 Felly, gwych i gael i'r ffordd o'r pwg ar y cyfnodol, cyfan cyfnodol, cyfnodol, 26 i gael i gael i'r ffordd. Gwych yn ddigon i'r bwysig am y dyfodol, mae'r rhai cyfnodol yn gweithio i ddweud yr unig. Roedd oedd wedi gwneud o'r ffordd i'r ffordd ar y cyfrifffordd Stevenson, a'r bywydau i'r cyfnodol ar y cyfrifffordd. Rwy'n meddwl i'r cyfrifffordd i gael i'r bywydau. Gweithi'r bywydau i'r gwbl y gydag, 2, ddy vegg is decision on taking business in private. The Committee is asked to consider taking three items in private. Firstly item five which is a draft letter on pre-budget scrutiny, secondly a future consideration of its draft approach to the Restrictedgest jobs' of Scotland Bill and thirdly its future consideration of its draft approach to the Anticipated South of Scotland Enterprise Agency Bill. Are all members agreed? We are agreed. Therefore, we are going to move on to agenda item 3, which is the Tramp Sport Scotland Bill. I wondered if there were any members who wanted to declare any interests in relation to transport. No. Perfect. This is our fourth evidence session on the Transport Scotland Bill, focusing on lower mission zones. This session will also touch on the parking prohibition provisions in the bill. I welcome Martin Reid, the policy director of the Road Haulage Association, Gavin Thompson, the Air Pollution Campaigner at Friends of the Earth Scotland, representing the Scottish Environmental Link, Tony Kenmure, treasurer and member of the Executive Committee of the Scottish Taxi Federation, and Neil Gregg, the policy and research director of I am Road Smart. There are a series of questions. Can I just say, for those of you that have given evidence before, you will know that if you want to answer a question, you need to catch my eye so that I can bring you in. You please do not need to touch the buttons in front of you. The gentleman on your left will automatically activate the speaker in front of you. If you see me waving my pen like this, that probably means that I am trying to encourage you to wind up what you are saying. It saves me having to cut you off. Welcome to the committee. The first question this morning is from John Finnie John. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. There is a number of, perhaps, slightly more technical questions to come, so I will be kicked off by rolling a couple of general ones together, please. That is about the position on the principle of establishing early zeds in Scotland and what impact, if any, you think that they will have on reducing air pollution at recognised hotspots, please. Do you want to start on that? Sure. Thanks very much. Can everyone hear me? Okay. Great. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for inviting me to speak. I am the air pollution campaigner of the ends of the earth, Scotland, and the transport bill could offer a great opportunity to reduce air pollution, not just through low emission zones but through the rest of the bill as well. Low emissions zones are used across Europe as a great way of reducing air pollution, which primarily comes from traffic. We know the health evidence from air pollution. There are fresh stories every week that are alarming. We know it shortens lives, it damages hearts and lungs. The most recent stories that we learned in pairs of cognitive ability increases the risk of dementia. It can reach unborn babies through the placenta, so it is clear that we need to be taking action. Low emission zones are one tool to improving air quality. The provisions that are in the transport bill certainly need to be improved to ensure that we protect people's health, but that is possible if certain changes are made. I think that a helpful lens as we analyse the provisions in the bill and as we discussed it this morning is that fundamentally we are looking at a public health policy. As you said, it involves a lot of detailed traffic regulation, but what we are looking at is something that, when it is implemented effectively, should protect people's health. Does anyone else want to come in on tiny? I think that we are all agreed that we want our descendants to breathe cleaner air. I should not think that anybody debates that, and that we are moving towards cleaner vehicles, Euro 6 standards, and it strikes us from the report that we are discussing today. I would like to just very briefly use a quick analogy. If you find yourself in a motor car with dual climate control in the front, and I, as a driver, want to keep cool and I set my temperature at 15 degrees, and my passenger on the other side of the gear stick wants to be warm and sets their temperature at 25 degrees, neither of us are going to achieve what we want. I think that the slight concern that I have about the low emission zone approach is that if we improve the standard of our vehicles, of our fleet across the board, that is perfectly logical and reasonable. Why would we do that only in certain streets or in a certain area? That is the bit that I struggle with when it is surrounded. Every step may be one step in the right direction, but I must admit that, to us, the concept of a low emission zone of only controlling the emissions in certain streets does not seem particularly logical as a principle. Even within your own report, the findings across Europe and in London in the low emission zones are that the lowering of emissions, frankly, does not amount to much. Martin, do you want to come in on the emission zones and the road to the haulage industry? Yes, sure. Again, thank you very much for the opportunity this morning. Low emission zones are clearly the way forward in terms of the direction of travel that we are all going in. For our industry, I have not heard of any specific objection to the concept or the principle of a low emission zone. Our concern is the timeframes that are being mentioned about that and our ability as an industry and the technology that surrounds our industry to accommodate those changes at the pace. As Tony rightly says, everybody has the right to clean air and the road haulage industry feels no different about that. Neil, as everyone else has had a chance, it would be right for you to come in as well. Just a quick point. Most of what I will be saying today is based on a survey that we did of 1,400 of our members. We have 92,000 members. One of the most striking findings was that only 3 per cent had any confidence that anything that any Government did would solve the problem quickly. A lot of the questions that we asked, people were afraid to evenly split a third in favour, a third against, a third do not know. It is that big do not know that there is a real lack of consumer information out there to allow people to make a judgment now. I think that that is why people are sometimes slightly worried about that because they do not know what it means yet. From our point of view, the key issue is consumer information, getting that out there to help people to understand what those policies mean to them. The important thing of taking evidence is to shape this. We are at the committee's job is to scrutinise. It is good that there is consensus, at least from my point of view. It is good that there is consensus that there is a wish to see low-emission zones. Mr Thomson, do you think that a lack of ambition is perhaps connected with that? Yes, a lack of ambition. The objectives of a low-emission zone, what specifically would the low-emission zones be trying to achieve, has not been set out in the bill, which is a concern, particularly when we look at the delegation of powers between ministers and local authorities. That lack of objectives could cause problems in an excessively slow implementation period at long-grace periods, which means that, in the current version of the bill, low-emission zones would not be in place until perhaps in 2026. That seems for an issue that we can all agree is essential that we need to act on and is imperative for human health. That seems unnecessarily slow on something that we could perhaps look at and the emission restriction standards. Just to make a broader point, we know that most of our air pollution comes from traffic and, essentially, we need to be reducing the air pollution that we receive from private car travel. That is about modal shift and a change in types of cars. The provisions that are in the current draft of the bill do not fill me with confidence that they would be successful in reducing air pollution. Our situation is slightly different from that. We are not going to argue any about the health benefits or disbenefits. We are not experts in that particular area, and we will happily defer to those who are. Our position is one of a current reality. We have no current retrofit option for trucks to come up to Euro 6 standards. Buses have it. I will add a caveat, which is late last night while I was preparing and not sleeping, as I should have been. I read an article that there has been a successful trial by a large waste management company using a CVRAS-approved retrofit option. It may be that we are now on the cusp of something good happening in that area. We would cross our fingers and hope that that is the case. Up to that point, we have no retrofit option. The option for our industry is to remove or get rid of the truck that they currently have to buy a Euro 6 engine truck. That is problematic, particularly for SMEs. A Euro 6 truck could cost anything between £80,000 and £120,000. The reality again is that the popularity of the Euro 6, mainly through legislation and so on, has created a distortion of the second hand value of Euro 5, so the gaps and the barrier for entry for those who are willing to or are wishing to adopt this newer technology. The barriers have got greater. For our industry, 2023 does not seem a long way away. I totally understand the point that Gavin is making, but the reality for our industry is that, should there be a situation where we are required or forced to jump early, technology is not backing us to do that. Neither are the economics just yet. The percentage of Euro 6 in the UK fleet is growing every year, just by way of a couple of statistics. 2017, 36 per cent of the total UK fleet was Euro 6. 2019 is expected to be 50 per cent. 2021, 64 per cent. By the time that the low emission zone is due to start in Glasgow 2023, all the indications are that 78 per cent of the UK fleet will be Euro 6. I understand that as a percentage. How many hauliers in Scotland how many trucks will be on the road in 2023 that will not meet that standard rather than the percentage? At the minute, there are 493,600 HCVs registered. That is the UK. If you are looking at the percentage of that, 78 per cent of that figure. It is a substantial amount, but it still leaves a substantial amount that will not be ready by 2023. The average life of a truck is between 10 and 12 years. We have to remember that Euro 6 came in 2013. Before that, previous Governments had recommended that hauliers bought Euro 5, so they did that in good faith. Now they are being required to change it earlier than their planned schedule. It is just a flag up that there is an economic imperative that surrounds this as well that affects the industry. Jamie-Wane will come in with a thing and I will come back to you, John. It was a brief supplementary. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. Mr Ken, you were your previous comments. I found it quite intriguing. We often talk about the de facto position that everyone accepts that there should be at least these zones, and it is just an argument about the house, the wats and the wares and how much. However, you have brought a very different perspective to the panel for the first time, and that is that if we only target specific areas of not addressing the universal problem. You could read that in two ways. Are you suggesting that there should be no zone anywhere, or there should be a universal zone by that? There should be complete compliance, or the zone should not exist at all. It is not clear from what you said which one you prefer. When I was reading part 1 of the bill here, I got interested when it started talking about retrofitting and whether that should be allowable or not. I found myself beginning to wonder why that would be an issue for you, why do you need to think about it? The short answer to your question is universal. I am here to talk about the taxi fleet, so there are 1,316 of them in Edinburgh and just over 1,400 of them in Glasgow. If they are all Euro 6 or electric, what does it matter what street they are moving up and down? If they have all met that standard, whether or not there is a low emission zone becomes moot. If you design a little zone with a boundary around it, you are creating a whole world of complication, so what happens when somebody in a Glasgow taxi gets a taxi to bring them to Waverley station in Edinburgh? Are they allowed in or are they not? Unless everybody has the same standard across the whole country, I think that the management of the environment and management of emissions is something that by definition is a global issue, a national issue, it is a macro issue. To try and manage the climate within a few streets just seems to me completely illogical. Possibly not a popular point of view but it just seems to add unnecessary complication. Peter, do you want to come in? I want to follow up on that, Tony. We all know the London black cab that a very long-lived vehicle that will last for almost forever, but they have a very old-fashioned type of engine, well some of the older ones have. You said that we could get them all to the Euro 6 level. Is that likely to happen any time soon with the taxis? I mean I see taxis here that are 10 years old with a very old type of diesel engine, so that is going to be a fairly polluting vehicle out of thought. You said something really interesting there when you mentioned the age of the vehicle, so there is research in the German automotive industry that shows that the emissions that are created by building car batteries take 10 years to recoup the fuel savings that you will make by converting the engines. If you put an age limit on the vehicles, that is something specific that I would like to get across and I am glad that I have the opportunity. I think that what we want to do is manage the emissions of the vehicles, not necessarily the age, because a well maintained, safe vehicle that is passing emission standards, hopefully Gavin would agree, is much more economically sound practice to keep that vehicle running than it is to scrap it and build another one to replace it. However, in Edinburgh in particular, the city of Edinburgh Council has introduced some very aggressive targets. Anything older than a Euro 5 taxis in Edinburgh has to go this year, so there are 1,316 taxis in Edinburgh. I am not sure that even the city of Edinburgh Council licensing committee realised that by scrapping everything that was older than Euro 5, that was nearly 700 vehicles, so half the fleet has to go in one year. Will that happen by replacing the car or replacing the engine? They have not given us the option of retrofitting, so what we can do to extend the life expectancy of the vehicle is convert it to LPG. That costs about £12,000, and we get an extra four years life expectancy tax on to the age of the vehicle, which is capped at 10 years. All the Euro 5s have to go up until March of 23 for all the Euro 5s to go, so by 23 the entire taxi fleet will be Euro 6. I understand that it is a retrofit to take it to Euro 6. Is that an expensive option? Actually, no, not relatively speaking, because you do not need to replace the engine. The change from Euro 5 to Euro 6 is just ancillaries, so it is a few grand. Relative to the £45,000 cost of replacing the vehicle, it is very affordable. It has been quite wide-ranging. I want to expand on a particular point that Mr Kenmewyn made, and it is something that is in the friends of the earth evidence regarding the category of special roads and the anomalous situation of having a zone. Funnily enough, the roads that are responsible for the Scottish Government, rather than the local authority, have been exempt. That is the issue of motorways and trunk roads. I wonder if the panel commented on that situation. Yes, we put in our submission in the current provisions of the bill that the motorways would be exempt from the many low-emissions zone scheme. At first glance, that might seem like it makes sense that motorways are treated differently from the inner city roads, but in terms of trying to think long-term and for the ambition of low-emissions zone schemes, we have said in our submission that that should not be taken off the table. Just to respond to Tony's comments about certainly a very small low-emissions zone scheme would not be much use. We would want to see a substantial geographical area covered by the zones and cities. The proximity of people, particularly vulnerable groups such as children and elderly people, to traffic pollution at the source. If you are at the curbside, you are being exposed to high levels of pollution. That means that we need to be thinking about how we protect high-density urban areas where there are lots of traffic and lots of people. Just one or two streets covered by a low-emissions zone scheme, I think that we can all agree probably would not be effective or worthwhile implementing. It would be great to see the cities that are first earmarked for low-emissions zone schemes thinking how can this apply city-wide. Therefore, things like in the fullness of time, motorways might need to be considered. That was something that we put in our submission. Can I just return to a quick point on the usual standards that we have spoken about briefly about HGVs and taxis? However, something that we focused on in our submission was to think in terms of how that affects private cars, the majority of vehicles on our roads. The standards and policy memorandum are Euro 4 petrol, which would be any car bought new from 2004 onwards, and Euro 6 diesel, which would be 2014. The current provisions are the low-emissions zone schemes that would be brought in in 2024 to 2026. That would be a private car that is 22 years old or younger if it is petrol or 12 years old if it is diesel. Those would be changes that we would expect to see in fleet turnover anyway, and the cars would not be around on the roads for that long. One of the questions that we posed in our submission is what is the current provision that the second-hand car market would not do naturally anyway. If we agreed that those low-emissions zones are needed, surely we agree that they should be effective? I am just going to move on, if I may, John, to the next question, Richard, because I think that that sort of feeds in naturally. Yes, I, basically, Tony and Martin will love this question. The bill proposes that certain classes of vehicle will be banned from entering a low-emissions zone. Will that not disadvantage users who will then not be able to either drive into a zone, be it an old taxi, or deliver goods into that zone because they can be retrofitted? There would also be a penalty imposed for non-compliance, and many other early zeds, for example London, require a charge to be paid if the entry criteria was not met. So what option would you prefer and why? Martin, you better lead on that, because… The points are well made. If we go down that route, there will be a number of vehicles that will not be allowed into those areas, which will undoubtedly have an impact on service. It will also impact on the number of small businesses who are able to access those areas. Deliveries must happen. We saw during the bad weather at the end of February how delays for a couple of days meant that there were empty shelves, and deliveries that could not get through were missed. We would urge a sensible approach to that. There are low-emissions zones that exist across Europe that allow Euro 5 and some Euro 4, and they have reported good results. What we would urge is that we are not throwing the baby out of the bathwater here. You mentioned London, and London is a great example, because we now have a situation where you have a low-emissions zone, an ultra-low-emissions zone and the London Borough of Hackney setting up their own emissions zone, which is different within the emissions zone. We have to watch and guard that we are not setting up a system that will be different in the various different areas or cities that are taking on the concept of low-emissions zones. The geography of Scotland means that there is a very high likelihood that someone delivering to Glasgow will either deliver to Edinburgh the same day, or possibly even Dundee the same day. It is very unlikely that they will do all three, but it is a possibility. It would seem ridiculous to have a vehicle that is eligible to drive into Edinburgh but not Glasgow, Dundee but not Edinburgh. We have to try and guard against setting up different standards, but it will undoubtedly have an effect on the industry and who is allowed to deliver into those areas. Before we move on to possibly Tony or anyone else, I have actually read that, in the likes of London, there are companies who deliver outside the zones and they then transfer goods on to another vehicle, which then can deliver into the zone. Is that the case? Yes, that is the case. The idea of distribution centres is not a new thing. Our members are paid to deliver from point A to point B, and if point B is a distribution centre, so be it. We understand that, in many cases, the trucks that are going into city centres are not operating at their most efficient because of stop-start, congestion and so on. That is one answer to some of the delivery problems. I remind you that, for every 44-ton Arctic, it takes 28 van loads to cover that load off. I remind you that customer expectations are vastly different now from what they were a few years ago. If you are having a glass of wine late one night, you can go on to a well-known shopping site and order something from the other side of Europe that will arrive to you the next day, and that will be done on the back of a lorry. We have to understand that the concept of service has changed, and we also have to understand that even distribution centres will bring their own problems with it in terms of congestion. Even if it is electric vehicles that are taking it from the distribution centre in, it is the added traffic that has to be under consideration there. My own business has carbon-neutral accreditation, so we are supplying cooked pots in Guatemala, and we are reforesting Uganda to offset our carbon emissions. We do that for, as it helps us, one business from customers such as the Parliament and the RBS and so on. I think that what is happening in our industry is that we are moving a pace and the standard of the vehicles is improving. They are newer, they are lower emission, we are either planting trees or doing whatever else we need to do to reduce our carbon footprint. We are doing all of those things because they make economic sense for us, they make commercial sense for us. There is lots happening in the industry that does not need to be forced on us. For me, as usual, the devil is in the detail. It comes down to getting your sleeves rolled up and making sure that what is applied is logical. I think that by 2023, all the taxis in the major cities in Scotland are going to be Euro 6 or electric or hybrid. That is going to happen without any interference or governance, that is happening anyway. Once you start scratching a wee bit below the surface, there are things happening like in Edinburgh and Glasgow at the moment. It is okay to sell on a Euro 5 taxi or to buy a Euro 5 taxi as long as it is already in the city, but you cannot import one from outside the city. I cannot buy a Euro 5 taxi from London, although it has got lower mileage, it is creating lower emissions, the taxis in better condition and it is costing me less, but I can buy the same vehicle in Edinburgh because it is already here. There are things like that that muddy the waters where the detail gets overly complicated and not terribly logical. I think that we are managing our fleet anyway. Partly that is being decided by Dundee in particular, our real leading lights, as far as the introduction of electric vehicles into the taxi fleet are concerned. They are worthy of a mention, but in Edinburgh and Glasgow, where we are talking about having low emission zones, the taxi fleet is going to be where it needs to be anyway. Richard, do you have a follow-up? Yes, I have a follow-up, but I have also reminded that there are 32 different councils in Scotland and they all have 32 different ways of dealing with taxis. I will remember that. The next question I want to ask is, do the low emission proposals in the bill strike the right balance between consistency across Scotland, which I think that you are saying does not. The ability of local authorities to devise schemes appropriate to local circumstances and, if not, what changes would you like to see made? Who would like to add up on that? Neil? I will just quickly come into that. Consistency is important for our members. We represent the private car drivers and they do not want to have to have a different permit for going into every single 32 council area in Scotland or the four cities. We are already seeing this across Europe. Some of our motoring clubs that we work with in Europe have put together a stunt where they stuck every single permit that they needed to drive round Europe on the front of a car, 26 bits of paper that they could not see out of the vehicle. We do not want to go down that line, we want to see consistency. We also do not want to see the market distorted by early introduction of things like stopping Euro 5. Even though that would stop people going into a low emission zone, it will have a knock-on effect on the market in general. It would be very difficult to sell an old diesel, and that would mean cars might be scrapped early. People will make losses, although there will be economic impacts beyond the low emission zone as well. Consistency is the number one thing that we want to see out of this. We do not want to see a different scheme in every area. Having said that, we are seeing in places like Germany local authorities going down a line of encouraging retrofitting of Euro 5, to bring it up to Euro 6, particularly for diesels. The technology does exist, but it is not that difficult. Although we would like to see the same kind of sanctions, the same kind of controls being used in the low emission zones, that would not stop local authorities if they wanted to, perhaps funding a retrofit programme for some of their vehicles or some of the vehicles in their area. A bit of flexibility in that respect, but the core running of a low emission zone, the core way that it is organised, the core way that it is enforced, should be consistent across Scotland for us. On that point, as I mentioned earlier, there is a concern that the objectives of a low emission zone scheme are not set out in the bill. However, there is a bit in the bill that says that any penalty monies that are paid should be used by local authorities to further the objectives of the zone. We do not know what the objectives are, but the local authorities will spend money on those objectives. That is a good example that we need clarity on what those objectives are. If it is just blanket reduction of air pollution, funding retrofit schemes might be able to pay it. If it is compliance with EU legislation, which Scottish cities are currently breaking, then it might be a different approach. There is agreement among us all that national consistency is important. We said in our submission various factors about how low emission zones operate should be reserved to the minister, the hours of operation, the automatic number plate recognition, and the way that the low emission zone works. There is also a section about that a local authority can suspend their low emission zone scheme for events of national importance, but it is up to the local authority to decide what is nationally important. That seems to be more appropriate for the Scottish Government minister to decide and determine what is an event of national importance that would justify suspending our low emission zone scheme. I want to see if Richard Watt wants to follow up on that, because we have a huge amount of questions, and I think that some of what you are saying is going to come out. I have the answers that I am looking for. A quick question from me before we move on to the next lot of questions, which Colin is one thing we heard when we were listening to the situation from London is the fact that consensus is hugely important in getting people to buy into the scheme and therefore take ownership and therefore want to be part of low emission zones. It strikes me and I am going to declare an interest, because I have a vehicle that is a Euro 5. I will tell you that it will not be gone before 2022, because it will have to earn every mile that I have paid for it. Do you think that Euro 5 is keeping a vehicle at Euro 5 beyond 2022 would be that damaging, or do you think that me, like many other people, would see that Euro 5 is what we are encouraged, as Martin had suggested from the haulier's point of view. For a slightly longer IE, a 10-year-old vehicle is nothing in this day and age, I believe. Who would like to comment on that? Neil? Just quickly, I do not actually have the figure to hand, but there was some research that suggested that the vast majority of the pollution is caused by a small minority of badly run vehicles, badly maintained vehicles. Our view is that if you maintain the vehicle properly, you will not be meeting the standards of Euro 6. You will be meeting the standards of the time when you bought the vehicle, but it will be a cleaner vehicle, and using it less will help. One of the things that we find difficult is that local authorities have had the power to roadside test vehicles for many years, but very few of them, if any, do it. You can have the van or the car spewing black smoke going through the city, and nobody is enforcing that. The MOT regulations have been tightened up only recently, and that is one of many things that are happening to improve the emissions from vehicles, but we would certainly like to see local authorities using some of those powers that they already have to target that minority of badly maintained vehicles. So Euro 5 would be less of a problem for badly maintained vehicles? A badly maintained Euro 6 is going to be an issue as much as a badly maintained Euro 5. Tony, do you want to answer briefly on that? I have echoed a point that I made earlier that it is far more ecologically sound to keep a well maintained vehicle running than it is to replace it with a new one. The licensing authorities all around Scotland all have a testing regime where they bring the taxes in for annual inspection, sometimes it is six months, sometimes it is even more frequent as vehicles get older and they test the remissions. I have perhaps naively taken it for granted, I suppose, that you mentioned London very briefly. Bus usage is falling, it is tailing off, private car ownership is tailing off. I have heard an interesting theory that that is because people find it a distraction from looking at their smartphone. What is happening is that there is an exponential rise in on-demand transport, which is the space that we occupy. In London in 2016 there were 6 million journeys a day in on-demand transport and last year there were 30 million journeys a year. It had increased by a factor of five in one year. Morgan Stanley have it that half of all-demand transport will be in some form of on-demand, half of all-driven miles will be in on-demand transport by 2025. Our marketplace is growing exponentially. I guess that the only issue for us is that the public higher taxi, in any given licensing authority, the regulation might be slightly different, the licensing regime might be slightly different. Really the only issue that we have is that a public higher taxi that is licensed in one area can make it in to drop off in a low emission zone in another area. As long as the public higher taxi has access and it is hard to believe that anyone would rule that out, but as long as the public higher taxi has access and the local authorities are managing their emissions on a scale, we are happy. Martin, do you want to briefly say something on Euro 5 and Euro 6? Briefly, I have to say. I will be as quick as humanly possible. Euro 5 for us is not too much of an issue. We understand that the need for Euro 6 is categorised as ultra-low emission, but we have the most heavily regulated industry on the go. We are far more heavily regulated than the aviation industry, for example. We have legal requirements on the maintenance of our vehicles. We also have spot checks from DVSA, and we are under the auspices of a traffic commissioner who, if you do not uphold the promises that you made on your operator's licence and that includes environmental concerns, you could lose your licence. There are a number of different steps that a traffic commissioner can make. For us, we understand the requirement for Euro 6, but it would not be a disaster for our industry should Euro 5 be considered appropriate, and it would also help a number of hauliers who are looking to bridge that gap or find the difficulty in bridging the gap. As I said, we understand the position on Euro 6. Gavin, do you want to briefly comment on private people with Euro 5 cars and whether they should be, but I have to ask you to be brief on that? Sure. Just as a point of clarification, you mentioned that you won't be getting rid of your car before 2022, which is great, but the low-missions on schemes, as they are currently drafted, wouldn't be affecting you until many years after that. I think that what we need to keep in mind for turnover of fleet and particularly for people who are thinking that they need to buy in new cars, we are looking quite far into the future on some of that stuff. 2024 would be the earliest that a local authority would be allowed to implement a low-missions scheme under those provisions, so that is six years from now before they would need to look at changing their car. Another point that perhaps we haven't touched on enough yet is that, in addition to turnover of the fleet and changing their car, we need to be thinking about changing the mode of travel. That's why the low-emissions zone in the transport belt is so appropriate, because low-emissions zone schemes in order to reduce air pollution, we need to be moving people out of private car travel, that's on to public transport needs to be expanded and improved to allow people a different option. If you still have your Euro 5 in 2022, that's wonderful but it would be great if there was a bus option that made any journey that you were thinking about taking just as attractive as taking your car. Gavin, I take that point, getting a bus from rural Scotland up in the Highlands down into Glasgow may be a challenge. Colin, I'm going to come on and I'm just noting in my mind as well that I'm not sure if there's a list of exempted vehicles, but people who drive old cars, so if you've got an old Morris Miner, do they get penalised if they want to go into Glasgow? Maybe that's something we need to take up or any old car. Colin? Thanks very much, convener. A point that Mr Kenyer made earlier was that the devil will be in the detail. I suppose that's one of the big challenges that we've got as a committee that much of how LEZs will work will be in the regulations set by the Government and ministers rather than on the legislation itself. That's obviously a challenge for us as a committee. In terms of developing the regulations from the Government's point of view, can I ask if your organisations have been consulted or discussed those regulations with the Government? Have they asked your views on what those detailed regulations on LEZs should say? We actually have a meeting with Transport Scotland on Friday to follow up on that consultation at a national level. There's been a great deal of consultation in Edinburgh and Glasgow with the local authorities. My concern—I think that it was touched on earlier—when it comes to that, I took great comfort when I met with the City of Edinburgh Council and they couldn't tell me where the LEZ was going to be. They couldn't tell me what vehicles would get in and which ones wouldn't, and they couldn't tell me when it was going to happen. I took a lot of comfort from that. My concern is that when a local authority is granted a power, unless it's given very specific instructions on how to use it, it tends not to be applied. It needs to be very clear and very prescriptive, but we're consulting with local authorities and with Transport Scotland at a national level, so we're comfortable that we're being consulted at all levels of that. If anybody else is—is that the case for all organisations? Certainly for our part, we're more than happy with the way things have gone and the level of consultation that's been involved. We've met with senior ministers, we meet regularly with Transport Scotland. I appreciate having seen what's going on south of the border in a lot of different areas. I very much appreciate the consultative nature of how the Scottish Government's going about this. Gavin, did you want to come in? I was just going to say that I don't necessarily have regular meetings with ministers or senior staff in Transport Scotland, but just to expand that point, the commitment is for low-emission zones to be in place by the end of 2020 in the four cities. We're now in October 2018, so thinking through the timeline for secondary legislation, not just the detail of it, but we'd want to be clear on when exactly after the bill becomes an act, we'd expect to see that secondary legislation so that local authorities have time to include all stakeholders and ensure that they're implementing effective low-emissions zones, so I think the timeline of that is something to keep in mind as well. On the issue of timelines, I can't want to come back to an issue that we've always touched on, and that is the fact that the grace period is up to six years. I get the impression that there's clearly split views on the level of that grace period. Do you want to expand on what you think the grace period should be? Who'd like to head off on that? Gavin? Thank you. I think just a general point. Obviously, we've spoken a bit about the challenges that particular industries face. Clearly, they need to be supported through that transition, so that might mean a different grace period for different industries or it might mean Government support financially. More broadly, looking at the entire fleet, all the vehicles on the road, the current grace periods of six years are far too long before low-emissions zones are finally in place. There's an option for our additional years that doesn't seem necessarily justified. If we take a national approach at communicating the need for those low-emissions zones to people, the grace periods can be surely shortened by a couple of years. Neil? There's a need to have some form of grace period because consumers are currently quite confused. A lot of change has been happening in emissions and information. Just to the whole, the information that's on your new car has all changed. We've now got a new way of assessing the CO2 and the NO2 that's on your car. That's real driving emissions, and that's where all the diesel-gate scandal came in. Most people who buy a car now might say that it does 50 miles per gallon. No-one ever gets 50 miles per gallon out of a car. That's the official urban and motorway figure. There are a new set of figures coming out. Consumers are having to deal with a new MOT system and new set of figures on their vehicle. Possibly that might impact on company car tax. Of course, they're ticking on Euro 6 as well at the same time and trying to understand what Euro 5 and Euro 6 is. It takes time for those things to work through. As those things work through, they will deliver cleaner air anyway, because there will be more Euro 6 on. Only this week, for example, the Government in Westminster stopped the grant for hybrid vehicles. They ran out of money. The grant has been slashed in half for electric vehicles. When high-level things like that are happening, that again adds to confusion and consumers don't know what choices to make. A lot of time is a good thing, but it's also a slightly bad thing. People are now buying their cars. Most people buy their new cars in a three- or four-year private finance plan cycle now, so they're starting to make decisions for the early 2020s on their new cars. At the moment, they're still making decisions not to buy hybrids and elliptics. We need to get some consistent messages here, but certainly over time we will see more clean vehicles and the more those that come on the roads, the cleaner air we'll get. I think that we just need to be really careful about the language that we're using in the committee. There's no suggestion that there's going to be a six-year grace period. The six-year is the maximum, as the bill is currently drafted and it may not finish like that. If you are a resident within a zone, the minimum grace period is actually one year for non-residents. Given the choice of a local authority, having that choice of introducing it now or waiting four years, we don't know what they will do. It's worth making that point that it is highly likely that the spending decisions of consumers and businesses now on vehicles is based on the information that they have. If we're being told that that information is patchy and sketchy at the moment, those zones could actually be placed by 2021 not 2025, as Mr Thomson suggests, then I'd be inclined to be quite worried that we're not actually giving out enough detail information to businesses and consumers. Would anyone agree or disagree? Tiny, you nodded. Yes, I did. I'm in a slightly strange position where the targets already set in Edinburgh and Glasgow probably have the fleet where it needs to be ahead of time. It's done already but the debate that we had at that level was very aggressive. I mentioned earlier in Edinburgh that we're having to replace half of our fleet in this coming year. We put a number of questions to the licensing authority. Have you considered are that number of vehicles available to buy? There's one thing that I want to quickly touch on because the taxi trade is unlikely to receive any form of subsidy. We've had access to finance through the energy savings trust. What they've done is put the finance in place for people who currently have the oldest vehicles. It started with if your taxi was more than 10 years old, you could get an interest free loan to buy a new one. That's completely wrong. What you need is to create a food chain and it will be the same for HGVs and other vehicles. There has to be a food chain, an owner-operator who's keeping his vehicle running round the clock and he's part of one of the big radio companies and his cost base is very high. He finances brand new vehicles, depreciates them over three to five years and sells them on. He has to sell them on so that he gets some return, some residual value to finance the new vehicle. The person that you want to give the finance to is the one with the newest vehicle because you want them to keep changing it and you want their vehicles to make their way down the food chain and create that second hand market. You're not going to get into that kind of detail here and I don't want to confuse you, but I just want to illustrate that very often the money isn't put in the right place. We're not thinking a couple of steps ahead to how the economy really works with these vehicles and those considerations at the moment I don't think are part of the equation. Okay, and actually because we're short of time I think it's an interesting point you raised so we may come back to that later. Peter, could you just go with your next lot of questions? You just lead very nicely into my next question. We've heard about how the changes to vehicles are necessary and the costs that that incurs. What, if any, financial support should be offered to vehicle owners living or working within an LEZ to replace or upgrade non-compliant vehicles? It's a difficult question. Who'd like to head off on that? Tony, you? Sorry? I'll put a number on it. I think your position is clear from your previous comment. Neil, do you want to come in on that? The survey we did on this, amongst private car drivers, the most popular option was to subsidise better buses, vans and lorries, but that's kind of this, them and us, the private cars versus the larger vehicles, but certainly there's a perception out there that the buses and the lorries and the vans are the main issue, therefore for amongst private car people they would like to see the money targeted on those vehicles first. I can't put any figures on that as to what you would need to give to people, but certainly, as I say, if you have that clarity, if people know the timescales and so on, that will help and it will help to the market to stabilise. It's a very difficult market for second-hand vehicles at the moment times of electric vehicles because there's so few. If I can quote a figure that I got from the RAC just yesterday on the RAC report on motoring this year, they asked Scots what their next choice of vehicle would be. 17 per cent chose a diesel, 54 per cent a petrol, 14 per cent a conventional hybrid, six per cent a plug-in hybrid, but only two per cent a pure electric vehicle. People are still not thinking about the most environmentally friendly vehicles yet, so that situation does need to change. Incentives will help that, but getting the incentives in the right place and to the right people is quite a challenge. On the face of it, a diesel scrappage scheme was something that we thought was great, but analysis of that has shown that that doesn't necessarily deliver what you want either, so you have to be very careful where the money is targeted. As I said, we need to have consistent messaging and consistent messaging about the money, because, as I mentioned before, if the grants suddenly stop, that distorts the market. When, in general terms, among private car motorists, they would like to see money spent on the larger vehicles rather than on their vehicles. All the money to lorries, Martin. That's a wonderful idea. Although technically there is no retrofit option that's approved just now, Green Urban has indicated that, depending on the engine size, retrofit option for each EV would run between £11,000 and £25,000, which is a fairly substantial investment. Just a bit of context to let you understand how the industry has been let down in the past. Some of you may or may not know that there's currently a class action being brought against the truck manufacturers. They were found guilty of price-fixing over a period from 1997 to 2011, and part of the argument—although I'm not going to divulge too much on that because there's an appeal in it, the competition's appeal, compensation appeals tribune, I'm sorry, the cat. Part of that argument is about the price-fixing of Euro 6 technologies and the delay of implementing it. Right from the start, even though the truck manufacturers had the Euro 6 technology, they delayed bringing it into the industry so that they could get rid of their Euro 5 stock. We've been stymied at the start of this, and now the knock-on effect is that we're not as far ahead as we should be. We're having a chat outside there, and it's much easier to bring our industry to a point where you want them to be by helping them rather than dragging them, kicking and screaming. Although we would love a scrappid scheme, we realise that that's very unlikely to happen, but it's certainly some form of helping in the form of a grant for particularly SMEs to upgrade and bridge the gap between Euro 5 and Euro 6, because we're not only now at the point over the last year or so where we're seeing second-hand Euro 6 entering the market, where the bigger guys are now moving on, but you have no option, you cannot buy anything other than a Euro 6 engine now. Perfect. Peter, could you just go with your you've got a follow? I would just caution that there certainly won't be a bottomless bit of money to help this process to happen, so I think you need to be fairly cautious. My next question is about the automatic number plate recognition. Do you have any concerns about ANPR, camera enforcement and any suggestions as to how these concerns could be addressed? I did read in your, the Rodd Hauledge guys that there were concerns about foreign trucks and how they would be policed. Can Martin maybe kick off? There's already issues with foreign trucks, but who knows, Brexit will sort that out, but we'll have to wait and find out. Our main concern surrounding automatic number plate recognitions is the amount of private plates that are in our industry, and those private plates get moved around the fleet, so it would be fairly easy to assume that a truck is older than it is because of the number plate that's on it through the system. It's not flawless. Automatic number plate recognition is a good thing, particularly when it comes to compliance. We see it on the bridges, etc., and we deal with Transport Scotland a lot on the findings from there and the education process. For this situation, it's not without its problems for our industry there. Do you feel that the foreign trucks will be registered on the system? Will anybody know how old a foreign truck is, for instance? No, that won't register. They're licensed in another country, unless you're accessing that information. Do you want to comment on that? I don't think that camera use is necessarily universally popular, but it certainly works now. For the private cars, it's running everything. It does require that you have an appeals process that can add to costs and so on, but we have an appeals process for parking, for bustling enforcement, which is working okay at the moment. Do you feel that the private plate issue that Martin mentioned is an issue for private cars? In my experience, for cars, it shouldn't be an issue because a private plate will still be linked to your V5, which will have your Euro standard on it, and the databases should all talk to each other. At the moment, they only tend to issue things like addresses and so on for fines, but if they can be linked to the emissions that are all in documents, it should be okay. One of the issues that we've heard before is the cost of the AMPR system and putting it in places around lower emissions zones. London was okay because it was tied in with congestion charging, but we haven't heard any pricing for AMPR cameras around lower emissions zones. It wouldn't be insubstantial if there were going to be static cameras, and there was some feeling, certainly, from London that the fines wouldn't cover the costs of implementing it. Maybe that's something that we need to consider on more. John, you had some questions as well. It was really just a couple of points. I'll roll them into one based on the submission from the road haulage association, so the others might want to comment, but it's kind of aimed at yourself. Really for clarification, I think, for myself, one point you'd raised was that in the worst case, a haulier failing to comply with an LEZ could find themselves being brought to the attention of the traffic commissioner. We believe that this would be overly punitive for what would be a minor transaggression, so I was wondering if you could just explain that. I'll give the other point as well. Glasgow will not have the infrastructure to properly enforce its LEZ until 2023, meaning that the bus fleet will be unaffected by an LEZ, but the haulage industry will be penalised immediately. I didn't understand that point either. Okay, two points. First, this has been a learning curve for us as well, so the point that was made in there about the traffic commissioner's office, we actually went and contacted Richard Turford, senior traffic commissioner, to find out whether, as I mentioned before, the promises that you make on your own licence application include environmental promises. They have come back to us and said that, for example, if you are driving an eligible vehicle into a low emission zone, they will not be looking at that as a serious enough offence to jeopardise your operator's licence, whereas tipping hazardous material within your yard definitely is. On that side of the scale, when we were replying to this, we have subsequently done follow-up work. You've had reassurance on that? We've got reassurance on that that that is not going to be the case. Okay. Regarding the other point, our point was largely around, there are two sides to this. Firstly, it is surrounding the retrofit. The bus industry will have had four years of having an active retrofit system to bring them in place. Whereas 2023 is coming around very, very quickly, we have no retrofit option as of yet. The buses have known what standard is going to be required as well. Now, we haven't had any word from any of the local authorities as to what standard we will be asked to operate to. The longer that goes on, the less time we have to adapt to what the standard that they're going to. We're all assuming it's Euro 6, but we've had no clarification on that. The buses have had that clarification, so they're in a position to get their house in order for a longer period of time, whereas we don't have that luxury rate and we're only making assumptions. Right. So, it's around the detail of preparing for this rather than one's going to be enforced and one's not going to be enforced? That's right, yeah. Well, we did hear reports now. I'm not going to pass the bucket. There was other people consulted on this, but we did hear it from Glasgow Council that they are not confident of being able to have the enforcement side of things ready by 2023 to measure the buses. That may be along the lines of the European Union. But the measuring buses would not just be the same equipment for measuring the haulage? It should be, so it's an equipment issue as much as anything else. Yes, so it would affect the buses and the haulage evenly? Yeah, absolutely, yeah. That's right, yeah. Okay, well, that helps to clarify. Thanks very much. Next question, Mike, is here. Thank you, convener. I've got two questions. My first question is, well, first of all, can I preface it by saying the current law as it stands prevents anyone from driving on footways on pavements. Do you support in principle, in this bill, that there are prohibitions on pavement parking and double parking? Martin, I'll take that one first. In principle, yes, we do. We absolutely support it. We don't see any issue with that. The one thing that we would point out is that there are certain occasions when making deliveries that trucks find it almost essential to go into the pavement, so as not to obstruct the traffic because of the size of the vehicle itself. So that's breaking the law currently? Yeah, but there are no current, and a lot of cases, there's no delivery point for them, in order for them to do that. So if the shop is wanting a delivery, then that's the case. Another example would be when you're delivering to building sites. Now, quite often, if you're delivering to the building site for the first time, you don't know what is going on in that building site, so the normal practice would be to park up outside and walk in on foot to see what it is you're driving into. You might not have room to reverse, etc. In principle, we've got no issue with that, but again, there are issues. There are occasions where, for our guys, there's very little alternative, other than blocking up the highway to do a delivery. Neil? We have taken the fairly simple view that we don't like a sort of blanket ban approach that should remain local flexibility. Clearly, we don't condone illegal driving, and advanced drivers don't do illegal things, but sometimes they do. However, there are certain areas in Scotland where parking on the pavement is almost a necessity. It's encouraged by some local authorities. I did a piece with the BBC recently where we quite quickly found a place in the western of Glasgow where the road is marked out for parking on the pavement in order to allow the access to and from other vehicles. Other people do it because they know it. I don't believe that there are thousands and thousands of Scottish drivers deliberately parking on the pavement in order to block pedestrians. They all become pedestrians themselves when they get out of the vehicle. However, I do worry that there might be unintended consequences of a blanket ban approach in smaller towns, in the suburbs, for example. It should be a local case-by-case basis. If there's an issue, then enforce it. Of course, the other issue is enforcement. If it's going to be unenforceable, it will be ignored anyway, which we see anyway with a lot of our parking regulations. It's the blanket ban approach idea part of it that we have objected to rather than the actual concept. Gavin Jones. I would say that if there were a representative from an active travel organisation here, I'm sure that they would make the point that improving the pedestrian environment goes hand-in-hand with tackling air pollution. That's how we could see restricting pavement parking in the low emissions zone as being tied together. We certainly support it in principle as prioritising the pedestrian in the street environment. Just by way of example, without that, there would be great difficulty in delivering to concert venues, music halls—that dates me a bit—but things like that, where access to those buildings is not necessarily from a road, then it becomes an issue for deliveries. Mike, do you want to just follow up on that? Yes, I would follow up on that. I know my question was a bit of a blanket ban, but in the bill there are exemptions that councils are going to be given in certain parking areas and residential streets. As long as there is no—the whole point about the bill is to ensure that there is going to be safe passage for pedestrians, but particularly also for people who are disabled or need a vehicle to go on the park. The issue is, if I could just address the road haulage association here—I've been particularly conscious of the fact that people have noticed that there are objections to the bill, the exemption, the bill that will allow people to park on the pavement for up to 20 minutes. Several people's concern is that that allowance of parking up to 20 minutes becomes the norm, that it will allow somebody to park for 20 minutes and obstruct a pavement. What would you—and particularly the road haulage association—if the law was changed to allow that for 20 minutes, as long as there was a specific wide gap for the disabled, or would that be an appropriate compromise, do you think? If there is a facility to not use the pavement at all, then our guys would happily utilise that. As for the 20 minutes, there are some deliveries that cannot be done in 20 minutes, which becomes problematic. Particularly if you are moving—for example, if you get an order from B and Q or something like that, the driver will have to—in common parlance is called handballing, which means that they will physically have to take whatever you've ordered, and it might be take it off an uneven road onto a pavement up a driveway to somebody's house. It's very difficult to do that in 20 minutes, and it would be very difficult to do it either without blocking a street or by compromising on a pavement. The whole point of this section of the bill is to free up the pavements for pavement users. What you seem to be saying is that that won't happen with this 20 minutes. I'm saying that, in principle, we're more than happy with that. We don't want to park on pavements, but there are deliveries where it's not possible to do anything other than that. The 20 minutes should be more than enough for most deliveries, but there are deliveries that will not be able to be completed in 20 minutes. You just said at the beginning when you first answered my first question that the law is broken at the moment. Do you think that this is an enforceable law? I think that parking is a massive issue right across the country. I'll explain in two levels. Firstly, when urban planners or planning authorities are looking to build shopping centres or whatever, or anything in town, they very rarely factor in loading bays. Shops have to have their equipment, houses have to have their deliveries, but they're never factored in because space is such a priority. If I flip back what I mentioned earlier about the bad weather in February, our industry was vilified for making deliveries in the snow, and there were countless shouts of that they shouldn't be on the road. But where else are they meant to go once they're on the road? Sometimes, those guys are not making drops from a depot that's local. In many cases, and certainly the ones that were called out by the First Minister, it was companies from the south of England who were on day 3 or day 4 of a tramp around the UK and so could not possibly get back to their depot while the weather was on, but there is no parking facility off-road. And we're finding this right across, not just Scotland, this is right across the UK. People seem to imagine that deliveries just happened magically by elves and they're dropped off. It's not the case. There's practicalities that are involved in you getting your deliveries, you getting your furniture, old people getting their food and medicine, chemists getting their equipment. All these things take a delivery and there are very, in a lot of cases, there is no provision made for that delivery to happen. I'm going to bring John in briefly and then come to more in for the final question. Thanks, convener. It was really to pick up on something Mr Gregg said. I mean, I've got some sympathy that actually in some cases it's considerate drivers who are putting two wheels in the pavement and therefore not blocking it for Mr Reid's drivers. I mean, do you think, have you picked up at all that councils are going to go for quite a lot of exemptions? I've started a list in my own constituency. I'm at 20. I think I'll get to about 100 streets where I think there should be wheels in the pavement. Do you think councils are going to do that? Have they got the resources in the finance part of the bill? Or should it be the other way around, are you saying, that they should have to mark specific streets where you're not allowed to put wheels in the pavement? I don't have that data. We just don't collect that data. I've had no feedback from our members in Scotland if they were interested in their particular streets, so I can't answer that question. I think it could work either way. I mean, if the council were willing to use that flexibility, then we would be perhaps less dogmatic about our blanket approach views. Certainly, I think there needs to be flexibility in the bill. That's the key thing, so that there will be roads where it does work. And it is, as you say, it's often, drivers are often like sheep, you know, one or two neighbours do it and they never be does it along the street. The one who doesn't then becomes vilified because he's actually sticking to the law and parking with four wheels on the road. I think that you need to be aware of that sort of local community feedback. I think that there was some sort of mechanism for that kind of detail, and it is the detail. It's going to be the detail of street by street that actually causes people hassle, so if that was part of the bill, if local authorities were encouraged to do that, then certainly that would be something that we would welcome. Okay, thanks. Okay, and Tony, I'm sorry, I'm not going to bring you in on double parking because we know taxis never do it, but Maureen's got the last question. Yeah, I'd just like to hope that Mr Reid wasn't suggesting that vehicles shouldn't be exempt from severe weather warnings. There's plenty of places to park up if there's severe weather warnings. In terms of this bill, I mean, it's got to be seen in the round in terms of other things like active travel and everything, and it's not just a case of getting out of your car in a single pedestrian going along a pavement. Pavements should, in my view, be wide enough to let double buggies and disabled buggies pass each other. One of the things that has bothered me and been brought up by my constituents is the parking in front of dropped kerbs, which is a real issue in terms of vehicles loading and offloading. Much of what we're discussing today will be eventually set out in a parking standards document by the Government. Can I ask if your organisations have already been involved in the drawing up on the drafting of such a document or expect to be? We'll go right the way down the line on that, and if I could ask you to keep your answers short. Martin, do you want to start that off, Pauline Stone? We have had discussions in this area. As I said, we're not militant about this in any way. We understand that there has to be access and egress, and we're not going to put up a protest about that. It's common sense, as far as we are aware, and there will be bad practice in many cases. We are involved, and we would hope that we will be continued to be involved as the process carries through. No, we haven't been involved to my knowledge. I would encourage the committee to read the section of our submission on workplace parking levy, which talks about how parking can be used to support other areas covered by the Bill, low-emissions zones and public transport. We understand the principles of the conflict for space. Everybody thinks that they are a priority. We have a lot of debate with licensing authorities over the provision for taxi-ranking spaces, but we haven't been part of any formal consultation on parking standards. Neil? By a pure coincidence, Transport Scotland has invited me to a parking standards meeting, along with many others, including a range of local authorities, on 14 November. I believe that it's being pushed back into December, but they are actively bringing together people to look at parking standards. Thank you. That concludes your evidence session. Normally, I would now suspend the meeting to allow you to leave, but we have one other item that we are going to do in public, so I'm going to move on with that, so I'd ask you to remain in your seats. We're going to move on, therefore, to agenda item 4, which is the consideration of subordinate legislation. There are five negative instruments set out in the agenda. Three instruments introduce a decriminalised parking regime within the Falkirk council area. Twenty Scottish local authorities have already introduced decriminalised parking regimes. The remaining two instruments cover issues relating to plants in respects of pests and red plant weevil, and no motions to a null have been received in relation to these instruments. Is the committee agreed, therefore, it does not wish to make any recommendation in relation to these instruments? That is agreed. The committee will now move into private session. Before we do, I'd like to thank the witnesses for the time that they've given to the committee this morning, so we're now moving into private. I would ask committee members to stay in their seats and the witnesses to leave as quickly as possible. Thank you.