Seòmar agus comataidhean

Our second item of business is consideration of a legislative consent memorandum on the United Kingdom Government’s Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill. The committee took evidence on that at its meeting on 30 September and agreed that further evidence would support our consideration.

As a brief reminder, a legislative consent memorandum is laid when a UK bill makes provision in areas that are within the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament, or alters that competence or the executive competence of the Scottish Government. The committee must report to the Parliament on whether its consent should be granted.

The committee is also taking the opportunity to look more broadly at the prospect of sustainable aviation fuel production in Scotland and the potential role of that in reducing greenhouse gases from aviation. That will feed into our work later this year, when we will consider transportation aspects of the Scottish Government’s forthcoming climate change plan.

The bill aims to create more stable pricing for sustainable aviation fuel to encourage domestic production to grow, in parallel with increasing the mandate for the use of SAF by the industry. The Scottish Government supports the bill overall but is withholding its consent for now on some technical matters. I was going to say that I hoped that we would see a supplementary LCM soon, but we received that at 7 o’clock last night, and I believe that another will be forthcoming shortly.

I welcome Simon McNamara, head of government and corporate affairs, Loganair, and Doug McKiernan, co-founder and chief technical officer for Zero. I think that you were Zero Petroleum—is it now Zero?

I congratulate you, Simon, on following my prompt to nod if you agree with what has been said—thank you.

We now move to Mark Ruskell, who has been waiting patiently—some of his questions may have been asked already, I fear.

Your view is that SAF production would not need to be limited to only Grangemouth. There are other sites in Scotland that we could use.

Yes.

Does any member want to contribute? No one does. Cabinet secretary, do you wish to sum up in any way?

I thank the cabinet secretary and her officials for turning up to give evidence on the instruments.

I have a very simple question. Will you prioritise the two biggest threats to the production of SAF? I do not need the reasons, because you have already had a chance to explain those. Which are the two biggest threats to an increase in the production of SAF?

Thank you. Ralph Lavery, I noticed that you were nodding at various stages during Simon’s remarks. Now is your chance to say whether you agree.

Does anyone wish to contribute? I see that no one does. Cabinet secretary, I do not believe that you will have much to sum up on, but you can sum up and respond if you like.

Thank you, convener. I realise the pressure that is on the committee as we come to the end of the parliamentary session. I would like to go back to a couple of comments that were made when the petition last came before the committee on 5 February. At that time, Ash Regan said that she believes that public bodies are “defensive” and Fergus Ewing said that he profoundly believed that the current system is “inherently flawed”. That remains my position, and I think that that is the position of the petitioners.

Since I came to the committee on 5 February, more cases have come to light in the Highlands, some of which are deeply concerning. Pupils are being dragged out of classrooms by their feet and teachers are being suspended but no evidence has been given as to why they have been suspended. As far as their colleagues are concerned, it remains the case that they have done nothing wrong when the parents and the pupils know that they have done something wrong. That is why we need, more than anything else, a whistleblowing officer to look at issues and to address them.

If we are going to get it right for every child—which we must do—we need to ensure that children are heard and that, when evidence is provided on mistreatment, especially in schools, it is made available when the person is suspended. At the moment, too many teachers across Scotland are getting away with things because the authorities are hiding behind GDPR regulations that say that they cannot disclose whether a person has been suspended.

I think that that situation will go on for ever, until we get a whistleblowing officer, which is why I am keen to ensure that the petition continues. As I said, I know that time is an issue for the committee, but I think that your committee is the only one in Parliament that can keep open petitions into the next session. Considering that the children of Scotland are affected, I urge the committee to consider keeping it open, because we have not got things right at the moment. I will leave it at that, because I could get emotional over this, as I think that we are letting our children down.