Meeting of the Parliament 22 January 2025
The point is that Scottish ministers determine applications to construct or install electricity infrastructure under the Electricity Act 1989. We do not choose, for instance, the routes of strategic power lines across the country.
In England and Wales, relevant legislation has long since been updated to make the consenting process not only more efficient but, I believe, fairer. As far as I am aware, that is not a reform that the Conservatives objected to. Indeed, our purpose in Scotland is to learn from reform in England, which may well result in similar changes to those that have been in place in England and Wales for many years.
At present in Scotland, it can take up to four years to process an application to determination. That is not in the interests of communities or the economy. The Scottish Government has long called for the relevant powers to be given to Scottish ministers. However, in October 2024, the UK Government announced proposals to reform the legislation at Westminster, launching a consultation that concluded at the end of November. The core aim is to make our determination process more efficient—not to make it easier, as the Conservatives seem to suggest—for projects to get consent. Indeed, one of the central proposals is to modernise the system to allow community voices to be heard, including at an earlier stage.
Conservative members might be interested to know that those proposals did not simply materialise in the past few months. The UK Government committed to review consenting in Scotland in November 2023. Conservative members have now forgotten the next crucial bit, which is that that was when the Conservatives were in power in the UK. Indeed, they were taking forward those plans before the general election was called, so it is rather surprising to hear them describe the plans in such terms as they have used today.
Ensuring that community voices are heard in the process and in the right way is central to the reforms. Under the current system, Scotland is the only part of Great Britain where developers do not have to consult local communities before submitting their plans. We want to change that by ensuring that the procedure begins with communities having the opportunity to express their views so that they can be considered from the outset. The reforms would make pre-application consultation statutory for the first time—