Chamber and committees

I will start off with a couple of apologies. First, I apologise to Maggie Chapman. If I had known how you were going to address the debate and how it was going to pan out, I would have supported your motion, and I apologise to you for not doing so.

It seems to be becoming a bit of a bad habit for me to deliver an ill-tempered speech about an LCM. The last time I did so, I referred to a sense of déjà vu, because we had been in the same position too often before. Today, it is déjà vu of déjà vu, or déjà vu all over again.

The Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill implements an international treaty about the high-seas marine areas beyond the 200-mile limit. It commits signatories to more sustainable use and protection. I remind the Parliament that the treaty was signed in 2023. It took two years to introduce the bill, and now there seems to be an unseemly race to get it over the finish line this month, apparently to meet well-telegraphed international obligations.

The Scottish Government lodged a legislative consent memorandum two weeks after the bill’s introduction. As is often the way these days, it could be called a holding LCM, as it did not set out a substantive position, except in a minority of cases. The triggering provisions relate to new powers for the UK secretary of state that could intrude into Scottish marine management. One might ask how a treaty about extraterritorial waters could trigger devolution issues. The main answer that we got was about the potential impact on Scottish marine-based actors—who, I hasten to add, are not underwater thespians, but the fishing and offshore energy industries and the like.

By late October, no updates had been provided, so we wrote to the Scottish Government. On 7 November, we got a reply that said that Government discussions were on-going but which provided no further substantive detail. We tried again later that month, but the reply was no more illuminating. With the clock running down, we had the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Energy in to give evidence on 9 December. The committee found it a slightly peculiar evidence session because, on the one hand, the Scottish Government’s main line continued to be that it could not show its hand while it was still in negotiations with the UK Government and, on the other hand, the cabinet secretary and officials were perfectly happy, at times, to delve into the detail of what outcomes they wanted in respect of this or that clause.

As the committee said in its report, in a context in which holding LCMs are increasingly becoming the norm, there is no good reason for the Scottish Government to be coy about its main asks of the UK Government and to be inconsistent in sharing them. Those should be a matter of public record.

For the Scottish Government, the story of the bill seems to have had a happy ending—it has obtained the amendments that it wanted, and it can now recommend that consent be given. I put on record that that happened just too late for our deliberations, with the result that the committee is not able to express an informed view on the late provisions.

Asking the Parliament to agree to something without any real chance to reflect on it totally devalues the principles of legislative consent. There might be rare occasions when it is unavoidable, but it seems to the committee that it happens more often than that and the system feels dysfunctional, if not broken.

Presiding Officer, will I get any time back? I am happy to give way to my fellow committee member.

I also apologise to members for having to slip away before the end of the debate. I forewarned you of that, Presiding Officer, and agreed it with you in advance.

I thank Maggie Chapman for bringing the debate to the Parliament because, as she rightly said, whenever we call for a firefighter or fire engine, it is because we need them. At that stage of need, we realise just how important they are.

That is why I have always campaigned across the Highlands for a local call centre. The difficulty of ensuring that we deploy our retained firefighters to the right places in the Highlands is often quite stark. I dread to think how many Kinlochs are dotted round the Highlands; when we call for a fire engine to go to Kinloch, it might end up near Tongue, near Skye or elsewhere. That is an important point that we have missed.

I must also compliment the Fire Brigades Union, which has been vocal in bringing these matters to the Parliament. I was going to say that I admire its militancy, but I think that that is the wrong word; perhaps I should say that I admire its tenacity in the way in which it has brought the issues to the Parliament.

Indeed, I thank it for doing so, because, in the Highlands, there have been various issues, especially in the past year, that have required a huge amount of support. I do not need to remind the Parliament that there were probably more than 70 wildfires across Scotland last year, the majority of which were in the Highlands. One of the biggest—which was in the Highlands—raged for weeks.

That proves that there is a lack of the equipment that we need to fight such fires. I strongly believe that there should be a centralised resource of equipment to enable firefighters to get to the hill. That could, and should, include equipment such as Argocats, which are hugely expensive—up to £30,000, in fact.

I also want to touch on certain issues relating to retained firefighters that I see when I travel around the Highlands. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude, but the problem is that we do not make it easy for people to become retained firefighters. Their training requires them to take quite long periods off work, which is an onerous commitment for their employers—even though it is vital for their communities—and I hope that at some stage the review can look at how that training could be made easier, not in terms of what the people involved have to do, but time-wise.

Furthermore, I hope that we can ensure that the training is appropriate, given that certain things that firefighters might have to deal with in one area, such as fires in flats, are not things that firefighters on, say, the west coast of Scotland have to deal with. The training should be made more appealing, too.

The other thing that has been definitely brought to my attention is the lack of facilities for firefighters when they return from fires. Too many fire stations have no showering facilities. It was only midway through last year that Inverness fire station ended up with suitable facilities for firefighters, so that they did not have to go home, reeking of smoke and carrying back to their families and homes the contaminants that they had been exposed to during that day’s firefighting experience.

That sort of thing is fundamentally wrong; I can say from personal experience that there is nothing worse than going home in soot-covered clothes and smelling of smoke. It takes days to get it out of your clothes and out of the house, and we should not impose that on firefighters’ families. Therefore, I hope that the review will cover that issue, too.

I support the motion, and I call on the Government to support our firefighters, for the simple reason that, when we need them, they have to be there—and they have to be properly equipped.

One of the questions that was asked at the committee was about how the legislation is going to be enforced. If I remember rightly, about 30 countries have signed up to it, but a lot more countries around the world have not. Could the member allude to how enforcement will be carried out?

I would seldom disagree with my fellow committee member on that and I have a suggestion on why the issue needs to be resolved. I have criticised the Scottish Government’s secrecy, but I accept that the legislative consent process often gives it a difficult hand to play. We had a constructive conversation with the Minister for Parliamentary Business and Veterans, who agrees that things really must change.

We most need a rule or a convention that a late triggering amendment stops the legislative clock at Westminster just long enough for the relevant committee here to take stock and gather some evidence on what we are being asked to do. If we are running out of time to sort this out during the current parliamentary session—I feel that we are—for goodness’ sake, let whoever is around in May start working straight away with Westminster on finding a workable solution, because short-cutting the committee system in this Parliament does this Parliament and Westminster no favours.

I agree with the cabinet secretary that there should be a separate transport committee in the Parliament to overlook these projects.

The final section of the A9 to be dualled will be the northern section. Yet again, that means that the Highlands come last. According to the programme, 50 per cent of the dualling will be done in the final five years, but not one bit of the A9 dualling that has been carried out so far was carried out on time. Why should the highlanders believe that you will stick to your timetable? Will you outline the contingency plans should you not reach the deadlines that you have set yourself?

I am pleased to speak to the stage 1 report on the bill. I congratulate the committee and its clerks on progressing the bill and congratulate the minister on organising various meetings across the crofting community to discuss it. I attended one of those meetings, on a relatively bright summer night, and it was interesting.

However, there is a bit of déjà vu here. In 2017, during the previous parliamentary session, the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee produced quite a lengthy report on the need to make changes to crofting law. In that report, the REC Committee made it quite clear that we needed a statement of crofting policy that would not only lay out the aims of crofting but cover keeping the associated language going and keeping the crofting population and culture in place across the Highlands.

The REC Committee found key issues. Some of those have already been addressed and others are dealt with in the current bill, but it is still apposite to remind the Parliament of them. They related to the election of crofting commissioners and the management of absenteeism. There was a call for a new entrants scheme, which does not seem to have gained any ground at all, and for definitions of different forms of croft ownership, including owner-occupation and various other forms. The committee also called for the mapping of crofts, which also seems to have stalled slightly, and raised the issue of so-called “slipper crofters” who have shares in grazings but do not actually own crofts.

The 2017 report was clear that sufficient time should be allowed to ensure that a new bill would be passed before the end of the session in 2021, but that did not happen. It is therefore surprising that we are discussing the current bill only as we come towards the end of the current session. I hope that we will have sufficient time to get all the amendments through.

I agree with the current committee that there needs to be a fundamental review of crofting in the next session of Parliament. The committee has raised issues relating to the Crofting Commission, mapping and, as I have just mentioned, what I have termed “slipper crofters”—that is, people with grazing shares but no crofts.

The bill represents the low-hanging fruit of crofting law reform. I would have liked to see more of a definition of the cultural, economic, social and environmental benefits of crofting.

I would also have liked to drill down into the Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act 1886, the Crofters Commission (Delegation of Powers) Act 1888, the Crofters Common Grazings Regulation Act 1891, the Crofters (Scotland) Act 1955, the Crofting Reform (Scotland) Act 1976 and the Crofters (Scotland) Act 1993. When we look at crofting law, we have to have the text of all those acts open at the same time. For people like me, who are trying to help crofters, that makes it difficult to understand which act is apposite to the matter that is being dealt with. There needs to be proper reform of those acts. I would like them to be drawn together to help to make crofting vibrant, understandable and enforceable.

As regards the merger of the Scottish Land Court and the Lands Tribunal for Scotland, I am aware of the expertise problem. The Government is pretty sanguine about it, but I would like to see some clarity when we come to stage 2.

I thank the Rural and Islands Committee for its work. I agree with the general principles of the bill, but I feel that opportunities have been missed here. I reiterate that a new bill will definitely be needed, which is what the REC Committee said back in 2017.

I thank the cabinet secretary for her earlier answers, but I am slightly confused. Robbie Drummond worked for three days of that year and seems to have been paid £35,000 for each day that he worked, which is high by anyone’s standards.

Can we have a definitive answer, cabinet secretary? Did you agree to that or not? Do you think that £35,000 a day is appropriate? Those are simple questions.

Sorry.