 Ysgol am ei wneud, a fawr i'r gilydd y cymdeithas 10 oed yn 2019. Felly, rwy'n fawr i chi'n ddweud yw'r cyfrifŷl ymlaen â cyrfryd. Rwy'n gwybod bod gan Ysgol Gael Ross, y ffordd chi'n i'n cyfrifŷl i'r gilydd. Dwi'n rhaid i'r gilydd Claudio Bymys, y ffordd hyn y gilydd o ddweud o'r cyfrifŷl, gyda'r ystod panffordd awr, gan y gyrgyn nhw, unig yw'r Fan, wrth gwrs, ac mae'n gwneud ei bwysigol i rywbeth am 5 hynny ar gyfer o brifysgol Iedd y gwneud roeddanu ei bwysigol i rywbeth a'r gweithiannol ac yn ei bwysigol i rywbeth i'n cydweithio i gyd, mae'n cymryd ar y bwysigol i'r ganfyrdd, Mark Ruskell, ac oeddwn i'r collegau a'r wneud. Gwyn i gyd, Mark Ruskell, geld, Malikzy Clart, yr diwrnodau'r gweithwil, Andrew Millon, Andrew Milne, the head of non-government bills unit, and Claudia Bennett, the office of the solicitor to the Scottish Parliament. Before I ask you, Mark, to give a brief opening statement about up to three minutes, can I just say we'll then go into questions. I know there are some of you that have given evidence before. You don't need to touch anything and if you just catch my eye, Mark, and we'll get you to bring in the right people, hopefully. Mark, would you like to make an opening statement of up to three minutes? Thank you very much, convener. When I was at school, a classmate of mine was struck down and killed while out playing on his bike. He wasn't killed outside of the school gates. He was killed in the residential street where he lived, like four-fifths of child casualties on our roads. Twenty more on our speed limits make a big contribution to the safety of everyone on those streets where we live, and especially children. They reduce speed, prevent deaths and injuries, encourage choices to walk and cycle, and public support for them continues to grow year on year. A small reduction in speed has a big effect in reducing casualties, especially when scaled up on a national basis. As you've heard in evidence already, every one mile an hour reduction in speed means at least a 5% reduction in accidents. We estimate that nearly 600 casualties will be prevented every single year based on average speed reduction of just a couple of miles an hour. Government policy in Scotland and Westminster recognises that 20 limits should be the norm on the streets where we live. That's backed up by the WHO, the EU and the OECD. However, 20 streets are often isolated exceptions to a blanket 30-mile-an-hour rule that was set back in the 1930s. I am asking the committee to consider the fundamental question. What should the default limit be on restricted roads? If the answer to that question is 20 mile an hour, then this bill is the only way to deliver it in a way that is nationally consistent, timely and cost-effective. In my previous role as a councillor, I saw huge frustration from communities who wanted 20 mile an hour limits but were denied. They were often told that it wasn't a priority for the council or that it might get scheduled in several years' time or that councillors were skeptical or that there wasn't a budget for a P to signs or that an area with an active community council had made a better case than theirs. When I was then elected as an MSP, I looked at the national picture and saw that it was very similar. While Clapmanonshire and Fife councils had managed to painfully roll out 20 in almost every single residential area by seeking exemption after exemption from a 30 limit, other councils had struggled or had scrapped 20 mile an hour roll-out completely. So I do believe, convener, that after two and a half years of working on this bill proposal with academics, councils, road safety organisations, police, Transport Scotland and many others, that it is time to end this illogical 30 mile an hour blanket speed limit while using the same mechanisms currently have for roads where they wish to retain 30 miles an hour. There is a clear opportunity here for Scotland to take the lead as we have already achieved on the smoking ban and make a lasting public health intervention that will make our streets safer for generations to come. Thank you very much, Mark. We will go straight into questions and there is quite a lot of them. Richard Lyle, you are the first one, Richard. Good morning, Mark. There may be some of us who actually agree with the comments that you have just made but others don't. How do you respond to witnesses who have told the committee that a national 20 mile an hour speed limit is too broad a brush and that the current arrangements allowing local authorities to set 20 miles per hour speed limits on roads that they consider appropriate should remain in place? Thank you, Mr Lyle, for that question. As I said in my opening statement, the fact is that the current system is not working. It is not delivering protection for children and vulnerable road users across the whole of Scotland. We have a situation where children in the borders, for example, do not have 20 mile an hour limits in their residential streets whereas children in Edinburgh do. The current system that we have is cumbersome. It is leading to inconsistency. I have already outlined some of the reasons why that is. That is why approaching this from the perspective of creating a national default will ensure that we have that national consistency across Scotland. Of course, it is important to emphasise that councils will still have the ability to exempt arterial and through roads from a default 20 mile an hour where it makes sense to do that. It enables councils, under the existing mechanism, to fine tune the layout of 20 and 30 mile an hour within communities to reflect the local road conditions. What evidence do you have to support claims that setting a 20mph speed limit on all restricted roads will lead to a culture change in driver attitudes to speeding in urban areas? We have seen the example of 20mph roll-outs on an area-wide basis across the country. You have heard evidence from Edinburgh, other authorities and more rural local authorities. The Akins report showed that the current roll-out of 20mph makes the delivery of that culture change very difficult. We are looking at isolated 20mph zones outside of schools. It does not reinforce what the national speed limit should be for restricted roads, which is 20mph. It is a very peace meal, it is confusing for drivers. It is important that we move towards a national default to ensure that there is that consistency. We have done quite a lot of work with academics on the advantages of a national default in terms of education, in terms of reinforcing the messages nationally around 20mph. It is quite clear that, through a campaign of national education around the importance of 20mph combined with work with communities to point out to drivers what the implications are, if they speed in terms of the impact of an accident, but also what the implications would be if they are caught alongside police enforcement, that we can get a very strong message around 20mph. I will be honest with you that this has not been done before. All the 20mph roll-outs that we have seen so far have been incredibly peace meal outside of schools, but what we do have is evidence from where 20mph has been rolled out on a wider area basis. It has been more effective in reducing speed, and it has enabled, in particular, local authorities like Bristol to do more of that work in communities to reinforce the importance of 20mph. There is a sign that that has had a good effect. The figures from Bristol, for example, in terms of speed reduction and casualty reduction, are very strong. Simply doing this 100mph outside of a school gate does not make sense. If it is an important speed limit for those restricted roads where people live, then it is an important speed limit on all those restricted roads where people live. I am reminded by one of the comments that was made by Superintendent Carl when he came to give evidence to you in his committee. He did say, to borrow a phrase from the Violence Reduction Unit, road violence is preventable, not inevitable. We need to make inappropriate speeding and exceeding speed limits as socially unacceptable as drink driving. That is an important point. I will argue that you can only really do that if you have a safe limit established on a national basis. The other point that I would make briefly convener is in relation to that wider cultural change. If the bill becomes law, of course, the Highway Code will be updated. New drivers that are learning to drive on the streets of Edinburgh and around the country will be driving in 20mph limits. There will be that national consistency. The new drivers that are coming through, the drivers of tomorrow, will have been trained on 20mph on our roads. That cultural change, we can put that in place over time, but the starting point is to start with a sensible speed limit. There are various questions to follow on from that. Stewart, you have one and then Jamie Greene you have one. Yes. I just wanted to pick up on the remark that the current system is not working. I do so in the context of a helpful report that you have provided from the Transport Research Institute, which replicates the Scottish Government's road casualties and gives 10 years of numbers. It is table 1 in that report on page 5. The thing that is very clear is that, looking at the headline figures, the fatals in 2007 were 255 and in 2017 141, approaching half the figure. Overall, the figure has gone from 12,500 down to 7,000. If I look down at the built-up roads, there is a similar pattern, a slightly erratic progress on fatals. Is it fair to say that, rather than the current system not working, that what this can be, if it is anything, is augmenting the many other safety initiatives that we are seeing having the benefit here? Is that not the more proper way of looking at it? This is not the magic bullet that is going to take all these numbers down to zero. Is that fair? The evidence shows that, to any man, our limits can make a significant contribution to tackling these issues. What I would point out in this report is that, yes, there are KSIs, there are killed and seriously injured statistics on our rural roads, which are not covered by this bill, which are AMB roads, which are significant. It is clear that that is where the police focus is a lot of their resource at the moment. I also point to table 2, which shows that the numbers of seriously injured people on our built-up roads are significantly higher than on non-built-up roads. There is an important point to make here about the level of injuries that we see in our residential communities outside of our homes, on our streets. That raises questions about whether councils or, indeed, the police are prioritising those particular types of injuries. Of course, that does not capture the near misses. There are people who are injured, but there are also people whose confidence is severely dented because they have been in a near-miss psychological impact of that, which puts people off walking and cycling. We need some more care and attention on the streets where we live, work and play. There are serious accidents that happen on those streets, and there is a need to drive up the levels of walking and cycling there. Thank you for bringing the bill forward. It has been a fascinating subject for the committee, but I want to revert back to the original question from Mr Law. What evidence do you have to support claims that a 20-mile per hour speed limit on restricted roads will lead to a culture change? In your response, my understanding of your response was very much that, because it has not been done before, there is no evidence. The only evidence that there is is very localised to where there have been small, local blanket changes in specific areas such as Edinburgh and Bristol, but we also took evidence that, in the areas that did do that, the actual reduction in speeds was very nominal. A 30 per cent cut in the speed limit equating to a very small reduction in one or two miles per hour of average speeds in those cities, to me, is not evidence to support the original question. Do you have any more concrete evidence that there will be genuine cultural shift in driver's behaviour? As I said in my opening statement, an average speed reduction of a couple of miles an hour is significant. I would not discount the benefits that can come from that. If you have a look at the financial and policy memorandum that companies the bill, even a speed reduction of one to two miles an hour can reduce 600 casualties in Scotland every single year. The average life of a speed sign is 30 years, so you can do the mass in terms of the number of lives that save the number of severe casualties that will be saved as a result of that. The bill is predicated on a modest reduction of average speed. As you have heard in evidence, when we talk about average speeds, we are also talking about the higher speed drivers reducing their speed at a more significant level than those that are going at a lower speed. The average statistic does not fully explain what is happening on our roads. Even if we accept the average speed reductions that we are seeing in roll-outs in Edinburgh, in Portsmouth, in Calderdale and in other areas, that is very significant. If we build on an approach on the back of that, which drives further culture change through what I have discussed with Mr Lyon in terms of national education enforcement and reinforcing that approach across Scotland, I believe that we can get higher speed reductions. The bill is not predicated on that. It is based on what we know already and what we know already is that that will lead to significant reduction in casualties, significant reduction in deaths in Scotland and an improvement in walking and cycling. I think that there is a cost-effective public health measure that can be applied across the whole of Scotland. That is it. That does it. In terms of cultural change, I think that we are seeing a cultural change in Scotland. We produced a poll two years ago done by Survation that showed, if you discount the people who did not have an opinion, around 66 per cent of people support a default 20-mile-an-hour in their communities. We repeated that work last week and showed that that has gone up to 72 per cent. That reflects some of the evidence that we have had in Edinburgh, which shows that post-implementation public support for 20-mile-an-hour goes up. You have heard that evidence from Ruth Jepson as well, that Opposition Edinburgh has gone down. We are seeing a cultural shift here anyway, where drivers and communities are becoming more aware of 20, they recognise the benefits, they are waking up to that. That is a good basis to build on, to drive the benefits further than what we have predicated the bill on, which is modest. Can we go further? Yes, I think that the evidence suggests that we can. Can I pinpoint exactly what that speed reduction is going to be in 10 years' time? No. The premise of my question is that you say modest, the bill's approach is modest, but why do we have to cut the speed limit by a third to achieve a one-mile per hour reduction average speeds? Is that really the only way that we can achieve that? Are there not better or other ways that we could reduce average speeds rather than such a huge reduction in the statutory speed limit? I believe that the evidence shows that this is the most cost-effective way to achieve that. Are there other ways to reduce speed or putting speed humps on every single road, every single restricted road? Incredibly costly. The speed limit is traffic law, we have a well-established framework for traffic law, we have restricted roads at 30 miles an hour. A low-cost intervention is to reduce that speed limit to 20 miles an hour, to carry out interventions on every single road, to physically design every single road to be at a lower speed limit, would be a vast amount of public expense. It's actually not what we do at the moment. The 30-mile an hour roads around Edinburgh, are those designed to be 30 mile an hour? No, they're not. If you wanted to, you could drive a Hollywood road at 40 or 50 miles an hour if you wanted to. There's an element of self-enforcing with those speed limits, and that's what we currently have with the designation of speed limits in this country. What I'm proposing is to not rip up the system but to go with the grain of the system and to reduce speed from 30 to 20, so that that will result in a modest but substantial reduction of speed and casualties. We've got three follow-up questions here, so be Mike, Maureen and then Claudia. I'd just like to follow up on your response to Richard's question. You seem to be somewhat critical of our local authorities who haven't gone the way that Edinburgh has gone, for instance, but surely our local authorities know and have examined where they want 20 mile an hour streets. Surely they have examined their own local areas and decided either to go forward or not to go forward with them? Are they not the best place to do that because you seem to be, rather than taking a national approach, you seem to be critical of local decision making here? Well, not at all. I've engaged with many local authorities throughout this process, and Scots, of course, represents the heads of transportation for all the local authorities. I mean, as a former councillor myself, I recognise the challenges that councils face. However, you also have to bear in mind that the majority of local authorities that have responded to multiple consultations on this bill have supported this as a measure, have supported this as being the most cost-effective way to deliver 20 miles an hour across their areas. I do believe that this is a measure in which local authorities are supporting and will continue to support as a way to deliver 20. In terms of local discretion, yes, councils need that local discretion about how they implement 20 and what they retain as 30 miles an hour. I think that there's been interesting discussion in committee, including from yourself, Mr Rumbles, about Aford and about these rural communities. I understand where you're coming from. I live in a rural community myself. I think that if you look at the roll-out that Fife Council has done, for example, in some areas they've decided to create a wider network of 20 that includes the through roads through certain villages and other villages have decided not to do that because of the volume of traffic going through the area. In terms of the exact, precise roll-out and retention of 30 and 20 within each individual village or area, that is rightfully something that local authorities need to make their own decision on. That's within a context of a national default of 20 miles an hour. The current context for that is, of course, a national default for 30 miles an hour. Local authorities are already working with the national speed limit. They're seeking to make adjustments within that to reflect the conditions and requirements of each local authority. That makes it easier for them. The situation that we've had in Fife where the council has put in exemption after exemption from a national default is unfortunately the only tool that the council has had to bring in effectively a national default in Fife for 20 miles an hour, but it's been very costly and time-consuming. I think that's why substantial number of local authorities are now saying, before we do anything more on 20 miles an hour, that we're waiting for this bill to be enacted because it just makes it easier, simpler and more cost-effective while retaining our ability to make those local decisions about where we retain 30 and what kind of signs we put up in consultation with communities. Mark, you said that the highway code would need to be updated. The highway code is UK-wide, so can you tell me how it would be updated, what would happen and what currently happens to the places in England that you've already said of introduced this? The highway code is the highway code and whether there would need to be a supplementary page for Scotland, I'm not entirely sure, but the point that I was making is that all of the training documents and programmes that are put in place and the work that driving instructors do and organisations like Institute of Advanced Motorists, that's predicated on a 30 mile an hour speed limit on our restricted roads. I did my driving test in Edinburgh probably 30 years ago, now I did fail it twice, but that was on a 30 mile an hour road. It would be a very different experience now doing it on a 20 mile an hour road, so I don't think it's an insurmountable challenge to see an amendment to these training documents to reflect what we would have in Scotland which would be a default 20, a safer speed limit in our roads. I've just been informed by my colleague that there's already a separate highway code for Northern Ireland. Maureen, have you finished that? I would quite like to ask a legal question on this. I'm directing this at the solicitor and she may not be able to answer it. I'm aware that there are powers that the Scottish Parliament has over signage, which would allow the way... I know this as transport minister because I had the power to redesign a Lollipop, Lady's Lollipop. We didn't do it in a way that was visually particularly different. It was simply because the black piece of plastic round the edge that the manufacturer had stopped making it the required width, so we had to change the spec. However, the point is that the Scottish Parliament has powers over signage, which could lead to differentiation. How widespread is that, or is that a question that you would need to research more fully? I am aware that this is now, since the Scotland Act 2016, within the devolved remit, but how far this goes and how that would work within with the Secretary of State, whether that would have to be with agreement and so on. I can research further and come back to you on that. Claudia Beamish, I think that you had a question there. Thank you very much, convener. Good morning to you, Mark, and to the panel. I'd like to take you back to what you were talking about, the cultural shift. I found it interesting that I received earlier this week from 20s Plenty, the UK organisation, a poll that I understand has been done specifically in Scotland, which you have referred to, where 72 per cent of those who express an opinion support the introduction of the 20mph default speed limits, and that this has risen from 65 in 2017. I am interested to know what you think the reasons for that cultural shift, which you have referred to already, are. Indeed, I do not know if there has been any breakdown of the reasons within the poll, but they probably have not, but it would be too sophisticated perhaps in analysis. If you could point to some of the things that you think are important in terms of the cultural shift, which might build confidence for the future. That was a poll with a single question. I think that the evidence that comes from areas that have implemented 20 is more detailed. In particular, the pilot that was done in Edinburgh pointed to a range of reasons why 20mph is popular. People feel safer, even with a modest reduction in average speed, that they feel safer in areas that are more likely to pick up a bike or let your child out of the front door and cross a road. That is part of a growing shift. As more 21-hour limits roll out, albeit in a piecemeal way across Scotland, there is a growing awareness of the importance of road safety. It is starting to tip. Some of the evidence that has come out of Edinburgh particularly with the study that Ruth Jepsen has been leading, which is now the biggest 21-hour study in the UK, shows that the opposition to 20 is declining as well. Some of the myths around that it is going to make the roads slower and increase pollution. A lot of those issues are being greater understood now. People are focusing on what the benefits are to the feel of their communities and the livability of their communities and the confidence that it gives people to be living in a community with a safer speed limit. We are at a tipping point. All the evidence shows that that is getting stronger and stronger, but we still have a default 30 that we are continuing to try to create exemptions from. Peter, I think that you have a question, and then we are going to move on to question 3. I think that it is very important that we hear fully the answers all of this, but we have done two questions in half an hour. If we can focus in, otherwise I am just worried that of the numerous questions that we have, we are not going to get through them all. Mark, I was not looking at you. I am just saying that there are a lot of questions, and I think that it is right that we try and drill into all of them. Peter, and then we are going to go to question 3, which will be John Finnie. Thank you, convener, and good morning Mark. I want to explore a wee bit more. You have made some fairly bold statements that all councils want to see this bill succeed and become law. I am not sure that that is the case, because we did take evidence from Borders Council, for instance. The feeling that I got is that they did not want this. They are quite happy with what they have got to see that there are areas that 20 miles is correct and that there are areas that they do not want to be forced to go down that road, because I think that basically what they were saying, the level of accident in some of these rural villages is so minuscule that there is no need to change the default from that. What do you say to that? I probably need to clarify what I said, Mr Chapman. I did not say that every single council was in favour. I said that the vast majority were and have been supportive. We have had a lot of contact with them over the last two and a half years. I understand where Borders Council is coming from. Like many local authorities, there will be financial pressures. They need to decide where they want to put their resources. They have a focus on KSIs, on major A and B roads in rural communities, and I understand why they may wish to do that. However, the report that we have just provided to the committee also shows that we need to consider the serious injuries that happen on residential roads as well. The vast majority of people living in rural Scotland, including myself, live on streets that are restricted roads. They are streetlit roads where children live and play, and there are issues there. We need to find the correct balance here. I appreciate Borders Council's point of view on that, which is that this is not a cost saving for them, because they were not planning to introduce 20mph anyway. If you look at it that way, it is an additional cost. However, you also need to look at the benefits and the savings to communities as well. I do not think that there is a difference between a child living in New Macca or Aford or Alloa or the centre of Edinburgh. It is the same environment that my kids live in in rural Stirling as the kids live in the centre of Edinburgh, and it is important that they feel the benefits of 20mph. If that then becomes an issue of funding about whether the Government should support councils, the rural councils that identify challenges with the implementation of 20mph, then so be it. However, it makes no difference to the child or the community or the family living in that street about whether they are living in a rural village or whether they are living in the centre of Edinburgh. They still face the same challenges with traffic. They still want to get out on their bikes and walk and cycle to school. I do not see why they should not have safer streets to do that, but I appreciate the fact that rural local authorities have challenged geography. The border council made that these types of accidents in built-up streets are minisculey small, and they did not feel that that would have any significant difference at all because the figures, as of now, are virtually zero anyway. That is the point that they were making. I suppose that I will briefly come back on the point. This is really an answer to Mr Stevenson's point. If you turn to table 5 of the report that was produced by Professor Adrian Davis, it gives you a figure for those who are seriously injured on built-up roads. That is 787 people every single year. It is a cost of £167 million. That is a substantial cost. I am not saying for one minute that the border council does not take that into consideration, but my point is that it is wrong for us to not consider the needs of people living in streets and the dangers that they face. We are going to move on to the next question. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. Perhaps, convener, just prior to asking questions about reduction in casualties and collisions, I would like to refer to the letter that we got yesterday from the Society of Chief Officers of Transportation in Scotland that was directed to yourself and circulated to the committee. Indeed, the chief officers of transportation in Scotland are, of course, the senior practitioners representing all those local authorities. The final paragraph of the letter says, in summary, that the Society maintains its general support of the restricted roads 20 miles Scotland bill and its intentions. The other thing that I wanted to members will also be aware that 20s plenty issued a press release yesterday. One of the lines covering the tension between central decision making and local costs is to say, a national policy pace for itself in the first eight years for eight times less money than if the council implemented 20 miles an hour individually at local level. That is a compelling piece of information. Mark, you referred to the World Health Organization. You talked about this as being a public health intervention, which is how I like to view it more than to talk about administrative processes or signs, for that matter. We heard from the cabinet secretary last week a cost—I do not like it being referred to in this way—of £2 million for a fatality. We are looking around the evidence about reductions and collisions and casualties. In the SPICE briefing paper, we hear about research done by the Glasgow Centre for Population Health in the DB2 confirmation form. Can you comment on the scenario 1 and 2 that they allowed to please? Before we go any further, can I clarify something? The letter that was referred to the Scots letter, I think, was sent to individual members. It was not sent through the committee clerk. Can I just confirm that all members have—you haven't seen it, Jamie. Well, it was sent to individuals. It wasn't sent to the committee. I received a copy, so if anyone on the committee hasn't received that letter, I'll make sure that you get it after that, but it wasn't circulated through the committee. Sorry, John, just for a point. I wasn't going to give them—I mean, I just assumed it. I was double-checking, because the clerk looked at me blankly, and I just wanted to make sure. So, I mean, it should have been sent to the committee, but it wasn't. But if anyone hasn't got it, and I've noticed that Richard hasn't got it, I'll make sure that you get a copy, and Jamie, I'll make sure that you get a copy. Sorry, Mark, that probably gave you a brief insoluit to find the information that you needed. We make an estimate in the bill of what the benefits will be. It is focused on improvements on road safety. We haven't tried to estimate in pounds and pence what the public health benefits will be in terms of increased rates of walking and cycling, but I think we can assume that they will be substantial. In terms of the work by Glasgow Centre for Population and Health, and we wanted to get an independent view on what the road safety benefits will be, the casualty reductions that we could expect to see from a modest reduction in average speed, and there are two scenarios associated with that. That correlates broadly with what we've worked up ourselves to put into the financial memorandum of the bill. Instead of looking at the Glasgow Centre for Population and Health figures, the first scenario estimates £755, fewer casualties, five fewer fatalities, and a cost saving of nearly £40 million every year. The second scenario, slightly less, £531 fewer casualties, three fewer fatalities, and a saving of £27 million every year. Those are substantial figures. Of course, what the figures don't tell us is what that human cost is of a loss of a life, the cost to a community. I experienced that myself when I was a young child, although I didn't know that the child involved very well. The impact on the whole school community and the family was huge, and it stays with me to this day. If you look at not just the impacts of fatalities but the impacts of severe injuries as well, the lifetime costs in terms of care, but also the impacts of near misses. If somebody is involved in a near mess, they come very close to being seriously injured, that can affect their life chances. It can affect their choices going forward. I have met people who have been nearly run over or knocked off of the minor incident of their bike when they were younger, and they have never touched a bike again. This perception of how safe our communities are is hugely important. I might ask Mr Milne to explain a little bit more about the estimates in terms of the hard savings that we identified in the bill. Is that answer your question, Mr Finlay? I have to be honest that I am uncomfortable with putting a sum beside a life. Given that cost is featured so much in this bill and we have heard the cost benefits, in this crude way, I would like to hear, because I think that it is important. I do not know what price you put in a child's life in the loss of community, as has been said, but if Mr Milne has further information, that would be great. If you look at the financial memorandum, we put at the end of that some estimates of savings, and we have broken that down according to a number of different factors. Those are using standard figures that are widely used across Government to calculate costs. Table 4, for example, gives you the value of accidents prevented according to likely costs on the police, and then we have separate tables for the impact on the NHS. Table 6 is, in some ways, the most significant. This is the value of accidents prevented in terms of pain, grief and suffering, which is exactly the thing that Mr Finlay expressed some unease about. The point is that those are absolutely standard figures that have been generated centrally within Government as a tool for policy analysis. There has to be some way of quantifying the cost of fatalities, and that is how it is done. It is an actuarial calculation. In a sense, you could argue that it is not real money, but it is a way of quantifying in some meaningful way that you can use for comparative analysis the impact of fatalities and serious injuries. We have simply used standard figures that are used, for example, when the NHS, as I understand it, is assessing the value of new medicines or interventions that might save lives. It uses those figures to calculate cost-benefit. We have come up with figures with a lower and higher estimate, and they are very similar to the ones that Mr Ruskell just quoted. The higher estimate is £36.1 million, which is very similar to the nearly £40 million that was quoted as the higher estimate. There is a standard methodology that you can use to get meaningful numbers for the potential savings that you can gain from something that saves lives. Is there any evidence that a national 20-mile-an-hour speed limit on restricted roads would produce greater benefits in those areas than the current system? The problem with the current system is that it is not delivering 20 miles an hour beyond zones outside of schools or, if you are lucky to live in Edinburgh, substantial number of residential streets, but it is not delivering those benefits universally on a population-wide basis in rural areas and urban areas. That is where that intervention starts to deliver. It makes sense that, if we apply that across the whole of Scotland, we will get greater reductions in casualties and more benefits over time. The Atkins report, which has been discussed in committee on several occasions, also found that the wider the 20-mile-an-hour area is, the bigger the broader the 20-mile-an-hour area is, the more effective it is in reducing speed. They did particular work looking at Brighton, which had a big roll-out, and found that there was greater reduction in speeds in that area because of the extent of the roll-out. They also found that there were speed reductions on accompanying roads, A and B roads outside of that area. It demonstrates the benefit of applying that in a nationally consistent way, not just piecemeal zones outside of schools but on a wider area-wide basis across the country. I again refer to the spice briefing under the heading do 20-mile-an-hour speed limits improve road safety. It alludes to what is referred to as a systematic review of evidence in 20-mile-an-hour zones where physical tramming caffing measures are present and the 20-mile-an-hour speed limit areas are published. That was in the Journal of Public Health, and it says, and I quote here, that 20-mile-an-hour zones and limits are effective in reducing accidents and injuries. We have heard a variety of traffic speed and volume, as well as improving perceptions of safety. Can you expand a bit on that? You did earlier why that might be important. We make choices in our everyday lives about how we get to work, whether we allow our children to walk to school or whether they need to be driven to school. A lot of that is down to perception. I do not go outside of my house every morning with a speed gun and decide whether I am going to send my child to walk to school or not, but I do have a feeling about what my community feels like in terms of whether it is safe or not, and I believe that it is a safer community as a result of a 20-mile-an-hour limit. Perception is important, and I think some of the research that has been done, particularly around the Edinburgh pilot and in the Atkins study, points to the fact that people feel safer where they have 20-mile-an-hour in the streets, where they live, work and play, and that it has a positive impact in terms of those choices. Tempact is not exclusively on young people, older people and social mobility as well. I am not aware of a breakdown of particular types of people, but I think the benefits could be most keenly felt with those who are vulnerable. We have had support from disability organisations and those that represent people who are vulnerable, not just children. Active travel, people who are walking and cycling are, by their very nature, vulnerable in a road environment where they are mixing with motorised vehicles. This is where the global consensus is at the moment with WHO and the OECD saying that 20-mile-an-hour limits should be the norm, where vulnerable road users mix with motorists, mix with vehicles. It is a safer speed limit that promotes those activities. I think that any vulnerable road user will feel more vulnerable as a result of higher speed traffic. John Mason The next question is from John Mason. I am going to have to start being quite strict on time now if we were to get through all the questions. John Mason Thanks very much, convener. Following on, one of your answers to John Finnie, you said if you are lucky to live in Edinburgh. Is it a question of luck that Edinburgh has a 20-mile-an-hour zone, or is it something to do with local democracy? I thought the Greens were very much in favour of local democracy, and it surprises me a bit that there is such an emphasis on a national policy here, which appears to be imposing on local authorities. I realise that you have been asked something like that before, but could you explain? The present system, it seems to me, is very much driven by local authorities. The local authorities would still have a bit of leeway, but it would be imposing something pretty new on local authorities, would it not? John Finnie I think that it is important to get the balance right here. We have a system of national speed limits for restricted roads, for A roads, for B roads, for motorways. We do not encourage local authorities to make up their own limits for the A roads and the B roads, so it is different in South Lanarkshire compared to Glasgow. We have that national consistency. That is important. It is in the statute law, and we need to go with the grain of that in terms of this bill. However, you make an important point, which is about local discretion around the setting of 20-mile-an-hour limits and the integration of the restricted roads with other roads in an urban area. That is very much about the locality. It is about the community, it is about how it functions, it is about having that discussion with other road users like the bus companies and the hauliers and others. That is where the local discretion comes in. I am not proposing getting rid of nationally set speed limits, but I am proposing using the current system in a way that is more cost effective because it looks at exemptions rather than trying to create a new rule by continually creating exemption after exemption after exemption. I accept that whatever system we have, there is going to be a mixture of national and local, and I suppose that I am interested in how much interaction you have had with local authorities. It seems to me that there are three broad options here. One is to continue with the present system. Two is your plan to have 20 restricted roads, and another option is to make the 20 more widespread, because one of my concerns is that you go through a village or a city like mine, and you are going to have signs absolutely everywhere, and every junction is going to have either a 30 or a 20 on it. Part of me would like to go further and say that the whole of Glasgow is going to be 20, and the council can make exceptions to that if it wants. Explain why you are thinking that restricted roads are the right way, but do you think that that is what local authorities, out of all those options, is that their preference? The definition of restricted road is that it is a C along classified minor road, which is also streetlit. I think that that accurately defines the kind of streets that need to be 20 miles an hour, because they are largely residential in character. In terms of whether we would want to include A or B roads within this context, I am certainly not proposing changing the default speed limit for B roads in Scotland to 20 miles an hour. That would not make sense at all. However, it will make sense in a minority of roads, particularly in an urban context, where that A and B network within an urban context is part of that community and may be residential in character. I think that you have already heard some evidence from last week from Scots where they identified that some local authorities have already taken some A and B roads in that urban context and restricted them. Those would go. They have been restricted for good reason and they will go to 20 unless councils choose otherwise. However, I think that it is important to have that discretion for councils to make a decision. To go back to Mr Rumble's point again, I have thought about affords and communities in my own region that are very similar. There does need to be discretion from local authorities about whether they would wish to see a three-road incorporated into a wider 20 network, or whether they would wish to retain that at 30 or at a higher speed. Therefore, that would require additional signage in terms of entry and exit points on to that through road. However, that is a local decision. That needs to be taken by councillors working with communities in order to do that. It cannot be done centrally here, nor should it be. You seem to be indicating that it is very clear what restricted roads are. I think that one of my colleagues is going to ask more about that. We have had some evidence that local authorities are not that clear and cannot give us a figure as to how many miles of restricted roads there are. Therefore, that takes me back to my first point, as to how we can decide which is the best way of doing it if we are not that clear about what are the restricted roads. The letter that you have had from Scots that I hope members of the committee have had in the last day shows quite clearly that a number of local authorities have clear understanding of where the restricted roads are and have done that work. Other local authorities are on their way to achieving that. Yes, there are challenges there, but the restricted roads category is pretty clear. It is clear on classified roads that are streetlit. It does not include the A and B roads unless they have been restricted under order. If they have been restricted under order, there are copies of those orders that are available. Although that might be a challenge for some local authorities, it is not rocket science. I think that there is substantial reassurance from the body that represents heads of transportation that this is doable. Can I just come back and clarify something on that, Mark? My understanding from the Scots letter is that 50 per cent of councils had worked out what the restricted roads were, and the others were partly through the process or not completed at all. You have just said that local councils knew where the restricted roads were. It seems to me that I am slightly confused. I was confused at the last evidence session about what was classed as a restricted road. Is Scots letter that was circulated yesterday and is now circulated formally by the committee has gone to people's emails? Is that wrong? More than 50 per cent of councils know where, or has it just, as Scots said, 50 per cent of councils know? The Scots letter stands on its own. It has been doing more detailed work with local authorities. It has gone beyond where we have got to with the policy and financial memorandum, and it is looking at the individual circumstances that local authorities are in. We do not have a complete list of restricted roads nationally and totals for that in Scotland. That is partly a consequence of the default blanket 30-mile-an-hour limit that we currently have. What Scots are saying is for the proposals in the build to be effective. There is a requirement for co-ordination and resources to monitor and maintain the data required, which says that they do not have the data effectively. Is that incorrect? I mean that councils have a range of data, so let's go back to the data. Sorry, I'm under the mark. If I could just ask you specifically, is Scots right in what they're saying in that letter that the councils don't have all the data, or are they not right? The letter is right, however, on the interpretation of the letter. No, I'm fine because there's other people who want to come in on this, so I'm going to bring Stuart and then I'm going to bring you in, John. I've asked my question, so Stuart, if you'd like to come in and then John. It's just to try and home in on what's going on here. My understanding is that all councils know where their restricted roads are, because they have databases that do that. Certainly Aberdeenshire does, and you can go on to the website and look them all up. But what I understand is not known is which of those restricted roads fall within the definition here in relation to the lighting, that that is the difficulty. I think that's consistent with what Scots are saying, but I'm a little uncertain. Is that the specific difficulty that's being referred to by councils, which I recognise is a difficulty that I hasten to add? So the definition of restricted roads in Scotland, which I gather is different to England, is that those are sea or unclassified roads that are also streetlit. Every local authority, I know from my days as a councillor, has an asset register of where their streetlights are because they maintain them. They're on maintenance schedules, so I think that Mr Stevenson is correct in saying that local authorities do know where their restricted roads are. They also know where the roads that aren't restricted are, the A's and the B roads and the motorways. The issue perhaps is about looking at where the variation has occurred over time, and where an order has been applied for over time to bring in potentially A and B roads as part of a wider restricted network. I can just intervene to try and cut to the chase. While the councils have got a database of all their sea and unclassified roads, they don't know which of those in that database are restricted, because it's a different database than the streetlighting in general terms. Equally, even though they have an asset register of the streetlighting, is it correct to say that they do not necessarily know whether the streetlights are 185 metres apart or more, which is what would lead you to be able to identify? Is that the area of difficulty that we're experiencing and what we're hearing? That's not an issue that has been raised with me in the last two and a half years with Scots. However, it's an interesting point and certainly something that I would imagine Scots would be prepared to engage with Mr Stevenson and the committee on if he felt that was substantial. However, it hasn't been raised with me and I've had extensive engagement with Scots and councils over the past two years. John, you want to come in and then we're going to move to Jeremy Greene. It's a damning indictment on our local authorities if they don't know what they're responsible for. They are custodiors of public property. Highland council used to be able to tell you every lay by the owned, every salt deposit area. Similarly, I've had an asset ratio breakdown from Argyll and Bute. With the definition, you say that maybe there's a confusion and I'm disappointed with focus at once again on road signs. There's no dubiety that the council is required to maintain lighting in the areas that you're talking about, so that, by default, must know where these areas are. I think that was the point. We're going to move on to the next question, which is Jeremy Greene. I do feel we're not just focusing on road signs. This is a very important issue. If you read the overview of the bill, it says that the main purpose of the bill is to reduce the general speed limit on restricted roads to 20 miles per hour. That in effect is the premise of the bill and it's the route that you've chosen to take to introduce RAL and other approaches that may have been discussed. It's important that we get to the bottom of the issue. Can I just ask some simple questions around that to inform the committee? As the lead member is responsible for the bill, do you know how many restricted roads there are in Scotland? That information about a total road length of restricted roads does not exist because of the issues that we've just discussed. I have to say that that's a question that I asked two and a half years ago because I felt that it would be quite simple to say, well, here's the total road length of restricted roads in Scotland times that up by a certain number of signs and therefore that gives you an understanding of what the costs would be. However, I was informed and told by road officers and people who are professional in this area that that's not the way to work out how this cost, the way to work out how this cost is to look at where 20 miles an hour has been rolled out already to look at specifically Angus Council, where we took a model financial costing based on Angus Council, where we look at real settlements and what the signage requirements will be. I think that that makes sense because obviously if you're in an urban area, a large urban area, a large urban conurbation, there will be fewer entry and exit points out of a suburban area onto a through road than there will be in a smaller rural village. In a way, you need to look at what the roads are in Scotland and how the types of settlements that we have and build out an understanding of what the costs are and the implementation phases on that, rather than taking a figure and going all out times that by 20 miles an hour. I get it. We are going to talk about costs later in the session. I don't want to impose on other members who have questions on that. You've sort of preempted the reasons to why I'm asking the question. I'm asking for just some simple data. We're getting to the fifth evidence session of this, but no one's been able to answer some very basic questions such as how many restricted roads are there in Scotland, what's the total mileage of those, what percentage of roads are restricted roads, and, indeed, as we heard from the last evidence session, how many B roads are also designated restricted roads in Scotland. We had some evidence around, specifically, West Lothian, given by one panelist, but I have no idea how that correlates to other local authorities who may also have B roads. What I'm asking for is have you in the past two and a half years been able to answer any of those fundamental questions to give us an idea simply of the scale of the effect of the overview of the bill. In terms of creating national totals around restricted roads, no, but then, as I've already pointed out to you, this is a question that needs to be answered at a local level. What we have done is work with Scots on thinking through what an implementation plan would look like, the phase of work that local authorities would need to do to establish the exact layout of restricted roads within their area, which roads they would wish to retain as 30, and then plan to put up the signs and introduce the traffic orders to maintain that final network. So it is a level of implementation that we've been informed by councils needs to happen after the bill is enacted and to have a decent timescale between achieving rural ascent, if it does achieve rural ascent and implementation, to allow councils to do that detailed work. There isn't unfortunately a magic figure that exists out there. It is unfortunate, because I think it would help to put the premise of the bill into some context. It's unfortunate that no-one's been able to answer those questions, either the bill team or the local authorities in question. The letter that we did get yesterday, which I thank you to the clerks for forwarding it to us, is quite clear. It says that it may be accurate to state that we do not know the number of restricted roads in Scotland. It then goes on to say that nearly a third have no limited asset data to allow roads to be identified. My question is, at this stage—in proceeding as we're going forward with the bill—nearly a third of local authorities still not just do not know the answer to that question but feel that they don't even have the data to answer that question. So it seems to me that there's still a problem there in terms of the available data. I'm not saying who's fault that is or who's duty it is to collect it there. We can have a discussion around that, but it still seems to me that there's a fundamental problem with knowing and identifying which roads this bill will affect. That seems to me quite a fundamental flaw. I would say that it's a challenge that is well recognised. It's been well recognised since the inception of the development of this bill and is incorporated into the thinking around timescale for implementation and the kind of work that local authorities would need to do. We've had very detailed conversations with those that would have to implement this bill about what would be required to provide that certainty, and then to enable councils to go on and do that work with stakeholders and identify which roads they wish to retain as 30. I'm confident that this can be addressed. Thank you. I'm going to move on to the next questions, which are from Mike Rumbles. Mike Rumbles. Mark, one of my major concerns about the bill is that from the evidence that we've received, particularly from rural councils, is that they feel there's going to be a disproportionate financial impact on rural councils and rural authorities, which puts into question whether the financial memorandum is fit for purpose that's being produced for it. We've heard that, for instance, if I can just preface it by just saying, even where a successful council has done really good work with 20mph zones like Edinburgh, the evidence that they've given us is that it's going to cost them nearly a million pounds to adjust for this bill, taking down repeated signs, etc. That's going to cost a million per se. Then we've got rural councils such as Highland who do know, they gave us an evidence that they would have 700km of restricted roads. If I were to refer to the evidence that Borders Council gave us, they said, hang on, the accidents that have occurred in the borders are really to do with vehicles that are reversing, vehicles at very low speed. This issue isn't, from their perspective, important enough to decide where to put their financial resources. It will cost rural councils a hugely disproportionate amount of money to implement this on the grounds that you've mentioned, and I've mentioned, of course, that if you just take one village in Aberdeensia, I worked out that they'd have to put up, instead of having one sign entry and exit from the village, over 40 entry and exit signs. That's going to be repeated in every village in our rural authorities across the country. It will be an enormous cost. Do you have any response to that? Okay. There's quite a few issues in there, and I thank Mr Rumbles for raising some specific examples because sometimes we need to drill down into that to truly understand it. In terms of costs, the bill is largely predicated on estimates that were provided by Angus Council. Angus Council, as we all know, is fairly similar to much of rural Scotland. It has a mixture of urban towns and conurbations. It has smaller villages. It has hamlets. I believe that those costings are accurate. In discussions with Angus councils, they've factored in the possible requirement for buffer zones. They've factored in the—yes, I agree—inevitably higher costs of introducing signage in a relatively small village. Particularly the costs for entry signage for Scotland are based on Angus. There's a rural waiting in the bill. The costings have been waited towards those that rural local authorities would have to shoulder. There are issues about whether there's a disproportionate cost between one local authority compared to another. It's important that, if there was to go through, the Scottish Government could look at a way to equalise some of those costs. I appreciate that if you're in Clapmaninshire and you've already introduced 20 mile an hour on every single road and you're the smallest local authority in Scotland, you'll have less costs in terms of integrating your current scheme of signage international default taking down a few repeater signs than you would say for Highland Council, which has got a larger geographic area and would have more costs. It's important to recognise that. I would also say that the majority of rural councils have caused back this. Aberdeenshire was one of the few local authorities that was neutral on this. The board has had concerns, but Highland Council, you mentioned Highland Council back this. They support it. Orkney Council back it. Angus Council back it. Stirling Council back it. Numerous community councils across Scotland back this approach as well. The question about equalisation of costs according to the need of rural local authorities is a very valid issue that I think you raise, but I believe that the national estimates that we've provided are accurate. I've not seen figures that really show that we've underestimated in many ways. I guess the frustration is perhaps I have in terms of getting a clear understanding at this point from the Scottish Government about how they might change the signage regulations, because clearly if they decided to change the signage regulations to require repeater signs to remain up in 20 marna zones currently or to reduce the requirement for 30 repeaters, that could substantially reduce the cost of the bill even further. Unfortunately, I don't have that for committee at this point. Press you on the point that you're making about the support of rural councils in particular for the bill. I mean, I signed your motion to allow the bill to come forward because I'm very much in favour of 20 mile an hour. The question I have to ask myself on this committee is this to having seen the bill and taken the evidence and interrogated people on this, is this the best approach? And I'm just concerned that I've heard so much evidence from, I was particularly taken by the evidence from Borders Council that they don't think a blanket approach for 20 mile an hour will save lives, because the evidence they gave the committee was that in the very small instances when there are accidents in these areas that tends to be, as I say, reversing vehicles at low speed anyway, and at a time of financial constraints, why should they be spending a huge amount of money to solve a system from their point of view that doesn't exist? And the question I'm going to ask is really how recent are all these rural councils saying they support the bill, because if I had been asked if I supported the bill before I heard the evidence, I would have said, yes, I'm not so sure now. I would point to not just the consultation that I ran at the beginning of this process when we discussed the bill, but also your own consultation, the responses that you've had to this committee from councils. You've obviously taken evidence from one who's in favour, one against, you've had discussions with Highland Council, but the majority of councils are in favour. And I've ran seminars in Parliament over the last two years for councils to discuss the issues around 20 implementation. I've had rural councils such as East Lothian come to me and say, you know, we're not doing 20 anymore. We're not doing it anymore, because every time we try and introduce a 20 zone we get 55 objections and 50 of them are from the same person. So we're not doing this anymore. We're waiting for your bill to be enacted. So we have significant numbers of local authorities that are now not rolling out 20 because they want a national default and a significant number of those are rural councils. So this is what they're waiting for. I mean, I did earlier on talk about, you know, the views of borders and I accept that. This isn't a priority for them, but I would point again to the report that's being furnished for the committee, Majoran Davis, that shows the numbers of people who are seriously killed in built up areas in Scotland is significant. Those are built up areas that are in my rural community, they're in your rural community, they're not exclusively in the centre of Edinburgh in cities, they're everywhere where children and vulnerable people live. Can I just ask one question before we move on to the next one, because you've neatly net onto that. I was just having a look round and I mean, I just drove through Keith at the weekend, you know, on the A96, which would be not covered by the 20mph speed limit. Boringly, I counted 60 plus streets off the main road, each which would require signage one way and the other way, and I then went and looked around to find where the schools were and whether they were on that road, and I looked at the traffic on that road with the traffic lights. And truthfully, I didn't see it would make much difference to the signage and the law there, but it would be a vast cost. Do you think that that probably is reflected in many rural areas, or do you think that Keith is just exceptional? Keith is exceptional, by the way. Right, okay. I'm sure it is. I mean, I suppose I'm a little bit parochial in this, in that I spent a lot of time driving round Fife, and I have seen the way that Fife Council have implemented 20. There are some communities, such as Burnt Island and Aberdour, where the council has decided to take that through Arterial Road and also make that 20 as well, because it makes sense for that community, the way people cross the streets, where they access services, shops, the tourists that you have, the railway station, the police station, et cetera. But that's very much a decision based on the needs of that locality. It may be different in a rural community that has less of a residential character and is more arterial in nature, but those are decisions to be made locally. I'm going to stop you there just for the simple reason, because that very neatly leads on to Colin, and I'm going to bring Colin in, because you might want to ask some questions on that. Thanks very much, convener. When the cabinet secretary gave evidence to the committee, he seemed to suggest that he supported the concept of 20 mile an hour, but his view was that this wasn't the bill to deliver that. This wasn't the best method to achieve that. How would you respond to that, and what alternatives to this proposal have you looked at to deliver 20 mile an hour? I'm not clear what the alternatives would actually be. We've had a discussion in your committee about streamlining the traffic regulation order process, for example, but there's nothing inherently wrong with the traffic regulation order process. It's a system that's been designed to create exceptions from a rule. Simply streamlining a process to enable more and more exemptions from a rule doesn't make sense. Why not just change the rule and then continue to apply the regulation order process on the streets where you want to retain those as 30 mile an hour? I don't see what the alternatives are at this point. Again, I would point to some of the views coming from local authorities that they're either stopping the roll-out of 20 mile an hour because they're waiting for this bill to be enacted or to support the provisions of what we're attempting to do. I'm not clear what the alternative is. The system that we have at the moment is very painful and very slow for those local authorities that want to create a new default in their residential areas. For other local authorities, it's not delivering the kind of protection that we see for communities from 20 mile an hour. In your discussions with Government over this issue, in no time have they put forward an alternative proposal? I've not had that feedback. We've had detailed discussion with the previous transport minister, Hamza Yousaf. It was very constructive. We've been working with Transport Scotland officials who came to give evidence last week over quite a long period of time. The direction of travel has been to consider this proposal. No point has been put to me that there's an alternative waiting there to be brought in through streamlining TROs or removing the requirement for repeater signs or anything else. The view that I'm getting from local authorities is that while some of those potential streamlining of TROs may have some benefit, it's not going to fundamentally change the policies that they have at the moment. No organisation that you've spoken with has said that, if you streamline TROs, that will deliver 20 mile an hour any faster than what we're delivering at the moment. To be honest, I did ask that question almost two years ago. Is there a simple way to do this? Is it about me loving Scottish Government for more funding or streamlining TROs or whatever? The answer that I've consistently had back is that no national default does make sense. That's why I'm sitting here today at the end of a very long journey that I've been on. At no point have I heard an alternative that will achieve the objective of what this bill is trying to achieve, which is to ensure that there's a safer speed limit on the streets where people live, work and play. Do you want to do the question of 20 mile an hour? I suppose that one side issue is that I'm presuming that the TRO system would be willing to be used, but how would you expect a local authority to deal with the process of having to re-impose a 30 mile an hour zone on a restricted road, particularly where residents were in favour of that being 20 mile an hour and it would be by default be 20 mile an hour as a result of your bill? Again, this comes back to the important implementation phase. Again, we've discussed with councils and Scots how this would work. I think that what we wouldn't want to see is a situation where 20 mile an hour default limit is brought in for restricted roads and then six months or a year later there's a debate about, oh well maybe we should bring it back to 30 again, what do you think, or maybe we should keep it as 20. This needs to be as seamless as possible, and that means that there's a need for a substantial amount of time to allow local authorities to do several things. One, to bottom out the exact nature of their restricted roads. Secondly, to consult with communities and stakeholders, including the bus companies, who of course have legal obligations to stick to timetables as to which roads should be retained as 30, and then a third phase of phase rollout of the signage. It's important within that implementation phase to have that discussion with communities up front about where there is a case to retain 30 miles an hour and where it's appropriate. I have to say that there will be cases where we need to retain 30 miles an hour, and for very good reason, because many of our roads are arterial in nature. That needs to happen ahead of the implementation date of the bill. Mark, we've heard evidence, and we've seen some robust evidence, that the 20mph limits that are in place just now are regularly flouted. In fact, we see that speed limits have only dropped by one and a half miles an hour. Very often that's because the traffic is so busy that physically the traffic can only travel at 24 miles an hour, and that's what you end up with. What we're seeing is that the 20mph that do exist are regularly flouted, and we've also heard from Police Scotland saying that they wouldn't put any extra resource in place to enforce the 20mph limit, because they haven't got any other resource. My question is really, if people get used to the fact that they can flout the 20mph limit on a regular basis and do, is that going to have an effect on the general perception that 60mph and 70mph speed limits can be flouted as well, because that's what we're doing on a regular basis in Edinburgh, and we can do it elsewhere? Mark, just before you answer that question, if I could just make an observation that the evidence that we heard from the police who, when they visited the committee, were subsequently corrected and they did make it clear that if you're going to do over 20mph in Edinburgh, they will enforce it, and they do have the capability to enforce it. I don't want anyone feeling that what they heard at that committee session gave them the ability to break the law, but the police made it clear that they will enforce it. What they said is that they would choose where they chose to enforce it based on accident black spots. Mark, if I could let you go back to your question. The current situation that we have with 30mph roads is that over half of people travelling on 30mph roads break the speed limit. They go faster than 30mph, so we have a compliance issue in relation to 30mph. If you look at the numbers of people going between 20mph and 24mph on a 20mph speed limit road, it's broadly similar in terms of compliance with those travelling on a 30mph road. I don't think that we're seeing a dramatically different issue in terms of compliance. The issue for the police, obviously, is that they have limited resources. They don't have the officers at the moment to stand on every single street corner on a 30mph road with a speed camera and enforce that, which is why an approach towards education and amplifying the enforcement activity so that when people, as the convener has just done in this session, the perception that you may be caught speeding and that speeding is socially unacceptable becomes more the norm and we transform social attitudes over time with that. The important point that was raised again by this report, which we've just circulated to committee, is that the police do recognise that they need to put in place some upfront enforcement with this bill to become law. That's something that Stuart Carl has commented on in this report, which we've furnished to committee. The police recognise that they have a role to play, partly in education but partly in terms of targeting their enforcement activity on roads where speeding is particularly high. I know that Mike has a question. Mike, why don't you come in with yours and then I'll come back to you. Thank you. I just wanted to challenge Mike's response there, because it's contrary to the information that we have from the SPICE briefing about enforcement. It's quite clear in the SPICE briefing that the information... I don't have it in front of me, but I remember the evidence that we used, which was when people are driving a 30 mile an hour zone, most motorists and the average speed of motorists is within the law. When people are driving in a 20 mile an hour zone, certainly in Edinburgh, that was the evidence from SPICE, that most people and the average speed that people undertake is more than 20 miles an hour. What we've got a situation, and I'm not saying that this is right or wrong, I'm just wanting you to address the facts here. The facts are that with a 30 mile an hour zone, most people are law-abiding, and with a 20 mile an hour zone, most people are not law-abiding. Do you accept that? I come back to that figure again that most people driving on a 30 mile an hour road are breaking the law. They are driving at more than 30 miles an hour, and perhaps even more importantly than that, they're driving at a speed, which if they hit a pedestrian, they'll be seven times more likely to survive. The evidence that the committee received with the SPICE briefing, the SPICE briefing for Edinburgh, I think John might have it in front of him. So maybe if I could come so briefly back on the point about are we criminalising people effectively by dropping the speed limit? There's a sort of rule of thumb, if you like, that the police apply to detection and prosecution of people who are speeding, and it's an acceptable variance, let's say, from the speed limit. That rule of thumb is 10 per cent of the speed limit, plus two miles an hour. So if you look at the numbers of people driving on a 20 mile an hour road who are travelling between 20 and 24 miles an hour, it's broadly the same levels of compliance with 30 miles an hour. So I don't get the sense that we're criminalising a large number of people by dropping the speed limit. In fact, over time, as people understand the implications of driving at a higher speed and they understand the implications, if they get caught driving at a higher speed, then speed limits will drop further. Essentially what the SPICE briefing does, and it's difficult to describe because there's a table here, but what, sorry, a graph rather, it was on page 2 from earlier weeks, and this is, I think, from DFT statistics, but in fact, what it shows is that the range of vehicle speeds from those who are breaking the speed limit at 39 mile an hour down to those going under 20 mile an hour, that range of speeds shifts on 20 roads towards 20 miles an hour. I've got it right in front of me now. It's hand-produced by John Finnie. On page 6 it says that the average speed, this is about Edinburgh, the average speed of vehicles on the streets provided with a 20 mile an hour speed limit has dropped by an average of one point mile an hour from 22.8 mile an hour to 20.9 miles an hour. So when it dropped when the speed limit was 30 miles an hour, the average speed was 22.8. Most people were obeying the law. When it was dropped 20 miles an hour, the average speed was over 20 miles an hour. It's quite clear in the SPI's briefing of the Edinburgh statistics. Surely we should accept the statistics that the SPI's briefing is produced. Very briefly on that, I mean that's an average speed reduction. So an average is made up of a number of people driving at different speeds, some of them going very fast, some of them going slower than the average speed, and you divide it by the number of drivers and you end up with an average speed reduction. So that doesn't tell you that everybody is suddenly driving at one point nine miles an hour slower. What it shows, and I think what some of the studies in Edinburgh show, is that on the higher speed roads you get a greater reduction of speed, greater reduction of speed than drivers driving on a slower speed road. And it stands to reason, because if you implement 20 mile an hour on a road where it's difficult to drive at 20 mile an hour because it's incredibly narrow and it's residential in character, then speed reduction obviously will be very low on that road once it's had a 20 mile an hour limit imposed. However, if you're putting 20 mile an hour on a road which is faster, then of course you'll get a greater reduction. So this is an average, it's not a kind of a mean, I'll look at Stuart Steele. Mark, I'm trying to get you to look at me because you look at, and I give you a huge amount of credit for attending every evidence session doing this, and you will have heard me say that when I wag on my pen, you're probably getting to the end of your answer. And I know Maliki would like to come in, so I'd like to bring him in, and then I'd like to go on to Stuart and then come back to Peter. So Maliki, sorry. I just want to answer that to say that the second spice briefing that was presented to the committee showed that 52% of drivers on a road with a 30 mile an hour speed limit exceed those speeds, so most speed drivers are going above 30, but the point clearly is that at 20.9 miles per hour is not breaking the law, and the police are not going to stop anyone and tell them that if they were driving at 20.9 miles per hour that they get a ticket and they've said as much. Well, I think the point is that it's very easy to buy into a reduction of a speed limit to 20 miles an hour in Edinburgh if you're never doing 20 miles an hour because of the traffic conditions, but that may be a different argument. I'm going to bring in Stuart and then I'll go back to Peter and then move on to the next question. Just a very brief one and then a slightly less brief one. Is the member aware of the construction and use regulations that covers the calibration of speedometers in vehicles actually provides that they only have to be accurate to plus or minus 10 per cent? That is why the 10 per cent issue, because you legally can be sitting in your car, your speedometer is reading 30 miles an hour, your actual speed can legally be 33 miles per hour. Therefore, that's why the 10 per cent actually exists. Therefore, if you were to be stopped and taken a quote at 33 miles an hour, you would have a legal defence that your speedometer was saying 30 miles an hour and that's why that is. Is that your understanding? I saw nodding head so I don't think I need a response to your question. Therefore, 20.1 is within the 22 miles an hour limit. Now, it is really just to pick up on the report that the Transport Research Institute has hopefully provided. We've covered a lot of it, but there's a little bit on page 3 at paragraph 3. General agreement, greater levels of road traffic policing results in low numbers of collisions and injuries in traffic violations. We've got a conflict here in that when I moved to page 4, the report that, in essence, the police are not particularly forcing, at the very end, above the footnotes on page 4, that they're basically enforcing in rural areas where the speeds are higher rather than urban areas. Yet, in the casualties numbers, we see that the majority of fatal and serious are actually in built-up roads in urban areas. Is that an issue that the police in their observations that have provided to the committee so far have adequately addressed, although I do note again that the report says that the police intend to have at least a six-month period of special enforcement after the implementation of this bill? I'll just briefly answer that by saying that we've had detailed engagement with Police Scotland. We recognise that they are in a difficult position. They have resource constraints in need to prioritise where they can deliver the most public benefit in terms of their policing, but it was part of the reason why I've commissioned this work from Professor Adrian Davis and the Scottish Institute for Policing Research to really help the police to drill down into this data and to consider how they would react to a national default, and where they may choose to prioritise their resources. It's welcome that they've acknowledged that there would be a need for strong police involvement in the initial six months, but there is a question there that needs further discussion with the police around built-up areas and this level of seriously injured people and whether we have the balance right. Peter, you wanted to follow up on one final thing. I mean, as I said very often, the traffic is travelling at around 20 miles an hour, not because it's a limit, but because the traffic conditions are such that the amount of traffic is such that it's physically impossible to go any faster than that at peak times. I'm just going to focus in and out with peak times. When traffic levels are a lot lower, the temptation will be for many drivers to drive above the 20-mph limit, because at that point in the day they can. I accept that there's a duty on the police to enforce 20 miles an hour, but I also accept what we've heard that there's no more resource to do that. The end result is going to be that many more drivers are going to be breaking the law, end of story, and I'll just ask you to accept that that is a reality. I may be asked perhaps Andrew Milne just to talk about where we think there may be an increase in terms of fines and that side of things. I think that the evidence is quite clear from Atkins and other studies that 20 miles an hour doesn't undermine other speed limits. In fact, speeds reduce on surrounding 40 and 60 miles an hour roads. Overall, it's reducing speed. Will there be variants throughout the day? Well, yes, but I think that you've also heard evidence from Police Scotland that they're not saying to people that it's okay, it's three in the morning, speed up, you can rumble down rule mile at 40 if you want. There are implications every time of the day if people speed and part of this is about education. If you are driving fast through the centre of Edinburgh at 3am in the morning, there may be fewer pedestrians on the road and less traffic, but there may be people who are particularly vulnerable as well who could step out in front of your taxi or your vehicle. The message here and the understanding of the impact of speeding is a process of engaging drivers in that and understanding not just the implications if you get caught, but also the implications if you are in an accident could be extremely serious for your career and for the wider community and all of the individuals involved, not just the person who is in the accident, but the driver as well. Maybe just briefly, but Mr Milne could just explain our fine income. Do look to your left as well because you may find your researcher might want to add something to what you are saying. Andrew, yes, head on. Well, certainly when we were doing the financial memorandum, we did take into account levels of compliance with speed limits and we have a table, table 1 on page 4, which gives current statistics for levels of compliance with different speed limits. It backs up, I think, what Mark was saying just a few minutes ago about that there might be some greater level of non-compliance on 20 miles an hour, but it is not as great as you might otherwise think. We use that as a basis for then working out what additional costs might arise if there was a need for a greater number of prosecutions and penalties and so forth. All of that is very carefully costed, but we also say of course that although that is based on a certain number of assumptions and it comes up with certain numbers, if the bill is successfully implemented with an effective public information campaign that succeeds in changing the culture, as is the intention behind it, then of course levels of compliance may not go up at all, so there is a possibility of some of those costs being avoided, but we have costed quite carefully on the basis of some increase in speeding. Which needs, I think, needs neatly on to you, Jamie? Thank you, convener. We do spend a lot of time in this. I think that the member probably shares a lot of frustration around the narrative of this as we focus on numbers and percentages and the costs. I would like to talk about the costs, because they are important, but before I do so, I just want to share a short anecdote. I usually promote active travel, the member will be aware, but I chose to drive to work this morning from my home in Edinburgh and at 20 miles per hour or less the entire journey, of course, as I always do. That experience is important. We put it in the context of what motorists experience either, because in the real world this is about what happens out there among driver behaviour and among pedestrian and cyclist perceptions of the safety of the word. I think that this really gets to the crux of this bill. Throughout that journey, I had two cars overtake me because I was driving too slow in their eyes. One pulled out in front of a bus and another cyclist overtook me because they thought I was going too slow on a downward hill. Another driver sat so far close to my rear bumper that I could see the whites of his eyes. Do you understand people's genuine concerns over the idea that not everyone will drive at 20 miles per hour? When you try to do so, it can be incredibly difficult. I think that the Edinburgh experience is interesting. We have all got our own experiences of driving in Edinburgh and cycling in Edinburgh and walking in Edinburgh. I would point to the evidence that was presented to the committee by Ruth Jepsen, who is doing the largest study anywhere in the UK into 20 mile an hour rollout, which shows that public objection to 20 in Edinburgh has gone down over the last year. I do not deny that there are those who may be frustrated driving at 20 mile an hour. I think that there is a question around the appropriate selection and retention of 30 mile an hour limits on arterial roads. There are certainly roads where I think it is important to retain 30 miles an hour because those are the roads that are arterial in nature and are needed. We need that high speed limit for traffic flow. If they are largely non-residential, then there may be a case for those roads to be 30 miles an hour. That is a local decision for councils to make. There will be discussion around whether councils have made the right decision. I know that there is that discussion in Edinburgh about whether all the roads need to be 20 or whether some could be 30 or whatever. There needs to be a judgment there around what the function of that road is. Is it largely residential? Does it have an arterial function and therefore is it appropriate for it to be 20 or should it be retained as 30? Let us be clear that these are the minority of roads. I am not sure about your journey this morning, but if you were driving through a residential housing estate in a suburb of Edinburgh, I presume that perhaps people were not tailgating you there. They were perhaps more concerned if you were on an arterial road. In terms of relieving driver frustration, it is about choosing the appropriate roads to retain us at 30. I would again point to the evidence that you have had for Road Hologis Association. Road Hologis Association does not object to this bill. The professional drivers do not object to the bill. What they want to see is an appropriate retention of a 30 arterial network. I absolutely share their view. I agree with Road Hologis Association on that point. We need to retain roads as 30, but let us be clear that those are the minority of roads within an urban environment. That is very helpful. Thank you for that response. Moving on to the cost issue that has come up time after time through evidence sessions. What is your understanding of the total potential cost of the implementation of this bill? That is relevant to either central government costs or local authorities, probably excluding any costs associated with police enforcement. The financial memorandum that we have worked on with Mr Millan and my colleague, Maliki, in conjunction with Scots, who represent those who will be implementing the bill, estimate a figure of between £21 million and £22 million over two years. The modelling that I indicated earlier in the session was based on figures provided by Angus Council and Edinburgh Council as to their existing 20-mile-an-hour roll-outs. I might ask Mr Millan perhaps to expand if that would be useful on how that financial modelling has been arrived at. Sorry, we could spend a lot of time getting into our algorithms behind it, but the top-line figure is that you have said £21 million to £22 million. Is that just local authorities or does that include the Crown Office, the Scottish Government and the courts? I am just looking at the table that I have in the briefing paper. It says that the annual cost in the first two years equates to £10.2 million to £11.9 million in our briefing, so I am just trying to correlate those numbers. How does that match with your £21 million? That is in the financial memorandum. Again, I cannot see the table that you have in front of me, but that is probably from the financial memorandum. There should be a table when it outlines costs for Scottish Government, Crown Office, prosecution service, local authorities, police, Scotland, etc. If that is what you are looking at, that is what I am looking at in front of me. Can we clarify that? I am slightly confused more in the sense that you are creating a figure of £21 million. The table in the bill is saying that in the first two years, it is £10.2 million to £11.9 million. Can you just clarify which one is it? I have got that. Thank you for explaining that to me. The comments that we received from Scots who I believe were participated in the costings. The author of some of the projections said that they thought that £19 million was at the low end and £33 million was at the upper end. Can we take, for example, the experience of Edinburgh? We did some FOIs with the City of Edinburgh Council and it came back that the cost of the 20 mile per hour project to Edinburgh Council was nearly £3 million, £2.96 million. I am just trying to put that into context. That is just one local authority. How do you then compare the experience of Edinburgh's substantial costs and doing it in one local authority versus a national roll-out of just £22 million? That is because Edinburgh was doing it under the current system. As you heard in evidence, it was at least double the cost on the official report. That is the cost of doing it under the current system, which is a lot higher. Maybe I might ask Mr Milne to explain a bit further. We have tried to explain in the financial memorandum as carefully as we can what the methodology is. Some of the calculations are not straightforward. We have data, as Mr Russell has said, from some particular authorities such as Angus and Edinburgh. We have tried to extrapolate from those to a national level. That is not an easy exercise because you cannot just multiply by 32, which is the number of local authorities from the basis of one, because that particular local authority that you are starting from will not be representative either because of its geography or the proportion of roads in built-up areas. Edinburgh will obviously have a very high proportion of its roads in built-up areas compared with other councils, for example, but also because some of those figures, as Mr Russell has said, are derived from the actual cost of implementing widespread 20s under the current regime, which is a relatively cumbersome and costly process. With the bill, many authorities who have not yet taken significant steps towards widespread 20s would be going through a different process post the bill, and the cost would therefore be different. The extrapolation is complex. All I can say is that we have tried in the FM to explain as carefully as we can, as openly and transparently as we can, the methodology that we have used. As with any FM, it is a matter of informed guesswork. It is not a scientific process, and we cannot claim that the numbers at the end of the document are the last word. There will be different ways of arriving at numbers, and different people in good faith will arrive at slightly different numbers. However, where we have made assumptions, we have explained what those are and where there are gaps where we simply cannot attach numbers to particular elements. We have said that, too. On that basis, I do stand by the figures that we have produced as a good, honest estimate of the realistic cost of that. As I say, other people may arrive at different figures, but what is striking is that the experts themselves have come up with broadly comparable figures. I should say briefly that this is based on the current regulations for signage. This is assuming that, on a 30-retained road, you may need repeaters, so we have cost £8 million for repeaters. If signage guidance has changed, it may not be required. We have assumed that existing 20-mile-an-hour repeaters will need to be removed because they are no longer an exception anymore. There is fault, therefore we do not need repeater signs. If Government would come to us and say, this is how we would like to change TSRGD, potentially those costs could be substantially reduced, but we have not based it on that. We have based it on the worst-case scenario at this point, and, as I mentioned earlier, we have based it on a rural model, where you would assume a greater proportion of exit and entry signs because communities are smaller. I think that we have been quite accurate in terms of our costing. I spoke to Scots last night, and again, they are content that what we have at this point is robust. The other thing that Scots said in his letter that he submitted yesterday is that adequate funding should be provided to local authorities to do that. The big question is where is this money coming from, because there is nothing in the Frenchman random that states that the Government, central government, will give local authorities any additional funding to implement the change. Whether you agree with the final numbers in the FM or not is a matter for debate, but there will inevitably be a cost of at least £20 million. My understanding is that the brunt of that will be borne by local authorities. It is fair to say that we have had representation from local authorities who are concerned about those costs. Where do you think that money should come from? Who should pay for the implementation of what is in effect the central government policy? There is a change in the national default limit for restricted roads. I do believe that the national government should be paying for the bulk of those costs. There are local authorities, of course, who have tried to do that under existing budgets. Over many, many years, Clackmannanshire, for example, used their road safety budget and tried to ration it out to introduce 20 exemption after exemption. Other councils have done the same. However, if this is a national roll-out, there clearly would be a role for the Scottish Government in this. If you look at procurement of signage, for example, there could be opportunities there for arms-length companies that local authorities run, such as Tayside contracts to be engaged in sign manufacture, but it is certainly a discussion with Scots that they are seeing that an element of national procurement would be the most cost-effective way to deliver that. Before we leave the issue, we heard from the cabinet secretary that the marketing figure that has been put in there may be very low and suggested that, if that was to be rolled out, it would have to be a substantially higher figure. Do you have a comment on that? The figure that we have in the financial memorandum is based on the cost of a typical national campaign. The Scottish Government already has a budget for those national campaigns. We have assumed an uplift of that of around half a million to provide a particular focus on 20-mile-an-hour national education. It would be the choice of government about whether they wish to go further, particularly if they wish to introduce a multi-annual campaign that could last for longer than two years. They currently have an existing budget for that. Is there a case to go beyond that? I think that it would obviously be based on reflection about what the benefit had been over the first year of funding a national campaign like that and whether it needed to be substantially increased over time. To go back to the bill, the bill is predicated on a modest reduction of average speed, which is currently done by local authorities that do not have hardly any budget to do that kind of work. Clackmannshire did no educational work with the police very little when it introduced 20. Anything that the Government would do beyond that, you could rightly assume that it would help to drive that culture change even further, but that would be a choice for the Government. I think that he suggested that national marketing campaigns would cost significantly more than that. He would have better experience than me. I am going to go to the last question, which is Richard Lyle. Do you want to pick up what Mark has just said? He has just said that he thought that this is a national initiative for this bill. It should be the Scottish Government to foot the bill and not our local authorities. That is what you have just said. Why did you put in the financial memorandum up to £20 million for local authorities and only £450,000 for the Scottish Government that does not bear in mind what you have just said? Because local authorities would have to pay in the first instance, but, as we know through Government investment in road safety and active travel, budget lines can appear in the Scottish Government to support local authorities to do work that national government feels important, and there is a partnership there with local authorities. Most councils— Did you not think that it was important when you were presenting a member's bill to be absolutely clear where you think—you are the member in charge of this bill, and you have just said in verbal evidence to us just now that you feel that this should be funded on a national basis, and yet the evidence that you have presented to us in written form in the financial memorandum, you have said the opposite. You have said that £20 million should come from local authorities and only £450,000 from the Government. Why is that? What the financial memorandum says is that local authorities would need to spend that money in order to bring about a national default 20 mile an hour. That is correct. Where do local authorities get their money from? Council tax, the Scottish Government, core grants, etc. I am not going to deny that there is a question there. There are huge savings from this, huge savings, some of which come back to local authorities. There is an upfront cost in this. Local authorities would bear that cost, but how that is funded is a question for the Scottish Government. The last question is from Richard Lyle. I hope that there is a brief question and a brief answer. To round up, when drink driving came in, people said that it would not work. When the no smoking ban came in, people said that it would not work. In regard to your bill, can you set out what you consider the likely benefit of the proposals of the bill and how that compares to other interventions that I have just mentioned? I think that it is very similar. This is a public health intervention. I think that you have heard that evidence from Professor Adrian Davis, who is an expert in public health. You have heard that from Dr Ruth Jepsen as well. This is a very cost-effective public health intervention. If you are looking at what the ratio is for cost-of-benefits, yes, £20 million to put the signs up to get this in place, but potentially £35 million of savings year on year on year. It was funny because that was a point that my son raised the other week. How would I feel if I knocked down a toddler? How would people feel if their loved one was killed? If that helps to save one life, it is worth all the millions of pounds, as far as I am concerned. It was a point because my son said to me, how are you getting on with the 21 hour bill? I said that I have a big committee session this week and I said that there is obviously going to be a little debate about costs. He said the words, you can't spend money to bring back somebody from the dead. That is probably a very good point to leave at. I would like to thank you, Mark, for the evidence that you gave him this morning. Clearly, you have presented your case and thank you for that. I would like to thank Malachi for coming in. I think that you had a chance to come in and Andrew, you had a few chances and Claudia, you had a chance to come in. Thank you very much for giving evidence this morning. I would like to now briefly suspend the meeting for five minutes and we will then move into closed sessions. Thank you very much.