Chamber and committees

I support David Torrance’s suggestion to refer the petitions to the health committee. In the evidence that we heard, many concerns were enunciated about particular issues that are affecting people in rural Scotland; most of Scotland is actually “rural Scotland”, in terms of geography.

As I understand it, as a constituency MSP with a partly rural constituency, some of the issues have not been raised in evidence; that is no criticism of the petitioners. For example, provision of vaccination services by local general practitioners is not available any more because of the terms of the GP contract. Many people feel that that is an unfair restriction on general practices that would like to provide vaccination services as well as other services. That is a hot issue right now; it was not raised by the petitioners, but I raise it as an example from my casework of an important nitty-gritty issue.

It was raised in evidence by the petitioners and by Rhoda Grant that travel allowances for people who must undertake operative treatment in Inverness—people who have to travel from the Western Isles, for example, who must stay in hotels and who have probably driven—are woefully inadequate and do not cover costs. I suspect that that is because of the UK tariff, because I have looked into the matter before for constituents who have had to travel from Inverness to the central belt. The level of travel allowances and travel costs are unfair. I mention that in the hope that, if the committee agrees to refer the petitions to the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, those issues could be considered, as well as the particular ones that are raised by the petitioners.

The Scottish Government has very much supported community ownership. When I was energy minister in 2014, there was a programme for government commitment that stated that we should secure the co-operation of energy developers to offer a stake in developments to communities as a matter of course.

This is seen as a very worthy objective—across the board, I think, in politics—and one where much progress was made in 2014 and 2015, when a target that we then had of achieving 500MW of locally supplied energy was met five years early. It is not always the case that Government targets are met five years early, I have noticed, minister.

There were 154 projects and £10 million of investment and things were going really well, until the UK Government decided on the abrupt cessation of renewables obligation certificates, meant that that just fell off a cliff. That is in the past now, but the response from the Government as to why we cannot mandate community ownership of energy is that the Electricity Act 1989 makes that challenging.

I wonder, minister, whether you or the energy minister have approached the UK Government to seek approval for changing the necessary legal format—including the 1989 act, if necessary—to enable the mandating of community energy having a stake? For example, if there are 10 turbines in a wind farm development, you could very often have one or two which would be owned by the community. The developer would still proceed with the development, but the community would get a stake. Back in 2015, banks such as Triodos, the Co-op and the Close Brothers—as Mr Rafferty will remember from his good work then—were very willing to lend. They even brought the major banks to the table, funnily enough, to lend money—it is an extraordinary proposition that major banks lend money, but even they became slightly willing to do so towards the end.

Therefore, because there is an income stream, there is a bankable proposition for communities. It is entirely doable, and if I have gone on for too long, it is because I think that this is one of the big unmet challenges of our time across the UK, given the commitments to renewable energy.

Is this not the time for the Scottish Government to bring the UK Government to the table to mandate community ownership of renewables developments, which would be a tremendous achievement and legacy for people throughout these islands?

Indeed. Citizens assemblies are one of a number of different ways to achieve that objective. What key lessons have been learned from them?

That would be helpful.

I have one further area of questioning that is also important and lies within the minister’s portfolio. The Scottish Government’s response seems to have been that it cannot mandate community energy but that it can use the planning system at least to encourage or require it. I have not read the draft national planning framework 4, I must confess, but I read in our papers that it makes no reference to community benefit and only one passing reference to community ownership of renewable energy projects. If I am right in assuming that we want to use planning law as a tool or compulsitor to try to deliver more community interest, whether ownership, benefit or a mixture of the two—both are desirable, although ownership is immensely preferable in the long term—why is there is scant reference to it?

I would also say in passing—I know that this is not the minister’s responsibility—that the same criticism applies to the Bute house agreement, in which, extraordinarily, there seems to be no strong emphasis on delivering that policy. I had no part in the drafting of the agreement, but one would have expected that the issue might have been a prime candidate, given the political support for community ownership from the constituent parties to the Bute house agreement.

Can the Scottish Government do more in NPF4? I will put you on the spot, minister: can we use the final version of NPF4 as the means to deliver the policy by including a much stronger reference to the need for community ownership or, if that is for whatever reason not possible, strong and major community benefit, so that communities really benefit from the natural resources that, to many people’s way of thinking, are theirs?

As the minister knows, I am keen to get out of the bubble from time to time.

Is it not easy to reach out to children in what I think you said we can no longer call “hard-to-reach areas”? At least everybody knows what “hard to reach” means. Children tend to be in schools and, if you visit schools, you can reach the hard-to-reach children there because they have to go. Is that not a simple answer to a question that has been made too complex?

We can consider our response later, but it occurs to me that one option would be to invite the minister back after he has had an opportunity to finalise the process. I entirely understand that he cannot prejudice the process and that he must properly consider the 780 consultation responses before coming to a conclusion. I also appreciate the evidence that we have heard about the planning system being able to do only so much. However, in life, things have always been difficult. As Seneca said more than 2,000 years ago,

“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.”

I leave that helpful thought with the minister.

Maybe he just found things too difficult. [Laughter.]

Good morning to all our witnesses. I am very grateful that you have, collectively, brought to Parliament the issues around health in rural Scotland, as they are very important.

I start by posing some questions to Mr Baird in respect of his petition, which urges the Scottish Government to create an agency to ensure that health boards offer fair and reasonable management of rural and remote healthcare issues.

Mr Baird, I am sure that you are familiar with the broad arrangements in Scotland, whereby there are 14 regional NHS boards and, since their establishment in 2014, 31 integration authorities. More recently, in 2020, the remote and rural general practice working group published its report on “Shaping the Future Together”. The Scottish Government accepted all the report’s recommendations, including the recommendation—perhaps the most relevant one—to commit to the development of a national centre for remote and rural healthcare in Scotland.

I mention that because it is important to give a backdrop. Following on from that, I have two questions for Mr Baird. I will put them both together.

First, how could the Scottish Government reform the way in which the NHS and social care are currently organised so as to better address the needs of remote and rural constituents and populations? Secondly, will the development of a national centre for remote and rural healthcare for Scotland help to address some of the issues that you raise in your petition?

I did not quite understand why you did not find acceptable the suggestion, which you say that you had already considered anyway, that each board should have a member whose role would be thus. Why do you not want that? Although that might not be the whole solution, I would have thought that it might be part of it.