Subordinate Legislation
Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Designation, Transitional and Consequential Provisions (Scotland) Order 2002 Modification Order 2010 (SSI 2010) (Draft)
Cairngorms National Park Designation, Transitional and Consequential Provisions (Scotland) Order 2003 Modification Order 2010 (SSI 2010) (Draft)
Cairngorms National Park Elections (Scotland) Amendment Order 2010 (SSI 2010) (Draft)
Good morning everybody. I welcome you to the committee’s 19th meeting of the year. I ask everyone to switch off their phones and BlackBerrys because they buzz in the ears of the people in broadcasting.
The main purpose of today’s meeting is to take evidence on the Wildlife and Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill. However, we will start by taking evidence on three draft affirmative instruments: the Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park Designation, Transitional and Consequential Provisions (Scotland) Order 2002 Modification Order 2010; the Cairngorms National Park Designation, Transitional and Consequential Provisions (Scotland) Order 2003 Modification Order 2010; and the Cairngorms National Park Elections (Scotland) Amendment Order 2010. The Subordinate Legislation Committee has made no comments on the instruments. I welcome to the committee Roseanna Cunningham MSP, the Minister for Environment; Helen Jones, who is head of the national parks and outdoor recreation team; and Andrew Crawley from the Scottish Government’s legal directorate.
Agenda item 1 enables members to ask questions about the content of the three instruments before we move to formal debate on them. Officials can contribute at this point, but cannot participate in the debate. I invite the minister to make a brief opening statement on all three instruments.
The Minister for Environment (Roseanna Cunningham)
I will set the scene by explaining that this is the first time there has been any change to the original orders that set up the two national parks. Each national park was established by means of two orders: first, a designation order, which established the area of the park, the membership of the park authority and its functions; and, secondly, an elections order, which set out the arrangements for direct elections to the national park authority.
Today we are dealing with two orders to modify each of the original designation orders, and a third one to amend the Cairngorms elections order. Those changes are due to take place at the beginning of October.
I will deal first with the two draft modification orders. A primary purpose of both those orders is to reduce the size of the 25-member boards of the national park authorities. The issue of board size was addressed in 2008 in a strategic review of Scotland's national parks. The review recommended a reduction in size to streamline decision making and maintain effective governance. It found that there had been clear benefits in having large boards when the parks were first set up, but that the park authorities were now well established and their strategic direction had been established in their national park plans.
I therefore decided to reduce the number of members on the park authority boards to below 20. In doing so, I have adopted the same principles in each national park. The number of local authority nominees and ministerial appointees will go down, but the number of directly elected members will remain unchanged at five on each board. That will strengthen the element of local democracy on the park boards.
I will explain how the number of local authority nominations will be determined. The two larger authorities in each park will have two nominations to the board and the remaining authorities will have one apiece. As Loch Lomond and the Trossachs national park has four councils in its area and Cairngorms national park will soon have five, the number of local authority nominees will be reduced from 10 to six and seven respectively.
The number of ministerial appointees has to mirror the number of local authority nominees: that is a requirement of the primary legislation. As a result, my intention is that the overall sizes of the boards will be 17 in Loch Lomond and the Trossachs and 19 in the Cairngorms.
I turn to the Cairngorms national park boundary extension. The committee’s predecessor in the previous session of Parliament—the Environment and Rural Development Committee—concluded, after hearing evidence while considering a member’s bill that was introduced by John Swinney, that there was a strong case for extending the park to include Blair Atholl and highland Perthshire. The committee concluded that on geological and geographical grounds, highland Perthshire was naturally part of the Cairngorms; the local residents felt themselves to be part of the Cairngorms. Michael Russell announced our intention to proceed with the boundary change in a national parks debate in 2008. Scottish Natural Heritage has since consulted on the precise line of the boundary and its report was laid before Parliament last year.
The third and final order will amend the Cairngorms elections order. That is necessary because of the boundary change, and will simply allocate the extended area of the national park between two of the existing electoral wards. Those wards are used solely for the purpose of direct elections to the national park authority. We have taken advice from Perth and Kinross Council on the linkages that the new electors will have with the rest of the national park.
Finally, I draw the committee’s attention to the considerable amount of public consultation that has taken place on the changes. First, there was consultation on the national parks review recommendation that there be smaller boards. There were then two further stages of consultation, as required by the National Parks (Scotland) Act 2000.
I am happy to answer any questions from the committee on the orders.
The minister will recall that part of the process on which the Government has consulted—the boundary and the size of the boards—is caught up in the quinquennial review that was agreed when the legislation was passed. I note from the orders that you now suggest that a post-implementation review will be conducted within 10 years. Is that a deliberate decision? Would a five-year period be viewed at this stage as being too short a timeframe in which to carry out subsequent reviews?
The quinquennial review took place in 2008. It was felt that because we are making these changes now, it would be too soon to have another review in only three years. We are looking at a longer period.
We move to item 2, which is the formal debate on the first of the three instruments: the Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park Designation, Transitional and Consequential Provisions (Scotland) Order 2002 Modification Order 2010.
I remind everybody that officials cannot participate in the debate—although I do not think that there will be one—on this or the two other instruments.
Motion moved,
That the Rural Affairs and Environment Committee recommends that the Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park Designation, Transitional and Consequential Provisions (Scotland) Order 2002 Modification Order 2010 (SSI 2010/draft) be approved.—[Roseanna Cunningham.]
Do members have any contributions?
The title is awfully short.
The question is, that motion S3M-6944 be agreed to.
Motion agreed to.
We will now have the formal debate on the Cairngorms National Park Designation, Transitional and Consequential Provisions (Scotland) Order 2003 Modification Order 2010. I invite the minister to move the motion.
Motion moved,
That the Rural Affairs and Environment Committee recommends that the Cairngorms National Park Designation, Transitional and Consequential Provisions (Scotland) Order 2003 Modification Order 2010 (SSI 2010/draft) be approved.—[Roseanna Cunningham.]
Does any member wish to contribute to the debate?
I do not oppose the order in any way; I simply want to record that, although the southern boundary has been taken care of in the order—the minister outlined some of the background to that—one dilemma for any national park, but particularly the Cairngorms national park, is exactly where to put the boundaries. It could be argued that what is on the right-hand side of the A9 as one drives up it, which is in the national park, is in environmental terms absolutely no different from what is on the left-hand side. The problem is that if we extended the park to the left side, we could end up going right to the coast.
To the north, there has been an outstanding concern about two small areas—at Dava moor and a second smaller area that is reckoned to have been omitted because of a cartographic error in the original designation. The order does not tidy up those issues. I just want to record that people at the northern end of the park would like consideration to be given to Dava moor becoming part of the park in the future.
It remains open to us at any point in the future to reconsider the boundaries of any national park. I imagine that that might happen in relation to different communities. However, I cannot say what the decisions will be.
Given the welcome success of the national parks, I ask the minister to say in her closing remarks whether she has any plans to extend the national parks scheme to anywhere else in Scotland. I am thinking particularly of the south-west of Scotland, which would be a prime candidate.
Is that a Conservative call for more money to be spent by Government?
I just wonder what your views are.
In the current circumstances, it is difficult to envisage that happening. At present, there is only one other part of Scotland in which a significant issue has been raised about potential national park designation, and that is on Harris. People on Harris are still negotiating with Comhairle nan Eilean Siar about the council’s support or otherwise for the idea. The only real proposal that has come from the south-west has been for a biosphere, rather than a national park. We are not inundated with people from throughout Scotland looking for national park status. However, that is another thing that might change in the future.
I am interested in the minister’s response to Peter Peacock’s point about potential extension along the northern boundary of the Cairngorms national park. The case that people in Blair Atholl and other areas made about the southern part of the boundary was well understood when the primary legislation was passed. Notwithstanding John Swinney’s member’s bill, it was thought that the quinquennial review provided a basis on which the issue could be considered in a reasonably short timeframe. Are you suggesting that consideration of the case for extending the northern boundary could take place only within the context of the 10-year review that is set out in the order, or might the issue be dealt with at any point during those 10 years?
Well—
Hold on a minute, minister. Those kind of questions should have been asked in the first part of the process. This is supposed to be a debate. Before the minister responds, do any other members wish to make a contribution or ask a question?
Members: No.
Go ahead, minister.
10:15
In fairness, our view is that the situation is pretty settled now. It would probably be six years before the process of a review would be set in motion. Notwithstanding that, it will always be open to any Government to decide at any point to reopen the issue for particular reasons. If strong cases were made in respect of particular communities, a future Government might well decide to move outwith the review period. I cannot say what decisions a future Government might take.
The difference with the order that we are discussing today about the extension of the Cairngorms national park is precisely as Liam McArthur said. A strong vocal and settled case was being articulated right from the start and over quite a long period of time. We have not yet seen that with other areas. From time to time, communities might wish to express their desire to be in a national park because of what they perceive to be the potential benefits of certain developments not being allowed to go ahead, or otherwise. Different communities might come to that conclusion for a variety of different reasons, and the proposal for an extension to include those communities would have to be interrogated quite closely to see whether it fulfilled all the criteria that we want to be fulfilled for national park designation.
However, I could never be in a position to rule out anything that a future Government might choose to do if it was presented with an incontrovertible case. Our view, at this stage, is that we have dealt with outstanding issues and we do not envisage anything major coming up in the near future.
Motion agreed to.
That the Rural Affairs and the Environment Committee recommends that the Cairngorms National Park Designation, Transitional and Consequential Provisions (Scotland) Order 2003 Modification Order 2010 (SSI 2010/draft) be approved.
Finally, we move to the formal debate on the Cairngorms National Park Elections (Scotland) Amendment Order 2010.
Motion moved,
That the Rural Affairs and Environment Committee recommends that the Cairngorms National Park Elections (Scotland) Amendment Order 2010 (SSI 2010/draft) be approved.—[Roseanna Cunningham.]
Motion agreed to.
That concludes our discussions on statutory instruments. I will suspend for a moment to allow witnesses to change over.
10:17
Meeting suspended.
10:18
On resuming—