Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning, minister. I now ask you to risk taking the journey from Castlemilk up to Inverness via the A9. On 12 August, I attended a meeting at which more than 300 people representing more than half the community councils in the whole of the Highland Council area discussed their concerns about the process. I want to ask you about that first, because many of the petitions are asking for the democratisation of the process and specific elements of it.

10:15

I have been attending public meetings for four decades now—rather too many of them—and I have never before encountered the amount of anger that I saw at that meeting. The source of that anger was that, although many of the community councils had made detailed objections about things such as the cumulative impact of a large number of onshore wind farms, grid improvements and substations, what happened next was that, even if Highland Council turned down the application, it then went to you, minister, and the Scottish Government, and in almost every case, the decision was overturned. That was the feeling at that meeting.

I ask you for your reaction to that, and whether you can give us the statistics about the number of applications that you or the Scottish Government have granted and the number of decisions that you have overturned. You might not have that information with you now, but a lot of people would like to see it, because that is at the root of the concern. There is a feeling that democracy does not exist in the wind farm process in Scotland.

I say that in the context that, as you know, both of us are—as most people are in principle—in favour of more renewable energy as part of a balanced grid.

All of them.

Yes. The local authority would deal with applications for projects under 50MW, and those above 50MW would go straight to the ECU. How many decisions that were taken by local authorities on applications for projects in which the output was to be under 50MW were overturned by ministers?

Winston Churchill put it very pithily—he said that, when it comes to electricity supply, the solution is “variety and variety alone”. Does the Scottish Government recognise that we cannot rely solely on wind, solar and other types of renewables such as hydro and battery storage? There simply will not—cannot—be enough storage within the next 10 to 15 years, at least, to avoid the possibility of constraint payments.

Constraint payments are part of the system. If there were no such payments, the strike price would not have been £90—goodness knows what it would have been. Developers bid on the basis that they will get constraint payments, so if they do not get them, the strike price will be higher. I agree with you, but it leaves a question mark over whether there is too much wind in the system.

I would like to know whether the Scottish Government agrees with me that there must be a continuing backup in the form of gas and/or nuclear—preferably both—to provide a balanced grid and to maintain stability. The stability of the grid is absolutely crucial, because if you lose it, you get the kind of fluctuation and volatility that happened in Spain over the summer, I believe—although the causes of that are under dispute.

Does the Scottish Government agree there must be backup of base load, and that it must be gas and/or nuclear?

I support Mr Torrance’s recommendation, but I add that the work that was done by NHS Forth Valley, which I think has been described as the best-performing health board in the area of stroke care, will inform further procedures with regard to whether FAST should be changed to BE FAST, inter alia. As I understand it, the relevant work on that began in October and will be completed fairly soon. It will then be open to the petitioner to review whether to lodge a new petition in the next session of Parliament, because I think that some of the achievements that you have described, convener, have come about as a result of the petitioner’s efforts and the consideration of this committee. It is very much a developing story in terms of policy making in the next session of Parliament, I hope.

This is yet another tragic case, and I would just note the statistics on the number of people who lose their lives as a result of having heart attacks outwith hospital, how access to cardiopulmonary resuscitation and defibrillators massively increases the chance of survival, and how every minute without that treatment reduces the level of survival by a staggering 10 per cent. I just thought that I would mention that, given that 3,752 people’s lives are at stake if they do not have such access.

I am quite sure that this issue will come back to our successor committee, and rightly so. The work that has been done has allowed a real focus to be put on the detail of the issues, which is to be welcome. I would just say that our hearts go out to the families involved in these cases.

Following on from that point, I am sure that the minister will know that several applications have been submitted for pump storage projects around Loch Ness. As we have heard, there are concerns about the salmon population, angling, recreational interests, and the level of the loch and the Caledonian canal.

There is a group of people who are broadly in favour of pump storage but who feel that the current planning rules do not allow the planning authority to take a holistic view of the cumulative impact—in fact, they prevent it from doing so.

Although I welcome SEPA’s working group, every time I hear about a working group, I think that something might happen in five years’ time if we are lucky, but this problem is here and now. The applications have been submitted and they have to be determined. The problem that the petitioners have is that the applications will all be determined without the council being able to do what the minister has said should be done, in a better system—namely, to take into account the cumulative impact.

How will we avoid decisions being taken that might have significant adverse impacts on the existing interests of salmon fishing, angling and—more widely—the marine environment, recreational interests and the interests of other loch users?

Oh, okay. In that case, I will go back to community ownership. The last petition was on the energy strategy in general, which also covers community ownership.

When I was the energy minister, although we did not have the legal power to require community ownership—that remains the case—we had a voluntary scheme that was sponsored by the renewable energy investment fund. That fund—REIF—was used to provide grants to communities to enable them to facilitate the purchase of a community share, on a commercial basis, from the developer. The way it worked was that, if the cost of the community share was, say, £100, REIF would provide £10 and the commercial banks that were involved—Triodos, Close Brothers and the Co-operative Bank—would provide £90. That meant that communities that did not have any money were able to leverage a loan through a Government grant, and the loan would be repaid from the income stream from the project.

Local Energy Scotland did the groundwork so that developers did not have to scamper around the country holding lots of extra meetings and negotiating with communities; that responsibility was taken away from them. That scheme worked extremely well until renewables obligation certificates were summarily withdrawn by the United Kingdom Government and the whole thing fell apart.

I have raised this before in the chamber and with the minister, but what puzzles me is that here we are, five years into the parliamentary session, and nothing has happened. I suggested on more than one occasion that the Scottish National Investment Bank could be encouraged to be involved. After all, we are talking about a commercial transaction, not a freebie. Such an arrangement would allow public money to lever in 1000 per cent more potential benefit.

Taking that approach would mean that people in communities that are presently hostile to such developments would see tangible benefits for them, their children and their grandchildren. That would help in some, but not all, cases—some people would see it as a bribe, but others would welcome it. There are mixed views.

What depresses me is that nothing has been happening for the past five years. Where are the voluntary schemes that, with help from officials, we managed to provide when I was in your shoes?

11:00

I appreciate your answer and your good intention. I suggested that the Scottish National Investment Bank could be a source of revenue, which is what is required. I cannot help but notice that Mr David Ritchie, who used to work for me as an official in the energy department, is now in charge of the bank and at the helm. Perhaps a phone call to him would help to unlock the funding that is needed to move things up a scale, as you obviously wish to do. That would mean that, in the next session of Parliament, there would not be five years without the significant progress that we would all like to see.

Mr Mundell has been particularly dogged in his pursuit.