Chamber and committees

These are your questions. I just did not want his arm to fall off.

That is interesting. There is the argument about who should benefit from the money from LEZs. For example, should it be people in rural communities because they are not able to get into the zones? Does Gavin Thomson want to answer that and the wider question?

I think that the nuance between a penalty and a charge will be lost on most people—it is certainly lost on me. If I pay to go into an LEZ, it is a charge. It is not a penalty; I am paying a charge. That was always my view during consideration of the Transport (Scotland) Bill. People will have to pay to go into the zone if they have no other way of getting in. Therefore, it is a charge rather than a penalty.

We move to our second evidence-taking session on the air quality improvement plan, and I am pleased to welcome to the meeting a panel of local authority representatives: Kenny Bisset, lead officer, land and air quality team, Fife Council; Dom Callaghan, assistant group manager, sustainability, Glasgow City Council; and Shauna Clarke, environmental health officer, City of Edinburgh Council. Thank you for accepting our invitation.

I should say that the previous session ran over slightly, so if you see me waggling my pen, it is because I am trying to get you to keep your answers short and keep the questions coming in from committee members.

We will head off straight away. The first question is from Mark Ruskell.

The final questions for this panel come from Monica Lennon, who has waited very patiently.

Monica Lennon wants to come in on this specific point.

Before we leave talking about Glasgow, could Dom Callaghan clarify something for me? There is talk that the council would like to include the M8 in the LEZ. Is that true?

I wanted to clarify that because, from my understanding of the 2019 act, special roads, such as some trunk roads and the M8, cannot be included in LEZs. I wanted to ascertain what the process would be if the council’s aspiration were to include the M8 in the LEZ. Who would have to give authority for that?

Kenny, do you want to add anything?

That is quite a wide question, and I am sure that there will be a huge amount of things on all of your shopping lists. I will ask you for a couple of examples only of things that you would like to see. Otherwise, I fear that we could be here until Christmas.