Hansard

As other members have done, I congratulate Claire Baker on securing the debate.

As a member of the Rural Affairs Committee from 1999, I was involved in Parliament’s earliest consideration of national parks and can say without any doubt that the title of Claire Baker’s motion—and the report on which it is based—is absolutely correct. “National Parks, Unfinished Business” precisely and directly sums up the current position.

Having been a member of the committee that scrutinised the bill that paved the way for national parks and which was eventually passed, I then had the very considerable honour and great pleasure of convening the committee during the creation of Scotland’s two national parks. As I think Claire Baker pointed out, at no time during scrutiny of the legislation or the consequent creation of the Cairngorms and Loch Lomond and the Trossachs national parks was it ever suggested or recommended that they be Scotland’s only national parks. As I have said, what we have at the moment is unfinished business.

The enthusiasm and commitment that I witnessed during the passage of the legislation, during which the committee travelled to both proposed parks to take evidence, was, to be frank, awe inspiring. Indeed, so impressed was I at what I saw and heard that I went into the 2003 election pledging that if I won the constituency vote I would campaign for Scotland’s third national park to be in Galloway. It is on that topic that I want to focus brief remarks in the remainder of the time that is left to me.

As it happened, I won the election and set about drawing together various potentially interested stakeholders to discuss the prospects for the creation of a Galloway national park. I take no pleasure at all in reporting that the only support that I received was from the Federation of Small Businesses in Dumfries and Galloway. Dumfries and Galloway Council, the Forestry Commission, VisitScotland, Scottish Enterprise Dumfries and Galloway as it was then, Scottish Natural Heritage and others were all at best lukewarm, so it became pretty clear pretty quickly that the prospect was more or less dead in the water.

Hope reared its optimistic head once again when, as has been mentioned, the then Administration took a look at the possibility of creating a marine national park. I believe that there were seven proposed sites for that park, and the Solway Firth proposal—which is in Dumfries and Galloway—was the only one that did not give rise to significant local objections.

Again, I flagged up the potential of the possibility of the creation of a land and marine-based national park, which the Scottish Campaign for National Parks very much supported at the time; indeed, I think that it still does. As has been mentioned, the incoming Administration following the 2007 election ditched the idea of marine national parks and, until now—other than the process that has already been mentioned—not a lot more has been said about national parks of any description.

Members might well ask why on earth I would wish to return to the subject of a possible Galloway national park after two pretty robust rejections. That is because, other than the fact that I am a born optimist, it is extraordinary how attitudes have changed in a decade. Some of the agencies that previously rejected the possibility have very much changed their opinions. It is significant that Dumfries and Galloway Council has, and it has been joined by the increasingly influential Dumfries and Galloway Chamber of Commerce. The idea is still strongly supported by the Federation of Small Businesses as well as many local business associations, community associations and other community bodies to which I have spoken.

Ever since the M74 was built—indeed, I suspect long before that—the people of Dumfries and Galloway have desperately sought something that will get people who are travelling north on the motorway network to turn left at Gretna. I have never changed my original view that a Galloway national park would bring that about. Such a national park is recommended in the excellent report on which this debate is based. I commend both organisations for the report. I whole-heartedly support it, the Galloway national park suggestion and the motion.

17:26