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The convener is absolutely correct—this is not about targeting young people. We have been very clear about that from day 1. It is about antisocial behaviour, which arises in all age groups, not just those who come within our concessionary travel schemes.

The committee will be aware of the issues that were raised in the responses to our survey. Quite often, it is young people who feel intimidated during bus travel, particularly by older males, and I would like us to be able to talk about this in terms of withdrawing the scheme from anyone who is entitled to the card but who gets involved in this type of antisocial behaviour, whoever they might be, and to get away from talking about young people.

I also point out that boisterous behaviour is not antisocial behaviour—teenagers will be teenagers. In the correspondence that the committee will have received, there is discussion at various points about boisterous youngsters causing people to move seats, but that is just kids being kids. There are definite cases of antisocial behaviour, which has been widely talked about across the chamber and among the groups that have made representations. We felt that it was appropriate to ensure that we had the opportunity to remove concessionary travel in those cases, should there be a requirement to do so.

I cannot give a specific answer, but we have received anecdotal responses from young people. When the proposal was announced, it caused some consternation among young people in particular, because they felt as though they were being targeted. They have made the point that some older people, particularly older males, can create fear and alarm for younger people as well as older people. We are looking at the draft instrument as an ability to remove an entitlement. We are not just targeting younger people or older people. We do not have regular reporting figures from the operators because, until now, they have tended to deal with any issues themselves. When we have the level of antisocial behaviour that would merit taking away a bus pass, we have evidence that that has been on-going.

The code of conduct is still in development. I have to take some responsibility for that. Officials have done a lot of work on it, but I chose not to present it to the committee at this stage, because I want to be sure that everything is tied into it. We will present the code of conduct to the committee as soon as possible. The fact that we received Young Scot’s submission only this morning indicates that there are still things that we want to do.

Young Scot is part of the Confederation of Passenger Transport’s antisocial behaviour stakeholder group; however, its submission notes that it does not feel that the proposal to remove bus passes has been presented to it directly. I want to be sure that, when we are delivering the code of conduct, we have crossed as many of the t’s and dotted as many of the i’s as we possibly can to ensure that it is fair and robust. When we reach the point that officials present the code to me as the final article, I want to be comfortable that I can come back to the committee and say, “This is the code of conduct. We think that it will be the proper vehicle to allow us to be able to carry out the process.”

Yes. A driver making a complaint would not necessarily guarantee that a pass would be taken away. Transport Scotland would have to take a view on that.

We were asked as a Government—

That is one of the things that we are looking at. It already happens on Lothian Buses and Stagecoach buses. They are not called travel safety officers—they are called something else. There are agreements with—[Interruption.] I am sure that Ms Webber is going to come in on that in a second, because I can hear her talking away.

To finish the point that I was making, the measures include the potential to have travel safety officers. We are continually looking at how we make sure that public transport is safe.

I absolutely appreciate those concerns and all the considerations that we have heard from Young Scot, which has every ability to feed into the code of conduct—that is absolutely at the foundation of how the code of conduct is being drawn up. However, I absolutely take on board the committee’s concern that there are questions that we cannot answer at this stage. We can say, however, that we want to proceed with the principle of being able to remove the concessionary card.

I take the convener’s earlier point about withdrawing this Scottish statutory instrument and coming back with it. My concern is the timescales for the parliamentary process, given where we are in the parliamentary session. I hope that we can take enough comfort from the team that is pulling together the documentation that it will approach this properly and equitably, ensuring that fairness is at the heart of what they are trying to do. My officials are more than capable of that.

I therefore ask the committee to agree to the principle of allowing us to remove the card if the thresholds have been met.

The code will come with guidance. I will ask Eilidh McCabe to confirm whether that is right.

No. There would not be a further vote on the principle of allowing the concessionary cards to be removed. The code of conduct would come back to the committee for it to comment on and feed into so that we have as broad a range of views—from the committee and from the people who have written to us—as possible. That is to make sure that the code covers everything that we need it to cover. I will provide a copy of the current draft code for the committee to feed comments into it. We will take on board the new stuff that we have heard today, and that will help us to put together a final code of conduct that should then be put in place.