Seòmar agus comataidhean

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.

—also pay a price, and it must be covered by the rest of us.

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to increase access to thrombectomies in the Fife region, in light of the reported 1.9 per cent increase in investment in the national thrombectomy service. (S6O-04226)

No, I do not have time.

Some of the myth-driven rants that we are starting to hear—for example, that undergrounding is a cheap solution that can easily be put in place—could not be further from the truth. I believe that Stephen Kerr raised that in his speech. [Interruption.]

I advise Mr Kerr, Rachael Hamilton and others to go back and read the comments made by former Conservative energy ministers at Westminster, who underlined the fact that undergrounding will cost between five and 10 times the cost of overhead lines and that it has substantial environmental impacts, as we saw in the debate on the Beauly-Denny line all those years ago.

We are now seeing a shift to populist rhetoric, which is very disappointing. Douglas Lumsden tried to pull that back a bit. He said that we are in the chamber today to talk about solutions that “empower” communities. However, I did not hear any solutions from the Tories. What I heard was a call for an endless public inquiry, where they can rant, shout and drive communities into an expensive, costly and debilitating process for years on end. [Interruption.]

Okay—I will end on the words “no detriment”.

I understand that the Department for Transport has produced guidance, particularly on cross-pavement gullies. I realise, though, that that is beyond the budget.

Thank you very much for joining us this morning, minister.

One of the areas that we are looking at is the relationship between GB Energy and the Crown Estate, which operates outside Scotland, around the rest of the UK. I am interested to know how you see GB Energy working with Crown Estate Scotland, which is set up slightly differently and does not have borrowing powers. We are trying to understand how the two Crown Estate organisations will work with GB Energy. What will that look like?

We are aware that you have a Crown Estate Bill going through Westminster at the moment. It would be useful if you could provide a little bit of clarity on how you see that relationship developing.

Okay. Thank you. I will come back with some more questions later.

Cabinet secretary, you have spoken about the importance of investment in publicly owned transport, ferries and ScotRail. Obviously, largely, we do not have that situation with the buses, which are run by private companies. The community bus fund was an attempt to support local authorities to look at more public control through franchising and potentially through municipalisation. That standalone fund has been scrapped and is now part of the bus infrastructure fund for the next year. How will local authorities be able to take forward that work, given the new budget line? Does that approach meet the aspirations of councils to procure their own buses and run their own bus services, or at least control those services through franchising?