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Following on from Mark Ruskell’s question, I have one on the period for which these plans are in place and how often they are reviewed. Do you think that there is the potential for conflict? Local authorities have an electoral cycle and there are national plans such as the United Kingdom forestry standard, but we have a forestry industry that needs to plan 25, 30 or 35 years in advance. How can you ensure that the national park plans are flexible enough to deal with that?

Commercial forestry might not be a huge consideration in Sitka spruce scenarios and in the Cairngorms, but when the Government considers other areas—for example, the Galloway and Ayrshire national park—how can we be sure that the national park plans recognise the electoral cycles of local authorities and national plans such as the UK forestry standard? How can the park plans interact with those to ensure that they are flexible enough that they do not put off or divert investment away from local authorities when it comes to election and budget-setting scenarios?

Thank you.

Thank you. You just rang a bell in my head. Why does the bill refer to the “prosperity of individuals”? That raised a few eyebrows among stakeholders. What is your definition of “prosperity of individuals”?

It appeared right from the outset that the timescales for the designation of the Galloway national park were going to be incredibly difficult to meet. The Galloway National Park Association had carried out the only work that had been done on the proposal and although that was very commendable, it was considered quite some time ago, before I became an MSP. It was clear quite early on that the Government’s consultation process was deeply flawed. Almost £350,000 was spent on that failed process. Should you not have considered halting the consultation earlier, given that it was so clear, even back in December and January at the turn of this year, that the process was ultimately doomed and would be very polarising?

One issue that came out above the rest concerned the timescale for organisations to come forward in the bidding process and the capacity within areas to produce successful bids. There is no legislation at all for that, so we may need to look at addressing that by using the Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill to make amendments to the existing National Parks (Scotland) Act 2000.

In some areas, there appeared to be an overreliance on using volunteers to bring forward proposals. We heard in evidence that it took up to seven years to reach a consensus about how the national parks in Loch Lomond and the Trossachs and in the Cairngorms would be developed and that businesses, locals, individuals and non-governmental organisations came together to look at how they would see a national park being developed. However, in Galloway, that timescale was significantly shorter.

The main issue was that NatureScot played two separate and distinct roles, one of which was to make recommendations as a reporter to the consultation while the other was as the natural heritage adviser to the Scottish Government. That led to a lot of people suggesting that NatureScot was biased in its role as reporter in providing the Scottish Government with professional advice as well as trying to carry out an effective consultation. How did you weigh up that advice, considering NatureScot’s two roles? Would you consider again an amendment that would provide for an independent reporter to provide the consultation responses for future designations?

We have heard that the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee recommended that there should be an independent review of national parks to inform future decisions. We heard that suggestion throughout the consultation, and you have touched on it yourself. There was misinformation around some of the challenges that the current national parks have. Would it not be sensible to have an independent review of national parks? We know that they have annual reviews, but, effectively, the park authorities mark their own homework. Although the Government has oversight of that process, there is a lack of confidence that the reports reflect the true situation in national parks. There are still questions about whether parks deliver on their nature targets and for local communities.

Would you consider an independent review? If one had been in place prior to the Galloway national park proposal, the arguments would not have been quite so polarised and there would not have been accusations that misinformation led people to their conclusions about whether there should be a new park.

Certainly.

Sorry—to make it easy for me, as well as for you, I will just come back in.

Even if the report suggested that NatureScot acted in an unbiased way or as well as it could, from the outset there was a perception that NatureScot simply could not be unbiased. Ultimately, NatureScot promotes and has a huge role in the two existing national parks. Surely it would be more appropriate to choose a reporter with appropriate skills in conducting such inquiries or processes, through which they could set out their recommendations independently of NatureScot. That approach would have immediately taken away some of the suspicion that the process was, from the outset, going to be biased. The fact that the organisation that carried out the overview considered that NatureScot acted unbiasedly did not matter to the people who, from the start, thought that it was biased.

Would you consider having an independent reporter in the future, to remove that perceived bias?

Okay. Thank you.

The process went horribly wrong. It is not an exaggeration to say that it was a complete and utter disaster that pitched community against community. The whole process was polarised from the outset.

You said that you failed to set out how the park could be different, and that was one of the issues. Communities judged what a Galloway national park would be like by basing that on the two existing parks, but they were told that it could be, or had to be, different—we will move on to that idea in a minute. They were told that the impact on farming, forestry and renewables would be on a completely different scale from that elsewhere. Why did the Government and NatureScot fail to set out how a Galloway park could be different in practice?

There were concerns that farmers would have some of their permitted development rights taken away, that there would be stronger regulation of commercial forestry or that the national park would lead to far more low-paid jobs and higher house prices. You kept on saying, “Don’t worry about that. It’s going to be different. It’s going to be flexible.” Why did the process fail to set out how a Galloway national park could be different? People just did not understand how it could be different in practice, and that is fundamentally why we find ourselves where we are today.