Chamber and committees

Thank you. I am sorry for having interrupted you.

I suppose that I know the answer to this question, but why would a landowner not wish to implement that best practice, and what can we do to encourage them? For example, I was surprised to hear that the proposal for a bit of community woodland was refused. Can that sort of thing be addressed through stronger planning approaches such as community benefit clauses? How do we encourage those who do not wish to do the best, to do the best? I agree that commercial forestry is important to our economy, but we have to ensure that it does not come at too high a cost.

This is an important matter. Pam Duncan-Glancy’s response shows that it warrants a full investigation, and I wonder whether a subject committee could take on the petition. I do not know which would be the best committee for that—perhaps the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee or the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee—but it would be helpful for a committee of this Parliament to investigate the matter properly and fully.

I was interested to read a little bit about that. You did something about the broken taps in your school—could you tell the committee about that?

Who did you go to for help?

I heard you on Radio Scotland this morning—you did very well. You sounded less nervous than some of my colleagues sound sometimes—you did a really good job.

My questions were to be on the impact of commercial forestry, but we have covered that quite extensively. Speaking of the issues that need to be addressed, are you in a position to expand a bit more on what exactly needs to happen and what the industry should be doing?

And that grant is available to landowners for improvements. How is its availability publicised?

In a future evidence session, we will discuss a number of petitions on healthcare in Caithness. I suggest that we invite the petitioner to join us at that meeting and that we examine all the petitions in that evidence session. Although they are all important individually and they are distinct, they are all part of the same theme and it would be helpful to speak to everyone together.

I am flying blind here at home—I am sorry.

My colleague Natalie Don intends to introduce a member’s bill on the issue. Are the petitioners able to give the committee an update on their knowledge of it, their views on its scope and whether it addresses what they want to do?