Chamber and committees

We may have forgiven you for that by this time.

I have to say that the communications that I get from Ofgem are often not what I would expect.

I need to ask a question about some of the experiences that my constituents have with fixed tariffs—these are folks who cannot change tariffs because they have storage heating. In reference to RTS, I have had a text again this morning about my own meters, but no real explanations are given to folk for why these things need to take place.

On that communication aspect—communication is king, or queen—do you think that Ofgem does the business of ensuring that the energy companies communicate well? Is part of the problem that Ofgem cannot really criticise the energy companies because it does not communicate very well itself?

I have a final and very brief question that is Scotland-centric, because you have led me down that path. We have seen reports in the past few days that smart meters do not work as well in Scotland as they do elsewhere. How many complaints have you had about that and what are you doing with Ofgem and others to get that right for consumers?

I look forward to receiving the correspondence, as will the committee, but that gives us a good flavour of the challenges. I have many more questions, but I will defer to Ms Thomson.

I want to move off the pre-payment meter issue and on to energy markets more generally. From my perspective, part of the issue is down to the cost of living crisis. I have seen much more in my mailbag and in my email inbox about difficulties with energy suppliers. That often leads to a wee missive to Ofgem, but the responses are often pretty grim and not very helpful, to say the least. Do you think that Ofgem serves the public well?

Thank you. That is very clear.

Thank you, convener. One of the priority criteria for the role is stakeholder engagement and community empowerment. Dr MacLeod has given some commentary about stakeholder engagement, so I would like to hear from Dr Beattie and Mr Black on how they see community empowerment as part of the role.

As we have been sitting here this morning, there has been some commentary that shows that, first of all, some people are not listening and some do not want to empower people. John McTernan, a former Labour political adviser, said this morning:

“we don’t need the small farmers”,

which shows me that he has not been listening at all. It would therefore be useful to hear about the community empowerment aspect with commentary about stakeholder engagement from Dr Beattie and Mr Black. Mr Black could go first.

I want to follow up on something else that you said, Dr MacLeod, before we come to Dr Beattie. You mentioned Aberdeen, which is always guaranteed to get you in my good books. However, my constituency, Aberdeen Central, is the only constituency in the north-east of Scotland that does not have a farm in it. You expressed the importance of views about land from an urban perspective as well as a rural one. How do we help folk from urban areas to understand the rural aspects? How do we get folk in rural areas to understand the urban aspects of land? How do you see your role there?

Quite often, such instruments do not make much sense to the layman or woman. People might be watching this at home and listening to the complexity of your opening statement, Deputy First Minister, and of Mr Matheson’s questions and the answers to them, and thinking, “What the hell is going on here?” We need to tease out some of the key elements.

This was a power that we had before, which was taken away and which we are getting back. One of the key things that you said in your opening statement, which I will ask about again, was that our intention is to retain the “well-understood”—your term—environmental impact assessments, and that if there is to be any change and a move to EORs, that would require a huge amount of consultation. Is that fair to say?

You talked about listening and lived experience. How do we move forward from not only listening to people and taking their views to also empowering them to do more to help shape their future?