Chamber and committees

Thank you.

Thank you for coming to see us this morning. I have some questions to help me to more fully understand the work that you do. The newest operational register, the register of persons holding a controlled interest in land, is such an important tool in allowing us to increase biodiversity, get to net zero, look out for community interests and manage deer and invasive species—all those good things. How complete was the register at its launch? What is its functional state? How useful is it as a tool for doing those things? How is it progressing and being improved?

It does. That is great.

I am interested in how things are working. I would like to better understand the process of moving a property from the sasine register to the land register. How complicated is it? What steps do you need to go through to make that happen? I completely understand the pragmatic approach in having the functional register—that makes total sense—but I would like to understand what challenges there are in moving between them.

Out of curiosity, are certain classifications of property typically more challenging, such as large estates, tenement flats or derelict land?

You are just over halfway in completing the register. Have you done the easy half—the low-hanging fruit—and is it the hard stuff that is left? I realise that what is left is land that is non-functional and less likely to transact, so it is low risk. Is completing the register not terribly urgent or difficult, with it just being ticked away at, or will completing it be really difficult? I am trying to understand the scale of the challenge.

With regard to the evidence that was used to determine those five things for the green industrial strategy, why did those things go in the prospectus, especially as two of them were not even part of the national strategy for economic transformation?

I am really interested in learning more about how the green industrial strategy was developed and the evidence for that, if that is possible.

Thank you. We have touched slightly on my next question, but I will elaborate on it. The second PFG priority is growing our economy. I have a question about what that means, because economic growth can be associated with increased inequality—letting the rich get richer—and it can be associated with trashing the environment. Both of those things will give you great GDP figures, but they do not lead to the wellbeing economy that we claim to want.

The update to the national performance framework and the new proposed national outcomes was a good bit of work—I support that. It included community engagement and it talked about public transport—the things that we need to do. How do you square the full charge for economic growth, which can cause environmental havoc and inequality, with measuring our success on the proposed national outcomes, which are based very much on a wellbeing economy? Those feel like two different things. You are measuring one thing while trying to achieve another.

I get that it is to bring us in line with the UK. I am just curious as to whether there is any current provision by those countries that would therefore be terminated or not be able to be renewed. What is meant by “certain health care services”? Maybe you could write to me about that.

I want to understand this clearly. Are any healthcare services being provided in Scotland by the countries that are being removed—Georgia, Albania, Kosovo, Moldova, North Macedonia and Ukraine? The instrument says that it removes those countries’ access to bidding for procurement of “certain health care services”. What kind of healthcare services are those?