Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Official Report 526KB pdf

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Annual Report

Agenda item 5 is consideration of a draft annual report for the parliamentary year from 11 May 2015 to 23 March 2016. Do members have any comments on what is a short and succinct report?

I note that, with regard to the first time that a minister gave evidence on a piece of legislation in a rural location, the report refers to “Dumfries”. I think that it should say “Dumfries and Galloway”, because Dumfries is a town. The sentence reads rather oddly.

Thank you. If there are no other comments, do members agree to sign off the annual report?

Members indicated agreement.

Okay. The annual report will be published on Friday 11 March.

We have come to that point in the meeting when I usually set out what will happen next week, but, as I have said, this is the committee’s final meeting. I therefore want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has supported the work of the committee, which I have had the pleasure of convening for the duration of the session. I have been ably supported by my deputies—first, Annabelle Ewing, and latterly, Graeme Dey—and I thank them both for stepping into the hot seat when required.

I also thank all members of the committee, past and present. You have all made an enormous contribution to the work of this busy committee, and I thank you for your dedication and commitment.

I pay tribute to two members, in particular, as they will be standing down. On behalf of the committee, I wish Alex Fergusson and Dave Thompson all the best for the future. Alex has been a member of the Scottish Parliament since 1999, and his interest in and dedication to rural affairs have been evident throughout his parliamentary career. He has taken on the roles of party spokesperson and convener of a previous incarnation of this committee. As Presiding Officer, he commanded the respect of members of all parties; he is also a dedicated servant of the people whom he represents and of this Parliament. I wish him well for the future—in fact, I think that he has already left us. [Laughter.]

Dave Thompson has been a member of the Parliament since 2007 and a member of this committee since April 2014. He is also a member and former convener of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee and a tireless advocate for his constituents. I thank him for his dedication to the work of this committee and his valuable contributions, and I wish him a happy retirement.

I thank the staff of the official report, the media relations office, broadcasting and security who have supported the committee’s work. I particularly thank the clerks and the team from the Scottish Parliament information centre for their detailed and often arduous work. I also thank everyone who has engaged with the committee, from the stakeholders who regularly challenge us to seek better outcomes for rural Scotland and its environment to those who have taken an interest in our work by joining us in the public gallery, especially during the deer management discussions in 2013. In closing, I add, on behalf of the committee, our best wishes to our successor committee or committees.

As previously agreed, the committee will now move into private session to consider its work programme.

Before we do that, convener, I note that Alex Fergusson is not the only original member of the committee to see his time as an MSP drawing to an end. The convener, Alex Fergusson, Jim Hume and I are the only original members of the committee to have survived the joys of committee reshuffles—albeit that Alex had a brief spell away from the committee, when his contribution was greatly missed—and, like Alex Fergusson, Rob Gibson has opted to stand down as an MSP.

On behalf of members of the committee past and present, I thank Rob for his enormous contribution to the work of the RACCE Committee. He has brought detailed knowledge and great passion to the role of convener, and his determination to improve rural Scotland is as obvious now as it was when the committee was first convened in 2011. More than that, he has been an incredibly fair and inclusive convener who has always ensured that all members have had the chance to ask questions and have their say. The consensus that the committee has achieved more often than not on a wide variety of issues owes a great deal to the approach that Rob has taken to convening it. If I am re-elected to Parliament and convene a parliamentary committee at some stage in the future, I will be a better convener for having served as Rob’s deputy for the past two and a half years.

I suspect that today we see Rob saying cheerio, rather than goodbye, to the RACCE Committee. I have a hunch that our successor committee will hear from him on a variety of subjects, not least land reform, in the years to come. I am sure that we all wish Rob well in his future endeavours.

Thank you very much.

Although I am the newest member of the committee—Sarah Boyack might have joined a week or two after me, but she had sat on the committee before whereas I had not—I should point out that I have known Rob Gibson for more than 30 years. I have always had respect for him, even in his frequent musical incarnations, but my respect for him has been greatest over the past 14 months. I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience of being on the committee, and I have very much enjoyed being on a committee convened by Rob Gibson, who does the job supremely well. His knowledge of the subject is voluminous and, although he can get a little tetchy from time to time, he has guided the committee through some very choppy waters. I am grateful to him, and I am also grateful to my other committee colleagues for the experience that I have had over the past period. If those of us who intend to come back to Parliament are spared, I hope that I will have a place on the committee with some of my colleagues in the next session.

Thank you very much.

As we said in the preceding debate, our decisions are never magic bullets. We always have to return to subjects as both a matter of process and a matter of progress. Like devolution and the powers that we have, our decisions are not events but things that we take forward to the best of our ability at the time. Inevitably, they are not perfect—just as the convening is not perfect, although I have certainly enjoyed it. I hope that everyone who comes back has a great time, whether or not they are members of our successor committee. Those of us who are retiring will not be too far away, watching how you get on.

Thank you very much for that. I now close the public part of the meeting.

12:14 Meeting continued in private until 12:47.