Chamber and committees

Many other excellent points have been made in the debate, and I could speak for another seven minutes in order to highlight them.

Community energy provides 34 times the community benefit of privately owned energy. Therefore, we need to ensure that that benefit is returned to our communities. I urge the Scottish Government to ensure that all arms of government have a presumption to contract and support community energy producers.

Would the minister look at the situation with Forestry and Land Scotland? Could there be a presumption in favour of communities that are interested in taking over developments when they come up for re-tendering?

Energy is a key resource, and community ownership of energy has empowered communities and provides resources for on-going investment in community wellbeing. I welcome the investment that has been announced by Great British Energy and the Scottish Government in the community energy generation growth fund. That is very much appreciated, but we possibly have to go further than that.

Alex Rowley talked about fuel poverty, which is often the crux of the matter. Community-owned energy provides an opportunity to tackle fuel poverty. Renewables are often developed in areas of the highest fuel poverty but, when that is done by private investors, local communities do not really see the benefit. Community ownership could be a vehicle to provide that. Community owners such as the Galson Estate Trust are looking at how to retail their community-generated energy at an affordable price to local people in their community, many of whom suffer from fuel poverty.

A number of members have rightly mentioned Point and Sandwick Trust, which has also led the charge in that regard, by helping members of its community to become more fuel efficient and therefore to cut their fuel bills. We see community generation doing that all the time.

Sarah Boyack talked about the amount of money that is paid in constraint payments. When those payments are made, the energy is being wasted at the moment. She suggested that the energy should be used for not-for-profit heat networks, which is an excellent idea. We need to pursue research and development in relation to storage and alternative methods of transmission to ensure that none of that energy goes to waste and that it goes where it is most needed.

Sarah Boyack and many other speakers talked about community benefit. The Aquatera report for Point and Sandwick Trust said:

“In cash terms, the average payment from the community owned wind farms in our study is £170,000 per installed MW per annum compared to the private industry standard of £5,000 per installed MW per annum.”

That is a huge difference. There is 34 times more benefit from community-owned generation than from privately owned generation. Perhaps the cabinet secretary will take someone from Forestry and Land Scotland aside and point out which model provides the best community benefit and return.

In answer to a question, the Scottish Government admitted that no wind farms in our national forest and land are community owned or community run. Of the 25 operational wind farms that are on Scotland’s national forest and land, which are managed by Forestry and Land Scotland, none is community owned, in whole or in part. That means that 1,300MW are being generated through private ownership.

Alex Rowley, Patrick Harvie and others cited the example of the Cruach Mhor wind farm, which is on Forest and Land Scotland land in the Cowal peninsula. The community was keen to take on the farm when it was put out to tender again, but its bid was totally rejected by Forestry and Land Scotland. I ask the Scottish Government to ensure that there is a presumption in favour of community ownership in scenarios in which a community organisation is willing to take on such a project.

Like Colin Smyth, I am a proud Scottish Co-operative Party member, and I am therefore committed to co-operative ownership. Co-operative Development Scotland, which is a wing of Scottish Enterprise, is supposed to support the growth of co-operatives and community-owned businesses. It could play an important role in assisting the development and scaling up of community energy organisations throughout Scotland, but that is being limited due to inadequate funding and resources. The Scottish Government should specifically commit to increasing CDS funding, which is ring fenced from the Scottish Enterprise budget, so that it can do that work.

We could also look at having a co-operative retailer for community energy, because one issue is that all the retailers are multinationals. How do community generators sell their energy into the grid at an affordable price in order to challenge fuel poverty? Community Energy Scotland tells us that all community-owned wind turbines that are operational will need to be replaced by 2038. Therefore, we need to get alongside communities and help them to meet the challenges. We need to look at how we can secure grid connections for developing community projects, which is a big issue, because community projects cannot develop a number of projects and then sign up to grid connections. They must have the grid connection before that point, so they are not being counted when it comes to grid infrastructure. That needs to change.

We need to look at funding. Colin Smyth talked about the Scottish National Investment Bank. The Co-operative Party’s “Scotland’s green energy future” asks whether SNIB should have a dedicated fund. We need community investment.

Audrey Nicoll talked about communities that have money to invest but not the land to develop. Could they invest in other community-owned wind farms or renewable generators? Douglas Lumsden talked about planning and how the same regulations were in place regardless of the planning application’s scale or ownership. That is something that we need to look at.

A number of people talked about doubling the funding for CARES and ensuring that communities have confidence in the scheme. Michael Matheson made the point that communities need to be nurtured and have confidence in investment, because huge risks are involved in it.

That would apply, too, to those who were promoted into ministerial and cabinet secretary positions—they would already have cast a vote and would then be subject to scrutiny by that same committee. However, we would simply have to live with that, because I do not think that any of us are so arrogant that we cast a vote expecting to be in an elevated position and none of us are probably looking at our demotion so clearly as when we are looking to cast a vote—although the minister might disagree.

We must also not shy away from setting up short-life committees. Sometimes the committee structure is so stuck that we cannot do things a bit more flexibly. We should look at setting up short-life committees and sub-committees—or joint sub-committees of two or more committees, if that would be useful. That would give us the flexibility to react to circumstances.

I absolutely agree that there should be no single-sex committees. Scottish Labour works hard to ensure that our group has gender balance, and we must never stop doing that.

I thank the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee for the debate and for carrying out an inquiry into committee effectiveness.

We must review and improve our procedures to ensure that the Parliament always operates to the highest standards. Our committees exist to hold Government to account and to test legislation. Members must leave their party allegiance at the door and hold Government to account. Some would argue that the role is different for members of the governing party when they are dealing with legislation, given that they stood on a manifesto that promoted that same legislation. I do not think that anyone would expect the committee—

I really look forward to the day when that must happen—[Laughter.] I cannot conceive of it, but I sincerely hope that it does. If that were the case, I would be willing to come off the committee.

Our Parliament should be representative of the communities that we represent. If we had gender balance in the Parliament, single-sex committees would not be an issue at all. However, signing up to the ideal of no single-sex committees without challenging parties to have better gender equality means exactly what Jackie Dunbar and Jackson Carlaw have talked about—that women would end up working harder than men. I am sure that every woman in the Parliament would argue that we already work harder than men as it is, and that we would not want to work any harder than that.

Not only would it be incredibly disappointing if we had single-sex parties; a single-sex party could not prevent a committee from being single sex if it were the last party to nominate. That would cause problems for other parties. Should they forego their committee membership? Should another woman step in? What should happen then? The simple way of avoiding that is to ensure that all parties pursue gender equality in their MSP group.

Having taken a number of interventions, I am now running out of time. It is essential that we review and refresh our procedures to keep our Parliament responsive to the needs of our communities. We need to review our committees. We also need to review legislation and build post-legislative scrutiny into our processes. There might be opportunities to do that at the start of a parliamentary session, when legislation has not yet been introduced. We need to consider using that time to train committee members, as well as let them review previous legislation. That would give them an insight into that committee’s work.

Yes.

Indeed—I was about to make that very point. Legislation must be tested to ensure that it will do what it is meant to, that it will not have unintended consequences and that it will be really good legislation. That benefits the Government as well, because it means that its legislation is all the better because of it.

At the same time, I do not think that anyone expects committee members to leave their personal beliefs at the door when they go into committee. Sometimes, that directs the approach that they take. It is difficult to see how we can leave our party politics at the door in what sometimes can be a very partisan Parliament.

A proposal is that we elect committee conveners. We believe that that would help. It would obviously have to be under the d’Hondt system, so that candidates could be only from one party. That approach would give scope for a different career path for MSPs, who could look to become a committee convener rather than a Government minister or cabinet secretary. It would also provide opportunities for those who might not be in favour with their party and might never hope to aspire to committee convenership otherwise. Excluding cabinet secretaries and ministers from casting a vote in the ballot would ensure that the Government could not unduly influence those elections.

There are many committees on which there is only one woman, and there are some on which there are no women. That is an issue right here, right now, and it is not good.

The maximum penalties set out in your bill will be lower than those currently available under the common-law offence of theft. What impact do you think that that will have on any penalties that are imposed?