Access to Justice (Environment) (PE1372)
It is an interesting discussion because it throws open the whole question of budgets and what equality impact assessment has been made about the budgetary allocation for legal aid. I absolutely agree—a fundamental issue that we have to wrestle with every day in this place is that we have a fixed budget and competing demands. However, there still is—and as a committee we would expect there to be—evidence on how one demand trumps another demand. I do not see any difficulty for the committee, or indeed the Government, in relation to outlining the position.
Are we happy to go along with John Finnie’s suggestion that we write to the Government to ask for an explanation and then decide when we receive the reply what we will do next—either close the petition or take further action?
Members indicated agreement.
Yes. We will talk about it again.
Thank you. That concludes the public part of today’s meeting. Our next meeting will take place on Thursday 14 August.
10:45 Meeting continued in private until 10:54.
Agenda item 4 is a discussion on petition PE1372, by Friends of the Earth Scotland, on access to justice in environmental matters, which is covered in paper 4. Taking into account the work that has been done by the Justice Committee that is relevant to the petition, I ask the committee to consider whether we should close the petition or take another course of action.
The issue of Aarhus convention compliance, as referenced in the petition, was one of the very first items that came to this committee—Siobhan McMahon was with me on the committee throughout that period—and it has been batted around. It will be a matter of fine judgment whether there is compliance in some instances and not in others and it is entirely right to say that a lot of this work appears to have been addressed by the Justice Committee.
Similarly, we could have said that the important item that we covered today—female genital mutilation—is a crime so it would be for the Justice Committee to address that, too. However, I think that there is a role for this committee as regards this petition and, prior to making a decision on it, I would like us to write to the Scottish Government asking it whether it believes that there is compliance and, if so, how it would evidence that compliance. If there is not compliance, it should outline where the shortfalls are and how it seeks to address that lack of compliance.
Significantly, the party of government had a manifesto commitment to an environmental court. It would be interesting to know where that matter sits. It was referred to directly in the Justice Committee’s stage 1 report on the Courts Reform (Scotland) Bill, when it said that the legislation would facilitate an environmental court. That does not appear to be on the agenda. That was addressed in the response to the stage 1 report but I think that this committee has an obligation to look at the wider aspects—if you like, the non-judicial aspects—and how they affect the much-used term “access to justice”. If we were to write to the Government on the specifics that I have outlined, we could make an informed decision thereafter.
I agree entirely with John Finnie. The issue has been going on from the very first days of this committee and this session of Parliament. I think that it would be wrong for our committee not to have looked at the petition in its entirety before closing it. I, too, was going to propose writing to the Scottish Government so I fully back John Finnie in his proposal.
I am rebutting John Finnie’s argument on this one. I see that the issue was introduced to this committee, as was talked about, and the Government answered but it should maybe be taken on by the environmental committee because it is tied to justice and the environment. I am not sure how it sits in this committee.
It is about the equality of opportunity to challenge decisions—for instance, the ability of a small community to take on a multinational about an issue and where that sits. Also, whatever has gone on in other committees, we do not have anything here about that. I am giving my interpretation of events in that regard. If the desire is to close the loop from this committee’s point of view, there is no harm in securing that information first and we can have a debate thereafter.
I do not have any problem with us asking about it or writing about it—whatever we are going to do. When I read the figure, as I come from a finance background, as soon as I see more legal aid possibly going to one group I wonder whether that means that less legal aid is going to another group. For people who are homeless, for example, there is already an issue around people sometimes not getting the legal aid that they feel they should. I just wanted to flag up that as one of my concerns.
When we talk about equality of arms, we have to be very careful. Some people in Aberdeen, for example, would say that the balance went the wrong way in relation to the Aberdeen western peripheral route so it goes both ways, as John Mason said.
I am saying nothing because I agree with Christian Allard and, if I said that publicly, it might weaken his case.
You have just done that. [Laughter.]