Chamber and committees

The member raises a pertinent question given the tragedies that have occurred in that national park in recent years. The national park authority has developed a water safety policy and an accompanying risk assessment procedure, which formalises its approach on its owned and managed land. It has now upgraded and installed public rescue equipment and signage sites around Loch Lomond. I saw some of that myself when I was at Balloch for the launch of the action plan this past month.

The follow-up phase involves assessing and addressing issues on sites outwith the immediate Loch Lomond area.

We are, of course, very concerned about the effect of the boycott on court users and on justice partners. Officials met the president and chief executive of the Law Society of Scotland on 13 April to discuss wider issues with legal aid fees, in light of the profession’s call for a further increase of 50 per cent to all legal aid fees. Although the budget for legal aid cases is demand led, the Scottish Government allocates a budget to the legal aid fund. In 2021-22, that was £138 million, so a 50 per cent uplift would add £69 million per year to the fund, which is unaffordable, given the current pressures on public finances.

I have been informed that the meeting was constructive and that it is hoped that the Law Society will report back on that soon. The Scottish Government will continue engaging with the Scottish Solicitors Bar Association and with the Law Society of Scotland on a package of proposals worth £3.8 million, which was offered to target specific areas of solemn and summary legal aid fees that had previously been raised by the legal profession as being the most pressing of the fee-related issues.

I do not accept the member’s characterisation of the situation that we are in. I say to him that I listen to the legal profession regularly and often and that I take great care in listening to all the arguments that are put forward and in trying to address the profession’s issues.

The member raised the issue of capacity in the system. I remind him that the Government recently invested £1 million in the traineeship fund. There was also a 5 per cent rise in legal aid fees in 2021 and a further 5 per cent rise in place from this month, representing a rise of more than £10 million in legal aid fees in the past year alone. The Government is listening to the profession and is continuing to invest.

I am concerned about the current situation and recent developments, and I assure members that my officials and I continue to discuss further fee reforms with representatives of the profession. However, the situation in Scotland, in relation to eligibility levels and the wide scope that remains, is different from the situation in England, where the Conservatives are in charge of the legal aid system. That system has been cut, cut and cut again, so there is a stark difference between the situation in Scotland and the one that Conservatives are presiding over in the rest of the country.

We are working with stakeholders to improve water safety on several fronts, including awareness. Some measures, such as work to improve signage, should benefit all age groups, but other measures focus specifically on children and young people. For example, coinciding with the National Fire Chiefs Council’s be water aware campaign, next week will see the launch of age and stage-appropriate water safety education lessons, which have been developed by Education Scotland and Water Safety Scotland. The resource, which is to be hosted on the Education Scotland national improvement hub, aims to support those between the ages of three and 18 to develop valuable life-saving knowledge, skills and understanding.

The 2018 to 2026 drowning prevention strategy is a collaborative piece of work between Water Safety Scotland and its members, and the strategy is complemented by the stakeholder action plan that I launched last month. Both approaches are informed by an appreciation of the challenges of open-water swimming, which are very different from those of indoor pools because of the risks that are posed by currents, obstacles and, importantly, cold-water shock.

A key focus has to be on education and raising awareness, and both documents set out the work that is being done in that area. There is always value in practical experience, which is why one of the actions that the action plan identifies is for a sub-group of Water Safety Scotland to review the scope for developing expanded opportunities for young people to experience being safe in open water environments.

The Scottish Government has enhanced the funding that is available to RoSPA, which supports Water Safety Scotland, so that such work can be progressed as quickly as possible. In the meantime, relevant authorities are undertaking a range of site-specific work—for example, the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority’s water safety campaign will highlight the importance of wearing buoyancy aids or life jackets when participating in all water sports and focus on being visible in the water for open water swimmers.

I touched on that in my answer to Jamie Greene. Many people would just like fireworks to be banned. I think that people want that for a couple of reasons: they think that it is simple and would be easy for everybody to understand. The powers that are available to the Scottish Parliament mean that we do not have the ability to introduce a ban in Scotland. That approach is not available to us under the constitutional settlement. Therefore, we considered what powers were available to us and have used the maximum amount of powers of the Scottish Parliament to put in place the system that we are introducing because I wanted to reflect the Scottish public’s desire for tighter controls on fireworks.

As I said, there is a legal reason not to have a ban but there is also a strong policy reason. Personally, I enjoy going to organised fireworks displays, as I am sure many people do. I know that many people use fireworks responsibly and want to continue to do so. That is important. It also reflects the debate that we are having about proportionality. We do not want to be seen to be punishing people who use fireworks responsibly. We want people to be able to continue to do that if that is what they want to do.

The measures that we have come up with in the bill are an attempt to change the way we use fireworks, respond to what the public have asked us to do, examine the evidence and use as many of the powers that are available to the Scottish Parliament as we can to make that happen.

We hope that some parts of it will be in force this year. It is my attempt to reflect what I saw as the will of the Parliament in the previous session. I gave an update to the Parliament on the action plan. I think that I gave a statement to Parliament in two consecutive years on what we plan to do and what legislation we were introducing.

We realised that we were able to deal with some of this through secondary legislation, so, as the committee will be aware, we did that last year. The bill is an attempt to keep up the pace of change and to keep moving and working towards creating the new regime. The will of Parliament, which I felt came across strongly, was that we work on the bill as quickly as possible, so I am very grateful that the committee agrees that it is important to do so.

The sooner the bill can go through and be agreed to by Parliament, the more time we will have to work on the implementation and enforcement parts of the bill.

I will ask Natalie Stewart, who is appearing remotely, whether she wants to speak to the earlier part of Ms Clark’s question about the constitutional angle.

Another piece of evidence is national health service injury data, which includes firework-related diagnosis. I will say—if I do not, my officials will get very cross with me—that we have to be a bit cautious about that data but, nonetheless, broadly, it tells us that such injuries have increased fairly consistently over the past 10 years.

The final example of evidence is lived experience. We know that that has been reflected very strongly in all the consultations that the Government has done, and I am sure that it will have been reflected back to the committee. It includes powerful testimonies about the significant impact that not only the misuse but the legitimate use of fireworks can have on people and on animals.

The bill has been carefully constructed to reflect the evidence that I have gone through and to be proportionate. Many people have said to me over the past few years that we should just ban fireworks. Under the devolution settlement, Scotland does not have the power to do that, so that is a legal reason why we did not go down that route. However, there is also a policy reason, which has a kernel of Jamie Greene’s question about whether the bill is proportionate. It is proportionate because there is still an obvious route for people to go through to purchase fireworks. Albeit that we are putting slightly more restrictions on it by suggesting that we set up the licensing scheme, if people want to, they will still be able to buy fireworks and use them.

People have made it clear that they want tighter controls on fireworks so that people can continue to use them safely. I hope that that answers Jamie Greene’s question.

Yes.

The bill is not emergency legislation—it is not right for the member to characterise it in that way. I admit that the timetable has been slightly speeded up, but the bill would certainly not come into the category of emergency legislation.

We have already covered some of the specific information with regard to the prosecution data, both in my answers and in Elinor Findlay’s answer to Russell Findlay. If the committee has not seen, or is unable to get hold of, that data, which was part of the evidence review in 2019, we can certainly send that over—I think that we have already committed to doing so. That data shows that enforcement is already taking place.

I reiterate what I said in my previous answer. Scotland spends an immense amount of resources on preparing for bonfire night and on getting people to adhere to the current regulations. If you speak to the police or the fire service, or to local government, they will tell you that themselves. That is why we need to go further, with stricter controls than we have now. The amount of effort that we expend on something that happens on only a few days of the year is disproportionate, as is the impact that that has on the people of Scotland. The people of Scotland have told us that they want to see change in this area.

I accept that some of this is a bit more complicated than we might have wanted it to be. If Scotland was an independent country, we would probably be able to do things in a slightly different way. However, various complicating factors have affected how we have had to produce the legislation, for reasons that I am sure we will touch on later.

When we were considering developing legislation, of course, we looked at the existing legislation in the area and evaluated how it was being used. The fireworks review group had all the stakeholders represented on it, including those from the fireworks industry. The group was tasked specifically with looking at the current regime, at whether there were gaps in the law and at other regimes internationally to see whether it could come up with something that would help us to change the culture around how we use fireworks in Scotland. The group presented recommendations to me, and this legislation is part of my work in taking those recommendations forward.