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Are there other approaches to running bus companies and services that we should look at? Some of the challenges with rural services have already been mentioned. I know that a number of community bus groups are running their own rural services and they have done very well: they have increased the number of bus users and are running more regular services that are keyed in to what rural communities want. I am also aware of the spreading of municipalisation and public sector control of bus services, particularly in English cities. There is potential for that to happen in Scotland as well.

I am interested in your thoughts on whether it makes a difference who owns, controls and runs services, and on whether the experimentation with flat fares in England has worked. Is that something that you would welcome here? What is good?

It is clear that some services are declining, particularly in rural areas, and that they have been doing so for a long time. What is working and what could help to restore our services? Robert Samson, do you want to start?

Thank you.

I actually want to address my question to Gordon Martin and Kevin Lindsay. It is about the changes in station staffing and whether they have implications for managing antisocial behaviour. In particular, I was thinking about situations where a lone worker is managing a station with reduced hours and reduced staffing and how that works in antisocial behaviour hotspots at particular stations. A bit of an insight on that from the rail industry would be useful.

I welcome the Parliament’s focus this afternoon on environmental justice. The loss of our right to a healthy environment as European Union citizens was a Brexit betrayal and, if the SNP Government still has the desire to rejoin Europe, it should enshrine the right to a healthy environment in law without any further delay.

The reality is that the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Continuity) (Scotland) Act 2021, which was passed in the previous session of Parliament in an attempt to deal with the results of Brexit, ended up as a scrabble to save four decades of environmental rights that we won through working within the European Union. Those were hard-fought-for rights that were forged from the campaigning efforts of citizens movements that had been fighting pollution and destruction over many years in the European Union.

The establishment, through the 2021 act, of Environmental Standards Scotland was critically important, and the body has shown its effectiveness. ESS has stepped in where the European Commission left off, by holding the Government and its agencies to account on issues from air quality to water quality and many more besides. However, in truth, even before Brexit, the Scottish and UK Governments were allowing the environmental governance gap to widen and were failing to commit to reforms, including the establishment of an environmental court. On its own, ESS does not deliver environmental justice for citizens. It cannot even consider individual cases and, even if it could, it could not perform the critically important role of an environmental court.

The Aarhus convention, if upheld, ensures a route for citizens to legally challenge decisions. However, rather than upholding the principles of the convention, the Scottish Government has consistently been non-compliant with and in breach of article 9 for the past decade. When the Acting Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero and Energy came to the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee recently, she was unable to commit to a date or even a time horizon for full compliance. We have heard a similar lack of commitment today from the minister.

It is the consistent breach of article 9 that is partly linked to the significant legal costs for environmental cases. As Richard Dixon of ESS highlighted in committee, a judicial review can cost between £30,000 and £40,000 a day. That is an eye-watering amount of money that is in direct contravention of the convention, which requires legal procedures not to be prohibitively expensive.

As we have heard from a number of members, corporate interests have deep pockets, but individuals struggle to secure legal aid for environmental cases, and, of course, legal aid is not available to charitable organisations. In addition, the loser pays rule means that litigants who lose their case are liable for their opponents’ expenses, which, as the Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland notes, can end up costing tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds. In fact, the centre noted that, on a number of occasions, it has decided not to pursue legal challenges because of the direct financial risk to it.

However, even if all the costs were removed, the Government would still be non-compliant with the Aarhus convention, because it considers only judicial reviews and not merit-based ones, despite both being required under the convention. Legal challenges can be made only on whether the decision-making process was followed properly, so there is no scope to consider substantive issues, including whether a decision was made with full consideration of the evidence.

As we saw with the climate-wrecking decisions of the Tory Government to prove the case for the Rosebank oil and gas field, when evidence is ignored, the Supreme Court can step in, but only after a sustained and very costly legal challenge from multiple parties that again focuses primarily on process. The Rosebank decision was focused on the process. It touched on the merits, but we need full merit-based challenges.

There are other actions that the Scottish Government can take. As we have heard, it can reform legal aid to make it more accessible for environmental cases, remove the loser pays rule and extend the exemption from court fees for Aarhus cases to the sheriff courts, as well as establishing an environmental court and increasing access to justice and judicial expertise on environmental cases.

Failure to comply with the Aarhus convention is a political choice that the Scottish Government has made over and over again.

Can the minister say when Scotland will be compliant with the Aarhus convention?

It is disappointing that Douglas Lumsden is trying to boil it all down to one particular decision and one particular issue. I respect the fact that there will be communities that want to challenge the pylon lines. It was the same with the Beauly to Denny case. There will also be communities that want to challenge other forms of development, such as fracking, Mr Lumsden, fossil-fuel power stations at Peterhead and wind farms. They should all have the right to challenge such developments, but the justice system needs to respond quickly and proportionately.

The planning system is also hugely important. It deals with where renewable energy development should take place—and where battery storage should be, because we need more of that, Mr Lumsden—and the role of communities in that system is absolutely critical. That is the same for pylon lines, for renewable energy, for the dualling of the A96 and for all the other developments that many people feel are necessary and which, in some cases, the Government wishes to support. They need to be adequately planned before things get to the point of judicial review.

The climate and nature crises are only worsening, so we need to deliver environmental justice, and we cannot wait another decade for the principles of the Aarhus convention to be fully enshrined in Scots law.

Women, particularly disabled women, experience sexual assault and harassment on public transport and have expressed concern about being less safe in unstaffed stations. What actions does the Government intend to take to guarantee women’s safety, particularly at the growing number of unstaffed stations?

If I have time, I will take Mr Lumsden’s intervention.

I have a question about the target areas that are not included in the bill. The advisory group originally recommended targets on positive outcomes for biodiversity from public sector and Government policy—for example, on investment in nature. Do you have a view on those areas? Do you already set targets in those areas?

Does Mark Lodge have anything to add?