Road Traffic Deaths (PE29)<br />Dangerous Driving Deaths (PE55)
Road Accidents (Police 999 Calls) (PE111)<br />Dangerous Driving Deaths (PE299)
Dangerous Driving Deaths (PE331)
We move on to item 4. We have agreed to consider petitions on a quarterly basis, and we have a number of petitions before us. The first petition, PE29, is from Alex and Margaret Dekker; PE55, PE299 and PE331 are from Ms Tricia Donegan; and PE111 is from Frank Harvey. I refer members to the various lengthy papers on the petitions.
Members indicated agreement.
I open the discussion for comments on petition PE111.
The Justice 1 Committee has been pursuing this issue for some time, but we still have not got to the bottom of some of the matters that we have been trying to address. I am broadly in favour of what is proposed in option 9 of the paper. We should probably pursue all three of those objectives.
The committee has received nothing further.
There are several loose ends that need to be tied up. Option 9 and the three objectives that it contains will address those issues. I am keen for us to continue to pursue the matter, as we have not got to the bottom of the issues that we are trying to consider.
Thank you, Michael. The petitioner has helpfully attached several press articles that we have probably all read. Seeing them all together highlights the fact that there is a particular issue to address. [Interruption.] Sorry, are you talking about the Dekker petition, Michael—PE29?
Yes, I am.
Members might be aware of a report on that issue, which has been out for several months. I do not know whether members have had a chance to look at that. Does anyone dissent from Michael Matheson's view that we need to keep the issue live?
I do not want to dissent from Michael Matheson's view. I concur with what he said. However, I seek some clarification. As well as the three suggested actions under option 9a), there is also a suggested option 9b). Are we talking about all those suggested actions? I think that we should take all those actions, not just the three suggested actions in option 9a).
When you say option 9a), are you talking about the list that begins with the suggestion to write to the Executive?
Yes. I am just seeking clarification.
Okay. We will write to the Executive, asking for an update on when the steering group will have reached its conclusions on the decisions in the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions report. We will also ask whether the ISCJS—what is that? Could somebody please clarify what those initials stand for? [Interruption.] I am advised that it is the integration of Scottish criminal justice information systems—what a mouthful. We will ask when the ISCJS will hold data on serious injuries caused by dangerous driving. We will also ask about the time scale and outcome of the survey of convicted careless and dangerous drivers. We can also write to the Lord Advocate to request an update on progress with a report that contains 80 recommendations. Is that agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
Will that request cover the Lord Advocate's letter of 30 January?
We can refer to his letter to Christine Grahame, who was then the committee's convener, and ask him to follow that up.
As agreed, we will deal with Mr Harvey's petition separately. Do members have comments on the petition?
I am sorry, but I would like to return to petition PE29. The Lord Advocate's letter of 30 January says:
Two separate issues are involved. Procurators fiscal are meant to take offences under sections 1 and 3A of the Road Traffic Act 1988 to the High Court. It is worth checking that that is happening. It must also be ensured that cases that have been tried in a sheriff court but for which referral to the High Court is thought to be appropriate for sentencing are being referred to the High Court. I understand that several cases that should have been referred to the High Court for sentencing after being tried in a sheriff court have not been so referred, although an undertaking to do that was given.
Can we ask the Lord Advocate to clarify those matters?
We have returned to petition PE29 by Alex and Margaret Dekker. You would like the Lord Advocate to clarify whether the presumption that offences under sections 1 and 3A of the 1988 act should be referred to the High Court is in operation.
That relates to paragraph 5 of the Lord Advocate's letter of 30 January, which says:
We will leave petition PE29 now.
The question could be applied equally to the fire service and the Scottish Ambulance Service. Why has the police service been singled out? We have newspaper clippings about cases that have involved the police, but firefighters have been involved, too. It may help to consider whether an on-going issue exists. Sadly, incidents will occur, but I do not know whether they have a pattern or whether there is a problem. It may help to have a statistical background and some information, as paragraph 7a) in our briefing paper suggests. We need to find out whether there is an issue that needs to be addressed before we go off and try to find out what the Executive and the Lord Advocate are doing about it. We should ask about all three emergency services rather than just the one.
I agree with Michael Matheson that we should go for the option that is given in paragraph 7a). There is no point in proceeding with the other options unless we establish that there is a troubling statistical pattern. After that, we could consider the options that are given in paragraphs 7b) and 7c).
Does anyone dissent from that?
No, but we should adopt option 7a) only with the proviso, which Michael Matheson mentioned, that we should ask about all the emergency services and not just the police. The same law applies to all the emergency services.
We are clear that we are talking about all the emergency services.
I am sure that the guidelines advise when to engage and when to disengage. We might want to look at that spectrum.
The police sometimes operate only with blue lights rather than with, as they put it, blues and twos. They do not always use both siren and lights. I understand that the fire service always responds to a 999 call with blues and twos, whereas that is not the case for the police. For the police, it depends on the nature of the call.
From personal experience in the fire service, I would say that Michael Matheson is right. Under fire service legislation, there is a statutory obligation to treat all 999 calls in that way, but the situation for the police and ambulance services is different. Perhaps we need proper clarification from all the services before we can debate the issue properly.
For example, the fire brigade will turn up even to a street bin fire with the full monty, whereas the police would probably put just the blue lights on to get there. That is the difference. I have heard the police say that that issue needs to be addressed.
Perhaps we can debate that a bit further during this afternoon's debate on the fire service.
Members indicated agreement.
Children (Scotland) Act 1995 (PE124)
For petition PE124, we have a paper that sets out the background to, and correspondence on, the issue of grandparents' rights of access to their grandchildren. The paper presents a number of options. I invite Bill Butler to comment.
I am very keen that the committee agree to the proposed action that is laid out in paragraphs 13, 14 and 15. In the previous parliamentary session, various organisations made submissions to the Justice 1 Committee that said, basically, that they were content with the current legislation. The action that is proposed in paragraphs 13, 14 and 15 would ensure that the petitioners' concerns—with which, I am sure, we all have sympathy—were progressed in some fashion.
Margaret Mitchell, who is not here today, asked that I mention to the committee that, in her view, if we are to widen access under the 1995 act we should do so to include fathers. I do not know what members think about that suggestion.
Part of the problem is that there may often be a substantial cost to be met. As I understand it, GASH members want the automatic right to have contact with their grandchildren. That change has been seen as unnecessary, because people are content with the law as it stands. However, it is still a matter of concern to the folk in GASH to whom I have spoken. Perhaps they should make a submission to the consultation on the forthcoming family law bill, to ascertain whether there are ways in which their problems may be addressed. I do not know whether that would be possible, but we should at least suggest to GASH that it may wish to explore that option.
I have dealt with a number of cases of people seeking representation in relation to this issue and recently I have been in correspondence on the matter with the Minister for Justice. The cases that have been brought to me suggest that it tends to be the parents of the father who have lost access to the child, because the father has also lost access.
That is the key issue. Indeed, we should specify to the Executive that we think that the issue is worthy of examination.
With respect, convener, I am not suggesting that. Instead, I think that we should go ahead with the proposed action as set out in paragraphs 13, 14 and 15 of the paper.
Yes, but I am simply addressing your comments about GASH's call for an automatic right of access to grandchildren.
I concur strongly with Michael Matheson's comments. However, I know of cases in which it was found to be in the child's interests not to allow the father access, which meant that the grandparents were not allowed access. As a result, there would be problems with giving grandparents an absolute right of access.
Michael Matheson and Margaret Smith have made excellent suggestions. We should incorporate their comments, particularly Margaret's comments, in any action that we take.
I just need to go through all the action points to make everything clear.
I suggest that we change the phrase "is sufficient" at the end of the paragraph to "would seem to be sufficient". I know that the current legislation is sufficient, but we should not send such a bald statement back to the petitioners. It is simply a gentler way of putting the matter.
As far as paragraph 13 is concerned, we should write back to the petitioners to explain what has happened and give them an update on the situation. We will also forward to them a copy of the Official Report of this meeting, which will contain our discussions of the matter, and include a summary of our proposed actions. Does that sound all right?
Yes.
Paragraph 14 of the clerk's note mentions that
Work has been done by the former Justice 2 Committee and we acknowledge that the reasons why the right of grandparents to have access to their grandchildren cannot be absolute have been expressed. However, the committee is generally supportive of the group's main aim, which is to ensure that the majority of grandparents have on-going access to their grandchildren. We should ask the Executive to consider the issue in the context of the family law bill and to consider whether it might be possible to extend the rights of grandparents—and perhaps other people, as the convener said—in the way that the petitioners suggest.
That suggestion encompasses a number of points that have been made by others. We could write to the Executive to say that we would like it to consider this issue in the drafting of the family law bill and to examine the question of access to justice, which Michael Matheson and I raised, and the question of whether the law could be strengthened in relation to grandparents and other groups to ensure that they had easier access to the children, which Margaret Smith raised.
I agree with that suggestion, but I think that we should also write to the petitioners to say that we strongly advise that they consider not so much the automatic right of access, which seems to be a dead end, but the issue of wider access for a range of family members and access to legal aid. We must give them a steer, but whether they take that steer is entirely up to them.
I propose to include Bill Butler's comments in the letter that we discussed in relation to paragraph 13 of the note on the petition.
Are we simply amending the wording of the proposed action as outlined in paragraph 15 of the note? Are we going to ask the Executive to consider the matter but not undertake work ourselves?
Our comments will be contained in a letter to the Executive. We are asking it to do the work but we will have to keep an eye on the situation. We might get a response from the petitioners as well.
Members indicated agreement.
Carbeth Hutters (PE14)
I have to declare a sort of interest in the petition from the Carbeth hutters, which calls for protection for hutters, as I think that it was the first petition that I ever dealt with, away back in the days of the original Justice and Home Affairs Committee.
I have had constituents to whom the same thing has happened. Their rent has been put up to such an extent that they have been forced out of places where they have lived, at least partially, for 20 years or so. There is a great sense of grievance at such action. I was a bit dismayed by the report on what the Executive has done, or not done, on the issue. Obviously, practices are going on that may be within the letter of the law but which are outwith the spirit of the law. There seems to be no recognition of that in the Executive's action. Can we have clarification on what action the previous committee asked the Executive to take, because you said that some outstanding issues had not been addressed by the Executive?
Yes, we can get clarification on that. I wrote to the minister, and I recall that there was scope for some kind of regulatory regime over leases and rents. It is a difficult area, because we are talking about owners of land who have granted leases on certain terms that have now run out. The question is whether there should be measures in law to prevent landlords from having unfair terms in the first place.
It is outrageous that in this day and age anybody is behaving in such a fashion. I am pleased that there has been progress with the Carbeth case, which looks to be in the interests of all parties. However, when I go through the report I cannot help but feel that the Executive is fobbing us off. It is not doing anything about the issue. We have a moral responsibility, given what has happened to the folk on the Drimsynie estate, to ask the Executive whether it is happy that this sort of thing is happening. If not, something has to be done to deal with it. I know that it might be complex, but something has to be done when a landowner can behave in such a high-handed fashion.
I am pleased to say that, following negotiation, the Carbeth situation seems to be reaching a positive resolution. However, as Michael Matheson said, the Drimsynie situation is, on the face of it, outrageous. We are duty bound to write to the Executive asking whether— notwithstanding the fact that it is difficult to legislate in this area—it has any thoughts on what it might do to resolve the Drimsynie situation and to prevent any other such outrageous situations from occurring. We must do that at the very least.
One of my constituents owned one of the chalets, as their property on someone else's property. They were told that, unless they got their property off that other person's property, it would be destroyed. That situation leaves people with the cost of moving their chalet and the problem of where to put it. It really is a totally impossible situation for people to find themselves in.
The owner has a right to determine what they want to do with their land. However, when they contract with somebody else for the use of their land—whether as a site for a chalet or something else—there should be some framework to protect the person who enters into that contract. The only other option would be some kind of rent control. I cannot think of another measure that would protect somebody in that situation. I presume that, in the cases under consideration, the people have signed something.
On the question of what can be done, you suggested that some sort of legislation dealing with the rental situation might be one of the few options. However, in the light of what has happened at Carbeth, perhaps there is a role for slightly tighter regulations on compulsory arbitration between parties in such situations. Perhaps there should be a presumption that, when such a situation occurs, the case should go before a body that will arbitrate between the two parties. That may not resolve all situations, but it has done so in the case of Carbeth. Rather than going into the problems of land ownership and rent control, perhaps forcing the two groups to come face to face through professional arbitrators may resolve such situations, as it has in the Carbeth case. Perhaps that avenue could be explored by the Executive.
For the record, I am not opposed to that suggestion. However, although we can threaten to legislate if the parties do not sort the matter out, once we have done that, we cannot do the same for anybody else. The fact that we have resolved the Carbeth situation does not necessarily mean that we could get a resolution in all situations, unless we pursue Stewart Maxwell's suggestion that, as part of the legal process, the two parties would be forced into arbitration. We would have to think about what would be the conclusion of that and how it would be enforced.
I am familiar with the Drimsynie estate, as I used to be an instructor at the outdoor centre in Lochgoilhead. I do not know the exact situation, but I am familiar with the estate. It is a large, commercial development with a hotel, chalets and a caravan park. I am not sure what has happened, but I suspect that—for commercial purposes—the landowners have decided to get rid of the wooden chalets that used to be near the foreshore and to do something else there. That is very different from the Carbeth situation. If the landowner thinks that a commercial interest is at stake, I do not think that he will be open to arbitration. I also know that, historically, the landowner in question does not have a reputation for dealing with things in the best of ways.
That is helpful. How does the committee feel about writing to the Executive, saying that it should pick the matter up again? Our suggestion would be that it consider compulsory arbitration—as suggested by Stewart Maxwell—and/or some regulatory framework that would apply fairness to leases, along the lines of the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977. The UCTA could be used as a model. Those two suggestions are not mutually exclusive and could be used together as a way forward. We would have to make it clear that they would have to apply in a number of situations, rather than be tailored to the specific situations at Lochgoilhead and Carbeth. Is that agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
I propose that we break for five minutes, for coffee.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—
Previous
Subordinate LegislationNext
Work Programme