others, there just wasn't at the end of the day a confidence even in those authorities or the police that any intervention by them would produce a return, because the system, as they saw it, stacked against action and stacked more towards the perpetrator than the victim. It was a very chilling session. I'm interested when we saw that in isolation, you don't want to believe that that's the picture across the whole of the country, you don't know when you hear evidence like that. What does the available evidence tell us about the level of involvement of young people as perpetrators of violent behaviour? What is the kind of age demographic of that? Is it older teenagers or, as in the case, we heard actually younger teenagers, younger than I would have thought possible? The violence we heard perpetrated had actually been by girls on other girls, not necessarily boys, but is that typical? Is it more boys than girls or is there a much wider problem? Obviously, we'll come to the roots and all of that, but I'm interested to understand how you might think the evidence that we heard set in the context of the available wider academic understanding of this issue. I don't know which of you would like to go first, but please just feel free. You're going to go first, are you, Dr Batchelor? Yes, thanks for that introduction. I think that just before either Fern or I contribute, it's just helpful to say a little bit about the background from which we are speaking. We've both got a long history in doing research in relation to young people and violence. I'll let Fern introduce her own more recent research experience, but I've just led a Scottish Government-funded project looking at repeat violence in Scotland. It looked at a range of case study communities, rural, town and urban centres across Scotland. Youth violence or violence involving young people was something that was explored as part of that, but we were looking at a much bigger picture of violence. That's my most recent experience, and, certainly off the basis of that, in response to your first question, I'd say that it's really important to acknowledge that the vast majority of violence that occurs in Scotland is not perpetrated by children and young people, it's perpetrated against them often or it's perpetrated by adults against each other. The vast majority of young people are not engaged in violent behaviour, so the cases that you've referred to certainly do exist. We've both been involved in research where we've heard very similar and distressing stories, so I don't wish to minimise the seriousness of youth violence that is occurring in Scotland just now, but it involves a minority of young people. The research evidence suggests that it is concentrated in particular communities and among marginalised groups, and those would be communities where there's been a sort of withdrawal of services specifically in recent years, and particularly youth services, like some of the ones that you've discussed, which are really important in addressing violence affecting young people going forward. In terms of the age range, young people that are involved in violence become involved in violence often around the age of 12-13, and that can escalate in the younger years. Again, the majority of that violence is not serious. The research evidence suggests that girls are more involved in violence in that younger age, but in terms of the age crime curve, girls and young women grow out of violent offending much younger than boys and young men. Again, the violence that they are involved in tends to be less serious. The project that I've been working on is a three-year project that looks at youth violence in Scotland specifically. We are taking a longer-term view of youth violence, looking at the reduction that has occurred in violence in Scotland over the past 20 years, and trying to learn lessons about what happened around that time, what contributed to that reduction, to learn lessons about where we are now and to understand the kind of changing picture of violence. I am aware of the incidents that you have heard about. I work very closely with young people who have been affected by violence. That includes being the perpetrator of violence, but they have also been victims themselves of violence and a number of other social harms and vulnerabilities. It is not to minimise those, as Susan said, but taking a longer-term picture, violence is stable and low. It has been lower than it has been in the past 20 years. Common Assault is plateaued around 2000s. That is not a recording trend. Communities are feeling that, from the height of violence in the early 2000s, communities feel safer. However, as Susan said, the concentration of violence has changed. When we look at Glasgow, which has always represented a higher amount of violence in Scotland, when we take the six police divisions and the reduction in violence that they have seen, they mirror each other. The concentration effect is the same. The higher crime areas have seen a reduction, but that is comparable to the lower crime areas. The concentration effect of particular communities experience harm and violence to disproportionate levels. It is concentrated in areas of social deprivation where young people, communities and families experience a range of other social harms. That concentration is particularly concerning for us. It was not just from Glasgow, but we heard from people from St Andrews in Fife. It seems a bit easy to say— It is by no means a Glasgow problem. We certainly would not want to give the impression that what we are saying is in terms of what the official record of statistics says, partly due to the different demographic patterns in Glasgow compared to some other parts of Scotland. It has a history of higher levels of violence, but violence is occurring across Scotland, but it is concentrated within communities where there are high levels of deprivation and concentrated disadvantage. It is interesting that you say that you have been talking about the period since 2000. Smartphones and iPads are much more recent than that. The first iPad did not appear until 2010. One of the disturbing characteristics, as I said in my opening remarks about the examples that we heard, was the violence by appointment to film it deliberately to post it on social media to allow the perpetrators to self-aggrandise and to create reputations for themselves, which are designed to intimidate others. That seems to me to be a new and slightly more sinister kind of development. What have you found in relation to that, if anything? Changes in youth culture generally, as you say, technology and access to social media is changing the dynamic of violence. Rivalries can be extended because of social media. Incidents of violence can be amplified because they are viewed. That creates a sense that this violence is all-around and that it is consuming communities. That fear feeds into young people's perceptions of how they keep themselves safe. They are potentially more likely to join gangs or become groups of friends who feel that they have to look out for each other or to carry weapons to keep themselves safe because the perception of violence is amplified. However, it is more complicated than to say that social media is causing violence and that young people are driven by that social media. I think that it is a feature of it and a vehicle of violence that we knew took place between young people anyway. It is how it is being presented through social media that is perhaps changing. Social media does not address the underlying causes that are leading to young people taking those behaviours and behaving in that way. Does it give them a platform that they did not have before? That is what struck me as alarming that this material could be posted essentially with impunity because the young people perpetrating it were not of a responsible criminal age and there was nothing that seemed that anybody could do about it. In the knowledge that this was the case, they were repeating their actions and there were a series of videos of the same people identifying fresh victims who they were able to perpetrate that violence against. In a sense, it advertised the fact. A completely parallel example of my own constituency, there is a quarry that is popular with cliff jumpers into water. Every year when the summer holidays come, people come from around the United Kingdom, young people risk their lives to try to jump into that quarry. Why? Because on social media, they have seen video of other people doing it, it has advertised the fact and they have thought that this would be a great thing to do. There is no doubt that it does influence behaviours. My mind is that the impunity that exists and the lack of action to do anything about the fact that this violence is being promoted in that way is something that should concern us. I agree with Fern that it is really important to not see social media as the key issue here. In terms of the young people involved in violence, it tends to be the same groups of young people. New forms of media, whether it is newspaper, reporting or television, have shaped patterns of youth violence and encouraged young people to amass in certain areas because they will get publicity for doing so over time. There is no doubt that the fact that social media is so available to people and can be broadcast so quickly and so widely is not having an impact in terms of organising and distributing. It is important to emphasise that it is not just young people who are involved in this behaviour. We have plenty of evidence from the repeat violence study about adults consuming and circulating videos of young people involved in violence. However, as adults, we are using social media as a way to organise and identify where potential victims were through organised crime, for example. That is not a problem that is specific to young people. Is it something that I think we should be concerned about and address? Yes, I do, but it is not new. Dealing with the underlying causes of violence is more important than being preoccupied with social media. Final question from me. One of the examples that we heard was of a youngster who realised that they were in a shopping centre and violence was pending. They sought support from the security staff. They contacted their parents and the security staff said that there is absolutely nothing that we can do to protect your child until the violence actually occurs. Is there a why? The security staff said that if we intervene, we will end up being charged with having intervened, potentially restraining the individual who was going to perpetrate the violence before the violence had actually been perpetrated. Is there a sufficient and what the evidence suggested was that those people committing the violence were perfectly aware of this, perfectly aware of the fact that nothing could be done to protect the individual? Is there a kind of greater degree of knowledge of where the parameters of the system are in current society that allows people to exploit that in the knowledge that they can act again with impunity? The only evidence that I have in relation to that has been the way in which children and young people are exploited by organised crime groups as a result of that, so I am concerned that because young people will not be dealt with through the criminal justice system for the same behaviour as they would for an adult, they may be taken advantage of and pressured to be involved in offending behaviour and sometimes violent behaviour as a result of that. Are young people aware of that? Yes, they are, but I have not spoken to any young people that have deliberately engaged in behaviour because of a sense of that impunity. I think that your example speaks to the wider issue of a lack of safe spaces for young people. Where are the community services? Where are the free sports facilities and communities? They are all now private shopping centres that young people that look a particular way or behave a particular way are not permitted to access. Where are the spaces within that centre that a child or young person that is frightened can go to to feel safe? They do not exist and, to me, that is more of a concern. How do you gather your evidence from young people? The most recent research that I have been involved in is a qualitative project, so it was commissioned to look at the concentration of violence in particular communities and amongst particular groups so that the quantitative official data tells us the police and crime survey data, but we spent time in communities alongside organisations that support people that are involved in violence, speaking to stakeholders about getting an overview of the community and then doing in-depth qualitative interviews with people who have experience of violence from aged 16 up to age 50. Our study has been focused in areas that would be considered hot spots for violence, so we are very much working in the heart of communities where that is a real issue. I have particular expertise and experience of working with young people with justice experience. We have been speaking to the adults who support them, front-line staff and workers from a range of backgrounds, so youth work organisations, grassroots organisations, police, education, social work, so people who deal with young people and work with them in communities, as well as the young people themselves. In the project, we have been working with one small group of young men who have been affected by violence for more than a year and a half. We have been co-creating resources and knowledge around their experience. When I say that they are affected by both perpetrators and victims of violence for more than a year and a half. I just wanted to pick up one of your earlier points regarding recorded crime. We know that in certain areas, for example, shoplifting, recorded crime represents a minority of actual crime. In that area, if there has been any work conducted to see how that matches up? In terms of the study that I have been involved in, which again does not focus specifically on youth violence, it focuses on violence more generally. The important aspect of qualitative research is that it uncovers violence that is not reported. We know that all crime is under reported in terms of reports to the police and then what goes through to the courts system. Arguably, repeat violence involving children and young people and adults is more under reported. As violence becomes normalised in a community or in an individual's life, they are less likely to identify an individual incident and report that to the police. In the repeat violence study where we spoke to almost 100 people, there was only a handful of people who had ever reported their violent victimisation to the police. When we considered the amount of violence that they were experiencing, there were multiple experiences of violence across the life course but in different settings. In the community, in the context of education or special educational provision, in children's homes and prisons, those are experiences of violence that just become normalised and, in that context, they are very unlikely to report. Violence is a highly under reported event.  The second question is just really trying to get a feel for the situations and types of behaviours where we see violence occur and whether that varies, perhaps geographically, by age, which touched on or gender likewise. I just reflect that in Kirkton and Dundee, it is really an area that has been beset by violence and anti-social behaviour. We have seen that fireworks nights but, on-going, places like Asda and Kirkton have been traumatised. Their staff is traumatised by children as young as six coming in to their store causing issues and really terrifying lots of people. Historically, there would be more of a gang culture in Dundee where youths would fight across different schemes. I just wondered in that context if you have a bigger picture in terms of what is going on and what is going on where across Scotland. Our study has focused on Glasgow, but I think the lessons that we can take from that suggest that that would apply across Scotland. When we look at what is happening in communities in Glasgow, we realise that speaking to young people and the practitioners that support them, you cannot intertwine the link between interpersonal violence. Young people commit violence between each other and other influences. We use the term triple violence. Communities, families and young people are experiencing violence upon them. They are facing structural violence through poverty and inequality. That is having an impact on the communities and families that young people are a part of. They have a lack of opportunity, a lack of hope, jobs and opportunities. They describe their areas as wastelands, dumping grounds and having no future. They also recognise that the social support is retracting in those communities. That is the informal support that Susan spoke about. The youth centres, the staff, the youth work staff, that are so vital to creating safe spaces for young people. The formal support, teachers being burnt out, waiting lists for mental health support being extensive and police just being absent. We have the violence between young people, which is changing. I think that we have seen a change in that territorial violence that was quite typical of Scotland, which you could kind of term as gang violence. In the trends, that is where we have seen the decrease. Young people reported feeling safer generally being able to scheme hop. In the men, most young people can move about their community without fear of violence. However, as we said, for that small population, for that concentration of young people, territorial violence will still be an issue. Social media plays a part of that and we have touched on that. Drug markets are having an impact on the violence that we are seeing between young people. Susan spoke about it in terms of serious and organised crime and exploitation. Young people are being forced through the economic hardship that they are facing to become involved in drug markets. We know that violence is associated with that, either through enforcing debts or being the victim of having drug debts, as well as being under the influence of substances and taking part in violence. The third kind of violence that we see is that young people and practitioners could not separate from the violence that young people are committing is the violence within young people, the mental health crisis, particularly following Covid. Young people are being isolated, having experienced severe hardship during isolation in Covid-19. The lack of support that they had, the lack of safe spaces, the breakdown of relationships, the lack of routine, the bereavement that they have experienced and the trauma that they now feel and that that is being unsupported and that that is manifesting itself in self-violence, self-harm, poor mental health, struggles in education, suicide but also playing out as violence to other people as well. They do not know how to cope with the trauma that they feel and they are engaging in violent behaviours and taking risks towards themselves and other people. I can potentially add a little bit more. I think that one of the points that I emphasised before in terms of one of the limits of looking at youth violence in isolation is that fairness is intimated to some of the wider social harms and forms of violence that fit into that. In terms of your question and different types and demographics of violence, we had the advantage of the repeat violence study of interviewing a range of ages and many of the people that we were interviewing aged 35 onwards were people that I interviewed not literally but the types of people that I would have interviewed 15, 20 years ago as young people and that demonstrates the impact of violence and the institutionalisation and criminalisation of violence and its impacts throughout the life course. A typical story, but this is just a general story, is somebody that will experience violence within the home, often domestic violence between the parents, usually perpetrated by a male figure within the family. That young person gravitates towards a street-orientated peer group, has a lot of trauma and harm in their background, may become involved in substance use as a means of dealing with that trauma and perhaps then illicit activity to support that drug use. Young women are much more likely to experience sexual violence within that context, but young men experience very high levels of physical violence, become very, very anxious because of the violence that they have perpetrated, that they are going to be attacked and so they are living in a sense of being hyper-alert. They then are often exploited by organised crime networks into drug selling or drug running. A lot of the violence that we discovered in our research across the age range was drug debt related violence. We are seeing changing drug markets, the impact of crack cocaine in Scotland cannot be underestimated, the impacts of that drugs in terms of the physiological impacts, which are short term, but also the cost of the drug and the need to fund that or shaping patterns of violence. Those are people who, as adults, enter the criminal justice system, where they are exposed to more harms within a prison setting, they are further brutalised and they leave prison and enter homeless accommodation, where there is concentrated disadvantage of lots of other people with the same histories and backgrounds. Those are located in the centres where young people again get drawn in. When we are talking about some of the violence that has been discussed in relation to urban centres in particular, when we have concentrated disadvantage of the homeless communities that were located in Covid in unsuitable accommodation in hotels and hostels where there are no support workers and you have people with on-going drug issues and all this history of trauma, you have young people gravitating to those urban centres and are being drawn into that economy and the cycle starts again. This is an urgent problem that needs to be addressed, but it will not be addressed just by focusing on the problems affecting young people. It is about housing, employment and the withdrawal of really essential safe spaces and community supports, where people can develop relationships within people and with people in their community. It is about young people not being excluded from school through what are referred to as time-limited timetables, where they are only in school for half a day a week and therefore they are unsafe for the rest of the space. Those are the issues that need to be addressed, and it is not just about focusing on the problem of young people. Thanks for that. My final question is on escalation of violent behaviour, which you deftly answered and, indeed, the potential interventions into that. I would just like to emphasise that the impact of this fear, and for men in particular, men who have become involved in violence and may be involved in committing very serious forms of harm themselves, the trauma that they experience for that that they cannot discuss with anybody and the lack of services, particularly for men. Men will not identify themselves as victims because that increases their vulnerability in that context, and that means that they are. They are not identified often as victims by support workers, even support workers that understand the trauma that they experience. Again, dealing with the problem of violence, we need to develop support services that appear-led, community-based, that specifically tackle the needs of men involved in community and drug-related violence. Of course, we are concerned primarily with the petitioners' concerns, which are very much related to young people, and in particular to the disturbing culture of youth violence in Scotland, which in recent months has received dozens of videos, images and first-hand accounts of the violence perpetrated in young people. Against the youth, I suggest that there is a culture of youth violence in Scotland because I think that- That is the name of the petition. I know it, but I think that it is just important to emphasise- Our job is to advance the petition now, so I am not here to criticise the petitioner, I am sorry, and neither are you. David Torrance Thank you, convener. Good morning. We have answered most of my questions down to the reasons why young people get involved in violence, but are we the same as young people who get involved with minor criminal offences or anti-social behaviour? Is there a same link that causes that? I think that we know that offending is a very normal experience for young people, whether it is detected or not. Getting involved in trouble is part of establishing the boundaries and a part of growing up. Whether it is detected or not, most young people in Scotland will offend in some way. I am concerned about the term of anti-social behaviour because it focuses the attention on the young person rather than on the circumstances that they are in that are driving them or leading them to act in this way. If we acknowledge that, for most young people, there will be some interaction with getting involved in anti-social behaviour or offending, then we need to look at preventative and universal support and services in communities. Addressing early on the indications of need or support that young people are displaying by showing us that behaviour. What are they looking for? Is it that they need a trusted adult to speak to? Are there wider concerns that might need more specialist support or is that part of age and stage growing up? If we look at what we know about young people who are involved in the more serious forms of offending, the qualitative evidence would suggest that they are the ones who have had the most significant experiences of harm in their background. That might be what distinguishes them from more general, lower-level offending. That is not to individualise the problem but to emphasise that that need for more general support. Those are the young people who have experienced the most severe forms of witnessing domestic violence within the family or of child sexual abuse, for example. Good morning to both witnesses. I want to ask about your views about current efforts to reduce violence and the various initiatives that, as I understand it, exist in order to promote violence reduction. I go back to the distant days when I was community safety minister working with Kenny MacAskill, the justice minister, when a great deal of effort was put into supporting the violence reduction unit, medics against violence and diversionary activity that was funded by the cashback scheme. The VRU had, as its core, a belief that violence can be reduced by intervention on a one-to-one basis. Medics and violence involved doctors volunteering to speak in schools and explain to kids the consequences of what happened when somebody was attacked with a knife and had a facial injury. Therefore, it showed children at school just how devastating the consequences of violence were. Those, as I understand it, were volunteer medics, doctors, nurses and others who had direct experience of working in places like the Royal Infirmary in a Saturday Night, not the faint hearted, as I recall when I visited it many years ago. Do you think that those efforts are effective? Do you think that more needs to be done? If you have any suggestions and thoughts about how those and other similar activities can be beefed up, the impression that I get is that perhaps they are not being pursued with the same gusto and enthusiasm that I felt was evident in the distant days when Kenny and I were at the justice helm. It is very hard to say what specific interventions work because of the complexity of the issue that we are dealing with, but what we do know is that for many years the policies and practices around violence prevention that those interventions that you mentioned are drawn from and their support for young people's general wellbeing has been moving in a really progressive direction and that banner of public health, of whole systems approaches, of early intervention, of prevention do work, they improve the general wellbeing of young people and in turn keep young people safe. I think that what we recognise, the study looked across all levels of what influenced that change and improved outcomes are possible but it needs coherent leadership at all those levels and that is what you had at that point when violence reduction really occurred in the early 2000s, there was a single narrative around violence being preventative, it's not inevitable and that was the direction of travel that all levels politics, the media, practitioners got behind and we interviewed the ex-first minister Jack McConnell and he said that it was so important because of the gravity of violence not to use it as a political or a media football and that this approach, the broader approach around public health and whole systems has to be the kind of uniting factor. We believe that improving young people's wellbeing more broadly will keep young people safe and that any initiatives kind of under that banner can only do good. The only thing that I would add to that just as part of that sort of multi-agency approach that's required to tackle violence is the need for further funding of community-based supports that are run by people with lived experience because in these areas of concentrated disadvantage where we know that violence levels are higher there is a sort of a set of informal rules about no-grassing because of a perceived sort of lack of support from state institutions people will not report their victimisation to the police except in very exceptional circumstances they will try and deal with violence themselves and they don't trust state systems so funding community-based organisations that are staffed by people who are from the community that have relationships and connections who can model good behaviour is what people say that they want what young people but also adults that are involved in violence say that will be effective and that certainly is an area where we've seen a withdrawal of support in recent years. Community safe spaces were also picked up in our community work it's a place where young people feel safe where they can develop relationships and they don't want organisations parachuting in they want them to be of the community staffed by local people who know the local issues who have that authenticity that they can relate to and that operate as positive role models these are safe spaces that young people can return to in times of crisis or times of transition and the relationships and opportunities that they provide are really integral to their their wellbeing and their roots out of any kind of adversity that they're facing. Which is I think what the 6 vt facility that we saw in Edinburgh was very much evidence of I mean the Milton group did themselves flag up the home and family circumstances of the perpetrators of violence and obviously you've spoken at length about the the kind of breakdown in the preventative work and agenda that may have been there 20 years ago and and which needs to exist in order to try and stive off the any youth violence at the earliest point but where that fails and where there is violence I mean is there a robust police and prosecution response in place to protect young people when they see others attacking them because the people we heard from felt that when it got from whatever we would prefer to be in place to the fact that violence had taken place that they then felt let down at that further end in terms of the the ability of the police to respond or the ability of the security guard to intervene or the prosecution response that took place after that. I think we need to be really mindful that in Scotland we have a long standing understanding that children young people who offend are both victims and perpetrators that these are one and the same young people and making a distinction is perhaps not helpful. The young people who are committing the most serious acts of violence while there are less of them their lives are increasingly chaotic and challenging and they are increasingly vulnerable to a whole host of issues and further criminalising them as Susan says taking them into justice systems which will only reinforce that trauma that are less likely to support the healing and the trauma that they need to have addressed will only go on to create more victims. When we speak to young people about restorative justice, which we do, it is a really mixed feeling because while they want to know the outcome of what happens they are also really aware that the perpetrators of violence have that there are circumstances for offending and they perhaps do not always feel safe in reporting crime in the first instance because we do not have this institutional or cultural sense of protection for our young people so I think that further criminalisation can potentially only do more harm and create more victims. Echoing what was said, because of that position, the perpetrators of the violence were outside the homes of those that they had perpetrated the violence against, laughing at them and taunting them further because there is no police or restorative process so are those people right to feel let down? I think yes of course and I'm not trying to minimise all the experiences and I've spoken to the same families that you've spoken with, I've worked with the same young girls that you have worked with, it's not that I am not aware of that experience of victimisation but I do not see it as representing one group of young people's interests and wellbeing and another I see them as directly linked that until we can support the young people who are causing this harm we are never going to be able to support the young people who are experiencing it and that requires yes formal responses and that's outwith my remit to comment on the role of police and how they respond to incidents but I see them as connected and that that dichotomy, creating a dichotomy between those two groups of young people is potentially unhelpful. We spoke to police officers of various backgrounds as part of the repeat violence study and that was a concern about the sort of lack of off-ramp for when they arrest or pick up a young person who might be involved in a violent disorder and then take them home and then that child or young person is apparently out on the street a matter of minutes later so that I think there was certainly concern expressed by police officers around not knowing what happens next when they do respond amongst communities particularly in the communities where there was heightened disadvantage there was a concern that the police did not respond so that when they called the police that the police didn't come but there were positive views of the police express in relation to community police officers the community police officers that we interview express a lot of frustration about how that they would be pulled to police corporate events concerts and so on when they should be in the community building relationships with people so policing is definitely part of the picture here but I would agree with Fern that that going down the route of criminalisation is not you know we've got lots of evidence in Scotland and internationally that that that is unlikely to result in a positive outcome but certainly there were concerns expressed about what to do in the immediate situation where there is an incident and the police either come and feel that they they can't do anything with the young person or the community feel that they are contacting the police and they didn't come so policing is an issue that needs to be addressed and our research would suggest more investment in community policing rather than response policing okay thank you that's very interesting we've actually covered I think in the course of the discussion one or two of the other questions we're going to ask so I'll throw it back to you is there anything we've not discussed that you thought you might have volunteered by way of testimony that would be useful to us I think we've managed to anchor in all the points that we we wanted to in relation to your questions thank you well thank you both very much that's been very very helpful I mean in the new year we're going to be taking evidence from people with practical experience of of addressing youth violence and supporting victims as a part of our extension of our inquiry underpinning this petition from Alex Cain with that in mind our colleagues are you content to have a quick discussion at the end of the meeting and then for us to reflect on the evidence at later day and with that thank you both very much for your time here this morning and I'll now suspend briefly thank you and welcome back and we now move to further consideration of petitions that are continuing the first of these is petition number 1854 to review the adult disability payment eligibility criteria for people with mobility needs mobility needs sorry mobility being something from my own motor motor trade days crept into the vocabulary there this was lodged by Keith Park on behalf of the MS society and it calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish government to remove the 20 meter rule from the proposed adult disability payment eligibility criteria or identify an alternative form of support for people with mobility needs we've been considering this petition for some time last considered it actually a year ago on the 26th of october when we agreed to write to the cabinet secretary for social justice housing and local government and to the MS society the Scottish government has undertaken a consultation on the eligibility criteria for the mobility component of the adult disability payment which found that respondents frequently argued for the reform of elimination of the distance-based mobility tests including the 20 meter rule the consultation responses will form the independent review of ADP now the independent review is due to commence later this year and according to the petitioners recent written submission the Scottish government has started the recruitment process to identify the lead for the work the cabinet secretary's written submission highlights the current financial challenges facing government stating that any significant changes which result in new additional spending will not be deliverable within this parliamentary term the petitioner has expressed disappointment at the Scottish government's incorporation of deliverability and affordability considerations into both the consultation and upcoming review he states that such consideration should not limit the scope of the independent review or any recommendations relating to eligibility criteria the petitioner argues that the purpose of the review should be to make recommendations that would enable the design of a disability assistance benefit that will meet the needs of disabled people well we've held the petition open I think for some of this work to advance do colleagues of any comments or suggestion to Fergus Ewing well I was reading the petitioner's submission of the 18th September which in return responded to the minister Shirley-Anne Somerville's submission in August this year and it did occur to me convener that the points made in the most recent comments for the petitioner are ones that we haven't fully explored and bottomed out and I felt that it it would be only fair to the petitioner to do that and the points as I understand them where the their report in 2018 I mean five years ago pointed out the basic inconsistency or unfairness that this petition is about as I understand it which is that there's 20 meter rule as arbitrary there's no evidence that is actually based on on any rational justification and it resulted in moving from pip from from from to pip from DLA that a third of people in it who suffered from MS lost some support and one out of ten lost all support now that was the basic thesis five years ago and I'm not sure really that we've ever had a specific factual response from the Government about whether that's correct or indeed on any of the specifics I mean the response has been for a review which is fine but they haven't really responded specifically to what the petitioner said the other point that I picked up from the response in September was slightly different that that the ADP and PIP benefits use the 20 meter rule but the DLA use which still applies in some cases uses a 50 meter rule so the point there is there is an inconsistency in the way in which different benefits apply different rules and again if that is correct and I don't know I'm no expert in this at all but this is what they say in just just a couple of months back then it would seem to me that I don't think this committee should take forward this work because I understand that Mr Torrance might go into this a minute but the social security and social justice committee is undertaking scrutiny but the very least what we can do is specifically explicitly refer these matters to the minister with a copy to social security and justice committee asking that perhaps these are points of which they may have regard specifically in their scrutiny so that the petitioner's case is not lost but rather is sort of bequeased to the substantive committee so those were the suggestions I was going to make at the risk of causing any difficulty. No because I think they may very well be incorporated something we can incorporate into even our final consideration given also that I know that the government have said that they will engage with the petitioner themselves in relation to the actual aims of the petition David Torrance. I'm just wondering I was going to close the petition convener but in light of what Thirkus has said I wonder if we can pass it on to social justice and security committee because they are doing work into it anyway. Would that be to pass the petitioner or are we closing the petition but encapsulating the comments of the petitioner as Fergus Ewing has suggested both back to the minister but potentially also just writing to the social security committee highlighting the particular concerns that the petitioner has raised. I would agree with you, convener. Would we be content to operate on that basis? I think that we might also at the same time as we have customarily do is just alert the petitioner to the fact that it is open to them in due course if this review does not advance the issues that they have identified to table a fresh petition at a later date. Petition number 1931 to improve the 100 are 100 roll-out by prioritising properties who currently have speeds of less than 5 mbps. This has been lodged by Ian Barker and calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to prevent digital exclusion for rural properties and their households. We last considered the petition on 8 March this year and we agreed to write to the Scottish Government. For context, off-com research found that 10 mbps of download speed was the minimum speed needed to meet an average household's digital needs back in 2018. The Scottish Government response indicates that superfast broadband access has been made available to 62,000 more premises since 2022 and it states that the networks being delivered will support download speeds of up to 1,000 mbps. The submission also provides details about the full fibre charter. Do members have any comments or suggestions as to how we might proceed? In looking at the papers on the committee website, I could not see any response from the petitioner to the written submissions from the Scottish Government. I wonder if that is correct. That surprised me a little bit because I thought that perhaps the petitioner might respond. If he has not, I wonder whether, given that this will affect an awful lot of people—I think that the petitioner was from Land-Bride in Maryshire—there will be lots of people affected in the Highlands and Islands in that way. I am familiar with the open-each argument about inside-out versus outside-in, but I think that the petitioner is arguing that there could be a bit more of a sophisticated, flexible approach taken, but we have not had any response from him. Was given the opportunity to contribute but has chosen not to? Well, if he has not, then perhaps we should be closing the petition unless there is any— I think that there are some further actions that we might consider taking yet, but any suggestions? I wonder if we could write to BT Open Reach in light of information of a work that is for primary exchange locations in our communities. However, it considers areas with low speeds in the surrounding communities and when determining when primary exchange locations are prioritised. There is a whole other list of asks here. I wonder if we would just add them to it, convener, when we write to. Are we content to do that? We are. So we will keep the petition open and we will make further inquiries. It may well be that the petitioner in response in the light of further information that we receive may contribute further at that point. Remove Potholes from Scotland's Roads is petition number 1936, lodged by Leslie Roberts and calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to improve road surfaces by creating an action plan to remove potholes from trunk roads across Scotland and providing ring-fenced funding to councils to tackle potholes. We last considered that as well on 22 March when we agreed to write to the Scottish Government, Audit Scotland and Police Scotland, and the committee has now received responses from all of those organisations with Transport Scotland responding on behalf of the Government to state the current level of funding being invested in Scotland's motorways and trunk road network. They also note the obligation in operating companies to inspect the trunk road network twice per week, which is intended to identify serious defects and ensure that they are rectified promptly. What the response does not directly address is why the motorways and trunk roads budgets were reduced in 2324 and whether the Barnett consequentials resulting from the UK Government's announcement of an additional £200 million for pothole repair, I imagine notionally some £20 million in England, will be allocated for pothole repair in Scotland. In their response, Audit Scotland indicated that they have no current plans to do further work in relation to Scotland's roads. Police Scotland tells us that over the past three years, 95 road traffic collisions were recorded with defective road noted as a contributory factor. Though it is noted that this contributory factor may not necessarily be a pothole, we have also received two submissions from Petitioner, reflecting on the responses that we have received and sharing her continued concern about the health and safety risks that are being faced by motorists and by cyclists while so many roads remain in a poor condition. Do members have any comments or suggestions? I wonder if we could keep the petition open and in doing so write to the cabinet secretary for finance to seek clarity on whether the Barnett consequentials resulting from the UK Government's announcement of additional funding for pothole repairs will be made available for pothole repairs in Scotland as part of both the 2425 budget allocation for motorways and trunk roads and for local government settlement. I wonder if we could also write to the Minister for Transport seeking information on what action he has been taking to ensure that the budget for motorways and trunk roads is not further reduced as part of the 2425 budget. As he was reasonable with specific additional funding coming as a consequence of the Barnett consequentials, it would be useful to have some confirmation or otherwise that that money is going to be deployed to that purpose here in Scotland, and I think that that would be useful to confirm. That brings us to the next of our petitions, which is petition number 1958, to extend after care for previously looked after young people and remove the continuing care age gap. That has been lodged by Jasmine Consipe-Pilling, who I can see with us again in the gallery. You have got yourself a season ticket for our proceedings, as I like to say to regular attendees, on behalf of Who Cares Scotland. It calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to extend after care provision in Scotland to previously looked after young people who left care before their 16th birthday on the basis of individual need, to extend continuing care throughout care experience people's lives on the basis of individual need, and to ensure care experience people are able to enjoy lifelong rights and achieve quality with non-care experience people. That includes ensuring that the UN convention on the rights of the child and the findings of the promise are fully implemented in Scotland. Members will recall at our previous meeting—that is just our meeting past—we heard from the minister for children, young people and keeping the promise at Natalie Dawn MSP and from Scottish Government officials at Caracouper and Sarah Corbett. During that session, the minister recognised that care and support provided to care experienced individuals is inconsistent and talked about a determination, and I quote, to review and co-design the policies and supports for people with experience of care alongside those with lived experience. We also heard that consultation process is planned for 2024, with the promise bill expected to be introduced to the Parliament for consideration in 2025, time getting a little bit near the end of the lifetime of this Parliament. Since our last meeting, we have received a submission from the Scottish Government providing clarification on whether legislative change would be required to achieve the things called for in this position, as well as providing the requested details of educational outcomes, for looked after children and data on social work staff, retention and recruitment. We have also received two submissions from the petitioner, Jasmine sharing her reflections on the evidence that we have gathered and the additional information that she has had a chance to consider provided by the Scottish Government. Although welcoming the work of the Scottish Government, Jasmine highlights the reviews and consultations that have already taken place where care experienced people have shared their views and cautions against further consultations, which risk asking people to relive trauma while they continue to wait for solutions to be developed and implemented. While the evidence that we took from the minister at our last meeting is still fresh in our mind, and I know that we had a number of questions that we put, do we have any comments or suggestions in consequence of that? David Torrance I wonder if a committee would like to consider writing to the Scottish Through Care and After Care Forum, seeking its views on its action called for in the petition and seeking further details of its work that is carrying out as part of its 100 days of listening. I think that there is probably merit in pursuing the minister a little bit further as well. Do you have any proposals perhaps in that regard? I think that there is a whole list here of like two, if you have got time. David Torrance I wonder if we could consider writing to the minister of children and young people and keeping the promise to ask the Scottish Government what day it has on the number of care experienced people who are being removed from compulsory supervision orders before their 16th birthday and to provide further information on the steps that it is taking to address the issues of children and young people being removed from CSO before their 16th birthdays without long-term consequences on their support being explained. I ask whether the Scottish Government has considered providing some form of redress to care experienced people who were removed from CSO prior to their 16th birthday, but who would have remained on the CSO had they been made aware of the long-term consequences of its decision and to seek clarity on the timeline for updating guidance in relation to provision of continuing and aftercare services and what further progress the Scottish Government intends to make on those issues raised by the petition, which does not require legislative change between now and the introduction of a promise bill. Lastly, I recommend that the Scottish Government explore options for accelerating work on the promise bill and for making effective use of existing evidence to ensure that care experienced people of all ages do not have to relieve trauma experiences through multiple consultation processes. Maurice Golden You have a website to go and look at the response from the Scottish Government, which is a way to find out for yourself, mate. Is there anything that arises from the response in relation to the ability, as you asked, of local authorities to meet the expectations upon them that would lead to any further questions that you would want to put? Most likely to be covered through Dave Torrance's suggestions. Right. You are content to support them as well. Fergus Ewing, is there anything that you would like to add? I think that Mr Torrance has covered most of it, but I absolutely endorse the comments that all members have made that there is an awful lot to be answered by the minister. There is just overall a feeling that nothing very much is really going to happen anytime soon, and what might happen is going to happen many years away. That was the kind of feeling that I got. The minister had full of good intentions, absolutely. That came shining through, but there was just a lack of clarity about what exactly is going to be done by whom, when and how. As far as the promise bill is concerned, the Government has got an indication of assuming its past when it will be implemented. In other words, there is quite a lot of legislation that is passed that is never implemented, often for practical reasons about the cost of implementation. It may be that the Government knows well that it is not going to be able to afford this anytime soon with the financial pressures that we hear about yesterday and so on. I just wanted to add that to the benefit of the clerks when they are framing the letter. I think that that would be useful. It is a recurring feature, certainly, that when we have petitions that are pursuing why legislation has not been implemented, it has very much been a case of, while the funding is not in place to allow us to do it, and I think that we would like some indication of where, if they are confident, the funding will be in place when finally they do progress this bill. We are content to take forward the petition and to seek the further clarification on the back of the minister's evidence that we heard at the last meeting. We are. The next petition is petition number 1970 to create an online account for parents to manage the 1140 hours of early learning and childcare funding lodged by Sharon Fairlie on behalf of the Scottish Private Nursery Association, calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to reform the funding model of the 1140 hours of early years learning and childcare to allow parents direct control of childcare funding via an online account. We last considered that on 21 December last. We agreed to write to COSLA early years Scotland, the Scottish Child Mining Association and the National Parent Forum Scotland. The Scottish Child Mining Association's written submission states that the implementation of 1140 childcare hours by 2020 has had a devastating effect on the child mining workforce. The association signalled some support for a direct parent provider system, but raised a number of concerns with the proposal of an online system. One concern is that uptake amongst vulnerable children could be adverse if parents have to arrange the payment themselves. COSLA's response to the committee highlights that 88 per cent of those with a three to five-year-old and 92 per cent with an eligible two-year-old were satisfied with the flexibility that they had been offered with the funding arrangements. Due to the evidence on satisfaction rates, COSLA does not believe that this is the right time to consider this type of reform to ELC early learning and childcare delivery. Colleagues, in the light of the responses that we have received, do we have any suggestions as to how we might proceed? Does that look to me as if potentially a move to close would be appropriate, Mr Torrance? I would agree with you convener, and I like the evidence that we have given. I would like to close the petition under rule 15.7 of standing orders on the basis of the Scottish Government's consultation on early learning and childcare, found that responses favoured alternative approaches and highlighted potential drawbacks to using it on an online account. It is Scottish Child Mind Association raised concerns about problems arising from an online account system and suggested that this would not resolve existing issues with funding for early learning childcare. Are we minded to close where we are? Can I thank the petitioner? It has been sometimes, since we did last, considered that the petition has taken a while to gather in the additional submissions and for us to have an opportunity to consider them. However, it appears that the evidence gathered by COSLA and the view of the Scottish Government means that there is no way that we can effectively take the aims of the petition further forward, so we will close it now. I thank them very much for having brought it to us. Petition number 1997 introduced braille labelling for food products sold in Scotland. That has been lodged by Fiona MacDonald on behalf of Site Scotland and Site Scotland veterans. I believe that we have the petitioners in the gallery with us today. It calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to introduce new and legal requirements on retailers to provide braille labelling on food products detailing the name of the item and the items use or sell by date. We last considered this petition on 22 March when we agreed to write to the Food Standards Scotland, the Food and Drink Federation and the Scottish Government. Members will have noted that the response from Food Standards Scotland also covers the issues that we raised directly with the Scottish Government. Food Standards Scotland states that they have no immediate plans to conduct a public consultation on policy options for the introduction of mandatory braille labelling, but they will continue to build the evidence base in this area. The response also indicates that, while it is unlikely progress in braille labelling work will be made in the short term, they have brought the petition to the attention of the UK Government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The Food and Drink Federation draws our attention to alternative technologies being trialled by food producers, which would improve accessibility for consumers and encourages the recognition of digital food information, which can be used to complement and repeat mandatory product information. We have also received two submissions from the petitioners, which emphasise the importance of food products being accessible and safe for blind and partially sighted people. In particular, they note that, while use of QR codes is helpful, that technology needs to be used in combination with other techniques to ensure packaging is fully accessible for all. The petitioners' most recent survey shares results of their survey, which gathered feedback on the general accessibility of food packaging. With, interestingly, 76 per cent of respondents saying that the current labels do not meet respective accessibility requirements, I was almost getting a bit carried away with that, with 76 per cent of respondents saying that the current labels do not meet respective accessibility requirements. I have some quite interesting feedback from the various parties in relation to the department. Any suggestions? Mr Torrance? I wonder if the committee would consider writing to the UK Department of Environment of Food and Rural Affairs to ask what consideration it has given to the introduction of mandatory bail labeling on food products across the UK and seek clarification of whether the UK Government will carry out a full review of general food labeling requirements. I wonder if the committee would consider going back to Food Standards Scotland to seek an update on their work to build an evidence base in the area of recommendation. It launches a public consultation to gather views on braille labeling on foods. I support those recommendations. In the course of the letter to the UK and the Food Standards Scotland that we can make reference to the material that the petitioners have drawn attention to about the European Commission's work and to launching a review into accessible labeling, so that we can be informed by what the European Union and the European Commission is doing. Plainly, that is bound to have an enormous implication. If they regulate, all the major food producers will probably be complying with their regulations. That would leave the UK as the odd man out, if I could coin a phrase. Hugh Bay. Thank you, Mr Yew. We are content to incorporate all those very suggestions, so we will keep the petition open and we will pursue it in the ways that we have just agreed. That brings us to item 3, which is consideration of new petitions. I should, as I always do, say to people who might be tuning in because they have lodged a petition or watching our proceedings that, when we first consider a petition, we have already asked the Parliament's independent research body SPICE to offer us some evidence and views and also sought the initial consideration of the Scottish Government. We do that because, otherwise, when we first considered the petition, those would be the first two actions that we would suggest and it would only delay a meaningful consideration of the petition. The first of our new petitions is petition number 2042 to abolish car parking charges for all forestry and land Scotland sites. It is lodged by Undine Achilles Day on behalf of the Tenult Community Council, and the petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to abolish car parking charges at all forestry and land Scotland sites, helping to promote access to forest and green spaces across Scotland. The petitioner is concerned that the introduction of car parking charges by forestry and land Scotland will have an detrimental impact on the health and wellbeing of people who wish to visit those sites, but there is a consequence that they will no longer be able to afford to do so. Responding to the petition on behalf of the Scottish Government, Forestry and Land Scotland states that it has been charging for car parking at its most popular sites for 20 years, and while it is expanding the number of sites where parking charges apply, two thirds of its car parks will remain free to use. This response goes on to note that the decision to increase the number of sites where charges are incurred following a challenge by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy for public bodies to actively increase income from visitors to offset the increasing costs of managing visitor pressures and abolishing charges would impact the sustainability of forestry and land Scotland's finances and potentially lead to similar calls on other parts of central and local government who charge for parking. The petitioner responded to the forestry and land Scotland submission raising concerns that parking charges are being introduced at sites such as Ffyrnach, Chwyrrust and Sutherland Grove, where there are no additional facilities to justify the charges. Do members of any comments or suggestions for action? I see that we have competition on this occasion, and I will go to Mr Ewing first, who is perhaps going to be less challenging to the aims of the petition than Mr Torrance, but let's see Mr Ewing. I was just going to say that the office is a new petition, so I think that quite a lot could be done, and some of this has been suggested to us, so perhaps I'll leave that, but there were some specific points that I wanted to make, which I don't think have been raised with us and the advice that we've got. Number one is that there has been parking charge for 23 sites. That was increased up to 12 to 44 sites, but now it has been increased to 110 sites. Now, as it happens, I used to be responsible with the ministerial portfolio for FLS and the fund members who are working with them, so I appreciate that they have got to cover the cost, convener, but many of those car parks are places that I have got no facilities whatsoever. They are just basically open ground, and I know because I used to do a lot of running around forests and the islands, and many of them are just open spaces. I cannot see that it is justified to make charges there. Some sites have facilities, very few. There seems to be a lack of rationale about how and why the charges have been induced, why some and not others. What is the rationale? Moreover, surely the rationale should be based on what facilities there are, so where does an equalities assessment come in? Equalities assessment seems to me to be looking at various different things, which is treating equal rights and so on. That's absolutely desirable and fine, therefore it's a right to access, which perhaps is the point. I would have thought that the key decisions should be based upon what facilities there are, such as toilets, such as rangers present or not, as the case may be. I began to get from FLS details of all that. Secondly, why should the equalities assessments not be made public? I mean the public documents, so can they explain why? Thirdly, if the cost is £13 million of running the 300 destinations, can we get some sort of detail and breakdown from FLS about what that actually is? It seems an awful lot of money. Is that mostly labour costs or is it sites specific? What exactly is it that they do? Most of those sites are basically open land. There's nothing to do. There's no grass to cut. It's usually unmetalled flat areas where cars park. The last thing I would say is that if there are to be charges imposed everywhere, some drivers might just instead of parking the car park, park alongside roads, often the single track roads, to avoid paying charges. They know that they won't be detected because there aren't any police that will go by for weeks and then probably in some of the more remote areas. I'm not against bodies paying for their costs. It's a principle of government that brings with it its problems. I just wanted to raise these points and I'm sympathetic to other points that will be raised. I think that you have encapsulated that. If I'm quite happy to take forward further work to FLS, then digging beneath the general point that they've made over the fact that charges have existed along the lines that you've suggested in a number of different ways, I'm quite happy to do that. David Torrance? I also ask if we look at, especially because Mr Ewing mentioned about car parks. We have no facilities, but you just need to look at Loch Morlach and you'll know the area well where they have lots of car parks. They are seriously overused by the public because it's a real good tourist destination and the wear and tear in these areas is incredible that the forestry and land Scotland have to repair, so we need to get revenue from somewhere. I think that it's a case of, as has been suggested, equality assessments and looking to see how the charges are established and what, in fact, the charges actually deliver in relation to facilities and the benefit to those who are using them. We'll thank the petitioner and we will take that further forward and see what response we get. Petition number 2045 to lower the cervical cancer smear test in Scotland is 16. This has been lodged by Tiffany McGuire and calls on the Scottish Parliament or the Scottish Government to do exactly what the petitioner says. We are joined this morning by Megan Gallacher, who is joining us for the consideration of this petition. Good morning. Megan, I just ask if this petitioner is known to you, or is it a constituent? The petitioner shares that she was refused a smear test at the age of 18 after her first child was born prematurely and that following a cervical cancer smear test at 26 it was found that she had abnormal cells. The spice briefing explains that cervical screening is offered on a five-yearly basis between the ages of 25 and 64. The World Health Organization recommends that cervical screening begins by the age of 35. Key organisations in the area advised that the risks of testing at younger ages may outweigh the benefits, as it is common for women under 25 to experience changes in the cells of the cervix that are resolved by themselves. If those changes were detected by a cervical screening test, the patient may be offered unnecessary treatment, which could lead to complications, including an increased risk of premature birth and future pregnancies. The response of the Scottish Government also notes this particular evidence and states that, along with the rest of the United Kingdom, it relies on advice about screening programmes from the UK National Screening Committee. I do not know, Megan, if you wish to speak to the petition at all. Very briefly, if I may. Thank you very much and good morning, everyone. The reason that I am here today is on behalf of my constituent who has intimated that she is raising the petition with the Scottish Parliament. The reason that I want to say a few words this morning is because I believe that the petition is admirable. However, due to the reasons that you have outlined, I myself have some reservations about lowering the age of smear tests to 16. That being said, I think that what the petition does do is start a conversation that is much needed in terms of women's health, particularly young women's health, from the ages of 16 to 24, and making sure that, if anyone has any concerns about their body, they are able to get the help that they need for it. I have slight reservations just in terms of the research that we have to hand in the research that has certainly been read out this morning. However, I do feel that the petition itself is an admirable one on behalf of my constituent. Thank you very much for that, Megan Gallacher. In the light of Megan's assessment and the evidence that we have received, do we have any suggestions as to how we might proceed? David Torrance? In the light of what evidence that the committee has received and what Megan Gallacher says, it has highlighted the issues raised within the petition and it has brought it to the forefront, but I think that there is no place to go but close the petition under rule 15.7 of standing on the basis that women under age of 25 are not invited for routine cervical screening, as evidence shows that screening would do more harm than good in line with the guidance from the UK National Screening Committee and the rest of the United Kingdom. I thank Megan for coming along and supporting the petitioner. I agree that it is a petition that is one that I think is useful in terms of the ongoing conversation that needs to take place, but I think that for the reasons that have been given quite directly to us, we will move to close the petition. Do the committee agree? That brings us to the final petition this morning, petition number 2047, to make malicious false allegations a hate crime lodged by Francis Ann Nixon calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to consider legislation to ensure that malicious false allegations are considered hate crimes and dealt with as such. Members may be aware that the petitioner lodged a similar petition in 2019, which was considered by our predecessor committee in the last Parliament and was prompted by the petitioner's own experience of malicious false allegations at that time. The Scottish Government has provided a response that notes that behaviour amounting to making false allegations can be dealt with under existing common law. It is not clear to them on what basis a false allegation made against someone should be treated as a hate crime when other offences such as assault, committed in the same circumstances and with the same motivation would not be. It is also noted that existing hate crime legislation can be used to add a statutory aggravation to general offences being prosecuted. Ms Nixon has responded to the Scottish Government's view, highlighting that her own experience demonstrates the challenges of dealing with malicious false allegations using existing laws and calling for the definition of a hate crime to be expanded to ensure any characteristic of an individual cannot be used by others to make false allegations against them. I appreciate the petitioner's tenacity based on their own experience, but again, quite a direct view of the Scottish Government. Do colleagues have any views? David Torrance Thank you, convener. Considering the light of the Scottish Government and the evidence before us, I do not think that the committee has any other option but to close the petition under rule 15.7 of standard orders. On the basis that the Scottish Government does not consider that malicious false allegations should in themselves be considered as a hate crime, behaviour amount to false allegations can be dealt with under existing common law, with hate crime legislation enabling a statutory aggravation to be added where a false allegation is motivated by characteristics listed in the hate crime legislation. The Hate Crime and Public Orders Scotland Act 2021 covers the protected characteristics of age, disability, race, colour, nationality, ethnic and national origins, religion or perceived religious affiliation, sexual orientation, transgender identity and includes the power to add the characteristic of sex to this list. Any other comments from the committee? Are we content to agree that? We are. I thank the petitioner again for raising the issue, but I thank the very direct response that we have received from the Scottish Government and from SPICES that we will be unable to advance the aims of the petition, so we will close the petition. That concludes the public part of our meeting for today, and we will meet again on Wednesday 6 December.