 Rhaid i'n cael ei ddweud, ac wrth gwrs, y trofnod i wneud i'r gaelio'r FF28 i'r acfer mae 2018. Rwy'n cael ei ddweud i'r fre er mwyn i modelu'r ffermhwn o'r rhaid i'r byw i'r ydw i, ac rhaid i'n cael eu polegau i'r Ffにe i siarad honi i'r Stevensyn. Rwy'n ei ddweud i'r ysgelwch i'r jenderwysau 4, yma ychwanegu Transport Scotland yn ddiwedd anghyfsprinol, a rwy'n cael ei ddweud negell. The first panel is going to talk, but before they do, I want to just check with any members. Does anyone have any interests they want to declare? Okay, fine. This is our fifth evidence session on the Transport Bill Scotland, and as I said, we're taking it with two panels. The first will look at the proposals in the bill on double-ampavement parking, and the committee will then take evidence on the proposals relating to roadworks. I'd like to welcome Stuart Hay, the director of Living Street Scotland. I'd like to also welcome John Lord, the national director of Sustran Scotland. Ian Smith, policy and public affairs officer for Inclusion Scotland, and David Hunter, member for the Mobility and Access Committee for Scotland. I'm sure you're all well-versed in how the committee works, but you don't need to push any of the buttons. What I will do is I will call you in, and the gentleman on your left will make your microphone live, so you don't need to do anything. I try and warn people that if I'm waggling my pen, the faster it waggles, it means that you are really pushing to the end of your time, and I'd like you to wrap up relatively quickly. That will allow me to get everyone to come in, which is very important. The first question is from John Mason. Thanks very much, convener. Obviously, we are starting on pavement parking and so on, which I find an interesting subject. My first question, I suppose, is, well, do you broadly agree with what the bill is proposing, but linked to that, do you think it will actually happen? Last week, the committee, some of us, were in Glasgow in Union Street, which is one of the main streets in Glasgow. There are double yellow lines, and there were vehicles parked in the double yellow lines. It's one thing setting out something in the law, but it's another thing actually happening. Do you think that the proposed ban on pavement parking would actually happen, even if it was put into the law? Primarily, do you agree that it should be put into the law? We'd like to start off on that. Thank you for that question. Yes, it's very welcome. It's necessary. Councils need these powers, because we hear from people who talk about the impacts on their lives in terms of access, and I'm sure that some of the other panellists will talk about that. There are also issues about the damage that's done to pavements. They're not designed for vehicles. I think that it will work where it needs to work, whether the case is made by communities to get enforcement, that then enforcement will happen. I think that the biggest change will be through behaviour change, and I really welcome the Government's commitment to a behaviour change campaign, a publicity campaign behind it. So enforcement is part of it, and we do need to improve enforcement in all sorts of areas of parking and traffic line and other centres. David, do you want to come in there? Thank you. Yes, I certainly endorse what Stuart said. Yes, it is needed. I mean, as I'm sure you're all aware, there have been calls for this for years, decades possibly, from disability organisations as well as pedestrian organisations, because pavement parking does cause a real problem for a lot of disabled people, blind people, people in wheelchairs. Anybody really with a mobility difficulty is frequently disadvantaged by pavement parking. So the key test on it really is about enforcement. Is it going to be enforceable? I think our position really is that we think that would be strengthened by having the minimum possible exemptions or exceptions from the bill, from the provision so that if an attendant sees a car on a pavement, they know basically that they can tick it. We would also welcome the provisions for camera enforcement in the bill, which, given that there's, I think, about a dozen local authorities that don't have decriminalised parking enforcement so that it could enforce there. But we particularly would like to see the exceptions for loading and also bin collections, bin lorries waste collections, removed from the bill. Ian. I'm pleased that Scotland welcomes the principles behind the bill today. It's been a long time coming. It happened this morning bumping to Ross Finney downstairs. He brought in the first members' bill on this many years ago into the Scottish Parliament, so I'm sure he's still a desire to see that it's now finally in a Government bill and therefore has a chance of getting forward. We welcome it. It's very important for disabled people, as he's been said. It's actually about their rights. It's about being able to get out of their house to where they want to go safely on pavements, where at moments many are literally trapped in their house because vehicles parked in the pavements means that they can't get out on the wheelchair or they have other mobility pavements and impairments. Their visual impairments and vehicles parked in footpaths can be a danger to them, so it's about their rights to participate fully in society, and therefore we welcome the bill. One area that we are concerned about, however, is that the bill does not include the provisions that the previous members' bill had in relation to vanning parking adjacent to drop kerbs, and we'd like the committee to consider that. Are my colleagues all asking about that? You mentioned about enforcement. I think that that is crucial, and I'm sure we'll discuss that further in the course of the morning. If there isn't effective enforcement, then it isn't worth the paper that it's written on, and it will be up to local authorities to work with their local communities to ensure that those provisions, if they're enacted, are properly implemented and enforced. John, you get a chance because everyone else is coming in. I know, and there's always a danger going last that you just repeat everything that the people, your colleagues, have said. I totally agree with my colleagues on everything that they've said. I don't think that this will be like turning on a switch. We're not instantly going to solve the problem of parking on the pavement because it's become a societal norm over the past few years. In Scotland, over the past 10 years, car ownership has risen, and yet access to a car has not. More of us are three or even four car families, and that's becoming more normal, and that means that there are more cars around looking for parking spaces. This is an issue that's become a societal norm. It will take time to change it. It won't just be changed by addressing the law, as you've said. Mr Mason, because we have a very wooly approach to parking enforcement in Scotland at the moment, it's not always clear, and it can vary local authority to local authority. So there's also an element of changing our behaviours, and that takes time. We strongly support and welcome the fact that this element is in the bill because it does address, as people have said, a human need to make it easy for people to get out of their house and get down the pavement where they live, unencumbered. I have quite a major route in my constituency, and it's reasonably wide road with reasonably wide pavement, but it's got buses on it as well, which I would guess helped disabled people and others. I think that in order to keep the buses and the traffic moving so that there's two clear lanes for traffic, the council has painted white lines at the side, which strongly encourages cars to put two wheels on the pavement. That still leaves 1.5 metres, I would suggest, for people to get passed. I think that road works, I have to say. There's plenty of room on the road for two large vehicles to pass. There's room for vehicles to park outside their houses, and there's room for pedestrians, with or without wheelchairs, etc., to get passed between the car and the hedge. If that system is working, are we not causing more problems by forcing the cars fully onto the road? Does that not slow down the buses? Does it not slow down the fire engines? Are we not just going to create more problems for ourselves? I think that what you're talking about there is exactly the type of street that could be exempted via the bill. We are comfortable with the provision for doing that. It's locally led, so you can look at the type of street, the provisions and the impacts on people with disabilities. I think that that's the key to it. You can create that type of facility by putting a line on the pavement provided that there's sufficient access for people to use the pavement. If there's justification for that, councils can do that under the bill. What it does in the bill is that it makes that process a lot simpler in terms of the procedures that it has to go through. I think that the bill is just a more efficient way of managing parking. Does anyone else disagree with that, David? I don't disagree with that. Max has slightly reluctantly, I think, accepts that there's a case for local authorities to make decisions on local circumstances if the situation that you describe, basically the pavement parking isn't a problem. It doesn't actually cause problems for disabled people or other people, basically if it works. I think that there is a case for local decisions being made on local circumstances, so we don't object to that provision in the bill. So long as there's a proper equality impact assessment on the circumstances, what we are concerned about and object to is the blanket exemption for loading and for bin lorries in particular that would apply everywhere. We're going to come on and ask about loading. I'm just more specifically on the cards. Can I bring Jamie in and then come back to you, Jamie? You had a small... Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. This is a fascinating discussion. The good news is that I think there's cross-party support for the essence of what the bill is trying to achieve. However, there are concerns that have been shared to us locally as members. One of those is that, by simply banning the parking on pavements, and I don't mean to fill four-wheel parking in many or most cases, one could argue it's two-wheel parking that occurs in many of our local streets, but we're not reducing the number of cars that are in a household, nor are we making any additional parking spaces or facilities available to people. It's a quite simple question. Where do those cars go? Where do you think they're going to go? Isn't it the case at the moment that some elderly people with mobility issues quite like to be able to park outside their house to save them having to walk many streets away where there may or may not be an exemption? My issues are in displacement here. Could an unintended consequence of this be that we create huge traffic issues in small communities? I think that it's important to quality's issue here. We shouldn't be creating conflicts between vehicles and pedestrians and between disabled people and non-disabled people in terms of road management. It's important that, when looking at car parking, we don't just look at the harassment part, we look at the whole access issues and ensure that there's proper equality impact assessments of any decisions that are taken. The problem with vehicles parking on footpaths is that if the footpath isn't wide enough, like the case that Mr Mason referred to earlier, that blocks access to the footpath for pedestrians. Why should pedestrians be treated less favourably than motorists? It's important to get the balance right. It's a responsibility of local authorities not just to say that cars have to park here because there's nowhere else to park, but to look at how they deal with the shortage of car parking in communities and work with local communities about where cars can safely park and ensure that the access for disabled people, mothers with pushchairs, elderly people with mobility problems are resolved. One other issue is that vehicles parking on footpaths can damage footpaths and that can create—even if the vehicle isn't there, the footpath may be broken and that may cause trip hazards, etc. for people with visual impairments or mobility impairments. It may make it difficult for a wheelchair to pass. There are a number of issues about vehicles parking on footpaths, which are quality issues and need to be taken into account in that way. Can I come back? I know that it's not my question session, but there's no question of anyone around the qualities aspect of access to pavements. I said that that's not the intention of my question. My question is a simple one. The vehicles are not going to disappear. There's nothing in the bill that makes any provision for facilities to be made available to people, so, perhaps, if anyone else is answering that, they may like to contemplate that. Stuart, I'll bring you in briefly and then I'd like to come back to John. We've suggested in our evidence that local authorities should have a parking strategy. I think that this problem has built up over 40 years and we need to manage it and we need to be creative about how we do that. There is probably workplaces and evenings that have empty car parks right next to very congested streets, so could we use that type of space? I'm generally just looking at car ownership in general and new models of car ownership such as car clubs and that sort of things. In areas with real pressure and city centres, that's where car clubs can really come into their own. Removing parking, we'd incentivise some people that probably don't use their car very often, might actually benefit, but while you've got a car, you won't join a car club, so it's changing our mobility profile. John. So, just really one final point. I mean, balance was mentioned in there, I think, by Mr Smith, which I totally agree with. Do you think that the process for exempting streets, which councils would be able to do, strikes the right balance? Is that going to cover the right streets? I mean, we got the impression that Edinburgh's not sounding like it was going to do very many, and there will be a cost and there will be a hassle for the councils. Do you think that there's a right balance in here? I think that it depends on the regulations and directions that the Scottish Government ministers give under the terms of the bill. I think that if the directions are very clear that exemptions, there needs to be a positive case to be made for an exemption rather than you have to make a case against an exemption, I think that that will help. One of the key aspects of that is that there has to be proper involvement, engagement with the local community, and there has to be a proper look at the equality impact issues relating to exemptions and that the access, particularly for disabled people and others who may find difficulty if cars are parked on the pavement, is properly taken into account before an exemption order is made. However, the onus should be on a positive case having to be made as to why an exemption is needed in a particular case and it should be kept to a minimum. As we are on exemptions, it needs to be on to Mike's question, Mike. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. I want to focus on one specific exemption in the bill, which is a concern over the proposed 20-minute exemption for pavement parking for loading and loading for businesses in major vehicles. You'll be aware at the moment that the law says that you may not drive on pavements, simple as that, but we know what happens. What we are doing with this bill is giving illegal basis for people to do just that, because you have to drive on to the pavement to do it. What are your thoughts on this 20-minute exemption? One of my thoughts is that if we say in the bill that there is a 20-minute exemption, that may very well become the norm, rather than the exception. Any views on that? Do you want to go on that? Thank you. I completely agree with you. I think that there is a real contradiction that this bill would reinforce as it is drafted between the fact that to drive on a pavement is illegal, but to park on it for 20 minutes would be legal. I think that the principle that we would really like to see is that pavement parking is not allowed unless there are exceptional circumstances. I would also endorse what other people have already said about creating that culture, where it is seen as anti-social to park on a pavement. I think that to allow you to park on a pavement for 20 minutes would really run counter to that and undermine that creation of a culture that is not a decent thing to do to park on a pavement, because it does cause pedestrians problems. Because of that, we do not think there should be any exemption for loading whatsoever. We think that it will create real enforcement problems for parking attendants, and we think that it will actually mean that parking attendants will only ticket vehicles that they know have been there for some time, not 20 minutes, but probably a couple of hours by the time they go back and they pass a vehicle and they note that it was there before. So, they will actually pass pavement park vehicles, particularly in town centres and areas, because the loading, as you say, it is about loading. It is not just about delivery vehicles. People going into the shops to collect some goods could say that they are loading. We think that many tickets issued will be appealed on the basis that people say that they were loading. So, the simplest thing to do, the clear and simple position, is not to permit loading throughout the country, distinguishing that from the question of exempting particular areas. Does anyone want to follow up on that? If I could go on then to another question. Is there a compromise here? I know you were saying, David, that you would not agree with us at all, but I am always looking for a balance here. I know that, in written evidence, Stuart, your organisations have suggested that it might be acceptable if there is a gap, say, of one and a half metres for disabled, for pedestrians, for people who use our pavements. Is the solution, rather than that David suggests, a total ban and removal from this with a bill, or is there a compromise, as you suggest, Stuart, perhaps, where there is a one and a half metre gap? If there is, how would that be enforced? Yes. I think that the simplest way is to remove the clause, but if the committee felt unbalanced, they were not going to do that. I think that there is another option. This is an overarching clause about obstruction, which could be defined in guidance. Part of the problem with existing laws is that obstruction is not very well defined, so the police do have powers on that, but they never use them. It would be getting around that, that we could say, right, whatever you cannot obstruct pavements. Then it is down to the driver to make a value judgment on whether they are or not, and for the enforcement person to come along and do a simple measurement and say, well, I actually can't get a wheelchair passed there, so this person is broken the law. I think that that could work fairly easily if we get the law right and say obstruction is not allowed and we get the guidance right that says, this is what it looks like. I think that that could work as a potential compromise. Can I just ask, to bear in mind a real-life example, every morning when I come into the Parliament at about 7 o'clock, there is a lorry double part that unloads everything on to the pavement. It doesn't obstruct the pavement, it doesn't obstruct it physically, it just obstructs it with all the crates and cages and food and waste that's going out, and it's a transfer process. Surely, if we don't allow something, would you not believe that it would just create a different problem that isn't covered by the legislation? Does anyone want to comment on that, John? Related to that, I think, and to Mr Greene's point, is that we've not thought about how we've designed our streets for years. The redesign of streets is really important. Loading bays, for example, might be an easier way for a parking enforcement officer to place a loading bay so that somebody doesn't double park in the loading bay and therefore forces commercial vehicles on to the pavement or to double park. Where Sustrans comes in, I suppose, is in place making and construction and design, and where we have worked with communities—we've got a great example in Dumfries, where we worked with a long, narrow Edwardian street where there was a lot of double parking and parking on the pavement, and we worked with the residents of the street in conjunction with Dumfries and Galloway's housing department. It was the residents who came up with a brilliant solution to the parking issue, and we've redesigned the street and it works much better now, and that's because people applied a bit of thinking to how the street would function and built in loading bays. It seems to me that a designated area for a commercial vehicle to stop and unload in a street or in an area would be much better and easier to enforce than an exemption. We need to spend a bit of time thinking about that and how we deliver within the urban realm. We've not thought about that at all, and as internet shopping has grown, we've given absolutely no thought to that at all. I think that we could learn quite a bit from our northern European neighbours who do this much better and do it in a much more planned way. It goes back to the parking strategy point that Stuart mentioned. A small follow-up, and then I'd like to move on to the next question for Maureen. I asked the bill team where the 20 minutes came from, and their reaction was that it just appeared. There doesn't seem to be any scientific basis for putting a 20 minute allowance in the bill. If that section wasn't removed at stage 2 or 3, what would you feel about reducing the 20 minutes to say a lesser amount, and what should that be from your perspective? David, do you want to do that? I'm at the risk of repeating myself. Any limit—20 minutes, 10 minutes, whatever—gives a parking attendant a difficult job. I think that they should be able to ticket a vehicle when they see a pavement park. Similarly, I don't entirely agree with Stuart about the 1.5-metre obstruction issue. Again, realistically in practice, going back to the enforcement question, the very first one, I think that you need to make it as simple as possible to enforce, which means that pavement parking is not permitted except in exceptional circumstances. I'll have to move on, just relevant of the time. Maureen, I think that you're the next question. Thank you, convener. I'd like to focus on dropped kerbs. We've had several witnesses who have called for the bill to prohibit parking in front of dropped kerbs. As a constituency member, I've certainly had calls for this in relation to motability vehicles and wheelchairs, but I've also dropped kerbs in terms of cyclists. Can I ask what your view is on this proposal? More importantly, how could it work in practice? Ian was waiting to come in on the last question, which I excluded him from, for which I apologise, but you can have the first chance on this one. Thank you, convener. Drop kerbs are essential for people with mobility problems. They enable people with wheelchairs or other mobility problems to cross roads without which they are trapped. Preparing our evidence for the previous Member's Bill in the last Parliament, we asked Members for examples of it. Some of the cases came back were things like that. Part across the drop kerbs meant that I had to go round the block to find somewhere where I could cross the road, and I missed a doctor's appointment. It's that important. It stops people getting from where they need to be. At the end of the day, it stops people getting out of their house because they haven't got confidence that they can get to where they want to be, and they will not go out. That causes social isolation and other problems. There may well be buses that help disabled people, but they can't get to them because the drop kerbs are blocked and they are not much used to them. I think that there are huge issues about drop kerbs that need to be addressed. I don't understand why the Government has dropped this from the Bill. There is some talk about them bringing it through all of the secondary legislation. It doesn't seem to make sense to me. There should be a blanket ban on parking on drop kerbs with the option for local authorities to make exemptions if they can make a strong case, why an exemption should be made in a particular case. That would be the way to do it, and it's better done through primary legislation where it's clear, along with parking on pavements, that that is not acceptable. I just see you all nodding your heads. I'm assuming that you will agree more. So, would you paint double yellow lines in front of them, or would you just have it like in your highway code or whatever, knowing that you shouldn't park in front of a drop kerb? I think that if, for example, bus stops, you're not allowed to park in bus stops, and that's just a general provision. You don't have to mark it as a bus stop, but it's fairly obvious that a bit of a kerb is dropped and that it's a drop kerb. If the law says that you cannot park in front of a drop kerb, you cannot park in front of a drop kerb. You don't need any further markings to designate it. The next question, then, is Richard Lam. Thank you, convener. My question is mainly to Stuart Haber, to the other members of the panel, who may want to come in, of Living Street Scotland. In written evidence, she asked for clarity as to which pedestrian areas are covered by the proposed prohibition. Can you explain why the current definition is not sufficiently robust and how that could be rectified? We were involved in the previous members' bill, and there was a lot of debate about that aspect of defining things. I think that using the talking about fruit waste is good and very clear, and it refers to another act. There are lots of different types of paths, and we think that the bill captures all those different types of paths, but we certainly have had a debate with a colleague from Sustrans about whether it captures all those paths. It is just a question that we are posing that makes it very clear for motorists and very clear for enforcement that every area where people either walk or cycle on is covered. That is the point that you are making, is enforcement. Bus lanes and loading bays should not park in them, but we goodbye and we see people parking in them. How frustrating is that? I could mention quite a number of pedestrian areas where I have seen cars coming down or even lorries coming down to deliver. None of these have been possibly driving lorries, but people have to deliver stuff to shops, and some of them are located within pedestrian areas. What do we do about that? Does it really come down to the point that my colleague made, John, about the factor of being enforced? If we pass a law, it has to be enforced, or is it not a case that laws, people just accept a law and obey the law, and we do not need to enforce it? I think that there is a bit of both, to be honest. I think that there is an acceptable behaviour for some people, not everybody, but that needs to change because people need to realise the impacts that this has, and then you do need a fallback of some sort of enforcement, and some councils are better geared up to do that than others in terms of they have a good regime in place that they can gear up for this bill in other places. They are going to have to think quite creatively and they may have to borrow some of the capacity from neighbouring local authorities to do that. What will happen is that there will be specific streets with a specific issue where the communities get real concerns and there will be a blitz and then the problem will go away. It will not be an inspection on every street all the time. It is just not going to go that way, but we need the ability where there are real problems to send the team out. Hopefully, you can give people warnings in advance of that, saying that you realise that we will be around and it might not come to the point where you are actually dishing out fines, but there will be a hard core of people who just do not get this behaviour as unacceptable that will need to be tackled via enforcement. John Ewing? There are two things. Buchanan Street is a really good example of where you can mix early in the morning lots of delivery vehicles, lots of trades vehicles and yet the rest of the day it is a wonderful experience to be a pedestrian. I think that with good control that can work really well. The topic, thanks to Stuart for reminding me that I am not clear about and I think that I would like the committee to think about this, is increasingly in urban Scotland we want to see provision for segregated cycle lanes. Physically removed from the footway, usually by a small angle drop kerb and then a wide cycle lane, then a drop and then to parking. I am not clear in the bill and Stuart and I are not clear between us whether parking on a cycle lane will be prohibited. I wonder if we could have a check on that, because that is the way that we are going. There is a good demonstration project in Glasgow at the moment on Victoria Road, which will link Queen's Park to the Merchant City, but we have projects like that in now five cities in Scotland. It is very much following the Copenhagen style of how you allow people to get around and you do not mix cycling and pedestrians. I would like just to check on that because we are not entirely clear whether that would be prohibited. The next question is from Colin. I think that you have probably just answered my question, which is around cyclists and whether the bill currently goes far enough to protect cyclists. What you are saying is that it is not clear from the bill whether or not a ban on cycle paths is being proposed. Right. It is not clear to me whether that is covered in the provision. It is a technicality. I think that the spirit of it would be that you should not. However, it is whether technically you can. There is a great example of one of the very early lanes in Edinburgh where people did park on it. For one day, the evening news ran a big story about it. It has never happened again because people just got used to the social norm. All right, that is what it is for, fine, I get it now. I am not entirely clear. I think that double parking is a real issue for anybody who wants to get around on a bicycle because you are then pitching yourself right out into oncoming traffic or whatever. That one element needs to be tightened. The other element that I am more sanguine about is where you may have a vehicle parked for maintenance on a designated cycle way. In terms of a mixed-use path, it might be a former railway line that is used as a greenway. I think that it is there with some exemptions. I am sure that that could be managed. We manage it at the moment fairly well, but if it is a maintenance or a service vehicle rather than a member of the public parking. One of the points that I picked up is that there was a remote suggestion that you would try to de-conflict loading and unloading to times when there were not pedestrians on the street, which means probably an early start for some people. I know that it has been tried and I hear lots of complaints from people who object to their bins being emptied at 6 o'clock in the morning because they are trying to get an extra 10-minute sleep. Are you suggesting that Loris should be encouraged to deliver, say, in the period 6 to 7.30 before the main build-up of traffic? Was that your suggestion? Yes, I think that it is. There are good examples on the continent of large towns in small cities that function perfectly normally where they control when deliveries can take place and when they can't. I do not really see a reason why we cannot do that. I am not suggesting that it would be blanket, but I think that in some places it will work well. I go back to the Buchanan Street example, which seems to work particularly well. Does anyone else have a view on that? Maybe we will move Colin Strudell on to your next question. It is just a follow-up to the comment that John made earlier. John raised the project in Dumfries. I suppose that you have declared an interest as a local councillor and chair of the committee at that time. What that project did, and I am biased that it was a great project, but what that project did is it focused attention on the need to look again at the whole layout of streets to better balance cars and pedestrians and cyclists. Do you think that the bill will act as an incentive to do that, or is there anything else that needs to be put into the bill to strengthen the need to start to look again at the whole balance when it does come to public realm improvements such as that project in Dumfries? I think that it will focus attention on it. I think that it needs to—to Mr Greene's point, where you have high car ownership on a narrow street—it is exactly the type of project that local authorities need to adopt and roll out. I do not think that it will happen. My understanding from Edinburgh City Council is that anecdotally, it has done an analysis where they think that there will be a particular area. I have not got an exact figure, but they reckoned that it was a fairly small number of streets where they would have to put in some intervention. I think that it is a great example of the type of project that should be done—could be done. I think that the bill will lead to that. It will lead us all to think about how we park our cars, those of us who own them, and the impact it has on those who do not have access to a car. I do welcome it, and I think that we will see a gradual change. We will see more projects such as Queen Street as we go ahead. Jamie Greene, on the next question, is yours. Thank you. It has been a very interesting discussion. A few things have jumped out at me. Can I just check if we are confident—the panel is confident—that this lumping together of pavement parking and double parking is the best way to approach the issues, especially around things such as deliveries or dropping off goods at people's homes and so on, where the tendency may be to double park rather than pavement park, which I think we all agree is unacceptable. Do you think this—and indeed if the suggestion is that we include drop parking as well—that the three-year-old treated the same or should we treat them as separate occurrences that can be dealt with differently, if the bill does not do that at the moment? David, yes, sorry. Well, I think from Max's point of view, it's really pavement parking that we're concerned with. So double parking clearly causes a number of problems, cyclists, buses, car drivers, all sorts of things, but those aren't really the problems that affect disabled people. So if—in terms of the double parking—so if a better pavement parking ban was achieved as a result of separating provisions for double parking and pavement parking, I think we'd probably live with that. My colleagues to my left might not be so happy with that, but it's really a pavement parking that we want a kind of really firm clear line for everyone to create that culture and that easy enforcement environment that's obviously been a bit of a theme of the discussion so far. Ian, do you want to come back to the mic? Does it look like you smiled when you said you might disagree? It's always like disagreement. I mean our focus is particularly on the pavement parking and drop cars because that is the big issues that affect mobility and equality for disabled people, but there are issues—and vehicles are double parked—that do cross additional issues in relation to road safety for pedestrians trying to cross roads and things, so that's an issue that also impacts on disabled people. If you get past one car parked, you might then find another car parked in front of you, so you can't get around that one, so there are issues about that as well. Richard, do you want us to come in? On pavement parking, John Lodder said that he sat down with a council and he decided with the residents, so should it just be the council who should say, right, okay, you can't park there or double park or put your pavement parking or should also be encouraged that residents can approach the council, but a mechanism could be set up to do that. John Lodder's coming in, Ian, and then Stuart. That particular project, which was in Colin's constituency, was a particular street where there was a real problem with parking and also rat-running cars. It was a really difficult street to cross. A lot of elderly people living in the street felt quite intimidated and just preferred to stay in than go out. Either they couldn't get down the pavement or they couldn't get across the road and there was a particular cross roads on it. It was one of those streets and I think there will be a few of them in each town that was acknowledged as a real issue. It was the council who raised it, but it was the residents who we worked with as a kind of bridge between the residents and the local authority. We got to a point where we had a pragmatic design that everybody could live with and were happy with and it was then delivered. I don't think that that would need to happen in every street in Scotland, but I think that there will be some streets where that's a great approach because where you get everyone on the street—I would say that 90 per cent of the people in the street bought into the project and are now very happy with it. In fact, the residents have now formed themselves into their own development association and their greening vacant and derelict land and doing other things. However, what it's done is it's brought people together, it's created a sense of neighbourliness and it's solved the issue. I do think that it's a really good project. It wasn't an expensive project because it wasn't infrastructure-led. It wasn't all about let's redesign things and it didn't come from the council telling residents how things should be. It was very much the residents saying, we're part of this design and we'll work with you. It took about a year of discussions before anything was built. At the end of that, it's worked and it's worked really well. I hope that's answered your question. As I say, I don't think that it needs to happen and it wouldn't have to happen on every street, but on streets that are really tight and difficult with parking, with the narriness, it's a great approach and it has redistributed parking within the street itself. People found space that was poorly designed and badly used and we've rearranged it to work really effectively now. One of the four outcomes in the accessible transport framework is that disabled people are involved in the design, development and improvement of transport policies, services and infrastructure. Inclusion Scotland has certainly argued that if disabled people are involved in designing it, you get it right for disabled people, you get it right for everybody, but that principle should extend to the community because if you work with the community as a whole in developing and designing your problems, identifying what the issues are in terms of bad parking, finding better alternative parking might be available. For example, you're more likely to get community buy and therefore make it easier for it to be enforced because the community itself will enforce it, so it's important to involve the community, not the top-down approach but a community-up approach. I echo Ian's point and I think that the way that Bell is designed allows it to do that. What we don't want to see is local authorities just deciding to put blanket exemptions where they think that it's too difficult. I think that it's for the communities to come forward and say that we've got a real problem on our street with the impacts of this. Can we re-design our street to exempt it and then go to the committees of the council to come up with a solution and pass a solution? That might be signing a line in that street or it might be something more creative. The Bell obviously has that to happen. Jamie, do you want to come back to my next question? Can I ask the panel if there is anything that is fundamentally missing from the Bell? I appreciate there are areas that you might not want to tweak or change in the current provisions of the Bell, but is there something that you think is substantive that has been overlooked by the Bell team? This could end up with a huge shopping list. While you're gathering your thoughts, can I encourage you to try to limit to one or two points? I'm sure that you'll each have one of those. Stuart, do you want to start that off? There are two issues—school zigzags at the moment. Councils need to put an order down to make them legally enforceable. We think that they should just be nationally enforceable. The second is the point about local authorities having some sort of parking strategy. That could be quite light touch, but you need to think about those issues and come up with a strategy. I've made the point about cycle lanes beside the pavement. I think that that needs to be checked and I'll restrict myself to that. I've mentioned the accessible transport framework earlier, but that was co-designed by disabled people, disabled organisations and other transport providers and transport authorities, published by the Scottish Government in 2016. Its overarching framework is that all disabled people can travel with the same freedom, choice, dignity and opportunities of other citizens. We think that it's a missed opportunity not to have made reference to that within the transport bill, and we wish it was there. I totally agree with what Ian's just said. I've got a copy of the framework here. Max really confined himself to commenting on what was in the bill, rather than what wasn't. Clearly, there's a long-term issue about making travel, transport and mobility much more inclusive for disabled people that isn't right at the moment. Deputy convener Gilruth has got the next question. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. I'm going to touch on the equality impact assessment and whether you think that it has covered everything. The policy memorandum states that it has not identified any group that would be adversely affected by the new legislation. Do you agree with that statement? Ian, you're not looking away, so you can go first. I think that providing the regulations and directions and guidance from Ministers in relation to the footway parking are sufficiently robust and ensure that disabled people are involved in the design and discussion on all aspects of exemptions within the act. I think that that will not have an adverse impact on disabled people. Some of the other provisions of the bill could have a positive impact for disabled people, for example, in bus services. If disabled people are involved in those discussions, local authorities can enforce better training of disability awareness training for bus drivers, for example, and ensure that people are properly consulted before routes are removed because the impact it could have on disabled people's ability to get to places they need to go to. I think that there are potential there, again, subject to the regulations and directions that Scottish ministers may give. The bill has the power to improve significantly for disabled people, but it's subject to how it's implemented. Does anyone else want to come in? You were all looking the other way. David, do you want to come in? Well, Max actually had quite a lot of discussion with officials about the equality impact assessment, and I think we would like to think that we'd had a sort of positive influence on it. I don't think that there's anything in the bill that makes situations worse, except possibly the legitimisation of short-term pavement parking that I've referred to before. I think that the question is, does it go far enough, which goes back, I suppose, to the previous question and Ian's comments? I've got a final question, unless the committee's got any more questions. My really is a general question, and over the years we've seen a huge shift in what's acceptable and not acceptable. Drinking and driving, that's changed, is now socially so unacceptable to do that, as it is in disabled parking slots. I don't believe that most people even consider it as an option. Do you think that there should be a bit tacked on to this bill that tries to create that social unacceptable of doing things like parking on drop kerbs and not considering people when people are parking? Do you think that that's got a role to play rather than purely legislation and enforcement? I wonder if anyone would like David. Briefly, absolutely, yes. I think that we've probably all commented on creating that culture, and I don't think that legislation is the only thing. However, drink driving, not wearing a seat belt, things like this, legislation drove it. I think that we're looking to not just have a law that is enforceable, although that's very important. We're trying to change attitudes and so on, but unless the law points in that direction, it's going to be really difficult to create that kind of culture. I disagree with what you said. Passing legislation is one thing, but implementing legislation is another. If this is going to work, it needs effective enforcement, but it also needs that change in culture and attitude, and that will come from effective publicity campaigns. Organisations that have been involved in bringing this legislation to where it is now need to be involved with the Scottish Government in developing that publicity campaign. Does anyone else want to add to that? I think that it's also about local authorities saying that this is something that's positive about getting communities to function more effectively, and that parking is a problem at the moment. It brings a lot of issues to head, and it allows you to face up to them and come up with some solutions. Those are not new issues, and we see those issues occur when you create new control parking zones, and people get used to those, so I think that people get used to this as well. John Lennon At the final point about culture changes, I think that there will be culture change required within transport departments, within local authorities as well, particularly when we begin to look at streets where parking is really tight and difficult. There has to be a culture change that says that this is an issue, and we need to tackle it. We'll need the resource, training and planning to be able to tackle it. It's not just something that we can forget about and focal muddle through. It will all be fine. I think that there is an approach like that, and I think that that will have to change as well. There may well be, and it will be a gradual thing, that we may need to look at the impact of planning on planning of this bill as well. How do we plan our residential states? We've got a great design policy in Scotland called designing streets, but very often I feel that it isn't adhered to as well as it could be, because if it was, we would have residential, particularly residential areas, much better designed around people than around vehicles. I think that that's a big change that needs to happen within planning. John Lennon I mean, the committee was in Glasgow on Friday looking at some of the things that are being done there. There was definitely a feeling that designing the streets for modern-day use is critical and the ability to look back to create that flexibility in the old streets, which you've mentioned. I think that that was one of the things that we definitely came out with. And also the very fact that if you encourage people on buses, you can perhaps reduce cars. Maybe the elephant in the room is about increasing the availability and the reliability of buses and trains and, if necessary, all other means, so that we reduce car ownership. I think that we've covered most things this morning. Is there anything that anyone feels that I particularly missed or that the committee has missed in the points that I raised? Stuart, you can have a quick one. Stuart McMillan We support the workplace parking levy as an option for councils, and I think that it's important that that gets debated and you take further evidence on the merits of that. You've just provoked, Richard, who wants to say something. What you're proposing is another tax on drivers and, physically, and I know your organisation what wants to bring that in. As far as I'm concerned, that's a no-no. I certainly would not support it and I've had discussions with your organisation about it. Can I just say how appropriate it is to leave on this session on Richard Lyle's personal view? That's not necessarily a collective view of the committee, but thank you very much for coming in and giving evidence this morning, and we're very grateful for the written submissions that you've made. I'd now briefly like to suspend the meeting to allow a change over of witnesses. Thank you. I'd like to now move back and welcome the second panel on the Transport Scotland Bill, where we'll take evidence on the proposal relating to roadworks. I'd like to welcome Alex Ray, the manager of Scotia Gas Networks on behalf of Streetworks UK, Elizabeth Draper, Head of Compliance and Regulation for Streetworks Open Reach, Angus Carmichael Street Roadworks Commissioner, Mark McEwen, general manager of customer service Scottish Water, David Hunter amendment, who is here from the last committee for mobility access committee. We have a series of questions. Those of you that haven't been here before or didn't see the last session, basically the question will be posed. I will look at you. If you look away and everyone looks away, one of you will get tasked with doing it, but if you want to ask a question, catch my eye or answer the question, and the microphone will automatically go live in front of you when it's your turn. I did remind everyone that I followed the deputy presiding officer's process of wagging my pen if you're getting to the end of your time. That's just to allow everyone to come in, so please don't ignore it because I'm not sure what the sanction is when I cease to hold on to it. The first question is Peter Chapman and Peter. Thanks, convener, and good morning, lady and gentlemen. You are the people that tend to dig holes and dig up our streets on a fairly regular basis, and I'm sure you're aware that the bill proposes a number of changes to the legislation governing the regulation of roadworks in Scotland, and I'm sure you've all studied it and are all aware of them. So my question is, what practical impact do you think the roadworks proposals in the bill will actually have on road users? Who'd like to go first, Alex? Can I maybe kick off with, it's been quite a broad brush statement, but as utilities, we're not in the business to do bad roadworks. The roadworks we do, we have to do, being done for a reason, doing bad roadworks is simply not good for business, it's bad for a reputation, it's bad for business, it's bad for what the cost involves in it, so we're in the game to do good roadworks. I think as a whole we have a good working relationship within the roadworking community, both between the utilities and how we got on with the roadworks commissioner and the road authorities, so I think that that actually works well. There's nothing really in the bill that says it's going to change drastically, there's some subtle changes, there's some subtle pushes into trying to work more cooperatively, work more efficiently, and on the whole I think it's actually fairly good for what we're trying to achieve. I think what I might try to do is bring in the utilities first and then maybe come to Angus to make comment, if I may, after I would say Mark Scottish Water. Yes, so certainly from our perspective, the provisions in the bill I think provide a framework to continue the journey of improving the high quality of roadworks, whether it's done by utilities or by road authorities. So we welcome the establishment and some clarity around the role of the Scottish Roadworks Commissioner, I think we welcome the move to reinstatement quality plans. There's no particular provisions that cause a concern in terms of the additional approach to regulation, noticing and penalties. Our perception overall is that we'll generally just continue to drive up the quality of roadworks in Scotland, which I think currently we believe are to a relatively high standard, certainly compared to the rest of England and Wales, and that's a journey that this bill will continue. It doesn't pose a particular threat to us, it's an opportunity to continue to drive up our quality of works. Elizabeth? Yeah, I would agree. I think it is an evolution. There's a few things in there that do improve the situation, but in particular I think the quality plans is the one I would call out. So that's going to encourage more works to be done right first time. That will prevent re-work and having to go in and dig the road up twice or have traffic management twice, so that's certainly something I think is beneficial. But it is a continuation of what's there and I think that's probably the right thing, refining the edges as opposed to something completely radically different because we are going in the right direction. I think it's about doing more of that. Angus, everyone's perfect. Absolutely. I think first of all I should perhaps say that the situation in Scotland is significantly different to that south of the border, where we have one Scottish roadworks register, we're very fortunate of having that. In England I think there are around about 170 and they're very disparate and Alec doesn't know what Elizabeth is doing, what Scottish Water is doing and so forth. Up here everyone knows what everyone else is doing on the road. We'll undoubtedly improve, provisionally we'll undoubtedly improve quality and safety, but turning to the impact on the public, which I think was the main question, was that it will all lead towards reducing disruption and improve as more real-time information comes in, it should improve journey planning time for individuals as well as reducing the disruption and getting things right quality plans, getting things right first time rather than having to return to that site. But certainly I would have to say I very much feel amongst friends at this end of the table, it's not as if we're fighting with each other day and daily. David, I'm going to bring you in because everyone's convinced they're all perfect. Does it all work for you guys? Thank you for giving me the opportunity to descend a little bit. Obviously that the session we've just had has been highlighting the problem, the parked cars in particular on pavements for disabled people. I've got to say we think roadworks are a serious hazard and often obstruction for disabled people and we don't share quite the rosy picture that's been painted so far. The so-called red book, the guidance that is already there and has already been endorsed by Scottish ministers is actually very good and we appreciate that most of the roadworks, whether by utility companies or councils or whatever, do pay some attention to this but on the way here this morning I took a photograph for example of a road sign saying diversion because of roadworks that left less than a metre of walking space past it which would stop a wheelchair user for example using the pavement. I think probably all of you around your constituencies will see this kind of thing every day. Other common problems are ramps usually are put in when roadworks have to block off a pavement and there's a diversion onto the road but again very typically there isn't enough space for a wheelchair user to get to the bottom of the ramp, turn around and go along the route provided. So we think that application of the very good guidance that already exists isn't good enough and we'd like to see better inspection and enforcement, again a theme of the previous discussion around pavement parking. Peter. Well I mean I need to dissent a wee bit as well. I mean I recognise you all want to reinstate all the your roadworks to a high standard but the practicality of it is that it very often isn't reinstated to a high standard. We've all seen areas of the road that's been dug up and within weeks or months the repair has collapsed and there's a big hazard there in the road for cyclists in particular and for everybody really. So I mean what is your view on the proposed inspection powers for the Scottish Roadworks Commissioner and their staff? Do you really think that this will drive a better standard of repair and really make sure that what you do when you do put it back it is a high quality repair and it isn't going to be needing to be revisited a few weeks later. I mean that seems to be the problem. The road works, the road collapses where the hole was dug or whatever and then you've a real issue there. Can we be confident that the changes in this bill will drive a better standard of reinstatement? Angus that looks to be directed at you. I certainly didn't mean to imply that roadworks were perfect by any stretch of imagination in Scotland. They're not. I mean I have a dashboard system which is produced quarterly and a basis of red ambers and greens and there's still plenty of red in it. What I would say is that we are better than our southern cousins but there is certainly remains room for improvement and if it comes to safety for instance there is no evidence that roads authorities carrying out works are any better than utility companies and it's probably the case that utility companies are better regulated and generally perform slightly better than roads authorities doing that same work but the provisions in the bill should further improve the current situation in Scotland. It will be difficult to get it absolutely perfect. There's a lot of human nature and a lot of different operatives, different companies, different contracts and so forth but I think it will certainly lead to an improvement in both the safety at road works sites which is a big issue and the quality of reinstatements and there are the two main things, the safety at road works sites and the quality. Can I ask some of the other folks in the panel, do you feel that the new inspection powers, Welpeter and Greast demand on your teams to do the job better than perhaps have done in the past? So I think just to pick up a couple of elements that are in the bill. I mean the reinstatement quality plans are a key part of that process I think in developing a high standard consistency in terms of the quality of works that are carried out. That sits alongside the existing inspection and monitoring programme that roads authorities apply which I think has a role as well and demonstrates generally for many utilities quite high levels of standard but still with room for improvement and also the provisions that sit with the Scottish Road Works Commissioner to take action where there's fundamental failures of quality performance. I think the all-creator framework that puts added impetus and focus on this issue provides greater powers for action to be taken where there isn't the right action or there isn't the right recovery and so I am of the view that the framework being presented building on what we have already will continue to drive up the quality of reinstatements and the quality of works on roads. So I think there is the kind of penalty side of things where you know if you get inspected and you've not done the right thing then there's a natural cost for that to follow and there's some enhancements in the bill for that but I think one of the biggest wins of the changes in the in the bill is proposed is that by formalising the need for a quality plan which will need to be agreed at the utility level with first tier suppliers with any subcontractors it's formalising that upfront self checks a culture of actually getting things right at the very beginning as opposed to failing down the line and then getting a penalty and I think that's what feels very different about this it's putting it in the right place you know none of us want penalties you know angus probably doesn't want to give a penalty we don't want to receive a penalty this this is putting it right at the front end what needs to be done in what order how how are we going to check it and a key thing that we have implemented is self-coring so we're not waiting for authorities or angus to to go in and you know take a chunk of our own statement see if it's right we're doing that ourselves so that we can proactively find and fix and then feed back into that upfront of what needs to be done so that we we fix it for the future and I think that's a key key difference in this Jamie I think it sort of leads on to your question there I think thank you convener and good morning panel I'd like to explore a couple of themes around some of the other things that the bill does the first one is around the issue around qualifications for supervisors and operatives on on-site in relation to works being carried out and also reinstatement the bill I think seeks to strengthen the presence of all staff on site including contractors and subcontractors that there should be a trained named operative and that those names should be given to roads authorities including their qualifications and so on and so forth and this stems from I think much of the criticism that the politicians get from representations when there are specific issues around reinstatement or you know certain practices which are not not so good do you think this bill will have any noticeable tangible difference to the general public in terms of what they see as the quality and the processes by which roadworks are done by I'm kind of going to go to Alex because you didn't get a chance to answer the other one yeah um the lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost ddweud i gael yn ymdrasol. Felly, nid ffortiau ffortiau i ddweud i gael'r llyfr o ddweud i ddweud o ddweud i ddweud i ddweud. A fyddwn ni'n gweld cymdeithasol i ddweud i ddweud i ddweud i ddweud i gael y peINKOGFATやn ymdod amifروio i dyfodol, yma er gael hyn yn lleiud hiad i ddweud. O beth yr ydych yn ddim gan rwyf i ddechrau gael i ddweud i ddweud i gael sayw, you are responsible for your site, it is important that you do it right and we are measured on it. Perhaps it just heightens that awareness a little bit, it is already there, it is tightening up what is already in place, so in that respect it's a good thing, and yes it will help to enhance that responsibility on the work. Ar effaith yng Nghaerdydd, rydyn ni'n cymdeithaswn i gylwgyn ni'n cyflwgon i fwyafodaniaeth gwrdd o'r amadeunion o'r cyflwgon i'r amadeunion a'r emfawr a'r ddod i ddechrau. Mae'n llwyafol i'mdoedd honi yn cael ei ddweud i ddweud i gyd ddweud i ddweud i chi gwnnw'n arweinyddol a wneud ei ddweudio'u rhai cyflwgon i'u ddweud i chi'n cyflwgon i'r amadeunion i gyd ddweud i gyd. Rydyn ni wedi gael ei ddweud i gyd. a went I will not name them who were inserting telecommunications into a pavement and had dug up numerous streets. I attended the site at the complaint of some local residents who were complaining about access. In fact, it was dipped ramp access to the road and lack of pavement availability, so I went to check it out for myself. When I got to the site, there was a large number of subcontractors on site. There was no-one from the prime operator themselves. It was very difficult to engage with the members of staff there. No-one seemed to take any responsibility. There was lots of, you need to speak to my supervisor. When I eventually spoke to the supervisor, he said, I'm a subcontractor. You need to speak to the ex utility company. Here's their telephone number. There was nobody on site who could account for the health and safety or the actions of anyone. That was a real example of me being on site at the time. I suspect that that happens in other places too, so I think that the reality is maybe quite different from your perception. I would agree that that is a bad example. That shouldn't happen. There should be a person on site that has overall responsibility for that site. Can I ask the Scottish Roadworks Commission, are you confident that that gives you adequate powers to enforce the practice or to ensure that you're happy when you sign off plans or reinstatement plans that the bill that is currently drafted gives you enough power to give more confidence to consumers? I think that rolling back to the first part of your question, the qualification generally around the table here you have large organisations who have pretty good systems in place. If you go to, I imagine, the company you're talking about or rolling out these programmes of telecoms across Scotland currently and there are issues with multiple subcontractors and so forth which we are looking at. The qualifications element of the bill has been progressed in parallel with the training and accreditation group UK looking at how they test operatives. Currently, I could go along and sit a day-long course or week-long course and come to the test and then I could turn to David and say, what's your answer, David? Now it's all going to be computerised and a much larger pool of questions such that the standard of the qualification is also going to improve in parallel with what's proposed in this bill. It is true that at times you will come across people, there's always meant to be somebody on that site with a card and I've come across sites myself where people have not been qualified, but generally if you take open reach they have a lot of single operation vans out there and anytime I've personally stopped, these guys have got a card. They know the situation but there are challenges with some of the other telecoms providers right now but they are aware of their obligations and they are aware of what they have to do to improve. One thing that will improve the qualification is the courtesy for, for instance, those with a disability when they come across a site. If they are aware of what they're meant to do in a way of sign, light and guarding, what ways, pedestrian ways, they will be more sympathetic to catering for the needs of those people. Can I ask what you do with repeat offenders? One of the new parts of the bill is around the submission of these reinstatement plans and it says in my notes that the plans must be approved by the commission and that the parameters for approving it is whereby the applicant can demonstrate that they are competent to execute the works properly and has quality control procedures but the point that's missing is that it doesn't seem to take into account the historic activity so if you have a company who's submitted a plan that seems on paper to be good but you know in practice have been less than forthcoming in the past, are you able to take that into account when approving future plans or do you have to judge them just on the merits of the plan that's delivered to you? Currently, where I come across systematic failure, I have power to impose a commissioner penalty. As you know through the bill, the compliance notices are proposed and that will be an amendment to that system of escalation but where I saw a company routinely fail, I would be looking to take action against that company. Can I just clarify because I think the point that Jeremy makes quite interesting is the whole issue of a main contractor and then all the subcontractors underneath in the fact that it's trying to hold the sub-sub-subcontractor to account for a contract that is awarded by the main contractor. Do you feel that the bill deals with this because just about everywhere you go now there's a subcontractor somewhere involved in it? The legislation puts the onus squarely on Mark, Elizabeth and Alex Shoulders and they have to manage their tier 1, tier 2, tier 3 contractors. Will all the subcontractors, if it was Scottish Water and you had a subcontractor that there would be somebody from Scottish Water on site to deal with the issue? Or could that still be a remote telephone call? Not necessarily. In many cases, there won't be anyone from Scottish Water. I take example of water repairs. I have a team of people who carry out burst repairs, but we also use supply chain partners to support that. Primarily one partner. That partner will not necessarily have a Scottish Water person on site. They will, however, be subject to exactly the same requirements in terms of the quality of works. The ticketing required of the individuals on site in terms of their qualifications need to be demonstrated. They will have systems of work that we have reviewed and signed off in terms of the quality of the works and the safety of those works. We will then also have a random process that they may be visited by field service advisers who will visit sites and just test and check. Are we happy with the quality of the signing, lighting, guarding, quality of reinstatement? That happens in parallel, but there will not be a Scottish Water person on site where those works are carried out. We primarily only use one supply chain partner in the operational world around repairs, so we do not have tiers upon tiers upon tiers of supply chain partners. It is primarily one main supply chain partner that we use. It seems to me that the most important thing is to make sure that the implications and what the bill is trying to drive at is part of the contract for tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3 suppliers in their contract. I know that you are nodding, but I am assuming that you are all agreeing to that. Alex, I want to come to Peter in the move-ons chart. I agree entirely with what Mark is saying there. As the principal contractor of your SGM works, we are responsible for those works. It is an SGM site. We are responsible, irrespective of who the contractor is or the subcontractor is. It is our site. At the various and early rock meetings that I go to and my team go to, we always keep saying, if there is a problem and you cannot get through to anyone, come to me or come to my team and we will deal with it. We will take the issues on board, we will not try and show up the responsibility. It is our site. Our responsibility is up to us to fix it. The example that you gave there, a dreadful example, should not happen. It is something that we need to take on board, but I do not think that anyone here is going to say that it is some contractor's problem. No, it is not. It firmly sits with us and it is up to us to manage and control our contractors. Elizabeth, I know that you are coming in. Maybe you will get a chance to answer Peter's follow-up question. Thanks, convener. One of the new things in the bell is proposed that the utilities will need to state a start and a finish date for any work that you are going to take forward. How practical do you feel that is and do you have real concerns about how you would do that in practice? Elizabeth? I think the reality is that it is a start and a finish date when you are literally on site. By the very nature of that, somebody somewhere knows that that has happened. The limitations at the minute of being able to achieve that are connectivity and potentially having the right IT to say that it is done. I know that this will be subject to some supplementary regulations that will outline exactly how that will work and when it comes into effect, and that is good. Right now, I do not think that we are quite in that place from a technology perspective, but I know that the Scottish Roadworks Commissioner's Office is working on an app that will facilitate that. There will still be limitations in some areas where there is no connectivity, but that has been addressed by time stamping when you send the note as opposed to when it is received, so that will help to work on those connectivity. However, I do not see that as an insurmountable thing. The way that this is moving, we can let the public know where we are quicker, it is possible. The only limitation is the technology and connectivity. It is absolutely feasible, but the technology needs to come before regulations and any subsequent penalties can legitimately be enforced. I will expand your question a little bit into the whole noticing process. On the whole, we are okay noticing, and yes, there is a lot of room for improvement. There are various areas of where we are noticing. I am a great believer that, when we are working in housing, we say that it is done where, it does not matter how much notice we give. To a certain extent, it is probably not, because the only people who are in that housing state are affected. Yes, it is important that we work with them and they are aware of what we are going to do, when we are going to do it and what access we need to their properties. We need to work with that bit of the community. From the rest of the road working community, it probably does not really matter. What is more important is that we co-ordinate our works and we all work together. That is part of what the register does, it is part of what the whole rock process does, it is about working together. Obviously, when you come to traffic-sensitive roads, it is far more important to give more notice there. As I have always said to people in my organisation, if you are working on a traffic sensitive road, your best friend in the world has suddenly become the road inspector or the traffic police, because there are the people that you need to go and work with and say, right, it is a difficult road, it is a busy road, how are we going to do it? What requirements do you need? What do we need to do about pedestrians, access for disabled people? There is a whole raft of stuff in there that we have to deal with and we need to take more time with it. That is one part of the noticing. The other big bit of it is to try and get as much advanced notice of our works. Certainly with the next gen, we are currently working on some clever computer stuff that will automatically upload all our future works into the register so that we can look two, three, four years ahead. That is not about saying that we are going to that street on 1 October 2019. It is about trying to say that here is where we are going to work. It is trying to co-ordinate our works with the roadworks of other utilities and probably more importantly with the road authorities themselves. So they can look at it and go, ah, SGN is going to be working in that street, they reckon about early 2021, we were going to resurface that road in 2020. That is the point where we should be coming up and saying, hang on, there is a big conflict there, because what we want to do is switch those round and actually we are going to do our works in 2020 as do Scottish Water, SPEN, Open Reach etc. Then in 2021, the roadworks authority will come and resurface the road and all the roadworks are done. It is that big thought, it looks grey, it is the old cars but I have thought. That is where we want to be. This idea of where they are one day and then it is straight after it has been resurfaced, that is where we definitely do not want to be. You will have to excuse me smiling, because I do not recognise the fact that roadworks are done after it has just been resurfaced. Angus, you want to take out my online? The current legislation for our works commencing this morning at 8 o'clock, it does not need to be in the register until 12 o'clock tomorrow, which I think personally is nonsense in this day and age of communication. The app that Elizabeth referred to and is now available has been since the summer, and operative can go out there at 8 o'clock this morning and press a button on the phone, that is what it recorded. When it goes off site, it press another button and that is it closed. It is much more real-time and live, and not only does that allow the road inspector to get to that site, it may be a two-hour job, he gets there while it is actually live, but it also means that it goes on to our public-facing website and it is live information to anyone around this table who wants to do a bit of travel planning. The whole thing becomes much more real-time. I think that around the area of safety and staffing, my understanding is that the bill is going to require roads authorities to match the same requirements that yourselves and other undertakers have had. I am assuming that most of you think that that is a good thing, but you can absolutely tell me if you do not. When I looked at safety, as I understand it, the two key things are that road works are fenced and lit. I have to say that I smiled when I read the fencing because what I see is that maybe at four o'clock on a Friday the workers go off and there are nice little delicate fences beside the hole, and they last for a couple of hours maybe until the kids push them into the hole or on to the street or block the temporary pedestrian way, which affects then disabled and everybody else, or they just get blown over by the wind that night and then Monday. The whole place is a mess for the weekend, and then somebody comes along on Monday and starts working again. It is all very well-putting up fences, and I am sure that you are all doing that, but is there some way that we can improve that kind of situation? Who would like to go on that? Let me just respond before we get to the improvement piece. Certainly, we do not use delicate barriers generally. Having lugged some of these things around, there is some weight. We generally have some quite robust barriers around excavations, and the protocol is very clear around the need for those to be weighted down by sandbags or something similar to reduce the risk of either vandalism or high winds affecting those in the first place. We have also started in areas where there is more risk around people trying to access excavations using a combination of the traditional heavy-duty bright plastic barriers, as long as the hair is fencing, you might be more familiar with, which also provides a double level protection to prevent people from accessing excavations at the end of the day. Although a barrier coming down can be inconvenient, the bigger issue is preventing people from accessing excavations where there is a risk of injury. That is what we are trying to prevent primarily. Furthermore, if there are any examples where people see barriers down, we are very clear that people should report that immediately. We have an operator 24-7 response that will ensure that people are out to address those as quickly as possible. I think that you will find the issue that in poorer areas people are less likely to get involved in phone and things. We end up in the richer areas where people will phone and complain so that they get their whole gets a fence back around it again, but my area does not. I take your point that there are different kinds of fencing. The hair is fencing, frankly, does go over very easily. I also think that sandbags are just a waste of time. They come off the sign if they are just hung on the bottom of the sign, which is what is normally done. They come off very easily. The sign still blows over. I like the plastic ones, which have either water or sand in them, because that is much less easy to move, but they are not so high. I would accept that as well. There is an issue around that. I am not going to go on and on about it, but clearly some of the fencing does not work. I do not know if any of the others have comments. I hear what you are saying. I would like to hope that we can disagree with it. The red book is very clear in the specification of the barriers that have to be used. It has to be of sufficient strength that it will stand with certain wins. The red book is also very clear that we should be inspecting those sites on a 24-hour basis. Where the sites are left, as far as work stops on a Friday, we should still inspect that site on a Saturday and a Sunday if we are not working at that site. We should be inspecting those sites on a 24-hour basis. As Mark Scott said, please, please, please, if people see it, give us a phone. All our barricades have numbers on them, all our sites should have courtesy boards on them. Phone is up, we will come out, we have a 24-7 operation, we will have somebody out within one or two hours and we will fix it. When you say courtesy boards, is that saying who to phone or who is doing the work? Yes. I have to say my experience of that is patchy, but I am not blaming your organisation for that. Again, it is a mandatory requirement. We must have courtesy boards on all our sites and it should have a clearly number that says in the event of any issues, problems, questions—here is a number to phone. In our case, that is a 24-7 operation. Just to help John Angus, do you issue fines if those things happen? There has not been a fine penalty issued on the basis of lack of fencing. Perhaps that is remiss. I see one of my predecessors here today, perhaps it is remiss on all of us that we have not pursued that particular avenue, but it is something that we are aware of. This is the red book here. The whole basis of the red book involved is Bill. John, have you got any more? David, do you want to come in briefly? Yes, just briefly. Our particular interest, or main interest, is on the actual durate while the road works are taking place, rather than the reinstatements, although they are actually there. As I said earlier, I think that it is literally in everyday sight to see non-compliance with the red book. It is interesting to hear that there have never been any penalties issued around that. Going back to the bill, one thing that is rather unhelpful is that it talks about fencing and lighting. There is a section on fencing and lighting that makes it sound a very technical issue. From our point of view, it is about accessibility and public use, particularly for people walking pedestrians and disabled people. As I said, I cannot really fault what the red book says. It is just that, in practice, I would say that it is unusual to find it followed correctly. I do not know if we are going to follow on some questions about inspection, but that is an issue that I think is a real problem. My understanding is that it is very rare for on-site roadworks to be inspected by local authorities. I think that they can only charge £36 for inspections, which I cannot believe covers their costs, so it disincentivises councils from inspecting. It is good and all very well for members of the public to report things. I sometimes report things directly to people on-site and so on. Very often, people will rectify things there and then, but I think that there needs to be a better regulatory and enforcement regime. I am similar to the discussions that we had about pavement parking before. I know that there is a whole heap of people coming in and I am afraid that I am not going to get them all in, but I know what the next question is and I know that there are people who have put their fingers up. We will get a chance to answer it. Richard, could you ask her? Yes, I am. We all agree that roadworks are important and Alec Wade spoke about joined-up roadworks. I wish there was, because as a roadman, my constituency would win the BAFTA award for the most dug-up road. Gas went in, then Scottish Water went in, then the digital company went in. They all had a board, they all had a number, but it was months and months and months, so joined-up working. In writing the evidence, Streetworks UK opposed the Scottish Roadworks Commissioner being given the power to issue fixed penalty notices. Can you explain why you opposed this proposal and is it because you think you may face penalties? I am sure that you will get your chance now. The thing about fixed penalty notices is that it has to be proportionate. Is it about punishing or trying to correct behaviour? What we should be about is trying to correct behaviour, is to get the roadworks correct. I take your point about the street that has had gas come in, water came in, telecoms came in. To me, I am thinking that this is sounding really good, because what I am hoping is going to hear next is that road authority come in and resurface the road, and that to me is brilliant, because that is what we want to try and do. The idea of trying to do roadworks at the same time tends not to work, because we have all got different methods of working, we have all got different priorities. That bit does not tend to work particularly well. When it will work, we will try it, but it tends not to work. What we try and do is to de-conflict the actual work, so that, exactly as you saw it, we would go in, water would maybe come in next, and telecoms would come in next. You were saying that we are all, you know, you were painting a lovely picture, we are all working together. I do not think that we are. You know, you are all working, you are all working in your own wee silos, and you are digging a hole, you are digging a hole, and you are digging a hole, and the hole could be actually in the same place. So, you know, can you not all plan and put in the gas and the water and the utilities all at the same time? Come in on that, just so that Alex does not feel that it is all at the end. So, for planned work, that sounds like a perfect thing that could happen. And we have the register in Scotland that we do not have in other parts of the UK that enables for planned work that collaborative approach. Believe it or not, we do, as open reach, look where out of the utilities, go in where we plan to and can we coordinate, and we do that as a matter of course. Of course, we have got to remember that there is only a small proportion of planned work for some of us, and a lot of the work that we do is sitting in the minor bucket, so that is where we give three days notice because it could be a customer connection, it could be a blockage, and also we have a lot of reactive work, you know, if we get fault, so cable theft, you know, things like that, and so I think there is absolutely an opportunity to coordinate and the register facilitates that, but there will always be an element of appearing of not to have done when you have got this constant flow of reactive work that does exist in the industry and is absolutely necessary to connect Scotland digitally and fix gas leaks and whatever else is going on. Are you for penalties, big penalties or not? So it depends what the penalty is, so I see a penalty should be a last resort and this is what I wanted to come in on, so I don't think it's a bad thing we've not had penalties and clearly I would, but the reason I think that is because there's so much more that should happen before, so the quality plans we talked about, you know, we should be brought in to discuss what we're doing to improve, it's not kind of fair to say that we don't get checked. At the beginning of the year, we agree a number of sample inspections based on the volume of our work the previous year, and we pay for those upfront, you know, as statutory undertakers in this area, that's what we do, so we fund the inspections and we expect those to come. Of course there'll be ad-hot ones as well, there'll be third party ones reported by other people, but we absolutely do support inspections and see inspections and we do our own, and like the others we have a 24-7 service if something's funny and we'll fix it, but I think penalties have a place, but I think they're the last resort. If we end up with a penalty and the Scottish Roadways Commission or a Road's Authority has to give us a penalty, something's gone wrong. We should be collaborating, we should be looking at improvements and looking to change behaviours. A penalty, it should be the last thing, particularly with the size of penalties that have been proposed, and I would hope that one of the things that we've proposed is a tariff of charges on those. So I think Alec Waze against, Elizabeth Dapers against, how it will work? We are comfortable that the provision of penalties and the like has a place, as raised earlier, it's going to be proportionate and it's going to be appropriate, but as a final resort we have no fundamental objection to that being included in the bill. I'm going to briefly bring in Angus because it's pretty critical that you have yourself. Some people see them as a cost of doing business, but I view them as an avoidable cost. If the work is done properly in the first place, there will be no fixed penalties. What's proposed is a small extension to the basically four areas just now, and we'll go on to six or seven. Touching on the point of working together on the same trench can be very difficult. Your plan to open reach may go in at this depth, Alex might go in at two or three metres deep, and that's a very challenging situation. One little correction, sorry, while I'm speaking. I said that there would be no penalties applied for signage, maybe not specifically signage, but open reach had a £50,000 penalty applied in Vernace by one of my predecessors for their working, and much of that was to do with signing of sites, I believe. We're going to move on to the next question, which is Mike Rumbles. It carries on from fixed penalty notices, and my question really is focused on Elizabeth. In the written evidence from open reach, you call for the creation of an independent adjudicator for fixed penalty notices. Why do you think that would be necessary, and how might it work in practice? We already have, through ROC, the Rhodes Authority and Utility Committee, an independent appeal point for all the charges. If there's a disagreement as to why the charge has been levied, it goes through that process. There is a discrepancy with fixed penalty notices that in the existing legislation in the proposed bill, if you don't agree with the situation, it goes back to the issuing authority. It's effectively the same person. It might go to a slightly more senior person, but usually these are technical issues. You need a fairly detailed understanding of roadworks to be able to adjudicate. You end up in the same pot. Clearly, we want to avoid as many debates as possible, and things should be as black and white, but we're always going to end up with them. It's to make sure there's a fair and just process, really. For every other type of charge, it would go to the ROC process, which is well defined and has been around for a long time. For fixed penalty notices, that just doesn't happen. It goes back to the same person or issuing authority. That would feel odd with a fair process to us. We would look for something like the ROC process for FPNs, as well. I was going to say that I'd be interested. I think that there are parallels with parking tickets, in the first instance, and you appeal that to the issuing authority. Very much so with fixed penalties, you're appealing to the issuing authority. What happens after that? If there's change to the process, I'm kind of relaxed about it, but I think that in the first instance, you should continue to appeal to the issuing authority. My last question really is, again, back to Elizabeth. You raised security concerns about the need to provide detailed information about open reach infrastructure to the Scottish Roadworks Commission. Can you outline the reasons for those concerns and explain how they could be addressed? This is specifically about providing our apparatus data. We have concerns about providing that in the totality for the whole of Scotland. It's mainly based on the fact that our network is national critical infrastructure, and we have to keep that safe. We've spoken with the Centre Protection of National Infrastructure and the Cyber Security Centre UK and asked them for advice on how the requirement to do this works, with what they need us to do to keep our apparatus safe. We're waiting for the output of that. In short, any data we hold, it has to meet certain safety standards to be encrypted at rest, encrypted in transit and lots of other things. If we were to give our data in its entirety over to somewhere else, we would need the same level of security we have in our own systems to be in place there. We would prefer that we continue to use our own system called maps by email that services £1.9 million requests a year for maps. That does the same job, but it's our own one that anyone can access. If we did have to go ahead and provide our apparatus, we would want to see some obligations on the third party that would be holding it, so in this case, the commissioner's office, to keep it safe and secure and for them to be some recourse if they don't, so that we've got that in place. Ideally, there would be some kind of accompanying code or further regulations that would very clearly, because this is a complex area, detail what would need to happen to keep it secure. It's not a will to not share our maps, we already do that, but in a controlled manner in our own system. This is about making sure that we don't put our critical national infrastructure in any danger or at any risk. We currently have a system called Vault, where all of Scottish Water's information is on, all of Alex's information is on, Vodafone, Virgin Media, City, Fibre, all of the others, they are all on. Open reach has always been resistant to this. It's only available to those with access to the register. My personal view is that it's more a commercial decision on the part of open reach. DCMS requires them to share information on duct capacity amongst different ones, and they say that some businesses would never voluntarily share information without legislation to force their hand. DCMS identifies that it was unlikely to be collaborative information sharing about ducts without government intervention. To my mind, it's more a commercial issue than anything else, and open reach playing a game. Oh, controversy. Sorry, it's all gone so well so far. Yes, it was all going so well. Elizabeth, do you want to briefly answer that? Of course. It is true that in the past we had commercial concerns in this, that's absolutely true, and if legislation comes in that requires us to share this, clearly those commercial concerns go away because the legislation requires us to do it. That is not the primary driver, and I know I've had this discussion with Angus, and I will get him to believe me at some point. It is risk-based. Our risk team, our security team are very concerned about this, and we've got a lot of detail, which I know we've put in our response about what we would need to feel comfortable like this, so it is a quantified issue that we've got. At the moment, as it stands today, if this was obligated, that's where our main concern is. Without obligations on the third party to keep our data safe and secure, our issues are not addressed. We would still be very uncomfortable about handing it over. Okay, and maybe we should part that there, and move on to the next question from the deputy convener, Gail Ross. Thank you, convener. Good morning panel. My questions are specifically to Angus. Can you tell the committee why you think that there's a need to clarify the legal status of the Scottish Roadworks Commissioner? It's an issue that both my predecessors had concerns about, perhaps if anything went wrong they might have to sell their house to settle their debts or whatever else. The contract for the Scottish Roadworks register, which is a £1 million-a-year contract paid for by the community, is with me personally. If something went wrong there, how liable am I? I have certain assurances in place from the Scottish Government, and unless I transgress severely, I am confident that I would get support from the Scottish Government. I know that both of my predecessors had strong concerns about their exposure, should something go wrong. It's really just clarifying that. Does that need to be put in the bill, or is that clarification that can be given elsewhere? I think that it should probably be in the bill. In the evidence that you get, you highlighted the issue of permits and lane rentals. Permits and lane rentals? Yes. 57 per cent of the authorities in England currently use permits and two of them are lane rentals. Many, many years after Scotland they are trying to introduce what they are calling street manager, which is an English streetworks register. I don't think that it will be as good as what we currently have. To make that work, I think that they require everybody to be in permits, so that the Transport Minister has required all roads and highway authorities in England to have permits in place by March of next year. I think that it's totally unnecessary. It's an extra financial burden on organisations delivering utility services, and we'll stifle innovation and we'll remove any of the community working that currently exists in Scotland. What you find, there's been a lot of research into what happens in England on noticing and on permits, and they've produced statistics that show the improvements that they will make using permits. We currently, in Scotland, under noticing, perform better than the projections in England, and we still feel that our noticing performance has room for further improvement. We feel that we're ahead of England, England's projections currently, with further improvement, quite possible. It's just quite unnecessary. Before we move on to the last question, which is more in one of the things that doesn't seem to be addressed, which I'm sure every MSP has a huge correspondence or dialogue with constituents, is that roadworks that are signed, marked, lanes are closed and left closed over the weekend to protect the workforce, which is nowhere near, and there's no roadworks going on. Would permits and lane rentals not reduce that? It is one of the things that causes huge frustration to people, especially on some of the trunk roads in Scotland, and we're going to see more work on those. The road is reduced in width and sometimes speed when there's no evidence that it's required. It also undermines the restrictions that should be there when there is workforce there, because people don't always believe that they are there. I wonder if Angus would like to make a comment. Everyone is encouraged, of course, to be as open with their timescales for work as possible, and I think they generally are. There are certainly cases that are like what you're talking about, but often those cases, and I think, in the example that the Transport Secretary down south cited to bring in charges, was itself concrete waiting to cure, or parts that aren't available on Friday that might be available on Monday. There are often other reasons for sites being open and nobody may run them. I think that's where it comes to information sharing and perhaps signage again explaining the situation that works are awaiting supplies or are awaiting concrete curing or something to make it more obvious, again my public-facing website perhaps something could be added to that. But human nature being there will always be exceptions. I always give committee members a hard time if they mention constituencies, so if I say the A9 is a perfect example, park it there and give it to Maureen so I don't incur the wrath of the committee Maureen. Thank you, convener. I think David, throughout the evidence session you've highlighted some of the main issues around road works facing disabled people. I just wanted to give you the opportunity to raise anything that you haven't raised so far and whether you think that your concerns are addressed in the bill. I'd also like to ask the roads commissioner how many times do issues relating to disabilities cross your desk and if so what tends to happen with them? I've mentioned, I suppose, the common problems and I think I saw a bit of nodding around the room that those weren't unfamiliar to you. One other one I would add is that talking about road works going on longer than they should do, it's quite common to see road works kind of debris left on the pavement that's kind of gone missing, sandbags, bits of barriers perhaps, signs often or just the frame of signs and you know these may well come from subcontractors, they may well come from local councils as the roads authorities but there is a lot of kind of road works debris littering streets which is another issue. I mean I think the key I think is and in fact there are a number of things that again talking about culture and professional standards and I'm not accusing any of colleagues around here of a failure to commit to that but I think that I'd like to see the bar raised higher in terms of really being aware of these kind of issues and dealing with them on a day-to-day basis through their quality plans and all the rest of it. As I mentioned I'd like to see local authorities given more incentive to inspect road works while they're actually taking place and finally I know the commissioner has new powers in the the bill to carry out inspections but I think I'm right in saying that there aren't any provisions to enable the commissioner to recover his costs and so I think we're a little bit sceptical that they're going to be used widely or again that there's actually a disincentive for the commissioner to use those inspection powers when it's actually going to be a net cost to the commissioner to do that. Angus. The cost element, other organisations, the HSE and others, they do not charge for inspections. I would hope that following the completion of associative regulation that a financing regime is established by the Scottish Government. Currently road authorities do recover their costs of inspection. It's £36 and I know somebody mentioned perhaps that wasn't enough. That is very much based on road authorities submitting returns to the working group. That is based exactly on the returns that come in from the 32 councils across Scotland, as recently as last year and Alec chaired the group and it was quite difficult. We thought it was too low initially and encouraged them to put in other figures and still couldn't get it above £36. Disabilities, individual instances don't tend to come to my office. If they do, I would refer them to the road authority responsible for that area to solve. If I became aware of activities that were causing systematic inconvenience to those with a disability, yes, I would absolutely get involved in that. Sorry, there was another bit that I was to respond to. I think that's all the questions, unless any of the committee would like a further question. Right. Well, thank you very much then, all of you, for coming in and giving evidence this morning. It's been very helpful. Now, I'm going to briefly suspend the meeting. I'm going to ask members of the committee to stay in their seats and I'd ask the witnesses to move on, if they may, so that we can carry on with the next item of the agenda. So, briefly suspend committee to hold their seats, please.