 Good morning everyone and welcome to the rural economy and connectivity committee's eighth meeting in 2019. Could I ask you please to all ensure that your mobile phones are on silent, no apologies have been received, and we're going to move straight on to a gender item 1, which is the restricted roads 20 mile an hour speed limit bill. This is the committee's third and fourth evidence session on the restricted roads 20 mile bydlymit. The first committee will be taking evidence from Police Scotland local authorities an academic and the society of chief offices of transportation in Scotland. Following this, the committee will be taking evidence from the cabinet secretary for transport infrastructure, connectivity and the Scottish government officials. On the first panel, I'd like to welcome Wallsonscott, the vice chair of the liaison committee, and Kevin Hamilton, member of the Society's Traffic and Road Safety Working Group, and the Society of Chief Officers of Transportation in Scotland. I'd also like to welcome Chief Superintendent Stuart Carr, the divisional commander of the Road Policing Division, Operational and Specialist Support Police Scotland, and Dr Ruth Jepson, the reader in public health and principal investigator on research into the impact of 20 mile an hour speed limits in Edinburgh University of Edinburgh. Andrew Eason, the road safety and active travel manager of the City of Edinburgh Council, and Brian Young, the infrastructure manager for the Scottish Borders Council. You are probably all been at the committee before or given evidence, well I don't know if you have, to the Parliament. Let's go through some of the rules, try and make it easy. You don't need to touch anything on your panel in front of you, that will all be operated by the gentleman on your left. So what you have to do is if you want to speak in answer to a question you have to catch my eye and I'll bring you in. Once you've caught my eye the secret is then not to look away and just keep talking because then I'll have to interrupt you if you go on for too long. What I'll tend to try and do is I think you've made your point and you may be laboring your point. I'll try and wag on my pen at you which gives you a good indication that I'll be looking for for you to wind up and so we can bring somebody else in. That's a lot of you on the panel, it's going to be difficult for all of you to answer every question so don't be offended if I don't bring you in. I will try and balance it as best I can. The only other issue is if you all look away when a question is asked and giving me the clear indication you don't want to answer the question that of course is incredibly dangerous because I shall just pick one of you to answer it and that will probably be the one who looked away first. So hopefully you'll all get a chance during this evidence session to answer questions. There are quite a lot of questions, there are a lot of you, so I always appreciate short answers and so we'll try and keep it moving so you all get a chance but if you want to speak just catch my eye and I'll bring you in is the secret. So the first question is from the deputy convener, Gail Ross Gail. Thank you convener and short questions no doubt as well. Good morning panel, I just would like you all to answer a very simple question. Do you agree or support or oppose the proposals in the bill to go down to 20 miles an hour on restricted roads and just a brief reason of your answer? So, Walter, you can start and we'll work straight down the line. That sounds good, convener. The Scots position on this is that we are generally supportive of the bill, certainly the intentions of it and as with many things the devil will be in the detail which no doubt we will touch on today hopefully and as we've been working with the bill preparation we would hope to see some of those areas of concern shall we say that would be picked up as the bill progresses through the parliamentary process. Kevin Stewart Yes, as Walter said the Scots position is generally supportive of the bill and the aims of the bill in particular the majority of pedestrians and cyclists make up the biggest proportion of people who are killed and seriously injured in urban areas so there's a road safety argument but crucially from the local authority point of view I think that the way the bill is framed probably makes the most cost effective mechanism for local authorities to be able to introduce widespread consistent 20-mile an hour limits across the whole of Scotland. Stuart Convener, the Police Scotland supports any measures that will reduce road casualties. There's plenty of evidence that says lower speed limits achieve that. Like the previous speakers we'd like to see maybe some more of the detail but where we can we support existing 20-mile an hour zones that are promoted by local authorities. Ruth Davidson So I've got two answers to this. In my role as the person evaluating the 20-mile an hour in Edinburgh I have to be unbiased therefore I don't have any particular view on it in that role but in my role as a public health academic I support what we call upstream interventions which is things like legislation which can have a big impact on the health of the population. Andrew City of Edinburgh Council supportive of the bill we've already implemented widespread 20-mile per hour limits so it will not make a lot of difference to what's happening in the ground in Edinburgh in terms of limits. It will however make other local authorities who want to take a similar approach make it a lot easier for them to do so in the future. We also think it will go a long way to building acceptance understanding and increasing compliance with the limits which will be important for Edinburgh going forward. Brian Thank you. Scottish Motors Council entirely supportive of any measures that will help to support road safety. We're also broadly accepting of the intention of the bill and to make it easier for local authorities to actually introduce 20s. We do however remain very concerned that the bill is very much a one-size-fits-all and that it disadvantages some of the rural areas. We feel that the bill as it currently stands would have a significant financial impact on the council, being likely to have any appreciable impact on accident numbers, and mainly because they're already very low in those areas and actually only have a limited impact on the speeds. Thank you. Okay, I want to pick up a couple of issues. Kevin Hamilley, you said that on the balance it's probably the most cost-effective way for councils to do this. Is this a view that's spread across all councils, considering what we've just heard from boarders? I think that the answer to that is no. There's not a unanimous view on that amongst local authorities, but in my opinion and based on the evidence that I've seen in the financial memorandum, and the work that I've done looking at this for West Lothian Council, which is a council that I've worked for, I think that it is a cheaper way of doing it in an authority that hasn't already gone down the road of widespread 20-mile-an-hour implementation. I know Walter Wants to come in. Maybe you could just clarify a statement just so I understand that. You said that there wasn't a majority. Did you say that? Are councils more in favour, more against? What is it? I said that it wasn't unanimous. It wasn't unanimous. Walter, can you clarify that? Yeah, I can clarify. We've undertaken a pool of sorts, not necessarily statistically fully valid, from our membership on certain aspects of the bill and progressing it through. And there is a bias towards being in favour of the bill and the cost-effect of nature of it. Probably 50 to 60 in favour and maybe 40 to 50 against, in terms of that, depending on the don't-know's in that regard. Okay, sorry. Do you find that that's a split between rural and urban? The analysis doesn't show that. I think that certainly there's an introduction of interests from the local authorities. One of those that responded was Fife Council, one of those was City of Edinburgh Council. We're both very experienced in terms of already rolling out the 20-mile-hour limit. In that regard, there's probably one of those authorities in favour, one of those less in favour, so I don't think it's as straightforward to be thinking it's rural or non-rural, although the premise has always been that it was more straightforward to implement a more understandable and urban environment than it would be in a rural environment. Brian Young, could you maybe go in a little bit more in-depth about what you think the difficulties are as a rural authority that you're going to face? Yes, the difficulties, and it goes back to the financial memorandum. The financial memorandum at point 40, it makes a point that it's, I'll just quote from it, it's probably easier. That's what it is expected that local authorities would incur some costs under the bill relating to using the order-making process to introduce a network of roads with a higher speed limit. Those costs would be lower than they must currently incur to achieve a similar outcome. On that basis, it really says that there'd be no costs involved in that aspect, because it's equitable, but there's a very basic assumption there, and that is that all authorities are looking to introduce 20-mile-per-hour widespread throughout their areas, which is not the case. Most authorities have looked at this in the past and they made a decision, and they've introduced what they intended to introduce already. So this would be very much additional work. So would you prefer to see the status quo where you are being able to choose which areas or streets or housing estate schools or whatever it is to take down to 20 as and when you saw fit as a council? Yes, that would be our preference. I'm afraid, Gail, that you pushed the envelope there on questions. I'm going to have to move on to the next one, which is John. Thank you very much, convener. The bill is obviously called the restricted roads bill, but I think my question is why restricted roads and should it actually be a whole area that would be 20? My understanding is from Edinburgh that you have gone for zones and that that would include maybe even the A1 could be part of a 20 zone. Whereas the bill proposes only the restricted roads, and if we took a village or a small town like Heuch or somewhere, presumably the main road through will stay at 30 and the side roads would all be 20, so I wonder if it wouldn't be easier just to make the whole thing 20. So it could have any thoughts on that, Mr Scott? Yes, the premise in terms of simplicity of approach, or even with that in terms of what is a restricted road, was not a restricted road and how consistent that is across the country, does differ slightly. There has to be a boundary set on that and therefore the restricted roads themselves is a fine principle. What I would say in terms of that is the likes of the roads that you are talking about, A roads and B roads that would be effectively running through which aren't restricted roads would not default to a 20. The premise there would be, and that's one of the things that Scots is looking for, is that more that time and resource undertake more detailed assessment, that the powers would be available to local authorities through the TRO process to then incorporate those kind of areas into 20s if that's appropriate. Are you happy that the TRO process, or would it be just simpler to put it in the bill? What I would suggest is that it would be more complicated if you tried to put it into the bill and therefore because what you've then got is a lot of local consideration as to whether, for an A road or a B road that may be deregulated, maybe a 50, a 40, a 30 in that regard, there has to be some local consideration for that and therefore to then strictly apply for all of that type of environment down to a 20 I think would be overly restrictive on local authorities to actually demonstrate that local applicability of the 20 mile an hour limits. Can we bring Andrew in and then come back just to Andrew? Could you come in there and I'll come back to you, Kevin? Yeah, I just want to clarify. Edinburgh's approach in terms of a blanket roll-out to all roads only applied to the city centre. There was a cord and put round the city centre and every road within that is a 20. Out with that cord and it was very much a judgment based on the type of street, how it functioned and the use of the street, so residential streets, streets with high levels of pedestrians and cyclists and shopping streets primarily. So you do have arterial routes that for part of their length are still 30 mile per hour and part of their length are 20 and obviously there's a bit of root consistency to be to be achieved there as well. As my colleague said, if the bill was to go through there is still the option for local authorities to tailor the speed limit using TROs but what the bill would mean is instead of having to do TROs and our road network for instance about 80 per cent of our roads are now 20 miles per hour. So under current legislation we would have to do TROs for 80 per cent of our roads. If the bill were to go through and we wanted to retain a network of streets at 30 miles per hour for instance we would only have to do TROs for 10 per cent of our road network. So in terms of the process that's where the difference comes in. Kevin, did you want to come in? Yeah, thanks, convener. Just to give a little bit more information on this restricted roads issue, I've had a look at the situation in West Lothian and most of the A and B roads which run through built-up areas in West Lothian are already covered by an order under section 82 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act which designates them as restricted roads. So in effect, if the bill came into being those roads would default to 20 miles an hour anyway and I understand that position is probably similar in other authorities that made a restricted roads order in 1985 after the Road Traffic Regulation Act was enacted. There was a historical situation whereby when the Road Traffic Regulation Act was enacted it wasn't clear whether A, B and C-class roads were going to be included within the definition of restricted roads. The regulations that made A and B roads not restricted roads came sometime later and in the intervening period local authorities made restricted roads orders which designated many of the A and B-class roads in their urban areas as restricted roads. That's very helpful, thank you. Can I bring Stuart in? I mean we're all looking, I'm certainly confused by this because this is something that we've never heard before. Stuart, do you want to just follow that? Hi, it's just a technical question. Was it one roads order that covered all the redesignation of A and Bs as restricted or did you have to do them individually? Okay and I can only speak for the Lothian regional council order because that's the one I'm familiar with. That was one order that designated all the A's and B's that the authority at the time wanted to be restricted roads are all contained within one order and since that time certainly in West Lothian we have continued to vary that order when new built-up parts of A's and B's have come on stream. That's it. Okay, it doesn't shed any light on what other council said. Mark, you wanted to come in on that. Yeah, my question, I wonder if the members on the panel could help me out on this. I'm in favour of 20 mile an hour zones when we can properly do them. The question is, is this bill the best way of achieving that? I'm looking at the evidence that we've already received if I can quote Edinburgh City Council under the current law. Edinburgh City Council have done it basically but it's still, if this bill passes, it's going to cost them up to a million pounds to remove all the repeater signs and do everything they need to do with this legislation. That's going to cost them a million. We also heard from Highland Council, I give us evidence, that this will cost them as well a great deal of money and basically they give the evidence of WIC in the north of Scotland where I asked them, would this bill make their life easier work-wise, never mind cost-wise, and their response was no it wouldn't because they'd have a similar amount of work to do to change the roads going through WIC. So basically my question is this, if we're all in favour of reducing 20 mile an hour roads to the appropriate level and make a road safer, is this bill the best way to do it considering that the council's evidence to us already has that's going to cost them a lot more than what's in the financial memorandum and it's not going to say them any work. Brian, do you want to go on that? Yeah, in some ways, certainly the intention of the bill is to make it simpler and to make it easier for authorities to do, to do this to introduce them widespread. The difficulty is that not all authorities have looked at this and decided to bring in widespread 20 mile per hour. For my own authority, what we've done and we've researched this is that we've introduced them at schools, on the routes to schools. We believe that that's the place where they can be most effective, where people are most likely to understand them and are most likely to comply with them. We don't really intend, it wouldn't be our choice to extend it further than that. The part of the reason is that we fear, like other road safety initiatives, the wider you spread them out, the more deluded they can become, so actually introducing it throughout all our towns and villages, we feel may actually impact on where we actually have them in place just now. I just want to bring Peter in, because then I'd like to go to Walter. That is about a new evidence, I think, that we haven't heard before, that the likelihood that A and B roads passing through towns and villages are potentially going to go down to 20. I have concerns about that. People need to get about their business, lorries need to deliver stuff, and folk needs to get their work. I am concerned that this is a step far too far. I wonder how the police would look on this. Are you actively going to start looking at enforcing 20 mile an hours on A and B roads through towns and villages? If you aren't, I think that what we're going to do is that 90 per cent of people are going to be breaking the law, and that's not a position that I think we should be putting folk in. I would ask Stuart to comment on where the police are with this possibility. Mr Chapman, you're going to have to apologise to Mr Finnie afterwards for asking his question, but as the question has been posed, Stuart, I'm going to bring you in on that. Stuart, we'll sort it out afterwards. Stuart, if I may. Yeah, convener, I'm thinking back to what Mr Mason asked. If he thinks about his area of Glasgow, the Edinburgh road, three lane divided carriageway, but it's a 30, but to the driver that would appear to be a higher speed limit, but it's a 30 for a very good reason due to a lot of side streets, a lot of heavy traffic, but there are certain times as you travel along that route that the speed increases, and I can think of numerous other examples having met with Mr Ruskell in Stirling, where I love the A9 runs through Stirling. There's already been a reduction from 60 down to 40 for the main route that goes into Stirling as part of work that local authorities have undertaken, so I would have concerns that the bill might then seek to impose that 20 mile an hour as a blanket. You're asking specifically police enforcement if the law is enacted, the police will play their part in upholding the law, but 20 mile an hour zones will not be a priority because the majority of casualties are on faster speed roads, so we will continue to focus finite resources on those areas. Our safety camera units that come under the programme, meantime their equipment is not calibrated for 20 mile an hour, so they will continue to be deployed on 30s and above, so you won't expect to see them suddenly switching into urban areas, so yes, we will uphold whatever law is passed, but it will be done proportionately. I'm going to bring John Finnie in because this was an area that he wants to look at. John, do you want to come in? Yes, thank you. A number of questions for Mr Carroll on that. Mr Carroll, good morning and thank you all for your evidence. In a previous session, we heard from a range of speakers who many with a grin in their face said, well, it's not enforced anyway, so I was somewhat surprised. I appreciate the evidence that Police Scotland is probably historic rather than responsive to that, but I would have thought that you would want the opportunity to stress that your obligation as a police service is to enforce legislation that's passed. That includes the existing 20 mile an hour zones, yet you have now told us that camera enforcement isn't possible, because it's not calibrated. Why would that be the case? It's down to the type of equipment that's used, so we can go through a process of having that equipment recalibrated, but in the meantime, the safety camera vans that you'll see out in the roads that move about the flexible sites, they're going to prominent crash locations, they're going to locations where we'll have the greatest influence in reducing speed and detecting motorists, and we detect between 4,000 and 6,000 speeding motorists across the country using those measures just now. We do uphold the law. The inspector sitting behind me just now is the unit commander for Edinburgh City, and he works with the local policing teams in enforcing those 20 mile an hour zones, primarily with community police teams. See, there seems to me to be a bit of a catch-22 in this, because I note what you say about prevention and reduction in casualties. That's very, very positive. You talk about maximising the potential to do that, then you talk about killed and seriously injured, and that's a factor that you use, and traffic offence data. However, if you're not enforcing, or if you're not treating as a priority the 20 mile an hour areas, you're not going to have traffic offence data from in that area. We've already heard that the cameras vans don't do it. You talk about routes that would attract higher offending rates, but again, if you're not actively working in the 20 mile an hour areas, that's a factor that's going to be discounted, too. If I may, I find it deeply offensive, but there is a calculation around the cost of an injury and a cost of a death. What would it take by way of child injuries, child fatalities, have I forbid, to change the priority that would ensure that more rigorous enforcement exists in 20 mile an hour? Never mind. What I must do is operationally prioritise where I can have the biggest impact with the finite resources that I have. In the meantime, on some trunk roads and on speeds with an astral speed limit, that's where we'll see the greatest number of casualties. Clearly, it's a mix of responses and tactics that we use. We're working towards reducing the number of child casualties along with the other partners for the 2020 framework, but meantime, switching suddenly a lot of resources away from faster roads into urban areas, I don't think we'd give the same gain, and that's why I must decide to prioritise those faster routes. If every organisation has finite resources, you say faster. If someone's going 27 in a 20 mile an hour in the implications of that, that's potentially more significant than someone going 75 in a motorway. I don't think that the figures bear that out. The greatest number of casualties so far this year have been motorists, and typically motorists who lose control of their car at a high speed on rural routes. That's because of irresponsible driver behaviour. Two brief points. One more question, and then we've got to move on. I'm also very surprised at your comment about perceptions of enforcement being overly punitive. How would you gauge that? Can you explain what you mean by self-enforcing with regard to 20? Is that supposed to apply to other speed limits, too? Firstly, in terms of punitive, we've already heard from one of the gentlemen to my right that the public have to see a law as being fair for them to comply with it. That's where we get the greatest level of compliance. Secondly, in terms of the methods of self-enforcement, that is a road layout looking and conveying to the driver signals that there is more risk and more danger. The road engineers using signage, paint and other engineering things will convey to a motorist that there is greater risk. In terms of self-enforcing, that tends to be around housing estates. Where there are new housing estates being built up, we would expect to see engineering measures that convey to the driver that you should be travelling at less than 20. Where we started with this was 20s plenty and now we're seeing local authorities promoting the 20s, but the driver needs to recognise the type of road they're travelling on and comply rather than expect to see a police officer in every corner. I'm just going to bring Mike Rumbles back in, because he wanted to ask a specific question and I'm going to go on to Jeremy Greene. Thank you very much, convener. It is about my first question, but the supplement that I wanted to ask, really, is that Kevin, perhaps Walter, could answer this. Let's be kind to the financial memorandum. Let's be kind to the financial memorandum. It said at the beginning when the bill was presented up to 10 million, but the evidence that we've received is that in Presidio Council there's going to have a million. Rural councils in particular are going to have to spend millions on this. This is not, if I could say, a robust financial memorandum. Are you convinced that this is going to be value for money for councils if we operate reducing 20 miles an hour in this new system? It's the value for money from councils that I'm particularly interested in. In terms of the costings, we were involved with the development of the financial memorandum. There was a cost report that the Scots prepared. I was the author of that last summer, and the figures there, the low end, was 19 million, and the upper end is 33 million, which is fairly consistent with some other figures, no doubt that you're hearing from local authorities multiplied up. Therefore, the financial memorandum in terms of the drafting of that took those figures and applied certain considerations and assumptions, but we stand by that. It was a pretty rudimentary model to develop the cost for implementation, which, as I say, would not suit every single situation. It wouldn't suit every single council, but in terms of the range of councils we looked at, we felt that was the appropriate way forward. As I say, the figures there were 19 to 33 million. In terms of the value for the local authorities, the local authorities have shown in terms of the current powers that there is a reluctance to roll out 20s more widely. We've got evidence of that right across the board. There seems to be a smattering or a smooth area, and then there's less smooth areas, and therefore local authorities in that regard. Or would the passing of this bill be made a duty, in which case that would impose upon local authorities the requirement to look at this, or at the very least to write it out? At that stage, that's where the funding that's attached to this bill for local authorities is absolutely essential. I want to make two comments from a public health perspective. First, from my point of view for our evaluation of 20 miles an hour in Edinburgh, and we're also doing it both fast, we are doing an economic evaluation of that. Unfortunately, that won't be until next year that that's available, but we are very much interested in the cost effectiveness of that. In terms of the public health intervention and whether that is cost effective, I can talk from a public health perspective. This is seen as something where it's got high upfront costs, so you're talking about the millions and whatever, but when you think about how much that is over 20, 30 years and the gains you would have in terms of maybe reduction in, maybe not deaths, but maybe mortality and non-fatal accidents as well, it brings it a bit more into perspective. You do have the costs of enforcement after that, but actually most of the costs are up front, and that's very unusual for a public health intervention. Often they're on-going and they're very, very costly. I'm going to move on to the next question, which is linked to it, which is Jamie Greene. Thank you. It is linked, but I think we're moving around in our conversation this morning. I think that's fine. Just to pick up on perhaps following on from Dr Jepson, is it the case then that this idea that you spend this money upfront, you put in signage and then you stop there and you're expecting safety to improve, casualties to reduce, behaviour to change, enforcement to improve, data to collection to get better? It strikes me perhaps that there's not enough robust evidence to suggest that sign only speed limits are enough and that by introducing the bill as it currently stands, burning in mind, local authorities will have to foot the majority of this, and many are telling us they simply don't have the cash to do so. Is there another approach that we could take to do this? For example, rolling out schemes across the country as and where they're required and as and where they're affordable to do so? That is another option. We know that the most effective ways to, with road architecture such as road bumps and things, that would be more effective, but sometimes in terms of public health you can have, because you're looking at a population level, so you're looking at the whole of Scotland here will be affected in some way by it, so for a relatively small amount of money in terms of total budget, even if you only get a small gain it can still be cost effective. So it doesn't, in a way, it would be better to put in road humps everywhere, but actually that's much more expensive, so this is a cheap option that's probably less effective, but could still have a public health benefit and still be cost effective overall. Just before we get bogged down in whether we should do road humps or signs or both, and I don't want to go there at the moment, but I was struck by something that Mr Young said earlier, and that's the idea's notion that in areas where there is an obvious reduction in speed in a hotspot area around a school, or somewhere that you've identified as a local authority, that you need traffic calming, do you think there is an issue around removing that obvious shift from a 30 to 20, that drivers know that there is a reason why they should be slowing down at that hotspot, and if you take those hotspots away, take that temporary reduction away, you somehow lose some of the benefits that you're getting at the moment? Yes, that's very much the fear that we have just now, that the recognised people driving along there actually see these, sometimes they're temporary part-time during the day, so just when school's coming out, and other times, depending on the area, they may be more permanent 20 mile per hour, but people can actually see why they're there and the reason for them, and we think they're more likely to comply because of that and more accepting of them, and we do worry that a widespread introduction would dilute that effect. Is there any evidence, can I ask the police, is there any evidence of whether that behavioural shift from going from 30 to 20 in these designated areas has a positive effect, and the removal of them would alter behaviour in that respect? We probably see greater compliance with 20 mile an hour where they are around schools, there's been a lot of enforcement around those schools, not just to do with the speed limits but also parking outside schools, if I'm not mistaken. We do see drivers reacting to that. Again, I say that drivers need to understand what road they're on, the area that they're travelling through and why the speed limit is what it is, and therefore become self-enforcing that responsibility rather than relying upon hard punitive enforcement. Walter, you want to come in and then Andrew? I shall get both down into the road humps and not road humps. What I would say is to pick up the suggestion that if this were to roll out that everything would stop and nothing would happen after that. Each of the road and traffic authorities are administering and managing the network, we're picking up accident sports, we're looking at the data, there's still the day job to be done, it would just be slightly different because the baseline has changed in certain areas, so we'd still be looking at those hotspots, we'd still then be able to target further interventions, be it the road hump or the engineering, to suit that location and that particular need. To apply that more generally across every single road and every single 20 across every restricted road would be disproportionate but there's still the need for that proportionality and maybe that further reinforcement of the 20 limits around schools and those hotspots. It's just a very brief point on the issue of 20mph outside schools. We are really trying to encourage children to travel actively to schools, to and from schools. To do that, parents have to feel that children are safe on their entire journey, not just 200mph locally outside the school. So, yes, there is an argument that says drivers may be more compliant directly out of the school, but there is also the issue of the portion of the journey that's out with that part time 20. So, if you restrict it to a short length, it has less of an encouraging factor. Colin, you'll just say the next question. Thank you very much, convener. Can I come back on a point, first of all, that Mr Young made around the Scottish Borders policy at the moment, which is very much to focus on areas around schools, which a lot of local authorities clearly start there. Do your current casualty figures show that most of the accidents involving pedestrians and cars are around schools or are in other residential areas? Thankfully, we don't have a lot of pedestrian casualties at all and, statistically, there's no difference between them around the schools and other areas. It's very unusual to have—like the police colleague said earlier—most of our issues are on the 60mph or the national speed limit routes. Within towns, thankfully in touchwood, it's very unusual to have pedestrian accidents. Those that occur tend to be very low speeds, tend to involve reversing vehicles, that type of thing. But there's no real evidence to say that around schools there's a big problem. Is there a residential area next to a play park or whatever? No, there's no evidence. Statistically, the numbers wouldn't allow any evidence to be presented on that basis. That's interesting. The other point that you make in your statement that you've made as a council is that the cost is an issue, rolling these out was a cost. One of the feedback that we get from people in my area is that there's a frustration that the process takes so long—it's a very bureaucratic process. Can the existing process be improved to lower the cost and potentially widen the areas and make it quicker for you to roll them out? Or is it purely that you've decided that, for a variety of reasons, it's on their own schools? The process is a national process that you go through the regulations. Can that be improved? Can there be changes to make to the national process? I'm sure there can. I'm sure it could be more streamlined, but there's obviously a process to go through, as with any traffic regulation order, and there's statutory consultations and things that have to happen. It is a long, relatively bureaucratic process, as it stands. Would you envisage as a council, given the policy around focusing on schools, that, if the bill goes through, you will pass orders to effectively go to 30mph in lots of restricted roads in your area, or will you just accept that it's going to go to 20mph? I appreciate that. I can't judge what your councillors may decide in the future, but will your judgment be that, because you've got a policy focusing very much on schools, you'll then pass orders if the bill goes through, turning what would automatically be a 20mph limit under the bill back to a 30mph limit away from schools? That would obviously be a policy decision for the council. What we'd be looking at is that deciding if this was to come through as a bill, we would anticipate that there would be widespread 20mph per hour, and we'd perhaps look at the arterial routes through the towns, and that would be the decision, but it would only be the arterial routes. I'm going to bring Mark Ruskell in and try and focus this more nationally than just one particular area. Mark Ruskell, just a brief question. Scottish Government guidance is that 20mph should be the norm in residential areas, and yet we are seeing quite a variation in how seriously that Scottish Government guidance is being taken. I just wonder if there are any reflections from the panels about why that is the case, why is it that we have some local authorities like borders that don't really want to implement the guidance, while others are going a lot further, such as Edinburgh? I'll maybe start this off on just to maybe speak on behalf of Brian. It's a case of not wanting to, because the Scottish Borders are taking things very seriously in terms of the 20mph roll-out and whatnot, as are many authorities. I think that there's a certain degree of timeliness and willingness to look at the guidance. 86 per cent of the respondents—I'm sorry for quoting figures, I'm quite happy to make those available to the committee for your consideration—86 per cent of councils that responded have a policy, a plan or a strategy in place for dealing with 20s. Having said that, we don't see that transferring down to the actual roll-out of it, where you've got about 20 odd per cent who will have rolled it out completely, you've got about 20 per cent who have rolled it out in most places, you've got 30 per cent who have gone in some places and you've got 30 per cent who've got it hardly anywhere in that regard, and therefore the actual application of it and the implementation of that particular guidance is subject to some kind of filter. I don't believe necessarily that it's the complexity of the timescale or of the democratic process that I would hasten to add in terms of the traffic regulation orders. It's not necessarily just bureaucratic. It does need a certain degree of guidance. It takes something to shake things up. The initial policies that were set down and the guidance that came out of Transport Scotland at the time brought that to the fore. Councils considered it. It's been five plus years before anybody's actually—since they've updated their plans on average, and it's five plus years since they've looked at 20 seriously. Therefore, I think that this is the opportunity for councils to re-appraise that. In terms of every encouragement in terms of the aspirations and the implementation of the bill, it is required. However, it is then for the local councils to see how best to implement that locally. Does anyone else want to come in on that before I go back to call him for his next question? Just very briefly, I was involved in the working group with Transport Scotland in developing the latest 20 million-hour guidance. Since that time, one of the key issues for local authorities has been funding, and the other key issue has been knowledge experience and staff resources within councils. A lot of the knowledge and experience has disappeared over the past five years, and that has been a barrier along with the fact that funding for those kinds of initiatives has been very thin on the ground. Right. I'm going to go back to Colin. I think that you've got a question for Ruth. Just a brief question, Ruth. You mentioned earlier that you were carrying out assessments on the impact in Edinburgh and also Belfast, but unfortunately they're not available at the moment that it works on. Do you have any current assessments on the effectiveness of 20 million-hour zones where they have been rolled out? We started two years ago when it was during implementation, so we've been collecting data for the last two years, and we're due to report in August 2019. At the moment, we have just started analysing data from one full year after implementation, because we want to see it at different time points as long as we can after it's been implemented. I can't tell you much at the moment, apart from the fact that speeds have reduced by about 1.5 mile an hour, as expected. In some areas it's a bit higher than that, mainly on some of the main roads in some of the initial zones, one, two and three. The other thing is that we look at perceptions of people, and it's this thing about people who don't think they don't want it at the beginning, like I'd say 25 per cent, a quarter didn't want it at the beginning, but a year later that's reduced to one in five. As with some other public health interventions or transport, I think of it as a public health that people think they're not going to like something, but when it happens to them it's not as bad as they think it's going to be. Really, that's all I can tell you at the moment. We are starting to do work on casualties, but that's already been reported by others. I think there has been a reduction, but that's a long-term trend, that there's reductions in casualties. That's about all I can tell you, I'm afraid, at the moment. Can I just ask for a point of clarity? You said that I think that on some raised speed limits have dropped by 1.2, was it? No, it's about 1.6 miles an hour. That's the average over the city, but it will be different in different areas, and that's an average rather than… That actually is important when you look at the speed that they've reduced from. What speed were they travelling at that has seen this reduction? We looked at it in two different ways. We looked at it as an average, so just the average reduction, and then we looked at people that were going over 24 miles an hour. The reason we took that number was because we made the assumption that people tend to go 20 per cent over any speed limit, and the reductions were higher than they were up to 2.3. I think that you're misunderstanding. I'm trying to identify that when the speed limit was 30 miles an hour, you are now seeing a reduction, so presumably you would have done an assessment to say when it was 30 miles an hour, 90 per cent of drivers were travelling at 23 miles an hour, because that's all they could travel at in Edinburgh, and the speed limit has dropped by 1.6 or whatever it is. Is that the way you've done it? I'm confused slightly as I'm trying to work out how many people are travelling at the speed limit of 30 miles an hour in Edinburgh and therefore to see how big a reduction and how big a change this is going to make. Before they were travelling about 25 miles, that was the average speed. 25 miles an hour average speed. That's over the whole of Edinburgh. That was on the faster roads as well as the slower roads. That's the overall average, and now it's reduced down by about 1.5 miles an hour as an average over the whole of Edinburgh, but you will see variations in different places. We haven't yet done all that analysis because it's actually incredibly time consuming. I'm absolutely sure that's incredibly time consuming. I think that the point that I was trying to get to is to find out how many people were doing 30 miles an hour in Edinburgh before. We haven't done that analysis yet. Then it's difficult to see how much the shift has happened. Sorry, you want to come in. Do forgive me, as a mathematician. We're talking means, and I think that I'm more interested in medians, to be honest, because I don't care if the law-abiding people are reducing their speeds. That has no impact on the safety that we need to worry about. What I'm interested in is the people who are significantly exceeding whatever the speed limit is. I want to kind of know what effect changing the speed limit from 30 to 20 is having on those people who are the people who are likely to be the source of greatest risk. You can have the speed coming down 1.9 miles an hour or whatever number it is by the conformist people reducing their speed, while those who are significantly over have not reduced their speed by a single mile an hour. Which is it? Will your research ultimately tell us that? I was answering the wrong question last time. In the response to your question, when we did look at those that were going over 24, so over 20 per cent over, there was a reduction of around two miles an hour. It did reduce more in those who are going at higher speeds, which is what you want. I completely agree with you. I would like to do more analysis of that sort as well, because it's a two-blunt instrument that just says that it reduces by x amount an hour over the whole of the city. We need to know, is it the speeders? Are they reducing the speed limit? Stuart, you ought to answer that question as well. The people who are really seriously exceeding the speed limit have the number of those reduced since the introduction of the 20 mile an hour speed limit. That's a very old question for the answer. I don't have those figures in front of me. What I would say is that those are the people that we're most concerned about and will target. Where we see the greatest compliance with speed limits is where there's engineering and average speed cameras. If we think again of the city of Edinburgh, old Dalkeith Road, where there is the first urban average speed camera system, the compliance levels there are very high for all motors. However, you will always have those motors who will choose to break the law and drive at high speeds in a dangerous manner. Those are the individuals that we are most interested in catching. Maureen O'r next question. I suppose that my question is mainly directed at you, Ruth, and following on from what you've been saying already, have you done any work into finding out whether 20 mile an hour speed limits help increase the levels of walking and cycling among people? We are definitely doing that. That's one of the things we are looking at. Again, just because of where we are in this process, if it had been a year later this committee, I could have given you lots of results. Unfortunately, I'm not able to give you those results yet, but we're definitely looking at that as one of our major outcomes. Anecdotally, is there any evidence of that at all? I think that we can only go back to the Edinburgh pilot, which suggested that there were increases in cycling and walking from that evidence. Other evidence, we know, has been small increases, but unfortunately, I just can't tell you that at the moment from our study. You'd like to come in on that. I was actually going to refer back to the pilot study that we did in South East Edinburgh several years ago, which did show an increase in walking, and particularly a fairly significant increase in cycling within those areas, because they are primarily the increased perception of safety on the road network for pedestrians and cyclists. I'm particularly interested in whether this bill will have any impact on place making and whether neighbourhoods are going to feel more safe, feel more, that people feel that they can let their children out to play more safely. I wonder if any of you have considered that in relation to this bill. Walter? Yes, certainly. The police making element is a huge opportunity. We've focused on the questions, which is quite right, on the casualties and safety and some of the numbers that we're looking at, but the opportunity with a more general roll-out of 20mph on local police making across the board will still need to be focused in certain areas. As has been identified, we still need to engineer, so when we're place making with engineering, we would be looking at using our TROs as currently to bring those areas down to 20mph, but ultimately, at last stage, this would then give us the encouragement. I think that there's an additional either in terms of the encouragement to see that more widely, and therefore make most of our streets our places where we live and we play and we work in that regard. The roads that aren't suitable for that, that's where the character is because we're slightly different, and that's where that local consideration needs to come in. That local consideration shouldn't just be from traffic engineers looking at it, it would have to be from lots of different aspects, including place making, and therefore I'd be hopeful that if we were to go away and have more time and resource to do that more detailed assessment, the guidance for that could identify those other areas that we would need to open up to then bring into the full consideration, and place making is certainly one of those. I think that Andrew Bones, did you want to come in, Andrew? Very briefly, yes. It was just to say that our policy now is that any new residential street should be designed for a 20mph speed limit, and what widespread 20s allows you to do is design your roads in a different way, so that they are more people-friendly, they are more orientated towards pedestrians rather than through traffic. You can widen footways, cut down radii at junctions, make crossing points narrow or things like that, that you might hesitate to do on a 30mph road, but with a 20mph limit you can fundamentally roll out a different road layout that's more people-friendly. In some places there are even shared spaces now where there isn't a distinction between the pavement and the road. It's just there for everybody. Surely that's an area that must have a 20mph limit. Do you want to come in there? Just as a supplementary to that in very briefly, the current design guidance from Government very much points towards designing for place making and for a design speed of 20mph. The problem that creates for local traffic authorities at the moment is that they have to promote an order to make that 20mph. If the bill was enacted, it would default to 20mph, so there would be less administration going forward in the long term for those new streets that are being built just now. Just to follow up on that. A lot of what we've heard today and in previous sessions is that that would make it easier because of all the rigmarole and bureaucracy that we've got to go through at the moment. It's coming back to the finance of it. We've heard that it will cost our local authorities such and such and such, but to me that doesn't take in what's already being spent on. For example, how much has Edinburgh spent already on making 20 miles an hour? What's the budget been over the past five, ten years for this? Of course, we rolled out when it's under the current legislation. The recent roll-out, which covered about 30 per cent of our streets, was about £2.5 million. Had the bill been through, we've not done a direct cost on how much it would have cost us, but I would expect that it would probably have been somewhere less than £1 million for that same roll-out. Had the bill been in place, just because of the different way it would have had to be done, there would be a significant saving if another authority that hasn't rolled it out of the way we have wanted to take that forward in the future if the bill became law. The next question is from Jamie Greene. Before I ask my question, which is on a different topic, I'm quite intrigued by a theme that's come up from Maureen Watt's line of questioning. That's this concept that somehow roads will be safer if you reduce the speed limit. I don't mean at the point of, for example, an impact in an accident, but this concept that if a road is currently a 30, it's for the car, but if it's a 20, it's much more of a shared space. Surely roads are dangerous at 20 or 30 miles per hour for pedestrians? Who would like to answer that? I don't think that you can apply that generally. We've spoken about young people, the casualties that we see, the greatest number of our elderly pedestrians, we've heard already about risk around large vehicles moving through cities and in car parks, where a very, very slow speed collision can lead to a fatality or serious injury. On the other area, we spoke there about place making and making our town centres attractive. A large part of that is tourism, night time economy, and that's where we then see a greater risk to pedestrians who are distracted and or intoxicated. Reducing the speed limit, though, from 30 to 20 in principle, if speeds came down, the scientific data tells us that a collision at a lower speed is less likely to result in such serious injuries. If the general principle is to lower speeds, then that may, over time, have the public health benefits that we're seeking. That's very helpful, thank you for clarifying that. Just a quick supplementary on that, I think that the actual impact and the consequence of those kind of accidents are clearly lower in terms of that. The frequency of accidents when you're reducing the speed to 20 also reduces. I think that there's evidence that the committee has already heard in terms of that one-mile per hour results in 6 per cent reduction in the likelihood of that kind of contact being made and then, as I say, there's then the consequences of that factoring as well. Thank you for that. It also sounds like, from evidence given that the majority of fatalities occur at higher speeds anyway. Can I ask about the environmental aspects of this? There's a lot of discussion when you talk to people about this bill. There seems to be a suggestion that, if cars are driving more slowly, they are polluting the environment more, etc. Now, there are numerous academic reports on this, some running into the hundreds of pages, and I have heard every side of the argument on this to leave us all the more confused as a committee. I don't really want to get into the in-depth science behind this, but I would like a general view, if there's an overarching view, as to whether 20-mile per hour driving is more, less or the same in terms of its effect on emissions and local air quality. Last year, we had two master students who looked at this in Edinburgh, because we knew it was an issue. They looked at both particulates and emissions, and looked at it in 20-mile per hour zones in Edinburgh and non-20-mile per hour zones. Basically, it's inconclusive, or it's likely to be minimal the effect, and it could go either way, but it's not a big problem. That's the best we know, and we are replicating that again a year later this year, as well, to get some more data on that. And then I'll bring in Stuart, and then Kevin. Just very briefly, chair. I'm just going to make the point that it's not the 50% reduction from 30, what percentage, from 30 down to 20. It's the 2-mile per hour difference, so it's almost a moot argument. The other thing is that I think it will be overtaken greatly by the reduction in diesels and the implementation of electric cars, so I don't think that it's the most important part of this argument. Stuart, you want us to come in? Just back to the maths. Is the pollution emitted by a petrol or diesel engine not related to the number of ignition cycles and nothing to do with the speed whatsoever? In other words, that if you are operating in a lower gear because you are driving more slowly, the number of ignition cycles for distance covered has increased, and therefore the amount of emissions coming out of the tailpipe per mile increases if you are in a lower gear. Or is that to misunderstand the mechanical nature of how things actually work? I don't know, Stuart. You've managed to get everyone to look in the opposite direction. So maybe Kevin, you'd like to try and address that along with partly the question that Jamie had asked before. Thank you very much, convener. I'm a civil engineer. I'm not an automotive engineer, so in terms of Mr Stevenson's question, I have got no idea. In terms of an overarching view, the point that Brian has made is probably, for me, one of the most important points. The vehicle fleet is changing and it will continue to change dramatically over the next 20 years, and that's probably where I would be coming from, that the emissions issue will be dealt with in other ways. We'll move on to the next question, which is Richard Lam. Thank you, convener. I'll refer back to another question, which wasn't asked earlier. Cultural change has taken place over the last number of years in various things. Drinking, driving, smoking and pubs. Do you think that cultural change could come in when 20 is plenty? Over the years we've been 20 is plenty. If we make it national, could there be a cultural change to drive it 20 rather than 30? So it looks like Andrew wants to come in. Simple yes or no on that one. Andrew, do you want to give a yes or no answer? Well, it wasn't the answer that I was going to give, but the answer is yes. You tend to have to give a yes or no answer. That's one of the most important benefits that we see for Edinburgh coming out of the bill. At the moment, decisions to bring in 20 mile per hour speed limits are made at a local level. There will be an element in the local population who doesn't agree with that. Maybe it doesn't put the same value on a decision taken at a local level than they would on a change in the national legislation, and it carries a far greater weight if it's national legislation. It also brings in the possibility of national advertising, national promotional behaviour, and a lot of that out with the reach of local authorities. Richard, can I bring Stuart in? He's keen to answer on that one. Yes. If I may borrow a phrase from a violence reduction unit, and that is that road violence is preventable, it's not inevitable, we need to make inappropriate speeding and exceeding speed limits are socially unacceptable as drink driving. At the end of the day, it's no rocket science. People are speeding, going faster and faster and faster, so two cars hit together. Particularly if you hit somebody at 20, they've got more chance of surviving than if you hit somebody at 30. That's the... What we don't see in our televisions nowadays is speed kills, all the advertising that tells us that driving at a speed or that, and you see the nutters when you're on the motorways going at 80, 90, and we all see them. Basically, the next question I want to ask is, in the last couple of sessions, in fact, I get criticised on Twitter because I asked a question about bus times, but we've had conflicting evidence on if we reduced the times or reduced the speed to 20. What effect, and some members actually have touched on it, are you aware of any evidence that 20mph speed limits result in longer journey times or increased traffic congestion for both buses and people going to their work? Ruth, do you want to come in on that? We're looking at this too in our evaluation. I spoke to John White about two weeks ago, and I think he was going to put out a statement or something, but basically it hasn't made any difference the 20mph to bus journey times. I can't tell you about anything about passengers or anything like that, but in terms of the bus journey times, he thought that there was much of the things going on in Edinburgh, like roadworks or whatever, that had more of an impact than the 20mph. I should add that, in Edinburgh, as part of the development of our network, we did consult with bus operators quite a lot on this issue, and it was one of the factors that we gave quite heavy consideration to when we were deciding which strategic routes to leave at 30mph was the ones that carried heavy bus services. Part of the reason why there's not much impact on the bus services is that a lot of the bus routes are still 30mph over much of their length. You want to come in? Briefly, just two points. First of all, buses tend to actually restrict traffic flow, they tend to reduce speed, so absolutely we do not want then people overtaking at high speed. Although it's still very early, an average speed camera system in Mill Street in Rutherglen, which took the speed from 40mph down to 30mph, early indications are that traffic flow is better, and I certainly know that Transport Scotland, in terms of the trunk roads, report better traffic flows where traffic behaviour is regulated and speeds come down, so I would say yes. So basically going down to 20mph will make no difference to people's journey times. It could actually help to ease the traffic and it could actually help to ensure that people get where they want to go safely. During the busiest times, but again it's getting drivers to comply with that at 2 o'clock in the morning, and I referred to what I said earlier, just because the roads are much quieter and therefore higher speeds can be achieved, the risks are not removed and we've seen a number of pedestrian fatalities in the last year due to drivers travelling at high speed and not seeing a pedestrian. You want to come in and then I'm afraid we're going to have to move on to the next question. The short supplementary in terms of that, I think there is a focus quite rightly in terms of the city environment and that denser population. What I would say in terms of our bus routes is that it would need local consideration. One of the reasons why the arterial routes that have been mentioned are likely to stay as 30s would be to allow for that kind of traffic and consideration for bus services to get from their major points of A to B. When they then get into that urban environment to do their pick-ups and drop-offs, that's where the drop to 20 would be advantageous to them as well. Stuart Stevenson, Stuart. Thank you very much. We've had a fair bit of discussion over TROs, but I want to just relatively briefly explore some other aspects of that. Now, andreason in particular suggested that it cost Edinburgh £2.5 million to do what it had done using TROs and that it might have been, and I put it no stronger than that, £1 million. That's 40 per cent of the cost under the new arrangements. It might have been £1 million, so that's 40 per cent of the costs. Would it be possible to simplify the traffic regulation order to make the costs of that an order 40 per cent of the current costs, which would be an alternative cost of effective way of this legislation? The first thing is that the cost of the TRO process is only a very small part of the overall cost of implementation. That's mainly around the signage, and the bill would obviously change the signage requirements, so that's what the main saving financially would be. It would be possible, through legislation, to change the TRO process that could make it cheaper and quicker and easier to do. There's a balance to be hit with still allowing local democracy and people having the opportunity to view, comment and object. The TRO cost of the process is not massive, but it involves a lot of work and a lot of time. Our city-wide TRO, which we did in 2016 to introduce speed limits on 30 per cent of our network, involved individually listing 2,500 sections of street. Just to put that into context, as somebody has had to go out and schedule up those lengths of road. Can you give us just some understanding of how many people will evolve for how many person hours? In terms of person hours, no. We have a fairly small TRO team. It's got about three or four members of staff in it, and they're obviously working in TROs for all sorts of things. The city-wide order was prioritised to get it through. In addition to the one city-wide order, because it took us several years to implement over the whole city, because of the amount of streets and signs that we had to do, for each individual phase we then had to do a second TRO because the street network changes over time. New streets are being built, some streets are being altered, so we had to, over that period, run four separate supplementary TROs that made amendments to the original TRO, and, as has been alluded to earlier on, we've got developers building new streets in the city on an on-going basis. Every new street, as it's built, currently needs a TRO raised to make it 20 miles per hour. Let me just pick up on the point that came from Kevin Hamilton in West Lothian, where the A's and B's were designated restricted roads. Would that have reduced if you had taken that approach in Edinburgh? Would that have reduced the signage cost that you're identifying as the big cost associated with the present system? The signage cost is based on the current regime where you have to sign every 20-mile per hour road with repeaters. That's not so much whether it's a restricted road or an unrestricted road, it's just what the speed limit is. Given that, if we make 20 the default, the repeater signage requirement goes away, I understand, and I'm getting a nodding head, so I must be correct. Therefore, the bill in that context, if implemented, could have made a significant reduction in cost. If so, is that where your two and a half goes down to the one? Is that what you are—yes, I'm getting a nod. That's fine. I think that I've probably covered it. Okay, thank you. The next question is Peter Chapman. I think that Peter Chapman is yours. Well, we're on the repeater signs issue again. Should the bill be passed, as we understand it, there will be a requirement to take down the repeater signs where this has already happened in Edinburgh, for instance. Is this a cost worth paying? Is there any real reason to remove signs that are already there under the scheme that you've put in place if this bill passes where there is no requirement for repeater signs? Is there any real reason to take them down if they're already up? That's my question. Who'd like to go? From the national perspective, it is all about consistency. I think that we recognise that we wouldn't want to be taking down some great work that's already happened in City of Edinburgh, but in terms of recognising the benefit of having that consistency across Lothian, across Scotland, there is the benefit of not being confused in terms of, well, that particular location reminds me that this is a 20, and therefore you might get into a little bit of a lawful sense of security when you go somewhere else that is equally a 20, but you think, and there's no repeaters, and therefore I'll drive a little bit quicker. So I think there is a need in terms of a rationalisation of that signage. It's not just the signing, it's also the lining, and I think there's a reasonable presumption in that regard that we, if it were to go forward, we wouldn't be suggesting going in and burning off those kind of linings, we'd just allow those to degrade over time, whereas the signs themselves are much more readily removable. It would be an exercise, it's a relatively costly exercise in terms of that, but I think that the benefits would accrue nationally in terms of that consistency moving from one local authority area into another. Sorry, Andrew, did you want to add to that, and then I'll bring in Stuart? Just slightly, I mean, there are other options. Under the current way things work, you sign by exception, so you don't sign repeater signs for the default spent limit, but you sign everything else. It would be entirely possible to change that and say that you sign everything, but there's obviously an additional cost associated with that as well. It's something that could be dealt with in a different way, but under the current regime and the way things work currently, you would have to take them down. Stuart, do you have a view? I do have a view, and that is that investment in good signage tells the driver what the speed limit is, but I appreciate that the cost of applying consistent signing is very expensive. It is something that we look at at fatal and serious accidents, we look at signage leading up to the location, we look at how well that's maintained, and there's nothing better than stopping a speeding driver at a repeater sign and asking them what was it that told you to go faster. It's about, again, that fairness of getting people on board to understand that is the speed limit, but accepting that that's out with the police's remit in terms of finance. Just to respond to that, if this bill is passed, the repeater signs would need to come down, which is basically going against what you've just said, Stuart, in that signage is always good. Basically, that's what you said. It's never a bad thing to have a sign in place to remind people, but under that bill, that repeater signage in Edinburgh, for instance, would need to come down, so that's the point that I'm making. Briefly, Richard, and then we'll move on to the next one. On the factor of signs in town, maybe Stuart Carroll can tell me or otherwise, lawyers, traffic lawyers, could make a good business out of this, could they? They might, but if the bill's cropline act is on, I'm sure it will be in whatever form that that will be taken care of, but when people are building a defence, yes, they will rely upon if there's some default. There wasn't a sign, Chief Superintendent. I never saw a sign. That generally wouldn't be a defence, so if you're driving on a restricted road just now, that tends to be the case, but appreciating that, I think, giving clear messages without clutter to motorists, because that's another issue that can arise from too many signs, but I think that for speed roundals and speed roundals on roads, they do help. Riched on the basis that you've tested your defence and it's not going to work, the next question is John Mason. John Mason, thank you very much, convener. Both for the present and the future, most funding for local authorities is local authority funding, and that's it. Does Stustrans or Transport Scotland, can they, when you're rolling out 20mph or any of these things, provide any technical support or financial support or anything like that? Who would like to go on that? Walter. I think that there's a range of funding mechanisms that local authority are pretty adept at tapping into. If there are such funds from Transport Scotland, we will be there, and, specifically, in terms of Stustrans. I think that the beauty of the Stustrans bidding and the opportunities there is that you are in able to be building in some of these considerations for placemaking, for the speeds that you can be looking at, and therefore as part of a Stustrans bid, as part of a project that has a Stustrans element, then it's opening itself up to opportunities for that cross funding that would actually serve both purposes. However, in terms of anything specific coming out of there or any specific requirements coming out of the funding that is currently available or has been available, there's nothing that links it to the 20mph limit. You wanted to say something. From Edinburgh's experience, we did make use of quite a lot of funding that came in either through Stustrans or through Scottish Government grant funding, through cycling, walking safer streets, towards the initial implementation of the 20s. I'm not entirely sure that we would be able to use that funding stream for altering signs to comply with change signing requirements resulting from a bill that is effectively keeping the speed limits the same but altering the signage. In the financial memorandum, it specifically mentions Police Scotland and suggests that the police would have a saving and the figures are 320,000 to 562,000 if there were fewer and less serious accidents. I would have thought that the police would have done something else instead, so there wouldn't actually be a saving. Can you comment on that? Yes, the resource will switch to other areas, but we have to investigate the accidents that take place, but I think that that saving is negligible in the bigger gains to be had here. Right. The figures are quite small. Is it fair to say that there would be a saving at all? The overall police budget would not change whatever we do with the speed limits, would it? No, we don't. I think that figure is ascribed by the cost of investigating, attending and investigating an accident, so if there are fewer collisions, then that element of cost is taken out of a particular budget line, but it will be spent elsewhere. Okay, that's great. Thanks very much. Okay, John Finnie, you've got a question. A question, I think, primarily for Dr Ruth Gibson. Dr Gipson, how do the road safety health and place making policy aims of the bill measure up against the financial cost? It's clear that there's an overlap between a number of issues there. Say that again in your last statement. Clearly there's an overlap between a number of issues. Can you comment on that, please? Can you say the question again? Yes, I was wanting to know how the road safety health and place making policy aims of the bill measure up against the financial costs. I'm not sure I can actually answer that at the moment. It's something we're looking at again. We are particularly interested in what we call, you've all called it, if things we call it livability, so how safe and pleasant our streets are to live in, but we haven't done any economic analysis of that at the moment, so I'm sorry, I can't answer that question for you. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, Jamie, you had a follow-on question to that. Thank you, that needs to lie nicely into my next question. I think given that there is a very comprehensive and quite substantial piece of work going on into Edinburgh's experience of 20 miles per hour zones, which is, as far as I can tell, the largest to date in Scotland, do you think it would be sensible or prudent for this committee and for Parliament to wait and see what comes out of that analysis before we take a view on whether that should be rolled out across the rest of Scotland? That's an interesting question. I suppose it is the biggest. It's actually one of the biggest, probably, that's been done anywhere. We're also looking at Belfast as well, but it's difficult for me to say partly because Edinburgh's Edinburgh, so it's very context-specific in a way, so what happens in Edinburgh might not be the same in what happens in some of the small rural areas. It will give us some indicative estimates of effectiveness. It will give us estimates of effectiveness or cost-effectiveness as well because we're doing quite a robust analysis of that. I wouldn't like to make a judgment on that, really. Does anyone have a view? Maybe I could bring Brian in. Do you feel it would help inform your position? I think that there's probably enough evidence throughout the country already. I wouldn't expect the Edinburgh information to differ greatly from that. You can never have too much evidence. Whether it's the reason to delay things, I'm not sure. Briefly, Walter. Briefly, I think that the national applicability we've already used, the city of Edinburgh experience in trying to, within our course reporting and the work that we've done to see how that would apply against a typical authority or a range of authorities, so I don't think that waiting for that will give us anything more in terms of applicability. I think that if we were to consider time to consider and build more evidence in terms of that, then I would suggest that that's for to direct the local authorities and to provide the resources for local authorities to look at that local implementation in the 31 other authorities so that we do have something that is much more definitive. By then, it would be too light, because we will have passed the bill that rolls out nationally and then our capital city produces a report that may produce evidence to the contrary, so my point is that it's not better to get that first before we then take a view on the rest of the country. I think that we're at interim time now for it. The direction of effect is roughly the same as what's been found elsewhere, so I don't think that there's going to be anything surprising. It's just that probably some of the effects that have been found elsewhere will likely to be replicated. I don't want to say too much, because I'm a researcher and I've got to keep with this as interim results, but the fact is that at the moment we've got similar levels of reduction in speed in other areas that have done the same thing. I can't imagine it being hugely different, to be honest. The actual information that you will have is probably saying about the economics of it that hasn't been done elsewhere, which will be pretty robust. We're doing that in Belfast as well, which has a different model. It's just got the city centre, so in a way it's quite a nice comparison to see looking at the cost effectiveness of one versus the other. I think that we're going to have to leave it there just purely because we're short of time. I know there are a couple of people who want to come in. I apologise for that. I'd like to thank the panel for coming in this morning and giving evidence to the committee. It's always very helpful to hear the views of a wide variety of people, so thank you very much for giving us your time this morning. I'm now going to suspend the meeting literally for five minutes to allow the panel to depart. Thank you very much. I'd like now to reconvene the committee, and I'd like to welcome our second panel. I'd like to welcome Michael Matheson, the cabinet secretary for transport, infrastructure and connectivity. I'd like to welcome Donna Turnbull, the road safety policy manager, and I'd also like to welcome Stuart Wilson, the national operations manager. Cabinet secretary, we're going to go straight into questions, and the first question is from Richard Lyle Richard. Good morning, cabinet secretary. Can you outline the Scottish Government's view on the proposals in the bill and advise whether, and how, that view has changed since the publication of the Atkins Department for Transport research into the effect of 20-mile per hour speed limits? I think that the bill is trying to achieve two things. One is obviously looking at the issue of introducing a standard 20-mile-an-hour speed limit across restricted roads, and, alongside that, part of its purpose is to achieve that, is to help to support a greater provision of active travel and the benefits that can come from a 20-mile-an-hour speed limit. One of the things that we've been considering with the bill is that there are a number of challenges with it in that the bill, in itself, we don't know the numbers of restricted roads in Scotland. There are some restricted roads that you wouldn't want to have as 20-mile-an-hour zones. There are roads that are not restricted that you would possibly want to have as 20-mile-an-hour roads as well. As the bill stands at the present time, we don't think that it's the most effective way in which to actually take forward the agenda around trying to get a greater number of 20-mile-an-hour zones in the right place or roads in the right place. The Actons report confirmed that one of the key things is that it's important that, if you are looking to introduce a speed limit on a road, there are a number of measures that you have to put in place in order to achieve that effectively, in order to encourage compliance with it as well, because effectively, speed limits are self-enforcing to a large extent, as the police would tell you, that the design of the road and the other measures that you put in are all important elements in helping to support compliance with a speed limit. To some extent, that report reinforces our view that just taking a blanket approach isn't necessarily the best approach in order to achieve what we're trying to get from introducing 20-mile-an-hour zones. You wrote to the committee in the 30th of October, 2018, and now, quote back what you said, we believe that more evidence and more detailed analysis is needed before the measures proposed in the restricted roads, 30-mile-an-hour-limited Scotland Bill can be fully supported. Do you still stand by that? John, I'm mindful that that's very close to the question that you indicated you asked. I'd like to bring Mark Ruskell in first and then come back to you, John, if I may. It's just a brief supplementary convener. It's about the Actons report. I just wonder if you or your team had engaged with the conclusion of Actons, which is that there is better compliance when 20 is rolled out on a wider area-wide basis rather than just small discrete little zones outside of schools. Is that something that you recognise, that area-wide is better, and if it is better? You're referring to 20-mile-an-hour zones as opposed to 20-mile-an-hour roads, but that's not what the bill proposes. I'm referring to the approach that Actons studied, which is area-wide, wide area, 20-mile-an-hour limits across wider areas, including Brighton, in which it concluded that it was more effective than discrete little zones outside of schools. If you look at, for example, a city like Edinburgh, the way in which they have gone about doing it, with 80 per cent of the roads that are covered by 20-mile-an-hour as 80 per cent of the roads that are covered by 20-mile-an-hour at speed limits, however, the criteria that they used for arriving at that was somewhat different from what was proposed in the bill. They used a different criteria and a range of different characteristics in coming to that decision. What the Actons report reinforces is that there's a range of different factors that committee play when you're trying to get effective 20-mile-an-hour limits on roads or compliance with speed limits and that zones are one of the elements that can help to support that. That's the approach that was taken in Edinburgh, but that was a different approach from what was being proposed in the bill. Because some of the 20-mile-an-hour roads in Edinburgh are not restricted roads, the criteria was very different. Okay, I think we'll move on then to the next question. John, you wanted to ask something. Thank you, convener. Good morning, cabinet secretary. Good morning, panel. Cabinet Secretary, referring back to that letter again when you talked about doing some analysis of evidence, and the Department for Transport was one of them, and then you talked about working collaboratively with others. Can you see who the others are, and can you give us an update on the evaluation that you've made of the evidence that you've received as a sort of exercise, please? There's obviously the Actons report in itself, but there was also the... One of the drivers behind, I think, the purpose behind this bill, and certainly from the discussions that I've had with Mr Ruskell is the concerns around how the TRO process operates and the way in which local authorities are more proactive with them and others, and other concerns about whether it's unduly bureaucratic, it takes too long, et cetera. Part of the work that we've been doing with Scots and also with COSR is looking at the existing TRO process. The feedback that we've had so far is that, by and large, they believe that it is a robust mechanism. It's one that allows local communities to be engaged in the process and that they think that it's an effective mechanism. However, there are issues about whether we could streamline it in some way to make it a quicker process, and we've been having those discussions with them. We're now in the process of about to issue a questionnaire to all of the local authorities in order to get further details from them around the TRO process. That will be taking place in the next couple of weeks. Once we get that feedback, we'll then be in a position to look at distilling all of that information and that evidence together to then decide upon what other measures we can take for to help to support and encourage 20 million oil zones to be introduced or roads to be introduced in areas where it's appropriate to do so. Can you confirm a timeframe for that? You say the letters out the next couple of weeks. What's the turnaround period in the period for analysis? Before I ask Don, I might be able to say a wee bit more about that. As far as I understand, the questionnaire has now been drafted. It hasn't been done through one of the working groups that we have. The questionnaire has been drafted about in the next few weeks. I would expect to get feedback on that over the next couple of months, and I would expect in autumn of this year to have all of that information collated together alongside the discussion that we've had with COSLA and Scots around what measures we could look at taking forward. Do you want to say a wee bit more about that? I think that timeframe is realistic, and I suppose it depends on what comes back from the questionnaires themselves. However, we hope that it's a trigger for an on-going, more intense engagement with local authorities so that we can better understand and get into the detail behind some of the processes and really get their views and thoughts around any mechanisms or any part of the process that we can streamline or make a bit consistent across Scotland on how they do things. Fair to say to Mr Finnie that some of the feedback that we've had is that some of the local authorities feel so if there was additional guidance around some aspects that would allow a system with consistency and approach as well. Those are all things that we can look at doing, and once we've distilled all of that, we'll be in a position to look at the measures that we then take forward. Okay, thanks for that, cabinet secretary. Would it be possible to share that feedback and indeed share the questionnaire with the committee, please? I'm more than happy to do that. Yes. Okay, many thanks. Thank you. Jamie, I think that you still have a question on this process as well. Yes, I'd like to thank the cabinet secretary for answering the question. I had it yet not asked, but it's an excellent talent. Maybe I'll rephrase it. See if I can do it better the second time round. Indeed, I'm sure it was adequate the first time. Clearly, what's happening here with this bill is that you have a situation where the default is that there's a 30-mile per hour road and the local authority needs to go through a process, piece of work, to alter roads that they think would be better suited as 20. The bill seeks to do the reverse as such, that the default will now become 20, and if a local authority feels that a road should be a 30, it will go through a similar process. Part of the problem that there is a need for perhaps such a bill like this is the fact that it's criticism of the current process, of the timescales, of the cost, etc. If the bill were not to pass, would the cabinet secretary give a commitment to the committee or, indeed, to the Parliament that any areas of concern that local authorities have where they really want to implement 20 zones within their authority areas, that the Government will make it easier for them to do so, and will help to roll out as and where it's required? I think that the member raises a fair point. That's part of the reason that we've engaged in this process with COSLA and Scots is to understand where the issues of concern are. Let me give you a practical example. One of the issues of concern that has been raised is the time frame, the length of time it takes to actually go through the TRO process. Actually, a significant part of the time that is associated with the TRO process is the consultation exercise. What I'm not keen to do is to see communities losing the opportunity to be involved in that consultation exercise. However, there are two parts to it. There is the statutory consultation element, and there's also the public consultation element. There's two parts. Both of them, actually, one takes place before the other. It's a statutory first, or it's a statutory first, and then it's a public consultation. So one of the suggestions I've made is that we could bring the two of those together so that they could run simultaneously. If we can do that, I'm more than happy to look at taking forward that as a potential option. However, I don't want to start seeing communities curtailed from being able to actually engage in the consultation process as well. There's a balance to be struck there, but I'm certainly open to looking at how we can improve the system. If it helps to speed up the system as well and gets great to our consistency of application of it, I can give an undertaking to the committee that I'm prepared to do that. The exercise that we're undertaking now is to try and help to achieve that. Isn't part of the problem? I've spoken to a lot of local authorities about what's in this bill, and a lot of the feedback and concern they have is the fact that they just simply haven't done that mapping exercise nor do they have the resource and time to do so in the advance of any potential bill that would come into play of which roles they would want to put the speed limit up. Also, don't you think there's perhaps a general issue around this idea of putting speed limits up as opposed to bringing them down? Is that part of the consultation process coming up against more opposition when seeking to take something from a 20 back up to a 30, just from a perception point of view? I think that Mr Goon's latter point is a good point. I very rarely get my constituency representations from communities opposed to the idea of going to a 20mph road or 20mph zone, but I suspect that if they were expecting to go to a 20mph zone or road and they said, actually, no, we're going to put yours up to 30, I would get a significant level of representation of people being opposed to that. As if people feel that they're losing out in something, that's a reasonable point to make. I think that it's important to recognise as well, convener, that I've listened to some of the debate over the past couple of weeks around this bill on the media. People often refer to cities, towns, where they've introduced a blanket type approach. This is a bill that's intended to apply not to a town or a city, but to a country. We are in a situation where our local authorities don't have the information around the restricted roads. There are thousands of restricted roads in Scotland, but because most of it was done in paperwork over many, many decades, it would be a massive undertaking for individual local authorities to go through in order to collate all that information and to identify that information. I go back to the earlier point that I made as well. If you look at what they did here in Edinburgh, it wasn't just in restricted roads, it was in the roads that they thought it was most appropriate to go to 20mph. There will be roads that, in my view, it wouldn't be appropriate for them to go to 20mph. We're creating a process that is unnecessary, but it would be better if it was driven at a local level by identifying the roads and areas that they think should be zones or 20mph limits. John, you want us to come in. Thank you, convener. I'm always very frustrated about this phrase that we don't know. Local authorities have an obligation to have an asset register. Local authorities are obliged to know what they own and what they... You're obliged to inspect things and then repair them. I know that you'll say that this has nothing to do with me, the local authority. You're the Cabinet Secretary for Transport. It does seem passing strange that we don't know the categories of roads across Scotland. Do you not agree? They won't know on the basis of historically how the records have been kept. For example, prior to 1996, with the disaggregation of councils, there will be a whole host of restricted roads that were applied previously, which local authorities will have now. However, because they have not had to deal with them, they won't have collated that information. It has been done as a paperwork exercise over many, many decades. I agree with you that that is a frustrating point. It would be easier if it was on one single database, but the reality is that it is not. Identification of restricted roads in that process would be an extremely time-consuming and detailed exercise for individual local authorities to undertake. That's just the reality of the situation. You wouldn't anticipate the effort that they'll be coming to you making representations for funding to maintain those roads in that case. Those are roads that are local authority roads anyway, which they do, which they already have, but the whole process has gone through. They have unrestricted roads, which they are responsible for. It's not just the restricted roads, they have a whole host of different roads that they are responsible for. That's a process that they would have to go through in order to get the database, to get a level of data that allows them to understand what impact this bill would have in their respective areas. I'm just going to say just a general point. It's difficult to manage the questions if we're all struggling to answer the same questions that we want to ask. Can I just ask members to just be careful that we try and keep to the questioning areas that we've agreed? It just means that some members then look at me with grievance saying that they've had their question answered. So, just moving straight on, Mark, you want to come in and then I'm going to come to Maureen. I'm glad that the cabinet secretary has mentioned the sort of work within the implementation group, which indeed I've been working constructively with Donna Turnbull and Coslow and Scots over some period of time. I don't think that the cabinet secretary has seen some of the early survey data that has come back ahead of the autumn, where obviously more work can be done. About 21 per cent of local authorities have responded to say that they already have the roads identified, which they would wish to switch to 20 and those that they would wish to retain as 30. And another 29 per cent say that they have the asset data to allow roads to be identified. So, you know, there already is some progress for some local authorities. I guess my question is how do you ensure that there's consistency, because there is information coming back from local authorities that even if the process was simpler, they still wouldn't necessarily stick to Scottish Government policy and introduce 20 mile an hour residential areas. We heard that clearly from Borders Council this morning. Your own local authority in Falkirk has introduced virtually no 20 mile an hour limits in residential areas, and yet if you go across a Kincard in Bridging, Clackmannanshire, virtually every residential area is 20. So, I'm asking you about whether you believe that a simple sort of change to the TRO process would actually have any effect at all, because that contradicts what we're hearing in evidence that's coming back from some councils. Let me just pick up on the point that you said there about 21 per cent of local authorities already have that data to hand. That means nearly 80 per cent don't. I'm not dismissing it, but I'm saying that that means nearly 80 per cent don't between 17 and 80 per cent don't have that data. That's a major undertaking for any local authority. It's good that we've got some local authorities that are in that position where they have that information, but the vast majority clearly don't. We shouldn't dismiss that. In terms of the work that we're doing now and the inconsistency approach, that's exactly what we're trying to understand from local authorities. Why are there neighbouring local authorities that take a different approach around 20 million hour road on its and also 20 million hours on its own? What can we do around process and guidance and information that we provide them with that can help to achieve a more consistent approach as well? Once we've had that feedback from them, we'll be in a better place to understand what we can put in place to assist them in making sure that we get a greater consistency of approach across local authorities. I think that the next question is from Maureen Mawryn. Maureen Mawryn, cabinet secretary. There is an argument going that creating a national 20 mile an hour speed limit on restricted roads would result in that cultural change in attitudes to vehicle speeds, which in effect may produce results greater than that created by the current piecemeal implementation of the 20 mile an hour limits. Can I ask what your view is on that? One of the things that's very clear is that drivers take a number of different factors into account when they are looking at the speed at which they're going on the road, the design of the road, the layout of the road, where it's got lighting, et cetera, a number of different factors. Those are all issues that need to be taken into account in trying to achieve compliance with any speed limit, including a 20 mile an hour speed limit. One of the biggest challenges that you will always have in any aspect of trying to change behaviour is trying to create cultural shift, which by and large will take much longer and can be much more difficult to achieve. My view is that the best way in which to achieve the type of cultural shift that we're looking for is to make sure that we are placing 20 mile an hour limits and 20 mile an hour zones in areas in which we can most effectively ensure compliance with them. The range of other factors that need to be put in place in order to help to support and achieve that. We know that placing the speed limit doesn't work in itself. The other factors that all have to be taken into account to encourage compliance with that are extremely important. That's why my view is that it's better if we do that on the basis of where we think that it's most appropriate and can be achieved and we'll get compliance and in that sense we'll get the cultural shift that's necessary that goes along with that, but that always takes time. I have a question from the evidence that we're hearing. There seems to be different views on 20 miles an hour speed limits depending on whether it's councils with large rural areas or councils with large urban areas. A lot of the ones in rural areas feel that a blanket 20 mile an hour speed limit doesn't seem to be appropriate. I just want to push you slightly on this. Do you think that the councils, if you are in a position to amend the TRO, are the best people to make the decisions in the areas relating to the roads that they control on the basis that they have local knowledge on where those 20 mile an hour speed limits should be? I do, yes. What I do accept, though, is that there's an inconsistency of approach across how local authorities are doing that. I'm conscious in councils such as Highland councils. They have long rural roads that may be restricted, it may not be restricted, that would be affected by this, that they would then have to look at changing, but my view is that in order to achieve the type of compliance that we're looking for, the benefits that come from that, the best way in which to achieve that is through a local process, identifying the roads, identifying the areas and then taking forward the measures that help to improve compliance with those types of limits, rather than just taking a blanket approach and then having to unpick from that the bits that we don't actually want to have 20 miles an hour on. Colin, I think that you had a question there. Thanks very much, convener. We've talked a lot about the process and the issues around consistency and whether or not the existing TRO process can be improved to speed it up or how we get more consistency around local authorities. What I'm not clear about is what the Government's vision is in terms of what is the final outcome. Do you believe that across Scotland we should have in place something like Edinburgh in place, where residential areas are effectively 20 millon hour zones, or should we have in place almost like the borders, where it's simply just around schools? What is the position of the Government? What do you want to see? What's your vision for speed limits in residential areas across Scotland? We can talk about the process, how we get there, but when do you want to achieve as a Government? The Scottish Road Safety Framework up to 2020 sets out the approach that we've got as a Government. That includes areas such as 20 millon hour zones and 20 millon hour speed limits, and all the work that is set out in order to look at reducing casualties and injuries that are caused by road traffic accidents. We've got the framework that sets that out. What we're not intending to do is to direct local authorities that you must do x, y or z in your area, because there will be different environments where it will be appropriate and areas that will not be appropriate. What I'm hearing is that there is an issue about the tools that they've got that they feel as though they could be improved for them, and that greater guidance or clearer guidance to them could help to support a more consistent approach around how they apply 20 millon hour speed limits and 20 millon hour zones. That's the process that we're undertaking with them, just now. What can we do to help you to take a more consistent approach, but that's still to leave local authorities to decide on how they apply that within their respective areas. I don't think that it's for Government to tell Borders Council where they should put them. What I think we should do is make sure that we're giving them as much help and support as possible around the guidance and information to a system and making decisions about it and to look at the process that is used for coming to that, to make sure that it's one that they feel is fit for purpose and is helpful to them, but in the end it would be the local elected members that they decide upon where exactly they choose to put them within their respective areas. Ultimately there will be differences across particularly rural areas compared to urban areas, but we have a situation that won't where a house in a state and a town in a house in a state in Edinburgh, one has a 20 millon hour zone and another part of Scotland doesn't have a 20 millon hour zone, even though that residential area is almost identical in those two areas. I'm just keen to know, does the Government believe that it's 20 millon hour zones in that residential area is the right thing to happen, or in the case where it isn't happening, is that your view that it shouldn't happen? I know that we talk about local decisions, but we have a situation where two of our technical places have a different speed limit across Scotland. I'm keen to know what side the Government comes down on on that issue, because that will guide whether or not your desire in terms of having consistency is about increasing the number of 20 millon hour zones significantly across Scotland, which I believe needs to happen, or it's just about improving the speed of a TRO. We're in favour of 20 millon hour zones where there's a good evidence base for actually for them being introduced, and we would encourage local authorities to do that. But there is an inconsistency in how local authorities go about doing that. I'll ask Stuart maybe just to go through just some of the criteria which we do set and we ask local authorities to look at in arriving at those decisions. For example, if one decides that that house in the state is going to be a 20 millon hour zone and another one chooses not to, are they applying the same criteria so that there's a consistency in the outcome that they come to when they're considering the matter? Just the key message that we would like to send is the right limit for the right place. When we look at the current speed limit guidance, it's very clear that consistency and legibility are important. A driver in North Lanarkshire or a driver in Falkirk should have a common understanding of a road given the environment they're sitting in. Coming back to the point that was made earlier, having worked for Falkirk Council for five years and having worked for North Lanarkshire for preceding five years, those two local authorities came to different positions in terms of advisory 20s based on exactly the same evidence base because they had resources and plans that set out the merits or the non-merits, if you wish to call it that, of doing exactly the same thing. I think that looking at the network we have just now, we have roads and as a transport agency, Transport Scotland has sought to deliver 20 millon hour limits in certain parts of our network, we've felt there was evidence to do that. There are other places where we will not do that because we think that the evidence doesn't support it. Again, for local authorities it's very much the case being able to make the choice based on the evidence available to them, the community inputs, those things are important. One of the thresholds we've used in terms of the pilot 20s we looked at was an average speed of 24 miles an hour or less, reflecting the guidance that those limits should be self enforcing, the input that we took from the police at that time that said that those limits have to work without additional enforcement. It comes back to those key questions of if you do something, do you expect it to have a benefit? Residential side streets in any place, I think it's reasonable that those limits generally should be down around 20. There's no argument about that but there may be main roads running through the collectives of residential streets which are equally restricted roads where there's less of a case and there will always be a margin round about that and there's not a one-size-fits-all approach. I think that's the key thing, the right limit for the right place is where our current guidance and what the road safety framework and the road safety plan talk about. Just to be clear then, because at the moment nobody would dream about taking a house in a state where there's a really built up area and having anything other than 30 is a maximum, nobody would have that and that's a national policy. So what you're saying is that the desire of the Government is that that should be 20 though in a built up residential area such as that. When you look at our strategic road safety plan it has 20 actions and nine of them talk about speed management. We recognise completely the idea that managing speed effectively is a good thing to do. It comes down to that. Managing speed effectively and changing speed limits are not necessarily the same thing but there are plenty of places where you could point to a road network and say that this is obviously 20 and it's a restricted road or it's not a restricted road as Edinburgh have done but it's perfectly appropriate for it to be a 20. What we're not in a position to do is actually drop them off of the network just now and give you the picture of what that actually looks like. In the Mr Smith's point about how you could have two housing estates, identical housing estates and two different local authority areas, one which is a 20 million hour zone and one which isn't, is that from our approach we would see it as being most likely to be a 20 million hour zone but the fact that that local authority hasn't arrived at the same decision, part of the work that we're trying to undertake just now is to look at what we can put in place to help to achieve a greater consistency. The one that's decided it's not a 20 million hour zone, actually is a position scene, actually that would be better to be a 20 million hour zone. But that consistency is trying to get into 20, isn't it really? In areas where we can see there's a good evidence base to justify doing that, yes, that's what we would expect to happen. Thank you. Jamie Yous is the next question. Thank you, convener. We've heard a lot about the financial memorandum of this bill and the support levels that the Government may or may not offer local authorities to implement the bill if it was passed, including some concerns that the cost of implementing the bill may have been underestimated in the first instance. Is the Government's secret of any views on that and whether the Government would be minded to give additional support to local authorities, specifically financial support, to implement the bill if it were passed? Well, we do think that the costs have been underestimated. The reality is that we don't know what the costs will be for introducing the proposals within this bill. Larger on the basis is because of the issues around unrestricted roads. We don't know the numbers, we don't know what the costs will then be for its implementation. We have to keep in mind that there is the additional process costs of councils going through the process of actually collating this information. If they choose to have some restricted roads as 30mph, they will have to go through the process, a TRO process, to take it up to 30mph, the costs that are associated with that. We can maybe give you a couple of examples, just to see where we think that there are costs of not being considered. We mentioned that within the trunk road network, there are around 40 areas that we have identified. You can maybe give a bit of an insight into the actual costs that are associated with those roads, if we were to introduce a 20mph limit in those areas. We have put in a couple of 20mph limits, and if you extrapolate that cost, the simple change would be about £1 million. If we added the need for buffer zones, reflecting the fact that national speed limit roads with 60 coming straight into 20 might not be advisable, doubling that cost to £2 million is our current approximation of changing restricted roads on the trunk network to 20mph. I am sorry to interrupt. I will go back to my original point, and that is a very specific one. If the Parliament chooses to pass the bill, will the Scottish Government or not give local authorities the additional funding that they think they need to implement the consequences of the bill? They are saying to us that they do not have the money, so it has to come from somewhere. There is no allocation within my budget for the purpose of delivering the bill. If the Parliament is of the mind to support this piece of legislation and the Parliament passes it, any financial support that we would have to give to local authorities—and I recognise that we would have to give them financial support to a system with this matter—would have to come out of existing budget allocations. That would have to be determined at the time, so it would have to come out of the existing budget. Maureen Watt-East is the next question. We heard in the earlier evidence session that Edinburgh had access support through Sustrans and Active Travel funds. Is there an opportunity for further roll-out of that to happen? Do you mean using the active travel budget for that type of work? Given that, if there were 20 miles in our zones, the lady who was doing the research suggested that there would be more active travel, especially cycling, if there were more 20 miles in our zones. I understand you correctly that we use the active travel budget for the implementation of the bill, which was passed by the Parliament. That could potentially be an option, but we do not know what the cost will be for the introduction of the bill. We think that it has been significantly underestimated, so we do not know what those costs would be. However, if we do that, then that will have an impact on all the other active travel measures that we take, which would be to their detriment. Should the bill be passed, there will be a requirement in places such as Edinburgh to remove the repeater 20 miles per hour sign, and that is what the bill says. Will the Government consider changing the regulations so that, in that circumstance, there would not be a necessity to remove the 20 miles per hour repeater signs? Obviously, there is a cost to put them up, but there is a cost to take them down as well. As it stands at the present moment, you do not put repeater signs on 30-mile-an-hour roads, so there is no requirement for them to do that. If the default became 20, it would seem logical to say that you would take away the repeater signs or the requirement for those repeater signs. However, there are issues around shifting culture and compliance, which we then suggest that you should probably keep those repeater signs. You may want to increase the numbers that you have. Those are all issues that have to be considered, so we would give it due consideration if the bill was passed. You are correct, but there will be a cost attached to that as well. The point that Mr Chapman has just made is that at the moment we have guidance as I understand it that they are not allowed to have repeater signs within 30-mile-an-hour zones. I have quite a major road—it is called Clyde Gateway, you may be familiar with it—that was the new road built on the east end. It is a dual carriageway, it has two lines each way and no parking. It feels like a 40 or 50, and people drive at 40 or 50. The community would like 30-mile-an-hour repeater signs on that, but the council said that they are not allowed to do that. Is that something that you would at least be willing to look at in the future? Which of our way would we go on the speed limits? Consciously, we are into the technical regulations around speed limits. I suppose that coming back to that point, is that the right limit in the right place? If people's expression is that the road is faster, I am not in detail familiar with the reasons why we do not put 30s in. It is to do with the regulations that are long-standing, but, as Mr Matheson says, if the bill passed, you could look to apply a generally similar principle to the idea of 20s. I would have to come back to a more specific answer in terms of the near bringing 30s on. That is okay, I realise that it is wider than just this bill. I know the very mean, and I can understand why you would have concerns about it, so I know exactly where you are. I will make that point in passing anyway. To continue with the financial side, there is a figure in the financial memorandum of 450,000, which is marked as marketing. That is based on previous campaigns to do with cancer and all sorts of things. Obviously, if the bill was to pass, even if the Government is not keen, would the Government certainly be willing, and do you think that that is a reasonable figure, to roll out this kind of marketing promotion, whatever we call it, across the country, because it would be a major change if the default is 20 instead of 30? When I was, and I am conscious of another former public health minister here as well, is that we often had a variety of different public information campaigns around a range of different conditions. By and large, a six-week campaign is around about half a million pounds in cost. In cost of preparation work, the research work, the media work and everything, and there is a number at the end about assessing the impact that it has had as well. That is the type of cancer information programmes. The issue of culture was raised earlier on. Creating cultural shift takes a much longer period of time. My suspicion would be that, if the bill was passed and we went to a 20 default, you would need to go for a campaign that goes way beyond that for a six-week campaign. That would have to be an on-going campaign over an extended period of time in order to try and reinforce the message, and the cost would increase as a result of that. I do not know how long it would have to be, but I suspect that it would have to be over an extended period of time. In my view, months, if not over the course of a couple of years, and reinforcing the message in order to get it home. I realise that it is difficult to predict either the time or the cost, and some things such as the smoking ban came in more easily than many of us had expected. Could you put a cost on what you think should be in for this marketing or promotion? No, I cannot. I think that it would be unfair for me to do so, other than to say that, for example, when I was a public health minister, the average cost of a six-week campaign was about half a million pounds. A campaign of this nature, which I think would have to be sustained over an extended period of time—you can do the sums, depending on how long you actually want to do. I suspect that you are talking several million for an information campaign over an extended period of time. John, you have a question. Okay, thank you very much. It is a cost-benefit ratio of a national 20-mile hour speed limit on the stick-to-roads Cabinet Secretary. What is your view on that, given the level of casual to reductions that are predicted by organisations such as the Glasgow Centre for Population Health? I am aware of the work that they have undertaken. To some extent, it reinforces our view that the 20-mile hour limit should be put in places where we can actually gain the biggest benefit from them. We will get the greatest compliance with them as well, which reduces the risk of casualties from road traffic accidents. There are benefits that come from having 20-mile hour speed limits and zones. That is why we think that it should be an evidence base that is used at a local level to determine where they can best be achieved and that it will get compliance with them. The benefits include financial benefit. You talked about the downside, I think that you talked about the administration costs of TROs, but benefit in terms of finance? In terms of the cost benefit of having a 20-mile hour zone, the cost benefit of if you have less accidents, the health costs that are associated with that, depending on the nature of the accident, potentially the long-term financial impact that could have on an individual if they are significantly disabled or injured from a road traffic accident. There are cost benefits that come from that. It might seem unpleasant that I touched on that very briefly with Police Scotland. What cost on a life? What is the cost of a child fatality in terms of a financial cost? I will ask Stewart to give you some details on that. For the trunk network, there are different costs for local networks, because they are a little less, but a trunk road fatality is a little over £2 million. If you were to monetise the cost of that death, that would be the figure that you have put to it. In relation to Wales—forgive me for reading from this, convener—reduction between 1 January 2011 and 31 December 2013. 14,639 people were killed or injured on 30-mile-an-hour roads, and the prediction was that reducing from 30 to 20 could prevent six to 10 deaths, 1,203 to 1,978 injuries per year at a total prevention of £58 million to £94 million. Therefore, it is clearly wider than the costs of signs and some administrative inconvenience. Of course it is. Of course it is. Yes. Okay. Thank you very much indeed. Mark, you want to ask a question. As a follow-up to that question, Minister, do you acknowledge that if we move to a national default 20 mile-an-hour on those restricted roads where people live, work and play, there will be greater numbers of reductions of casualties, more lives saved than the current piecemeal approach of what we see in place today? I think that potentially that is the case. However, we know the evidence that, in terms of compliance, there is a range of different factors that drivers take into account in complying with the speed limit, including road design and road features. The location of that particular, for example, if there is no housing there, etc., people feel as though they can go faster. That is why we think that it is better that we address that at a local level, where they can identify the areas where we can get the greatest level of compliance and we will get the greatest benefits at a local level from that. I appreciate that you wish to drive compliance further and further. I wish to do the same, but do you acknowledge that, even with a modest speed reduction of one to two miles an hour, which is what the bill has predicated on, we will still save more lives on a population-level basis than going for a piecemeal approach with lots of lumps and bumps outside of schools? Our view is that the greater use of 20 million earth zones and roads is the right thing to do in order to help to reduce risk casualties and to make people feel safer. Our view is that that should be taken at a localised level in areas where we can get the greatest benefits of that, rather than doing it in a blanket approach, which is what the bill is proposing to do. If we can do that in a way in which we get greater levels of compliance, we will reduce potential casualty impacts, health impacts and everything that comes from that, rather than just doing it on a blanket basis in areas in which compliance might not be good. The police have said that, effectively, speed road limits are self-enforcing, and we should not ignore that. That is why it is important that we take an evidence base to the areas in which we choose to locate them and not to get the maximum benefit from them. That is, to some extent, the approach that Edinburgh has taken, which is using a different criteria from what the bill is. It looked at a range of different factors in determining where it thought that the 20 million earth zones should actually be, and it did not restrict it to restricted roads itself in order to address the areas that it thought it could get better compliance with, and it felt that it should be a 20 million earth zone. I mean, Edinburgh, with due respect, has rolled out a sign-only basis, but it has invested a limited amount of funds in putting in additional infrastructure in areas where there are potentially high casualty rates and high footfall. Do you not see that, within an area-wide 20-mile-an-hour limit across Scotland in restricted roads, it is still possible to target resources into areas where compliance is poor, such as enforcement activity of the police or additional investment by councils into speed reduction measures? The two are not mutually exclusive. We have a blanket 30-mile-an-hour at the moment, switch to a blanket 20 and then invest in those areas where we see continued compliance issues. Part of the challenge that we have is that we do not know the extent of the network that will actually be affected by the bill. When you say that all we should do— Is that what councils do? We do not know. That is a reality of it. When you say that what we should do is just focus on doing more compliance issues, what extent will that be? We do not know the extent of the network that will be affected. We are slightly ahead of schedule. One of your officials is due to turn up shortly. With the committee's agreement, I would like to move away from a gender item 2 and 3 on to a gender item 4 and 5. During that process, it will allow the cabinet secretary to adjust his officials. We can move back to the other gender items. Is the committee happy with doing that? What we will do is move on straight on to a gender item 4. This is the consideration of one negative instrument as detailed on the agenda. The instrument will enhance the controls of the issue, use and quality of horse passports. No motions to a null have been received in relation to this instrument. Is the committee agreed that it does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to this instrument? That is agreed. We will then move on to agenda item 5, which is the European Union Withdrawal Act 2019. There are two notifications in relation to UKSIs as detailed on the agenda. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Regulations 2019 and the Environment, Miscellaneous Amendments and Revocations EU Exit Regulations 2019. Those cover European regulations and directives related to spirits, food labelling, wines, genetically modified organisms, animal health and pesticides. All the instruments are being laid in the UK Parliament in relation to the European Withdrawal Act 2018. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Regulations 2019 is categorised as a category B, to the extent that the transition from the EU to a UK framework would be a major and significant development. Does anyone have any comments on that? Therefore, we need to agree a course of action. Does the committee agree to write to the Scottish Government to confirm that it is content for consent for the UKSIs referred to in the notifications to be given and to note the wider policy implications? We are agreed. Having completed that, I think that we will take a five minute pause to allow the cabinet secretary's witness to arrange. In fact, we will do it until 11.30, so I am going to suspend their meeting until 11.30. Thank you. We now move back in to session and we are going to move back to a deal with agenda item 2, which is subordinate legislation in the form of an affirmative instrument to do with national bus travel concession scheme. This is to consider one affirmative instrument, the draft national bus travel concession scheme for older and disabled persons Scotland amendment order 2019. The committee will take evidence from the cabinet secretary for transport, infrastructure and connectivity. The motion is seeking the approval of the affirmative instrument will be considered formally at item 3. Members should note that there have been no representations of the committee on this particular instrument and I would like to welcome from the Scottish Government Michael Matheson, the cabinet secretary for transport, infrastructure and connectivity, Pete Grant, the bus policy team leader and John Finlay, the customer services and communication manager for the Scottish Government. Cabinet secretary, would you like to make a brief opening statement? The draft national bus travel concession scheme order and disabled people Scotland amendment order 2019 sets the reimbursement rate and cap levels of funding for the national concessionary travel scheme in 2019-20. In doing so, it gives effect to an agreement that we reached in December 2018 with the confederation of passenger transport, which represents the Scottish bus industry. That agreement was based on an economic model for reimbursement that was developed in 2013 on the basis of independent research commissioned by the Scottish Government and following extensive discussions with CPT and its advisers. With CPT and our respective advisers, we have reviewed and updated the model and the forecasts and indices used in the model to use it as the basis for the proposed term for 2019-20. The proposed reimbursement rate in 2019-20 is set at 56.5 per cent of the adult single fare. We believe that the rate is consistent with the aim that is set out in legislation establishing the scheme. The bus operators should be no better and no worse off as a result of participating in the scheme. It is only marginally different from the last year's rate of 56.8 per cent, which we believe provides a welcome degree of stability for bus operators. On the basis of the reimbursement rate and our expectations for future journey numbers and fares, we had forecasts that claims for reimbursement may come to around £213.6 million over the next year. The figure is reflected in the draft order as a budgetary cap. The order is limited to the coming year. Our work to update the model during 2017 identified a significant uncertainty around what should be at the impact of changes in relative level of adult single fare. We agreed with CPT that we would leave this key element of the model unchanged for the time being. The economic model relies on good forecasting and, therefore, Transport Scotland has built relationships with the industry-based on transparent forecasting procedures. We know that older and disabled people greatly value the free bus travel that the scheme provides, which enables them to access local services, visit friends and relatives and gain from the health benefits of a more active lifestyle. The order provides for those benefits to continue for a further year on a basis that it is fair to operators. Therefore, I commend the order to the committee and I am happy to answer any questions. There are a few members who wish to ask questions. Can I just make an observation? There are a few members of the committee, and I am not going to name them, who may be eligible for concessory bus travel. There is no need for them all to make a declaration so that I will therefore spare their blushes by saying that. There are some questions, and I think that the first question is from Richard Lam. I want to ask a question, but I also want to make a comment. I welcome that the proposal extends the scheme for a further year and makes no change to who is eligible for the scheme or what benefits it confers. That is contrary to what comments by certain political parties made in this place when the system was going to be reviewed. I welcome, in fact, that the Government is not raising the age criteria or changing the system, and that was because of a public consultation. On record, in August 2018, the Scottish Government confirmed that there would be no change to the age of eligibility of the scheme. That would remain at 60. The Scottish Government also confirmed that it would make a minor amendment, which is welcome to make disabled children aged under five eligible for a companion card under the scheme. I have to ask that only for a year. What future discussions are you implementing with quite a number of bus companies in Scotland? I think that someone in my paper says that there are over 220 bus companies. That surprised me—bus companies in Scotland. What future discussions are you having with each of them to ensure that this excellent scheme for people who use it remains the way it is? Can you remember correctly that we have not changed the eligibility? We have extended it to include children and disabled children under the age of five, and that is taken account of in this particular order. This is an annual process that we go through with the industry. The process that we have is one that was agreed with them, so there is a consistency of approach. That is exactly what we will do in the coming year with them. We work with them in a collaborative way around coming to this particular figure. The process that we have gone through and leading up to agreement in December was a collaborative one, which was welcomed by the industry at the time and how we went about that. That is how we will conduct it in the year ahead. Can you remind me again how much people wonder how we spend their money and their taxes? The cap for the existing financial year was £202.1 million. For the coming financial year, the figure is going up to £213.65 million, which we invest in this scheme. I am sure that you appreciate that comment, Richard Stewart. In the last year, was the cap reached and, if it was reached, at what point in the calendar year were the claims that were received, when did they reach the cap? I will ask Pete to give you some details on that. In the last year, the cap was not breached. How far short of it were we then? Can I just be clear on what you were talking about? Last year's cap—I temporarily forgot what the figure is—was 200 points, so the actual expenditure under the scheme, I am asking what was that. In terms of the year that we are currently in, that has not been resolved yet. That is why I was asking for clarification. If you are talking about 2017-18, the cap was £196.16 and the actual scheme payments were £194.8. If it helps the committee, we can send details of the past several years in terms of cap and payment. I accept that the Government and the bus companies have come to a shared view of what the cap should be. That tells us quite a lot, but is there an expectation that the current year's cap will be reached? Yes, it is fair to say. We have communicated very openly with the Confederation for Passionate Transport and individual bus operators. There is the expectation that the cap will be reached in this year, and we have taken actions accordingly. Does that reflect an increased number of journeys that are being made using the scheme, or other factors? I think that it is fair to say that there are a range of factors that influence things. What I would say is that when we look at the year going past, one of the things is that we had quite a clement summer and winter, which has had an influence on journey numbers and therefore on expenditure on the scheme. Again, we have had open dialogue with the industry on that aspect, looking back at how we forecasted and what has come to pass, and we are as open as possible on that. Can I just ask some questions around what is being reported in the media today, which you can clarify is accurate or inaccurate information, and if it is accurate, it is of concern to me. We are hearing reports that operators have been told that what will be available to them in the last four weeks of the current financial year, the reimbursement right, has been cut substantially to them because the budget is close to being used up, as Mr Grant confirmed. Can you give me some numbers around this? How much do you think that we are close to the budget being used up? What reduced grants are being offered to bus operators? The reason I mention it is that we are getting feedback from some of the large operators, including McGill and my region, who say that they simply do not have the revenue to deliver any potential reductions in subsidy and are looking to make savings, which could include fair reviews and cutting services. Is that true? What McGills are looking to do, you need to ask them. If it is true, is it not of great concern to you? It would always be a concern if they were looking to reduce services, but you would have to ask them if that is what they are intending to do. So they have not approached you with any concerns over this? No operator has expressed concerns over reaching the cap early? I have not received any correspondence from McGills. It may be in the system if they have written to me about it, but I have not received a letter from them. Why does the policy document that comes with this today say that the cap is not welcomed by the bus industry? From the very outset, they have never accepted the idea of a cap on the concessionary fair scheme, which has been in place since it was established. I believe so, yes. So they have never accepted the idea of there being a cap, which is put there to protect taxpayer. Sure, I understand that they are protecting the taxpayer. However, if we are reaching the cap and if we are running out of budget before the end of the financial year, then surely next year's budget would need to reflect that, because what that obviously means is that bus operators throughout the country will not be receiving any subsidy or a reduced subsidy in grant on providing services for that end part of the financial year. Surely that would have an effect on what you foresee would be required next year. So, go back to the point. The figures for the year ahead are forecasts. So in the economic model that was agreed with the industry is to try to help to give as accurate a picture around that as possible. There will be variances from one year to the next. If you look over the course of the last 10 years, I think that there have been a couple of occasions when the cap may have been reached. From what I can see here, there are other years where the cap has not been reached. There is a forecasting exercise getting into the next year. We have amended the model in the past couple of years to try to take account of some of the changes that are taking place. We will continue to work with the industry on how we can improve that model going forward. However, it is a forecasting exercise to establish the cap. The mechanism for doing that was one that was agreed with the industry, although I recognise the fact that, from the very outset, the industry has never accepted the idea of a cap. Colin Smyth, you said that the order covers the extension of the scheme to care us with with disabled children. I am a bit confused by that, because I keep reading what I have read so far and I cannot see what it actually says. Does it cover care us with disabled children? If so, how much of the £213.65 million is to cover that? I was incorrect. It does not include that, because that has not been rolled into the scheme yet. What is the target date to extend eligibility to care us? We are looking to undertake that work in the course of this coming year of the scheme, and I would hope that we would be in a position to be introduced into the scheme in the following year. Not until the following year? In terms of the roll-out to modern apprentices, the Government has indicated that you support that principle, but when is that going to happen? There is a bit of work that we have to do around that to understand some of the details and the figures around it, and I would hope that that would be undertaken over the course of this year's programme as well. Therefore, the view would be to introduce it to modern apprentices the next financial year as well? If we choose to do that, yes. Maureen Watt, did you have a question? In the past, we have had constituents contact us to say that they were going from A to B, but their ticket showed that they were being charged from A to C or D or E. How far have we managed to curtail that practice from the bus operators? I think that John is probably in a better place to tell you about some of the anti-fraud work that is undertaken around those things, because I have had it from constituents as well. There is a range of work that is undertaken as part of the Transport Scotland's fraud strategy to deal with those issues and to engage directly with operators on those matters. Do you want to mention a wee bit about the work that we are doing in that area? Yes, we do. We have a fraud strategy at the moment, which is being refreshed with different measures that we can take with the bus operators. We have a fraud and analysis team that will look into constituents' complaints. While there may be some journeys that are overstaged, a lot of it, in some cases, is confusion from car tolders, because with some bus operators, customers do not understand the fair stages. If a customer says, I am going to Asda, they might expect the ticket to say Asda, but the ticket would cover the next fair stage, because it is not fair bans. However, any inquiries that we get from car tolders always respond to them. We have mystery shoppers that go out on the buses and do various exercises on different routes that the constituents have highlighted. We had received a few inquiries about First Glasgow. My colleagues went to meet First Glasgow, and a lot of it was because First Glasgow has recently changed its fair structure. For a lot of the services, they have just looked to fairs. Similar to what car tolders think, when they are being overstaged, when they look at the analysis, they are not really, it is just the way that First Glasgow records the journeys. We have engaged with the First Glasgow communications team, who are going to refresh the driver train and hopefully provide additional information to car tolders, whether it is posters on the bus or through social media, but certainly in the meantime, when we receive any inquiries, we always investigate it. We also have a free phone line that car tolders can phone if they have any inquiries or if they want to report any instance where they think that they are being overstaged. Is it reducing, increasing or staying the same? Cabinet Secretary, would you still encourage our constituents to get in touch with us if they have reason to believe or would like to query it? Absolutely. Anyone who has concerns has a process there for them to raise those concerns with us, and they will be investigated. Whether there is a pattern of concerns being raised, very often the approach that we will take is to use the different mechanisms that we have to check how that operator is behaving, whether it is on a particular route or whether it is an operator as a whole to assess that. If necessary, and we believe that it is appropriate, it will be reported to the Procurator Fiscal if we believe that criminal activity fraud has taken place. That has happened in the past, and there have been successful prosecutions on that basis as well. Does any other member of the committee have a question? Cabinet Secretary, I have been asked to raise a question by a lady who has a long-term disability who is entitled to a concessionary travel pass. She is concerned that every two to three years she has to go to a library to prove her disability, and she has recently received correspondence in the past that states that her disability entitlement needs to be viewed because circumstances can improve. However, in her case, she has a long-term disability that will not improve and therefore would like long-term conditions to be recognised so that she does not have to keep proving her disability. Is this something that you would be able to look at for the future so that this situation can be resolved? More than happy if you want to pass on the details of the matter and more than happy for us to look into the matter. I will ask the clerks to pass that on. Thank you. Cabinet Secretary, do you wish to make any closing remarks? Yes. Thank you very much. Therefore, we will move on to agenda item 3, which is the formal consideration of motion S5M-157-54 in the name of the Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Infrastructure and Connectivity, calling on the committee to recommend that the bus travel concession scheme for older and disabled persons Scotland amendment order 2019 be approved. I would like to invite the Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Infrastructure and Connectivity to move the motion. Do you have any further comments that you wish to make? Are there any comments that the members would wish to make? Richard? I think that that is option 2. I believe that this is good news, but, as usual, certain parties in this place wished to debase what is being done, a system that costs senior citizens nothing, but we have to remember that senior citizens previously were taxpayers, so they are entitled to this service. I have to remind people that this costs the Government over £200 million. It is a system and I support the motion. Thank you. Does anyone else have any comments from members? The question therefore is that motion S5M-157-54 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? Yes. That is agreed, and that concludes our consideration of agenda item 3. I would now like to move the committee into private session. I close this part of the meeting.