Official Report 350KB pdf
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the 29th meeting in 2014 of the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee. I welcome members, and the Minister for Business, Energy and Tourism and other witnesses, to whom I will come in a moment. I remind everyone to turn off or at least turn to silent mobile phones and other electronic devices, please.
We have some changes on the committee. I pay tribute to the members who have departed—on to higher things in some cases. I congratulate Marco Biagi on his appointment to Government and thank him, Alison Johnstone and Mike MacKenzie for their contribution to the committee over the past years.
There are three new members. I welcome back Patrick Harvie and welcome Gordon MacDonald and Richard Lyle to the committee. I look forward to working with you all.
Under agenda item 2, I ask the new members to declare any relevant interests.
I have nothing additional to the interests that I declared at the beginning of the current session of Parliament, when I was previously a member of the committee. I am a member of several organisations that are likely to give evidence to the committee or have an interest in energy and economy policy. They include Friends of the Earth, Oxfam and the Poverty Alliance. I am also a director of Gala Scotland Ltd, which is a company with charitable status that runs the Glasgay arts festival. That is an unremunerated post, but the organisation applies for small—I would say pitifully small—grants that have a relationship to tourism policy.
I have no declarable interests, but I am a member of the National Trust for Scotland and Historic Scotland.
I refer members to my register of interests. I also record, although I believe that there is no need to do so, that my son holds a senior position in a major investment bank that is involved in the oil and gas sector in Aberdeen.
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