Rural Affairs Committee, 21 Sep 1999

Meeting date: Tuesday, September 21, 1999

Official Report 247KB pdf

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Environmental Impact Assessment (Forestry)(Scotland) Regulations 1999 (SSI 1999/43)

This committee is not the lead committee on this order. I am told that the Transport and the Environment Committee will meet tomorrow, and we have been asked to make comments on the document to be passed to that committee at that meeting. Does anyone have any comments on the statutory instrument? Is there any comment that members feel would be appropriate to pass on to the Transport and the Environment Committee?

I have looked at the document, as have other colleagues, I am sure. It seems sensible to include deforestation as well as other changes under the consents that are required by the environmental impact assessment requirements. It seems to do that in a balanced way. The fact that there have been objections from people who felt that the requirements were going too far, or not far enough, suggests that those requirements are not far wrong.

Do members feel that we need to read through the document? If not, I think it is appropriate to report that this committee does not feel the need to pass comments on this issue to the Transport and the Environment Committee. That will be the comment that is passed on from this committee.

That brings us to the end of the agenda. There has been a great deal of publicity in the news regarding the beef-on-the-bone ban. I do not raise that as an issue. I merely note that we should monitor the situation so that the visit of the chief medical officer, who will come before this committee at its next meeting in response to an item that was put on the agenda by Mike Rumbles at a previous meeting, will be best exploited for the good of the health of the nation and the industry that has been affected.

Noting that we have no other competent business, is there anything else that anyone would like to raise that is relevant to the business of today's meeting? If not, I declare this meeting closed.

Meeting closed at 16:34.