Chamber and committees

You want us to find out why the values to which the police have referred have resulted in changing the previous practice. To many of us, such matters seem to be fairly straightforward and have always been so—for decades, if not centuries.

I do not oppose that proposal, as it is very clear that the Scottish Government is not going to change its practice. However, I want to record my full support for the petitioner’s views in every respect.

In reading the petitioner’s submission of 18 September, which responded to minister Shirley-Anne Somerville’s submission in August this year, it occurred to me that we have not fully explored and bottomed out the points made in the most recent comments by the petitioner, and I felt that it would be only fair to the petitioner to do that.

As I understand it, their report in 2018, which was five years ago, pointed out the basic inconsistency or unfairness that the petition is about, which is that the 20m rule is arbitrary and there is no evidence that it is based on any rational justification. When the move was made from disability living allowance, or DLA, to personal independence payment, or PIP, the rule resulted in a third of people who suffered from MS losing some support and one in 10 losing all support. That was the basic thesis five years ago. I am not sure that we have ever had a factual response from the Government about whether that is correct or, indeed, on any of the specifics. The Government’s response mentioned the review, which is fine, but it has not responded specifically to what the petitioner said.

The other point that I picked up from the petitioner’s response in September was slightly different. It says that ADP and PIP use the 20m rule but that DLA, which still applies in some cases, uses a 50m rule. There is an inconsistency, as different benefits apply different rules. If that is correct—I am no expert on this at all so I do not know, but that is what the petitioner said a couple of months back—I do not think that this committee should take forward this work. I understand that the Social Security and Social Justice Committee is undertaking scrutiny on the issue—perhaps Mr Torrance will speak to that in a minute.

However, the very least that we could do is specifically and explicitly refer those matters to the minister. We could send a copy of that letter to the Social Security and Social Justice Committee and suggest that it might have regard to those points in its scrutiny. In that way, the petitioner’s case would not be lost but would be bequeathed to the substantive committee.

At the risk of causing difficulty, those are my suggestions.

Good morning to both witnesses. I would like your views on current efforts to reduce violence and on the various initiatives that, as I understand it, exist in order to promote violence reduction.

I go back to the rather distant days when I was Minister for Community Safety, working with Kenny MacAskill as the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, when a great deal of effort was put into supporting the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit and Medics Against Violence, along with diversionary activity that was funded by the cashback scheme. The VRU had at its core a belief that violence can be reduced by one-to-one intervention. Medics Against Violence involved doctors volunteering to go and speak in schools and explain to kids the consequences of violence—for example, what happens when someone is attacked with a knife and is left with a facial injury. That showed children at school just how devastating the consequences of violence were.

As I understand it, those were volunteer medics—doctors, nurses and others—who had direct experience of working in places such as Glasgow Royal infirmary on a Saturday night. As I recall from my visit there many years ago, that is not an experience for the faint-hearted.

Are those efforts effective, or do you think that more needs to be done? Do you have any suggestions or thoughts about how those activities and other, similar activities can be beefed up? I get the impression that they have perhaps not been pursued with the same gusto and enthusiasm that I felt was evident in the distant days when Kenny MacAskill and I were at the justice helm.

I thought that the petitioner might respond. The issue will affect a lot of people—I think that the petitioner is from Lhanbryde in Morayshire, in the Highlands and Islands. I am familiar with the Openreach argument about the inside-out approach versus the outside-in approach, but I think that the petitioner is arguing that a more sophisticated and flexible approach could be taken. As we have not had any response from him, I wonder whether—

If that is the case, perhaps we should close the petition—

Are there?

Okay.

That is often for practical reasons to do with the costs of implementation. It may be that the Government knows well that it will not be able to afford implementation soon, given the financial pressures that we were hearing about yesterday, and so on. I just wanted to add that point, for the benefit of the clerks when they are framing the committee’s letter.

As this is a new petition, I think that there is quite a lot to be done. Some of that has been suggested to us, so perhaps I will leave those things out, but I want to make some specific points that I do not think have been raised with us in the advice that we received.

Number 1 is that there have long been parking charges for 23 sites. That was increased in 2012 to 44 sites, but now it has been increased to 110 sites. As it happens, I used to have the ministerial portfolio with responsibility for FLS and I have fond memories of working with it, so I appreciate that it has to cover its costs. However, many of the car parks have no facilities whatsoever—they are basically open ground. I know that because I used to do a lot of running around forests in the Highlands. I cannot see that it is justified to make charges at such sites. Some sites have facilities, but only a few.

There seems to be a lack of rationale for how and why the charges have been introduced. Why have some charges been made and not others? What is the rationale? Surely the rationale should be based on what facilities there are. Where does an equality impact assessment come in? It seems to me that it considers various things, such as equal rights. That is absolutely desirable and fine—everybody has a right to access, which is perhaps the point—but the key decisions should be based on what facilities there are, such as toilets and whether rangers are present. I would be keen to get details of all that from FLS.

Secondly, why should the equality impact assessments not be made public? They are public documents, so can FLS explain why there is an issue?

Thirdly, if the costs of running the 300 destinations are £13 million, can we get some detail and breakdown from FLS of what that cost entails? It seems to be an awful lot of money. Is it mostly labour costs or are costs site specific? What exactly is it that FLS employees do at the sites? Most of them are basically open land. There is nothing to do. There is no grass to cut and the areas where cars park are usually unmetalled and flat.

If charges are to be imposed everywhere, some drivers, instead of parking in the car park, might park alongside roads—often single-track roads—to avoid having to pay charges. They know that they will not be detected, because no police will go by for weeks on end in some of the more remote areas.

I am not against bodies recovering their costs. It is a principle of Government that brings problems with it. I just wanted to raise those points and I am sympathetic to other points that will be raised.