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Official Report: search what was said in Parliament

The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.  

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Dates of parliamentary sessions
  1. Session 1: 12 May 1999 to 31 March 2003
  2. Session 2: 7 May 2003 to 2 April 2007
  3. Session 3: 9 May 2007 to 22 March 2011
  4. Session 4: 11 May 2011 to 23 March 2016
  5. Session 5: 12 May 2016 to 5 May 2021
  6. Current session: 12 May 2021 to 26 April 2025
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Displaying 778 contributions

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Economy and Fair Work Committee

Registers of Scotland

Meeting date: 30 October 2024

Lorna Slater

Thank you for coming to see us this morning. I have some questions to help me to more fully understand the work that you do. The newest operational register, the register of persons holding a controlled interest in land, is such an important tool in allowing us to increase biodiversity, get to net zero, look out for community interests and manage deer and invasive species—all those good things. How complete was the register at its launch? What is its functional state? How useful is it as a tool for doing those things? How is it progressing and being improved?

Economy and Fair Work Committee

Registers of Scotland

Meeting date: 30 October 2024

Lorna Slater

It does. That is great.

I am interested in how things are working. I would like to better understand the process of moving a property from the sasine register to the land register. How complicated is it? What steps do you need to go through to make that happen? I completely understand the pragmatic approach in having the functional register—that makes total sense—but I would like to understand what challenges there are in moving between them.

Economy and Fair Work Committee

Registers of Scotland

Meeting date: 30 October 2024

Lorna Slater

Out of curiosity, are certain classifications of property typically more challenging, such as large estates, tenement flats or derelict land?

Economy and Fair Work Committee

Registers of Scotland

Meeting date: 30 October 2024

Lorna Slater

You are just over halfway in completing the register. Have you done the easy half—the low-hanging fruit—and is it the hard stuff that is left? I realise that what is left is land that is non-functional and less likely to transact, so it is low risk. Is completing the register not terribly urgent or difficult, with it just being ticked away at, or will completing it be really difficult? I am trying to understand the scale of the challenge.

Economy and Fair Work Committee

Programme for Government (Priorities)

Meeting date: 9 October 2024

Lorna Slater

With regard to the evidence that was used to determine those five things for the green industrial strategy, why did those things go in the prospectus, especially as two of them were not even part of the national strategy for economic transformation?

Economy and Fair Work Committee

Programme for Government (Priorities)

Meeting date: 9 October 2024

Lorna Slater

I am really interested in learning more about how the green industrial strategy was developed and the evidence for that, if that is possible.

Economy and Fair Work Committee

Programme for Government (Priorities)

Meeting date: 9 October 2024

Lorna Slater

Thank you. We have touched slightly on my next question, but I will elaborate on it. The second PFG priority is growing our economy. I have a question about what that means, because economic growth can be associated with increased inequality—letting the rich get richer—and it can be associated with trashing the environment. Both of those things will give you great GDP figures, but they do not lead to the wellbeing economy that we claim to want.

The update to the national performance framework and the new proposed national outcomes was a good bit of work—I support that. It included community engagement and it talked about public transport—the things that we need to do. How do you square the full charge for economic growth, which can cause environmental havoc and inequality, with measuring our success on the proposed national outcomes, which are based very much on a wellbeing economy? Those feel like two different things. You are measuring one thing while trying to achieve another.

Economy and Fair Work Committee

Subordinate Legislation

Meeting date: 9 October 2024

Lorna Slater

I get that it is to bring us in line with the UK. I am just curious as to whether there is any current provision by those countries that would therefore be terminated or not be able to be renewed. What is meant by “certain health care services”? Maybe you could write to me about that.

Economy and Fair Work Committee

Subordinate Legislation

Meeting date: 9 October 2024

Lorna Slater

I want to understand this clearly. Are any healthcare services being provided in Scotland by the countries that are being removed—Georgia, Albania, Kosovo, Moldova, North Macedonia and Ukraine? The instrument says that it removes those countries’ access to bidding for procurement of “certain health care services”. What kind of healthcare services are those?

Economy and Fair Work Committee

Programme for Government (Priorities)

Meeting date: 9 October 2024

Lorna Slater

The cabinet secretary will know that I think that a good green industrial strategy is very important in setting out Scotland as a place for investment in key sectors as we move forward in the just transition. However, I have noticed an area of incoherence between the national strategy for economic transformation and the green industrial strategy. I hope that the cabinet secretary can elaborate and tell us how she is going to align those strategies.

The NSET includes a list of 14 opportunities, which is quite a long bullet list, and many of those have a sub-list. That does not come across as very strategic but as a massive shopping list. It is wonderful that Scotland has so many opportunities, but that is not a strategic approach. It makes sense that the green industrial strategy is a shorter list, but that shorter list is not a subset of what is in the NSET. Two things that are in the green industrial strategy do not appear in the NSET at all. One is carbon capture, utilisation and storage, and the other is energy-intensive industry stuff, which includes chemicals, paper and steel. Those are all great industries, but neither CCUS nor those energy-intensive industries were identified in the NSET as opportunities. How come they have suddenly appeared out of nowhere, as it were, in the green industrial strategy as key opportunities? What evidence was used to generate the opportunities in the green industrial strategy versus those in the NSET? How are we supposed to know what our strategic priorities are when we have two disparate lists?