Chamber and committees

I am not sure how formal this would need to be, but are you suggesting that additional duties need to be placed on SEPA?

ESS recommended that the Government should establish a new oversight body. My understanding is that that is not where you want to go. What steps will you take to ensure that there is holistic oversight of the system of air quality monitoring? Will you keep an open mind on whether there should be an oversight body in the future?

Mark Roberts said that a stronger system of governance would be desirable.

We are trying to have a wider discussion about what changes need to happen, but we need to get that baseline agreement. Do you agree that SEPA has the right powers right now? I take the point about discretion, but is it your view that SEPA should be using existing powers more effectively? We need a sense of your view of that before we decide what happens next.

I am keen to return to some of the evidence that we took at last week’s meeting. We had a panel of witnesses from local government. I hope that you have had a chance to look at the Official Report if you were not able to watch those proceedings. A witness from the City of Edinburgh Council said that there was a workforce crisis in the environmental health profession, which I thought was quite worrying. I am looking back so that I get this right; she is also chair of the Scottish pollution control co-ordinating committee, so she has a national role as well.

Evidence seems to be emerging that there is a crisis as a result of the undergraduate programme for environment health not being attractive. There are also challenges relating to the recruitment of environmental health officers, which could be part of a wider challenge around local government recruitment. I am keen to hear what discussions are taking place across Government and with partners about that. Is there a crisis? How bad is it? What can be done to address it?

I am happy to leave it there, convener. With respect, though, I was merely seeking to illustrate that, while we are putting in place important policies such as LEZs and wanting the public to understand why we are doing so, the loss of bus services at the same time is literally driving people into their cars, and that is having an impact on other policies that Transport Scotland has a key role in, such as reducing car kilometres by 20 per cent by the end of the decade. Maybe Vincent McInally cannot speak to that matter, but other colleagues certainly can.

I just wanted to bring a bit of reality to the discussion. I know that this evidence session is not about bus policy, but the fact is that, if people cannot access bus services to get to where they need to be, it will have an impact on air quality—in my humble opinion.

Good morning. I am interested in exploring ESS’s key findings concerning oversight of the review and reporting on local air quality management. Do you have a view on the adequacy of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency’s current enforcement powers and on how well they are being used?

You are satisfied that there are powers that SEPA could be using. There are existing powers, but they might not be being used as often or as well as they should be. Do you have a view on why that is the case? Has there been an assessment of that? Have you had discussions with people at SEPA about any constraints or barriers that they face?

Good morning. I do not know how much you caught of the earlier discussion with ESS, but we basically heard the view that SEPA should be using existing powers more effectively. What is your assessment of the reason for the lack of enforcement action by SEPA with regard to insufficient progress by local authorities in meeting local air quality management duties? Can you help to explain that?

It is just because LEZs have been brought up. I am always reluctant to focus on very local examples, but I think that what I am going to talk about provides an important illustration for the national picture.

As colleagues might know, I am very concerned about the loss of our local bus service—the X1 express bus from Hamilton to Glasgow. It has forced people into their cars; they do not want to use them, but they have been left with no choice. That also includes people trying to get to hospital appointments at Glasgow royal infirmary.

Perhaps Vincent McInally can respond from a Transport Scotland perspective, because I am not bringing this up for political reasons. What I am saying is that we need to look at LEZs—of course we do—but in a joined-up way with other policies and the reality on the ground. My question is: what is being done to look at the fact that we cannot make that sort of express bus service work for a major town centre such as that in Hamilton? It is not unique in losing bus services; indeed, people have come to this committee and talked about bus deserts emerging in Scotland. What is being done to monitor impacts in terms of emissions and air quality? Since the service was removed, more people are using their cars to get to work, college or university, to shop, to meet friends or to go to hospital appointments. Has any assessment been made of that, not just in Hamilton but in other areas that have lost such key bus services? I think that we all want to make sure that we have that joined-up view.