Chamber and committees

Decommissioning will be a huge part of its work—it will probably make up the majority of the work, because the majority of the sites in Scotland are at that stage. However, we did not want to exclude those working in the supply chain or those who continue to work at Torness or Hunterston from our considerations.

We are also keenly aware that there are opportunities for the supply chain in Scotland in relation to new nuclear power elsewhere in the United Kingdom. There is a UK-wide nuclear skills task force, and a lot of the skills that are involved in decommissioning and in the supply chain overlap with those in new nuclear power—it is essentially the same workforce. Again, we are keen to explore career pathways and opportunities for people living in Scotland.

There is also a research centre at the University of Strathclyde that carries out advanced nuclear research. I do not think that it is the Scottish Government’s position that such things should not be happening in Scotland, as its position relates to the building of new nuclear power stations.

I will be up front about the fact that there are members of the proposed group who are passionately in favour of new nuclear power, but there are also members of it who do not support that. I make it quite clear that the group will not be campaigning for new nuclear sites; neither, however, will it be campaigning against such sites. We did not want to exclude people in the industry who are working in Scotland at the moment. We want to take the broadest look at the art of the possible with regard to capturing the cross-party support that is required to set up a cross-party group.

The vast majority of the activity in the nuclear sector in Scotland, both economically and in relation to the sheer number of workers, is in decommissioning. A lot of people do not understand that. They say that the Scottish Government is against new nuclear power stations, but there are thousands of people who will be working—today, tomorrow and into the future—on the sites in question, and it is important that the issues that affect them are discussed in Parliament. The fact that we disagree on future energy policy does not mean that we should not explore the challenges in the sector.

I am aware of individuals who have wider interests. I sit on the Chapelcross site stakeholder group, and I regularly attend a range of nuclear-related events, such as the event that was held in Parliament just the other week, which a large number of people came to. Therefore, there is interest in engaging with the Parliament on the issue. There has been talk of having a CPG on the nuclear industry for pretty much the whole time that I have been an MSP, but, because of the political space in which we operate, it has been difficult to get that off the ground.

A number of people in the industry and a number of individuals are interested, but they are keen to see whether the group will be established before committing themselves. I have had conversations with people in the supply chain and a number of individuals who work in the sector. Given the range of MSPs who are involved and their geographical relationship with the sites, I am confident that those people will join the group. Along with the other co-convener and the deputy convener, I intend to write to anyone we think would be interested in joining, in an effort to make the membership of the group as broad as possible.

I appreciate that. Thank you.

South of Scotland Enterprise recently acquired land at Chapelcross, near Annan, and there has been a strong expression of interest from ReBlade—a Scotland-based company that recycles and repurposes wind turbines, which normally go to landfill. The project is a welcome opportunity to create many new local jobs and an opportunity for the environment, and it seems a natural fit with the longer-term plans to establish a green energy park on the wider site. Will the Scottish Government get behind the plans and look to see what additional support can be offered through its agencies to get the project over the line?

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will consider carrying out an analysis of the potential impact of renewable energy and the associated infrastructure on farmland and food production in Dumfriesshire. (S6O-02868)

On top of wind farm applications, solar farm applications and power lines, constituents in my Dumfriesshire constituency are aware of a deluge of applications for battery storage, many of which appear to be on good agricultural ground and do not seem to be subject to the same level of scrutiny. Will the minister commit to looking further into and reviewing that issue?

That is not the feedback that I often get from young people in my constituency. Those living in rural areas find those programmes very hard to access, and good services that have cross-party support, such as the Usual Place in Dumfries, do not meet the criteria for funding. Will the minister look at that again?

Sanctioning is one of the very difficult issues about the welfare system—I do not hide from that for a second. However, we must have a system that is fair and that encourages people to interact with it within the rules that everyone is asked to follow. That presents challenges, but I am concerned that we are too keen to look to welfare as the first solution for many people who face difficulties in getting into work. Things can be done now to make a real difference for people.

That is why I am talking about the Usual Place—a model that operates in Dumfries and Galloway that works and is genuinely life saving. Some young people who have accessed it would not be here today if it had not been for that opportunity. They are moving into long-term, sustainable employment and getting one-to-one personalised support. Some of those young people have gone on to set up their own businesses. Something really powerful is happening.

However, we have the DWP on one side and Social Security Scotland on the other, as well as a myriad of Government schemes, and we are told that something that is very precious to people in Dumfries and Galloway does not fit into the silos that we have created for funding and support. I suspect that it is just one of hundreds of similar organisations across Scotland that could do something about the disability employment gap, particularly in rural communities such as the Highlands and Islands and Dumfries and Galloway, in which a significantly higher number of disabled people struggle to find employment.

We can get too focused on some of the political differences that exist in relation to the welfare system and not tackle some of the obvious, immediate and solvable challenges in our education system and in the support that comes after. We can all have bold ambitions, but, if those are not meaningful to the people whom we serve and represent, can we really be happy? Twenty-five years in, has the Scottish Parliament lived up to the promises that we have repeatedly made and that we make again today? Are we going to start delivering for people on the ground?

It is not good enough for things to stagnate or to move backwards. We all need to fight a bit harder to make sure that life gets better for our constituents.

It has been a very interesting debate. I will put aside the discussion about what a next Labour Government might bring. Notwithstanding that, I enjoyed a number of the speeches from members across the parties, and particularly the speech by Kevin Stewart, who said that we could all face disability at any time. I am not normally one to talk about philosophy in the chamber, but that reminded me of listening in my student days to discussions about John Rawls’s theory of a just society and the importance of looking behind the veil of ignorance and imagining what life might be like if we found ourselves in a different position.

That brings me to my experience as a young person growing up. I have dyspraxia and dyslexia. I do not consider them to be major barriers to me. I got relatively modest support at school, which I was very grateful for, and it made a difference to my educational outcomes. I was lucky to have a family to fight for me and ensure that I got that resource and help. It makes me very sad, as a constituency MSP who represents a part of rural Scotland, when things are actually worse for young people than they were when I was at school. It seems that many children, at the first point in their lives when they are desperately looking for help and support that could be life changing to them, are told that it is too difficult to find them the support that they need.

I would add the Morgan report to the list that we heard from Paul O’Kane. It is another report that points to the gap between the rhetoric and the reality on the ground. It is very frustrating that, on something that is within this Parliament’s direct control and that it has now had control over for almost a quarter of a century, we are still not able to get it right for every child. We have bold ambitions but, for many families and young people, the help that they need—help that could transform their lives—is not there for them when they most need it, and that moves on with them into early adulthood.

The other week, we had a big debate in the Parliament about a member’s bill, and it frustrates me deeply that such an issue is left to a member’s bill. That bill has challenges around it, as it has to fit what it looks to do within the tight criteria that the Parliament has set. After 16 years of this Government, given that the issue repeatedly comes up, there should have been more proactive action on it.

As I mentioned in my intervention earlier, and as Emma Harper touched on in her contribution, community-level organisations in Dumfries and Galloway—for example, the Usual Place, which I would put in Karen Adam’s category of a haven—bring together people from all walks of life and of all abilities. Everyone who walks in that door interacts on the same level. They are treated with absolute dignity and are given an opportunity to thrive and to access skills and employment.

In the minister’s opening statement, there were remarks about employment. I am not ashamed to say that the number 1 ask of many people with disabilities is for support and help to get into work. We should not feel afraid to champion that or suggest that that is not good. To go back to the previous Labour Government, I consider myself to be a Gordon Brown Conservative in that I think that work is good for people, that work should pay, and that work is a source of dignity that helps many people out of poverty.

Today, we again see an Scottish National Party-Green Government not just turning its back on rural Scotland but attacking it. We should make no mistake—the bill is another attack that is dressed up in the cloak of so-called animal welfare without the evidence to back it up. Far from protecting the countryside, this SNP-Green Government is overseeing its destruction. In the place of positive measures, all that we get is ban after ban. It is all quite sad.

The bill exposes the new reality once and for all. Rather than listening to those who get their hands and their boots dirty looking after our natural environment, the SNP now takes its direction from extremists. If members do not believe me, they need only look at the Green Party, which has been welcomed into Government with open arms. These are people who claim that they want to save the planet but who champion the wholesale industrialisation of our uplands. They seem wilfully oblivious to the impact that carpeting our uplands with Sitka spruce and wind turbines actually has on nature and the habitats that many of our most vulnerable species rely on. I say to them that, if they truly care about raptor persecution, they might start asking why it is okay for raptors to be taken out by wind turbine blades.

These are people who claim to care about our moorlands but who want to see them diminished and even abandoned, and who see no problem in forcing those who do more for biodiversity than almost anyone else out of their jobs and off the hills. Let us not kid ourselves. That is what the bill risks. The grandstanding of members in this Parliament on countryside issues that they do not understand has real-world consequences, but I guess that, if they never leave the central belt, they would not know that.

The madness goes beyond that. Even though rats are increasingly common in our urban communities in SNP Scotland, concerns about tackling rodent infestations have been ignored. How hard would it have been to agree a rethink on the modest request from pest control representatives for a glue-trap licence for professionals, even as a measure of last resort? A similarly heavy-handed approach and excessive measures are peppered throughout the bill, including vast and unnecessary delegated powers.

However, those are not the only reasons for smelling a rat. It is clear that some really nasty politics are also at play. The countryside and the people living in it are being used as a political football. Increasingly, our way of life is demonised. False divisions are stoked up. Fragile communities have never felt more abandoned and ignored. Twenty-five years into the new Scottish Parliament, life is worse for many who live in rural Scotland. Increasingly, the very viability of their communities comes into question. How can SNP MSPs who represent rural communities go along with that? Do they really want more wildfires, rodent infestations, and foxes wiping out ground-nesting birds? Are gamekeepers and land managers to be endlessly tied up in bureaucracy and dealing with vexatious reports of wrongdoing instead of actually managing the landscapes that they love and care about?

That is what the bill means in reality and what lots of the evidence points to. No doubt, those same colleagues would tell us not to worry, and will justify their support for the bill this evening by saying that it can be amended later. The problem is that we cannot trust this Government or this minister. We have recently seen the reality of how the Government’s legislate-now-license-later approach plays out, following the recent changes brought about by the Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Act 2023. Political considerations are put before the practicalities. Animals are left to suffer. Foxes are out of control ahead of the lambing season. That is just not right, not good enough and not what was promised, so how on earth can any weight be placed on the assurances that we have been given in relation to the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill?

In addition, during stage 1, we saw what listening to stakeholders really means for the minister. Rural stakeholders were marched to the top of the hill, only to be ignored by the minister when she decided to go ahead and ban the use of snares and cable restraints without any licensing scheme for any purpose. That followed what seemed like a genuine request for a detailed proposal on a licensing scheme, but the game was given away by the minister when she rejected that just 24 hours after stakeholders gave evidence to the Parliament on the need for it. That would seem pretty discourteous and somewhat suggestive of predetermined thinking. However, most shockingly, a response to a freedom of information request showed that, before making that decision, the minister did not undertake any detailed consideration of the evidence that was put to the committee.

The bill is just the latest in a long line of betrayals. SNP colleagues will no doubt nod it through at decision time tonight, but we must not allow ourselves to become desensitised to what is happening. Thread by thread, the very fabric of rural Scotland is being unpicked. If we are not careful, it will be lost forever. Our country will be the poorer for it. At some point, we have to say, “No more”. Enough has to be enough.

I cannot support the general principles of such a deeply flawed and unevidenced bill; nor could anyone who claims to stand up for rural Scotland.