You are correct to identify that there are different elements to reliability. Signalling issues were certainly affecting the Inverness line, in particular, yesterday, and the rapidity with which they are repaired is very important.

However, I think that your point is more about planned improvements. We put great emphasis on that in the funding, the strategy and the specification that we provide to Network Rail, but we do not micromanage delivery, because its responsibilities and internal management are still tied to its ownership by the UK Government.

As for improvements on the north-east line, we are looking at the Dundee and Arbroath area, in particular; I know that work is planned in that respect, and the issue is how we co-ordinate those planned improvements. I suppose that you would be better asking Network Rail how it manages its work, if delays as a result of signalling or other failures are regularly occurring in certain areas. That would be the sensible thing to do, and I am sure that it will look into the matter. Obviously, we can relay to Network Rail your particular interest in the Montrose area.

I do not know whether Bill Reeve has anything to add.

On the basis that it will require regulations, and on the basis that your committee is extremely busy, I do not think that we will necessarily have time to do what we would need to do. However, when I receive the responses to the consultation, I want to ensure that I can take a view and inform the incoming Government as to what it might want to do.

I cannot give you a definitive timescale, but I am conscious that, to give effect to some of those aspects, it will require legislation.

You also asked about the 20mph speed limit. All the local authorities have set out how they will do that. It has already been rolled out in many areas; in many other areas, the roll-out is a wee bit slower. I will dare to say that my local area of West Lothian is perhaps slower than other areas.

What is really important, though—and we know this from the history of moving to the 20mph speed limit in different parts of the United Kingdom—is that there is a strong consensus on doing this at the local level and on a cross-party basis. I am confident that it will be rolled out—and rolled out effectively—by the end of the year in every single local authority. I cannot take responsibility for every single one of those local authorities, but the vast majority are well on their way to delivery.

At the last road safety partnership group meeting, which I chaired just a few weeks back, that was one of the areas that our colleagues in COSLA and another member of the group, Colin, spoke about—I am trying to remember his second name, but I will check with our colleagues who work with local leads on road traffic management and update you on that.

I do not want to say that some local authorities do not take road safety seriously, because I think that all local authorities take it seriously, but I think that some local authorities are more organised in how they are managing it and it has a higher profile in terms of how it is viewed within some local authorities.

Another area that the people from road policing are quite keen on is making sure that road safety is seen within the context of community planning partnerships; perhaps, in some areas, it has a higher profile and importance. What is really interesting about the reports from COSLA is that, when its relevant committees have engaged on road safety, there is a great deal of enthusiasm from the local councillors who sit on those committees. I think that there is a real appetite to drive this forward, but you are right about the best practice point.

I am not in a position to say what that best practice is, but collaborative work is one of the things that our SCOTS leads, our local authority leads and our COSLA leads want to do in a supportive environment.

That is not to say that people are not doing the things that they can do. Sometimes it is about the resource and the tension that is put on that, but there is a great keenness to use the funding that we are providing nationally to help them.

Interestingly, we recently appointed someone from Public Health Scotland to be part of the road safety partnership, as road safety is also a public health issue. People often see road safety in terms of construction on the roads, but it is actually about how people behave and how traffic is managed to make a difference. Your points are well made, and I will feed them back to the road safety partnership.

The legislation on LEZs and what the money can be used for is very tight in that it is specifically for air quality and the enhancement of specific areas. That is governed by law, so the money cannot be used for anything at the council’s choice and whim, as some people think. Let us put that one to bed.

Some local authorities, including my own, do not even have powers to reinvest penalty charges into roads. There are different experiences in different parts of the country. There is no magic bullet for road safety, but the point is that everybody can contribute something.

We are also pursuing road policing. There is an important, constructive and challenging report into road policing from His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland. The police are changing what they are doing and that will become obvious when that report is published.

The reason why it is important is that local authorities often say that local road policing is not as it has been and they have criticisms of it, which gives them an excuse not to do anything. We are trying to get everybody to do more, and if that happens, we will start to have more of an impact on our roads.

I am actively considering what that will look like. I am not in a position to tell the committee just now, but it will be set out in the climate change plan.

We are improving public transport. That is what Edinburgh and Glasgow councils want to do, which is why they are taking iterative steps. They will do things only when they know that they have the public transport that will help to support those changes.

I think that Mr Simpson has been in Parliament long enough, as have other committee members, to know that if we do not have a target, it will be demanded that we have one. In addition, targets are useful in evidencing progress. Audit Scotland would not be able to measure how good, bad or indifferent we have been if we did not have targets.

I think that you ask a genuine question—I am not trying to diminish it. I am just saying that having something that we know that we are trying to achieve is more realistic. We can also see how it fits in with the wider climate change agenda, which is why the advice that we expect to receive in May from the UK Climate Change Committee will be helpful; it will set the context for where we are now and what we have to do.

Across a lot of policy areas, we get attacked if we have targets that we do not reach, and then we get attacked for not having targets where we have not set them because we want to take people with us on the policy. Such is life and the challenges of Government and politics, as you know.

It is a both/and situation. We have always had a policy of encouraging more people to use EVs, but there are also wider issues around trying to tackle congestion, encouraging people to have more active, healthier lifestyles and tackling the issue of particulates that are produced by tyres, brakes and so on, regardless of which vehicle is used.

The Transport (Scotland) Act 2001 probably provides more powers than the other acts. The City of Edinburgh Council was very interested in the workplace levy, but it then decided that it was not. Tools need to be available to local government, so that it can decide what to use.

It is fair to say that the politically combative atmosphere sometimes means that common desires to tackle climate change can be compromised, because the decisions can be seen to be too difficult for people to make at particular points in an electoral cycle. What has been interesting about the low-emission zones is that they have produced positive results in air quality, particularly from a public health point of view. You can see that from the Dundee studies. Four local authorities, all with different political make-ups, came together and shared their different experiences.

That is a good example of the common understanding that, for public health reasons, we need to tackle the issue of emissions in our city centres. Those local authorities have collectively done that in their own cities, and they have more flexibilities within that. That common purpose and cross-party approach to tackling a difficult issue is a good example of what can be done.

I will leave it there, then.