If I can. Gail Ross asked about sustainable forest management and section 9(1). For me, sustainable forest management is a balanced process—it is how you produce an outcome and, because you have engaged with economic, social and environmental interests, the outcome is intended to be what is appropriate for local circumstances. It is a flexible mechanism. There is a lot of guidance to help you to achieve that outcome and outline what it means for forestry. Where sustainable forest management is referred to, we are quite relaxed.
To pick up on Ian Thomas’s point, section 9(3) refers to land as managed by the Scottish ministers. That section is in part 3, and if part 3 was designed to tie up Confor staff for hours trying to understand what it means, Scottish Government officials have been incredibly successful. We think that we have got our heads round it, but that is mainly because we have read the submissions and asked questions—we think that we are 95 per cent of the way there.
We have concerns about section 9(3). At the moment, we would look at public forestry land, which is the national forest estate plus land that is brought in, as being primarily there for forestry and managed for sustainable forestry purposes. Simon Hodge, who runs the national forest estate, would like to be able to use that land for wider purposes than just forestry. That is understood. We recognise that 200,000 hectares of the national forest estate is not covered in trees—there is 30,000 hectares of actively managed agricultural land—so it makes sense to say that that land can be managed for a purpose other than sustainable forest management.
However, the way in which section 9(3) is drafted implies that the forest land need not be managed for sustainable forest management. When Carole Barker-Munro gave evidence on 7 June, she said that the land could be managed for sustainable forest management or for sustainable development, which does not differentiate between land that has trees on it—which we would call forestry—or land adjacent to that forest, and land that is nothing to do with forest. Therefore, somebody could manage that forest for sustainable development purposes rather than sustainable forest management purposes.
In the past, huge areas of forest on the public estate were cleared for wind farms. Section 9(3) appears to give the Scottish ministers, or whoever manages the national forest estate, the potential to say, “I can earn more money by doing all these things other than having trees, so, over time, I’m going to clear all the trees away.” It is that lack of clarity or a safety net that concerns us.