Chamber and committees

I note the cabinet secretary’s response, which is brief. What it does not say is that, although the statement was made to the Scottish Parliament on 29 June that the proposals would not be going ahead, one of the Green MSPs said shortly afterwards that the Scottish Government was

“committed to bringing forward these proposals”,

so what was in the statement was immediately contradicted in the press. Since then, the cabinet secretary has said that she will bring forward other measures.

The industry itself is highly sceptical. The Scottish Fishermen’s Federation has talked about the measures being brought back in by the back door, and when I speak to fishing representatives in Clyde, Shetland, the Western Isles and elsewhere, as well as the SFF, I hear grave concern. Instead of closing the petition now—the issues have not really gone away, which is the point that I am making—could we write to the Scottish Government to seek an update on its alternative plans to enhance the protection of the marine environment and whether they will include HPMAs? That appears to be the case, even though such a move appears to have been ruled out.

In addition, could we specifically request the Scottish Government to tell us what engagement it is having with Duncan Macinnes and the Western Isles Fishermen’s Association, with Elaine Whyte and her colleagues in Clyde and with all the bodies that represent inshore fisheries? They have tremendous knowledge and are doing tremendous things, but they have just been completely skated over.

Finally, 37 per cent of our seas are already designated as marine protected areas, but there has been no mention by the Scottish Government whether there should be a review of the existing designations of MPAs. It has always seemed to me—as a logician, I would hope—that before you embark on a series of brand-new measures, you should work out how effective or otherwise the existing measures have been as well as the economic impacts. As a former fisheries minister, I know that the impacts issue is highly controversial, because the fishermen feel that they have never been properly assessed and are repeatedly underestimated. We need look only at the number of vessels closing—we are losing vessels all over Scotland. It is a dire situation.

I am sorry—perhaps I have gone on too long, but I feel that we should keep the petition open and ask in writing for a lot of detail. Indeed, I am pretty sure that that is what the petitioner and many others would want us to do.

I want to raise a wider issue about citizen participation. As we know, the purpose of this committee—good morning, minister—is to act on the side, as it were, of David versus Goliath, which is the Government.

It is a shame that the fleet was so prematurely deprived of Alex Neil, its admiral, but—[Laughter.]

I will try not to be too predictable, then. Just extending the metaphor one more time, our purpose is to provide David with a sling so that there is some equality in the weaponry. To be serious, we find that many of our petitions relate to concerns that ordinary people—citizens of Paisley or Inverness—have with Government agencies, the authorities and the powers that be. In fact, those petitions probably account for more than half of the total.

I want to raise a specific example. Last week, the convener of the Finance and Public Administration Committee, Kenneth Gibson, pointed out the cost of the commissioners, also known as tsars. There is a plethora of those commissioners in Scotland, and the cost amounts to £80 million over a five-year period. We will discuss the A9 later, but a 10-year saving on the tsars—if we decided to purge them in Scotland—would save £160 million, which just happens to be £10 million more than the cost of the proposed dualling of the section of the A9 from Tomatin to Moy. Minister, you may not have direct portfolio responsibility for the tsars, but, given that we really need to look at making savings, do we get value for money from our tsars? Are they any more relevant to our citizens than the Romanovs were to the Russians in their daily life? Would it not be worth considering a purge of the tsars and, if so, does history not tell us that October is not a bad month in which to carry it out?

I am grateful for the minister’s reply. It is not ungenerous, and it is appreciated. I will just comment that we spend a lot of time in the Parliament deciding how to spend ever more quantities of taxpayers’ money, but we spend very little time reviewing how much value for money we get from the billions that we spend every year. With the pressures that face us now, perhaps that argument’s time has come. I am not necessarily in favour of a mass purge and assassination, but a sunset clause, for example, was another idea that was put forward. That would be a gradual turning off of the lights.

We should take evidence from the petitioner, the anti-SLAPP research hub, the Law Society of Scotland and the Minister for Victims and Community Safety. In addition, we should hear from Mr Graeme Johnston, who has provided a detailed, forensic and closely argued submission. I make that suggestion because, from what the National Union of Journalists, Mr Johnston, the anti-SLAPP research hub and others have said, it appears that Scotland is at risk of becoming the jurisdiction of choice for people such as oligarchs to abuse the court system, throw their weight around and, by taking SLAPP actions, prevent freedom of speech. Surely, freedom of speech is something that we are here to preserve and fight for.

In particular, I was struck by the point that high-profile SLAPP cases are simply the tip of the iceberg. The NUJ submission states that they

“do not reflect the volume of threatening letters and interference that takes place pre-publication.”

In other words, we have no idea how many threats of legal action are made that we never hear about because the person from, for example, a small publisher or small newspaper thinks, “I havenae got the money to take on this guy,” so that is the end of it—David, no sling, no action; another victory chalked up to Goliath.

I have absolutely no doubt that we need to get the evidence and to learn more from the various points that have been challenged in relation to the Government’s response, which—I am sorry to say—I found a bit on the complacent side.

Thank you very much.

No—that is not correct. I did not have responsibility for infrastructure.

I am absolutely content with that. However, I want to add that, on 18 January, there was agreement. I spoke—as did Alexander Stewart, the convener and Rhoda Grant—and asked for the minister to be specific and say when we would get a decision. That was 18 January, but here we are—almost another year has passed—and we now know that nothing will happen until the early part of next year, when the report from the SCDC will be available. I will not be holding my breath about the content of that report. Without being too critical, I do not expect a great deal from it. I am not sure that it is even necessary.

Be that as it may, however, the minister fails to say when a decision will be taken after the SCDC report has been issued. Therefore, we are none the wiser about when the minister will get around to doing something. I put that on the record in the vain hope that, when we ask a Scottish Government minister to give us the courtesy of a reply on something so basic as timing, we do not just see things kicked into the long grass in perpetuity, particularly in these days of rewilding when the grass is very long.

I will read back from the petitioners’ response of 3 March:

“We thought it might be useful … to take you through several actual case studies highlighted by whistleblowers and victims.”

They also said that it was their hope that

“some whistleblowers will be prepared to speak directly to the committee”.

These are very sensitive matters, as we know, so I suggest that it would be appropriate to invite the petitioners and whistleblowers to a round-table discussion on the issues raised by the petition. If that option is favoured, the committee might want to delegate authority to the convener to work with the clerks on the most appropriate format for that discussion to take place. We are here to make sure that people have a right to be heard. They have not been heard yet, so that would be a way in which we could give them that right.