Chamber and committees

It became clear that the misinformation and distrust were about some of the main issues: that house prices would be higher, that there would be less affordable social housing, and that there would be an impact on agriculture and forestry. There was also misinformation about whether renewables would be allowed to expand or would be more controlled in a national park. The fact that there was such misinformation suggests that there was no trust in the national parks and their performance.

An independent review would have taken away a lot of the doubt, speculation and fears at the outset of the designation process. I am not sure why you do not appreciate that point, because you have been telling us about misinformation all along. There is a lack of trust, and an independent review would certainly put that to bed, because the figures would be there and they would be independently reviewed. Moving forward, if future Governments were to be minded to designate a national park, it would be clear what the real picture is. At the moment, that trust does not exist, regardless of whether national parks are producing annual reports or whether they are being scrutinised by the Government or potentially by the Parliament.

We have more or less come to the end of the questions on part 3 of the bill.

Additional amendments to part 3 may be lodged on the Galloway national park and the process for proposing and designating a new national park. At this stage, it is probably more appropriate to bring up those suggestions or concerns around the existing bill in our next evidence session, but it could also inform our discussions on our stage 1 report on the Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill. I just wanted to put that on the record.

We come to the end of the evidence session. I propose that we suspend for 10 minutes.

Good morning, and welcome to the 20th meeting of the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee in 2025. Before we begin, I ask everyone to ensure that electronic devices are switched to silent.

Our first item of business is consideration of whether to take item 4 in private. Do we agree to do so?

Members indicated agreement.

We have heard that the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee recommended that there should be an independent review of national parks to inform future decisions. We heard that suggestion throughout the consultation, and you have touched on it yourself. There was misinformation around some of the challenges that the current national parks have. Would it not be sensible to have an independent review of national parks? We know that they have annual reviews, but, effectively, the park authorities mark their own homework. Although the Government has oversight of that process, there is a lack of confidence that the reports reflect the true situation in national parks. There are still questions about whether parks deliver on their nature targets and for local communities.

Would you consider an independent review? If one had been in place prior to the Galloway national park proposal, the arguments would not have been quite so polarised and there would not have been accusations that misinformation led people to their conclusions about whether there should be a new park.

Yes. Ultimately, the decision of the people in Galloway appeared to be based on the idea that national parks are not delivering and that they are actually curtailing the ability for areas to be economically sustainable. Again, the view was that national parks just exacerbate problems with the low-wage economy, low-skilled jobs, higher house prices and restrictions on agriculture. If that is not the case, why did that misinformation effectively succeed in persuading the majority of people in Galloway not to back a national park?

There has been some concern about what the definition of cultural development is. Some have suggested that you should have considered alternative words such as “creative” or “creative arts”. Was there a reason, or much discussion around, why the term “cultural development” was used?

Following on from Mark Ruskell’s question, I have one on the period for which these plans are in place and how often they are reviewed. Do you think that there is the potential for conflict? Local authorities have an electoral cycle and there are national plans such as the United Kingdom forestry standard, but we have a forestry industry that needs to plan 25, 30 or 35 years in advance. How can you ensure that the national park plans are flexible enough to deal with that?

Commercial forestry might not be a huge consideration in Sitka spruce scenarios and in the Cairngorms, but when the Government considers other areas—for example, the Galloway and Ayrshire national park—how can we be sure that the national park plans recognise the electoral cycles of local authorities and national plans such as the UK forestry standard? How can the park plans interact with those to ensure that they are flexible enough that they do not put off or divert investment away from local authorities when it comes to election and budget-setting scenarios?

Thank you.

Thank you. You just rang a bell in my head. Why does the bill refer to the “prosperity of individuals”? That raised a few eyebrows among stakeholders. What is your definition of “prosperity of individuals”?

One issue that came out above the rest concerned the timescale for organisations to come forward in the bidding process and the capacity within areas to produce successful bids. There is no legislation at all for that, so we may need to look at addressing that by using the Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill to make amendments to the existing National Parks (Scotland) Act 2000.

In some areas, there appeared to be an overreliance on using volunteers to bring forward proposals. We heard in evidence that it took up to seven years to reach a consensus about how the national parks in Loch Lomond and the Trossachs and in the Cairngorms would be developed and that businesses, locals, individuals and non-governmental organisations came together to look at how they would see a national park being developed. However, in Galloway, that timescale was significantly shorter.

The main issue was that NatureScot played two separate and distinct roles, one of which was to make recommendations as a reporter to the consultation while the other was as the natural heritage adviser to the Scottish Government. That led to a lot of people suggesting that NatureScot was biased in its role as reporter in providing the Scottish Government with professional advice as well as trying to carry out an effective consultation. How did you weigh up that advice, considering NatureScot’s two roles? Would you consider again an amendment that would provide for an independent reporter to provide the consultation responses for future designations?