Chamber and committees

The minister might not know that rural communities across Scotland rely on wood-burning stoves to heat their homes—they did so during storm Arwen in particular. The poorly thought-out ban has been criticised by Western Isles Council, a Scottish National Party MSP and even a former Scottish Green MSP. With rural areas already suffering from population decline, why is the minister hellbent on making it even more difficult to heat new homes?

Although Langholm is not in my constituency, I represent the neighbouring communities across the Borders. Newcastleton, for example, is closer to Langholm than it is to Hawick. Some of the children of Newcastleton go to the Langholm school and some go to the Hawick school.

As Oliver Mundell has said, Langholm has much in common with its neighbouring town, Hawick, because it has a common riding. I support the common ridings. Tommy Morrison from Langholm was in the car with me as we drove round Hawick, waving to everyone as all the townsfolk came out. I thought that they were waving at me and saying hello, but no, it was Tommy Morrison from Langholm they were waving at, so I have just given him a shout out because he was far more popular than I was.

The core of the debate is about ensuring that we give communities the right tools and support to allow them to thrive. As many speakers have said, we need to ensure that people do not just drive through these areas on their way to other places; we need to ensure that they come and enjoy the fantastic towns and attractions that we have on our doorstep.

In Langholm and across the south of Scotland, tourism is a key part of the local economy. As of March this year, there were just over 890 businesses directly involved in the visitor economy, employing thousands of people across the Borders. I draw members’ attention to my entry in the register of members’ interests as the director of a local hospitality business in the Borders.

There were 2 million day trips to the Borders in 2022, and our towns and villages are the first to offer the best experience for tourists across the area. Millions visit the region every year to see attractions such as Sir Walter Scott’s Abbotsford and our historic Borders abbeys. Sadly, however, as others have said, it is easy for travellers to miss those key attractions while driving through the region and not to enjoy what they have in the region because of the lack of effective signposting on roads such as the A7.

At this point, I would like to mention the A7 action group, because it is a group of people who have consistently, over the years, campaigned for signage to be improved on the A7 corridor. I also met Famously Hawick, which is a group of five premium luxury retailers who promote their local attractions and improve the visitor experience of the town—producers such as Johnstons of Elgin, the Borders Distillery, Hawico, William Lockie and Lovat Mill. Their concern was that there was no strategic approach to welcoming signage in the town and along the A7, which was resulting in missed opportunities for visitors. I agree with other speakers that improved signage along the A7 would undoubtedly provide a valuable boost to them and others in places such as Hawick and Langholm.

Finally, I was really disappointed by VisitScotland’s decision to shut down the iCentre in Jedburgh. I do not think that the Scottish Government, at this stage and juncture after Covid, can afford to take the visitor economy for granted. Our communities are proud of their heritage and culture. It is only right that the Scottish Government does more to boost those communities and to save those iconic and special visitor centres.

Thank you to Oliver Mundell. Let us try to do more and get the Government to engage with communities by implementing effective signposting to local attractions and businesses.

Although a provision that refers to emergency heating was secured, which permits alternative heat sources as a back-up in off-grid situations, it does not extend to stoves. The answer that the minister gave shows the ignorance of the SNP and Greens about the situation and about the needs of Scots who live outside the central belt.

The minister might not be banning stoves in existing homes, but the Government is consulting on doing just that. As well as reversing the ban for new builds, the minister must rule out subjecting rural communities to even harsher winters by ruling out the outright ban on wood-burning stoves. Will he commit to that?

I thank Oliver Mundell for bringing forward this great debate and for his fantastic speech.

Not to be outdone by him, I, too, completed the Selkirk common riding on horseback. My horse was going so fast that I had to tuck myself right behind Stuart Coltherd, a previous standard bearer for Selkirk. It was the most frightening experience of my life and thank goodness we were going up the Three Brethren—it is worse coming down. As Oliver has done, I challenge my colleague Brian Whittle to join me.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer.

The bill fails to deliver on the detail. Why should we be surprised that the raison d’être of the SNP-Green Government is to sow seeds of division? Let us take, for example, the bill’s provision for continued alignment with the EU. While farmers in the rest of the UK will be able to benefit from gene editing technology, Mairi Gougeon and Jim Fairlie have decided to put Scottish farmers at a competitive disadvantage by siding with ideology and not science. Instead of backing hard-working farmers in Scotland, they have put their obsession with independence first.

Last March, Mairi Gougeon chose to give an indulgent soliloquy on independence rather than use the time to provide farmers with key details on this vital bill. The lack of detail has left farmers uncertain about their future, uncertain about their future investment and uncertain about how they will continue to put food on plates up and down Scotland.

Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?

Reflecting on what Emma Harper just said regarding market gardeners and small producers and supporting the local economy, does she support capping and redistribution?

The cabinet secretary is absolutely right that, in the views of farmers and crofters across the United Kingdom, the CAP system was seriously flawed. It disproportionately benefited some EU states and did not give sufficient funding for smaller farms. Does the cabinet secretary believe that the Scottish Government now has the power to create a system that can better suit our farmers in Scotland?

I am not sure whether the cabinet secretary is insinuating that the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee is not doing its job properly. However, currently, the way that the power to provide support sits is through the negative procedure, which is, in fact, a Henry VIII power and should be subject to the affirmative procedure, as was noted by the DPLR Committee. That is where the committee took its advice from.

I know that it can be hard to justify this Government’s policies, but Parliament should nevertheless have the opportunity to hold it to account. Should we really trust the SNP to decide what are not matters of principle or great significance? I, for one, alongside many farmers and rural communities, have stopped trusting this Government.

It lost all trust when the cabinet secretary failed to stand up for rural Scotland at the cabinet table, leading to a £33.2 million reduction in the agriculture budget. It lost the trust of farmers by stealing £45 million of ring-fenced funding from the agriculture budget—cuts so deep that they were described as a “last act of betrayal” by farmers across Scotland.

I am grateful for the opportunity to open the debate on behalf of the Scottish Conservatives. I thank the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee clerking team and my colleagues for the way in which we got to this stage 1 debate.

I appreciate the cabinet secretary’s presence here today. I hope that her recent trip to Chile to discuss aquaculture was not the reason why her response to the committee’s stage 1 report came through this morning or why the update to the agricultural reform route map arrived yesterday.

After years of endless consultation and discussion groups, the stakes are high for the survival of rural Scotland. Key decisions that are made during the passage of the bill will have a significant impact on the lives of farmers, crofters and rural communities across Scotland for decades to come. That is why it is so important to bring people along with us on this journey.

The Scottish National Party’s choice to introduce yet another framework bill has come at the cost of parliamentary scrutiny. I accept that framework bills offer some benefits, but it is crucial that we strike a balance between providing flexibility and ensuring that the Parliament can scrutinise the secondary legislation, which the Government continually reminds us will contain the core of the policy decisions.

After reading the cabinet secretary’s response to the stage 1 committee report, I am somewhat suspicious of the motivations behind the desire to use a framework bill. Specifically, I am concerned about the Parliament’s ability to robustly scrutinise key aspects of the secondary legislation.