Equal Opportunities Committee, 20 Jun 2000

Meeting date: Tuesday, June 20, 2000

Official Report 261KB pdf

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Transport (Scotland) Bill

The next item is the Transport (Scotland) Bill. Members should have received papers on the bill and will probably know that the Transport and the Environment Committee is starting to take evidence at stage 1 tomorrow. It hopes to consider a draft stage 1 report on 4 July, which does not give us much time. Irene McGugan, did you have a suggestion to make?

Yes. From the perspective of the disability sub-group, issues regarding the disabled and transport are significant. The subject is mentioned only briefly in the bill. The provisions in the bill relate very much to what local authorities are to be encouraged to do.

Rather than suggesting that the disability sub-group or this committee does much at this stage, I would like to draw the committee's attention to the recent central research unit document, "Transport Provision for Disabled People in Scotland", which was made available in April of this year. The document set out to examine the prevalence of disability in Scotland, the transport needs of disabled people, the pattern of public transport in Scotland and the current gaps in provision. I would be surprised if it does not have almost everything that the Transport and the Environment Committee will need in relation to understanding what disabled people might require in a transport strategy. We should draw the attention of the Transport and the Environment Committee to the document, which it should study at some length. The document was consulted on fairly widely and I guess that it would have the support of most disabled organisations. It contains an enormous number of good recommendations and covers every aspect of transport, including ferries, buses, trains and cars.

That is the document that I received when we discussed those issues.

This committee does not have time to take any more evidence. I can write to the convener of the Transport and the Environment Committee, asking him to have regard to the document. We can do a trawl of the Official Report to pass on evidence that the committee has taken. It strikes me that some transport issues are specific to women or ethnic minorities. However, we do not have time to take evidence to feed into the lead committee.

We should ask the Transport and the Environment Committee to what extent it is taking evidence from groups other than mainstream transport experts. We can provide it with the Official Reports of our meetings. Some of us have raised several issues, including the internal transport services that local authorities in my area must provide for people with disabilities of various kinds. I hope that the Transport and the Environment Committee will examine those matters. We should ask it to consider the balance of the oral evidence that it is taking. We should make it aware of the spread of expertise that it could use to ensure that the stage 1 report is balanced and draws on work that has already been done.

That is why I asked my earlier question, even though it might have been a bit out of order. This is one area on which the equality unit has made some effort through the research that it has commissioned. In a sense, the timing is not ideal. Reid-Howie Associates are doing a good piece of work consulting women on these issues. Presumably the Transport and the Environment Committee knows about that work, but perhaps we should suggest that it examines it, given that it is not going to finalise its report until the end of the recess. That committee seems to be taking on board many of the concerns that we might have from a gender perspective, although that is complemented by what Johann Lamont has said—one of the traditional problems in transport is that it is even more male dominated than other sectors in terms of committees and so on.

In our letter to the Transport and the Environment Committee, we should indicate that we might wish to bring forward amendments at stage 2, depending on what that committee proposes in its stage 1 report.

I will send a letter to the clerk to that committee and ensure that the convener sees it before the meeting tomorrow. That will mean that the committee has the information when it starts to take evidence.