Chamber and committees

I can see the logic of the replies from the Scottish Law Commission and the Law Society that this is a difficult area and that a blanket solution does not necessarily present itself. I note—this is my suggestion—that the Law Commission says that, in its 11th programme of law reform, which has not been published yet, it expects that aspects of family law, including issues relating to how family law intersects with domestic abuse and violence, should be covered between 2023 and 2027. I wonder whether it would not be indecorous or impolite for us to recommend to the commission that it perhaps tries to focus on that early on in its consideration. On the face of it, a man who carries out violence and has sole title to the matrimonial home is in a position of, if you like, benefiting from his crime to the extent of being able to sell a property—in certain circumstances anyway; interdicts might apply.

I just wonder whether members feel that we could urge the Scottish Law Commission to bring forward consideration to the early part of January 2023. This is an issue on which the commission’s advice will be essential, because it has provided family law in Scotland with a very solid base from the Family Law (Scotland) Act 1985 onwards, and that has served Scotland well. However, there are still loopholes to be filled, and I make this plea directly to the commission. If we were to write to it, I do not see that that would do any harm, and that might give the petitioner some comfort that we are not just kicking the issue into the long grass.

That is a different kind of movie. [Laughter.]

We could have done that instead of doing a few other things.

I read Alex Hogg’s response to the Scottish Government’s response, which, although positive, was somewhat skeletal—it said that control of general predators was just a component alongside other things. In the petitioner’s submission, he has pointed out that the minister has contradicted what the Government has said, in that she says that the main elements are not predator control but well-managed restoration and expansion of the pine forest. That is not what NatureScot’s scientific advisory committee said—it said that predator control is essential. That is not happening in Strathspey, and the capercaillie is under threat of extinction. Journalists such as Magnus Linklater have championed the cause for a long time.

Without labouring the point and going on for ever, my recommendation is that, given the expertise and knowledge that is possessed within the ranks of the SGA, and Alex Hogg’s seniority as its president, it would be useful to have a short evidence session where we give him the opportunity to say what he thinks should be done. Plainly, he has a huge amount to offer, all in the cause of preventing the capercaillie from going into extinction. For the past 25 years, every land manager and farmer in my constituency has said that that will happen unless they start controlling the predators.

I have a few suggestions to make. As the clerks have helpfully suggested, perhaps we can write to the Minister for Energy and the Environment to ask whether the Scottish Government has the power to mandate community shared ownership for new wind farms, first, by using the devolved power under section 36 of the Electricity Act 1989 to lower the threshold for when an application to build a wind farm requires a minister’s consent and, secondly, by withholding consent from any application that did not agree to a community shared ownership model. That is my first suggestion.

I want to make another suggestion, or an extended comment, if I may, convener. On rereading the submissions, I note that the Scottish National Investment Bank’s submission is dated 13 March, which is a long time ago now, and that the minister provided a submission on 6 April. Both submissions were quite helpful. Both referred to the work that Local Energy Scotland is doing, to which you have alluded, saying that they expected to hear from the organisation—this is the phrase that both used—“in the coming weeks”. Weeks have come and gone—months have elapsed—since then.

I will give one example. I spoke to a wind farm developer who is proposing to develop a fairly large wind farm in the Dava area of my constituency, which is already covered with wind farms and where the populace’s view of them is mixed. Initially, the developer wanted 50 turbines but is now down to 18, mainly because the Cairngorms National Park Authority has negotiated the number down to that figure. I have long thought that a way in which community ownership can be made to work, without its being seen as a penalty on commercial companies, is that, instead of a developer proposing 18 turbines, they propose 20 or 22, with the additional two or four being community owned. In other words, the company gets what it was planning to get anyway, but, in exchange for planning permission, it is required to enable the development to be expanded so that communities can add two or four turbines. In those distant days of yore when I was the responsible minister, funding was available for that to be facilitated. Triodos Bank, Close Brothers, the Co-operative Bank and some others funded it to the tune of between 90 and 95 per cent, with the Scottish Government funding the remaining 5 to 10 per cent. That allowed communities to have a real stake of ownership. My worry is that time is passing us by. Such applications are being made all the time, and every one that is granted is a lost opportunity.

The petitioner, Karen Murphy, has pointed that out. Lots of applications for onshore wind farms are going on all the time. Therefore, I wonder whether we could ask the minister and the SNIB to show a little bit more urgency in telling us what Local Energy Scotland has said, as they promised they would do within a few weeks of their submissions but have not done, and generally knock them out of this somewhat complacent approach when the real opportunities for Scotland, which everybody sees—I do not think that this is political, convener—are passing us by. We are losing those opportunities, when we used to grab them. There is a long history to this, and I have probably gone on long enough, so I will not even go to chapter 1 of that long history, you will be relieved to hear.

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.