Chamber and committees

I remind people who are not at the meeting that that letter came in quite late last night. It will be published on the website so that people can see it.

The next question is from Monica Lennon.

I am totally confused, then, about how the scheme works, if we do not know what we are doing at the outset.

Sorry, but hold on. I apologise to Jackie Dunbar for jumping in on her question.

Circularity Scotland is running the scheme. If somebody rings your office, as people have been advised to do to get the information that they need to run the scheme, and the answer is to ring SEPA or whoever else you suggested, that is not advice—it is passing the buck. I am sorry, but I am confused. Help me, please.

That will save me making an FOI request. I had better just check to make sure that my local authority is on there.

I do not think that he is going just yet.

Do you publish—

Good morning. My question is based around the fact that I hear of more and more people who write letters asking for answers and do not get a timely or full response, so they resort to FOIs because that seems to be the only method that gets a timely response. To be frank, I will admit that there are two organisations in the region that I represent that I have given up writing questions to. I just FOI them as a matter of course, which costs them money.

Of the FOIs that you look at, are you happy that the responses that you have seen are fulsome and open rather than closed and focused on an issue that has not been asked about?

The final part of my question is that I think that I have some FOI requests of one organisation that have been outstanding for four and a half months. It does not surprise me that three months is standard. Do you know which organisations across Scotland are performing badly? I am not asking you to name and shame them, but is there a view of who is not performing as well as they should be? Would there be some merit in publishing a league table of the worst offenders, to try to get them to lift their standards? I think that there might be some merit in that.

The next item on our agenda is an evidence session as part of our inquiry into Scotland’s electricity infrastructure and whether it is an inhibitor or enabler of our energy ambitions. This is a new inquiry, the aim of which is to scrutinise what electricity infrastructure will be needed to realise the ambitions that are set out in the Scottish Government’s new draft energy strategy and just transition plan. The inquiry will be a short one that will lead to a report to the Scottish Government as it finalises its strategy.

Today, we will hold the first evidence sessions in the inquiry with two panels that comprise representatives of a wide range of interests in energy. I am pleased to welcome the first panel: Stuart Haszeldine is professor of carbon capture and storage at the University of Edinburgh; Clare Lavelle is director of energy and advisory leader north at Arup; Emily Rice is the Scotland policy analyst at Solar Energy UK; and Tom Quinn is head of analysis and insights at Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult. Thank you for accepting our invitations to be here today.

Before we move to questions, I remind members and people who are listening that, as a farmer and a landowner, I have electricity transmission lines across my farm in the form of 11kV lines, which are the small ones, and 33kV ring main lines, which are the bigger ones, and I am in negotiation for a 132kV power line to go through the farm. All those will generate some income at some stage for me.

I want there to be no doubt that I have some interests. I will make that declaration as and when it is appropriate to do so. I do not believe that that prevents me from doing my job as convener.

The first questions are from Liam Kerr.

Yes.