Agenda item 2 is consideration of a consent notification on the REACH (Amendment) Regulations 2023. This is a United Kingdom statutory instrument for which the UK Government is seeking the Scottish Government’s consent to legislate in areas of devolved competence. The committee’s role is to decide whether it agrees with the Scottish Government’s proposal to consent to the UK Government making these regulations within devolved competence, and in the manner that the UK Government has indicated to the Scottish Government.

At our most recent meeting, we considered the notification and agreed to request further information from relevant regulatory bodies and the UK Government about the proposed extension to registration dates and the impact in Scotland. Additional letters have been received, which I believe all committee members now have.

We also agreed to invite the Minister for Environment and Land Reform to give evidence today. We have until 31 March to respond to the Scottish Government’s notification so, straight after today’s evidence session, we aim to come to a view.

I am therefore pleased to welcome Màiri McAllan, Minister for Environment and Land Reform. Minister, thank you for attending at short notice. I also welcome Dan Merckel, chemicals team leader, and Ailsa Heine, lawyer, both from the Scottish Government.

We have around 20 to 25 minutes for this item. Before we move to questions, minister, I believe that you would like to make a very brief opening statement.

I am happy for you to come in, Dan, but I think that the minister has made that point clear. Fiona Hyslop, are you happy with that?

Mark, I am going to have to ask you to be brief, on the basis that other committee members want to speak.

Sorry, but hold on. I apologise to Jackie Dunbar for jumping in on her question.

Circularity Scotland is running the scheme. If somebody rings your office, as people have been advised to do to get the information that they need to run the scheme, and the answer is to ring SEPA or whoever else you suggested, that is not advice—it is passing the buck. I am sorry, but I am confused. Help me, please.

I am totally confused, then, about how the scheme works, if we do not know what we are doing at the outset.

Our next item of business is an evidence session as part of our inquiry into Scotland’s electricity infrastructure and whether it is an inhibitor or an enabler of our energy ambitions.

The aim of the inquiry is to scrutinise what electricity infrastructure will be needed to realise the ambitions that are set out in the Scottish Government’s recently released “Draft Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan”, and to understand what will be needed to deliver that infrastructure. This is a short inquiry that will lead to a report to the Scottish Government as it finalises its strategy.

Last week, during the first evidence session of our inquiry, we heard from two panels of key energy industry stakeholders and experts. Today, we will hear from the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets, which is the Government regulator for the electricity markets in Great Britain. We will discuss the evidence that we have heard so far and hear Ofgem’s views on the delivery of the aims that are set out in the draft energy strategy and on the decarbonisation—there are a lot of long words in this brief—of our electricity infrastructure.

I am pleased to welcome Steven McMahon, deputy director for networks and head of Scotland at Ofgem, and Jack Presley Abbott, deputy director for energy systems management and security at Ofgem. Thank you for accepting our invitation; we are delighted to have you here.

Before we start our questions, I believe that Steven would like to make an opening statement.

Thank you. Before we move to questions, I would like to remind members and those people who are listening that, as a farmer and a landowner, I have electricity transmission lines across the farm in the form of 11kV lines—the small ones—33kV ring main lines, which are the bigger ones, and I am in negotiation for a 132kV power line to go through the farm. At some stage, all of those will generate some income for the farm, so I want there to be no doubt that I have some interests here. I will continue to make that declaration as and when I think it appropriate to do so. I do not think that it inhibits me from doing my job as convener, but I want committee members to know about that.

The first questions will come from Mark Ruskell.

Mark Ruskell wanted to come back with a brief question.

Maurice, I have taken you as far as I can on that. I need to go to Fergus Ewing for his questions.

Before we move on to the next question, I want to clarify that I did not mishear something. I think that you said that you work roughly 80 hours a week, but did you answer Mr Ewing’s questions about any other payments, such as pensions? Sorry, I may have misheard.