Cairngorms National Park
The final item of business is a members' business debate on motion S2M-2376, in the name of John Swinney, on the boundaries of the Cairngorms national park. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes that the current boundaries of the Cairngorms National Park differ from those originally recommended by Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) following extensive consultation on behalf of the Scottish Executive; notes that, as a result of these boundaries, large parts of Highland Perthshire and East Perthshire are excluded from the national park; recognises the strength of support within these areas for participation and involvement in the national park; considers that the case for designation of the Cairngorms as a World Heritage Site would be strengthened by the inclusion of the Perthshire area in the park, and considers that the Executive should conduct an early review of the boundaries of the national park and extend the current boundary to that originally proposed by SNH.
I am grateful to the Parliamentary Bureau for the opportunity to hold this debate on the boundaries of the Cairngorms national park and thank all the members of various political parties who have supported my motion. One member who has given enthusiastic support to the whole matter is Dennis Canavan, who is out of the country on Commonwealth Parliamentary Association business but has registered his support for the arguments that will be advanced tonight. I also pay tribute to the members of PARC—Perthshire Alliance for the Real Cairngorms—who have contributed so much to pursue the issues that we will debate this evening.
I very much welcome the establishment of the Cairngorms national park. I support its work and its role within Scotland. Many people will criticise, debate and evaluate the approach and the direction of the national park and its founding principles. To me, that is a separate debate from the debate that we will have tonight, which is about a fundamental problem with the design of the park, which I believe undermines the effectiveness of the park and brings damaging consequences for some of the constituents in highland and east Perthshire whom I have the privilege to represent.
In September 2000, ministers made a formal proposal, under section 2 of the National Parks (Scotland) Act 2000, to establish a national park in the Cairngorms area. Ministers invited Scottish Natural Heritage to undertake the consultation on the proposal. For 20 weeks, SNH listened carefully to the views and opinions of interested parties on the boundaries, powers and functions of the park and the governance and financial arrangements for it.
The exercise was important in two respects. First, SNH was able to undertake a dispassionate assessment of the often controversial issues and give the Government a clear, robust and balanced proposal for it to consider. Secondly, SNH was able to engage local communities and individuals effectively, which gave people confidence that the park would be established on a sound footing. SNH is not exactly an organisation without its critics, but the evidence—in particular, the feedback from my constituents who took part in the exercise—is that it handled the consultation exercise on the Cairngorms national park extremely effectively.
In my view it is regrettable that the Government chose not to follow all of SNH's recommendations. I say to the minister that, as a result of that, public confidence in the consultation process has taken a heavy knock. Many of my constituents in the highland and east Perthshire areas, who spent a considerable amount of their time contributing to the debate about the national park to ensure that it would be established on a sound footing, have asked themselves why they bothered to take part when the results of such a detailed and rigorous exercise were not followed in full by the Government, which paid scant attention to the output of the consultation exercise.
On the question of boundaries, SNH recommended that the park area should include the central Cairngorms and the Lochnagar massifs, many of the straths that immediately surround them in Badenoch and Strathspey, Glenlivet, Donside and Deeside and, crucially, at the southern end of the park, in my constituency, the Angus glens and highland Perthshire.
The Government's first response to the proposals largely excluded the areas of my constituency in the Angus glens and in highland Perthshire. After an inquiry by the Rural Development Committee and much pressure from outside the Parliament, the Government revised its proposals and in the Cairngorms National Park Designation, Transitional and Consequential Provisions (Scotland) Order 2003 made provision for the inclusion of the Angus glens. Unfortunately, the area of highland Perthshire remained excluded.
I welcomed what the Government did on the Angus glens. I thought that it was a sensible response to the opinions that were being expressed, but it was illogical alongside the decision to refuse the extension of the boundaries to the highland and east Perthshire area.
I am grateful to the Rural Development Committee in the first session of Parliament, which was chaired by Mr Fergusson, who I am glad to see is in the chamber. The committee pursued the issue with great vigour. In a letter to the Deputy Minister for Environment and Rural Development at the time, Mr Fergusson wrote:
"There appeared to the Committee to be almost unanimous dissatisfaction with the proposed boundary, along with a degree of bewilderment due to the fact that the Executive had not provided clear and transparent reasons for its departure from the recommendations of SNH."
I have enormous sympathy with the view that the committee expressed.
Yesterday, I read again the Official Report that charted the committee's discussions on the 2003 order. Despite repeated questioning, the then Deputy Minister for Environment and Rural Development could provide no explanation of why the area had been excluded on the basis of topography, land character or land similarity. All that he would say was that he needed to reduce the number of local authorities involved in the park. It seemed that the debate had more to do with politics than with establishing the national park on a sound footing. That was no way to design a national park. The committee unanimously recommended the inclusion of highland Perthshire, in accordance with the recommendations of SNH. In response to the committee's recommendations, the then Deputy Minister for Environment and Rural Development wrote:
"I recognise that there is a case for extending the Park area, not only to remove the anomalies which had arisen through the division of certain communities … and to follow watersheds more closely, but also to include significantly larger areas."
However, the minister then ignored those views and reaffirmed the Government's existing position.
The debate presents ministers with a further opportunity to consider the matter. There is a compelling case for the inclusion of highland and east Perthshire in the national park. The area is similar in topography to the areas that are included to the north and east and includes natural gateways to the national park at Blair Atholl and through Glenshee. It includes areas of natural character that are as worthy of protection as the areas that are already in the park. The area is fundamental to establishing the credibility of the park in order to secure world heritage site status.
In a letter of 31 January to one of my constituents, the current Deputy Minister for Environment and Rural Development said that he accepted that the issue of world heritage site status issue is not simple or straightforward. However, he provided no reassurance about whether the park's ability to qualify for that status—or to have a credible case for acquiring it—has been enhanced or diminished by the decisions that the Government has taken.
In his evidence to the Rural Development Committee, Roland Bean, the head of forward planning at Perth and Kinross Council, said of the boundary of the proposed park:
"it runs along the administrative boundary of Perth and Kinross Council, which follows the watershed, but it cuts right through the Drumochter hills, a site of special scientific interest and a Natura site. The question is, will the dotterels and the snow buntings recognise the boundary?"—[Official Report, Rural Development Committee, 10 December 2002; c 3931.]
He asked a fair question, which highlighted the illogical nature of the boundary that has been foisted on us.
In a number of parliamentary questions, ministers have told members that although there will be a review of the park after five years, we should not expend much energy on boundaries. I hope that the minister will reconsider such dismissive talk and undertake an early review of the boundaries. I hope that he will acknowledge that the Government did not get its position right and I hope that he will listen to the views of people in highland Perthshire, its advisers in SNH and a cross-section of parliamentary opinion. The people of highland Perthshire want to be part of the Cairngorms national park. I hope that the minister delivers that sooner rather than later.
I commend John Swinney for securing the debate and for his assiduous pursuit of the issue during a number of years as the constituency member for North Tayside. Like him, I welcome members of the PARC campaign who are in the public gallery and I commend the way in which they have pursued the issue.
Perhaps unusually, I do not disagree with a word that John Swinney said. The debate is about righting a wrong. When the boundaries of the Cairngorms national park were drawn up, they included parts of Inverness-shire, Moray and Aberdeenshire and a small part of Angus, but no part of Perth and Kinross Council's area, despite the fact that all objective commentators said that the northern part of highland Perthshire should have been included. Even the Government's advisers, Scottish Natural Heritage, said that the boundaries should include parts of Perthshire. Only the Executive said anything different. Frankly, the Executive failed to marshal any objective evidence that their view was right and everyone else's was wrong. We can conclude only that the decision to exclude Perth and Kinross was taken for political reasons, because it would suit the Executive if a majority of the people who were elected to the national park's board came from the Highland Council area.
The Executive's decision was wrong and we should right that wrong at the earliest possible opportunity. It would certainly make sense to do so before we incur major expenditure on gateway signs and on the promotion of the park based on its current boundaries. If the current boundaries become entrenched, it will be even more difficult to reverse the position.
The summer before last, I had the pleasure of climbing Beinn a' Ghlo, which is a magnificent and expansive mountain with three Munro peaks rising steeply above Blair Atholl. It is clear to anyone standing on top of Beinn a' Ghlo that it is at the heart of the Grampians and at the southernmost edge of the Cairngorm massif. If the minister would like to join me for a re-ascent one day, I will show him what I mean.
Why should Beinn a' Ghlo be given any less protection than Beinn Bhrotain or Ben Avon, or any of the other mountains in the Cairngorms? Why, for that matter, should Glen Tilt be given any less protection than Glen Feshie? The whole thing makes no sense whatever.
The extent to which Scotland has benefited from national parks at all is a debate for another day. For many years, while England had national parks, we stood against them. The evidence to date shows that, where national parks have been created, visitor numbers have risen—although I do not know what has happened to visitor numbers in areas outwith the parks' boundaries. However, I do know that, if we are to have national parks at all, it must make sense to include within their boundaries all those parts of the country that fall naturally within the park. We should not artificially exclude some areas for political reasons.
A practical issue arises. As one drives up the A9—which I suspect is the access route to the Cairngorms national park for most people—one enters the park at the Drumochter pass. There is nothing there, apart from a lay-by on a busy main road. One can stop and take a photograph, but there is nowhere to buy refreshments or even souvenirs. The first settlement one comes to is Dalwhinnie, and there is not a great deal there for the visitor apart from a shop and a hotel—although there is also the distillery, of course.
The obvious gateway to the Cairngorms national park is Blair Atholl. It is well equipped to cater for the visitor. There are a number of shops and hotels, as well as the major tourist attraction that is Blair Castle. It would make perfect sense to develop Blair Atholl as the gateway to the Cairngorms national park. However, it will be more difficult to do that if Blair Atholl lies outwith the park boundaries.
I understand that Atholl Estates is working with Perth and Kinross Council and others to establish Blair Atholl as just that gateway, notwithstanding the present park boundaries. However, it would make much more sense, and be much more to the economic benefit of the area, if Blair Atholl could accurately say that it was part of the park.
A similar situation occurs a little to the east, in Glenshee. The obvious gateway to the national park on the east side of Perthshire is the Spittal of Glenshee. With its hotels, it is the obvious stopping point. However, the current park boundary is at the Glenshee ski slopes. It would be substantially to the economic benefit of the area to have the park boundary brought south and to make the Spittal the gateway to the park for those coming up the A93.
Frankly, the current boundaries of the Cairngorms national park are nonsensical. The Executive should stop dragging its feet on the issue and take action to right its wrong of two years ago. That wrong was to the detriment of the Perthshire economy.
I will make only a brief contribution, because my colleague Andrew Arbuckle is the one with the constituency interest.
I have strong feelings about this issue. I am proud of the Scottish Parliament and I am proud of most of what it has done. However, there are one or two glaring exceptions, and one of those was the Scottish Executive's decision not to adopt SNH's recommendation on the park boundary.
A key strength of the Parliament is that we engage in genuine consultation. Genuine consultation does not mean that we agree with every point made during that consultation, but it should mean that if we choose not to adopt a recommendation that has been arrived at through consultation, we must give a good reason for so doing. No relevant or persuasive argument was made for not accepting a park boundary that was arrived at after an extensive consultation that led to a hard-won consensus.
I agree with every word of John Swinney's motion and I hope that the Scottish Executive will move at the first sensible opportunity to review the boundary and to adopt the one that was extensively consulted on and that won a high degree of consensus.
I thank John Swinney for bringing this important topic of debate to the chamber and I join colleagues in thanking the Perthshire Alliance for the Real Cairngorms, which has done an incredible job in building real cross-party consensus on the need to include highland and east Perthshire in the Cairngorms national park. The Green Party and its politicians have been proud to be part of that cross-party campaign. Robin Harper was very vocal on the issue as a Green Party MSP for Lothians in the first session of the Scottish Parliament. I have been proud to follow in his footsteps and, as a Green Party MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, to support this campaign.
As part of its activities, the cross-party campaign undertook a Munro bash up to the top of Carn Liath to survey the nature of the land, to take a look at where the Cairngorms national park is and to think about where its boundaries could be. I was on the walk with John Swinney, Murdo Fraser, Dennis Canavan and Robin Harper. When we got to the top of Carn Liath, the mist lifted and we looked over at the Cairngorms massif. We could see how the nature of the land reveals that that area of highland Perthshire is intrinsically a part of the Cairngorms; that is obvious from the geography and the topography. That fact was recognised by the communities of highland Perthshire and by SNH, which is why they recommended that areas such as the forest of Atholl and Beinn a' Ghlo should be included in the Cairngorms national park.
As Murdo Fraser said, the economic argument is strong. The Cairngorms National Park Authority is starting to realise the importance of having highland Perthshire in the park. While reading a magazine the other day, I came across an advert for the national park that promoted various tourist opportunities, including a highland and east Perthshire walking festival. It is clear that the Cairngorms National Park Authority is aware that visitors are coming to the Cairngorms through a gateway at Blair Atholl, are residing in that area and are visiting other parts of the Cairngorms as well. Perhaps that is why Perth and Kinross Council is working to ensure that signs are erected at Blair Atholl so that it is recognised as a proper gateway to the park.
Underneath a map that describes the current boundary, the park authority's website contains a telling disclaimer:
"This map has been produced as a general guide only to the Park boundaries and its main roads, communities and features and the Cairngorms National Park Authority can accept no responsibility for errors or omissions."
It is time the Executive took some responsibility for the errors of the past and the omission of highland Perthshire from the Cairngorms national park. It is clear that the economic and physical geography dictate that the park boundary should lie in highland Perthshire and should not be dictated by Highland Council politics.
It is important that the boundary is changed soon; it should certainly be changed before the granite signs welcoming people to the park are erected in the wrong place. Ideally, the boundary should have been altered in September, before the correct change in the make-up of the park authority's board—to allow Perth and Kinross Council elected members to become members of the board—was made. The change should definitely happen before the quinquennial review.
The minister has a clear choice. If he does not instigate a boundary change before the quinquennial review, he faces the prospect of a member's bill being introduced that will seek to change the boundaries of the Cairngorms national park on the Parliament's terms rather than on those of the Executive. Such a bill would have cross-party support. The logic that the national park's boundary should lie in highland Perthshire is irrefutable. As a member of the Environment and Rural Development Committee, I welcome the prospect of that logic being tested in our committee.
The question is not whether we will get the boundary change, but when we will get it. I ask the minister to ensure that we get it before the quinquennial review.
I have great pleasure in supporting John Swinney's motion and congratulating him on securing the debate.
The Cairngorms National Park Authority is shaping up well. Week by week, we see it develop into the unified and thoughtful creature that was intended in the legislation that established it. Every week, I travel through upland Perthshire and find that it is excluded from the national park even though it is naturally attached to those areas that fall within the park's present boundary. I wonder what the Government has got against Atholl. I have climbed the mountains on both sides of the boundary—in my youth, I hasten to add—and thought about the human as well as the natural links that exist between those areas. I find the boundary highly illogical.
The great drove roads of the Minigaig pass, which links Strathspey and Atholl, and Glen Tilt, which links Deeside and Atholl, are naturally contiguous with the park area. Maybe we have a nomenclature problem. The park is called the Cairngorms national park, but the massif is far bigger and goes beyond the narrow area of the group of mountains around Aviemore. It is possible that that skewed Government thinking.
There are several local authorities around Loch Lomond and the Trossachs national park, but the number of local authorities is not important. The important issue is the credibility of the national park board: it should be respected by the general public and the people who live in its area and it should achieve the purposes for which it was set up.
The natural heritage argument is clear. A new Deputy Minister for Environment and Rural Development is dealing with the issue. I hope that he will be able to justify the Government's past position. I would also like him to take us forward. Waiting for however long is left of the five years is too long. We do not need to be taking up the time of this Parliament with issues that should have been fixed a couple of years ago. I am sorry that the decision was taken just before an election but, frankly, it was a bad decision.
I hope that highland and east Perthshire can be included in the park as soon as possible, to make the Cairngorms national park a centre of excellence for national parks in Scottish terms and to show me—a sceptic about national parks—that it is possible for them to do good for our highland areas. I therefore have great pleasure in supporting John Swinney's motion.
The sun may be in my eyes, but it appears that it is the Executive that has been blinded on this issue. I congratulate John Swinney on securing the debate and echo his support and that of others for park authority members who have kept the campaign going.
John Swinney ably laid out the history of the creation of the national park and the lack of substance behind the exclusion of the highland Perth area. He, Murdo Fraser and others correctly highlighted the many logical reasons for inclusion—geographical, commercial and economic. He and other members also hinted at the political reasons for excluding the area. The decision to exclude the area was perverse, given the views of Scottish Natural Heritage.
My predecessor MSP left me with few instructions, but he did mention the anomalous boundaries of the Cairngorms national park. He was right. Although I am a new boy here, I have come across wide-ranging support for a change in the boundaries. I have encountered long-standing support for inclusion from across the rural political spectrum and from many rural bodies. Only the Executive seems incapable of seeing the need for change.
I have no wish to see the continual revision of legislation, but when there are wide-ranging, non-controversial, sensible reasons for change, the Executive should be big enough to accede to such proposals. What the creator has put together, the Executive should not cast asunder.
I am in such a state at the moment that I came here tonight prepared to listen to Andrew Arbuckle's debate, which I think is scheduled for tomorrow night. However, I am delighted to be involved in this one because, as John Swinney said, I had the great privilege and honour of convening the Rural Development Committee, which considered the legislation that established Scotland's first two national parks.
It was a privilege because, during that process, the Rural Development Committee pioneered—if I may be so bold—a method of public involvement in committee meetings that has since been echoed by other committees. It gave members of the public who came to the meetings that we took out and about to all parts of Scotland a real sense of being involved and included.
Nowhere was the public keener to get involved than at a meeting in Kingussie. I will long remember it. They flocked to the meeting in droves. All had meaningful input for that committee meeting and none intimated a desire that highland Perthshire should be left outside the national park boundary.
As John Swinney said, Scottish Natural Heritage is not an organisation that does not court criticism. I, perhaps more than many other members, have found considerable cause to criticise it during this and the previous parliamentary session, but I did not do so in this case because every member of the Rural Development Committee believed that the exercise SNH had undertaken and the report and recommendations it published thereafter seemed totally logical, completely sensible and in accordance with the views of the vast majority of those who responded.
All members here have stated all the reasons why highland Perthshire should be—and I will always believe should have been—included within the national park boundary. When it became obvious that the Executive would not listen—only the Scottish Executive or, rather, the Labour part of the Scottish Executive would not listen—and would not be swayed, there were last-minute meetings between members of all parties and organisations such as SNH, Scottish Environment LINK, PARC, the National Trust for Scotland and all other serious bodies to try to get the Executive to rethink.
I was deeply disappointed to see a recent letter to Bill Wright from the minister in which he said that the park had to have a coherent identity and be of a manageable size, and that the existing park boundary allows for better management and more efficient use of available resources. I simply cannot accept that. The only significant change is that the number of local authorities has been brought down to four from five.
Sadly, I can only agree with other members that the decision on the boundary was purely political. As John Swinney rightly said, that is no basis on which to establish a national park. As long as highland Perthshire is excluded from the national park, the park will be deeply flawed and incomplete and the Parliament will be rightly criticised for letting petty party politics get in the way of common sense and a logical conclusion.
In the letter, the minister also says that, in his view, it is too early in the life of the park authority to undertake a boundary review. I am sorry, but it is no such thing. Highland Perthshire should have been included in the first place. It would not be a review; it would be putting right an omission that was made at the start.
I am prepared to forgive the minister for everything if he will announce tonight that Scotland's third national park will be the Galloway national park. It is not likely that he will make that announcement and, on that ground, I urge him to please all Scotland by saying that highland Perthshire will, from here on, be included in the Cairngorms national park boundary.
I begin by disappointing Alex Fergusson: his plea for Galloway is not on my agenda this evening.
I congratulate John Swinney on securing this debate on the Cairngorms national park. The boundaries of the park were approved by MSPs in December 2002 and the national park authority took on its full powers on 1 September 2003. Rightly, the Cairngorms National Park Authority has focused on getting established—from finding offices and recruiting staff to drafting its first corporate plan. It has developed an effective organisation and laid a sound foundation on which to build. It has progressed several excellent projects, one or two of which have been referred to in passing, in areas such as building partnerships with communities, sustainable tourism, biodiversity and economic development. That is what it exists to do.
Our first priority should be to support the board of the new authority in turning into reality the aspirations and objectives that the Parliament set out. That means supporting the four primary aims that are set out in the National Parks (Scotland) Act 2000, which cover areas such as natural heritage, the sustainable use of resources, enjoyment by the public and social and economic development. It also means accepting the outcome of the debate on boundaries that we had two and a half years ago and letting the national park authority get on with its job.
Highland and east Perthshire are beautiful parts of Scotland. I have not had the pleasure of climbing Beinn a' Ghlo or Carn Liath but I have been up Glas Tulaichean and had a good look from the top of that hill at part of the area to which members have referred. I understand entirely why residents might wish to have the importance of that area recognised by inclusion in the park, which is why it is important to remind members of the full process that Ross Finnie and Allan Wilson followed to ensure that ministers got the boundary right.
Before the minister explains the full process of consultation, with which all members are painfully familiar, I ask him to clarify a point that has run through every speech that has been made in the debate: what was the basis for the inclusion of the Angus glens in the park and the exclusion of highland Perthshire? I asked his predecessor that question on numerous occasions at the Rural Development Committee and I am yet to get an answer to it.
John Swinney invites me to put the cart before the horse. I would rather describe the process and then describe the conclusions that it reached.
SNH produced a comprehensive report following consultation in 2001. A number of the respondents to the consultation felt that the nationally important features of the natural heritage were concentrated in the mountain core at the heart of the Cairngorms and that such a smaller and less diverse area would make for a more effective management unit. Therefore, ministers initially consulted on a park area based on the smallest of SNH's three identified options: the mountain core and the straths of central Strathspey and upper Deeside. That consultation attracted almost 500 written responses, and ministers accepted that there was a case for extending the park area to include significantly larger areas. Therefore, it was increased by more than 50 per cent to some 3,800km2, which made the park easily the largest national park in Britain. The final designation order was approved by the Parliament and included significant additions in Laggan, Dalwhinnie, Glenlivet, Strathdon and the heads of the Angus glens.
I accept that parts of highland Perthshire were assessed as being of significant natural heritage quality and that one or two of the areas that were included in the park were considered not to be of the same quality, but it is important to stress the point, which was made at the time, that ministers were looking for a coherent and workable boundary, and the boundary was defined on that basis. Ministers also took the view that to include a larger area than was included would have increased the number of interests and organisations with which the national park authority had to deal and would have increased the planning and administrative complexity of its task.
Members have talked about the number of planning authorities and suggested that there is a political explanation for ministers' view that a large number of planning authorities would increase the level of complication. There is nothing party political about that; their view simply recognises the fact that the more authorities were included in the area, the more complex the national park authority's task of conducting its work would become.
Although I hear the points that have been made, at this stage it would not be right to put at risk the progress that the authority has made. Clearly, the work that it has done on producing a national park plan over the past two years would have to be suspended, which would have an impact on the national park's credibility and raise doubts about its future direction. There would be disruption to the organisation due to a requirement to reorganise or reconstitute the board and to restructure committees and, therefore, considerable uncertainty among staff.
However, the national park authority should not ignore the broader geographical context in which it operates and I expect it to be mindful of the interests of people in the surrounding area. I urge those in highland and east Perthshire who are enthusiastic about inclusion in the national park to put aside their concerns about boundaries for now and instead to channel their efforts into supporting the park's development and helping to make it a success.
Will the minister take an intervention?
Will the minister take an intervention?
Yes.
I will let John Swinney in, as it is his debate.
I am grateful to the minister for giving way and to Mr Fergusson for letting me in.
I assure the minister that there is plenty enthusiasm in highland Perthshire for seizing the opportunities of working alongside the national park authority. Mr Fraser made a number of points about that in his speech. I am still at a loss to understand how a boundary line can be defined as harshly as it is to the east of the A93 between Angus and Perth and Kinross, where the topography is identical left to right and right to left. The only foundation for that can be politics. The topography does not vary a whit from east to west in that area.
As I said, the number of local authorities that are included in the area is relevant not in a party-political sense but in relation to planning powers and the relationship between the planning processes that are carried out by local authorities—structure plans, local plans and so on—and those that are carried out by the national park authority, including the local plan for the national park area. Given that planning authorities remain development control authorities for the purposes of the National Parks (Scotland) Act 2000 in relation to the Cairngorms national park, the matter is relevant for the administrative boundaries. Given that the initial proposal was for a much tighter national park area centred around the massif, we are dealing with an extension beyond what was inherent in the Cairngorms design—namely the inclusion of the Angus glens—rather than the exclusion of an area that was initially intended to be included.
I share the minister's enthusiasm for the work that the authority's board has done so far and the cohesion that it has brought to the process. Recently, I attended a reception that it gave and was impressed by what I saw and heard. Does the minister accept that none of the board members threw up their hands in horror at the prospect of the park being extended into highland Perthshire?
I acknowledge that point and I do not throw up my hands in horror any more than any of the board members do. It is not a case of saying that highland Perthshire does not in any way qualify. As I have said, highland Perthshire shares features with the areas included in the park—I have made that point and explained some of the reasons for the decisions that were made. It is important to acknowledge the critical significance for any new organisation of being able to establish itself, to settle in and to put in place structures that will last.
There is no closure on the question of the boundaries. Neither I nor my predecessors have taken the view that there is a holy grail that defines what the national park should be and that there is no question of that ever changing. We have said that the quinquennial review, which applies to all public bodies and which will take place in 2008, may consider the park boundaries. Ministers would still have to form a view on whether a change was justified at that time, but we are clear that then, with a stronger, well-established organisation, a national park plan in place and real improvements on the ground, the national park authority would be far better placed to accommodate any proposed extension of the boundaries. That would be better than stopping in its tracks the process of establishing the authority and asking it to start again.
I come to the issue of world heritage status. Reference has been made to whether the current boundary will impact on the attainment of world heritage status for the Cairngorms. The Cairngorms are already on the United Kingdom list of potential world heritage sites, which was drawn up in 1999. The area that was nominated then centres on the Cairngorm massif—an area that is well within the current boundaries of the national park. It is certainly our view—and that of others—that the Cairngorms stand a far stronger chance of being designated a world heritage site by placing emphasis on the pre-glacial and post-glacial geological features of the massif, which are of recognised international importance. In any case, the first priority in making progress on such a designation is to get the national park established and to make it clear that there is a commitment to it. We believe that we should press on on that basis.
Until we reach the quinquennial review, I believe that we should all put argument and disagreement about the boundaries firmly behind us. Two years on, the priority must be to get the park firmly established in the interests of the areas within the park and the neighbouring areas. I urge all those who value the benefits that a national park can bring to get behind the Cairngorms National Park Authority in its efforts to secure sustainable development in the area and to make a real difference to both our national heritage and local communities.
Meeting closed at 17:45.