Chamber and committees

We need both. I am always open to unlocking and focusing on areas that meet the twin objectives of carbon sequestration and the improvement of habitats.

That is an example of cross-Government working and how the climate change, nature and the environment portfolio reaches into every other Government portfolio. I will take that away and discuss it with my education colleagues. In the last parliamentary session, I worked closely with them on skills issues associated with the energy transition, and this is no different. We have already referenced skills associated with peatland restoration, and I will not argue about the detail with someone who has a master’s degree in hydrology.

That line in the PFG goes well beyond my portfolio. Not all of the public bodies that own land sit in my portfolio. Further, a lot of the bodies that are in my portfolio, such as the Scottish Land Commission and the Crofting Commission, are advisory bodies that do not actually own land. They might have the word “land” in their title, but they do not actually own or control any land; they give advice to people who own land, rent land or have tenancies on land.

I think that Ivan McKee is setting out the fact that there is scope to do more in order to prompt a discussion that this committee and others will have. Local authorities and NHS boards own land. Indeed, the Government owns a great deal of land. Members will have their own views about where things can be consolidated, but that issue goes beyond my portfolio.

The reference is to public bodies that are involved in the management of public land assets. That does not concern crofts.

Unless I am unaware of public bodies that own land that is used for crofting—

I am not going to prescribe that. I think that it is really important that I do not, because the conversations and discussions around what the environmental body looks like and how the three organisations that we are proposing to bring together under one environmental body work together is something that really has to be led by them. The shadow board, the CEOs, the leadership teams and the staff of all three organisations need to make the decisions, because they know their business best and understand the services that they deliver. It would be foolish of me to dictate what that should look like, because I do not work for any of them.

We have given it an indication or broad outline. We do not want this process to take the whole parliamentary session, so, in our discussions with the organisations, we have given them a ballpark date—although I do not like that phrase—of 2029, which seems reasonable, and we have given an indication that there will be a few years of development. The timescale that I mentioned in response to the convener was mainly for the creation of the shadow board. Obviously, we want that to happen as quickly as possible, but I do not have an actual timescale for it.

I think that everybody wants to see that. It is another example of an area in which you cannot have short-term funding; the funding needs to be year on year. Various cabinet secretaries will make their cases for their own portfolios, but I also hope to assist those whose policies have implications for the climate change plan.

You made a really important wider point about how important climate action is for human health. We have reached out to academic partners and asked them to give us evidence on preventative spend in health as a result of actions that are associated with net zero. Various institutions have been very helpful in giving us that data, but a tremendous amount more work needs to be done on it. I cannot tell the committee what to do its various pieces of work on, but that link is a large, untapped area of work that we need to amplify as the far right starts to question why money is going towards climate action. We can make the economic arguments, the moral arguments and the arguments around the environment, but there are many other arguments that can be evidenced by preventative spending on climate activities, particularly in relation to respiratory diseases and mental health. That speaks to what you have just mentioned.

We have set a target for the work that we are funding, but we constantly assess the peatland that is being restored. One of the most important pieces of work, which involves a small amount of Government money, is the LIDAR—light detection and ranging—reconnaissance of where the degraded peatland is, where the interventions have to take place and where restoration is working. That gives us an up-to-date picture of the situation.

Peatland restoration is not just a Government effort; there is a combination of actors in this space. We have made a commitment with regard to what we are going to fund, and we also work with partners who want to do more off their own bats, which is very welcome.

It is something that gets mentioned to me, and it has been mentioned to me ever since the legislation was passed. We will always have landlords who do not want to give longer tenancies, because of the rights given to tenant farmers as a result of actions taken in this Parliament. I think that that is a real shame; after all, tenant farmers need certainty, like any business. I am very disappointed when I hear that there are no opportunities for landowners to give longer tenancies, for fear that tenants might exercise rights that were given to them by this Parliament.

Land reform will never be a finite process—it is an ongoing endeavour. Where there have been unintended consequences as a result of well-meaning legislation, we will need to look at what might need to be reformed in order to unlock the situation. We know from having spoken to them to over the summer that tenant farmers are making big investments in animal health and welfare and on the farms that they lease, and they need to know that, when they put in that kind of investment, they will have a tenancy that will allow them to be there for the long term.

You have raised a really important point. It is perhaps more an issue for detailed discussion with Mr Fairlie at the Rural Affairs Committee, but it does have an impact on what tenant farmers might want to do about nature recovery and carbon sequestration, because those are big investments.