Chamber and committees

The Scottish National Party Government is selling Scotland’s countryside to the highest bidder. The Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Energy is quite happy to travel the world, but she cannot even be bothered to meet campaign groups in her constituency. She would rather spend her time in New York than in New Deer. What a shameful display.

The motion before us will silence communities. That will forever be the SNP Government’s legacy to communities that are impacted by megapylons. Energy companies want to destroy our countryside to reward their shareholders, and the Scottish ministers are complicit in that.

In August, community groups came together in the Highlands, because they were concerned about what they were seeing in their communities—battery storage facilities, substations, hydrogen plants and monster pylons. Such environmental vandalism is endorsed by the devolved SNP Government. I was there in the audience. Two SNP MSPs, including a Government minister, signed up to recognising and valuing local democracy and the pivotal role that all our community councils play in ensuring that democracy is respected, and to undertaking to do all that we can across our respective parties to secure urgent debates at Holyrood and in the House of Commons.

I thought that, at last, we might be getting somewhere, but, since then, the SNP Government has failed to bring the issue to the chamber for debate. The SNP MSPs misled the local community because they knew what a backlash they would have received at the meeting if they had told the truth. I have written to the minister who signed up to the declaration and to the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Energy, Gillian Martin, to ask when the Government will hold a debate on the matter, but I have not been able to get an answer, which is shameful.

Community councils in areas of the north-east that are impacted by monster pylons and large-scale energy projects will meet to discuss the issue in Stonehaven this weekend. Will the cabinet secretary be there? No, of course she will not, because she is not interested in listening to the voices of concerned communities.

The legislative consent motion before us will make it easier for this rotten, tired SNP Government to push through energy projects. It is quite happy to sacrifice our rural communities to suit its agenda. It wants to desecrate our countryside, and the LCM will enable the desecration of our countryside. The monster pylons that I am talking about are absolutely huge, and communities are rightly worried.

However, the issue is about more than just the size of the pylons. Houses are being devalued as we speak, and farmers will not be able to farm in the vicinity of the pylons. The bill will fast-track the building of megapylons and other electricity infrastructure, ignoring communities.

There is a huge inequality in the present system. It is rigged in favour of energy companies. We have a David versus Goliath situation, in which energy companies with deep pockets face community groups that rely on volunteers and crowdfunding. It is a disgrace. We need to have a fair system that puts community voices at the heart of the consenting process, rather than the present system, which looks to silence them.

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to recent reports of a rise in recorded bullying incidents in schools. (S6O-05055)

With more than 64,000 bullying incidents logged in just five years and growing reports of violence against teachers, it is clear that violence and intimidation are becoming routine in Scotland’s schools. Does the cabinet secretary agree with the First Minister’s claim yesterday that the Scottish National Party Government has not failed in education, when it is evident that it is failing to protect pupils and staff from harm?

Last week, I took part in “Debate Night” in Dundee, and the issue that most people were concerned about was illegal immigration and the impact on our communities.

Let us clear one thing up straight away: people being concerned about illegal immigration does not mean that they are far right or racist, as the whole woke left-wing ideology in this place tries to make out—we heard that nonsense again today from the cabinet secretary. It means that they care about how public services are going to be paid for; how our hospitals, schools and housing will cope with additional unplanned pressures; and how our local authorities can afford to keep local services running while spending more and more on the problems that arise from illegal migration.

Those are genuine concerns that cannot be brushed under the carpet, and that is why people out there are angry. We have to listen and understand, and acknowledge the anger, not simply dismiss and ignore it as every other party in the chamber wants to do. We have protests in our towns and cities, councils rocked by divisions, and financial detriment to our citizens, all fuelled by a lack of understanding and direction from this out-of-time Administration.

I do not think that I have time, Mr Johnson—sorry.

I recognise that control of immigration is a reserved issue, but we must all play our part. The SNP Government has created pull factors for asylum seekers coming to Scotland. Removing the local connection rule in particular has meant that it is much easier for asylum seekers to come to a particular local authority, and has created undue pressures on authorities such as Aberdeenshire and Aberdeen City Council.

The Government has already said that it will not be accepting some of the proposals from the United Kingdom Climate Change Committee—for example, around agriculture. If you are not accepting some of the CCC’s recommendations, can you tell us what you will put forward instead to make up the gap from the savings that are not being made?

I am sorry, Kevin Stewart, but members on your front bench would not take interventions, so I am not going to take any interventions from you.

I agree that this piece of legislation is vital, but, once again, such legislation is being rushed through the parliamentary process. Climate change legislation has been delayed and obfuscated, and is now, I feel, at serious threat of running out of parliamentary time before the dissolution of Parliament. It is important that the instrument is looked at closely, because we do not know what the costs or the impact on families will be as a result of what we are being asked to agree to today.

We have before us an SSI on carbon targets that has come before the climate change plan, for which we have waited and waited. A plan was promised in 2023, and now, more than two years later, we are promised that it will be published by the end of October so that the Parliament—and, more importantly, the public—will have an opportunity to consider, be consulted on, respond to and shape that most important strategy.

However, we are now being told that a plan cannot be published until the targets are set. We remain mystified as to why that has to be the order of things. Why are we agreeing targets when we have no idea how the Government plans to meet them? How can we say yes to the end point, without understanding the process of how we are going to get there? That was the mistake that was made last time.

How can we be sure that all our communities and, most importantly, those who are living in poorer or rural communities, are properly consulted on the impact that the targets will have? I hope that there will be some common sense about wood-burning stoves, for example, because, as Jim Fairlie tweeted during the storm last week, he had his

“wee stove keeping us warm”.

It is a good job that his party’s plan to ban them was derailed by the campaign that was led by the Scottish Conservatives.

When looking at the SSI and the amendments, the committee raised some significant concerns and asked for clarity from the Government.

The Labour Government in Westminster is, of course, equally culpable, as the numbers arriving have been increasing exponentially over the past year, mostly in dinghies and—I say this to Maggie Chapman, so that she knows—not from war-torn countries, but from France.

More should, and must, be done by all Governments by working together, not by stoking petty grievances. Solutions can be developed only in partnership, through a cross-UK approach. The SNP, with its constant refrain of independence, is hurting the opportunities for co-ordinated action. There should be one message from all Administrations in the UK.

Billions are being spent on asylum hotels, which means that less money is available for the devolved Administrations. Money is being spent on taxis to shuttle asylum seekers to doctors’ appointments, which means that there is less money to spend on education. Decisions made by the Government have an impact on our communities. Offering things for free has a cost. Nothing is free; everything is paid for by hard-working Scots through their taxes. Only the Conservative Party has a commonsense approach to controlling immigration in our country. Only the Conservative Party has taken a whole-UK approach, understanding that the solution can be found only by working together.

Refugees should not find it easier to get accommodation in Scotland than in England. Scottish local authorities should not be under greater pressure to deliver accommodation than our neighbours in England, because we simply cannot cope. We have a housing emergency and the SNP is adding to it with the open-door policy that it is pursuing. Hard-working families cannot get on the housing ladder and they see people from other parts of the country jump to the top of the list. Local connection rules that were abolished should be reinstated and emergency policies that were adopted during Covid to house asylum seekers in hotels should be dropped. Our communities demand more and better, and it is time that the SNP Government listened to people’s concerns and stepped up or got out of the way.

15:31  

I think that that is where Mr Doris is confused. We are being asked to approve targets, without knowing how we are going to achieve them. We do not know whether they will be achievable. I feel that we should have had the plan at the same time as the targets.

The committee wanted clarity on the estimated costs of each policy and detail on how each estimate had been calculated; how actions set out in the long-awaited climate change plan will link with the annual budget process, which requires urgent action, given that we will have a budget in a few months; details of the publication of other related strategies, bills and plans, alongside the draft climate change plan; and modelling of emissions reductions for areas where the Scottish Government intends to reduce emissions at a different rate to the Climate Change Committee’s model, such as agriculture, which I asked about earlier.

We also need clarity on timing. Although the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Energy has pledged to have the climate change plan in place before the Parliament is dissolved, time is tight: the draft has to be laid, the Parliament has to consider it and the public need to be consulted and their views taken into account. On 9 September, the cabinet secretary reassured the committee that the Government had confidence that the timetable could be met. I remind the chamber that we first expected the climate change plan in 2023.

I am sorry if I do not share the cabinet secretary’s confidence. While the devolved SNP Government has wasted two years developing the policy, the world has moved on: Britain’s domestic energy prices are now the second highest in the world and its industrial electricity prices are the highest in the world. Almost half the cost of producing electricity in Britain results from net zero spending, taxes and levies.