Rural Development Committee, 21 Jan 2002
Meeting date: Monday, January 21, 2002
Official Report
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Scottish Parliament Rural Development Committee Monday 21 January 2002 (Afternoon)
[The Convener opened the meeting at 14:04]
Good afternoon everybody, and welcome to the Rural Development Committee. We are absolutely delighted to be holding today's meeting in Gartocharn. The Parliament has a long-stated principle that, through the committees, it should go out all over Scotland as often as possible. I am delighted to be in Gartocharn, because I have been to other meetings of parliamentary committees at which public attendance has been poor. It is wonderful to be here today and to see the public benches full, and I thank members of the public for giving up the time to come. We are delighted to be here and I am only sorry that the view behind me is not what I am sure it can be on a nice summer day such as you normally experience in this part of the world.
As I always do at the start of any meeting, I ask everyone to check that their mobile phones are turned off.
We have received apologies from Alasdair Morrison, Stewart Stevenson, Elaine Smith and Irene Oldfather, who are members of the committee. I am delighted to welcome Sylvia Jackson as a visiting MSP.
When today's meeting was planned some months ago, we hoped that the designation order for the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs national park would have been published by now and that it could be part of our agenda. I am sorry to say that the order has not yet been published, and it would be strange to discuss it prior to publication. Nonetheless, today's meeting is relevant to this part of the world because we will be concentrating on the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill that has started its progress through the Scottish Parliament.