Seòmar agus comataidhean

Colleagues, are you all of that view?

Members indicated agreement.

The “key committee”—I am sure that you flatter to deceive, minister.

Mr Byrne, you have been listening patiently to the evidence presented by the minister and your colleague. Do you want to contribute any reflections as we come to the end of our evidence session?

Thank you, Mr Ewing. That is an important point that is well made. It is challenging for people for whom such travel is the only option when provision that they rely on is inadequate. That came across quite strongly.

Welcome back. Item 4 is consideration of continued petitions. We will cover two petitions together, which focus on planning proposals and decisions on wind farm developments.

The first is PE1864, which was lodged by Aileen Jackson on behalf of Scotland Against Spin. The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to increase the ability of communities to influence planning decisions for onshore wind farms by adopting English planning legislation for the determination of onshore wind farm developments, to empower local authorities to ensure that local communities are given sufficient professional help to engage in the planning process, and to appoint an independent advocate to ensure that local participants are not

“bullied and intimidated during public inquiries”.

We last considered the petition on 2 February, when we agreed to write to the Local Government Association. Unfortunately, the LGA has not been able to respond to us ahead of today’s meeting.

We have coupled that petition with PE1885, which was lodged by Karen Murphy and calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to make offering community shared ownership a mandatory requirement of all wind farm development planning proposals.

Our last consideration of PE1885 also took place on 2 February, when it was agreed that we would invite the relevant minister to join us this morning to give evidence on both petitions. Therefore, I am delighted to welcome Tom Arthur, Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth; Andy Kinnaird, head of transforming planning, Scottish Government; and Neal Rafferty, senior adviser on the heat in buildings strategy, Scottish Government. Good morning to all three of you. The minister has made a hot dash across the Parliament campus from another committee in order to join us. We very much appreciate that effort; the timings have all worked out very nicely.

We also welcome back our MSP colleague Brian Whittle, who has a particular interest in the latter petition. I will turn to Brian once the committee members have had the opportunity to put their questions to our guests. He will be well used to the format and protocols of our procedures.

Members have a number of questions that they would like to explore this morning, so we will go straight to those. Some of it is familiar territory, so we are trying to focus the questions on the issues that are specifically raised in the petition.

Do you expect that to be a physical public event that members of the public can engage with, or can a public event be a more holistic affair?

We will do that at the appropriate time, to test the water. I will dabble my toes in the waters of that statement and will see what response I get, at the appropriate time.

I understand, having participated in the work of the parliamentary commission and in other events, that it is easy to set up a timeline. We set up timelines using parliamentary structures because we anticipate, in a sense, what we might be about to hear, and we therefore think that we can benchmark when the next milestone will be. However, in the evidence that you are hearing, you will hear fresh thoughts, challenges and ideas that might contradict views that people have held before. As you are reflecting, do you have in your mind an idea of when the Government will be able to indicate formally what its thoughts on the report are?

We return to where we began, to an extent, because Mr Stewart is keen to pursue some of the issues that relate to the recommendations and press a little further.

I thank the minister, Mr Kinnaird and Mr Rafferty for joining us this morning, and I thank Brian Whittle, too, for his participation.

Colleagues, are we content to consider the evidence that we have heard this morning at a future meeting of the committee?

Members indicated agreement.

This little exchange is showing the benefits of classical education all round. I am very impressed.

The minister might have heard me say in opening that the first of the two petitions is keen to appoint an independent advocate to ensure that local participants are not, in its words,

“bullied and intimidated during public inquiries”.

We have received written evidence that suggests that some individuals participating in public inquiries feel that they have been treated with contempt and abused by some of the legal representatives of wind farm developments and that, somewhat to their disappointment, the reporter has not intervened when that has happened. Is the Scottish Government aware of such instances? This sort of thing is always difficult—individuals have made submissions to us that this has been a practice and that the reporter has not intervened. Can anything be done to validate that evidence and, if indeed such a practice is taking place, to ensure that there is a remedy for it, given that it seems unreasonable?

We might well summarise the evidence that we have received so that the Government is made aware of the experience of those who have written to us. You might care to have a look at that, minister.

As I have said, Mr Whittle is with us for this item. It has been my practice as convener to invite colleagues joining us to make a statement. However, before we hear finally from our witnesses, if anything has occurred to Mr Whittle that he would like to put by way of a question, I am content for that to be the case, too.