Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Official Report 659KB pdf

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Draft Budget Scrutiny 2017-18

The fourth item on the agenda is the committee’s first evidence session on the Scottish Government’s forthcoming draft budget 2017-18. Today, we will focus on forestry and I welcome Stuart Goodall, chief executive of Confor; Jon Hollingdale, chief executive of the Community Woodlands Association; Willie McGhee, co-ordinator of the forest policy group; and Rodney Shearer, managing director of Alba Trees, which is part of Buccleuch Estates. I welcome the witnesses to the meeting and invite them to give a brief outline of their respective roles and of the organisations that they represent. Without being rude, I ask that the witnesses are as brief as possible so that we can get into our questions.

Confor is the principal representative body for the forestry and wood processing sector. We operate across the United Kingdom and we are based in Scotland. We have 1,600 members—about half of whom are based in Scotland—representing the full range of the supply chain in the forestry and wood processing sector. I describe Confor as a broad church—we have everything from environmental non-governmental organisations and large forestry businesses to solo traders as members.

We operate on the basis of appointing members to a board and the board agreeing policy. It is my responsibility to represent that policy in places such as this. The last thing to point out is that—through direct membership and indirect membership via agents and the businesses that work in the sector—we represent the overwhelming majority of the private forestry sector in Scotland.

I am the chief executive officer of the Community Woodlands Association. We are a membership organisation that was established in 2003 by community woodland groups around Scotland, some of which are very much older than we are. We have 175 members from locations that range from the middle of Edinburgh and Glasgow right out to the Western Isles and the very north of Scotland. We represent a great diversity of woodland communities and activities from small woods on the edge of town that focus on recreation to large commercial forest operations—particularly in the north and west—that operate as social enterprises. Those operations manage forests commercially, but reinvest the profits for social benefit, such as creating housing, setting up renewables schemes and creating a lot of jobs.

The forest policy group is an independent think tank. We produce research on local community forestry, on deer, and on the types of woodland that Scotland has and what it might need. We are very interested in local economies and in a diverse woodland portfolio for Scotland. Whereas Stuart Goodall badges a lot of forestry, we represent the opinions of the small and medium-sized operators and owners.

I am the managing director of Alba Trees, which is the largest container-tree nursery in Great Britain. We produce about 40 per cent of all the container trees in the country and we produce about 140 different species, spread over commercial forestry and native-style forestry.

We would like to ask a series of questions. I will look to each of you to bring you in so, if you do not want to be called to answer, do not catch my eye and I will be happy to pass you by. Some people will want to give fuller answers and there might be areas on which you do not want to answer.

Following up on the concerns expressed by the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee in the previous session, does the panel think that, in the face of real-terms budget reductions, Forestry Commission Scotland can continue to deliver all its requirements and responsibilities? Have you seen any impacts of those reductions?

It is quite clear that, if the Forestry Commission is going to deliver the objectives that the Scottish Government has set, the budget will be insufficient. Just to pick up a specific point, on the planting side there is a projected budget of £36 million under the forestry grant scheme, which is not just planting, though the bulk of it—£30 million—is planting. If we look at the average rate of grant that is being paid out, we calculate that it would require £45 million per annum in total to achieve the Scottish Government’s 10,000 hectare a year target.

The previous Government’s objective was to achieve 100,000 hectares by 2022, which was agreed with the agricultural community, the forestry community more generally and the Government at the time. We are falling behind achieving that objective. In order to achieve it, we would have to plant 13,000 hectares a year, which would require an overall budget, under the forestry grant headline, of £59 million. In that one area alone, with the current budget, we will not be able to deliver the current Government target, or what we would see as the required target, over the 10-year period.

Convener, did you mean Forestry Commission Scotland or Forestry Commission Scotland and Forest Enterprise Scotland?

It is always difficult to separate the requirements. We are trying to identify whether the Government’s forestry planting targets can be met within the budget that has been allowed, which I think is what Stuart Goodall picked up on.

As someone who bought land in the Borders in September 2015, applied for a grant and got the grant through in three months—that was in the teeth of a scheduled ancient monument and some environmental concerns—one of my concerns is that the commission is under pressure because of staffing. We heard the cabinet secretary doing a marvellous job of obfuscation in giving financial figures for Government departments. It is absorbed, I think. Bob McIntosh started cutting posts and funding in the Forestry Commission in preparation for austerity. The forest policy group would like the Forestry Commission and Forest Enterprise Scotland to be better resourced, not only to do things such as restocking in Forest Enterprise but to enable. Forestry Commission Scotland has always been an enabler, which means that it is able to give advice and guidance and assist agents. The time and resources that it has at the moment are not up to that. I would agree with Stuart Goodall’s point about the absolute money issue, but the organisation itself needs to be well resourced.

I would endorse those two points. A lot of our members have remarked on the apparent stress among Forestry Commission staff. People are being asked to do more with fewer resources.

There is enough will in the private industry to meet the planting target of approximately 10,000 hectares a year. At the moment, options for more than 10,000 hectares have been submitted to the scheme, and inquiries for a further 11,000 have been submitted to the Forestry Commission. The biggest problem that the Forestry Commission has right now is that 5,900 hectares has been approved, which has taken £27 million of the money. There is absolutely no way that the budget will get up to 10,000 hectares.

First, we needed a will within the private industry to plant that number of trees, and I would say that we have that. The second question, about whether there is enough money, can be set by whoever sets budgets.

11:00  

The practical detail comes after that. Because of the lack of continuity in planting in the past few years, we have been losing employees from the forestry industry. The one thing that our industry needs is continuity so that we can retrain people and bring them back in. The question about whether we have the labour to plant 10,000 trees would be answered by the private industry, if we had continuity.

The next question is whether there are enough trees. I am in one of six major nurseries in Scotland. We are trying to plan the production of trees two or three years in advance of any schemes being approved. It is becoming increasingly difficult to have the confidence to plan trees for the future. We have just gone through a year in which the nurseries in Scotland have destroyed approximately 3 million trees. We cannot have another year like that.

Thank you for that. It sort of leads us into the next question, or perhaps another question further down the line. The point is that staff and budgets are under pressure and we are not going to achieve the planting target. That seems to be the general response from all the witnesses.

John Finnie is next.

I would like to hear the panel’s views on Forest Enterprise’s approach to the acquisition and sale of land. We were told in 2014 that it could be used to encourage new entrants into forestry. How has that panned out?

I will start the ball rolling on that one. Forest Enterprise is charged within the repositioning programme to sell, to raise money, and to buy bare land, ostensibly to meet climate change targets. In the last iteration, it was buying farms, which was relatively contentious, and there were new entrants as in young tenant farmers in the lower lying land and forestry happening in the uplands or outby land.

The forest policy group lobbied quite hard for some mechanism whereby you could have new forest owners, tenants or entrants. I do not think that that has been achieved. It can be achieved, but we do not know what the target is in the repositioning programme that the cabinet secretary is considering—perhaps some of you do—but 12,000 to 36,000 hectares of public forest estate is to be sold off in the next four years to raise money to reclaim the sites of mines that were left by bankrupt coal mining companies. That is the message that we have been getting. We do not think that that is a good use of land. It could be better used in productive forestry, native woodland or commercial forestry, and to encourage new entrants.

There is an opportunity. Forest Enterprise is a flexible, listening and adaptable organisation. If it was instructed by the Government to encourage new entrants, it would do that.

As Willie McGhee said, repositioning has been going on for some time. We have been sympathetic to the principle of repositioning. The national forest estate in Scotland emerged out of the 20th century and the objectives of the 20th century for what publicly-owned forests should be seeking to deliver, which was primarily timber production. If we fast-forward to the 21st century, it appears to make sense to say that a national forest estate is there to deliver a wider range of benefits, including stimulating the opportunity for new entrants, whether into forestry or farming.

We are sympathetic to that approach, and there are opportunities, including in farming, to provide for new entrants. The key thing for us is that when we are going through a process of repositioning, the forests that are sold are primarily productive. Forests that are being sold are not those on the edge of towns that are important for local access but those that are primarily for producing wood.

The sector will face the really difficult issue of a declining availability of wood in 20, 30 or 40 years’ time. That will hit rural businesses in the forestry sector very hard. We are nervous that if we go down a repositioning programme route and sell productive forests that are then lost—cleared and not managed—it will mean that we will drain the supply of wood available. A significant component of the new planting that we are putting in place is to tackle that future lack of availability. If we are not mindful of what happens with the forests that we sell, we will make it even harder to achieve our new planting targets.

We support the principle; we believe that there are opportunities for it to provide for new entrants and to invest in new woodland creation. It could happen in different ways, and we will need to see what comes out of it, as Willie McGhee has said. Our plea is that the woodland that is sold should not be lost. An example of how it should be sold is in north-west Mull, where the community sector manages the forest, supports rural jobs and brings wood into the basket of Scotland’s forestry resource. That is the kind of approach that we would like to see.

We are, likewise, very supportive of the principle, particularly where the receipts are retained within forestry for forestry purposes—that was the critical step forward in 2005—rather than the receipts just disappearing back to the UK Treasury. That is very important.

Disposal has been an important trigger for community acquisition. Over the past decade, about 4,000 hectares of disposals, which is 6 or 7 per cent of the total, has gone into community hands. As part of the process, community bodies are required to demonstrate their plans for future management. Very often, those plans are for more intensive management, which bring woods into management and do more than Forest Enterprise would have been able to do.

An interesting step would be to place some of those requirements on all purchasers. At the moment, if the forest goes to community hands, there is a requirement to have an appropriate management plan and a commitment from the community to deliver certain public benefits. The remainder, which is sold to the private sector, has no such requirement. Of course, some of the forests that are sold to the private sector are managed productively—I am not making the case that all of them are not. However, there is a risk that some will be lost. Introducing requirements for private sector purchasers would be an interesting step.

What use has the income from sales been put to? Has that use been appropriate, or do the witnesses have other suggestions?

I have very strong opinions. [Laughter.] Previously, I believe that what happened—I am looking at my learned colleagues—is that when Forest Enterprise disposed of 1,000 hectares on the west coast of Scotland and bought a 200-hectare farm in Fife, the receipts had to cover all the operations. The unit cost, or hectarage cost, was higher for buying agricultural land and the establishment of the forest had to be funded from the receipts.

It is now proposed that we sell rural forests that may be of benefit to rural communities if they can get their hands on them—that is great—but the receipts will go into greening or reclaiming abandoned industrial land such as sites in central Scotland or Ayrshire that were abandoned by the likes of Scottish Coal, or others who went down the tubes and left derelict sites. Those of us who have worked in the central belt know that the unit costs are staggering. To a forester, a piece of land in central Scotland might be £20,000 per hectare; on the side of a hill in Caithness or the Borders, it might be £2,000. The Government is signing up—we think—to do something that is quite barking.

Who will benefit from the greening, as you describe it, of those sites that were shamelessly abandoned by some of those coal companies? Would they view it as barking?

If there were community benefits and communities adjacent to the sites were seen to benefit, I would not have a problem with that. However, many of the sites, such as in Alloa, are not adjacent to communities—they might be more than 2 or 3 miles from a community. It is not entirely obvious why the Government would pick up the tab for somebody else’s failure in order to do something that might not benefit the community. I think that the community should be consulted on how it would want the money to be spent.

I will bring in Jon Hollingdale in a moment, because I know that he wants to follow up on this. Are you suggesting that the money will achieve greening but that it will not achieve commercial timber?

It will not achieve community buy-in either. The situation was the same with the money for the buying of farms, which was potentially great for climate change targets in the short term but was perhaps not great value for money and did not necessarily benefit communities.

It is very difficult to say what would be produced if the greening of some of the sites concerned went ahead, given that some sites have land that was never mined in the first place, some have been partially restored and some have barely been restored. Clearly, what could be produced on those sites will vary greatly.

Community buy-in has to be considered on a case-by-case basis. I am aware that of the acquisitions that have happened to date, some have had considerable community buy-in; for example, Forest Enterprise Scotland bought a site outside Wick in Caithness, and the local community has been involved in that process—the feedback that I have had has been very positive. Whether that is a cost-efficient way of achieving public benefits is a slightly different question, and I might reserve judgment on that in some cases.

Does any of the witnesses have concerns about any major acquisition of forest from a major landowner?

Do you mean Forest Enterprise Scotland buying land from a major landowner and putting money in their pockets?

Yes.

I might use Jon Hollingdale’s more guarded words here. To answer your question, that would have to be considered on a landowner-by-landowner basis and would depend on who the land was acquired from and for how much. In essence, I would wish to see that kind of purchase operating under the new community asset transfer scheme, whereby the purchaser would not have to buy at valuation, as I understand it, if they can make a case that public benefits would flow from the acquisition. For example, if a community wanted to buy a bit of Forest Enterprise ground that was valued at £1 million, it could buy the land for under that if it could demonstrate public benefits. That might be a way of dealing with purchasing from a landowner.

Are you aware of any disposals that were subsequently acquired?

Disposals of what?

A disposal to a major landowner that was subsequently bought back.

No, but I would be very interested to know if that had happened.

I want to pick up on a few points that have been made. The main principle is that we have both the forest that is being sold and the land that is being purchased; it is about how we would go about that and what it would achieve. There is a general view that we want to retain the land that is being sold as forestry. Under the old national forest land scheme, communities had the option to buy the land first, then there was a nested arrangement of other organisations and then it was a private sale. As Jon Hollingdale said, there was no need in a private sale to specify how that forest would be managed. We are now moving forward and a new system is being launched.

Our view is that there should still be an option for community buy-out, which could achieve a lot of positives. Beneath that, the forest should be open for sale, but something should be in place to ensure that it will be managed as a forest, with a productive outcome. That is what it was established for. It is an asset for the local community and the wider region and we feel that it is important that it is retained.

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We then come to the issue of what kind of land is bought and what it is for. One option is the greening of former coal land. My understanding is that, as Jon Hollingdale said, that does not necessarily involve just the spoil heaps and the reconditioning of the land as it can also involve surrounding land that was not damaged. In that context, there might be an opportunity to grow some decent modern mixed forestry that provides income but also biodiversity and places for recreation.

A lot will come down to what is proposed in each case and the public benefits that can flow from that. It is difficult to say that it is a good or a bad thing. It could be a good thing. If we go down the route of ensuring that real public benefits flow from it, it will be a good thing, as long as we also look after the forest that is sold so that there is a net benefit. That would be my summary.

My only comment is that I am a horticulturist by trade as opposed to a forester and it depresses me that we always seem to fall into two camps—commercial forestry and community benefit. I do not understand why the two do not come together. Native trees can be productive and commercial trees can create good habitats and good public access.

My question is about the disparity in costs between the coal mining land and the planting in Caithness. There are clean-up costs for the former, but why is there such a huge difference?

It is partly about the state of the land and the ground preparation that has to be done in order to make the land suitable for growing trees. On mining sites, we have to treat the soil, bring in new topsoil or plant species that are tolerant of whatever is in the soil, whether it is heavy metals or hostile compounds.

We normally use a mixture of exotic trees such as Alnus rubra or red alder. In central Scotland and even at Craigmillar or one of the other community forests in Edinburgh, the planting costs may be anywhere between £7,500 and £15,000 depending on what has to be done to protect the site. Industrial sites are challenging. We do not want to discuss deer today—

Definitely not.

—but, on a hillside, if we can protect from deer and take them out of the equation, planting costs are relatively modest. They might be a couple of thousand pounds per hectare. It is all to do with the preparation, the planting cost and then the protection.

I have a question about repositioning. My brief research shows that forestry sales have been four times the amount of purchases in the past four years and that the Scottish Government’s policy was to reposition woodland, which allowed it to sell off bits that did not quite fit within the portfolio to increase the tree cover. Jon Hollingdale made a point about the receipts being kept in forestry, and particularly in the land on which the trees are grown. Would there be merit in trying to get money reinvested in a shorter term—that is, not sitting on it for four years—or would that create an artificial market in that, when people saw the forestry being sold, they would know that they could bump up the price of bare land when the forestry has the cash to pay for it?

There are a couple of points there. As you say, income has exceeded expenditure in recent years and there is a banking up of money. The issue might be relevant to John Finnie’s question about whether there are controversies around the land being purchased.

There was an active programme of selling and buying land but it bumped up against agricultural concern about lost arable land in particular. The original repositioning programme was intended to deliver planting across a range of land types and the agricultural community was very upset when the Forestry Commission purchased high-quality arable land to plant trees. That resulted in the woodland expansion advisory group and discussions about what is an appropriate level of planting, which arrived at the 100,000 hectare figure that I mentioned earlier. That put a brake on buying land, so the sales in the repositioning programme carried on but there was no opportunity to purchase land. That is part of the reason why we have the issue that we have.

The second part of your question was about the impact of tightening up on that and making it work. We want to ensure that the money is reinvested in forestry. Some of the money has leaked out into supporting grants for which there has been an increased level of demand and not necessarily available budget. I think that all of us on this panel of witnesses would be in favour of ensuring that money does not leak out in that way. The Government should provide the money that is required for planting and the money from the repositioning programme should be recycled into forestry.

That should be done in a way that provides benefits that the private sector is not better able to deliver. That would have less of an impact on land prices. If what the public sector tries to deliver is the same as what the private sector delivers, it will create additional demand for available land, which will drive prices up if availability becomes tighter. It is important that we consider how we complement things to get value for money for the public purse and ensure that we deliver a wider variety of benefits.

I might be wrong about this, but my impression was that there had not been a huge build-up of stored money. Certainly, more money is received from selling land than is spent on buying it but what is in the middle is spent largely on woodland creation and the other works that go on with the new land. Someone from the commission would have to give the committee the final numbers on that.

It has been difficult for FE to engage in the land market to acquire sites in many cases. There is not a huge turnover of land sales in Scotland and, without that, trying to find land to buy is difficult. In a tight market and one in which many people would think that the price of land is not reflected in its productive capacity, it is difficult for FE to buy land at a price that makes sense.

Jon Hollingdale has made most of my point. I was under the impression that it was less a case of sitting on money. However, in some of the farm purchases, arrangements have been entered into with private sector companies, such as Tilhill Forestry—I am not sure whether it is Tilhill, but certainly other companies—that are contracted in to do the forest establishment. Therefore, a portion of that money has been sitting waiting to go out the door into the establishment—the trees themselves.

It will be interesting to see what scale of repositioning goes ahead. Up to now, about 50,000 hectares of public land from forest estate has been sold. If the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Economy and Connectivity is minded to put 36,000 hectares on the market in the next four years, that will mean that it bites deeply into what the public would consider more sensitive forests. There is no way around that. We have looked at some of the scoring systems with the Forestry Commission and Forest Enterprise. Forests would be coming on the market that would attract a lot more public attention than forest sales have done to date. That is something to bear in mind.

We will leave repositioning, if that is all right.

In 2014, the RACCE Committee expressed concerns about

“the transparency, accessibility and consultation process surrounding the sales and purchases of Forestry Commission Scotland land by Forest Enterprise.”

What are your opinions on that? Are you content with the transparency and the accessibility of and the consultation on those processes, or would you make any changes in that regard? If you would make changes, what would they be?

I will let Jon Hollingdale go first, to get a change in the order.

There is a well-established system whereby disposals are lined up some way in advance. There is pre-notification, which allows communities and others to know what is in the pipeline for the next year or so. Clearly, forewarning is good, and there is a process by which communities are formally notified. Very occasionally and on the ground it does not work quite so well because the notification goes through a community council that does not function well. However, that is not a major issue.

On the disposal side, the transparency and the accountability is fine once forests are notified. On acquisitions, inevitably, a lot of things get done with a requirement for commercial confidentiality, whether that is buying bare land or existing woodlands. Quite often that requirement for confidentiality is placed on the negotiation by the seller; the FC is not—as far as I am aware—the one that requires that. That is a moot point. If the Forestry Commission is going to buy land from private individuals or organisations, they will generally have the right to demand confidentiality, and whether that should be subject to someone else’s scrutiny is for MSPs to decide on rather than for us to have a view on.

Again, Jon has answered fairly comprehensively. We have been working with the Forestry Commission and Forest Enterprise Scotland for the past four years. We have been looking at their sales portfolio—Jon has been part of the process—even down to the simplest of things, such as a great big sign being placed at the end of the forest. There are simple ways in which they could do better on transparency; the process need not be complicated or require consultation. They just need to do things such as put a notice in the newspaper and put signs at the end of road.

We have been particularly interested in sales in which there is the potential to lot a forest. Take a big forest that is covered in a road network, with a community that is close by and which could afford a bit of that forest but not all of it. We have been working with Forest Enterprise Scotland land agents to see whether we can identify potential areas for local communities or small businesses. A driver in the next five to 10 years will be trying to get more local involvement, including that of business, in forests.

Jon Hollingdale has said everything that I would have said about purchases. I do not see any way around that.

Good morning, gentlemen. Forestry contributes nearly £1 billion to the economy and—this astounds me—nearly 25,000 full-time jobs. Basically, you are saying that we are underplanting the target by 17,000 hectares, so we would need to plant about 13,000 hectares for each of the next six years, and at least 9,000 hectares of that would have to be productive conifer.

I am going to put you in the spotlight. Confor told the RACCE Committee that the money available for the planting was insufficient, going so far as to call it “pathetic”. I know that I have given you the answer, but why are planting targets still not consistently being met? Do you still think that the budget is “pathetic”?

11:30  

I would not use the word “pathetic”, because £27 million invested into forestry is not pathetic. However, if the target is for 10,000 hectares and the overall budget is £31 million, the fact that we are already up to £27 million and have planted only 5,900 hectares means that we will not get to 10,000. That is just not possible.

When you look at the breakdown of where the grant money goes, you see that the only efficiencies to be made are in the type of forestry that you invest in. If you invest in commercial forestry, it tends to be a lower price per hectare and you get more trees in the ground, but our forestry has multiple objectives and we are not just looking for commercial forestry. We are looking for native-type forestry as well, but native-type forestry costs more per hectare.

I love adverts on TV that say, “For every paper towel that we use, we will plant three trees.” Does that happen? How long does it take for the average woodland in Scotland to grow to a level at which it is productive?

In commercial forestry the first thinning takes place after about 40 years and a full crop after 70 to 80 years, roughly. You have to realise that when we plant trees back into an area that has been felled, even in commercial forestry, it is not a monoculture of a species such as Sitka spruce that goes in. We pay attention to diversity of conifer species. A fair proportion of what goes back in will not be a commercial crop. If we plant three trees but one is planted for environmental reasons, only two will contribute to paper in the future. There is a price to be paid for that.

We used the word “pathetic”, but we did not use it about the current round.

I should stress that that word was used in evidence to the previous committee. It is not a word that we would strive to use.

I was going to make a serious point. We said “pathetic” because it gave us media coverage, but the serious point behind that is that, at the time, we were not convinced that there was political support or that action was being taken to deliver, so we wanted to raise what we thought was a fundamental problem. Now we are in a situation where we believe that there is political understanding, particularly with the current cabinet secretary but not just at that level. In the intervening few years, the MSPs on this committee and the other MSPs to whom we speak have appreciated and understood the issues that we face.

We are in a very different position in terms of political awareness and appreciation, but funding is still an issue. If we are going to deliver on the target that we are aiming for, the funding that is available is insufficient, and that must be addressed. Why is the target not being met? One element of the reason why it has not been met in the past is that forestry is tied into an agricultural scheme that changes every seven years. If you look at what has happened with planting in the past, you see that it has been like a rollercoaster. Planting dips every time we come to a CAP renegotiation period and pulls back a bit, because there is uncertainty about funding, particularly if a new scheme is being brought in. There is no predictability, which is something that Rodney Shearer referred to.

We need a forestry scheme that is focused on delivering forestry planting and is not tied into the whole CAP process. That is possible, and we have asked for it, but there has been a reluctance to go down that route. It would make a difference.

We also need to broaden appeal to all the different types of landowners who want to plant. Some of them will be involved in large-scale planting and they will generally be people buying land, who are looking for a shorter processing period. We raised the issue of processing time and the cabinet secretary appointed Jim MacKinnon. He has reported to the cabinet secretary and we are waiting to hear back on that. That is about speeding up the process so that somebody who is buying land will know that they can plant it in a far shorter timescale—in one year rather than three.

To meet the target, we must also appeal to sheep farmers and estate owners—people who have mixed uses of land. There has been an underappreciation of the financial benefits that can come from planting trees of all types—not just conifers but productive broad-leaves. Those people can all benefit, and there is a greater understanding of that. With the uncertainty over the next couple of years around CAP, Brexit and so on, I think that there will be a lot more interest in planting from sheep farmers and estate owners, which will help us. There are also community woodlands and smaller-scale forestry. All of that has to come together to help us achieve the target and, with the political support, the funding and the communication of benefits, we will definitely do it.

Just before I bring in Willie McGhee, I will let Gail Ross ask a supplementary that leads on from what we have just heard. I realise that the questions are piling up.

With regard to planting targets, we have been focusing quite a lot on funding, but do you have any opinion on objections to planting proposals from individuals or groups? Could the planning system be improved to assist the meeting of targets?

I will let Willie McGhee in, as he was already queueing up. I do not know whether you can weave your answer around that and the previous question, Willie.

My answer is that it will ever be thus; there will always be people who object—both rightly and wrongly. In my experience as director of Borders Forest Trust, managing 3,000-odd hectares in the Scottish Borders, not a day went by when we did not get some input to new planting that we were carrying out. Ours was native woodland planting, so there are times when even doing a different kind of planting does not help.

I agree slightly with Stuart Goodall on the time that things can take under the current planning process. With environmental impact assessments, for example, you will get the local council coming in and making comments. Indeed, when we wanted to put in a new road, it took three months for us to get approval.

I know that you do not want the discussion to go down the deer route—again—but I have to say that a lot of the money in the grant scheme and the money that is being expended in forestry is being used to control deer. If you were to take that money out and put it into planting trees alone, it would make a big difference. The deer fences go up when you are obliged to put in native woodland or species that are not Sitka spruce, so it is a major issue for forestry. It would be a better use of the money—and the money would stretch a little bit further—if we did not have to put up deer fences at £13 a metre or whatever it is.

I am sure that we could delve into the question whether we want to eradicate deer from Scotland or make them part of our native landscape, but I guess that we are going to have to miss that one out. Everyone has given their own opinion on biodiversity.

I just want to make a couple of points, convener. Sitka spruce might be ready for harvesting in 40 years, but some of the social and environmental benefits of that forest will be available and delivered very much earlier.

On planting targets, I think that there is general agreement that the budget is insufficient. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, individual landowners have not been persuaded to invest in forestry, despite the fact that, as most people will agree, we have quite high levels of grant in terms of pounds per hectare. That is partly to do with the kinds of process issues that have always been the case. I have plenty of anecdotes going back 20 years about the interesting objections that we have had, but perhaps one of the answers is to empower Forestry Commission staff more to take a view and be the experts who understand what constitutes a reasonable objection or a spoiling objection.

There are also cash-flow issues. For example, the grants are structured in such a way that you have to do the work before you get the money, and that limits some landowners, particularly community landowners, in their ability to go down that route.

Fundamentally, there needs to be more work to support and demonstrate the value of forestry in order to encourage individual landowners to make the right decisions—or the decisions that we want them to make. Ultimately, the Forestry Commission cannot do all this planting itself. It has its planting targets, but it has to rely on convincing individual private sector landowners.

Can I just ask—

Hold on, Richard. I was going to bring in Stuart Goodall next. There is a queue, but I will definitely bring you in as soon as I can.

I will try to answer quickly. Consultation and engagement are hugely important. What people see are the forests that are out there, and the forests that are out there were planted 40 or more years ago. They were planted against a standard that was set by the Government at the time, which was to maximise production from an area of land. We now have modern forestry standards, which are about planting productive forests within a matrix of open ground, native and broad-leaf species, landscapes and all the rest of it. That has all been accepted and supported by environmental organisations and many others. However, we do not have mature forests yet, so a lot of people are making judgments, and there is a fear that we will plant a dark, square-edged monoculture. That creates an issue.

We are trying to overcome that. As an industry, we are taking on responsibility to develop more evidence. We are also developing guidance, which we are sharing with people who submit new planting applications so that they are aware of the benefits of engagement, and how to engage with local communities and others to explain what modern forestry means. We are also providing evidence about the economic and jobs impact of forestry. That does not just mean the 25,000 jobs and £1 billion contribution to the Scottish economy. If you plant a marginal sheep farming area, you will deliver four times as much income to the landowner and twice as much money into the local economy as you will from marginal sheep farming. You will also provide more jobs.

There has been a perception in the past that planting destroys rural communities. We have been able to demonstrate that that is not the case. There is a requirement on us to do that, which is what we are doing.

On planning, it is important that the Forestry Commission, as the authority here, differentiates between real concern and what is sometimes, as Jon Hollingdale referred to, a spoiling objection or a lack of understanding. If you respond to someone saying, “I don’t like that,” by saying, “But that’s not what we’re going to deliver.” the situation can drag on. The industry has got to step up to the plate and engage and communicate and, alongside that, the Forestry Commission has got to be robust and apply the process as it should be applied.

I have a small question. I am looking at the £1 billion contribution to the economy and the number of years that it takes a tree to grow. I take it that we still import quite a lot of various other types of wood into the country, but what happens if we do not plant enough over the next few years? Will we run out of producible wood?

That is very much the case. Rodney Shearer indicated that some of the plantings may take 60 years but, for most of the productive softwood planting, we are now looking at 35 to 40 years of maturing. That means that we are still forecasting a falling away in 20 years’ time. There are strategies that we can put in place to delay felling and to mix in faster-growing trees. There are things that we can do. Fundamentally, though, it is not just for me to say today that we do not have the budget to hit the target; we should be taking action to ensure that we bring that planting through. The funding then supports that in order to make it happen.

The sector is worth £1 billion and is looking at how it can become a £2 billion industry by the mid-2020s. There is the capacity to do that, because we are still working with an increasing availability of wood. We are looking at how we can add value, for example by putting more wood into housing. We understand that affordable housing will be part of the autumn statement. Scotland provides an awful lot of the wood that is used in housing throughout the UK. There is a huge opportunity for us. We want to grow that, and then maintain that level, which means that we need to deliver that planting.

11:45  

So it is speculate to accumulate.

Yes.

I would like to widen out the discussion a wee bit and bring in Peter Chapman, if I may. However, I want to make a point to Willie McGhee first. You mentioned deer. I am sure that you know that the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee, which I call our sister committee, is looking at deer management. It had a meeting with SNH on Tuesday, and one of the questions that came up was specifically about deer fencing. I do not want to get too involved in deer management, because I know that that committee is looking at it. Itf is legitimate that we will get an input into that. Therefore, please understand that your point has been accepted and is being dealt with.

I declare an interest as a farmer.

Surely one of the main drivers to achieve our targets is encouraging more farmers to get involved in forestry. We all know that there are many stresses and strains between foresters and farmers and that there is often seen to be a them-and-us situation. Stuart Goodall has spoken a bit about that conundrum. Surely there must be a better way in which we can encourage more farmers to get involved in forestry as a sensible way forward. Farmers still control the vast bulk of the land in Scotland, so they must be an important part of solving that problem. I encourage a wee bit more debate about that, because it is one of the most important ways in which we can unlock the potential of forestry. We know that there is an issue. We are not planting enough, and we need to do better.

I will bring in Jon Hollingdale first; Rodney Shearer can then add something. I want to try to balance all of your inputs.

We are talking about 25,000 jobs and a £1 billion industry. Those are very useful figures, and the report on that was very useful. It is important to remember that a large chunk of that is in other bits of forestry production, not just in industrial sawmilling, and that there is considerable potential for growth in the tourism and related uses of forestry. We want to encourage that as well.

On encouraging farmers, the long-term future post-Brexit is on the list of things that the committee wanted to talk about. One of the problems is the grant structure: there are agricultural grants and agricultural funding, and there is forestry funding, but we do not have land use funding. One way forward would be to start from a land use strategy perspective and attempt to abolish the silo mentality in the grant structures. We can start to think about the best means for the Scottish Government to incentivise land managers to manage their land in the best interests of the economy and the people of Scotland, rather than having an agricultural silo with money going that way and a set of grants that members are very well aware of, and a forestry silo with a different set of money to do a different set of things. Perhaps the opportunity in the future is to move away from that and design something that is based on incentivising land use in a particular area, such as a particular river catchment, that is assessed at the higher level.

The farming community tends not to be pro trees, but that is often well justified because, if farmers set trees on to land, that will quite often change the use of that land for ever. If there was a grant scheme and people wanted to bring back that land to agricultural use, that would be very difficult for them to do. Land drainage is affected. Our farmers have never been used to a culture of trees. They are used to annual crop production, for example. When they think of 35 years, that is just alien to them. Quite an education process is needed in bringing through the new generation of farmers to try to treat trees as an agricultural crop and not as a forestry crop. It is an education issue in the industry.

There are quite a lot of questions to be asked, and they are stacking up around me. I would appreciate it if people tried to keep their answers succinct. I remind people that we are trying to influence budget decisions. I understand that wider policy is part of that, but we are trying to aim at your helping us with finance stuff.

I do not think that farmers are that much agin trees. My job was to speak to upland sheep farmers in the Borders, which was not an easy gig for a forester. You have to approach it in the right way and not come with a message that the farmer will lose half their land and that it will all go under one type of tree. You have to explain that the land will have different uses, that the farmer can put some of their less good land under trees that might be useful for timber or biomass, and that they can let their sheep back in after a certain amount of time. There is no reason why farmers cannot play a key role in meeting the targets.

The big difference is that the farm woodland premium scheme paid £60 per hectare per annum for 15 years. Under the single farm payment, a hill farm in the Borders above 500 metres might get £20 per hectare, which is not the same. Previously, someone with a holding of 500 hectares would quite happily have given up 100 hectares in strategically placed patches. That is expensive; it is not as simple as slapping a large Sitka spruce plantation on it—I am paraphrasing here. That can still happen, but the message has to be more nuanced. It is necessary to work with farmers on where ground can be surrendered to trees and what they will get out of that. The money is the key.

We have not done Sitka spruce plantations for 25 years.

I know, but that is how farmers see it.

The important thing is that farmers need to be helped to understand what the opportunities are. I do not mean to sound patronising. We need awareness of the opportunity. We lack examples and models of how that can be taken forward.

There is some work going on between the Forestry Commission and the National Sheep Association to try to encourage sheep farmers to come and look at integrated models of sheep farming and forestry that demonstrate that forestry can be put on part of a sheep farm and not reduce the meat production. There will be a different type of income from another source. As well as the annual income from sheep, there will be the opportunity for a capital investment when the trees are harvested. We need to do more to demonstrate how those models can operate.

Once land is under trees, it is not under the annual subsidy arrangement, so the Government saves money. Farmers are offered a situation in which they are more economically active, they have sheep production, which deals with any issues around food security, and the cost to the public exchequer is reduced. It seems a very obvious thing to do; we just need to raise awareness of it.

I want to make sure that I understand the fundamentals here. We are looking at the draft budget that is about to be published for next year. The Forestry Commission has told us that on average over the past five years we have reached only 76 per cent of the target that the Government has set for new planting in Scotland.

As I understand it—correct me if I am wrong—you are saying that we have not reached the target because the Government has not provided enough financial incentive to reach it. First, is that correct? Is that what you are saying?

Secondly, what is the point of having a Scottish Government target of planting 10,000 hectares a year if on average we have planted only 7,600 hectares a year over a period of years?

We are focusing on the budget. Is this smoke and mirrors, or is it real? What does the future hold? There are fundamental questions here and I would like to confirm whether my understanding is correct.

No holds barred. You can answer that.

I am happy to. It is an important question, because it is a vital issue for us.

It is not the lack of cash that has been the problem in not delivering the planting. The not delivering the planting has come down to a few reasons, some of which we touched on earlier. One is the whole CAP link profile. When we go into a new CAP negotiation period, planting falls away because of uncertainty and changes to schemes. A grant scheme will be unavailable because there is a change from one thing to the next and it takes a while to create a new grant scheme. That all destroys confidence and activity.

We need to move away from that. It is a question of sending the right signals to people who want to plan and letting them know that they can get approval within a year or 18 months rather than three and a half years. If the cabinet secretary, advised by Jim Mackinnon, comes up with action that delivers that, it will make a huge difference.

The appeal for me is that the target is achievable. As Rodney Shearer said, interest is starting to come through. We are seeing more and more landowners saying that they believe that forestry is a real opportunity. It makes a lot of sense. There are more people in the farming community doing it. The appeal for me is that we believe that we will see in the coming year and in subsequent years more demand than had been predicted, so additional funding needs to be made available, because it will be required if we are to hit the target.

Jon, do you agree?

Yes. The expectation is that, not particularly in the current financial year but in the next two years, planting will be much closer to 10,000 hectares. Whether it will catch up with the lag is a different question.

A lot of the lag has been to do with the process. It is perceived as being difficult to go through the system and create a significant area of new woodland. I hope that Jim Mackinnon’s report and its recommendations will make that system appear to be a bit easier. Ultimately, we need to convince private individuals to change the use of land on some or all of their holding. There is not really an option for the Scottish Government to do that directly. The Forestry Commission does not have the land to plant 10,000 hectares a year itself, and to buy that land and plant it would be unbelievably expensive. Its contribution has been 600 or 700 hectares out of the 10,000.

I want to follow the point right the way down, because it is fundamental. Rodney, would you like to comment?

Within 18 months, enough applications will be in to meet the 10,000 hectares a year target. What worries me is that, if the programme is oversubscribed, how will we reject schemes? A rejection process could just take away the industry’s confidence again. If someone proposes a bona fide scheme and it is approved from a technical point of view, but there is no money at that stage and they are told that they cannot do it, it just knocks the guts out of the industry again.

Is the industry capable of supplying all the trees that are needed to achieve all the planting?

The nurseries certainly have enough capacity to produce 10,000 trees, but we might not get enough notification of the requirement and what is needed. It worries me that we might not have the right tree going into the right place, and that leads to plant health questions.

We are coming on to plant health. Willie, do you have a comment?

I say yes to all that has been said. There was enough money but there might not be enough in the future.

The real question on farming is about the rights of tenant farmers who have woodlands. I do not know what percentage of land in Scotland is under tenant farming, but as soon as a tenant farmer goes near woodlands, it becomes the landowner’s prerogative—or rather, it has been the landowner’s prerogative. Part of the answer to Mike Rumbles’s question will be about how tenants can be empowered to get access to forest grants under some sort of landowner discretion scheme.

Peter Chapman wants to come in on that.

I am pleased that you have come back to farming. We are going to design a new system to support agriculture in two years’ time after Brexit. That gives us a real opportunity to design a system to support Scottish agriculture that includes forestry. It will be a win-win for all sides and we need to strive to achieve that. I do not know if the witnesses want to comment on that, but those are my thoughts.

I am conscious of time, so if you agree that there will be opportunities, your answer will be yes, and if you think that there will be no opportunities, your answer will be no.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

The answer seems to be yes, and that is as far into Brexit as we are going to go at the moment.

John Mason has a follow-up question.

12:00  

It is on a completely different area.

I should perhaps say that I am a city MSP. I have very few trees and forests in my constituency, although slightly more than I have crofts. This is a genuine question, because I do not know the answer: do we have a problem with pests and diseases in Scotland?

We certainly have a problem with pests and diseases. The two that would probably come into the public’s mind are the ash disease, which means that ash cannot be planted in Britain, and red band needle blight in pine.

The biggest problem that we have in pests and diseases is not the ones that we know; it is the ones that we do not know. They are not indigenous diseases and, because of climate change, they have started to spread more. The main route for them coming into the country is through the importation of plants.

Is that done through nurseries or through other people?

It tends to be through nurseries and through some buyers as well. The reason that nurseries will import trees is because they do not have the confidence to produce what they believe to be the full requirement of trees for the period going forward. They will tend to produce perhaps 80 per cent of the requirement then rely on imports for 20 per cent of production. That is purely a matter of confidence.

Are the nurseries able to handle the pests and diseases or do they need input from the Forestry Commission as well?

No. Our main input comes from the horticulture and marketing unit. That is the plant inspectorate of Scotland. That means that all commercial nurseries are inspected for plant health and disease. It is a full cost recovery system, in which we pay for the privilege of being inspected.

The biggest issue that we have in Scotland on plant health and disease comes from the public through the purchase of plants from garden centres. The same pests and diseases can affect plants in garden centres, and control there is much more difficult to police.

Can that then affect forests?

It certainly can. The biggest disease that is coming to us in the future is a disease called Xylella, which is now in Italy. It first came in on vines, which destroyed the vine crops. It then transferred across to olives. At least 300 different host species have now been found. That is a major concern on importation of plants, because it covers a wide variety of the types of material that are imported through garden centres. Education is the key on that—we must educate the public that they should not be buying those types of plants.

Does anyone want to add anything to that?

Rodney Shearer is quite correct. Sudden oak death came in through azaleas—

Rhododendrons.

—that were imported from California. It did not tackle oak in the first instance but eventually managed to jump to larch, with Phytophthora. What we have now in south-west Scotland is almost a larch-free zone and, as Rodney said, we cannot plant larch back into some places in Scotland.

I think that the vast majority of the Forestry Commission’s plant health budget is actually for removing larch.

So in terms of what we do, Rodney is quite right: it is a question of public education and awareness. As far as the tree species that we use are concerned—this is not a dig at Stuart Goodall—for Sitka and productive forestry, we need to talk to the millers and the buyers of timber to get them educated in a wide range of other types of wood that they can use, because we do not know what is going to come in next. Well, Rodney does, in some instances.

I am going to bring John Mason back in before I ask Stuart Goodall and Jon Hollingdale to finish.

As has been said, we are focusing on the budget and what we should be encouraging the Government to do more of. Public education is quite a wide issue and a difficult one to tackle. Should the Forestry Commission and its plant health service be doing more? Does it have the resources to tackle some of those issues and to carry out education along with research?

We have the Scottish plant health strategy, which involves the plant health part of the agriculture department, Forestry Commission Scotland and Scottish Natural Heritage. They have quarterly liaison meetings and they communicate well with one another, so there is good cross-department communication. However, their budget falls to research and development work by the Forestry Commission on pests and diseases or it falls to the horticulture and marketing unit, which is self-funding anyway, so it does not cost the Government any money to police that.

What we need is confidence in plant supply so that we do not choose to import trees and for our customers to be aware that there is a major risk in importing trees and therefore know not to even ask for such trees.

Stuart, do you want to add to that?

Yes, particularly on the budgetary side of it. Border control is a significant issue and we need to be looking at borders. Some pests and diseases are airborne, but a lot are imported with plants. The issue is how we police our borders in terms of phytosanitary issues.

On budgetary issues, I flag up that it is important that Forest Research plays a key role in that regard. The consultation that has just been completed on the future of the Forestry Commission in Scotland involves cross-border research, so we have a cross-border function in that regard. Often on tree disease, though, we have one expert for the whole of Great Britain or the UK. If we decide that we are going to have three separate forest research bodies, we will have to find a way of cutting somebody in three and maintaining the bit that can tell you what is going on. We need to have collaboration.

We also need to look at how we operate the grant schemes and what we are funding. Willie McGhee made a point about diversification. It might be a surprise to Willie, but it is not one to me, that the sector has looked at that and is aware that it is an issue. However, what is key is anything that is done at scale. We are looking at planting forestry at scale and we are using products and sawmills at scale, so we need to ensure that we are planting tree species that can be harvested at scale and are suitable for the market. That can be done, but some of the work that has been done in the past has been about saying that diversification is the way forward, just for the sake of diversification, without actually thinking about the end product. We are improving on that aspect, though.

In respect of pests and diseases, is diversification a good thing? Does it slow them down or hold them up?

Diversification is basically about risk. If we have a broader range of species, we are reducing the impact of one species being affected. However, the corollary is that if we have more tree species, we have more trees that could be affected by a wide range of diseases. Diversification is a balanced-risk approach, which is a difficult approach to put over to the private sector. We have been trying to do that in the past couple of years, because we have regarded some of the policy responses as quite simplistic, and we need something more long-term and robust.

The Forestry Commission has invested money in citizen science projects to enlist members of the public, a great many of whom go to woods often and are very interested in what they see, to record and report symptoms of diseases. That has proved to be quite an effective way of monitoring the spread of diseases that are already here. I do not think that it is possible for the Forestry Commission to regulate garden centres, unfortunately; that needs to be somebody else’s job.

The budget is sufficient for exactly where we are now, but the danger is that we are in a world that is very uncertain. No one knows when the next big disease will strike or what species it will strike, but we are increasingly certain that there will be something coming down the line in two years, five years or 10 years.

Rodney Shearer seems to be pretty clear what it is. Is it not as clear cut as that?

It is not as clear cut as that. Sometimes we can see things coming, but I am not sure that everything that has struck us in the past two or three years was predicted up front. I do not think that Chalara was flagged like that; if it was, I missed it and so did a lot of other people. I hope—touch wood—that it does not happen, but if there is a major disease that strikes the Sitka spruce, that will involve major cost issues.

It is definitely the disease that we do not know about that is the biggest risk. We did know about ash dieback disease. We first knew about it in 1999, but the legislation and the phytosanitary certificates took a long time to catch up with the disease and we continued to import trees even though we knew that the disease was in Europe.

Diversity of species in a forest should help to reduce the incidence of pests and diseases. However, the type of diversity that we are planning is the introduction of new species from other parts of the world and we do not know the problems that lie with some of them. Quite a lot of that diversification is being done to combat the effects of climate change. We are recommended to grow plants from two or even five degrees further south. That policy has not been studied enough to see the risk involved. I really think that in Scotland we should stick to the use of our native species and not rely on some of those new exotic species that they intend to introduce.

That message, and the message of giving confidence that there is a long-term future for forestry will give people some strength.

We are all aware of the up-and-coming forestry bill and I ask your thoughts on the cost implications of that. Will it have a budgetary impact? Will it save money or cost us money?

I will let Willie McGhee go first as he is looking perplexed. [Laughter.]

I was thinking about budgetary implications and the crystal ball gazing needed to answer that question.

From the forest policy group perspective, the forestry bill as we understand it could be very exciting and dynamic for Scotland’s forests. We have been led to believe that it will be the mechanism whereby forestry will be devolved and Forest Enterprise will become part of the new forestry and land agency, along with the Crown Estates’ land and SNH’s national nature reserves.

Not in the short term.

Not in the short term? Okay, this is the crystal ball gazing, then. That idea does not strike me as having a great cost implication or budgetary implication, except for the rebranding exercise—we all know how expensive rebranding exercises can be. It would be beholden on the committee to keep a close eye on that.

Forestry Commission Scotland will inevitably end up somewhere else; members will get a diversity of views from the panel on that. The forest policy group would like Forestry Commission Scotland to retain its enabling, flexible, community-friendly, forestry local development-friendly role. We do not see that being best served by stuffing it into the environment division in Victoria Quay where the staff will become humdrum civil servants without the flexibility that we would like. I do not believe that that has much of a cost implication except, again, for the rebranding.

We wish Forestry Commission Scotland to be retained as an arm’s-length body, with an oversight body and an oversight committee like the national committee that Jon Hollingdale sits on. That may have a cost implication, but I am not able to say too much about that.

I pick up Willie McGhee’s point that there is always an issue around rebranding exercises. In itself, will that necessarily create budgetary issues? It is not clear that it will. We at Confor have a similar understanding of what is intended to happen.

One matter which is less a budgetary issue but is very important with regard to delivering policy—Willie McGhee alluded to it—is what we do with the facilitating, supporting and promoting element of the Forestry Commission, as it is described. We would not want those people to become “humdrum civil servants”—that would be a step back. Our response to the consultation made it very clear that it makes sense to have a body of civil servants who are there to operate with expertise to work with and support the sector. That expertise and ability and remit should continue, but we feel that forestry being a key part of the Scottish Government—part of the environment and forestry directorate—will support and enable that. Looking forward to Brexit and all the changes that are coming up, we want forestry to be at the heart of Government thinking and Government policy.

Forestry has been in a silo in the past and has struggled to break out of that to be seen as part of rural policy and wider Government delivery of policy across the board. If we hide it away again and set it up as an arm’s-length organisation, we are missing an opportunity. We are very nervous about that. In policy terms, what is being proposed could be a win-win as long as we retain that forestry expertise, the remit that Willie McGhee talked about and those types of people.

12:15  

Jon, do you want to add anything? I urge you to be as brief as possible.

I will be very brief. It is difficult to see where any cost savings would come from in either the Forestry Commission part or the Forest Enterprise part unless the delivery of public benefits is cut. Both parts of the Forestry Commission have significant value to the public and I do not see how that can be trimmed.

As the other panel members have said, we are concerned about the costs of a rebranding exercise. We hear anecdotally figures for the costs of the rebranding and reorganisation in Wales, and we are concerned about where the money would be found for a rebranding here. If it came out of Forestry Commission budgets, that would be a major loss.

We should look at the experience and what has happened down in England. There was a Forestry Commission in England and Wales, but it seems to have rebranded itself to the point of non-existence. It has managed to approve only 282 hectares of forestry. I think that there has been a bit of a failure down there. I would like the forestry expertise to be retained up here.

Thank you. That is the end of our questions. If anyone wants to say very succinctly anything that they were not asked about relating to the coming budget or anything else that we should be considering, they may do so now.

Deer were mentioned earlier, and I note that there will be a meeting on that subject here in the Parliament on, I think, 8 December with the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee.

On the budget, I urge the committee to bear it in mind that the Forestry Commission has been one of the drivers of rural development and land reform in Scotland. A lot of the land that is now in community ownership has come through the Forestry Commission. I ask the committee to smile kindly on it.

In that spirit, the main thing is to reiterate that the planting is one element of a wider budget. We would not like the planting budget to be increased at the expense of the other activities that the Forestry Commission undertakes. They include Scottish timber transport, the central Scotland green network and plant health. There are a lot of important things in its work.

We have seen reductions in the capacity of the Forestry Commission. Although we hope to see an increase in demand for the planting budget, we hope that it will be satisfied by looking at the budget as a whole and not by robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Stuart, if that was succinct, you could be a good politician, but thank you for the points that you have made.

I will be absolutely succinct. Stuart Goodall said exactly what I would have said. We want to see woodland creation but not at the expense of the other budgets.

We should not underestimate the industry’s appreciation for the political support that it gets in Scotland. Compared with the position in the rest of the UK, forestry is a major industry, and you have decent aspirations.

Thank you all for coming. When we sat down and worked out our work programme at the beginning of the current session of Parliament, forestry was right up there on the list of things that we wanted to look at, which is why we asked you to come and help us to consider the budget. I believe that the committee will look to you next year to see how the budget is delivering, because it is important to every single member of the committee. Thank you for sparing the time to come along.

I do not want to be rude, but we have one more item of business to consider. You might want to extricate yourselves quickly. I will suspend the meeting briefly.

12:19 Meeting suspended.  

12:21 On resuming—