Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Official Report 627KB pdf

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Laser Misuse (Vehicles) Bill

Good morning and welcome to the ninth meeting in 2018 of the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee. [Interruption.] I hear a lot of feedback on the speaker system, so I will suspend the meeting briefly until we can sort that out.

10:00 Meeting suspended.  

10:01 On resuming—  

Good morning, again. I remind everyone to ensure that their mobile phones are on silent. No apologies have been received.

Item 1 relates to the committee’s consideration of a legislative consent memorandum, which was lodged by Fergus Ewing, the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Economy and Connectivity. The LCM relates to the Laser Misuse (Vehicles) Bill, which is United Kingdom Parliament legislation that is currently being considered in the House of Commons. As the lead committee, we are required to reflect on the memorandum and consider whether we are content with its terms. We will report our findings to the Scottish Parliament.

Scottish Parliament standing orders provide that an LCM should normally be lodged with the Scottish Parliament two weeks after amendments that are relevant to that bill are tabled or agreed to in the UK Parliament. However, in the case of this LCM, the Minister for Parliamentary Business has written to the Presiding Officer to explain why the Scottish Government was unable to meet that requirement. A copy of his letter is included with the committee papers.

From the Scottish Government, I welcome Humza Yousaf, Minister for Transport and the Islands; Bertrand Deiss, head of road safety policy; and Stephen Rees, solicitor.

I invite the minister to make a short opening statement, then we will move to questions from the committee.

Thank you, convener. First, I thank the committee and its clerks for showing such responsiveness in allowing the LCM to progress through the Scottish Parliament as quickly as possible, to allow the final stages of the Laser Misuse (Vehicles) Bill to take place in the UK Parliament on 16 April.

The timetable for the LCM has been constrained at both ends of the process. At the first end, the Minister for Parliamentary Business wrote to the convener and the Presiding Officer on 14 March to explain why it was not possible to lodge an LCM in accordance with the timescale in the Scottish Parliament’s standing orders.

At the other end of the process, the Department for Transport notified my officials on 14 March about the timing of the final stages of the bill, which means that the LCM will need to be passed by the Scottish Parliament before 16 April. Due to the forthcoming recess, the plenary debate will take place on 29 March at the latest, with the committee report having been issued five working days prior to that.

On the bill, the Scottish Government shares the UK Government’s concern about the increased number of reported incidents of the deliberate misuse of laser pointers, with consequences that could have been fatal. The committee might recall that a man was jailed two years ago for shining a laser pen at a police helicopter that was flying over Glasgow in 2013. We support the provisions of the bill and for the UK Government to legislate on a pan-UK basis to address this transport safety issue.

The legislative consent of the Scottish Parliament is required for clause 1 of the amended bill, which is the offence of shining or directing a laser beam towards a vehicle, because the wider definition of vehicle means that laser misuse will be an offence in some contexts where the creation of such an offence is not reserved, such as carriages drawn by horses or other animals, motor vehicles and bicycles that are being used away from a road. I am happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, minister. We have several questions.

I welcome the legislation. The notes suggest that the legislation is principally aimed at addressing the shining of laser pens or pointers at pilots of commercial aircraft and will also criminalise the shining or directing of laser beams towards any vehicle used for travel by land, water or air. What is the range of fines? You mentioned that a chap had been jailed.

The recent case that I referred to was an offence relating to aviation under article 222 of the Air Navigation Order 2009. It is an offence to shine or direct a light at an aircraft that dazzles or distracts the pilot of the aircraft. The penalty for that offence is a fine of up to £2,500. The important point is that the offence does not apply to other modes of transport.

It is a sensible measure by the UK Government. If we do not grant the LCM, the other way to do it would be to unpick the legislation and for the UK Government to legislate for the reserved parts while we legislate for the devolved parts, which would be very messy. That does not really make much sense and a pan-UK approach is sensible here.

On maximum penalties, I mentioned the fine but I should have said that there is also the possibly of an indictment of up to five years imprisonment.

I have a number of small questions and I will ask them all at once to try to shorten the process.

The provision includes carriages drawn by horses or other animals, but is it intended to apply to horses when they are being ridden? A horse is not a vehicle, but the risk is surely similar. I think that I know the answer to that question, but I would like to hear it confirmed.

The bill’s title is the Laser Misuse (Vehicles) Bill, but in your answer you referred to a “light” that would distract. Are you indicating that it is not necessary for the light to be produced by a laser for it to be caught by the provisions?

Finally, are any modes of transport excluded and not intended to be caught by the bill?

I always appreciate Mr Stevenson’s questions, especially when he already knows the answer—this is no different. [Laughter.]

I am sure that he will be happy to give you marks out of 10 on your answer, later, minister.

I am not convinced that my marks will be high. I will do my best and then hand over to the legal expert, Stephen Rees.

Mr Stevenson asked whether the provision would apply to horses that are simply being ridden. My understanding is that it applies to vehicles only and therefore, for it to apply, the horse would have to be pulling a carriage.

I will pass the other questions over to my legal experts.

I can confirm that the bill applies only to vehicles. A vehicle is defined as

“any vehicle used for travel by land, water or air”.

Therefore the bill would not capture horses being ridden without a carriage.

On the laser beam issue, the bill applies only to the shining of a laser beam towards a vehicle or an air traffic control facility. A laser beam is defined as

“a beam of coherent light produced by a device of any kind”.

So the phrase that is used is “coherent light”. In technical terms, such light is generally capable of being produced only by a laser to produce an intense high-energy beam, but other high-energy beams can be produced that are not coherent light. That is really a matter for the UK Government, but I just want to be clear about what the bill says. I suggest that it would be appropriate for the bill to cover other sources of intense light that are not coherent light but which are equally intense under appropriate circumstances, such as arc lights.

That might be one for us to take away. We can reflect on that and perhaps have a conversation with the UK Government about it.

If you are going to give us your thoughts after the meeting, you will have to do so fairly quickly if we are to complete our consideration within the timescales. [Interruption.] I am told that we may be out of time by the time that you have done that.

I have only one point, which is on the breadth of types of vehicles that are covered. I am not in favour of legislating on things where there is no problem. I totally support the provisions relating to aircraft, motor vehicles and trains, but I wonder how much of a problem we have with lasers and hovercraft, given that we have very few hovercraft, and how much of a problem lasers are for submarines, although I accept that they could be on the surface. Cycling is also covered. Do we need legislation covering all these things?

There is a point about future proofing. I accept that the issues for hovercraft and submarines will be relatively minimal, but there is an issue for cycling. The Scottish Government is committed to an ambitious increase in the rates of cycling. Last year, I took part in the pedal for Scotland event, when thousands of people chose to cycle from Glasgow to Edinburgh and, for the second year in a row, there were attacks on those who were cycling. Tacks were left out on purpose to try to disrupt the event. Many people’s tyres were punctured and some crashed and were injured. I actually saw people crashing in front of me because of the tacks that had been put down. There were people out there deliberately trying to cause harm to cyclists. We might think that that does not happen, but it does. I do not know whether there have been specific incidents in which cyclists have been attacked by lasers, but it could happen in future. If we are to have more such events, which I hope we will, that could absolutely happen. Therefore, it is important that we future proof the legislation.

That is a fair point.

Jamie Greene has the next question, followed by Fulton MacGregor. I would appreciate focused questions.

No problem, convener. I will ask questions that I do not know the answer to, if that is all right.

Am I correct in thinking that there is already legislation covering the shining of beams into aircraft and that the aim of the bill is basically to cover everything else that has a motor in it?

Yes.

Secondly, am I correct that the bill covers only the use of a laser that has a demonstrable negative consequence or inappropriate use and that it does not cover the use of lasers to direct aircraft into docking areas, for instance, or any other technology in which lasers are directed at vehicles?

It covers the intention to dazzle or distract. Stephen Rees can go into more detail.

That was the point that I was going to make. There is a requirement that the laser is likely to dazzle or distract, and I presume that legitimate uses will not have that effect. Another aspect is that there are defence provisions in the bill. If a person has a reasonable excuse for shining or directing a laser towards a vehicle or did not intend to shine or direct the laser towards the vehicle and exercised all due diligence and took all reasonable precautions to avoid doing so, there is a defence to the offence. That should capture legitimate uses.

If someone can demonstrate a legitimate use, it is unlikely that they will be prosecuted. For example, in sailing, one of the first things that you learn is that in certain circumstances you need to get people’s attention any way that you can, and if that involves a laser, so be it. Lasers are more commonly carried these days. I would hate to think that that use might be unintentionally captured.

In that example, you would hope that the fiscal would not prosecute in the first instance. If they did, there would be a defence in the legislation that the individual could deploy.

10:15  

Has the Scottish Government or the UK Government done any research on how many charges there would have been under the offence if, for example, it had been in place last year?

We have the current law—article 222 of the Air Navigation Order 2009, which I already mentioned. I have just been passed some useful statistics on the convictions that have taken place since 2010: in 2010, there were 26; in 2011, there were 48; then there were 27, 23, 21, 16 and 10. The number is diminishing but, as the statistics show, a number of people have been convicted under that article, which shows that there is a problem.

I have spoken to a number of airlines in my time and they tell me that their pilots report the matter, although not frequently. The smaller airlines—I am thinking of companies such as Loganair—have said to me that their pilots have, unfortunately, been in situations in which they think that somebody has been pointing a laser towards them.

The issue has been raised anecdotally with me and there have been convictions since 2010. I am not sure that there has been any research. I am also looking at records from the British Transport Police, who patrol our railways. Their records show approximately 85 incidents per year between 2011 and 2016, so the British Transport Police also sees this as a problem. I am not convinced that there has been detailed research into how wide an issue it is, but the statistics that we have show that it is a problem.

I thank you, minister, and your officials.

Are members content to recommend that Parliament agrees to the motion drafted by the minister and approves the legislative consent motion?

Members indicated agreement.

I suspend the meeting briefly to allow the panel of witnesses to change.

10:17 Meeting suspended.  

10:19 On resuming—