Chamber and committees

As Liam McArthur mentioned, in our papers, there are obvious topics such as the 26th United Nations climate change conference of the parties—COP26—and the replacements for the common agricultural policy, trade deals and so on. It is interesting that the committee has on it three members who live on islands. I apologise if we try to take over from time to time, but I echo what Liam said about the fact that many of the issues that affect islands, and perhaps other parts of the country, are ultimately about depopulation. Therefore, there will be crossover between issues, and possibly some negotiation will have to be done with other committees about exactly where our remit lies.

If we are talking about rural or island economies, an issue that is impossible to avoid is housing. I realise that we are not the housing committee, but it is an example of an area that we cannot avoid straying into, because we will not have an economy in some parts of the country if we do not have anywhere for people to live.

We need to clarify whether we will have opportunities to take a more holistic or cross-cutting look at some of the economic issues that affect islands and other areas that are affected by depopulation, but which might stray into other committees’ remits and, as such, involve inviting them to negotiate remits.