Local Government and Transport Committee, 14 Dec 2004

Meeting date: Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Official Report 444KB pdf

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Transport (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

We have a heavy agenda today: five panels will give us evidence on the Transport (Scotland) Bill, which will be followed by consideration of the Gambling Bill and of how we will deal with a Sewel motion on the Railways Bill. I encourage all members to focus their questions and contributions so that we can make progress through the agenda.

With respect to our first two panels of witnesses in particular, I pass on apologies from three committee members, who must leave for other parliamentary business for part of the meeting, which is unfortunate but unavoidable: three of us must give evidence to the Parliamentary Bureau on matters that Parliament will consider in due course. To the witnesses who will be giving evidence then, I apologise on behalf of myself, Tommy Sheridan and Sylvia Jackson.

I welcome our first panel, comprising Roderick McLeod and Ewan Jones, who are members of the Mobility and Access Committee for Scotland. We look forward to your evidence on the Transport (Scotland) Bill. Before giving you the opportunity to make your introductory remarks, I hand over to my colleague, Bruce Crawford, who is deputy convener of the committee, so that we do not interrupt proceedings later, when I have to leave.

Good afternoon. Do you wish to say anything on the Transport (Scotland) Bill to begin with, or would you prefer to go straight to questions? It is up to you.

We will take a minute or two to make comments first.

On you go.

We will make a few scene-setting points then hand over to the committee and try to answer any questions.

The Mobility and Access Committee for Scotland welcomes the opportunity to give evidence to the Local Government and Transport Committee on the proposals in the Transport (Scotland) Bill to introduce a national concessionary fares scheme and to establish statutory regional transport partnerships.

Margaret Hickish and Trevor Meadows, who are members of MACS, gave evidence to the committee previously, during its inquiry into the effectiveness of the Transport (Scotland) Act 2001. Our position statement, which was submitted then, questioned the focus of concessionary fares. Our statement highlighted the range of issues that must be addressed if transport is to be accessible to all disabled people.

There is no point in providing a concession, either through a national scheme or a local scheme, if people cannot access the services. We believe that a national concessionary fares scheme should bring about a consistent approach, which would be welcomed by all passengers and would avoid the problems that are currently experienced by people who travel from one local authority area to another. Experience also shows that such schemes are likely to draw the wrong people on to public transport, in so far as they draw relatively affluent older people out of cars and on to public transport outside the rush hour, which does not lead to improvement in social inclusion. As the current group of mobile concessionary pass holders becomes less mobile—it is recognised that disability increases with age—they will find their concession to be less of a bonus if they are not able to use public transport.

We believe that the Executive's policy goal should be to achieve inclusive transport, and that the key issues that must be addressed if that goal is to be realised are access, information, customer service and affordability. All those factors must be addressed to provide inclusive transport for all the people of Scotland.

On the proposals for statutory regional partnerships, our view is that a founding principle of each partnership should be to embrace inclusive transport. We recommended that the regional transport partnerships take account of the forthcoming MACS publication on guidance on developing transport strategies, "Transport Strategies: Planning for inclusion". It is due for publication very soon, and has already been copied to staff in the Scottish Executive. It will be circulated to local authorities by the Executive, along with guidance on development of local transport strategies.

The structure of the regional transport partnerships could have a significant impact on their ability to deliver improvements in benefits to disabled people. We are concerned that each partnership should take proper account of the needs of disabled people in its area. For that reason, we consider that disabled people should be represented among the external members of each regional transport partnership.

We are considering the specific questions in the Executive's consultation and will be pleased to give more information on our likely responses.

Thank you very much.

There have, during our scrutiny of the bill, been a lot of discussions so far about the shape that regional transport partnerships will take. We have discussed the balance between democratically elected representatives and other people. How could an organisation such as MACS participate in an RTP? Do you have concerns about your ability to do so?

We looked at the potential make-up of regional transport partnerships and considered the number of council representatives and external representatives. We feel that it might be useful for certain organisations to be represented on RTPs, but we also believe that that might become difficult because of the number of people who are likely to be involved. That would impact on the size of the partnerships because a great number of competing organisations would want to be represented. We believe that it is more important to ensure that nominations for external members of partnerships are not made only by local authorities, but that certain organisations such as MACS, Inclusion Scotland and the Community Transport Association are able to nominate people. Although members of the partnerships would be there as individuals because of their personal expertise, they would come from a broad range of sectors to ensure the widest possible breadth of expertise.

Your written evidence states:

"The structure of the RTP could have a significant impact on its ability to deliver improvements, which would benefit disabled people."

What benefits do you think RTPs could bring to disabled people? Could they deliver those benefits if there is no representation from the disabled community on those bodies?

The RTPs would have more of a struggle to do that if there was no such representation on them. We realise that a lot of different groups and organisations will want to bring their influence and expertise to bear.

On the structure of the partnerships, the board itself—the formal partnership—will have to be relatively small in order to contain an appropriate number of people to take business forward. We feel that a mechanism is needed—perhaps a stakeholders forum or something similar—so that other organisations and people who have different views can feed into the process. Accessibility and inclusion must be at the heart of the partnerships right from the off.

Has the bill enough scope to allow RTPs to connect in some way with the type of forum that you suggest? If the RTPs do not have a duty in statute or in regulation to consider representations from groups such as MACS, is there scope in the bill that gives you confidence that they will engage with you and deliver transport in a way that will benefit the people whom you represent?

There is scope to ensure that the level of representation of disabled people can be addressed properly, although we would be more comfortable that that would definitely happen if there were a statutory duty. There is, however, also potential for some of the arrangements and structures that would benefit disabled people and provide accessible transport in Scotland to be missed.

So there is room for hope but not for real confidence.

There is room for more than hope. I would not say that there is no room for confidence, but transport is an issue that a number of people on MACS and the organisations that are involved in MACS have worked on for many years at local and national level. There are still big gaps in accessibility in public transport, in planning and strategies for public transport and in how concessionary fares schemes are set up. We are pushing for as much accessibility as possible to be built in at the start.

I will add a little more. Our view of the arrangement is that there will be three tiers: transport Scotland, the strategic regional partnerships and the local authorities. We hope that the role of the first two will be to establish overall principles in provision of transport rather than to decide where a bus stop will go, which is the role of the local authority.

When local authorities get together with outsiders in an RTP, they will have the opportunity to consider the bigger picture. RTPs will obviously have a role in relation to joined-upness, which we are concerned about for all passengers. In the present system, the fact that journeys do not always take place within a local authority boundary poses a difficulty. We hope that the creation of RTPs will have a positive impact, but I echo my colleague's point that one of the key roles of the RTPs should be to improve opportunities for people to travel in their region. If the RTPs do that, social inclusion will be built in on the ground.

Existing council transport divisions are already loaded down under the great burden of all the practical and down-to-earth things that they have to do. It would be great to have a body that could sit back and examine a whole area to identify whether any group of passengers has a serious problem.

Given that that is your view, would MACS support having a statutory right to be consulted on drawing up of RTPs, as a way of guaranteeing that people from the disabled community have a chance to influence how the strategies turn out?

That would be essential. At the moment, we have the opportunity to look at the strategies that the existing voluntary bodies produce. We write to them to ask whether we can look at their strategies, but we have no statutory right to do so. They have all been willing to share their strategies with us and a number have offered to talk to us about them so that we can learn from each other about difficulties in developing such documents. There might be a need for statutory provision, although I hope that we would be consulted without having to resort to statute.

In your opening statement, you mentioned that although implementation of a concessionary fares scheme was all very well, accessibility should be a crucial element of such a scheme. Should the Executive legislate to ensure that public transport is accessible?

Yes, the Executive will have to legislate in certain areas. There are two elements to access. There is the physical accessibility of bus and train services and so on, but other questions of accessibility that need to be considered include whether services are close enough to allow people to access them and whether people can access the information that they require to be confident about organising and booking transport.

In work in which I have been involved in the past, much consideration has been given to the mechanics of concessionary fares schemes and to whether they work. In my view, that has concentrated on assessing whether such schemes work for the people who use them rather than on asking how we get to the people who do not use them. That theme has come through in the work that I have been doing in Scotland for the past 10 to 20 years. I still come into regular contact with community transport groups that organise services for people who are entitled to concessionary fares, but have no services to access. They end up paying to use community transport, for example, when they could use a free scheme if there were services on which they could use their concessionary passes.

Certain types of service automatically attract access to concessionary fares schemes, whereas others do not. One way of making progress on that would be for the Scottish Parliament to legislate to extend the types of service that can automatically access concessionary fares. Different types of community transport, such as dial-a-ride and car schemes, which provide transport for many people who cannot access existing schemes for geographical or financial reasons, could be included.

So you think that there is a strong case for some form of legislation—if not catch-all legislation, legislation that is specific to special services.

The legislation should be broader than that. Rather than be specific to individual services, it should be about how different service providers could access concessionary fares schemes and be reimbursed for carrying passengers who have concessionary passes.

Further to that, the idea that we can legislate to say that everything should be accessible is fine, but we have to be realistic. We work in a world in which many transport services are provided by commercial operators. We have great difficulty convincing coach operators that they should ensure that every coach has a space on it for a wheelchair user. Wheelchair users are an important part of the disabled community; their needs are quite difficult to meet because of the nature of the vehicles that we have had in the past. There is not a huge number of wheelchair users—although everyone assumes that there is because every disabled sign shows a picture of a person in a wheelchair—but they are important. The coach operators say, "There's no way we're doing that. We'll have to take out four seats, put in expensive equipment and park beside a 3m-wide kerb to enable that equipment to work properly. This isn't going to work."

Legislation is fine, but we must consider the commercial realities and the amount of money that the Scottish Executive has at its disposal to spend. We must decide on the best ways to spend the money. In that regard, a national concessionary fares scheme is definitely not at the top of our list, because what really prevents social inclusion are practical things such as people's inability to get to the shops, the bingo, the kirk and the places where their friends are. Those places might be only three or four streets away but, if you cannot walk more than 50m—which is not uncommon for people over the age of 80—going that far is difficult if there is no bus service or if the nearest bus stop is half a mile away.

However cheap fares are, if the nearest bus stop is half a mile away, you will need a taxi to get to that bus stop, which changes hugely the expense involved in the process.

I want to raise the issue of the national concessionary fares scheme as it may apply to ferry transport. As we know, the plan is that the scheme will be for senior citizens and people who have disabilities and that it will apply to off-peak bus travel. However, the view has been put by some witnesses and committee members that senior citizens and people who have disabilities who live on islands will have to catch ferries in order to benefit from the scheme. Some of us hope that, when the announcement is made about the details of the scheme—which is expected to be this week or next week—we will be told that the scheme will be extended to ferries, whether the concession is that the journey will have no charge, be half price or whatever. Does MACS share that view?

I should declare an interest, in that I am an Orkney Islands councillor and therefore have a particular view on this matter.

Orkney has taken the opportunity to add to the statutory bus concession scheme a limited number of free trips to the Orkney mainland for our elderly and disabled people who live on the other islands. However, there is no such scheme for getting from the mainland of Orkney to Scotland by NorthLink Orkney and Shetland Ferries Ltd, for example. I agree entirely that the concessionary scheme should be available on the means of transport to which people have access—we do not yet have buses that go across the Pentland firth. Although none of my fellow MACS members lives on an island, I think that they would support me in this regard.

Your submission says:

"There will always be a place for concessionary fares".

Obviously, the bill allows for different management schemes to be employed for national concessionary fares schemes. What shape of management scheme would you prefer and why?

That is not an issue that MACS is desperately worried about. The key points for us are accessibility of the schemes in terms of how they are managed, how reimbursements are applied and the relationships between transport providers and local authorities, regional transport partnerships or whoever will administer a national scheme. From our point of view, the most important thing is that services become more accessible and that a wider range of services—I mentioned community transport and Roddy McLeod mentioned ferries—are available for people to use as part of a national concessionary fares scheme.

Would you like to make any further points? Perhaps you expected to be asked about areas that you have not had a chance to talk about.

One of the issues that concerns MACS is the quality of information and research on which the committee, your colleagues in Parliament and ministers make decisions. We are concerned about some of the research that was done early in the introduction of the concessionary fares scheme. For example, the Scottish Executive surveyed people who were using buses and people who were waiting at bus stops. I am sure that that research is valuable and that it told us something, but it does not tell us about people who are not using public transport concessionary fares.

The Scottish Executive is just about to embark on a new research exercise, supported by MACS. We have been involved with the Executive in specifying the details of the research, which will examine barriers to travel. We know a bit about that, but we do not know it all. We know that affordability is one of the barriers, but for local travel affordability is not the big issue—the big issues are practical matters.

If I may make a practical suggestion, members should all rent a granny or a granddad. Maybe not—some of you may already be grannies or granddads, but I will not delve too deeply into that. However, you need to rent one, preferably one over the age of 75 or 80, and take them on a trip by public transport. Try it a few times and see how you get on. If every member of Parliament, every councillor and every senior member of the Scottish Executive did that, we would have a huge improvement fairly rapidly.

We are about to hear from witnesses from Age Concern Scotland, who I am sure will support that view. Thank you for your useful evidence.

I wish a good afternoon to Jess Barrow and Jim Ferguson. I hope that you are well; I have not seen you for a long time. Thank you for coming to give evidence on the Transport (Scotland) Bill. Do you have any opening comments or would you like to go straight to questions?

I have a few comments to make. First, we would echo much of what MACS said. Many of the issues that it raised are pertinent to older people as well, so please forgive me if I cover the same ground, but some of the points are worth repeating.

I have with me Jim Ferguson, who is secretary of Perth and Kinross pensioners forum, which receives an awful lot of inquiries on transport and transport issues. He will be able to bring in some valuable practical experience.

Age Concern Scotland is a national voluntary organisation that works throughout Scotland. We are an umbrella body, but we have local staff and local member groups, of which Perth and Kinross pensioners forum is one. We also have a growing individual membership and we run the Scottish helpline for older people, which is funded by the Scottish Executive. Those are all sources from which we get information on the issues that we raise.

Transport is among the key issues. As far as the helpline is concerned, the problem is often transport to access health services or to visit people in care homes. Calls tend not to be about public transport or concessionary travel, although they are issues. Inquiries often come from people who can no longer use public transport for various reasons. Transport is consistently a key issue for older people, along with income, housing, health and care. However, it is important to remember that transport is integral to all those other issues, and that it relates closely to all social issues that affect older people.

Free local bus travel has revolutionised life for older people in Scotland—it is enormously popular. We differ slightly from MACS in that we whole-heartedly endorse it. For those who can use it, it has been fantastic and everybody who uses it really appreciates it. The scheme's introduction has sent out a powerful and positive message to older people in Scotland and has led to more active involvement in society and less isolation. The committee will have seen the research that shows that there has been a massive increase in the number of journeys made for hospital visits, which is quite important.

However, we need a national scheme. We need to tackle the issues, the confusion and the difficulties that have arisen. Those have been caused by various different things, but much of the confusion has been around cross-scheme travel. People have had really awkward experiences of having to make two separate journeys to go from one place to another, with one journey being part of the free scheme, after which the passenger must get off the bus and wait for the next bus, on which they must pay for the journey. There has been much confusion about that and we are now beginning to see bus operators act more pragmatically, although they are bending the rules slightly in that the rules say that someone who makes a cross-boundary journey must pay for the full journey. People did not understand why they could not just pay for the bit that was in the area where they were not entitled to free travel.

Among the other issues that came up and which should be addressed is that of people needing to book ahead to travel and having to pay for that. That affects mainly Scottish Citylink Coaches Ltd journeys because they tend to be long-distance journeys for which booking ahead is often necessary. If someone makes a day trip and there is only one bus back from where they go, they want to be certain that they will get a seat on that bus, so they want to be able to book. Initially people could not book such journeys, but after consultation of organisations including Age Concern Scotland, Citylink imposed a booking fee of £2.50 to cover the costs of booking—although I believe that it has reduced that fee to £1. Even so, people quite rightly felt that that was not free bus travel. We must address that and enable people to be sure that they can get a seat on return bus journeys.

One of the other difficulties with operation of the scheme is very much down to drivers' attitudes. Older people are frequently asked to wait until so-called fare-paying passengers are on the bus first, which is utterly unacceptable. It does not appear to be the policy of the bus companies, but it is happening in practice. Jim Ferguson's experience will back that up.

We find that, in some ways, the devil is in the detail. Bus drivers seem to look on older people who get concessionary travel as a lesser breed. Once the paying passengers are on the bus, the drivers let on the people who are getting concessionary travel. That is unacceptable and we hope that the bus companies will try to stamp it out. We are not saying that it is the policy of the bus companies; it is not, but it certainly happens.

The other thing that we have to consider—in this I agree completely with what MACS said—is that all aspects of transport are important whether it is public, private or community transport. Older people rely on a variety of different methods of transport, as we all do.

To echo what MACS said, the three key issues are availability, accessibility and affordability. Availability of services is critical—free bus travel is of no use whatever if there are no services. That is true whether people are isolated in rural areas or in urban areas. Out of the window we can see Dumbiedykes, which is poorly served by public transport and has one of the highest proportions of older people compared with similar estates in Edinburgh. We have to acknowledge that there is isolation in urban areas as well as in rural areas. In some suburban and semi-urban areas there might be very poor access to bus services. We have to make sure that the services exist for people to use.

Another issue that has come to Age Concern Scotland over the years is the difficulty that occurs when services are changed. Suddenly, out of the blue, a bus company will drop a lifeline route. It is entirely understandable that a bus company will drop a route that is not profitable, but that can have a devastating effect on the people who depend on that bus to enable them to go shopping, to visit friends, to go to the doctor or to engage in any way with the outside world. Those issues are critical.

We also need to remember that sustainability of communities and of independent living for older people can depend greatly on public transport services, yet those services can be easily withdrawn and changed.

Often, when older car users cannot use their cars any more, they find that they have to move house because they need to live close to public transport services. If a service comes under threat or change—I am talking about even a slight deviation to a route—the result can be devastating to those who depend on it. Car travel is important, particularly in rural areas, where older people are very dependent on it. Rural areas have a higher proportion of older people who are likely to use cars to get around.

I am aware that the next issue that I want to raise is probably outwith the scope of the bill. However, as it is of critical importance, I will mention it to the committee. I refer to the price of petrol in rural areas, which is an issue that significant numbers of our members have raised. They are concerned about the cost of petrol, as any slight increase in the cost of transport—whether public or private—can have a significant impact on a pensioner who is struggling to get by on a pension.

I have mentioned transport that is needed to access health services and to visit hospitals, care homes and so forth. That issue is particularly difficult for older people. We must remember that the need to access health services increases at a stage in life when ability to access public and private transport decreases and when transport becomes increasingly difficult to use. It is the time of life when someone is more likely to need to visit a loved one—a family member or whoever—in a care home or hospital, or when they themselves might have health appointments. The issue is another of the important issues that significant numbers of our members have raised.

A lot of older people are involved in community activities throughout Scotland, whether in visiting day centres, attending lunch clubs and participating in bingo, tea dances or whatever. Transport is key to those services: it is of no use at all if it does not get people to their day centre, bingo hall or wherever. Many such services are dependent on a local community transport scheme or on having a centre minibus that gets people to and from the places where they want to go. It is critical that the Local Government and Transport Committee consider the need for and the importance of such transport schemes.

I move on to address issues of accessibility. It is good to see the advance that has been made over recent years in low-floor buses. However, the improvement is not always welcomed by older people, as some find the buses more difficult to negotiate. The design can mean that it is not always easy for an older person to make their way to a seat. Not only is design an issue, poor driver training can mean that drivers move away from bus stops more quickly than they should. They do not realise that that can make things difficult for older people—indeed, people can be put off using buses; they can become frightened of using them. Driver training is critical.

Among the other issues that the MACS witnesses raised was information. Information, too, is vital to older people so that they can access accurate, up-to-date timetable information in a font size that they can read. It staggers me that bus timetables and other such information are usually produced in such a small type-face that people cannot read it. For example, I noticed that the display screens at Waverley station have changed. The type-face has shrunk and the screen has become terribly difficult to read. I cannot understand why transport providers do not address such critical issues.

Thank you. We will move to questions from members. If, at the end of the session, Jim Ferguson has a point that he wants to raise, I will let him in at that point.

Does Age Concern feel that it will be able to make an input to the regional transport partnerships? Do you envisage any difficulties with the establishment of the RTPs that could impact adversely on Age Concern's ability to get the accessibility to and accountability of public transport that it seeks? I put a similar question to the first panel, whose members represented the disabled community.

That will depend very much on the RTPs' priorities and on the voices to which they listen. It is critical that the RTPs listen properly to passengers and potential passengers and that they take the wider view. Some kind of community involvement will be important. It is difficult to say which of the diverse representative organisations for older people the RTPs should listen to, but it is important that they listen to the voices of public transport users.

Will the bill create the regulatory environment in which that will happen?

I am not entirely sure. We will need to wait and see.

For example, do the existing transport bodies engage with users satisfactorily or must the bill improve on the current situation?

A significant improvement is required, as there is not enough consultation at the moment with older people who are users of public transport. Some bus companies are good at talking to organisations—for example, Citylink has recently talked to Jim Ferguson's organisation—but they are not as good as they should be in implementing some of our suggestions. Jim Ferguson might want to add to that.

I do not mean to put words in your mouth, but does the bill perhaps need to ensure that it improves on whatever level of communication exists at present?

Yes.

The bill allows for a number of different management systems for the national concessionary fares scheme. Would you welcome the development of one scheme for all Scotland to replace the clutter of various schemes that run at the moment?

Yes, we certainly would. A great deal of confusion has been caused by the current variety of schemes because of the differences that exist between one scheme and another. We would welcome one national scheme that was the same throughout Scotland. It must be simple for people to understand and to use.

Have you a particular idea in mind?

It would be great if the scheme had one standard bus pass that was the same across Scotland.

It is as simple as that.

As we all know, it has been announced that the concessionary fares scheme will apply to bus travel. Jess Barrow mentioned that the existence of the scheme will be of little benefit in areas where there are no bus services. Generally, although not exclusively, rural areas tend to fall into that category. Such areas tend to have train connections to the major population centres, such as Inverness and Aberdeen, which serve a rural hinterland. Should the scheme be extended to rail travel? Would it be an advantage to have a simple single national scheme that applied to all types of public transport? Would such a scheme be better than one that applies purely to bus travel? If so, would that justify the development of a concessionary scheme for all forms of public transport that is not entirely free, rather than an entirely free concessionary scheme that applies only to buses?

That is a difficult question to answer. It would be wonderful if older people received free travel on all forms of public transport in Scotland, but I recognise that that might not necessarily be feasible. In certain areas, it is critical that people have access to the scheme. Where there are no bus services and the ferry is the only method of transport available, people should have access to the scheme.

The issue comes back to the question of the policy intention behind the concessionary travel scheme and whether that is to enable people to get out and about and to play a fuller part in society. That is the critical question that needs to be answered. Once we are clear about the policy intention, it will be easier to come up with solutions.

There are some very rural areas within the boundaries of Perth and Kinross Council area. Many older people tell us that, unless they get reasonable travel facilities, they will need to move house. Once the car is taken away from them—and nowadays it is taken away; it is not given up lightly—they are even more isolated than they were before. We really need the rail or road transport facilities to be there.

But you favour the scheme being extended to ferries in any event.

Yes.

Can I just pick up on that last bit? I think I know what Fergus Ewing was trying to get at. If the scheme was extended so that there was one pass for ferries, trains and buses, and if there needed to be a compromise because of cost-envelope issues, would you prefer a concessionary scheme that meant that travel on the buses was not free but was—I am using an arbitrary figure—a quarter of the fare, which allowed everybody to travel by train for a quarter of the fare also? Would that be preferable to a scheme that provided free transport on the buses but no concession on the trains?

The principle of free bus travel has been adopted and has been widely welcomed by older people throughout Scotland. I do not think that it would be acceptable for the Executive to backtrack on that. Where there is no alternative, there ought to be free access to public transport—for example, free access to ferries. There are alternative bus routes to most of the train routes.

Okay. That is quite clear. I think that, in conclusion, Jim Ferguson has a specific point to raise with us.

Yes. It is a plea to the people who look after the bus and rail terminuses to provide older people with the facilities that they require at the terminuses. Some of the facilities are absolutely abysmal at present.

How do you see that being addressed through the Transport (Scotland) Bill?

Local authorities look after some of those areas. We need them to update the facilities that are provided.

I do not think that we have any more questions. Thank you very much for your evidence. I hand the convenership back to Bristow Muldoon.

Thanks very much for handling those two sessions, Bruce.

We move on to our third group of witnesses. I welcome three representatives from the Scottish Youth Parliament and one from Argyll and Bute youth forum. Ross Watson is the chair of the transport, environment and rural affairs committee of the Scottish Youth Parliament; Morven Neil is a member of the Scottish Youth Parliament; Stephanie Veitch is a member of the Scottish Youth Parliament; and Kevin Smith is a member of the Argyll and Bute youth forum. I invite Ross Watson to make some introductory remarks about the views of the Scottish Youth Parliament on the Transport (Scotland) Bill. After that, we will move on to questions.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to come here and speak to you guys. The transport, environment and rural affairs committee of the Scottish Youth Parliament has raised three main issues regarding transport, which we would like to discuss. The first is uniformity of reductions on ferry fares and, in some cases, the introduction of a concessionary fare for all young people aged between 16 and 25, regardless of whether they are in full-time education, through the use of the Young Scot card. The second is the cost and regularity of buses in rural areas. The third is free transport to school for all pupils.

Stephanie Veitch has compiled an excellent set of evidence to show that recommending concessionary fares on all ferries for all young people is an essential move for your committee to take. I hope that that information was sent to you prior to the meeting. There is no hard evidence to back up our play for cheaper, more regular bus services in rural areas; however, the fact that so few young people use the services is evidence enough. On free transport for all school pupils, all pupils are entitled to free education and that should include getting to school and back again. We believe that a blanket concessionary travel scheme should be set up to cover all modes of public transport for young people aged between 14 and 25. The discount would be set at 30 per cent on production of a Young Scot card.

I ask Stephanie Veitch to say a few words about ferry travel.

A few months ago, we asked First Minister Jack McConnell how it can be that a Government-subsidised company such as Caledonian MacBrayne will not allow Young Scot or dialogue youth discounts for travel, even though those are Government-subsidised schemes. Before that, we had been confronting CalMac about getting an under-25s discount for years.

The aim of spending in the transport portfolio is:

"To promote economic growth, social inclusion and health and protection of our environment through a safe, integrated, effective and efficient transport system."

If CalMac were to offer young people discounts, all those criteria could be met, so what does it have to lose?

I thank Stephanie Veitch and Ross Watson for those introductory remarks.

I am not uninterested in the points that Stephanie Veitch and Ross Watson have made—other committee members will ask questions about those—but I am more interested in what they did not talk about: the regional transport partnerships. We have taken a lot of evidence on accessibility, which has led us to believe that concession schemes and similar issues must be addressed. One of the ways of doing that is through the regional transport partnerships. Will RTPs offer a way for young people to have their voices heard, so that the issues of concessions and availability that the witnesses are raising will be addressed?

I have to confess that I do not know how regional transport partnerships operate.

They do not exist yet, and we are talking about how we can set them up. If you, as young people, are not being listened to, would a statutory body such as a regional transport partnership—something that brings local authorities and other agencies together to consider transport issues—be the type of forum in which you would have a voice?

We would if we were given a voice. Young people are invited on to many such committees, but it is often a case of bringing in a token young person. If a young person were involved and making valid points that were taken on board, that would be a positive step forwards.

From your experience of talking to the bodies that currently run transport in Scotland, is your voice listened to?

Not significantly.

I imagine, then, that your primary concern would be that whatever bodies are set up, whether regional transport partnerships or not, give you a voice. Are you confident that any such agency could give you the voice that you are looking for?

If regional transport partnerships are a new scheme and start off with young people being part of them, that would have to be a good thing. If a young person is invited on to the board of an existing system because of comments that a young person is needed on it, the invitation is often regarded as a token gesture, but if they were part of the system from the start, it would work.

Your CalMac ferry proposal is interesting. You said in your opening statement that it would promote economic growth, social inclusion, health and environmental protection. Will you go into the specifics of how it would promote economic growth, for example? That might speak for itself, but what do you envisage would be the specific economic boon of under-25s receiving discounted access to ferry journeys?

As I have written in our submission, it would make it cheaper for under-25s to come home from and return to university, thus maintaining and promoting the economic growth of the island communities.

Would there be health benefits to the change? At the moment, some people will not use the ferry service as a result of there being no concessionary allowances. Is that your concern?

The point about economic growth is that young people do not have a lot of disposable income to do things. Many young people would like to go to the islands, but the cost of taking ferries makes that difficult. The islands almost exclude themselves from sources of income from young people who want to visit the islands or who live on the islands and are trying to get back to them, because people will stay on the mainland.

I would like to confirm what you are saying. Is the issue more about young people making their way to the islands than about those who live on the islands being able to go back and forward to the mainland?

Not necessarily, because the major health and education services for island communities are on the mainland.

So the main issue is to do with health. You want to promote health, well-being and social inclusion and you mainly want island communities to benefit. Ross Watson digressed a wee bit in talking about people on the mainland benefiting too.

Yes.

I have a final question. Is the issue not simply about the Government being involved in the subsidy, but about operators being more creative in assisting young people? Should companies that are involved in delivering transport be more creative in assisting young people and accepting that there is a market out there among young people?

NorthLink gives 10 per cent discounts to young people in full-time education who are travelling to Orkney and 25 per cent discounts to students travelling to Shetland. On the point about the Government subsidising a feasibility study involving CalMac and NorthLink, CalMac's argument is that there is nothing to prove that a reduction in fares for young people will bring any business benefit to it. It has no interest in considering the matter. It would help if the Executive funded a study to examine the matter.

Are you saying that big business should sit up and take notice of young people out there and the need to deliver a service to them?

Yes.

I understand that the Scottish Executive is proposing a concessionary scheme to young people in full-time education and not a concessionary scheme for all young people under 25, which you are arguing for in relation to CalMac. What would be the justification of giving a concessionary fare to a young person in their early 20s who is in a well-paid job, but requiring a person who is over 25 and in a less well-paid job to pay the full fare?

That is a valid point. However, young people who have poorly paid jobs vastly outnumber those who have well-paid jobs, especially in the Highlands and Islands. The majority of young people with well-paid jobs are probably in the central belt and the cities.

Would it be fairer to propose a concessionary fare for those who are in full-time education and for those whose income is below a certain level, as opposed to a blanket concession, irrespective of income level?

But how would that proposal be enforced?

The system could be applied in the same way as other means-tested systems are applied.

We mentioned anyone under the age of 25. An easy way of applying the proposals to those people, regardless of whether they are rich or poor, would be through their having the Young Scot card.

I have one more question about the proposals in your submission. It is suggested that there should be free bus travel to and from school for all young people in full-time education. Could not that militate against efforts to encourage people to get to and from school by healthier means? In respect of overall health benefits, it might be a better option for young people who live a mile or a mile and a bit away from school to walk to and from school rather than get a free bus service.

That is an excellent point, but I lived 11 miles away from my school, as did the majority of people who went to that school. We are not discussing young people's health, which would be a separate discussion.

Someone who lived 11 miles from their catchment school would be entitled to free travel to and from school, because the law stipulates that free travel should be provided for pupils who live further than a certain distance from their school. However, for perhaps thousands of young people who live relatively close to their school, walking to and from school might be a better option. The committee has heard in the past that a very small proportion of young people walk or cycle to school and a high proportion travel on a bus or other form of motorised transport. It might be better for society if we could rebalance that—there would be an impact on congestion as well as on health.

That is an excellent point.

In your opening statement you said that young people do not use the bus as much as perhaps they should. What are the main reasons for that? Affordability might be one reason, but are there other factors that impact on bus use?

The frequency of buses is a problem. In my village, one bus per day goes north and one bus per day goes south, so it is just not practical to use the bus.

I recognise the problem. I am from a rural community too and I think that there used to be a bus every two hours until 8 pm, when the service stopped running, so if we wanted to go out, we had to go early.

If the Executive were to put money into improving travel opportunities for young people, should it invest in concessionary fares or in trying to increase the frequency of bus services in communities that do not have a regular bus service?

That is an interesting question. I am not sure. Concessionary fares would benefit more young people throughout Scotland than would increasing the frequency of buses in rural areas, so that would be the way to go if the Executive wanted to help all young people in Scotland.

I have a couple of short questions. Does the Scottish Youth Parliament have the capacity to ascertain whether the problems with bus use throughout the country are based on geography or on other matters, such as coolness? I suppose that some young people think that public transport is not cool. Are the Youth Parliament's resources too limited to carry out such a study?

It would be possible for the Youth Parliament's transport, environment and rural affairs committee to run a survey of members of the Youth Parliament, which asked how they use public transport. We could do that quite easily; it would not be outwith our capabilities at all.

If you are able to do that, will you send the results to the Local Government and Transport Committee? When it asked young people in Dumfries about their use of buses, they gave a mixed response. They said that they used buses when they had to use them for school, but if they were going out at night to a nightclub or another facility, the bus was regarded as the very last option. The committee is concerned to make the bus the first rather than the last option.

Has your committee been involved with Glasgow City Council? A couple of years ago, the council conducted quite a widespread survey of young people, the results of which suggested that a lack of transport was one of the biggest problems in relation to the use of facilities in Glasgow. Could you liaise with the council to try to develop a strategy that ensures that facilities can be used? Glasgow is different from rural areas, but even in Glasgow people are sometimes isolated on housing schemes if there are no facilities on their doorstep.

We can certainly consider that. Our committee covers transport, the environment and rural affairs and some 95 per cent of its members are from rural areas, but recently two or three members from Glasgow have joined the committee.

I will ask about a slightly different matter. I know that you are in favour of the extension of the concessionary fares scheme to include ferry travel and broadly support a concessionary scheme for young people, in particular for under-16s and for students, who already receive discounts. We all hope that students will have, and will take up, the opportunity to travel widely, particularly to Scotland's islands. If there is a clear, simple concessionary scheme that is extended to ferries and which applies to students—at 50 per cent of the cost, for example, or even for free—to what extent would that stimulate people of around your age to travel more and to travel where they would not previously have thought of travelling? Would a concessionary scheme of itself be a stimulus to younger people that would give them a chance to get out and about and see more of Scotland, particularly of our islands?

Of course it would. As a student myself, I know that times are hard with money. If you want to go and visit the islands, the cost of going to some of the further afield islands by ferry is outrageous. If you wanted to go and see different places in Scotland as part of your studies or even outwith your studies, a discount would certainly be an incentive to go. You would have more money to spend on the island if you did not have to pay so much getting there, and you would probably go to visit different places and see more of the island.

I think that it was you who mentioned that members of the Scottish Youth Parliament have been lobbying CalMac for years to try to persuade it to adopt a more youth-friendly policy. Is that correct? If you are able to—if you have been involved or if you know what other people have been doing—can you describe what efforts have been made by members of the Scottish Youth Parliament to persuade CalMac to adopt a more friendly approach to concessionary youth travel?

The Scottish Youth Parliament and Argyll and Bute youth forum, of which I, like Kevin Smith, am a member, have both been involved in that. The youth forum and our development workers have been pushing CalMac to do that.

The Scottish Youth Parliament has really stepped in at the last moment, has it not?

Yes.

Well, you are ahead of the seniors' Parliament, because I do not think that we have stepped in at all. More power to your elbow.

Those are all the questions that we have. I thank Kevin Smith, Ross Watson, Morven Neil and Stephanie Veitch for their evidence this afternoon.

Our next group of witnesses represents the national joint utilities group and will present further evidence on the Transport (Scotland) Bill. I understand that they will concentrate mainly on the road works aspects of the bill. I welcome Frank Stewart, who is the engineering build services manager for Thus plc and chairman of NJUG; John Taylor, who is the Government relations manager for National Grid Transco plc; and Rodney Grubb, who is representing Scottish and Southern Energy plc. I believe that Frank Stewart will make an opening statement on behalf of NJUG.

Good afternoon and thank you for giving us the opportunity to address the committee.

The national joint utilities group represents gas, water, electricity and the telecommunications industry on matters relating to street and road works. We welcome the Scottish Parliament's resolve to reduce congestion on Scotland's roads. In fact, we would go further than that: we are happy to work with the Scottish Parliament, the Executive and local authorities to that end. Scotland's and the United Kingdom's roads do not only carry vehicles; they are the conduits that allow us to provide essential services to our customers throughout Scotland and the UK.

There are only three reasons why we excavate roads. The first is safety, the second is to maintain the security of supply and the third is to provide services to our customers. As I said, we welcome the Scottish Parliament's resolve to reduce congestion, but our main concern about the bill as written is that the cost to utility companies to provide essential services will increase considerably if all the proposals become law. The entire problem of congestion must be considered, not just one small aspect of it. A few years ago, the then Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions commissioned a report—it may not have been published—which said that 65 per cent of congestion is caused by the sheer volume of traffic; 25 per cent is caused by road accidents and incidents; and 10 per cent is down to road and street works, half of which are attributable to utility companies and half to local authorities or roads authorities. We must consider the problem in its entirety, but the bill addresses the cause of only 5 per cent of congestion and that is a great concern for us. The main thrust of our argument is that we want a level playing field to be established.

In the evidence that we have taken so far, we have established that utility companies and the construction engineering sector are not responsible for the majority of congestion problems. However, how could the bill be used to address those problems? The evidence has revealed concern that the bill appears to be skewed towards dealing with a small part of the problem. How can we remove that bias?

The bill provides an excellent opportunity to deal with a problem that affects us all—we all have to travel on the roads. The main step would be to establish a level playing field. The codes of practice that will be produced under the bill and those that have been produced under the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991 should apply to all organisations that excavate in Scotland's public roads. That would be one step.

I have no suggestions about how to deal with the major concern, which is the sheer volume of traffic. I am sure that most people who are present would agree that, as a motorist, if there is an opportunity to use a vehicle to go somewhere, one does so.

This will be a difficult question to answer, but if the problem is largely down to the volume of traffic, why does the perception exist that the utility companies are responsible for the majority of the problems?

I can answer that fairly simply. An Executive press release in January of this year stated that utility companies were responsible for 93 per cent of road works in Scotland. That is totally erroneous—they are probably responsible for 93 per cent of recorded road works, but utility companies have to record all their works on the Scottish road works register, whereas other bodies do not have to do so, which throws the situation out of kilter.

Do you believe that the debate was led down that road by "Scotland's Transport—The Regulation of Utility Company Roadworks: A Consultation"?

The press release was a forerunner to the consultation document.

I want to add to what Frank Stewart said. Figures on how much work is happening on the street are available from Susiephone Ltd, but the problem is that, on the whole, only the utilities give information to Susiephone. Perhaps the perception has built up because, although facts and figures can be recovered from a system, they cannot be obtained from local authorities, so there is nothing to back up how much work local authorities are doing. That does not help.

The perception is that all works are recorded by Susiephone, but I know of only one local authority—West Lothian Council—that records 100 per cent of its works. Some councils record none at all and the rest are somewhere between the two, so the situation is pretty haphazard. Until the register records every road work in Scotland—every time a spade is put into the ground—we will not get the exact figures.

You are not asking for the bill to be amended so that it is not seen as a hammer to crack a nut. You would like whatever measures are introduced to address the utility companies' role to be extended to everyone who has the capacity to cause congestion through road works.

That is exactly what I am saying.

Someone asked earlier how awareness can be increased. If everyone who does road works gets involved, the figure will double. The figures that we are going on state that 5 per cent of congestion is caused by utilities. If we were to include local authorities, we would double the figure to 10 per cent. That might still be a small figure, but we would be capturing a larger amount of the work.

Would you like that larger amount of work to be captured?

Given that we are talking about reducing congestion and being more effective, we have to know what all the works are.

You mentioned the way in which West Lothian Council works. From previous discussions with West Lothian Council and some of the utilities, I was aware that West Lothian Council recorded its works in the register. I believe that there are other ways in which the council works constructively with utility companies in co-ordinating works. Will you expand on that? Do you think that that way of working could be replicated throughout Scotland?

There are four situations in Scotland. Certain local authorities have introduced, or are introducing, what they call a considerate contractors scheme. One of those schemes has been running successfully in Aberdeen for three to four years. West Lothian is next; it is ready to launch its scheme on 1 January. The City of Edinburgh Council and Glasgow City Council schemes will probably start some time in 2005. We think that those are excellent schemes, which provide a great way of co-ordinating works and ensuring a spirit of co-operation between roads authorities and utility companies, which we welcome with open arms.

You obviously took a lot of heat at the beginning of this process, during the consultation, which I feel coming at us. If you have found yourselves in that situation, that is regrettable.

A fair chunk of the utilities work that you undertake must come from the Scottish Executive. For example, Scottish Water, which is in effect an arm of the Scottish Executive, undertakes such work. Has any work been done on that, given where the process started?

The short answer is no. What you said is quite right. As much as 60 per cent of the work on roads in Scotland, as far as utilities are concerned, is done by Scottish Water. Scottish Water is treated like any other utility—no exceptions are made for it and there are no differentials. It just happens to be the biggest undertaker of work.

So it is a bit rich for whoever made that comment in the press release to criticise utilities when most of the work emanates from Government. Perhaps that says everything about the climate in which we live.

I cannot speak for the water utilities, but perhaps I can draw a parallel between the water and gas utilities. We are going through a major replacement programme. After all, some of the plant has to be replaced; it is 100 years old and is deteriorating. Obviously, we are replacing the plant for safety reasons, but the water industry carries out work to stop water leaks and for other environmental reasons. That massive programme has to be undertaken to maintain a secure supply, which generates its own workload. We have a 30-year programme of essential works, and I believe that the water industry's programme is based on a longer period.

I believe that you agree with the Health and Safety Executive on the works that will be carried out. As a result, those works are partly Government driven.

Yes.

That is interesting.

I suppose that the real question is how we manage this situation better in the future. In your written evidence, you say that you support the introduction of a road works commissioner and that you look forward to collaborating with that department. However, the roads authorities and utilities committee (Scotland) has said that such a commissioner might not be needed and that it could undertake the task if it were given such a statutory responsibility. Do you have any preference about which course should be taken, provided that the whole matter is managed properly in future?

We do not have any preference per se, but we certainly see both sides of the argument. If nothing else, a commissioner would be an independent arbiter. For example, we would not have to approach a roads department for a decision, which might leave us second best.

We are not diametrically opposed to RAUCS, which is made up of representatives from utilities and roads authorities. I understand the roads authorities' position on this matter. However, we support the introduction of a commissioner post, as long as it is properly filled and resourced.

That was my next question. It has been suggested that, given the resources that will be available, the commissioner's office will have a light touch to say the least and will in any case have to rely heavily on local authority work and information. Could any changes be made to the roads commissioner's resources and proposed powers to strengthen the role?

I understand that the department will not have many staff. If that is the case, I cannot see how a commissioner and perhaps two assistants could examine the whole problem in Scotland. Many more people will need to be involved. If the Executive is paying only lip service to the matter, it will be a waste of time and money.

RAUCS has said that it could do this work for about £600,000, which is almost the same amount that the Executive has set aside to fund technical upgrades for the road works register. That does not take into account the additional administrative costs for the commissioner and his couple of staff. I think that other committee members share my view that it is difficult to strike the right balance on this matter. Do we put additional resources into funding a road works commissioner—which, given the amount, ain't going to have a lot of teeth—or do we put our money more smartly into RAUCS and let it do the job? I should say that "more smartly" is my term. You are saying that it is a fine balance, but that you would welcome the introduction of a road works commissioner if the office were properly resourced.

If it were properly resourced and, as Frank Stewart pointed out, independent. No matter whether we are talking about a commissioner or whatever, we need someone independent to examine the work of utilities and local authorities and come up with some real evidence. We need to find out how much and what sort of work is being done and who is doing it. If we are going to reduce congestion, we need to work together. We should be trench sharing. Any new build—industrial or commercial; a factory or a housing estate—requires the basic services.

Does not RAUCS provide a model for roads authorities and utility companies to work together? If that committee were to be given statutory power and a statutory responsibility for being fair to both parties, would that not work?

I think that that would work, but we must have the figures as well. We lack the evidence to say, for example, "Here's who is doing the work and here's how long it is taking to do." We need somebody to consider the benefits of trench sharing and the one-in, all-in approach. Nobody is doing such work. We need an independent body to do it.

Sections 18 and 19 of the bill deal with directions on the timings of road works and the placing of apparatus in roads. Your written submission says that the bill should allow exemptions for emergency work. Can you elaborate on that and give us further details about the kind of emergencies that you mean?

One of our greatest concerns is the bill's directions on timings and the placing of apparatus. The bill does not seem to make any provision for emergency work being done on, for example, gas leaks and large water bursts, for which we could go in and do a repair as quickly as possible. Currently, if there is a serious gas leak or large water burst, we can go in immediately, without notice, to try to rectify the situation, although we must give retrospective notice. The bill seems to take away that right. We are also concerned about the bill's possible impact on customer connections. Our fear is that the bill's provisions would mean that we would have to tell customers that we could not give them a service for six months or whatever. That approach just does not work in the modern world.

You say that the need to reconnect a supply is an issue of public concern. However, you will appreciate that the effect that such work has on road users is also an issue of public concern. Roads authorities feel that utility companies are sometimes inconsiderate in how they do their work and how long they take. For example, it is common to see a work site on a partially closed road around which there is not much activity. When I think about utility companies' work, I think about utilities taking over half a street and just leaving things there until it suits them to connect a service. Even after that has been done, there is an issue about utilities reinstating a road to its original condition. Do you appreciate that there must be legislation to deal with such situations and to ensure that utility companies do not have the free rein that they have perhaps had in the past? Do you accept that there is an argument for such legislation?

When there are gas escapes, we do not necessarily get informed about the most serious one first. For example, a team can go out to a gas escape and make it safe, but before the team can complete the work on the gas main, news about a more severe gas escape comes in, which must be prioritised. The team must then go and deal with that escape before it can come back and complete its work on the first job. Therefore, because work is prioritised for safety reasons, work on some repairs can be left incomplete. That does not mean that the work has been forgotten about; it just means that it is done according to a list of priorities, but it is usually done to a tight timescale. Occasionally, a specialist bit of kit that is needed to do a repair has to be ordered, which can delay the completion of the repair. However, we are talking about a delay of days rather than months or years—just a short timescale. To sum up, we prioritise work and deal with the most severe problems first.

An additional problem arises because some of our plant is old. For example, after a repair is done on a main, we realise sometimes that we will have to return in the near future to replace the main because it has deteriorated to such an extent. We do not postpone such work for long. If we did so, we would be in and out doing maintenance work all the time. There comes a point when it is sensible to devise a programme for completely replacing such a pipe.

Are you saying that you want a free rein to do emergency work as you please? If not, are you saying that you want regulation of such work?

Absolutely. I would not advocate our having a free rein for anything like that. Of course emergency work must be controlled, but it must also be realised that certain circumstances must be reacted to immediately. That takes us back to the word "perception". The perception is that some utilities come, open up the road and leave it for ever just for the sake of leaving it. However, there are a lot of reasons for excavations remaining open, including the curing of the materials that are used in a concrete-type situation and the venting of a shaft that has had a gas leak in it.

Is there a need for public information to be provided about a work site, perhaps on a website? Is there an argument for providing information in that way to deal with some of the problems of perception?

I would agree with that, yes.

Our concern with the bill as it is drafted is that, when it comes to the placing of our apparatus, there are no exemptions. We have a concern that exemptions regarding the placing of apparatus have been removed from what is in the 1991 act.

Is it the case that, because you are a private sector organisation, you do not include Scottish Water among your members?

Scottish Water is included. Its membership is through Water UK.

Okay. I was not sure about that.

My next question follows on from what Paul Martin asked about a moment ago. If the provision for emergency work is not included in the bill, what kind of delay could there be on something that has to be done as a matter of emergency? The biggest issue might be what constitutes an emergency. Will you have a go at defining that? In your submission, you talk about

"emergency, urgent and customer connections."

How do you define those in terms of emergency measures?

The simple definition of an emergency situation is one in which there is danger to life and limb.

So, if there was a delay to the work—

Exactly. If something happened after 6 o'clock at night, would we have to wait until 9 o'clock the next day to get permission from the roads authority to open up the road? That would be absolutely abhorrent. That is a horror story, as far as I am concerned.

Absolutely. You say of sections 18 and 19 that there

"could be serious implications for the cost of services, the timely delivery of services, and the quality of the local environment."

Can you expand on that a little and talk about some of the implications?

The timing issue arises with regard to people asking for our services. Because of the current climate in the commercial world—you are probably more aware of this than I am—if a company is not prepared to provide a service yesterday, or certainly two days in advance, no one will come to that company. As far as the positioning is concerned, it may well be that we have apparatus in a certain street off which we would tap to go to a customer. According to the bill, there could be instances in which that would not be allowed.

We have a licence condition that is laid down by the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets, which dictates the standards of service that we have to meet in giving people gas supplies and so on. We stick fairly rigidly to those standards. There are issues there.

A lot of consideration goes into the planning of the work and the locations where we put plant. We have highly trained engineers who, before we even put a spade in the ground, have done a lot of detailed research to ensure that the most sensible route has been taken from an engineering point of view. They take into account the impact on traffic and other conditions—the environmental impact, the situation regarding neighbours, and so on. That is all taken into account when the work is planned. The standard of service is of key importance.

There can be situations in which people have increased their gas or electricity usage, which means that we have to reinforce the system to ensure the security of the supply. In other words, the system that is in the ground is not sufficiently large for their requirements and, from time to time, has to be upgraded. Occasionally, there can be a request for a supply within 28 days. There is sometimes a delay, but we like to avoid that, especially with regard to businesses, which are trying to invest and generate employment.

Bruce Crawford asked you about the road works commissioner. How do you think that that role could help you, given the explanation that you have just given?

The issue is the independence of the role. If, for example, there was a dispute with regard to the placing of apparatus or the timing of a job, the road works commissioner would probably be in a position to arbitrate and give a fair ruling. He would not come down on our side all the time, but he would certainly provide an independent ruling.

Much of the work that we do causes inconvenience at the time. We accept that—it is the nature of the work that we do on the public highway. Much of the work that we do is short term. We are putting in assets, and the asset life of the new equipment that we install could be as long as 30 years. We might go in to do a month's or six weeks' work. We appreciate that there is disruption at the time. However, the benefit of that short-term work is a long-term gain, because new assets and infrastructure are going into the ground. That must be considered as part of the context.

Fergus Ewing has questions on the issue of local authorities and fixed penalties.

Yes. I am sorry that I was not able to be here for the earlier evidence.

Mr Stewart knows about my concern on the following question. I want to ask about the treatment of utility companies as opposed to local authorities, in particular in relation to the system of fines that the bill proposes. The fines or penalties would apply to the utilities, but not to local authorities. In the course of hearing previous evidence, as the present witnesses may know, I proposed that there be a level playing field and that, if there is to be a system of fines and penalties, that system should apply to all. Does NJUG agree with that?

Absolutely. However, we understand the difficulties involved; I do not suppose that we could have a situation in which the local authority was imposing fines upon itself. It is a matter of concern to us that the bill is being seen as a revenue-raising opportunity. I really do not know how it could be worked in another way, other than introducing a points system, under which points could be awarded against utilities and roads authorities.

I could be wrong, but my recollection is that only the AA Motoring Trust representative has come out and said that fines would be a useful source of revenue. As far as I know, the civil servants and the minister have not owned up to that—not that I would suggest that civil servants are ever guilty of anything, you understand. The bill does not set out how the system would operate, but I believe that NJUG and similar bodies have given some thought to how a system of fines might best work. How do you think that a system that uses penalties—sticks, rather than carrots—could best operate so as to achieve the objectives of having road works carried out as swiftly and efficiently as possible, with the least disruption to road users?

It is a very difficult question. We have discussed it, but we have not reached a conclusion. That is also a continuing argument in England—in relation to the Traffic Management Act 2004—where the situation is similar. Utilities will be fined, but highways authorities will not. Our suggestion is that, certainly for the first two years of the eventual act's application in Scotland, a points system or assessment system could be implemented in order to ascertain exactly where the problems lie. That takes us back to our first point about a level playing field, and having a register that records all works, not just utility works.

As the bill stands, the proposed fines are administration fines. They are for not notifying that we are carrying out works or that we have completed works. We recognise that it is not our operators whom we need to train, but our project managers, so that when we start works the notifications go out.

To put the question another way, it would be slightly ludicrous if local authorities were fining themselves. Clearly, that would not work. I was puzzled by the fact that, in your written evidence, you come out in support of the road works commissioner. I thought that you would tend towards the argument that your support would be conditional on the road works commissioner being the independent person in charge of a regime under which there were the two elements of a level playing field and the road works register applying to everybody, local authorities included. If you did not have a level playing field and/or local authorities were not required to submit information to the register in the way that you were, would you still support the road works commissioner?

The position would be a waste of time. There is no point in having someone who is looking at one small section that accounts for 5 per cent of congestion.

Because 95 per cent of the causes of congestion would be outwith the power or remit of the road works commissioner.

Absolutely. If the bill is genuinely to address congestion, the problem has to be examined in its entirety.

We talked about local authorities not fining themselves, but Scottish Water is a public body and it is on one side of the fence with us.

Last Friday, I witnessed a council direct labour organisation van being given a parking ticket in Glasgow city centre, so the idea that one arm of a local authority cannot penalise another arm is wrong. We could have a system that is applied to the roads authority by a local authority of which it is part.

Our desire is to address the real problems. One problem is the length of time that road works take to be reinstated—I take on board Rodney Grubb's point about the long-term nature of the issue. Even more important is the problem in the minority of cases when reinstatement work is not up to standard. There has to be a penalty system as a spur to the industry to ensure that it gets things right first time. Do you agree with that general position?

I agree 100 per cent. I have always advocated that those who offend should be punished. It is as simple as that. However, there must be a level playing field. I agree with what you said about one side of a local authority being able to fine or impose restrictions on another section, but there must be an independent arbiter, such as another totally divorced part of the authority.

Other witnesses from the private sector indicated that they would be willing to help to ensure that a robust system was introduced on the back of the bill, because right now the bill is not good enough, as it does not delineate exactly what we are talking about. On behalf of NJUG, are you willing to say that you will co-operate in developing a robust system, as long as it is applied evenly?

Absolutely. We have never shied away from that. We are happy to work with anyone—for example, the Scottish Executive, the Scottish Parliament and local authorities—to address the problem.

The convener mentioned work in West Lothian. That authority's considerate contractor scheme is the model that proves that people can work in partnership to deal with issues and plan work. There are examples of when we have delayed work and the authority has delayed work to make sure that all the work is co-ordinated. Where there were failures, people went out and identified who was at fault, whether it was the utilities or the local authority; they sat down and got to the bottom of the problem.

A failure of reinstatement costs us a lot of money, so it is not in our interests to do it wrong. We spend a lot of time training our staff to make sure that it is done correctly, although we accept that there are occasions when we let people down. We are always working to improve our standards and we now ensure that people are not just trained but continually assessed—we ensure that they are up to standard, know all the modern techniques and can apply them, so that there will be fewer reinstatement failures in the future.

To give another example, NJUG supplies the utilities' view to all the working parties on codes of practice and working practices that are set up throughout the UK under the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991. Obviously, we agree with the codes of practice when they are issued, because we are part-authors of them. We do not condone bad practice; we encourage best practice at all times. Some of the codes, such as the safety code of practice, which is a small book that can be carried by every operative, identify almost every situation that a worker is likely to come across in an excavation-type scenario. They give examples of how to lay cones, where to put signs and where to place vehicles. As far as we are concerned, those codes must be adhered to.

That brings us to the end of our questions. I thank the three representatives from NJUG for their attendance.

Our final panel today is made up of representatives from the UK Competitive Telecommunications Association: Domhnall Dods, the head of regulatory affairs at Thus plc and director of UKCTA; and Nancy Saunders, from Kingston Communications Ltd, who is a director of UKCTA. We also have with us Tony Cox, head of policy and public affairs at BT Wholesale. I believe that Domhnall Dods intends to make some opening remarks on behalf of the organisation.

Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to give evidence to the committee. I will start by explaining what UKCTA is and why there is a representative of BT with us. UKCTA is the regulatory trade association for the competitive part of the industry other than BT and the mobile operators. It is a significant indication of how seriously the industry takes the Transport (Scotland) Bill that representatives of an organisation such as UKCTA, whose raison d'être is to counter the power of "evil" BT, are sitting here beside someone from BT—that is meant in the nicest possible way. It is helpful for members of the committee to understand that we are taking the bill extremely seriously; it is one of our top concerns at the moment.

The points that we want to make could be summed up briefly, after which we can drill down through the questions that committee members might have. I will try to rattle through our points as quickly as possible.

First, Scotland's roads are not only conduits for road traffic, whether cars, bicycles or pedestrians. They are also conduits for the many essential services that we all take for granted. As representatives of the telecoms companies, we are naturally concerned about that service. However, none of us could exist in the way that we do these days without the other essential services—gas, water, sewerage and electricity. Our concern is that their needs have not been adequately reflected in the discussion that led up to the introduction of the bill or in some of the thinking that lies behind the bill.

I suggest that committee members ask their constituents whether they would prefer to have five minutes knocked off their journey home in the evening or to have electricity, water and so on. If that choice had to be made, I know how I would vote. Given that I am looking at my constituency MSP, who is the convener, I am able to tell him that directly.

Secondly, the utility companies in general, and telecoms companies in particular, undertake works for two reasons only: security of supply and customer service—either new or upgraded—connections. Clearly, for the gas and electricity companies, the need to undertake works also involves questions of safety. The telecoms industry—indeed, by definition under legislation—cannot have emergency situations, as our optical fibre poses no threat to life or limb.

For us, works are not done for fun—indeed, they are done at great cost. Frankly, we would rather not be involved in digging up the roads. Sadly, current technology means that we have to do so, but we try to complete the works as quickly as possible. We are under enormous commercial pressure to do that, particularly those of us on the non-BT side of the industry, who are struggling to catch up in terms of profitability—indeed, some of us are still trying to break into profitability.

Thirdly, many of the measures in the bill will increase the costs of what are essential works. As I said, we dig up the roads not for fun, but because our customers—Scottish businesses and Scottish consumers—demand supply. The proposals will serve only to increase our costs. Tony Cox and I were discussing the matter before we came into committee. He represents probably the only telecoms company that has the luxury of considering whether it will pass on such costs to its customers. For those of us who do not as yet make a profit, the costs will have to be passed directly to our customers. However, even for a profitable company such as BT, the extra costs are similar to increases in the cost of diesel or electricity—if costs go up, BT has to pass them on to its customers. Any business that faces an increase in the cost of doing its business has to pass on the costs to its customers.

Our final concern is that, for the bill to be completely effective and for it to tackle comprehensively the congestion problems on Scotland's roads, we have to look at everyone who conducts road works and at all the causes of congestion. According to the best figures that the Executive or the United Kingdom Government has, road works account for only 10 per cent of all congestion. Sixty-five per cent of the cause of congestion is down to sheer traffic volume—too many of us are driving around on our roads—and 25 per cent is caused by the incidents that result from those of us who bump into each other, break down or whatever. As I said, only 10 per cent of congestion is down to road works and, of that figure, there is a 50:50 split between the utility companies and the public sector—Executive and local authority—works.

If the focus of the bill is on the utility sector, the Parliament will tackle only 5 per cent of the causes of congestion. We question whether that is the most effective way in which to do things. If the Parliament thinks that road works are an issue that needs to be tackled, we suggest that it should include all road works—there should be a level playing field.

Thank you for those introductory remarks. I assure the panel that I did my bit to cut congestion today by coming to the Parliament by train.

The subject of my question is an issue that is dear to my heart as the convener of the Subordinate Legislation Committee. In your submission, you say:

"Until detailed regulation or regulatory impact assessments are available, it is difficult to provide in depth analysis of the impact on industry of the legislation."

Are you suggesting that, in addition to the regulatory impact assessments, the Executive should publish draft regulations as soon as possible? Is that what businesses need to become more fully aware of the impact of the bill? How detailed will those draft regulations need to be in order to allay your fears?

Thank you for the question, although it is difficult to answer, given that we are looking at the impact that the bill will have on our businesses. I return to the point that Domhnall Dods made about the impact of road works on congestion, as that has to be the starting point for any answer to the question.

We are saying that we are a very small contributor to the problem of congestion on the roads. I would go further than that and argue that we are part of the solution rather than only part of the problem. Some of the services that we provide enable people either not to travel at all or to make sensible choices about when they should travel.

On your question about the level of detail that we require to see, our main concern at this stage is that because of the lack of detail it is difficult for us to gauge the impact on our costs—not only our costs but the costs to our customers. I am not talking only about direct costs. Domhnall Dods mentioned the possibility of passing on costs to customers. That is a direct cost, but there are also other costs. If a delay to the service means that companies cannot take a new high-speed connection to a small business, that could have real costs on their on-going business.

Until we know the details of any exemptions to the three-year moratoriums on digging up roads and the exceptions that will be provided for, we cannot comment on the costs. All that we can do is raise a flag now and say that the matter is of real concern to us. There is a real danger that the proposals will affect the way in which businesses operate, but we cannot give you the detail because we do not know what exemptions would apply and how they would work in practice. I know that that is not a full answer to your question.

I understand that the Executive's intention is to publish the regulations before the bill is passed in order to allow the committee and the Parliament to have sight of them. Would it be possible for BT, UKCTA and your colleagues from NJUG, who are watching proceedings from the public gallery, to evaluate the impact on your businesses once the regulations are produced?

That would certainly be possible. We would welcome the opportunity to do that.

I had some experience of the lobbying activities that we undertook south of the border on the Traffic Management Act 2004. I do not want to come across as being completely negative, because one of the advantages of the system here is that this committee is taking the time and effort to consult industry and other interested parties at this early stage. I welcome that aspect of the process, although it is also important that, as you suggest, we should be consulted on the detail when the regulations are produced. At that point the true costs and, I hope, the benefits of the proposed measures will be evident.

To what extent have you been consulted so far, apart from appearing before the committee?

I am not sure whether this is the right way to put it, but I feel that in some ways we have taken the initiative because we have contacted a number of members of the Scottish Parliament. We—not only I, but a number of my colleagues and people from the industry—have had useful meetings with MSPs about the bill. There has been some consultation, but I think that I am right in saying that this is the first formal hearing or series of hearings that we have had. Of course, we have also submitted written evidence.

I know that you have met a number of MSPs. Have you met Executive officials and ministers? Have you had a chance to discuss the matter with them?

We briefly met officials. It is fair to say that Executive officials were reluctant to meet us until the bill was published. We were able, through the good offices of the Confederation of British Industry, to secure a meeting with the minister. That was very helpful to us, because at that stage we were completely in the dark about what was coming. The attitude had very much been the same as that which we had experienced south of the border: "There will be a bill and you will have to wait and see. You will get what you get when you get it." That is not satisfactory, but we are where we are now. We have met the minister and that meeting addressed many of our fears, although we still have concerns about some of the provisions in the bill. You have received our evidence about those concerns.

Your evidence focuses on some of the negative impacts, in particular proposals that could impact on your customers by creating additional costs and causing them to experience a delay in receiving new services. I am not sure which one of you made the salient comment that, through the services that you provide, you give people the opportunity to use roads less. I presume that that is where technology such as broadband comes in, as it enables home working. Can you give an example from the broadband sphere—in which there is huge demand from customers—about the delays, if any, that may arise in servicing customers as a result of the bill? Is there anything positive in the bill?

Like other witnesses, we welcome the creation of a road works commissioner. We are pushing for such a measure south of the border. It does not make sense to have a system of fixed-penalty notices under which one of the poachers—the local authority—also wears a gamekeeper's hat. We welcome the creation of an independent office to ensure that the system is applied fairly and equally.

We have a lot to be proud of in Scotland. South of the border, people are crying out for something like the Susiephone system and the Scottish road works register, which are great tools to aid co-ordination. Until now, that register has been on a voluntary basis. Every local authority and the majority of the utilities are now on the system, but not all local authorities record their works on the register. One positive development in the bill is that the register will be put on a statutory footing and all organisations will be required to register their works. In preparing our evidence, we found that West Lothian Council recorded around 7,500 works in the register. Clearly that council makes good use of the system. However, Dundee City Council and Stirling Council recorded no works and Glasgow City Council recorded very few. The uniform use of the system will, for the first time, give us a true picture of who is carrying out road works in Scotland.

Might the bill have a negative impact on the broadband services that you provide?

Broadband is a misunderstood term. People tend to think of broadband only as the ADSL-type service from AOL, BT or Wanadoo that is done through BT local exchanges. Our concern is not so much about that present generation of services as about the broader-band services, which seems to be the new term that is emerging. That will involve linking high-capacity networks throughout the country with, in the first instance, business customers, who will be able to pay for the service. However, who can tell what will happen in future? Fibre-optic cables may go to people's homes. If we put in place measures under which a road that has been resurfaced cannot be dug up to connect a customer regardless of whether the customer needs that to open a new office or provide a service, that business will be hamstrung. It will either relocate or go to BT, which would have an anti-competitive effect. It may not even have that choice. All sorts of problems could arise.

Another issue is the increasing interest, or re-interest, in local loop unbundling. Some large internet service providers have just started major plans for local loop unbundling but, as they do not have backbone networks, they will need to put some sort of network in place to backhaul from the BT local exchanges. If those companies cannot dig up roads, they will not be able to do that.

Forgive me, but I cannot recall seeing many of those comments in your evidence. It might be useful if we could have an expansion of those comments in writing. On the one hand, the Executive states that its main priority is to grow the economy, but you are telling us that the bill might have a dragging effect on the economy. From what I hear, I think that that might be right. We must know about that if we are to understand the bill's full implications before we start taking decisions.

For information, I point out that the Enterprise and Culture Committee is also taking evidence on the bill. I imagine that it will concentrate heavily on the economic issues, but I am happy for the witnesses to respond to the point.

We have just come from today's Enterprise and Culture Committee meeting, at which a representative of NJUG covered most of the issues—there were few left for us to cover. In our evidence, we may not have said directly that the bill will create a drag on the economy, but the concerns are there for all to see.

For example, we are concerned about the powers to direct the timing and locations of works. If a business orders a service from me—for example, if the Royal Bank of Scotland wants to open a major new data centre—it will want diverse suppliers to come into its building at different points, for security reasons. It might want several suppliers, because it will not want to put all its eggs in the BT basket, or the Thus basket, or the Kingston basket. Such customers want services from umpteen different people. If we say, "We are really sorry, but the local authority has banned us from working on this road for the next three years because it has resurfaced it," the customer will have a problem, we will have a problem and Scotland's economy will have a problem.

If there were exemptions to the powers in relation to connecting to a customer, we would not have that problem. I keep using banks as an example because my company works with many banks and they are the bane of our—I mean that they are at the top of our concerns. I nearly used the wrong word.

The holes are the bane of your life.

Yes, the holes are the bane of my life. If an existing supply to a bank is damaged somehow and becomes faulty, the bank will want the problem to be fixed. I am contractually bound to fix the fault within hours, not days, months or years. If the local authority says, "We would love to let you repair the circuits into the Royal Bank's building, but you are banned from digging there for the next three years," I will be in breach of my contract and the bank's customers will be unable to access services. When we look beyond what appears to be a reasonable proposition, a host of problems appears.

The convener and I have spoken about this: the local authority resurfaced the main thoroughfare through Livingston, in the convener's constituency. The council did a wonderful job, monoblocked the road and made it look fantastic. It asked us all to refrain from digging it up and we agreed to that on a voluntary basis as we had no plans to dig there. During the period of the ban, however, the council ordered a service and wanted a big, fat internet pipe. We said, "We would love to help, but can we come back next year?" The local authority said, "No. We need the pipe now." When the chickens come home to roost, local authorities understand as much as any other customer does what it means to want service. That illustrates perfectly the need for exemptions to some of the powers in the bill.

That is useful.

The multiple digging-up of roads causes frustration: one person digs up a road one day, then someone else digs it up the next day and so on. The submission from UKCTA refers to the problems that are caused by trench sharing, which I accept. It also mentions the sharing of ducts, which I would have thought would make it easier to carry out work without digging up the road again. The submission says:

"the sharing of ducts raises further issues of network security, integrity and quality of service".

Will you expand on that? Lay people such as me thought that sharing ducts would be a good way of reducing, first, your costs and, secondly, difficulties for the public.

Tony Cox and I both have a view, so perhaps we should give an answer in two parts.

We were not suggesting that we are anti-sharing. I can give you a list as long as my arm of companies with which we have shared—they include the company that Nancy Saunders represents. When we dig trenches to roll out our backbone networks, it makes sense to share the trench, because that cuts our costs. Rather than each company having to pay a contractor separately, we pay a single contractor. That can mean that the trench is slightly bigger and remains open for slightly longer, so a balance must be struck.

We won an award from the City of Westminster Council for sharing an enormous trench with seven other operators. We could have opened and refilled the hole in a day to complete our work, but the trench was open for three weeks and took up two lanes round Hyde Park Corner. The trench completely snarled up the traffic in London, but, perversely, we won a prize because we had complied with a perfectly laudable initiative to make operators share trenches.

Were you participating in a well-known beer advert at the time?

No.

We can and do share ducts. We can and do sell ducts. We install more ducts than we need when we dig a hole because we do not want to dig the hole again. Sharing ducts makes things easier, but of course we must still dig to get access to the duct in the first place, so sharing does not eliminate digging.

Serious business users, such as banks, have high and strict demands about security and integrity of supply. Such businesses would not be happy if we guaranteed them 99.89 per cent availability but then opened our ducts to people over whom we had no control. Other users would not be contractually bound to us, so there are issues in that context. We are not saying that sharing cannot happen and never happens; we are saying that there are sometimes limits to what can be achieved. Those limits are not necessarily imposed by us; they can be imposed by customer expectations.

Is your concern to do with the security of the supply when someone else is working on the duct—the old putting-the-spade-through-the-cable sort of thing?

You would be amazed how often that happens.

There have been cases in which customer supply has been interrupted because someone has unlawfully decided to share our duct. Some people who are not even telecoms operators dug into our duct in Aberdeen in order to run a supply between two offices. That came to light because they had damaged a customer's supply. That was an unauthorised use but I am sure that they did not deliberately try to damage the supply. Even if someone had been in there lawfully, they could have caused a problem.

Iain Smith started out by saying that the perceived problem is that one utility company digs up the road, then another one does and then another one does. I always think that that argument is strange because my perception of roads is that one car comes along, then another comes along and then another. The serious point that I am making is that the principal cause of congestion is the volume of traffic. From our perspective, this debate is about proportionality. We agree that it is right to make efforts to improve the situation with regard to any form of congestion. We particularly agree with the point about co-ordination and the requirement to complete works to a good standard. Those are valid points, but I do not think that we should overlook the fact that road works, whether they are conducted by the highways authorities or by us, are not the main cause of congestion and that the volume of traffic is.

If the roads were being used to the capacity for which they were designed, the addition of road works would make little difference to congestion levels. We only have a problem because there is a problem of over-demand in road use.

The convener talked about the television advert in which gas, water and telephone companies share the same trench. In practice, that would not happen because all those utilities have to be at different levels. You cannot have a water main near the surface of the road, which is where telephone cables generally go. Even though it would be nice to share trenches with our utility partners, it is not practical to do so, for many reasons.

The issue of the banking industry requiring special security is a specific example, but there will be other situations in which we should be encouraging organisations to share ducts. I would argue that, even given the security issue, technology should allow us to enable banks to share ducts anyway.

Why are we allowing those customers to be so precious about the issue? You are trying to make the case that road works are not the source of inconvenience and traffic problems, but I have to say that that is not the perception. We want to minimise disruption so surely we should not be allowing clients to be so precious. When I got broadband installed, I do not recall being precious about where the duct came in. Duct sharing is not a big issue for every business that wants broadband installed, is it?

I will not get into a discussion of how one negotiates with major banks—that way lies trouble.

The key word that you used was "perception", as the perception is not matched by the reality. People have an idea that companies run around digging up roads willy-nilly wherever they feel like it and without regard to anybody, that there are no statutory controls and that we just do not care. That is absolutely not the case. As I said already, our industry is not in the healthiest of financial conditions, if I can put it that way. We would do anything to avoid digging up a road, because it costs a lot of money. We dig to respond to a customer's order for service. If customers demand certain levels of service we have to find a way of guaranteeing them. That can mean—I am thinking of the banking example—ensuring security of supply. The customer might want diverse routing and will have back-up generators and the full panoply of resilience.

I return to the point about perception. The best figures available, which, sadly, are UK-wide figures rather than Scottish ones—although I do not see why Scotland should be radically different—show that 65 per cent of congestion is down to too many of us driving around, 25 per cent is down to us bumping into each other and 10 per cent is down to road works and street works, which are split 50:50 between us and the public sector. Utilities therefore cause 5 per cent of the problem at most. I take your point that the perception is perhaps different, but that is the reality. Some time ago, we called on the Executive to carry out research into the facts in Scotland, but, sadly, that has not happened and we are now facing a bill. The reality is not quite as extreme as people perceive it to be.

From where is the research that gave us the figure 5 per cent?

It was from the Transport Research Laboratory, which was part of the former Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions in London. We can and do share wherever possible on a backbone network—on trunk roads, for example—because that makes sense. However, if I am connecting to a major customer and my guys have gone in and fought hard to win the business, the last thing I am going to do, much as I respect my colleagues who are sitting either side of me, is offer to take them up to my newly won customer, because that is commercial suicide. There are limits to where I will share.

Everyone who has spoken to us has expressed a desire to have a level playing field, to which the witnesses have alluded this afternoon. However, the UKCTA written submission argues for:

"extending the various provisions that penalise private sector companies that infringe the Act to those in the public sector."

That is fair enough. You are asking for the level playing field, but how would that benefit road users?

If you are arguing that the measures in the bill are going to improve the situation with regard to congestion caused by utility companies, it follows that applying the same measures to the road works carried out by highways authorities would have similar benefit. If the purpose is to improve the congestion situation—albeit that utilities are responsible for a relatively small component of that—it seems sensible to apply the same rules to all those who dig in the road. That is our basic contention.

I would argue that the bill might have a greater effect on the other undertakers. We are already under huge commercial pressure to get the job done quickly, because until the job is done and the customer is connected, we are paying a contractor but are not being paid by our customer. Until the work is done, we have an unhappy customer. Public bodies do not face the same commercial pressure, which is understandable, so arguably there is an even greater need to give them an incentive to work harder and faster.

So it is all about incentives. How do you give your contractors an incentive to reinstate the roads as effectively as they should?

As an industry we have taken part in a voluntary coring programme. We accept that there is a problem with the quality of reinstatements. It makes no sense for us to allow poor-quality reinstatements because we are paying the contractor to do a good job. If they do not do a good job we get a bad name, your constituents write to you, you give us a hard time and we will have to pay the contractor to go back and do the job again. We want to address the quality issue. A voluntary scheme has been developed and a national coring programme is under way to address the problems. We address the problems through our contracts, in which we can include penalties. If contractors fail to meet standards, we do all the usual things that one can include in the terms of a contract—either we do not pay them or they pay damages. A range of measures can be applied.

Do you think that the bill will help to achieve higher-quality reinstatements?

To be honest, the bill will not help us to achieve any more than is being done at the moment. We want an incentive or encouragement to apply to all undertakers of street works. It is arguable that it makes no sense to require the public sector to pay fines—that would just mean the same money going round in circles—but other options could be considered.

For example, a number of considerate contractor schemes are already in operation in places such as Aberdeen, where a scheme has operated very successfully, and in West Lothian, where an awful lot of work has been done recently to set up a new scheme. Indeed, I gather that West Lothian's scheme will be taken on board in Glasgow as well. Although many people are sceptical of such schemes, which they think are just another badge that we stick on our vans, the schemes encourage—believe me—a great deal of pride in the job. No utility company or local authority wants to be named and shamed as an organisation that has consistently done a bad job. No one likes being in the position of being held up to public criticism and ridicule. The considerate contractor schemes have been very effective.

Another suggestion is to have a similar scheme that is based on points. If a company were to fail to do a good job, it would incur a number of points, and if the total number of points reached a certain threshold, fines would start to kick in. I am not convinced that fining everybody straight away is necessarily the way ahead.

The UKCTA submission raised the concern that the requirement to resurface the entire width of a road might result in a 385 per cent increase in the cost of a telecoms installation. Will you elaborate on how that figure was arrived at?

The figure comes from real-world experience.

In England, a similar power that was introduced under the Traffic Management Act 2004 has caused a great deal of anxiety about how it will work. However, the power down south is a little less extreme than the power that is proposed in the Transport (Scotland) Bill. For example, if we had dug up 10m of the Royal Mile in front of the Scottish Parliament building, a power such as that in the 2004 act could require us, at an unknown point in the future, to come back and resurface either half the width or the full width of the Royal Mile for that 10m. However, under the proposal in the bill, even if we had done a perfectly good and lovely job of digging up 10m outside the Parliament's front door, we could be required to resurface the road from outside the Ensign Ewart at the top of the Royal Mile all the way down to the bottom, or any part thereof. That seems completely insane.

The proposed power in the bill will also be without limit of time. One has to feel for BT, which has been around for 100 years. If BT has ever dug up the Royal Mile, it could be required at any time to come back and resurface the whole street, or to contribute to the cost of doing so. How are we to work the cost out? How is a company supposed to price a service to its customers? If a customer orders a service from us, we will need to explain that, although the contract states that the job will cost £X, we will reserve the right to come back at any time in the future to ramp up the cost so that we can recover the unknown proportion of the cost that we might incur for resurfacing the whole street.

The 385 per cent figure comes from a real-world example. In England—in Leeds, I think—my company voluntarily offered to cover resurfacing costs, which were 385 per cent of the installation cost.

Do you accept that the roads have sometimes looked pretty poor as a result of utilities carrying out work on them? Do you accept that the proposal has some purpose, because some utility companies have not always reinstated roads to the proper standard when they have gone about their business?

I do not accept that the proposed power is required to deal with poor-quality reinstatements. Under existing powers, a utility that does not reinstate a road properly can be made to come back to do so. There is also a guarantee period in which we might be required to perform such an undertaking.

Is not there technical evidence to show that the required finish for current reinstatements is not what it should be?

Real-world experience shows that, in many cases, the reinstatement is of a better quality than the surrounding road. That was confirmed to me by Department of Trade and Industry officials, so it is not from a biased source.

Have you technical evidence to back that up that we could get access to?

I will certainly try to find some for you but, hand on heart, I cannot say at the moment whether I can provide that.

It is quite right that we should be required to reinstate a road that we need to dig up to provide a service. If we are found to fall short in reinstating the road, it is right that we should be summoned back and made to do it properly. There is no question about that. The question is whether the provisions will be used as a rationale for extending our work and turning us into street resurfacers, which would be a step too far.

As I said, I have no qualms—and no reasonable operator would—with the idea that, if we have not done a good job, we can be brought back and made to do it properly. That is entirely reasonable and there is legislation that makes us do that at the moment, but I cannot accept the idea that, if I have reinstated one part of the road, I could somehow be required to redo the whole road, which has nothing to do with me because I have never been near it.

You made the point earlier that you do not open up a road unless you need to, but I argue that, if the industry was more intelligence led in the way in which it went about its business, you could prevent a number of roads from being opened up. There are bound to be occasions on which you have opened up roads when you should not have done or when it could have been prevented in some way. Would the bill prevent such work?

No. I do not think that it could.

How about some forward development and considering where things could be done that were not done in the past?

Unless the Parliament passes a law that requires Scottish businesses and consumers to tell us months and years in advance where and when they will want services, road works cannot be prevented. The telecommunications industry is unlike the gas, electricity and water industries, which have long-term programmes that have been planned long ahead. They know where services will be required and when mains replacement programmes will be required. For example, the Health and Safety Executive requires National Grid Transco to have a 30-year rolling replacement programme for gas mains. As a telecoms operator, I have no idea where my next order will come from. I do not know and cannot predict when company X or Y will order services and what they are going to order. I do not accept that we can prevent roads from being opened up unless the Parliament is prepared to pass a law telling businesses and customers to have a five-year plan for where they want services.

Do you have no idea at all where the business will come from?

We can have an idea with backbone networks, but we do not build a backbone network unless there is a bunch of customers at the end of it and we have critical mass. The industry is very much customer driven.

If we were still in the era when companies were digging speculatively—perhaps the late 1980s and early 1990s—we could prevent road works, but those days are long gone. The industry is not digging speculatively and our backbone networks are in place; we now have to connect customers to get a return on the investment. My company has invested upwards of £280 million in Scotland's infrastructure and it now needs to generate a return on that for its backers; to do that, it needs to dig to customers to connect them. The question would have been great 14 years ago, but those days are gone.

When I spoke to one of the other utility companies it explained to me how it tried to go about what might be described as minimally invasive installation of services by digging holes at interim points and piping the services through. Can—does—the telecoms industry undertake that procedure?

It has been tried.

It has been tried and, to the extent that it makes economic and practical sense—that is, to the extent that we are able to do it—we will do it. As we said earlier, we do not dig up the roads for fun, so if there are cheaper ways of achieving the same result, we will use them, and non-invasive techniques would normally be cheaper methods, so we are considering new, non-invasive techniques.

We were asked whether the bill provides an additional incentive. I do not see anything in it that does so, but there are commercial pressures to consider other ways of doing things. A new technology that might provide a partial solution—and, to some extent, already does so—is radio connectivity. If we are providing a wireless service, we do not need to dig up the road, so that technology has potential. However, for a lot of applications, we are not at the stage at which such a service will fit customer requirements. Those are normal commercial pressures, and I do not see anything in the bill that directly encourages such solutions.

One of the main problems with using non-invasive techniques is that when one uses what we call a mole to scurry through the earth, one has to be very careful that it does not scurry through someone else's fibre. At the moment, one of the main problems with radio technology is the lack of spectrum for proper broadband services.

The non-invasive technologies are there, but it is ironic that the areas in which one would want them most—in other words, the areas in which there is most risk of congestion—are those where there is most infrastructure in the ground, which means that they are least able to be deployed. In one case in which we tried to use a mole, it got deflected by a stone or a rock and came up and breached the surface of the A9, which caused congestion.

In many cases, we can lay new cable and new fibre through existing ducts. That happens at present—that contribution to reducing road works is already being made. Obviously, we do that whenever we can.

I am grateful to Mr Dods for highlighting yet another reason why the A9 should be dual carriageway between Perth and Inverness. If that were the case, such disruption would not be so burdensome.

I want to ask about a different matter. We have heard that the days of gratuitous investment have gone and that, from now on, road works will be stimulated by repairs to existing fibre or by new customer demand. Basically, the process will be demand driven. I do not know from your written submission—although I might not have picked up your views—whether you anticipate that the quantity of street works occasioned by the members of UKCTA and, separately, by BT will be similar to, less than or more than the quantity of such works that have taken place in the past. I do not have a picture of whether we are facing an escalation in the amount of work.

I realise that you may find that difficult to comment on, because it would involve saying how well you think that your businesses will do in future. Are you able to say what extra volume of street works might arise if the potential demand that you have identified suddenly materialised as a result of broadband and ISPs having to get involved in new road work activities? What volume of extra works might arise in such circumstances? I know that that is a very difficult question to answer, but it would be useful if you could give a broad indication of what we are looking at.

While you were asking the question, Nancy Saunders commented that it is impossible to say. It is very hard to predict the volume of such activity, but we can examine the trends on customers' bandwidth requirements. In this country, broadband uses a 512K connection—you must forgive me for using some technical jargon—which is about 10 times the speed of old-fashioned dial-up modems. If one mentions that in other countries, one is laughed at. We have a substantial operation in the Netherlands, where people ask us why we do not have 10 megabit connections, why we are not downloading DVDs and watching films and why we do not have all the wonderful services that they have. All that we can say for sure is that the demand for bandwidth will continue to rise.

There is a great deal of talk in the industry about the provision of fibre optic to the home. Fibre optic is the technology that is used to deliver services to the Parliament building, for example. Sadly, the only way of delivering fibre optic technology to people's homes is by digging up their paths or their gardens. The Office of Communications is promoting local loop unbundling as an effective way of promoting competition and delivering the benefits of competition more widely to the market. As Nancy Saunders has mentioned, that will involve some further digging. I do not know whether the overall volume of work, but will be higher or lower.

The backbone networks are in place and, as Tony Cox said, it is always possible to haul the fibre out, stick some more stuff down and put more boxes on the end of it. The clever people in the back rooms are always coming up with new ways of squeezing more data down the cables. We can probably say that, for the foreseeable future, backbone networks will not be getting dug up, but there may be an upsurge in the number of customers that are connected.

I agree with what my colleagues say. Fergus Ewing's question is difficult to answer. The best prediction is probably that the volume of works will be about the same. I should add that BT is embarking on a programme of assessing the design of its entire core network, with a view to upgrading it and changing it to an internet protocol-based network. That does not mean that we are going to be digging up the roads, because we will not need to. As Domhnall Dods said, we can put new equipment in exchanges. However, there are likely to be some occasions when we need to dig up the roads. The best guess in the telecoms sector is that the amount of road works will be about the same.

I can give a bit of context about something that it occurs to me that I have not yet mentioned.

I am a motorist and a cyclist and the type of road works that bother me are the ones where the cones are left out all weekend and no one is digging. We have some works in Livingston at the moment that have been scheduled for more than a year. That is the sort of thing that annoys me.

However, such situations are not what we in the telecoms industry are talking about. I am not an engineering person but I went out with my digital camera to take some time-stamped photos so that I could show politicians what we are talking about. I was astonished because the guys who are out there doing the work are digging trenches and then filling them in; they are rarely left open overnight. We are talking about works that take only very short periods of time to complete. Subject to trench sharing, if one operator is involved the typical telecoms trench is the width of a piece of A4 paper, and it is dug and filled in within one day. When I went out at 8 o'clock in the morning, the guys had started digging—they had done a couple of hundred metres already. I went back at 2 o'clock in the afternoon and they had gone—not only had they filled the trench in but they had cleared up and gone.

`Our colleagues in gas, water and electricity might have to dig some bigger holes, but members might want to consider exempting minor works. In our industry, we are not talking about the huge great holes that, because water pipes are bigger and have to be deeper, our colleagues at Scottish Water might have to dig.

Going back to one of the earlier questions about the details of the proposals, this is another area in which there is no detail. We will be looking for proportionality in increased fines, decriminalisation and the imposition of penalty notices when we get things wrong, given the impact on congestion that is caused. As Domhnall Dods said, our jobs are frequently very small and of relatively short duration and might well be on minor roads where congestion is not an issue. That is why we are looking for proportionality.

I have another question that arose from the written evidence under the heading "Telecoms as part of the solution". I was intrigued by the reference to a report by BT that concluded that

"more widespread use of broadband to enable flexible working could eliminate 14.5 billion miles of journeys per year throughout the UK – equal to some three years' of growth in car usage."

That very dramatic statistic seems to suggest that access to broadband is good for congestion and takes people off the roads because they can work from home. That is the basic idea. How was that apocalyptic figure of 14.5 billion miles arrived at? I presume that it was plucked out of the air.

Not at all. We examined the impact of broadband, although this is about more than broadband. Broadband has meant a step change in people's ability to work from home, and communications play a role in that. I do not think that we should forget that the other infrastructure providers are essential to that as well—we cannot have broadband if we do not have an electricity supply, and none of it is a lot of use if there is no water supply, too.

We examined the current take-up and use of broadband and the number of people who are home workers and flexible workers at present across the UK as a whole. The figures suggested that approximately 7.5 per cent of the workforce is working from home. We compared that figure with other countries that are further ahead than we are in flexible working, particularly the Scandinavian countries, where about 15 per cent of the workforce works from home. To blow BT's trumpet for a moment, we encourage home working where it makes sense and where it is possible, and we are up to that level of about 15 per cent.

If we extrapolate that 15 per cent and consider the impact on commuting, travel to meetings and so on, we come up with the figure of 14.5 billion miles. However, that is not the end of it. It is not just about flexible working and home working; there is a real net benefit from home shopping, for example. A lot of people point out that there will still be delivery vans, which is true, but there is still a net benefit. We have commissioned work on and carried out studies into this area and the figure that we have given is based on evidence. It is only one extrapolation, but we believe that the result is achievable.

It all comes back to the principal cause of congestion, which is basically the volume of traffic on the roads. Instead of telling people that they cannot travel, we need innovative methods of reducing traffic. After all, people will always need to travel. Some jobs are not so open to flexible working or home working; however, such approaches should be encouraged for those that are. That would make a lot of sense for the whole economy.

We can extend the point beyond home working and flexible working to include, for example, videoconferencing and audioconferencing. Indeed, we make very extensive use of such facilities. For example, I used to spend every week slogging up and down to London, where the bulk of our industry is based. Instead, I now have videoconferences and audioconferences. People are much more receptive to those technologies, even to the extent that, although my head office is in Glasgow, I rarely slog along the M8. I simply turn the television on in a corner of one of our meeting rooms and have a videoconference. There is a whole range of similar measures that we can think about.

In 1998, it took an average of 51 minutes to travel the length of the M8 corridor in the rush hour. It now takes 64 minutes. As a result, Domhnall is benefiting himself and everyone else by not making that journey so often.

I am a wee bit surprised by your attitude to the introduction of a penalty scheme. I do not know whether you heard the earlier witnesses or have read some of the evidence that we have received from other private contractors. However, everyone seems to be of the opinion that, as long as there is a level playing field for everyone involved in road operations, they have nothing to fear from a penalty scheme. Indeed, they welcome it.

I was interested to note that the word "proportionality" was used this afternoon. I wonder whether Tony Cox would, for example, proportionately reduce the cost of installing broadband in a low-income household. In any event, if your record of road reinstatement is so good, you must surely have nothing to fear from a robust penalty scheme.

Absolutely. If it seemed that we were against the application of penalties for doing something wrong, we were giving the wrong impression. Reinstatement is the classic example in that regard. It is perfectly legitimate to be given a penalty for not reinstating roads to a particular standard and we should be required to pay that. I must point out that we are already subject to such schemes.

That said, on proportionality, if the problem is congestion, proposals to extend a scheme should take it into account that something that goes wrong on a road where congestion is not an issue should be subject to a lesser penalty. I am not saying that no penalty should be levelled, even in that situation, but we need to address the real issue and concentrate our efforts on where the congestion problem is worst.

At the Enterprise and Culture Committee meeting upstairs, we discussed what might happen with a simple error that had no impact on congestion. For example, if I put a notice on to the Scottish road works register that says that I will be digging outside 100 the Royal Mile, but in fact I will be digging outside 101 the Royal Mile, that is technically a finable offence. We feel that it is disproportionate to receive a fine at level 5 on the standard scale for such a little keyboard slip. I am sorry if we have given the impression that we are against a penalty scheme, but I feel that we need to make the penalty fit the crime.

I am worried that I might have given the wrong impression when I mentioned points systems and considerate contractor schemes. I was simply trying to counter the argument we often hear when people say that schemes should apply to everyone that the public sector cannot pay for the public sector's errors and that the money will simply go round in circles. We could try to get round that with points systems, naming and shaming measures and so on. Other options can be explored.

That response is helpful because I felt that, particularly with your example of a points scheme, you were giving the impression that you were trying to avoid the type of penalty scheme that has been mentioned. I must signal some caution about basing your argument on the difference in effect on congestion between work on minor roads and work on major roads. What most people get angry about is not just the congestion but the idea of someone digging up a road and not fixing it right. Whether it is a minor road or a major road does not really matter for the local community. The local community might suffer more than the wider community. There is a principle here, which the committee is trying to identify. As I said earlier, it is in only a minority of cases that a contractor does not reinstate a road properly, but when that happens, it should be properly punished. If you accept that, that is fine.

I would caution Domhnall Dods—I am sorry if I am pronouncing your first name incorrectly; it is a unique first name—who gave an example involving the Royal Mile that was not helpful. Later, you gave an example of non-invasive techniques and talked about a very real example where an attempt to enter the network under one part of the A9 ended up causing damage elsewhere. You would obviously be responsible for the reinstatement of that portion of the road. As far as the bill is concerned, it is important to consider the fact that creating a hole in one part of the road network might, through structural problems, affect another part of it. You must have a certain level of responsibility for that. That is not to turn you into road reinstaters or resurfacers. The provision on that is included in the bill as a precaution.

If there were evidence that we had destroyed or seriously damaged another part of a road, we could accept the logic that we would be required to repair it. However, the power in the bill would not cover that, as it is simply a power to resurface. I am not an engineer, so do not press me too hard on the details of this, but a requirement is not being made to completely reconstruct the substructure of the road; it is about a skim of the surface and putting the tarmac back. That is an aesthetic measure, not a structural one. I can accept what you say in theory and I am not educated enough to argue over whether that is a sufficiently realistic scenario, but the bill would not resolve that issue. The bill proposes an aesthetic measure to make the road look nice again, all with the same shade of tarmac, but it does not provide a structural solution.

Let us be clear about the whole idea of a road works commissioner and a more robust regime. If anyone involved in road deconstruction were to cause structural problems, we are very much of the opinion that that should be identified at an early stage. The bill is not about trying to get you to resurface the whole of the Royal Mile despite the fact that you have been operating on only 10m of it; it is about trying to get you to reinstate that 10m to the highest possible standard. If that requires a slightly broader area of resurfacing for the sake of consistency, I would hope that contractors would accept that.

It is helpful to have that clarification as to the Parliament's intention. However, the bill does not say that. The provisions apply in perpetuity. They are without a limit of time or a geographical limit. Let us say that I am selling you a service for a certain amount a month; if the digging accounts for 80 per cent of my costs, and if those might be nearly quadrupled in 20 years' time, how am I supposed to price that service? That would not be satisfactory for you, nor would it be satisfactory for me.

Appropriate amendments may be submitted.

That brings us to the end of our evidence taking on the Transport (Scotland) Bill. I thank Domhnall Dods, Tony Cox and Nancy Saunders.

Meeting suspended.

On resuming—