Seòmar agus comataidhean

This is another painful petition that we have wrestled with over the lifetime of the Parliament, but, given the situation that we are in, do colleagues support the proposal?

Are we content with the suggested course of action?

Members indicated agreement.

A lot of schools are being built in out-of-town locations, so defibrillators would not necessarily be accessible to the local community in those circumstances. Therefore, they might not be the most appropriate place for a defibrillator to be sited.

Are colleagues content to agree with Mr Russell’s recommendation?

Members indicated agreement.

Our next petition is PE1900, which was lodged by Kevin John Lawson. It calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to ensure that all detainees in police custody can access their prescribed medication, including methadone, in line with existing relevant operational procedures and guidance.

We last considered the petition on 18 June 2025, when we agreed to write to the Minister for Drugs and Alcohol Policy and Sport. In her response, the minister indicates that the Government intends to commission another survey, similar to the rapid review that was conducted previously. That was scheduled to commence in late 2025. The minister added that NHS Grampian had confirmed that opioid replacement therapy was available at the Kittybrewster custody suite, with some logistical challenges being addressed to extend the service to the two remaining custody suites.

In his most recent submission, the petitioner, too, refers to logistical challenges, informing us that NHS Grampian is still not providing methadone to detainees who are in custody at Elgin and Fraserburgh. He also suggests that, at Kittybrewster, detainees do not receive methadone for the first 48 hours so those with a methadone prescription are instead given dihydrocodeine in the first 48 hours.

Do members have any comments or suggestions for action? There might still be time to do a little bit more with this petition. I suggest that we write to the Minister for Drugs and Alcohol Policy and Sport to highlight the petitioner’s on-going concerns about the issues in NHS Grampian and to request an update before the end of this parliamentary session on the findings of the most recent review, which was to be conducted towards the end of 2025. It seems that people are still having to wait for access to their prescribed medication. That is not what we understand is supposed to be happening, so we could challenge the Government on that in the time that is available to us.

Are our colleagues content to proceed on that basis?

On this occasion, action that was supposed to be taking place is still yet to happen.

We could seek to achieve that in the time that remains to us. Depending on the outcome, we might feel that the petition requires a lot of work ahead, so it could be part of the legacy document that we leave to the next committee.

Do colleagues agree to keep the petition open and write to the cabinet secretary on that basis?

Members indicated agreement.

Agenda item 2 is the next in our series of themed sessions with cabinet secretaries to try to do justice to as many petitions as possible. This morning’s themed session is on energy and, of course, relates to energy-related petitions. I have to say that, other than by their use of word “energy”, they are hardly connected at all with regard to their scope and range of concerns, unlike some of the justice or health petitions, where there was an obvious thematic connection. They raise quite complicated and sometimes quite technical issues, too.

We are joined by the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Energy, Gillian Martin, and by the following Scottish Government officials: Catherine Williams, deputy director, onshore electricity, strategy and consents; Robert Martin, head of legislative change and governance; and Antonia Georgieva, head of battery energy storage systems—which are a plague on my constituency, if I am allowed to say so, but such issues will no doubt be touched on as we progress. A very warm welcome to you all, and thank you very much for joining us this morning.

This morning’s evidence-taking session will cover a number of petitions: PE1864, on increasing the ability of communities to influence planning decisions for onshore wind farms; PE1885, on making offering community-shared ownership mandatory for all wind farm development planning proposals; PE2095, on improving the public consultation processes for energy infrastructure projects; PE2109, on halting any further pumped storage hydro schemes on Scottish lochs holding wild Atlantic salmon; PE2157, on updating planning advice for energy storage issues to ensure that it includes clear guidance for the location of battery energy storage systems near residences and communities; PE2159, on halting the production of hydrogen from fresh water; and PE2160, on introducing an energy strategy.

Cabinet secretary, I understand that you would like to start off this morning’s proceedings with a short introductory statement.

I will bring in Mr Ewing in a second, but there are a couple of questions that I would like to follow up on, given that Mr Golden has been kind enough to reference my constituency and the Whitelee wind farm, of which members of the community are all immensely proud.

It has been an interesting journey, which, in some ways, is typical of what happens with such developments. I can remember the community having very fierce objections to it, yet anybody who has been born during the lifetime of its existence simply accepts the fact that it is there. I might include in the community benefit of the wind farm the incredible leisure opportunities that have been provided in its precincts, which include the visitor centre and the bike trails. Those facilities are very widely used.

Having said that, although the people of Eaglesham and Waterfoot thought that the community benefit would all go to their areas, as Mr Golden said, that was not the case. As a resident of Waterfoot, I can say that we are very proud of our park bench, which appears to be the only community benefit that we received, because the council moved in and decided that it would assume responsibility for the community benefit, which now goes to the entire council area, including parts of the Leverndale valley such as Barrhead, Uplawmoor and Neilston that do not see the Whitelee wind farm, unlike the people of Castlemilk. Sometimes, as you say, the benefit can be quite widely spread. Of course, as some suspect, a council could start to use the benefit to subsidise its own core spending as opposed to delivering the incremental benefit that I think many people would hope would transpire. Have you come across that sentiment, which might be widely held?

I point out that we should stick within the context of the petitions that we are considering this morning, and none of them covers nuclear development.

David Torrance will come back in on the point about hydrogen. However, Mr Mundell, do you want first to come in on the areas that we are currently discussing?