Seòmar agus comataidhean

I agree, and following what Mr Torrance said at the end of his remarks, I make the point that, if the petition had been brought at the beginning of this parliamentary session, I very much doubt that we would be closing it today. It is only because there is relatively little time left, and because the Scottish Government has given specific undertakings to carry out work that perhaps could not reasonably be expected to be done between now and the end of this parliamentary session, that it would seem that the petitioner is not losing anything by the petition being closed today. I just wanted to emphasise to the petitioner that the approach is dictated by the parliamentary schedule, rather than the merits of the issue, which is, of course, extremely serious.

We could come back to that suggestion, though, if we do not get a satisfactory answer—

—because we have not had a satisfactory response over three years now.

Indeed.

Good morning, panel, and thank you for your most illuminating evidence.

Yesterday, I read an excellent article in The Herald by Stephen Jardine, the president of the Cockburn Association. He quoted from Lord Cockburn, who in 1849 wrote to the then Lord Provost of Edinburgh, stating:

“Edinburgh is not exempt from the doom that makes everything spoilable.”

That sums it up, really. Mr Jardine also alluded to the Cockburn Association’s work over the years to protect the Meadows from a motorway, for example, and George Street from a horrible high-rise hotel and to deal with other things that almost everyone would agree would have been disastrous mistakes.

On the one hand, we have a clear consensus that the best buildings must be preserved, but what I have not seen—and maybe this is my lack of scholarship or industry in examining all the papers, but certainly having noted the petitioner’s own submissions—is a distinction between those buildings that are A-listed, or of national importance; B-listed, or of regional importance; and C-listed, or of local importance. I raise that because, although Professor Masterton’s argument is strong in theory, the fact is that, as Laura Shanks has pointed out, councils have to deal with real risks to human safety. I understand that—it is a matter of absolute practicality. Nobody can gainsay it, and it is a difficult duty to discharge.

However, to follow the lead of my convener and play devil’s advocate, I am concerned that decisions have been made over the years to list buildings that seemed to many to be, at best, dubious candidates, shall we say; I am thinking of two gasworks, for example. A different example was the old distiller-manager’s house in the distillery of Balmenach in my constituency. Just a nondescript square building, it was going to hold up the redevelopment of the distillery, where many people lived in tied housing and where, because the roads were so narrow and not built for pantechnicons, lorries had to reverse 200 yards in icy conditions in winter, threatening the safety of children. That redevelopment was held up because Cairngorm planners saw fit to try to thwart the whole thing, until the then chief planner, Jim Mackinnon, happily had a word in somebody’s ear, and it was all sorted out very quickly.

I make the point just to set the scene. Many people feel that the listing of mediocre or nondescript buildings creates a barrier to progress. Nobody wants anything to happen to the Wallace monument or any of our fine castles. For the past 12 to 14 years, I have been overseeing a committee for the transformation of Inverness castle from a court to an international visitor attraction—and perhaps I can prolong the advertorial by saying that it will be open later this year, and you will be able to get your tickets online quite soon. It is grade-A listed inside and out, so we have had to work with HES every step of the way in what has been a very fruitful relationship.

Do you think that the whole system has been brought into question by ordinary folk in Scotland thinking, “What on earth are you listing a gasworks for?”

I entirely agree. You are absolutely right but, at the same time, and as must be said openly, we cannot let ministers off the hook simply because they can run the clock down. If that were the case, they could get away with doing nothing for every petition in every parliamentary session.

I suggest that, in light of the responses from the Scottish Government and from SEPA, we close the petition under rule 15.7 of standing orders, given that SEPA has moved to restrict its compliance and enforcement activity to specific targeted campaigns. SEPA stated in its service statement that the time spent handling queries and investigations is disproportionate to the very low risk of harm that the issue presents to the water environment, which negatively impacts on SEPA’s ability to focus on the most significant environmental harms that face it. The Scottish Government has supported SEPA’s position on the matter and is content that SEPA has sufficient resources to apply its approach to regulation and principles.

Sure. It will not be the managers, the chief executive and the board members, but the porters, the auxiliaries and the district nurses—the ordinary staff—who get stung.

I should declare an interest because I have a property, which used to be my home, that has been rented out since my wife passed away. As a matter of principle, all private landlords should maintain their properties. Plainly that is the case, and I suspect that most of them do. However, those who do not do that create an extremely difficult problem for tenants. As I know from my constituency work, the situation can be extremely difficult where landlords are recalcitrant and very often just refuse to do anything at all. Therefore, some powers of compulsion are necessary, and the question is whether the existing quality standards meet that need. As Mr Golden said, the answer from the Scottish Government is that it is lodging an amendment to the housing bill. The matter is very live and it will be debated further by the Parliament.

The approach that has been taken in England seems to be logical, although I do not think that it has yet been implemented. The ministerial response that the committee received on 8 May said that the approach in England would start to be implemented from October this year, starting with damp and mould. This is a serious problem that requires to be dealt with. It is just not acceptable that tenants are sitting powerless in properties and suffering the effects of damp while landlords refuse to do anything. We have all seen photographs of what this is like, often for children and people with diseases and conditions such as asthma, who are inhaling mould spores. We have all seen this in our constituency work and, from time to time, we see heart-rending cases. I am absolutely satisfied that the law needs to be tightened up in this area, so it is just a question of getting it right by working together across the parties.

I think that I ate the sweets so quickly that I probably did not notice.