Seòmar agus comataidhean

Okay. Megan wants to come in on the question. Thank you very much.

Okay. If no one else wants to come in, I ask for your views on the transfer test that will be applied to sellers prior to sale, rather than there being a public interest test at the point of transfer. Do you have any more points to make on that?

I want to drill down a bit into the Land Commission’s proposals for land management plans. It has come up with two specific recommendations. One is that there should be a duty on the landowner to demonstrate how community engagement has effectively informed the land management plan. The other proposal is to ensure there is a duty to refer to local place plans in the land management plans.

I want to get your quick reflections on both or either of those proposals. Are they useful? Would they, from your perspective, enhance the process of LMP development? I can see that Megan MacInnes has a hand up.

Thanks for those comments. I am looking for others to come in. Andrew Howard, you mentioned previous developments and I am aware that there was quite a lot of controversy around your proposed development in the wood of Doune. You alluded to that earlier. It would be useful to hear your thoughts, particularly on local place plans and how your thinking has perhaps evolved from that episode.

I thank the emergency services and offer condolences to those who lost a loved one during the storm.

It was a relief to hear from the cabinet secretary that no patients were harmed at Forth Valley royal hospital during the power outage. I understand that the back-up generator failed. The emergency battery that was the last resort has limited capacity, of course; I understand that it can provide only up to 90 minutes of power. Given that patients would have been undergoing surgery and been in critical care at the hospital at the time, is the cabinet secretary satisfied that health boards are really putting in the resilience measures that are needed to deal with such a storm?

Thanks, convener. I will offer some brief thoughts on the issue, because there is potentially quite a lot to unpack for the committee’s consideration.

I should say that I am a member of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, which has already undertaken some scrutiny of the Government’s existing air quality strategy, and I am also the deputy convener of the cross-party group on lung health.

I will make two quick points. First, the Government’s current regulations were made in 2010, which was some time ago. Since then, global scientific understanding has developed and substantial medical studies have been done on the impact of poor air quality on human health. In particular, there have been studies that have looked at the impact on vulnerable people—for example, on the links with heart health and dementia—and on developmental issues, particularly for young people who live in an environment where there is poor air quality. All that evidence has come through very strongly.

I am pleased to say that much of that evidence has come from Scotland. Lead scientists, such as Professor Jill Belch at Ninewells hospital, have been at the forefront of understanding the impact of poor air quality on children. That has led the WHO, through its peer-review process, to come up with new guidelines to help steer Governments and decision makers in the right direction.

The second point is that, from considering the issue and from the NZET Committee’s work on it, I have learned that there are no safe limits for air quality. It is not as if there is a point at which we can say, “Well, that is it—our communities are now safer because we have met this target or that limit value.” Every time that we reduce particulate pollution, for example, we get a resulting public health benefit; there is a reduction in medical conditions and, as a result of that, there is potentially a reduction in mortality rates. Every single improvement that we can make to air quality in Scotland has a direct impact in terms of health benefits. It is important to recognise that.

There is a lot to consider in relation to adopting the WHO limits—you outlined some of the political considerations of doing so in your introductory comments, convener. It would be challenging, but I think that the Scottish Government is considering that in its next air quality strategy, which I understand is under development right now.

What are the committee’s options? I welcome the fact that you have already made a start on the petition, but there could be an option to pass it to the NZET Committee, given that NZET will, at some point, be looking at the Scottish Government’s progress towards its new air quality strategy. In answer to the written questions that I lodged, the Government has indicated that it will consider the new and much more robust WHO guidelines when it looks at the new regulations.

There are a lot of questions for the Government to consider, particularly around partnership working with councils and what is the art of the possible. If there were to be an opportunity to look at the matter in more depth, I see a window within the NZET Committee to do that work—unless this committee wishes to take up the work itself.

I thank the minister for that response, but it is clear that there is something of a postcode lottery when it comes to thrombectomy services. My Fife constituency relies on the Lothian thrombectomy service, which also serves Lothian and Dumfries and Galloway. Will the minister ensure that investment in the Lothian service rises so that there are not unacceptable delays and waiting times for my constituents?

I agree with Liam McArthur that there cannot be a just transition without transmission infrastructure.

Michael Marra is right that there has been a responsibility on successive Governments in both Scotland and Westminster to provide “clarity” on the kinds of plans and programmes that had to be put in place. That argument needed to be won with the public, but I do not think that such clarity has been provided.

Unfortunately, that has allowed a populist space to develop. The kind of anti-renewables rhetoric that I heard from a wide range of Conservative colleagues this afternoon echoes the language that Donald Trump used when he came to the Parliament to give evidence against renewable energy all those years ago.

The energy transition is one of the biggest challenges and biggest opportunities in Scotland today, and it is important that Parliament supports the steps that are needed to deliver it. The missed 2030 climate target and the latest advice from the Climate Change Committee, in 2024, remind us that there is no path to net zero for Scotland or the UK without a major switch from fossil fuels to electricity. That is the case across many sectors, from the transport industry to how we heat our homes.

Of course, in recent years, all Governments of all colours in the UK have accepted that, including the recent Tory Government at Westminster. That switch requires a massive increase in the generation of renewable energy from all our abundant onshore and offshore wind, hydro, solar and wave resources. That growth in generation is already well under way in Scotland. We are doing very well in that regard, but it has exposed the huge backlog that we now face in investment in upgrading the electricity transmission network.

The Scottish Renewables briefing for the debate highlights that the UK will need to build twice as much transmission infrastructure in the next five years as it has over the past decade. Simply put, we do not have the transmission lines that we need to get the electricity to where it needs to be. We must grapple with that challenge now. The climate will not wait, nor will the households that face ever-rising gas bills.

The joint UK Government and Scottish Government consultation seeks to address that growing barrier in transmission. I do not accept the Tories’ motion, which asks us to throw out all the work that has taken place so far, ignoring the consultation responses that have already been submitted and effectively shutting down the opportunity to refine the Government’s plans further.

Public inquiries are a sign that the planning and consenting system has failed, yet perpetual public inquiries appear to be what the Tories want for our communities. Public inquiries are highly formalised and adversarial, and can last for years. They are not a process that is suited to having the views of time-poor and underresourced community groups heard equally alongside those of developers.

Both Governments have been clear that attention must be given to how communities can be part of the future energy consenting process. During the new statutory pre-application process, developers will be required to notify the public and gather views. They will need to include evidence that there has been a robust process alongside their consent application, otherwise it will be rejected.

Currently, any prior community engagement that is carried out on an application is voluntary on the part of the developer. There is no consistency in what information developers need to present, whom they must inform and whose views they must seek out, and there is no consistency about how much of that information must be supplied to the planning authorities.

I urge both Governments to seriously consider the concerns that have been raised by organisations including Planning Democracy and the Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland. There must be tougher requirements on developers who do not undertake a robust public engagement process, and a requirement to reconsult the public if they cannot evidence how they have taken concerns into account. The Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland also raised concerns that the processes could become tick-box exercises and that engagement must be done in such a way that it is genuinely meaningful for communities.

My final point is about benefits. Since 1990, more than £194 million in community benefits have been committed from renewable energy projects in Scotland. That is significant, but it is a fraction of what could be delivered if communities had major equity stakes in projects. However, in comparison, no financial community benefits have been required for transmission projects. That needs to change, so I welcome the voluntary steps that SSEN has already taken. We have socialised the financial costs of building shared infrastructure across the country, but we must recognise that the communities that host that infrastructure—

I was there at the time when the Beauly-Denny line was going through pre-application consultation, and it went to public local inquiry. I was there throughout all those years working with communities, and it was very painful.

The only positive thing to come out of that was that the communities that recognised that they could influence the project—that they could get substations moved and get investment in the landscape—were the communities that engaged with the utility company and cross-party MSPs, including myself; they got benefits as a result of that. There must be an understanding and an acceptance that we need transmission infrastructure, but there absolutely are wins that communities can get if they are supported by MSPs, councillors and others to engage with the companies and to win those benefits.

A number of members—including Liam McArthur, Sarah Boyack and Christine Grahame—spoke about community benefits. The recommendation of the review that was conducted in 2023 by Nick Winser, the electricity networks commissioner, was that communities should get financial benefits from transmission, both lump sums for householders and community benefit funds. The commissioner said:

“There is every opportunity to be generous with these payments. Undergrounding power line costs between five and 10 times more than overhead lines and causes more environmental damage.”

Utility companies such as SSEN, whose representatives are with us today, that are making commitments to community benefit need to be held to their word. They will save money through overgrounding, so communities need to benefit from those choices.

I welcome the fact that SSEN has committed £100 million already. We need to work with the grain of that and ensure that communities get a good deal from what is going on, but we are not going to get that from Mr Lumsden and his colleagues. Their only interest is in division and right-wing rhetoric, and that is a disgrace.