Hansard

Our environment is a subject that is close to the hearts not only of people who live in rural Scotland but of those who live in urban Scotland, including many parts of my constituency, Cowdenbeath.

I am proud of the Scottish National Party Scottish Government’s determination to protect and promote our environment. As we have heard, Scotland was the first country in the world to declare a climate emergency; we have world-leading climate change targets; and we have undertaken to proceed with a build-back-better post-Covid-19 green recovery. As the cabinet secretary said, we have recognised the key importance of biodiversity, and we have adopted a twin approach of tackling biodiversity loss right alongside the climate emergency.

On the important issue of biodiversity, I welcome the Scottish Government’s recently announced plans to commission a new Scottish centre of expertise in biodiversity. That forms part of a new draft strategy for the environment, natural resources and agriculture research programme, which is currently out for consultation—the consultation will close on 14 December, I think. I encourage my constituents and others to have a look at that, to make their views known and to indicate what priorities and delivery mechanisms they would like to see in the five key areas of plant and animal health, sustainable food systems, human impacts on the environment, natural resources, and rural futures.

That work builds on the current research programme, which has involved £48 million of funding from the Scottish Government. It has supported 1,500 jobs and helped research institutes in Scotland to leverage in £28 million of additional funding. That approach demonstrates that the Scottish Government wants Scotland to play a key role in developing environmental solutions that are based on the best possible scientific evidence.

We can also see that determination in the very significant investment in peatland restoration, with £20 million allocated in this year’s budget and a commitment to invest £250 million over the next 20 years. We can see it, again, in forestry. Scotland has delivered more than 80 per cent of all new tree planting across the UK, with 22 million trees planted over the past year or so.

A lot of progress has been made in the area of sustainable fish farming, in particular, further to the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee’s comprehensive report, which was published in November 2018, on the future of salmon farming in Scotland. I note that the Scottish Government has established a 10-year farmed fish health framework, under which a wide range of specific work streams are under way.

Further, the salmon interactions working group was set up, under John Goodlad as independent chair, to look at the issues surrounding the interaction of farmed and wild salmon. It recently reported—I believe in May of this year—with more than 40 recommendations. It would be interesting to hear from the minister as to where matters stand on that, taking into account of course the fact that the report was published during lockdown and we have seen the global pandemic play out since that time. I also refer to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency’s detailed plan on future regulation, which was published in 2018.

Those issues are of course very important to my constituents. Mowi, which is based in Rosyth, has more than 600 jobs at the site. The call from the Scottish Green Party, in its motion today, for a moratorium on expansion is likely to be a cause of considerable concern to all those workers and their families, who will obviously be worried about the consequential impacts on their jobs and livelihoods.

There is a range of initiatives across Scotland, in many different sectors. Four minutes is not nearly long enough to do them all justice.

One final issue that has not been discussed is the impact of Brexit on our high environmental standards. With, I think, 43 days to go, we still do not know what on earth the position is going to be. What a shambles on the part of the UK Government! The Tory MSPs are all sitting there, grinning away, as if that is good news for our environment, but it is very bad news for our environment.