Chamber and committees

You are talking about a different SI, Jim.

The SI in front of us was sent to the Scottish Parliament on 7 December with the intent of its being laid in Westminster on 16 December. We can write to the Scottish Government to ask why the Parliament was notified of it only on 7 December. When the Scottish Government got the SI from the UK Government is unclear to me at the moment. That is my understanding.

That is fine. Pat Snowdon would like to come in.

I am sorry, but Jim Fairlie wants to intervene.

I have a supplementary question. Traditionally, and at the moment, farmers are carbon farmers, nature farmers, food farmers, cultural farmers, soil farmers and tech farmers all at the same time—they have to have regard to all those matters. Some pay more regard to food production than to nature; for others, it is the other way round. In the future, will that broad spectrum of responsibilities be spread as they are now, with farmers taking responsibility, to varying degrees, for all aspects of land management, or will regional land use partnerships and so on specify areas that should focus on food production or on protecting crested newts, for example? How do you see everything coming together to deliver the biodiversity and climate change recovery that we need?

Over the past few weeks, the damage that has been done by storms has been very clear. Thousands of hectares of trees have been flattened. Some argue that those trees have been planted in the wrong place—for example, on good farmland.

How should we properly account for natural capital, given that we are seeing what is potentially a bit of a land grab, in that, in order to do a bit of greenwashing, big commercial companies are buying land, some of which is of very high value in terms of agricultural production, and planting trees? Do we need to rapidly have a baseline and look again at how we classify land to ensure that some of our best agricultural land is not turned into forestry? Is that part of what we need to do to assess our natural capital?

You talk about not pausing, but we are already seeing extortionate prices for agricultural land that would normally be passed on to the next generation of farmers or new entrants—it is being snapped up for planting. We have also heard about wind farms potentially being put on peatland. You say that we should not pause, but do we need to do more work to ensure that we do not go too far down the road and then have 25,000 hectares of inappropriate planting of Sitka spruce and so on? Maybe “pause” is not the right word, but do we need to go back and ensure that we are doing the right thing?

Dr Snowdon, we often hear the phrase “the right tree in the right place”. How is Scottish Forestry ensuring that we are doing far more than that and looking at the long-term consequences of actions that we take now?

Thank you. Jim Fairlie has a supplementary question.

I call Jenni Minto.

That brings us to the end of the session. I thank Professor Sir Dieter Helm for his thought-provoking answers and for giving us his valuable time. His contribution is very much appreciated. I am pleased that we ended on that optimistic call for action.

We will suspend the meeting to allow for a changeover of panellists.