Chamber and committees

David Rodger, Aberdeenshire has already been mentioned. Do you have anything to add on your local experience of working with members in LDPs and councils?

Finally, on the national public energy agency, it is still very early days, but one might imagine that, with the development of LHEES and the co-ordination and support that will be needed across the public and private sectors, it will have a role to play in that respect. Have there been any early indications of or discussions about the role that the agency will play? Morag, do you want to take that question?

We have taken evidence on the national planning framework, and there is a major tilt towards the climate and nature emergencies at that high level. I am thinking about how that translates into local development plans, which already exist and will go through a period of review and updating. How fit for purpose are the 32 local development plans across Scotland? Is there enough space and enough policy within those plans to facilitate 12GW of onshore wind or 4GW of solar energy? Are the plans fit for purpose? Is there a gap between what NPF4 says and what is actually in the 32 LDPs?

I ask Morag Watson to start. If you have examples of LDPs that are particularly facilitative of renewable energy, or of ones on which you think there is not enough action, that would be useful.

I will ask about two aspects of the bill that are a bit contentious. One is about the water environment: in effect, the controlled activities regulations are not being applied through the bill, which seems a bit odd. Surely there are not lots of rivers passing through what is quite a small site. The other aspect that I want to ask about is building standards. Are there any risks to the environment or to building users as a result of not adopting those regulations through the bill?

I presume that these would be fairly simple matters, given the size of the site and the nature of the project. For example, would the requirement for the project developer to speak to SEPA really require a huge amount of work to be done?

I want to pick up on the final topic, because I have been thinking about Professor Nicola McEwen’s comments about there being an age of former glory in relation to use of the Sewel convention, obviously in very different political times and, as Chris McCorkindale has said, perhaps at a time when it was not being stress tested quite so much.

I am interested in parliamentary scrutiny and in getting thoughts from around the table about whether there is more parliamentary scrutiny now or whether there was more in the past and less today, and about what the opportunities for parliamentary scrutiny might be in future. I see that Professor Page is nodding—you have invited yourself to make the first comment.

That is very useful.

You have all spoken about LHEES a fair bit, and I have a couple of follow-up questions on those. We are now passing regulations requiring councils to produce their strategies and delivery plans by the end of 2023. Is everything in place to enable that to happen? Do you have concerns?

I would also like to ask about the scope of LHEES and the inclusion of public and commercial buildings in the mix. Earlier, you said that every building should be included, but does that include historic buildings and public and commercial buildings? Can we get all the heat sources linked into those strategies? With commercial heat sources, could people say, “No thanks—we’re not interested in this”? Could people resist connection to district heating or whatever?

I ask for your final reflections on LHEES and where we might be going in that respect.

On the possibility of a windfall tax, it now looks as though it is a matter of when rather than if. What would your priorities be for spending that money? Would they include, say, a deficit fund or funding for front-line energy efficiency advice? How should any reinvestment in this area be deployed in order to benefit people who are struggling?

As you will be aware, Greg Hands came before the committee last week, and he gave quite wide-ranging evidence on all sorts of things, including our nuclear energy. He described the Scottish Government’s opposition to nuclear as “ideological”. How do you respond to that? Is there a role for nuclear in reducing energy bills?