School bus safety

Our discussion this afternoon on school bus safety was interesting and hopefully productive. You will know that we have been looking at these petitions for a while now.
It was good to hear from petitioner Ron Beaty again (sorry that Lynn Merrifield couldn't make due to illness) - we hope they found some satisfaction in our discussion and what we are trying to do. It was interesting to hear from Garth Goddard of the Yellow School Bus Commission about the outcomes from the report which it published on this issue earlier this year and from Malcolm Bruce MP who tried to legislate on this issue in the House of Commons.
Malcolm Bruce mentioned the scope for a 'school bus overtaking ban' pilot scheme that he had raised with the UK transport minister and which could perhaps run in Scotland. We agreed to look into this idea further. Also discussion around what individual local authorities are doing and what provision is made by them in terms of school buses. What are the regional variations? What scope is there through contracts to address this issue? The committee will follow up issues that arose from this afternoon and then come back to these petitions next year to see where we are.
Nanette Milne MSP