Chamber and committees

Thank you. As the motion has been moved, I must put the question. The question is, that motion S6M-07603 be agreed to. Are we agreed?

Members: No.

I do not disagree with you. I understand that some churches own considerable amounts of land and that it is sometimes difficult to find out the extent of the land ownership. That is important. Did you consider allowing churches to make one entry for the whole church, or do churches still have to do that individually as a diocese or a grouping within a region?

Thank you for putting that on record. I am sure that all MSPs around the table have had representations on that from various people. That was extremely helpful.

I think that Mark Ruskell has a question.

That was a bit of a drift on to the bill that we may see later in this session. The deputy convener has a question.

I would like to clarify something, minister. Land ownership and restrictions and burdens on land can sometimes be difficult to identify. That is never more the case, I would suggest, than it is with church lands, bits of which may have been given away or taken by the church over a period of many generations. Is your message to them, “Fill this in as best you can,” and, as long as they make what is, as far as they are concerned, an honest declaration, they will be doing what you require and will not be held accountable if it turns out, at a later date, that there are some minor inaccuracies?

Does freight move on separate ferries? Is that what you are saying?

That is very helpful.

The next questions are from the deputy convener, Fiona Hyslop.

You referred to fairly long-term contracts of eight years. There might be changes in eight years. How detailed are the contracts? If I was an operator and I wanted to change the time of a sailing from 8 o’clock in the morning to 8.30, because that made more sense and there was more demand for that, would that be a bureaucratic nightmare or is there flexibility in the contracts to allow operators to respond quickly to changing demand?

That is very helpful—thank you for that. Mark Ruskell has some questions.

I want to push you a wee bit on that. You are the people who make the ferries work and deliver the services that we want, but you are not the people who specify what those ferries should look like. That is done by CMAL and Transport Scotland, as demonstrated in the construction and design of 801 and 802.

If you give somebody a tool to use and it is the wrong tool, they will never make it work. They will just say, “You have given us the wrong tool”. What I do not understand—this is what the deputy convener was asking about—is how CMAL, CalMac and Serco are all parts of a wheel, but one is driving the other and the person who is driving the other is not the person who is having to make it work. Is that a bad assumption?