Chamber and committees

I will make only a few opening remarks, given that we have already had quite a long session and I want to ensure that there is appropriate time for questions.

The new regulations are technical and make amendments to the Visitor Levy (Local Authority Assessment) (Scotland) Regulations 2026, providing clarity without changing the underlying policy.

The amendments do not impose any new administrative burdens on accommodation providers. They provide clarity on how penalties and interest may apply and where a local authority has made an assessment on the amount of levy due. They also make some drafting amendments that were highlighted by the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee when it considered the draft Visitor Levy (Local Authority Assessment) (Scotland) Regulations 2026.

The regulations also amend the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland Local Taxation Chamber (Rules of Procedure) Regulations 2022 to provide drafting clarity with regard to references to the “the 2024 Act” making it clear where the Visitor Levy (Scotland) Act 2024 is referred to in the instrument.

I am happy to take any questions from members and to speak to some of the technicalities. I also have my officials with me to provide support.

There are several things within my portfolio, and planning is one of them. Over the summer I have been able to engage with many people on the planning side, on both sides of fence. I can clearly see how, if we manage to get it right, we will be able to create spaces that really benefit our communities.

I had engagement with Aberdeenshire Council over the summer, and I got to meet the planning team there. It is doing excellent, innovative work that puts planning at the heart of every decision that the council is taking regarding the spaces that it is creating for communities. It is excellent work—so much so that the Highland Council and the Western Isles have requested that Aberdeenshire Council shares its experience across. Aberdeenshire has a digital system that allows a lot of the paperwork and more of the bureaucracy to be taken out. That enables staff, other people and planners to plan and to get a creative element into planning, which is exactly what we need to see at the heart of communities.

There is a lot of exciting progress that we could make within the planning reform. The First Minister has been very clear that planning is one of the six main agenda items at the round tables within the 100 days. Planning has huge potential to create the kind of Scotland that we want, certainly in experience sharing, ensuring that planners are able to plan and using digital solutions. There is an opportunity to take NPF4 and the national hub perspective to the next level in sharing best practice across.

I go back to Simon Sinek’s golden circle: I want to start with the why—why we need to get this right—then we will look at the what and the how. I want to get my colleagues around the table, along with our officials, and we will get experts in, too. That process is under way. I will not sit here and talk about the national end point, but it is absolutely top of the agenda.

You can see the strength of feeling around the country on the issue as well. I go back to the role of Government, which is to see that strength of feeling and to be able to act pragmatically and calmly to take the best approach for our communities and our people.

I can sympathise with the concern across the country about data centres at this point in time. The speed of data centres coming down the track is significant; the pace of it is quite unlike anything that we have seen before. That is the nature of the tech; it is the nature of the beast in itself. That requires full awareness and a steady, calm hand from Government in considering what is coming down the track.

In any business development and at any origination phase of a new industry, we get a vast array of applications and development staging. Moving forward into the capital, the capex, the operation and the execution, that de-risks, and we see the number decline. Is important to provide reassurance on there being 24 data centres in the pipeline: I very much doubt that 24 will get built. That is important to state. That is the same in any industry as people work their way through.

To make a second point, how often do we get the chance to step back and see a new industry come to Scotland—to be there at the start of it; to get it right for the communities that are hosting it, in the regulation that is required and in the planning procedure that is put around it to safeguard and protect those communities; and to capture the opportunity? There are very few opportunities where we get to shape things from the start. That is an important point to make. Scotland needs to be able to capture the upside and the benefit from data centres, although we need to ensure that the right data centres are in place in the right location, with the right energy source and with the right regulations behind them.

We have been very clear in trying to wrap our arms around this opportunity as the pace has been increasing over the summer. We have issued new guidance, requesting ministers to be notified if a proposal is over 50MW, as well as calling a couple in and requiring environmental impact assessments on a couple, too. We hear the concern about requiring EIAs, and that is something to which we are giving consideration.

I hear the concern about the definition of green data centres—considering EIAs, the energy provision, tie-in to the grid and district heating. Is there a possibility to ring fence and to create regulation? That is at the front of my mind and the top of the agenda, but I must ensure that I get it right because, as I said, we have a major opportunity to shape this from the start, so I am going to measure twice and cut once.

I do. Coming from Shetland, I see that autonomy works and I see that local democracy works.

There are various solutions. I thank Ms Gilruth for her introduction, which was fair and right and set out our broad agenda. The convener’s question about the three points is an excellent one. I am clear that, although Government is not a business, where possible, we should be able to set delivery targets.

To add to that point, I would say that PSR is the vehicle to strengthen local democracy. I look at Scotland today and I see a country that, through elements of the rise of the far right, racial tension and violence against women, is not entirely at peace with itself. My fear is that, as people pull back and disengage from democracy, that will only grow. As politicians, we all have a duty and a care to treat those points of tension with calm. As people withdraw, they fill the vacuum within the misinformation space online.

If we get things right in democratising our country, at the end of the five years we can have a country that is more at peace with itself and that is starting to tackle some of the large underlying forces that give me concern and keep me awake at night: violence against women, the rise of the far right and the rise of racial split within Scotland.

It all comes back to care about the communities that we live in, care for our neighbours and care for the welcoming community that we want to create and that we know Scotland is. That starts with democratising our country, and it starts right at the beginning—right at the base. That will not be done from an ivory tower here at Holyrood, so it is incredibly important that we get PSR right. My plea is for that to be cross-party work. Through PSR, every one of us sitting around this table has an opportunity to get this right and to ensure that Scotland is more at peace with itself.

The visitor levy was introduced in Edinburgh in June or July. It is very new. Other authorities across Scotland are considering introducing a levy in 2027.

This is a precautionary measure. We are only a couple of months into its implementation, so we are still very much monitoring the position.

I ask my officials to come in.

Over the summer, I held a number of engagements on planning with various communities, companies and businesses. The clear feedback is that folk think that the system has sand—it has some things that we need to sort and get right—but also that the aspects of national planning framework 4 that came in in 2019 are working and that communities and businesses are getting into the groove with that system. Therefore, there has been resolute feedback that we should not create a new planning system. I have heard that from across the board.

On what I want to see in planning, I was clear in my answer to the convener’s question on the top three things that I want to see in the next year. I want the planning timeframes to be more standardised and brought more into line across housing, major developments, business and industry, because there is a vast degree of difference across those timeframes.

We have already taken some steps on a second major reform of planning within the portfolio of Fiona Simpson, the chief planner, by merging the procedures under sections 36 and 37 of the Electricity Act 1989, so that we consider the energy system as a whole. We will explore that further. There is growing consensus and frustration across communities and developers that we are treating parts of the planning system as individual parts. Whether it is generation, transmission or storage, each development is considered individually in our planning system when, actually, it is part of an energy system. Therefore, we have already taken some steps to align that under the chief planner and take it into one team. We will consider the regulations surrounding that as we go forward.

It is for every local authority to take that forward. I will hand over to Andy Kinnarid, who will be able to give you a concise and detailed answer.

Given that this is nationally important infrastructure and that planning is devolved to Scotland, the matter spans several different Government portfolios. The matter will not be solved within my portfolio or the energy, economy or technology portfolios but we will get everyone together to ensure that we have the right energy use, placement, type of AI data centre and offtake, site, location, connectivity and proximity to the grid and that we give consideration to whether we will link it into district heating. We need to consider all those things.

The AI data strategy has been in place for a couple of years, and as I said, things are moving rapidly, not only in Scotland but right across Europe, the United States and China. We have the AI strategy at a Scottish Government level, which is a very good foundation to build on, but the pace of change even in the past 12 to 18 months is astronomical. Last week, I took the initiative to bring my colleagues together on the issue. As I said, we need to consider the energy side, the technology side, what type of companies we use and how we create those centres in the right way from the beginning.

I am very sympathetic to the calls for a moratorium and to the fact that people want an immediate solution on the matter. However, immediate solutions do not get it right in the long term because that is just kicking the can down the road—we need to be measuring twice and cutting once, as my grandad used to tell me. We are tackling it with urgency, but we also need to ensure that we get it right for the long term. AI is not going anywhere, so we need to ensure that Scotland is open to it as well as ensuring it is the right type of tech for our communities, our place and our energy use.