Official Report · Committee
Dangerous Driving and the Law (PE29, PE55, PE299 and PE331)
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The next petitions are on dangerous driving and the law. They are petitions PE29, from Alex and Margaret Dekker, and PE55, PE299 and PE331, from Ms Tricia Donegan. Members have a summary of the petitions in their papers. This is the second time that we are being invited to deal with these issues. I invite the committee to comment on the substance of the petitions.
All the petitions are long standing and were considered by the Justice 1 Committee in the previous parliamentary session. Dangerous driving is an issue that was given serious consideration by the previous Justice 1 Committee, which even went as far as questioning ministers directly on the matter. Although progress appears to have been made in some areas, a number of the issues that the committee raised with the Lord Advocate and the Scottish Executive are still outstanding. In my view, we should continue to pursue the matter until we get the result that we hope for, which is a full response to all the points that have been made to the committee.Of the options that are given in the clerk's paper, I support option a, which has five clauses that list the information that is outstanding. I see no reason why we cannot also adopt option b.
I agree with Michael Matheson. We should not hesitate to pursue both options, given that both of them are appropriate, sensible and absolutely necessary.
I agree with all that, but I have a question for the convener about the issue that is raised in paragraph 9 of the clerk's paper. Obviously, you have met Mrs Dekker, who has raised with you other issues, including the way in which families are treated when they ask for a fatal accident inquiry. I am concerned that the perception, if not the reality, is that families' requests for fatal accident inquiries are essentially brushed aside. Given that you intend to write separately to Mrs Dekker on those matters, what is your thinking on that?
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At her request, I agreed to meet Margaret Dekker so that she could talk further about those issues, not all of which are addressed in her petition. Although some of the issues that she has raised fall slightly outside the petition, they are still quite valuable, as some of them relate to the victim support statements that the committee considered by way of statutory regulation.What we should do with the information is a matter for the committee, but I think that it is important that the information is fed in. Scotland's Campaign Against Irresponsible Drivers wants to comment on the information, and there would be no harm in allowing it to do so.It was useful to hear Margaret Dekker's comments on the lack of Scottish statistics in the report by the former Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions. That was one of the most concerning issues. The Scottish statistics should certainly be in the report, albeit that they might look slightly different.There are quite a number of recommendations and it is for the committee to decide how to respond to them. I think that we should provide an opportunity for Margaret Dekker to explain all her concerns, which have been copied to members. As there are a number of recommendations, we might want to focus on the areas where we think that we could be of most use.
It is certainly valuable that the convener gave Mrs Dekker that opportunity to bring those other issues to our attention. We should probably bring some of the points about the working practices around fatal accident inquiries and victim statements to the attention of the Executive and the Lord Advocate and ask them for comments. Whether we can take a committee view at this stage is another question, but we could certainly put the issues before the Executive and Lord Advocate. It would be worthwhile to get their response at this point.
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We need to be clear as a committee about which matters relate directly to the petition that has come through the Public Petitions Committee and which are part of SCID's recommendations. There is nothing to stop us pulling out any specific points, but for purposes of clarity we need to be clear about which elements relate to the petition and which elements relate to the campaign, because there are things in the campaign's recommendations that are not in the petition.
Some changes have been introduced in relation to cases being referred to the High Court. It may be worthwhile for us to ask SCID whether it could advise us about its experience of the changes that have been introduced. I have the feeling that SCID may not be happy about how some of the matters that appear to have been addressed are working out in practice. That would be relevant to the petition.
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I do not have a problem with that—there is no dissent.I will go back to the action that the committee wants to take on the petitions. There has been a suggestion that we should take option a, which is"to write back to the Lord Advocate and the Executive asking that"the committee"be forwarded all outstanding information as soon as possible".The information that we await is an"announcement on progress of the steering group on the DTLR report",because there is a possibility of a further consultation paper, which is expected this year. We also await"information on the feasibility of a new approach to collection of statistical information on road accident injuries".That is a specific request of the campaign.We also await the"DTLR report on survey of convicted careless and dangerous drivers (and their families), expected in early 2004",and an update"on the recommendations outlined in the Review of the Investigation of Road Deaths in Scotland, expected in Spring 2004."The final piece of information that we await is on"offences under section 3A of the Road Traffic Act (The Lord Advocate offered to provide this ‘as soon as possible'.)"It may be worth adding that we have had confirmation that the vast majority of cases in which there is a fatality now go to the High Court. Since the committee is dealing with—or has dealt with—the reform of the High Court and the fact that some of the cases will move down to the sheriff court, we may want to ask for clarification as to whether the terms of those new arrangements will affect such cases, as I think that the campaign is a lot happier with the existing situation. It might be worth getting clarification of that. Is that the way in which the committee wishes to proceed?
Did you include option b, which refers to asking about the lack of involvement of Scottish agencies?
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I did not, but I think that we should do so.
How do you feel about my suggestion that the papers on the other issues should be forwarded to the Executive and the Lord Advocate for their comments?
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I do not see why we should not do that.
Presentationally, they would have to be separated out from the petition, but there would be value in forwarding them.
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I do not think that there is any objection to our doing that. The committee has had the chance to see all the correspondence and the recommendations. Would it be possible to pluck out the recommendations and put them in one document so that we could see those that are in the petition and those that are not?
Yes.
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I did not pick up on Michael Matheson's suggestion about writing to the petitioners formally to ask how they think that the new arrangements were working. We should do that formally, if that is agreeable.Members indicated agreement.
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