Chamber and committees

That is when the spatial energy plans will be delivered, so I hope that the strategy will be published by then. However, we have had some curveballs recently. We have had the Finch verdict and various other Supreme Court verdicts, which we must assess so that we can come to an informed view on all those issues and what we think needs to happen. As long as there are no more major curveballs, I hope that the strategy will be published by then.

I just want to say how much I welcome talking about all these issues with you, so I thank the committee for inviting me.

That was the result of a combination of a couple of things. There was powdery snow rather than the sort of snow that sticks to overhead transmission lines. I am giving my layman’s assessment, given that I was at the relevant Scottish Government resilience room meetings. There was also a lack of wind—on the whole, it was not particularly windy. Storm Arwen was particularly bad in causing outages because there was an unusual wind pattern that brought down trees in winter, when there would not normally have been wind coming from that particular direction. Trees grow to withstand the wind that they expect. Every day is a school day when you speak to people who deal with such outages. Storm Arwen caused a lot of tree fall, which brought down a lot of lines. On this occasion, there was mainly a particular type of snow and there were not the kinds of winds that would bring down power lines.

The change was put in train a few months ago. We have been consulting on the good practice principles associated with applications. This is the case that I made: having the responsibility for consents put me in a situation in which I felt that I needed to be able to divorce the policies associated with energy from the eventual decisions, so it was best for the planning minister to have responsibility for consents. In that way, I could be confident that there could be no perception of my having been influenced. It is important that that is understood by communities that have concerns.

I will give a hypothetical example. A community group in the Western Isles might have concerns about project X and want to speak to me as part of the community engagement associated with the project. If, at the end of the process, consent was not given to the project, the applicant could say that I was swayed by my meeting with that community group—there could be the perception that I was influenced by that group. I do not want anything like that to happen. That could be the case when something was consented to or when something was not consented to—it works both ways. I want to ensure that I can engage with every stakeholder, in line with the good practice principles on community engagement.

I was confident that the UK Government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill would give us the power to mandate community engagement, but I had the sense that it would be difficult for me to carry out that engagement as fully as I wanted to. Thankfully, I reached an agreement with the planning minister that he would take on responsibility for the energy consents unit, and the First Minister agreed that I needed to be able to fully engage on all the good practice principles and the developments that the Planning and Infrastructure Bill would allow us to take forward.

I thank Maurice Golden for setting out the landscape. It is important to be aware of the different roles and the many different players. There are reserved responsibilities associated with transmission in particular. The Electricity Act 1989 is the governing legislation around all the regulations associated with consenting. The Scottish Government’s energy consents unit must conform to everything in the 1989 act. NESO has responsibility for what the transmission network looks like, and must look like, in order to facilitate the getting of the electricity to all the places where it needs to go throughout the whole of the UK.

The previous UK Government worked with NESO, and it has issued its plans for upgrading the transmission infrastructure. Regarding the role of the Scottish Government, ministers have the final consents, once developments have been through the whole process, which is regulated at UK level—although we have planning powers. Any developments over 50MW currently go to the energy consents unit in the Scottish Government; anything under 50MW is decided at local authority level by councillors and the authority. We are currently consulting on changing that threshold—to see what people think about changing it to give more responsibility to councils up to a level beyond 50MW.

We have some of the most stringent environmental conditions in Scotland. A series of documents and assessments must be submitted in applications to the energy consents unit. We do not dictate and cannot dictate to an applicant what the engineering solutions are for their application. Indeed, nowhere in the UK dictates that.

The ECU assesses the application as submitted. Let us say that those in charge of project X want power transmission lines. They have set out the engineering solution that they have found, and they have determined how and where they want to site those lines. We will assess that application as written. We will not dictate in advance that things have to be done in a particular way. It is for them to make an assessment and submit all the documentation associated with environmental impact assessments. That will then go out to all the statutory consultees, which includes local councils. Even if the development is over 50MW and comes to the ECU, local authorities will still be a statutory consultee. If local authorities do not agree with the application as written, it will automatically go to a public inquiry.

If the application goes through the energy consents unit, it will assess all the documentation, assessments and plans that are supplied by the applicant, and then, in accordance with all the regulations and the Electricity Act 1989, it will advise the minister who is making the final determination, with an assessment of what all the statutory consultees have said. It is important to realise that the minister who is looking at that advice can go back to their officials and question certain things, such as, for example, “Why are you giving me this advice when this has happened?”

The minister has to be certain that, when they make a determination, they are not going against any legal advice because, if they do, it might give them an opportunity to turn something down, for example. If officials have given the minister advice to consent to something and all the reasons why, and the minister says, “Nah—I don’t like it,” they need to be certain that they are on solid ground legally, because the decision might be appealed and taken to court.

That is the process and it is very rigorous. Many developers say that we take too long to make determinations. We try our best and we have doubled the capacity of people working in the ECU to streamline the process. That is good for developers, but it is also good for communities, because they get a quicker decision, they know what they are dealing with and it does not drag on for years.

I agree with that, but I would also expand it. As you rightly said, the Scottish Parliament agreed to national planning framework 4, which set the narrative that we want to facilitate as much low-carbon energy as possible to reduce our emissions, but also for energy security reasons. The Scottish Government does not have responsibility for energy security, but we have an interest in it. We also have an interest in economic growth in Scotland, making sure that we provide jobs for the future and that we have an energy industry in Scotland that is able to adapt and pivot to new energies.

So, yes, we set a narrative, but Parliament also set a narrative by agreeing to NPF4, which gives guidance to planning authorities throughout the land—at local authority level and more generally—on what is expected in relation to planning applications.

Absolutely. When—if—community engagement becomes mandatory, we are going to consult widely on the issue and the good practice that is associated with it. However, the issue that you have just described, of people not seeing community benefit, is the cause of the problem of communities not buying into these developments.

I am almost becoming like a broken record, but we are no longer in the realms of painting the scout hut or buying football strips for the school team. There has to be a substantial and meaningful community benefit that will improve that community. I believe very strongly that it should be the community that decides how the money is spent.

I will give you an example from my constituency. Vattenfall had a process in which it worked directly with all the associated communities around its Aberdeen offshore wind farm, including community councils and community groups, to see where its community benefit should go. The process was quite wide ranging, and there are communities in the west of Aberdeenshire that cannot see the sea that got community benefit from it while some coastal communities that bid for money did not get any. It is all about balance. Again, spreading the community benefit too thin is a problem.

I am not currying favour with you, convener, but I would say that it is a bit disappointing that you only got a park bench out of it. However, what a great dog walk Whitelee is. I have family in the area, and we often go up there to walk our dogs.

Yes, that has been put to us. We said that we were going to consult on the issue, and I think that the time is right to do it.

I am not here to answer for Ed Miliband. Upgrading the grid infrastructure has actually been the policy of successive UK Governments—it was the previous Government that put in place grid infrastructure upgrades. I take the point that everything like this takes a very long time, but the time to start is now.

I welcome your views, Mr Russell. You asked me what my view is. The consultation is out there, and I look forward to seeing what you put in by way of a submission to that effect, and the arguments with which you back up what I imagine is your opinion on the matter. Others will have the same view as you.

10:30

In the consultation that we have put out, I want to hear feedback from people so that we can see what the general view is. It is also important to hear the views of those who will be making the decisions. If councils and councillors overwhelmingly want to make all the decisions that are associated with energy developments, we need to take those views into account. However, there will be some—or perhaps many—councils and councillors who do not hold that view, and there might also be communities that do not hold that view. That is why we are doing the consultation.