Chamber and committees

I thought that the petitioner might respond. The issue will affect a lot of people—I think that the petitioner is from Lhanbryde in Morayshire, in the Highlands and Islands. I am familiar with the Openreach argument about the inside-out approach versus the outside-in approach, but I think that the petitioner is arguing that a more sophisticated and flexible approach could be taken. As we have not had any response from him, I wonder whether—

If that is the case, perhaps we should close the petition—

Are there?

Okay.

That is often for practical reasons to do with the costs of implementation. It may be that the Government knows well that it will not be able to afford implementation soon, given the financial pressures that we were hearing about yesterday, and so on. I just wanted to add that point, for the benefit of the clerks when they are framing the committee’s letter.

As this is a new petition, I think that there is quite a lot to be done. Some of that has been suggested to us, so perhaps I will leave those things out, but I want to make some specific points that I do not think have been raised with us in the advice that we received.

Number 1 is that there have long been parking charges for 23 sites. That was increased in 2012 to 44 sites, but now it has been increased to 110 sites. As it happens, I used to have the ministerial portfolio with responsibility for FLS and I have fond memories of working with it, so I appreciate that it has to cover its costs. However, many of the car parks have no facilities whatsoever—they are basically open ground. I know that because I used to do a lot of running around forests in the Highlands. I cannot see that it is justified to make charges at such sites. Some sites have facilities, but only a few.

There seems to be a lack of rationale for how and why the charges have been introduced. Why have some charges been made and not others? What is the rationale? Surely the rationale should be based on what facilities there are. Where does an equality impact assessment come in? It seems to me that it considers various things, such as equal rights. That is absolutely desirable and fine—everybody has a right to access, which is perhaps the point—but the key decisions should be based on what facilities there are, such as toilets and whether rangers are present. I would be keen to get details of all that from FLS.

Secondly, why should the equality impact assessments not be made public? They are public documents, so can FLS explain why there is an issue?

Thirdly, if the costs of running the 300 destinations are £13 million, can we get some detail and breakdown from FLS of what that cost entails? It seems to be an awful lot of money. Is it mostly labour costs or are costs site specific? What exactly is it that FLS employees do at the sites? Most of them are basically open land. There is nothing to do. There is no grass to cut and the areas where cars park are usually unmetalled and flat.

If charges are to be imposed everywhere, some drivers, instead of parking in the car park, might park alongside roads—often single-track roads—to avoid having to pay charges. They know that they will not be detected, because no police will go by for weeks on end in some of the more remote areas.

I am not against bodies recovering their costs. It is a principle of Government that brings problems with it. I just wanted to raise those points and I am sympathetic to other points that will be raised.

When I was looking at the papers on the committee website, perhaps I missed it, but I could not see any response from the petitioner to the written submissions from Openreach and the Scottish Government. I wonder whether that is correct, because that surprised me a little.

I think that Mr Torrance has covered most things. I absolutely endorse the comments that all members have made. There is an awful lot to be answered by the minister. Overall, there is a feeling that nothing very much is going to happen any time soon, and what might happen will happen many years hence. That was the feeling that I got.

The minister was full of good intentions, which came shining through at our previous meeting, but there was a lack of clarity. What exactly is going to be done, by whom, when and how? Does the Government have an indication of when the Promise bill will be implemented, assuming that it is passed? Quite a lot of legislation that is passed is never implemented.

I support those recommendations. Perhaps in the course of drafting the letters to the UK DEFRA and to Food Standards Scotland, we could make reference to the material that the petitioners have drawn attention to regarding the European Commission’s work on launching a review into accessible labelling, so that we can be informed by what the European Union is doing. Plainly, that is bound to have an enormous implication. If the EU makes new labelling regulations, all the major food producers will probably comply with those. That would leave the UK as the odd man out, if I may coin a phrase.

In reading the petitioner’s submission of 18 September, which responded to minister Shirley-Anne Somerville’s submission in August this year, it occurred to me that we have not fully explored and bottomed out the points made in the most recent comments by the petitioner, and I felt that it would be only fair to the petitioner to do that.

As I understand it, their report in 2018, which was five years ago, pointed out the basic inconsistency or unfairness that the petition is about, which is that the 20m rule is arbitrary and there is no evidence that it is based on any rational justification. When the move was made from disability living allowance, or DLA, to personal independence payment, or PIP, the rule resulted in a third of people who suffered from MS losing some support and one in 10 losing all support. That was the basic thesis five years ago. I am not sure that we have ever had a factual response from the Government about whether that is correct or, indeed, on any of the specifics. The Government’s response mentioned the review, which is fine, but it has not responded specifically to what the petitioner said.

The other point that I picked up from the petitioner’s response in September was slightly different. It says that ADP and PIP use the 20m rule but that DLA, which still applies in some cases, uses a 50m rule. There is an inconsistency, as different benefits apply different rules. If that is correct—I am no expert on this at all so I do not know, but that is what the petitioner said a couple of months back—I do not think that this committee should take forward this work. I understand that the Social Security and Social Justice Committee is undertaking scrutiny on the issue—perhaps Mr Torrance will speak to that in a minute.

However, the very least that we could do is specifically and explicitly refer those matters to the minister. We could send a copy of that letter to the Social Security and Social Justice Committee and suggest that it might have regard to those points in its scrutiny. In that way, the petitioner’s case would not be lost but would be bequeathed to the substantive committee.

At the risk of causing difficulty, those are my suggestions.