Olly is going to jump in and tell us that he will buy it all.

How many PIUs are there, per hectare?

I am not sure whether the local communities have much input to the planting of Kinrara, or whether the aspirations of the owner to plant bits of it, which are peat and cannot be planted, were ever achievable.

We will leave it there. This subject is very interesting, and it is apposite that we look at it now, given that the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill is before the Parliament.

I thank you all for coming. Although I do not want to single anyone out, I was appreciative, Olly Hughes, that you decided to join at the last minute. I understand how that worked out and I am grateful, because you added to the excellent evidence that we have heard this morning.

I should say to the witnesses that the problem is that, if you all look away, I will have to nominate somebody. If you could indicate whether you would like to come in, I will try to gauge—[Interruption.] Oh my God, every hand has gone up. Now, this is not good.

Lydia Cole, I think that you were first, and then I will bring in Josh Doble.

I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer, and it is interesting that no one seems to have seen her since. Does the cabinet secretary believe that members of this Parliament should be allowed to visit schools in their constituencies and/or regions, or should councils such as Highland Council obstruct and deny such visits?

That twisted logic perhaps defines much of the bill.

Where do I start? The debate has been heated, but I do not think that anyone in the chamber would sanction or approve any shape or form of wildlife persecution: it is just not on. I have made the point on numerous occasions that it needs to stop. A selfish and stupid few carry it out. I am happy to put that on the record.

I thought that I was going to enjoy talking about a subject that has taken up a huge period of my life. I have enjoyed engaging with the committee and with some of the groups that sought to change activities that I have been involved in during my life. Most of those engagements have been good natured, although we have agreed to disagree. I hope that, as we progress, dialogue can continue on an open and frank basis.

The bill’s progress has been unusual; a new section was added at stage 2, which I always think is not good for parliamentary procedure. We have, unfortunately, had a change of ministers, although I understand the reason for that. We heard a minister arguing against his own amendments at stage 2, which I found quite odd. When he was challenged about it the other day in the chamber, the minister said that since becoming a minister, his eyes had been opened and he is aware of more figures. It is a pity that that was not the case during stage 2.

I will talk only briefly about glue traps, because I understand that my time is short. At stage 3, we saw an about-turn on glue traps. It has been a bit of a rollercoaster ride. I am disappointed, in some respects, that we are where we are with glue traps. I hope that the minister will bear it in mind that there are plenty of places where it is not appropriate to use rodenticides—certainly their use is not appropriate in schools, hospitals and restaurants. We do not want dead rats and mice lying around. People who have smelled them when they have been under floorboards could have been put off more than just their dinner. Glue traps are something that we should consider.

I am disappointed in respect of snaring. I make no bones about the fact that removing snaring as a tool is regressive and will end up bringing firearms closer to conurbations. That is bad news. It will also make it very difficult to control rabbits. For example, in one particular patch that I managed, in one year alone we had to kill 12,000 rabbits to maintain and look after designated habitats.

As far as trapping generally is concerned, there are bits of the bill with which I am unhappy. I welcome the Government’s point about damage to traps. That was helpful, and I hope that the Government will ensure that it follows through on that.

I remain deeply concerned in relation to muirburn. Everyone thinks that muirburn is done to promote grouse shooting, but it is absolutely not done purely for grouse shooting. As Kate Forbes said during stage 2, muirburn is vital for protecting communities and making sure that there is not a heavy fuel load within and close to habitation.

Muirburn is also about managing the vegetation on a hill, and not just for grouse. Other species need long rank heather to nest in—hen harriers prefer to nest on burn edges where there is longer heather. However, to allow them to do well on the moor, they need prey species, such as grouse or other birds that benefit from shorter heather. Eagles also probably benefit from shorter vegetation that hares can go in.

I urge the minister to monitor carefully the effects of muirburn on all wildlife—it is not just about grouse—and, if necessary, to come back with amendments at a later stage to make it easier to carry out muirburn to benefit management of our high hills.

To conclude, I say that I found one thing amusing in the debate—the justification for making something that was already illegal, illegal, in case anyone illegally makes it legal in the future. That was the argument that the minister put in relation to making traps for killing birds illegal.

To ask the Scottish Government when it last met with the executive chief officer for education and learning at Highland Council, and what was discussed. (S6O-03232)

I, too, thank Douglas Ross for bringing the debate to the chamber, and I thank Rhoda Grant for her contribution. I will not say that she has stolen a lot of my thunder, but she is very well researched on the problems of the closure of Hopeman and Burghead surgeries. I welcome the campaigners who have come to the Parliament—their Parliament—to make their voices heard.

I will be entirely clear: every GP closure is a disaster, every adopted GP surgery is a failure, and every GP surgery that has no succession plan is doomed. We cannot afford to have that.

We must be clear about some of the figures in the public domain. Over the past 10 years, 89 GP surgeries have closed. One in 10 GP surgeries is now run by a health board. There has been a huge increase in the use of locums. In Moray, the Aberlour health centre, which is my health centre, had to be taken over by NHS Grampian because there were not sufficient doctors and all the patients were leaving. That has still not been resolved and is a huge concern to communities.

I wonder, why does that happen? Why do we get ourselves into such a situation? A lot of it can be put down to the point that Rhoda Grant made about GP contracts. The 2018 GP contract that was negotiated seems to work fairly well in the central belt—in Glasgow or Edinburgh—but it does not work for rural GPs or practices. If it did, there would be more GPs in those rural practices.

It has not delivered the extra staff that were promised as part of it. We have seen NHS boards removing vaccinations from local GP surgeries, which GPs across the Highlands were against. We have also seen them removing secondary care from GPs and thus undermining GP practices, which, frankly, we cannot do.

I am delighted to say that I am working with Mr Ewing and Rhoda Grant on the issues faced by Grantown medical practice, which has had funding removed from the building project that it had been promised, and which was almost complete. That is a disaster for the local community. The petition has been open for five days, and I have never seen such a flurry of people trying to sign a petition. They cannot all sign it online, and so there are also paper applications to join it, but well over 500 people signed up in the first five days. That is how important GP surgeries are. I trust that we will get a chance to discuss that in time.

We also need a review of the mechanism of how we run our GP surgeries, and of the GP contract. The problem is that, when the Government negotiated the GP contract, there was no review process in it. It therefore looks as though we are going to lurch on and on with declining GP numbers and contracts that do not work across rural Scotland. That is a huge mistake.

I am delighted to be part of today’s debate. My plea is that we review the GP contract on a wider scale across Scotland, get a new workforce plan out, deliver to GPs the extra workforce that we promised, and stop removing the very sensible additional services that they provide. Then we will not be faced with the disasters that the closure of GP practices such as those at Hopeman and Burghead cause.

I am disappointed to be standing up today to talk about failed targets for 2030, but I am almost more disappointed that the cabinet secretary has not committed to publishing the climate change plan before the deadline of November this year. If Parliament is to be accorded the respect that it should be, surely the plan should be presented at the first possible opportunity, to allow all the committees as much time as possible to consider it, in the knowledge that we are not going to meet our 2030 targets.