Chamber and committees

Thank you.

Convener, to do justice to the petitioners, it might be helpful if we shared some of the detail of their proposals. I have skimmed those here; I have not gone into them fully. Maybe we could copy them to the minister. Then, if she has any comments further to what was a generally positive response, we could see what those are.

When did that meeting with the transport minister take place?

I was not quite sure whether the petition was calling for restrictions beyond the use of peat for horticulture. From what David Torrance said, and the reference that he made, it would appear that the Climate Change Committee recommends going further than that and banning peat for burning. Given that we all know that the burning of peat is traditional in crofting counties as an essential means of heat and is a cultural practice that has gone on for centuries, I wonder whether any attempt to ban said practice would be met with horror and outright opposition, if not direct action, by crofters. We might write to the Scottish Crofting Federation to seek its guidance on whom we should be consulting on the matter, because I suspect that it will become—to use a rather poor pun—a burning issue.

Carol Mochan MSP has provided very interesting information about the impact on people who have MS. I wonder whether it might be appropriate to write to the MS Society in order to elicit more information. Perhaps Carol Mochan could help the clerks by providing the information that she has. Given what she has informed the committee of today, I would be interested in digging a bit deeper to see whether there are people who have been casualties of the rule and have lost the ability to carry on working. That is a very serious matter, and I am very grateful that Carol Mochan has brought it to the committee today. I would be keen to see whether the MS Society could give us a more complete picture.

After the meeting, could the witnesses send us the detail on the points that they have made? I suspect that I am not alone in thinking that they have laid out a strong set of arguments, and I would like to see in black and white the figures that they have mentioned and study them in a bit more detail.

It seems that you are the Cinderella of the public transport sector in the way that you have been treated. You are trying to do the right thing, but are being told that you must do the right thing by the state. The state has a responsibility to assist you to do that without forcing your members out of business or imposing the unreasonable financial burden that you have described.

You have persuaded me that you have made a statable case, but I would like to have those figures in writing, and I therefore make that request. Specifically, could you share with us details of the Manchester alternative and how things are done there? One of the witnesses said that Manchester provides a more generous scheme to enable assistance by way of grant finance for the purchase of a new vehicle, rather than—as the witnesses have argued—throwing money away on retrofitting old vehicles that are ready to go to the great car cemetery in the sky.

If the witnesses can provide more evidence, the committee might want to consider how it can help them to advance the petition. Time is agin us, so it would have to be done quite quickly. I hope that that is a reasonable request.

I can understand that. As Mr Sweeney said, that could be done either by the Government or by an individual MSP.

However, I want to put to you an alternative that has been suggested, in a very helpful paper, by those advising us in the Scottish Parliament information centre. They suggest that, instead of creating a specific, brand new offence, it would be possible, under existing offences, for the charge against the assailant or the accused to specifically refer to the fact that the violence led to the loss of an unborn child. In other words, instead of creating a brand new offence, an alternative course of action could be to urge the Scottish Government and the justice system, including the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and the Lord Advocate, to require that such wording be specifically mentioned in the charge. Do you feel that that might be an acceptable alternative to the creation of a specific offence?

That is very helpful, because colleagues might wish to pursue that alternative option with the relevant authorities. In its submission, the Scottish Sentencing Council said that

“nothing ... precludes the loss of an unborn child caused by violent actions or coercive control from being libelled as part of an offence”,

so it says that that could be a route. However, I will ask the council, if I have the opportunity to do so, whether that has ever happened in practice.

Like Paul Sweeney, I found your account harrowing, and I am very sorry that the system appears to have let you down, not just in one way but in several ways. I just make that observation. Thank you very much for coming before us on an issue that is, sadly, so important for many women.

I will pursue the main issue, which is whether the law should be changed and, if so, how. Am I right in saying that you would like there to be a new criminal offence that specifically relates to circumstances in which violence or coercive action by a man—I think that it would be a man in almost every case—leads to the loss of an unborn child? Is that your primary objective in lodging the petition?

I was not sure if you could hear me, convener. While agreeing to the courses of action that you have just outlined in relation to PE1885, given that energy is a policy issue that rests substantially with the Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero, Energy and Transport, we should also write to him as well. In writing to both ministers, we should ask whether the Scottish Government has any plans to provide additional funding to enable communities to pursue an interest in community ownership and, in particular, whether the Scottish National Investment Bank, which operates commercially but has a green mandate, could be requested to provide an element or a tranche of funding from which communities might be able to draw, as well as raising money from other sources, such as private banks and so on.

It occurred to me that, in order to pursue what the petitioner wants, those related aspects are also relevant and are perhaps ones that we could seek the Scottish Government’s views on with regard to whether it has an additional plan to enable community ownership of renewable energy projects to become far more prevalent than it is at the moment.

Indeed. I do not know the answer, but we will pursue that point to see whether we can get justice for you.

I want to ask you about another issue. You were faced with the ghastly situation of finding that the charge had been reduced, as I understand it, without any consultation. Of course, at the end of the day, the people in charge of the prosecutorial system are, rightly, independent. However, do you feel that there should be a requirement for prior communication with victims of these ghastly circumstances prior to any reduction in the gravity of the offence being agreed between the fiscal and the defence lawyer?