Chamber and committees

Convener, that reply is as much as I could reasonably ask of any minister, so I am grateful for it. Minister, if you want a useful form of words to ensure that you are never really on any particular hook as to the timescale within which you do something, the legal terminology is, “We will do it on or around between X.”

That is just some free advice. [Laughter.]

I think that I agree with the first part of that. On the second part, there is no legal aid for defamation.

I thought that the chap from the Law Society in our last meeting said there was no legal aid.

I agree with Mr Torrance’s recommendation. I reassure the petitioner that the point that he has raised is an extremely valid one. Given that we will be closing the petition today, I repeat for his benefit what I might have said in a previous meeting. I played a part in proceedings on the bill that became the Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006. The act is extremely vague about the division of property between unmarried couples who live together, in effect, as man and wife, because it does not incorporate the very detailed provisions in the Family Law (Scotland) Act 1985 that apply for divorce. Those very detailed rules contrast markedly with the complete vacuum of rules in the 2006 act. To be fair to me, I made a speech to that effect at stage 3 in which I said that we did not really know what we were doing, and we did not provide sufficient clarity.

Any petitioner whose petition is closed will always feel a bit disappointed, but the petitioner has done a good job in raising an important topic. I feel slightly uneasy that the Government has not given a clearer commitment, and I hope that it will bear that in mind. Perhaps we could write to the Government to say that we feel that that is the case. There needs to be clarity, with the Government being more specific about when the corrective work will be done, whether that is through one of the devices that Mr Izatt mentioned or through primary legislation, which I suspect will probably be necessary.

You are endowed with greater quantities of patience than me.

I am pretty sure that the minister has studied the previous evidence session. Mr Mullen and others made the point that, in its response to the petitioner’s arguments, the Scottish Government has mostly referred to the Defamation and Malicious Publication (Scotland) Act 2021. However, as Mr Mullen pointed out, that is not the only type of SLAPP. SLAPPs can cover other types of action, and it would therefore be wrong to assume that only the law of defamation is in play. That is probably the main topic, but it is not the only one. Can the minister confirm that the consultation will fully cover that?

Can they can consider it? If so, I stand corrected.

Well, it is still pretty dubious. Most people will not get legal aid if they have even a relatively small amount of capital tied up.

In any event, I think that your answer is satisfactory—thank you, minister. I have not said that for a while.

I do not think that there is anything further that we can do. I have much sympathy with the points that Rhoda Grant made about the practical difficulties that Highland people face in general. There has been no suggestion of a solution. I am not sure that Network Rail is likely to provide an answer, although I am sure that Rhoda Grant can take that up. Our experience in writing to Network Rail is that you do so more in hope than expectation, simply because its budget is committed for a long period in advance in respect of existing programmes, as is the roads budget.

I do not see that there is much more that the committee can do, other than to close the petitions under rule 15.7 of standing orders, on the basis that the Scottish Government has said that there are no current plans to undertake a formal review of the trunk road network. The Scottish Government does not consider that the A890 and the A832

“meet the criteria to be incorporated into the strategic motorway and trunk road network”.

The Scottish Government has said that local roads are considered to be out of scope

“unless they provided direct access to a major ... airport; linked to a nationally significant National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4) development site; or where a local road intersected a trunk road where bus priority or active travel measures were proposed.”

It is the Government’s view that the

“Principal A Class roads are best managed locally rather than centrally”

and that the A890 and A832 belong in that category

“as main roads which distribute traffic to and from the strategic trunk road network.”

I am merely stating the Scottish Government’s position. My view is that we need to do far more, as Rhoda Grant has rightly said, and that other methods of funding should be considered. I agree with that.

My last comment, perhaps in the light of the departure of two ministers from office last week, is that, with regard to overall priorities, we could spend more of the £60 billion of expenditure that we have in Scotland on upgrading roads. After all, unless you are a Tour de France cyclist, active travel on a bike is not really much use for the situations that Rhoda Grant described. However, that is perhaps a topic for another day.