Chamber and committees

Scotland’s 93 inhabited islands are all radically different from one another, not just in their landscapes, histories and locations but in their cultural traditions, economic contributions and needs for the future.

What all our islands have in common, however, is their shared appreciation of global environmental threats, the most obvious of those being rising sea levels and increasingly chaotic weather events. As the cabinet secretary pointed out, each of those things is already having a measurable impact on our lives in island communities. It is only natural, therefore, that islands would want to make their own distinctive contributions towards our collective efforts to decarbonise Scotland.

In my constituency, I can point to the long-running efforts to develop more wind power. I say “long-running” because it is only now, after decades of negotiation, that the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets has finally made the commitments that are needed before an interconnector can be built to export much of the islands’ renewable potential.

Scotland’s islands hold immeasurable reserves of other types of potential energy, too—there is not just wind, which is certainly abundant, but also tidal and wave power, the latter of which is, as yet, completely untapped.

Meanwhile, efforts continue to decarbonise transport and housing, against a backdrop of challenges, including extremely high rates of fuel poverty and poor energy efficiency in many Western Isles homes. I know that the Government and the local authority are working together at present to re-establish area-based insulation schemes, which are certainly a key part of addressing that problem.

Across my constituency, however, people are already taking their own steps towards reducing the islands’ carbon footprint. Last year, the Scottish Government’s island communities fund assisted local businesses and community groups with sustainability projects, including Tagsa Uibhist, Clan MacQuarrie community centre, Gàradh a’ Bhàgh a’ Tuath, Maclean’s Bakery and the Leverhulme community hub, while the regeneration capital grant fund made awards to initiatives such as Cnoc Soilleir and Ionad Hiort. I mention all this to put our current debate about six specific islands into the context of the wider work that is already under way in many of our islands to tackle climate change.

The Scottish Government’s very welcome commitment is to ensure that six islands become entirely carbon neutral by 2040. In my constituency, the community concerned is the linked islands of Barra and Vatersay. The definition of a carbon-neutral island in the context of this project means an island that has got to a point where its local greenhouse gas emissions, captured as CO₂ equivalent, are in balance with carbon sinks.

Setting out to achieve that aim in Barra and Vatersay is, from the outset, going to be a community-led initiative. The local carbon-neutral islands anchor organisation, Voluntary Action Barra & Vatersay, is working closely with other community groups, businesses and island residents to fully explore their islands’ potential, because the experts on their communities are, of course, the islanders themselves. The journey to decarbonisation must be led by them, in order to ensure that local knowledge shapes local solutions.

I am sure that that outlook will shape the projects elsewhere, too. The on-going, fortnightly project group meetings provide an excellent opportunity for the community development officers and steering groups from all six islands to meet with Community Energy Scotland to exchange knowledge and support. That collaborative approach will help to ensure that Barra and Vatersay, along with Yell, Raasay, Hoy, Great Cumbrae and Islay, act as catalysts for decarbonisation across all of Scotland’s islands.

As, I think, the Government has set out, although there might have been things that could have been agreed with, the amendment does not address all the needs of islands that this side of the chamber has identified as important.

I am certain that, going forward, the six islands will influence what is taking place in other islands, too.

On 30 November 2022, a project showcase was held in Castlebay. This was an opportunity for the community to learn more about the carbon neutral islands project from members of the Scottish Government’s islands team. The carbon neutral islands team then met with a range of local businesses to discuss the numerous potential opportunities for collaboration within the project.

Although the deadline of 31 March for this part of the project is not far off, after that, the community in Barra and Vatersay will be in a position to create a specific local climate change action plan, again led by the community at every stage. In successfully achieving the project’s aims, there will, of course, be challenges along the way, some of which will be unique to Barra and Vatersay and some of which will be experienced elsewhere. However, Barra and Vatersay will be playing their part, as will other islands, to ensure that Scotland meets its aims of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045.

I have seen the Faroe Islands tunnels that the member refers to. Would he support the Scottish Government having the same kind of borrowing powers that the Faroese Government has to achieve such a thing?

I agree with Colin Smyth’s points about fuel poverty in the Western Isles. Would matters be helped if the UK decoupled the price of renewably generated electricity from the arbitrary price of a unit of gas?

It is fair to say that you have a sympathetic audience in the committee when it comes to the need for a positive trajectory on funding, which you have talked about. The only rider to that would be—and this is not meant to take away from anything that you have said—that the Scottish Government could probably do with a positive trajectory, too, and some notice on or say over its income. However, I think that everything that you have said rings true.

Given the constraints, we are left with cross-portfolio working. The committee has asked about that many times, in relation not just to the culture sector but to other parts of Government. My question is one for everybody to chip in on. We talk about cross-portfolio working all the time, but how do we make it real? In the committee, we have often talked about things such as social prescribing and cultural prescribing. Iain Munro rightly pointed out that that is supplementary to his budget. The problem is that the health boards tell us that it is supplementary to their budgets, too. I do not know what the answer is, so I am genuinely keen to hear how we can make that a reality. We have talked about it many times and it is clear from the pilot studies that have been done around the country that the health service and society more generally could save money and people could be healthier and happier if we did more of that work. In the current difficult circumstances, how do we achieve that?

As I said, the question was for anyone to chip in on; that is what these round-table meetings are really for. Does anyone else have a view?

I am returning to a familiar theme, Alex Paterson, but it is one that you mentioned—the reopening of the estate. HES has had an uplift, although I appreciate that it is one that you needed, given the enormous estate that you have to maintain in difficult times and the lack of ticket revenue that you have had. What plans do you have to move back to the model of selling tickets on more sites? How many sites are presently closed?

Obviously, we are talking about a budget in the context of massive inflationary pressure, which applies to individual farmers just as it applies to the Government. How are you planning in the coming year to work within the constraints that that imposes on you, given what we have had? Without rehearsing history, we have had a parade of chancellors and unprecedented levels of inflation in recent years. How do you plan the budget for the coming year in those circumstances?

There is £5 million allocated to the agricultural transformation fund. Can you say a bit about what you seek to transform? How do you intend to spend that budget?

Thank you. You mentioned that your portfolio does not contain everything that is happening in Government support for the islands, and you have alluded to trying to work across traditional barriers or silos in Government. I think that everyone acknowledges that plenty of money is going in, but there is a need to ensure that we overcome what has perhaps happened at a local level in the past, with houses being built in an area where a school has just been closed, or houses not being built in an area where a school is in danger of closing. We have had all those interconnected problems.

What can be done in Government, not just nationally but locally, to overcome those silos and ensure that people work together more closely in order to get past such problems, which affect the supply of labour?