Chamber and committees

I will continue to engage with the Labour arguments for the time being.

Not only because of that support from the Scottish Government but because of political leadership at a local level, Glasgow City Council has invested in specific infrastructure and has a long-term plan to continue to do so. As she is not standing again in the coming election, I pay tribute to Anna Richardson for the work that she has done on that.

There is a huge amount of community leadership right across Scotland, and we will get the greatest benefit from supporting that community leadership through Scottish Government policies and spending.

I want to maximise the role of active travel in the wider transition to a sustainable transport system, with fewer unnecessary journeys. There is no time to wait. I am pleased to announce more than £300,000 to develop a national dashcam safety portal with Police Scotland. With more of us using cameras, not just on dashboards but on handlebars and even on our clothing, it will be easier to report crimes that put people, particularly cyclists and pedestrians, in danger. That is why we are also sustaining our headline places for everyone programme and more than doubling investment in the national cycle network next year. Those programmes will deliver the connected network that is so important, so that we can talk just as meaningfully about a path and cycleway network as we do about the road or rail network.

Much of that delivery will happen in partnership with local authorities, which is why we are increasing the capital funding programme for cycling, walking and safer routes, which goes directly to local authorities, from £24 million to £35 million next year. That means that, over a period of four years, direct local authority funding will have increased fourfold. I look forward to working with the newly mandated councils from May onwards on turning those pounds into projects.

The member knows that we will always continue to debate local authority funding, and I do not agree with the way in which the Conservatives interpret the figures. However, we are now seeing examples across the country—albeit not everywhere—of local authorities giving real leadership. They are clearly capable of doing so, and our increased funding to them will support them.

I want to pick out a few specific strands of our programme. The first, which I am announcing today, is the new Ian Findlay paths fund, managed by Paths for All and named in memory of the Paths for All chief officer, who very sadly passed away suddenly last year and who was a passionate and hugely respected advocate for active travel. The new £1.5 million fund will support small, local projects to make improvements to existing path infrastructure and make connections where there are gaps in the network. It will demonstrate that transformation is not just about big city or town centre changes; it is as much about connecting remote communities and making our neighbourhoods better places to live in, move around and relax in. I hope that Ian, who would have turned 61 today, would have approved.

Turning to the second aspect of the programme that I want to pick out, I highlight the point that active travel is inclusive travel. Walking, wheeling and cycling should be choices for the maximum number of people. Through our development and roll-out of street design guidance and through the projects that we fund, I want to see active travel being a choice for everyone.

I hope that Neil Bibby welcomes the fact that the Scottish Government is continuing with the policy. It would have been wrong just to crash ahead without designing it properly. That is why we have a pilot phase. Many different approaches are being taken, including those that do not necessarily lead to ownership of a bike but provide access to one and the ability to change bikes. That range of pilots will be evaluated by the autumn and we will continue to roll out the national programme as a result of what we learn from conducting them.

I will do so in a moment.

On one of Jeremy Balfour’s points, I have met the Mobility and Access Committee for Scotland, which was one of the Government’s main advisers on these issues. I know that other organisations such as The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association work very constructively with the Society of Chief Officers of Transportation in Scotland and other organisations to try to ensure that our guidance and advice to local authorities respects the need to be inclusive.

However, the challenge must be that disability access and disability equality issues do not conflict with our approach to active travel. I know, from sadly-growing personal experience, because I have grudgingly come to know arthritis over the past few years—members will have seen me walking with a stick sometimes—that there are many people who are disabled for whom active travel, and using a bike, is a mobility aid. I have days when cycling is much easier than walking.

We also need to ensure that there is access to adaptive bikes and the wide range of bikes that can enable a great many people with different kinds of disabilities to travel actively. This must be about how we do both; we should not see the two issues as being in conflict with each other.

I have given an example of how The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, MACS and SCOTS work together with Sustrans to produce guidance. I value that kind of constructive contribution more than some of the wholly negative comments that have been made.

That brings me to the Conservative opening and closing speeches, some of which wholly lived down to my expectations. Graham Simpson clearly wrote his opening paragraphs bemoaning the lack of detail about funding and specific projects. Therefore, he must have been disappointed that my opening speech mentioned so many clear, specific examples—specific figures for funding increases and specific projects that we are working with. He said that he wanted us to develop national standards. He must not have been listening to my opening speech when I talked about the cycling by design guidance that has been updated. He wanted us to provide more money at local level. He must not have been listening when I talked about the additional funding, including the funding that is going directly to local councils to deliver the work.

Mr Simpson fully lived down to my expectations when he used part of his speech to yell “Wear a helmet!” at me. Like every other Government in the United Kingdom, the Scottish Government does not make wearing helmets mandatory because the evidence would not support that. Like every cyclist, I make a decision for myself about whether I wish to wear a helmet and, like every other cyclist, I have angry drivers yelling “Wear a helmet!” at me out of their windows when they should be paying attention to their responsibilities on the road. I deeply regret that Mr Simpson thinks that it is appropriate to bring that same energy into the chamber.

The Labour amendment brought some much more credible and substantive arguments into the debate. Mr Bibby knows that there are aspects of it that we cannot support, but he raised some significant issues, particularly on the motivation for what is being done. The climate and public health imperative was acknowledged and, indeed, Mr Bibby criticised some specific local projects but did so more constructively. However, one of the fundamental arguments that Labour is making is that none of the work can be done properly because we have an honest disagreement about wider local government funding.

The reality is that the leadership that is being shown on active travel at local level around the country is patchy. There are some great examples now. Glasgow is one. I would not have said that 10 years ago and might not have said it five years ago. I might well have been scathing about the level of respect that is given to active travel in Glasgow all those years ago but, now, very clearly and not only because of the support and funding that the Scottish Government gives but because the political will exists there at a local level, Glasgow not only has—

I have less than a minute left.

Over the coming year, we will engage in a transformation project in relation to the delivery model. There are substantive issues that we all need to grapple with, particularly on the role of local leadership.

Some members used the debate to unleash their inner Nigel Farage and call for cycle lanes to be ripped up or to condemn particular councils for not ripping them up or for building them in the first place. If we wanted to, the Scottish Government could simply allocate that £320 million by 2024-25 purely according to where we think the maximum benefit would be for transforming modal shift. That would not give a fair crack at the whip to every part of Scotland. We could simply split that funding up by local authority and we would not foster the kind of local leadership that we see from some local authorities but not others.

We need to respond to some of the constructive challenges that have been put by the Transform Scotland briefing. It is clear that Transform Scotland welcomes what we are doing and is constructively challenging us to go further. Rather than simply complaining that there are specific examples that people do not like in their own neighbourhood, that is the kind of engagement that will make the Scottish Government’s programme on delivering active travel better.

If we want to get it right and be a nation in which everybody, inclusively, can choose to travel actively and sees that as a first natural choice, we need to change a great deal about how we deliver active travel, and not just spend money. Every political party across the chamber has a responsibility to foster local leadership and ensure that we are advocating for making it better rather than railing against projects, as, I am afraid, too many have done in this debate.

I guess that the ideal is that we increase the number of situations in which an alternative route or resolution is found. One would hope that if a landlord made such an approach and the tenant engaged constructively, the case would never have to reach the tribunal stage, because a way of resolving the situation and sustaining the tenancy would be found. That is what we are looking to achieve. It seems to be fairly clear that if a landlord has taken the steps and is still, because the tenant has refused to do so, unable to engage properly with their tenant, the tribunal will be able to take that into account.

We will continue to listen to the sector and to recognise the very different circumstances—or heterogeneity, as I think one of the witnesses on the previous panel described it—of landlords in the private rented sector. I have met the Scottish Association of Landlords and other organisations that represent the sector on the landlords’ side, as well as those who represent the interests of tenants.

There is probably a need to recognise that there is a shared interest here in achieving the two goals that I set out earlier: closing the gap in outcomes between the social rented sector and the private rented sector; and raising standards across the board. Good-quality, responsible, professional landlords will see that as being in their interests, too. They do not want to have low-quality landlords—those who are sometimes called “rogue landlords”—operating in the sector. The professional and high-quality parts of the private rented sector want there to be good standards across the board and want an end to unscrupulous or unacceptable behaviour.

Beyond the specific measures that we are talking about today, we need to recognise that there are concerns around a wide range of other issues. For example, as the committee heard from the previous panel, there are concerns around energy efficiency and the move to net zero. All political parties support the move to net zero, and I think that the private rented sector recognises that there is work to do. On average, its stock has a lower level of energy efficiency than the rest of the housing stock, which impacts on the affordability of housing for tenants. We need to make sure that we support the whole sector to move forward with that agenda, as we do with the rest of society.

The Government continues to commit to working with the sector in all its diversity, listening to it and understanding its concerns, and we will do that, in particular, with landlords who want to work with us to raise standards, while taking on board the perspective of tenants.

That is hugely important. There have been periods when evictions in the private rented sector were the largest route into homelessness. That has perhaps declined proportionately but there is a real concern and a desire to make sure that that does not become a problem of the scale that Mark Griffin is are rightly concerned about.

The pre-action protocol and the tribunal discretion provisions are both safeguards that can help to prevent eviction into homelessness. The protocol, in particular, encourages and supports the dialogue that I referred to earlier between landlords and tenants so that they can work towards the establishment of repayment plans to help clear rent arrears and sustain a tenancy and to make sure that tenants have access to the financial support that can also help them.

The organisations that you have heard from have made similar points. Shelter in particular says:

“The pre-action requirements (PARs) for eviction proceedings on the grounds of rent arrears introduced another important preventative measure for eviction and homelessness ... this extra protection for renters”

against evictions

“should be made permanent. The PARs encourage landlords to help their tenants access support and advice on rent arrears management before any eviction action is taken, thus helping them to manage their debt and remain in their home.”

There is a pretty clear sense from the organisations that work most closely on homelessness and that rightly challenge the Government to continue to do more on homelessness prevention that the measures will be a positive step in that direction. I by no means suggest that they are the only steps that we need to take, but they will certainly be positive in helping to achieve that.