Chamber and committees

I turn to the impact on high streets of the issues that we have been talking about. There are no cities in my region yet, but there are lots of market towns, including Galashiels, Lanark, Dumfries, Stranraer, Ayr and Kilmarnock. They are all suffering from the same thing—a massive number of empty shops. Obviously, digital shopping accelerated quite significantly during the pandemic. What assessment has been made of the extent to which that has continued as lockdown measures have been lifted? Has it eased off? What are the implications for retail, logistics and infrastructure of that trend? If you have other policy initiatives to support our town centres that you have not touched on already, it would be good to hear what they are.

I will kick off with Ewan MacDonald-Russell because I appreciate that he will have a big list of policy initiatives that he wants to give the committee.

Thank you. I put the same question to John Lee.

Before I bring in John Lee and Colin Smith, I want to touch on the supply-chain issues. You mentioned earlier that we might not be able to get things for our Christmas dinner that we got in the past, because of shortages. Is there evidence of that so far? Do people fear that they cannot get products on the high street—the right size, the right item or some other aspect—and are just saying, “I’m not going to do this: I’ll order online”, because they will get what they want by doing so?

That is a very useful and interesting point. It is easy to park in an out-of-town development, but not in front of a convenience store.

I put the same question to Colin Smith.

Someone once described Dumfries town centre to me as being a place where people used to go to the shops and maybe have a coffee, but now they go for a coffee and might go to the shops. Obviously, hospitality has taken a bigger chunk of our high streets. is the retail footprint in our high streets too big? Do we need to accept that the impact of digital shopping means that we reduce the retail footprint in our town centres?

I will follow up the points that Fiona Hyslop made.

The vast majority of freight is transported by road, and that is likely to continue. In the example that we have just been talking about—the transportation of goods from Scotland to Northern Ireland—there are no rail links at all from Cairnryan ferry port and none from the south to Stranraer, which is the nearest town. There is only a winding track from Glasgow.

The idea of a fixed link between Scotland and Northern Ireland has rightly been buried in Beaufort’s dyke in the Irish Sea. The reality is that no one ever complains about the ferries to Northern Ireland; the problem is the condition of the roads to get to the ferry ports in the first place—the A75 and the A77.

My first question is to Richard Ballantyne. When it comes to the transportation of goods from Scotland to Ireland, how reasonable is the option of rail freight? Do we just need to be realistic and accept that, without improvements to the A75 and the A77, a key Scottish ferry port will continue to lose business to Heysham, Fleetwood, Liverpool and Holyhead when it comes to transporting goods to Ireland?

I think that the figure that you used in your evidence to the review was that it would be £1 billion for the roads. I would take that any day for improvements in the south-west.

I will move on to another issue that is still relevant to trade between Scotland and Northern Ireland, particularly as the gateway to the Republic of Ireland, but that also has implications for trade with the rest of the EU. It is about possible customs changes from 1 January 2022. Some of the plans have been postponed until possibly the middle of next year, but others will go ahead. How significant will the impact of those changes be and how ready is Scotland to manage them? Do the witnesses have any comments on the unique challenges that we have regarding trade between Scotland and Northern Ireland?

I put the question to Robert Windsor first, as the British International Freight Association has published material on the customs changes that will take place in January 2022.

That is interesting. I put the same question to Bryan Hepburn of DFDS. Robert Windsor has just said that he has been working in this business for 45 years and even so he cannot get his head round some of the challenges. In your experience, are businesses such as yours ready for the possible changes that will come in on 1 January?

I put the same question to Kiran Fernandes. I appreciate that your research was focused on the impact of Covid—

Northern Ireland is a domestic market but, for obvious reasons, there are problems there. Have you experienced problems when it comes to exporting domestic products from Scotland to Northern Ireland?