Minister, you will appreciate the difficulty that that creates for committee members. We do not know whether the removal of the card can apply to instances of antisocial behaviour away from a bus—associated not with the public transport but with the person having made use of concessionary travel. We do not know what the governance arrangements will be for the decision-making process in respect to any sanction that is to be applied, nor what threshold of evidence will be required in order to satisfy the decision maker in taking action. That makes it difficult for committee members to understand what we are expected to agree to.

In principle, I agree with the idea of being able to remove someone’s concessionary travel, but we need to be satisfied that we have worked through the practicalities and the operational assurance that is needed for “fairness, equity and inclusion”, as Young Scot described in its evidence. From what I am hearing this morning, we do not appear to be able to give that assurance.

Hold on. Does that mean that if someone uses concessionary bus travel, commits some form of antisocial behaviour nowhere near a bus and not associated with public transport, then the sanction of removing their concessionary travel could be deployed? Is that what the code of conduct would allow to happen?

Okay. We do not currently know whether it could be applied in those instances.

My second point is in relation to process. Given that the decision maker will be someone within Transport Scotland, what are the intended governance arrangements around that individual in relation to their making of those decisions, and what threshold of evidence will be required in order to justify a decision?

09:30

Thank you, convener. As the witnesses will be aware, we have had the outcome of allocation round 7. We have two projects in Scotland, including the first fixed offshore project in Scotland through that process since 2022. Adam, what is your take on the outcome of AR7?

That is a lot of pressure on AR8 to ensure there is momentum.

My next question is for John Underhill and Simon Coop. In AR7, there are two Scottish projects—one floating and one fixed at bottom. In Scotland, we do not produce nacelles, turbine blades or towers, or floating foundations. Given that, what is the economic value of those projects to Scotland?

Simon, how do we deliver a just transition for your members off the back of something such as AR7, when two of the projects that have been committed to in AR7 are in Scotland, but operations and maintenance activity for offshore wind is much less than it is for oil and gas? How do we deliver a just transition if we do not manufacture the nacelles, blades, towers and foundations to ensure that workers in oil and gas have other jobs that they can move into?

I suspect that the whole issue around preventative spend goes back to the Christie commission and trying to make that long-term investment in order to get wider societal benefits. The problem is that, very often, the political cycle does not lend itself to that type of investment. I was struck by Rachel Aldred’s point about the need for long-term investment, which a couple of you have also made. The challenge that the Scottish Government will have is that it does not know what its budget will be next year, because it is, by default, set from the UK Government’s budget. That political process issue compromises some of those other issues.

That brings me to the question that I would like to ask Adrian Davis and Rachel Aldred. You do not feel that the transport provisions in the draft climate change plan are sufficient to achieve the reductions in transport emissions that are needed to tackle climate change. Adrian, you rattled off four examples of areas of transport in which we get good bang for our buck in relation to impact. You mentioned congestion charging, road reallocation and the enforcement of parking restrictions—I am sorry, but I missed the fourth example that you gave. If you feel that the transport provisions in the existing plan are insufficient and that there are clear policies that would, if implemented, have a marked impact, why do you think that those policies are not in the plan and the Government is not pursuing them?

Moreover, if you target this in a particular way and, say, produce things that help to reduce our carbon footprint, it will have a wider environmental benefit.

You talked about 600 vehicles. That must be a very small percentage of the overall fleet in the UK. I would have thought that the percentage would be in single digits. Is that correct?

Okay. That was helpful.

My final question is on moving freight from road to rail. I know that grants were available to encourage freight operators to make the shift to rail. I am conscious that there are limitations on the types of goods that can be put on to rail freight, but do you know exactly how many rail freight pathways on the UK rail network are not being utilised because of a lack of demand from industry to switch to using rail freight?