I think that most of us would join you in those thoughts.

Douglas, we have about eight minutes left for this session. Will you ask your two questions, so that I can bring in Sue Webber at the end if she wants to ask a question?

Before I bring Mark Ruskell back in with some further questions, I would like to know how we make bus travel more attractive for people—I am thinking of, say, the long trip from Inverness down to Edinburgh. Do you have a view on that, Islay? Surely it is not just about making sure that there is wi-fi. Do there not need to be other facilities, too? What are your views?

You get to put your question to Islay, who gets to give the final answer.

You were getting only one question.

I welcome our second panel of witnesses: Stephen Smellie, member of Unison’s national executive council and Scottish committee, Unison Scotland; Jackson Cullinane, head of Unite Scotland’s politics and campaigns unit, Unite the union; Gordon Martin, RMT Scotland organiser, National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers; and Kevin Lindsay, district organiser, Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen.

We move straight to questions, the first of which comes from Sarah Boyack.

If somebody who gets concessionary travel misbehaves, do you think that their concession should be removed?

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I am afraid that I could not connect to the app. If I had connected, I would have voted yes.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I am sorry, but I could not connect to the app. I would have voted yes.

I may struggle, Presiding Officer, but I will do my best.

I am pleased to close the debate on behalf of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee. I thank members of both committees and the other speakers for their contributions.

As we have heard, the Aarhus convention is an important international agreement to protect environmental rights, and a key pillar of the convention is access to justice in environmental matters. Let us be honest that, as we have heard, Scotland has been found to be lacking in that respect. We are just not compliant with the convention, as access to environmental justice in Scotland is prohibitively expensive.

I am aware of the availability of legal aid in the area. The Scottish Government has committed to reviewing that, and the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee has been considering the matter. However, to address our non-compliance with the Aarhus convention, a more fundamental suggestion that has been raised with my committee is to create an environmental court. Many members have spoken about the potential benefits of such a court. Stakeholders have suggested that it could result in greater efficiency, quicker decision making and, ultimately, lower costs. It is considered that there is something of a gap in expertise in environmental cases, which can be very complex. A specialist court might reduce the time that is needed to establish and understand the facts in a case and thus, in turn, reduce the cost.

At the moment, the only route for an environmental case is a judicial review in the Court of Session. Let us be clear that that is complex and, indeed, very costly. We have heard concerns that a judicial review does not adequately allow the merits of an action to be assessed—only the process that was followed in reaching a decision. Thus, the creation of an environmental court was raised with the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee when we looked at the Scottish Government’s review of environmental governance arrangements.

The Government’s review accepted that there was a need for improvement to access to justice, but stakeholders were highly critical that it did not sufficiently engage with the question of creating an environmental court. A separate briefing paper on the topic was later produced, but it did little, as far as I can see, to alleviate stakeholders’ concerns. Having been described by Dr Richard Dixon, the chair of Environmental Standards Scotland, as “shoddy”, stakeholders thought overall that the Government’s review was a missed opportunity to look at the new environmental governance arrangements in Scotland that had been established post-Brexit.

The Scottish Government’s review highlighted its proposed human rights bill as a fix for the lack of access to justice. We were told that that would include recognition of a human right to a healthy environment. We were also told that that would be underpinned by international frameworks such as the Aarhus convention. We were told that it could strengthen routes to seek redress, and could potentially develop both judicial and non-judicial routes. Where is that bill? That commitment has, sadly, fallen by the wayside, leaving stakeholders frustrated at the continued lack of action to strengthen those rights.

There is now continued non-compliance with the Aarhus convention, without any clear plan to correct that. The Scottish Government has suggested that Environmental Standards Scotland is the answer to those problems. In the Government’s statement following its review, it asked ESS to consider the role that it might play in investigating individual cases.

Dr Richard Dixon, when he recently gave evidence to the committee, described the Government passing a “poisoned chalice” to ESS, as it gives the impression that ESS is going to fix the problem of the lack of access to justice. The Scottish Government is trying to pass to ESS the challenge, and therefore people’s expectations, which Dr Dixon said was unsatisfactory.

Although ESS fills an important role in environmental governance in Scotland, its functions are limited to what this Parliament authorised when we passed the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Continuity) (Scotland) Act 2021. ESS cannot give itself powers that the Parliament did not grant. We did not give ESS the power to investigate individual cases. Indeed, that was not an oversight, because amendments were debated at stages 2 and 3 that would have given ESS those broader powers, but the Parliament did not agree to those amendments.

The issues in this area go beyond what ESS has power to address; those are issues for the Scottish Government. It must be for the Scottish Government to reflect on our continued non-compliance with Aarhus. It is the Scottish Government that must act to ensure that environmental rights are meaningfully protected in a way that provides a clear and accessible route to justice.

In closing, I urge ministers to reflect on the issues that have been raised in this important debate and to establish a route forward to ensure that everyone in this country with a legitimate case to raise has access to environmental justice. We have heard a lot about such people in the debate, including groups relating to the development of pylon lines and groups in urban areas. I believe that the Government has a lot of work to do on the issue, and I urge it to take time to consider what has been heard in the debate.

I want to give everyone their head as much as possible, but you are going to carry on your negotiations outside this room. While the committee will have an interest in the generality of that, we cannot get into calling on unions, or people calling on you, or telling you, to do various things. That is inherently wrong of a parliamentary committee. We can delve into the facts. I know that passions are high, and that you feel strongly about it—