Transport and the Environment Committee, 08 Sep 1999

Meeting date: Wednesday, September 8, 1999

Official Report 193KB pdf

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Public Petitions

Next is agenda item 4, on public petitions. Petitions are a welcome aspect of the Parliament's work, and it is good that Parliament gets involved with the issues. This committee has a number of petitions to consider. For background information, the Petitions Committee met on 1 September to consider petitions received by the Parliament. At that meeting, four petitions were referred to this committee. Petition PE8, from the Scottish Homing Union, was referred to the Rural Affairs Committee for consideration.

We will go through the petitions and determine what action we shall take. First, we will consider petition PE2 from Ayrshire chamber of commerce and industry on the upgrade to motorway standard of the A77 between Fenwick and Newton Mearns. Do any matters arise from that?

You will not be surprised if I say that as a member who represents part of Ayrshire, I entirely agree with the petition. The petition is directed to the Parliament, but the petitioners must take into account that the Parliament does not have a budget and cannot act on the petition. We must, therefore, remit this petition to the Executive in the first instance, and ask it to take the petition into account in concluding its review of strategic roads. No other option is open to us at this stage.

I come from that part of the world, and I must declare an interest because I signed a motion supporting this issue in the Parliament. Can we do anything else at this stage, or do we need to follow the route that Murray suggested, and await the outcome of the strategic roads review?

Bearing in mind the fact that according to the minister the roads review will be published soon, there would be little point pursuing the issue at this time. Of course, we can revisit the issue once the review has been published. That would allow us to pursue Murray's suggested course of action and forward the petition to the Executive, but also to retain the matter on our agenda for discussion after the review has been published.

The process that is being suggested for handling this matter is appropriate. However, I would like to raise one or two procedural issues relating to how these matters may be handled in future. Obviously, strategic roads development involves a number of competing projects. Do we want to create a situation in which every proposal comes with a petition? Is that an appropriate use of time and effort by ourselves and the petitioners?

The other issue concerns areas that do not naturally fit into our agenda. We have an agenda set out to deal with certain matters between now and Christmas and the Executive has set its own business agenda. Issues might arise that do not obviously fit in with both agendas, and the question is how we signal to people that their matter is or is not being dealt with. We need to make it clear to people what happens when they make proposals and we have to be able to say when the committee cannot progress a certain issue at a certain time. We need to decide how that issue should be handled.

I was more sympathetic towards the point about noting the issue for revisiting. I do not see any merit in remitting the issue to the Executive, which will have its own position. We should indicate to Ayrshire chamber of commerce that the committee will revisit its petition when the trunk roads review is issued. We are not shelving the petition for years, but probably for a matter of months, even though we have not received a specific timetable from the minister. We should politely recognise the importance of the petition and indicate that we will consider those views when we come to discuss the strategic trunk road review as a whole.

I have no difficulty with Kenny's suggestion. The only action that we can take at the moment is to bring the contents of the petition to the Executive's attention. If we do not do that, we will be failing to follow through immediately on the issue. I realise that the Executive is already examining the matter, but we should tell ministers that the issue has been drawn to our attention, even though it is a matter for them. I am delighted that we will revisit the issue in the light of decisions that will be made by the Executive and by the Parliament, because I do not want to suggest to the petitioners that the committee is punting the issue into the middle distance.

The petition should be submitted to the Executive. Our responsibility as parliamentarians is to spread information as widely as we can. It is then down to MSPs to decide what weight to give to that information, because we have to bear in mind that every MSP will have issues pressing from the areas that he or she represents. As Des said, do we go back to those areas and whip up a frenzy of people submitting petitions? People have put effort into this petition and I do not want the committee to sit on its contents. We need to share the information with other people so that they can make an informed decision about the matter.

I think that we have a consensus on this matter. We will forward the petition to the Executive and revisit the issue when the strategic trunk roads review is published.

The next petition is petition PE3 from the Hospitalfield Area Residents' Association about the effect of commercial oil seed rape crushing on the health of that area's residents. Having read the association's well-structured briefing note, I think that the two focal points of the matter are the Scottish Environment Protection Agency's view and the view of the local authority. Should we take further advice from SEPA and the local authority on what led them to make the decisions that have since led to the company getting consent for its development and to the petition being presented to the committee? I am sure that other issues will be brought to my attention during our discussion, but is that a good way of progressing the matter?

I agree with your suggestion, convener. The residents' complaint mostly centres on the initial planning decision. However, because of our work load, we cannot realistically revisit every planning decision that people throughout Scotland do not agree with. We can examine whether the regulatory authorities are doing their work properly, which is an important distinction to draw.

We will discuss our work load. If we take on too many issues we will not make progress on the areas that we have identified as priorities.

What Murray says is sound, but I wish to enter a caveat. You raised the issue of mobile phones, convener. That is a legitimate concern for us because it touches on health matters. In connection with the matter of oil seed rape, I would like this committee always to bear wider health issues in mind. Allowing things to go ahead in a planning or environmental context can sometimes have an impact on people's health in years to come.

We can certainly seek the view of the Health and Community Care Committee on that matter, which will cross-cut into its activities—to use the cross-cutting term that we keep hearing about. We will see what its view is on the matter.

Approaching SEPA and the local authority appears eminently sensible. We want issues not only to be raised, but to be seen on a broader base. We should ask the local authority and SEPA to comment on how we can address the individual matter and the broader issue. I appreciate that our time and scope for action are limited, but if SEPA says that a matter is not isolated and is arising all over Scotland, we may care to take its advice on board and accelerate the issue up the agenda. We should ask the organisations you correctly targeted, convener, and invite them to comment on individual matters and on whether they think the committee should examine any further issues.

Is that agreed? It is.

The next petition, PE7, is from Mr R H Guild and is

"on Edinburgh's transport and traffic".

I am sure that members have had an opportunity to read the notes.

When the minister spoke about the local transport strategy, I felt that there was a link with this petition and how the local authority consults.

The City of Edinburgh Council is forming and developing a local transport strategy, but I do not know what stage it is at. The local authority should be the main focus, in the first instance, for points about a local transport strategy.

I know that the City of Edinburgh Council, Scottish Borders Council, Fife Council, Stirling Council and Falkirk Council have been involved in a partnership and are engaged in exactly the sort of discussion that is mentioned in "Tackling Congestion". To say that there is no agreed way forward is not to do justice to the work that that organisation has been doing, which has been commendable.

I applaud Mr Guild's comments about rail links with Edinburgh airport. I am wholeheartedly, four square and 100 per cent behind them. While I understand his concerns, I think that his comments do not take account of the wider work going on in the south-east Scotland transport partnership.

I will take those comments on board. Are we agreed about noting that petition?

I think that it would be appropriate for us to advise the City of Edinburgh Council formally that the concerns have been expressed to us.

Thank you, Murray.

The last petition is PE8 and comes from the Scottish Homing Union. It is

"on the impact of the number of birds of prey on the sport of pigeon racing".

I can advise members that the Rural Affairs Committee deferred further decision on the petition pending further research by SPICe which, for those in the public gallery, is the Parliament's information centre, and on the report by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions and on raptor predation research—easy for me to say.

In short, research is going on as we speak, but it has not yet been published. It would perhaps be better to wait for that research to be published and then to revisit the petition. The clerks have circulated a second document, from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which gives some further detail on the issue.

I agree with what you say, but can we also approach the Scottish Homing Union to ask about any research that might have been done into how pigeons can be made less attractive to predators, so to speak?

Before it produces a briefing, the information centre will listen to the opinions of all the organisations that want to comment, so I am sure that that will be taken on board.

Is it appropriate to make any preliminary remarks on that topic at the moment?

I would not have thought so, because we will end up going round and round. It would be better to proceed on the information that we get from SPICe and the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions.

I wanted to make a similar point. A lot of us have received a lot of representations on the matter, and it would be appropriate to deal with them later.

At the end of this meeting, the clerk will confirm to the petitioners in writing what we have agreed to do with their petitions. I would like to thank those organisations for sending their petitions and for playing their part in the democratic process in the Scottish Parliament. As I said earlier, it is a welcome innovation.