Chamber and committees

That is reassuring.

We can all agree that part 2 of the bill causes most concern, and my amendments 118 and 119 are designed to improve it.

My amendment 118 aims to ensure that there is a balance between climate and nature targets. My amendment would delete the words

“(including, in particular, the net zero emissions target set by section A1 of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009)”.

Those words are unnecessary, because part 2 of the bill gives ministers wide powers to amend environmental law to facilitate progress towards any statutory target. As drafted, the bill would allow changes in support of unrelated targets—such as those related to energy, waste and transport—that risk weakening nature protection.

Specifically referring to climate targets risks creating a hierarchy in which nature protections are weakened in order to facilitate energy infrastructure and other decarbonisation efforts. Powers under part 2 should support nature recovery as well as climate targets and ensure that one is not pursued at the other’s expense. My amendment would remove the implication that climate targets have priority over nature recovery targets.

My amendment 119 would delete section 3(c), which provides a purpose that is intended to ensure consistency and compatibility with other domestic and international legal regimes. That purpose is too broad, it is unclear under which circumstances such a power would be necessary, and it has the potential to be misused.

I would like to make an intervention before you do, because we all have real concerns about part 2.

We are trying to amend part 2 in order to strengthen it and make it less open to abuse, but we will need to take stock between stages 2 and 3. If we do not amend that part at stage 2, there will be the option to remove it at stage 3. Would the cabinet secretary be open to having discussions about concerns that might arise if we do not think that the amendments made at stage 2 actually work?

I am sorry, but I am getting a wee bit concerned now. I thought that there would still be a derogation if something went wrong—for example, if there was an issue with a ferry for a larger herd—simply because that was the explanation that we were given when this provision first came out. I understood that people could apply for a derogation if their bull was sterile or the ferry did not run at the right time, for example. Are you saying that, for people who find themselves in a situation in which something totally unplanned happens, the only provision for them is a claim for only 10 calves?

We welcome the derogations with the calving interval conditionality, but did you consider further derogations for herds with just one bull, those that are dependent on the crofting cattle improvement scheme, or those on islands that are dependent on weather and ferries to get bulls across?

It would be good to get a feel for what is happening, because access to services is all tied together. If you are in a rural area, you seem to be at the end of the line. You get fewer transport improvements. For instance, train journeys between Inverness and Wick are increasing rather than decreasing in duration. The rest of the world is getting faster rail services but they are getting slower ones. The road quality is really poor, yet people are expected to travel in these circumstances. I heard of the case of a woman who had a caesarean section in Inverness and was discharged two days later to go on a four-and-a-half-hour train journey, carrying her baby on her own. That does not feel person centred. If someone was looking at her overall care, that should not have happened, yet we hear such stories every day. Transport infrastructure is important, as is retaining staff.

Digital connectivity is another issue. You mentioned Near Me, which is a rural solution that was rolled out during Covid for the whole country. It does not seem to be working because, yesterday, when I was driving, I heard on a radio phone-in that there was a cancer patient in Caithness who drove 100 miles to Inverness for a Near Me appointment with a consultant located further south. That seems pointless. Why did he have to drive 100 miles to have a Near Me appointment with somebody who was not there? There is disjointedness between what you say and what is happening on the ground for people. Across portfolios, what responses are you getting from your colleagues about how they are going to put that right, specifically for rural areas?

I will move on to housing, which is another big issue that was highlighted at our round-table session. Transport and housing are the two big issues in getting people into rural areas, and they are important in relation to your responsibility for addressing depopulation.

There is a total lack of affordable housing in rural areas. Affordable houses are often built in the wrong place, and planning restrictions often make housing much more expensive to build than in other areas. For instance, you need streetlights and pavements, even though you might not have other streetlights or pavements to join up with. That adds costs, even though it is not really fitting for rural areas. Is any work on-going to make housing more affordable? That adds to the cost of building. Obviously, housing associations and councils have limited resources, so they will avoid incurring those kinds of costs. Is any work going on to look at how to build affordable housing in rural areas in a cost-effective and accessible way?

It is about childminding. In Stornoway and Kirkwall, large childminders could not make it work, so they pulled out of the industry, leaving people in difficulties. We hear of smaller childminders who look after one or two children at home, but the hoops that they have to jump through make it impossible, so they are leaving the market as well. Is there on-going work to improve that?

Thank you.

On a similar theme, minister, you said that you spoke about maternity in your discussions with the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care. Did you discuss the issues in Caithness, which are really difficult for local people? There are few natural births now, because people are going to Inverness to be induced or for caesarean sections and the like. Obviously, you did not come up with solutions or we would have heard about that, so could you give a flavour of your discussions and the areas that you are looking at to improve the issue for women in Caithness?