I welcomed the Lewis Ritchie report in 2018, and I was delighted to play a part in some of the recommendations. One of the recommendations was that a fast-response vehicle and a paramedic should be based at Portree hospital. I think that the fast-response vehicle cost £100,000. In 2024, the fast-response vehicle was seen heading towards Fort William. Is it back? Is it manned? Will it be replaced in 2025, when its life is determined to be up?

I am interested to hear that the minister will attend a meeting. I wrote to him on 8 August requesting such a meeting and he told me this morning that he is too busy between now and Christmas. Well, there we go.

This year, there have been 62 fires in the Highlands. That is the highest number since five years ago, when there were 85, and we still have a big part of the year to go. In the past 10 years, there have been 570 fires in the Highlands, which represents a third of all fires in Scotland, and it is going to get worse because of things such as the muirburn code. Surely we should have centralised assets, including access to aircraft—fixed wing and rotary—in order to fight fires and save lives, rather than relying on private estates and the will of good neighbours to fight these fires.

I remind members of my entry in the register of members’ interests, which states that I am involved in a family farming partnership in Moray.

I thank Emma Roddick for bringing this debate to the chamber. If it has done nothing else, it has held the minister’s feet to the fire with regard to a response to a request that I made on 8 August for him to meet my constituents, Mr Ewing’s constituents and other constituents in the region to discuss the issue. I found out today that he was unable to attend because he had accepted a subsequent request that was made by another MSP. That is not good enough, and I will make a complaint through the correct channels.

I have some experience of wildfires, having fought plenty of them in my time. They happen in remote areas, and it is really difficult to fight them. In many cases, specialist vehicles are required to get to them. That is what the fire brigade needs, and keepers and estates often supply such vehicles. I also reiterate the point that Mr Ewing has made, which is that wildfires are often best fought at night, when the wind is low and there is a heavy dew. However, that is the time when some parts of the fire service are unable to attend, which means that it is certainly the time when keepers go out and fight those fires. I remember one in Tongue that we fought for five days, successfully putting it out at 4 o’clock in the morning, having fought it every day and night during that period, taking only two hours off to rest.

Neighbours can provide specialist knowledge in such situations. I want to make the example personal by drawing attention to one contractor, Stephen Shand, who did not work on the estate but dropped everything to move his equipment up to where the fire was and start fighting it. He had no indication that he was going to get paid for it; he did not worry about that. He was trying to fight the fire because it was on a neighbour’s land. We rely on such effort, and it is really important. The Parliament should acknowledge the effort that people make.

Fuel load is a critical issue. It is difficult to manage the fuel load in areas with wind farms—which we are getting more and more of across Scotland—and there is a particular difficulty in managing fuel load in relation to the peatland grant schemes. This Parliament, which believes that it knows better than the people on the ground, has dictated how muirburn and the management of moorland should be carried out. I am afraid that, after nearly 30 years of experience of doing that, I find some of the decisions that the Parliament has made to be completely bizarre.

I am short of time, but we need to consider what we do with regard to woodland grant schemes. When I was driving across the Dava moor the other day, by Lochindorb, I noticed all the trees that had been burned. They were all part of a woodland grant scheme and will all have to be replaced. Who will bear the cost of that? Why should it be the landowner? They did not start the fire, and there was nothing that they could do. No one will be able to attribute the cost or the blame to any individual, so it needs to be dealt with through insurance. We need to make sure that, when the Government draws up woodland grant schemes and peatland restoration schemes, insurance forms part of the proposal.

I also point out that retained crews across the Highlands lack the necessary equipment. Some of the retained crews do not even have showers at their stations, so they can be fighting fires all day and not even be able to get a shower before they go home.

Finally, I want to say that we need more assets. The Government has to draw together assets such as Argocats and the associated systems. It needs to have the ability to call on helicopters, and I strongly believe that, given the prevalence of wildfires across the UK, an aircraft that is capable of bombing fires with water should be available to both Governments. I urge the Scottish Government to liaise on that issue.

09:39  

Our third item of business is consideration of petition PE2123, which has been submitted by Asthma and Lung UK Scotland and asks the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to amend the Air Quality Standards (Scotland) Regulations 2010. The petitioner wants new limits to be set for nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter in order to align with the World Health Organization’s 2021 air quality targets.

The committee first considered the petition in April, and we agreed to write to the Scottish Government for an update on its review of the second cleaner air for Scotland strategy. The Scottish Government responded on 22 April; and when we considered the petition again, on 13 May, we agreed to write to stakeholders who responded to our 2023 air quality report, along with a few other interested parties, highlighting the Scottish Government’s response and seeking their views.

Paper 2 sets out some options for further scrutiny, which include writing to the Government and closing the petition, if we consider that appropriate. Do members have any views on what has been suggested in the paper?

Let me see if I can summarise all of that, if I may.

I think that we are suggesting that we write a letter to the Government, drawing its attention to the evidence that we have received on this matter as well as the recommendations from various organisations that the Government consider alignment with the World Health Organization’s strategy. We will also ask the Government for its views on where we are and make sure that it is logged that, when the cleaner air for Scotland 2 strategy comes up for review, our successor committee is kept informed.

That is the basis on which we are agreeing to close the petition. If we are happy with that—and as I do not see anyone violently shaking their head, I guess that we are sort of happy—I ask the committee to delegate power to me to sign off the letter to the Government on the petition and to write to the petitioner on the committee’s behalf, thanking them for bringing this matter to our attention so that we could work on it. Is the committee happy with that?

Members indicated agreement.

I think that that concludes all the things that we are doing in public this morning.

Good morning, and welcome to the 27th meeting in 2025 of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee.

Our first item of business is a decision on taking business in private. Does the committee agree to take in private item 4, which is consideration of a draft report on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill supplementary legislative consent memorandum, and item 5, which is consideration of the evidence that we received on the Climate Change (Scotland) Bill 2009 (Scottish Carbon Budgets) Amendment Regulations 2025?

Members indicated agreement.

09:37  

Our next item of business is consideration of a statutory instrument. The order has been laid under the negative procedure, which means that it will come into force unless the Parliament agrees a motion to annul it. No such motion has been lodged, and the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee has made no comment on the order.

Before we go on to consider the order itself, I want to make a comment on the accompanying policy note. It seems to assume certain pre-existing technical knowledge. For example, there are references to “EU values” and “UK values” with regard to trading; there is no further explanation of the terms, and I am not entirely clear what they mean. It is very important to me as a parliamentarian that policy notes are understandable—they should be understandable to any member of the public who wants to know what an instrument does, and they should be understandable when parliamentarians are being asked to agree to instruments.

The policy note also uses greenhouse gas statistics from 2019 although, as I have been informed by the Scottish Parliament information centre, the 2023 figures have been available since June. Furthermore, the policy note refers to being “carbon neutral by 2040”. That might well be a specific policy commitment in a particular area, but a little more context to clarify that would have been helpful and welcome to me as somebody considering the instrument.

That said, do members have any comments? If not, I invite the committee to agree that it does not wish to make any recommendation in relation to the instrument. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Mark Ruskell has some questions.

I am going to be the bad guy now. We have six questions and we are going to get through them. The deputy convener has the next batch. I will cut you short, cabinet secretary, if I think that you are overexpanding on your answers.