Seòmar agus comataidhean

I have a few suggestions to make. As the clerks have helpfully suggested, perhaps we can write to the Minister for Energy and the Environment to ask whether the Scottish Government has the power to mandate community shared ownership for new wind farms, first, by using the devolved power under section 36 of the Electricity Act 1989 to lower the threshold for when an application to build a wind farm requires a minister’s consent and, secondly, by withholding consent from any application that did not agree to a community shared ownership model. That is my first suggestion.

I want to make another suggestion, or an extended comment, if I may, convener. On rereading the submissions, I note that the Scottish National Investment Bank’s submission is dated 13 March, which is a long time ago now, and that the minister provided a submission on 6 April. Both submissions were quite helpful. Both referred to the work that Local Energy Scotland is doing, to which you have alluded, saying that they expected to hear from the organisation—this is the phrase that both used—“in the coming weeks”. Weeks have come and gone—months have elapsed—since then.

I will give one example. I spoke to a wind farm developer who is proposing to develop a fairly large wind farm in the Dava area of my constituency, which is already covered with wind farms and where the populace’s view of them is mixed. Initially, the developer wanted 50 turbines but is now down to 18, mainly because the Cairngorms National Park Authority has negotiated the number down to that figure. I have long thought that a way in which community ownership can be made to work, without its being seen as a penalty on commercial companies, is that, instead of a developer proposing 18 turbines, they propose 20 or 22, with the additional two or four being community owned. In other words, the company gets what it was planning to get anyway, but, in exchange for planning permission, it is required to enable the development to be expanded so that communities can add two or four turbines. In those distant days of yore when I was the responsible minister, funding was available for that to be facilitated. Triodos Bank, Close Brothers, the Co-operative Bank and some others funded it to the tune of between 90 and 95 per cent, with the Scottish Government funding the remaining 5 to 10 per cent. That allowed communities to have a real stake of ownership. My worry is that time is passing us by. Such applications are being made all the time, and every one that is granted is a lost opportunity.

The petitioner, Karen Murphy, has pointed that out. Lots of applications for onshore wind farms are going on all the time. Therefore, I wonder whether we could ask the minister and the SNIB to show a little bit more urgency in telling us what Local Energy Scotland has said, as they promised they would do within a few weeks of their submissions but have not done, and generally knock them out of this somewhat complacent approach when the real opportunities for Scotland, which everybody sees—I do not think that this is political, convener—are passing us by. We are losing those opportunities, when we used to grab them. There is a long history to this, and I have probably gone on long enough, so I will not even go to chapter 1 of that long history, you will be relieved to hear.

I will try not to be too predictable, then. Just extending the metaphor one more time, our purpose is to provide David with a sling so that there is some equality in the weaponry. To be serious, we find that many of our petitions relate to concerns that ordinary people—citizens of Paisley or Inverness—have with Government agencies, the authorities and the powers that be. In fact, those petitions probably account for more than half of the total.

I want to raise a specific example. Last week, the convener of the Finance and Public Administration Committee, Kenneth Gibson, pointed out the cost of the commissioners, also known as tsars. There is a plethora of those commissioners in Scotland, and the cost amounts to £80 million over a five-year period. We will discuss the A9 later, but a 10-year saving on the tsars—if we decided to purge them in Scotland—would save £160 million, which just happens to be £10 million more than the cost of the proposed dualling of the section of the A9 from Tomatin to Moy. Minister, you may not have direct portfolio responsibility for the tsars, but, given that we really need to look at making savings, do we get value for money from our tsars? Are they any more relevant to our citizens than the Romanovs were to the Russians in their daily life? Would it not be worth considering a purge of the tsars and, if so, does history not tell us that October is not a bad month in which to carry it out?

I am grateful for the minister’s reply. It is not ungenerous, and it is appreciated. I will just comment that we spend a lot of time in the Parliament deciding how to spend ever more quantities of taxpayers’ money, but we spend very little time reviewing how much value for money we get from the billions that we spend every year. With the pressures that face us now, perhaps that argument’s time has come. I am not necessarily in favour of a mass purge and assassination, but a sunset clause, for example, was another idea that was put forward. That would be a gradual turning off of the lights.

We should take evidence from the petitioner, the anti-SLAPP research hub, the Law Society of Scotland and the Minister for Victims and Community Safety. In addition, we should hear from Mr Graeme Johnston, who has provided a detailed, forensic and closely argued submission. I make that suggestion because, from what the National Union of Journalists, Mr Johnston, the anti-SLAPP research hub and others have said, it appears that Scotland is at risk of becoming the jurisdiction of choice for people such as oligarchs to abuse the court system, throw their weight around and, by taking SLAPP actions, prevent freedom of speech. Surely, freedom of speech is something that we are here to preserve and fight for.

In particular, I was struck by the point that high-profile SLAPP cases are simply the tip of the iceberg. The NUJ submission states that they

“do not reflect the volume of threatening letters and interference that takes place pre-publication.”

In other words, we have no idea how many threats of legal action are made that we never hear about because the person from, for example, a small publisher or small newspaper thinks, “I havenae got the money to take on this guy,” so that is the end of it—David, no sling, no action; another victory chalked up to Goliath.

I have absolutely no doubt that we need to get the evidence and to learn more from the various points that have been challenged in relation to the Government’s response, which—I am sorry to say—I found a bit on the complacent side.

Thank you very much.

No—that is not correct. I did not have responsibility for infrastructure.

I am absolutely content with that. However, I want to add that, on 18 January, there was agreement. I spoke—as did Alexander Stewart, the convener and Rhoda Grant—and asked for the minister to be specific and say when we would get a decision. That was 18 January, but here we are—almost another year has passed—and we now know that nothing will happen until the early part of next year, when the report from the SCDC will be available. I will not be holding my breath about the content of that report. Without being too critical, I do not expect a great deal from it. I am not sure that it is even necessary.

Be that as it may, however, the minister fails to say when a decision will be taken after the SCDC report has been issued. Therefore, we are none the wiser about when the minister will get around to doing something. I put that on the record in the vain hope that, when we ask a Scottish Government minister to give us the courtesy of a reply on something so basic as timing, we do not just see things kicked into the long grass in perpetuity, particularly in these days of rewilding when the grass is very long.

I support that recommendation. We might also wish to seek from the Scottish Government an update on what testing and training are provided on the use of naloxone. Many moons ago, between 2007 and 2011, when I was the drugs minister, we promoted the use of naloxone by, for example, police officers. If applied, naloxone can reverse the effects of opioids, and, in certain circumstances, it can save lives. It is not without its controversies, but that measure was introduced years ago. I raise it because, in relation to drug testing, it has the potential to save lives and is very valuable.

It would be helpful to get a fairly comprehensive account from the Scottish Government about how naloxone has been rolled out, whether the police are now using it, as was wished to be the case, whether there are any barriers, and what is being doing with it specifically. We are all alarmed and concerned at the number of drug deaths in Scotland, and, in some circumstances, naloxone can save lives.

I will read back from the petitioners’ response of 3 March:

“We thought it might be useful … to take you through several actual case studies highlighted by whistleblowers and victims.”

They also said that it was their hope that

“some whistleblowers will be prepared to speak directly to the committee”.

These are very sensitive matters, as we know, so I suggest that it would be appropriate to invite the petitioners and whistleblowers to a round-table discussion on the issues raised by the petition. If that option is favoured, the committee might want to delegate authority to the convener to work with the clerks on the most appropriate format for that discussion to take place. We are here to make sure that people have a right to be heard. They have not been heard yet, so that would be a way in which we could give them that right.

—and what Transport Scotland did or, perhaps more relevantly, did not do.