Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee, 19 Jun 2007

Meeting date: Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Official Report 144KB pdf

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Interests

Good afternoon and welcome to the first meeting of the Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee in the third session of the Scottish Parliament. I remind members to turn off their mobile phones and pagers because they interfere with the system. I have received an apology from Cathy Peattie, who is running late because of a plane's late arrival at the airport. We have no control over that, but we hope that she will arrive during the meeting.

Agenda item 1 is a declaration of interests by members. In accordance with section 3 of the code of conduct, I invite members to declare any interests that are relevant to the committee's remit. An interest that I will have to add to my entry in the register of members' interests is that I am a member of the Dornoch rail link action group. I invite members to declare any interests.

I do not think that I have any interests that I am required to register in relation to the committee's work, although I am a member, in a voluntary capacity, of several organisations that might wish to give evidence to the committee, including Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Oxfam.

Similarly, I have no interests to declare in addition to those in my entry in the register of members' interests. I am a former member of the rural community transport initiative.

My interests are registered in the register of members' interests. I draw attention to the fact that I recently retired as a councillor on Aberdeenshire Council, as part of which I was chair of NESTRANS—the north-east Scotland transport partnership. I was also a non-executive director of Scottish Enterprise Grampian until May 2007. Those are my interests that are relevant to the committee's work.

I draw members' attention to my entry in the register of members' interests, which states that I am an owner of agricultural land in Scotland. That might be relevant to our discussions on climate change, in particular. Also, I am a member of NFU Scotland and of the Scottish Rural Property and Business Association, both of which regularly give evidence to parliamentary committees.

I draw members' attention to my entry in the register of members' interests. I do not think that it contains anything in either the statutory or the voluntary sections that gives rise to a conflict of interest with the duties of a member of the Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee.

I do not believe that there is any conflict of interest between my membership of the committee and my registered interests. I am a member of City of Edinburgh Council, but I have no executive or convenership role on it.

Thank you. We will allow Cathy Peattie to make her declaration at the first opportunity.