Meeting of the Parliament 10 December 2025
It stinks, Presiding Officer. It is clear that, when it comes to approving large-scale energy infrastructure projects, Gillian Martin gets to be the judge, jury and executioner. She fails to listen to the voices of our communities but is happy to jet-set around the world in business class to sell our countryside to the highest bidder.
Having the debate next week would give an opportunity to members of the Parliament who took part in a convention in Inverness four months ago to fulfil the promise that they made to the public on that day. During that convention, MSPs signed up to
“Undertake to do all that we can across our representative parties to secure urgent debates at both Holyrood and in the House of Commons at Westminster on the attached Unified Statement of the Highland Convention of Community Councils dated 14th June 2025.”
The statement was about looking at the impact of energy projects on local communities and the damage that they were causing. Douglas Ross signed it, as did Jamie Halcro Johnston, Tim Eagle and Fergus Ewing, as well as Emma Roddick and Maree Todd. An SNP minister, no less, signed up to have more debating time on energy infrastructure in the chamber. If she does not support my amendment, in effect, she will have deliberately misled the 400 attendees of the convention in Inverness.
We have time next week, so let us use it to have a full debate on the impact of energy infrastructure on our communities and finally have some answers on the energy strategy.
I move amendment S6M-20068.1, to leave out from third “followed by Business Motions” to “3.10 pm Decision Time” and insert:
“followed by Scottish Government Debate: Energy Strategy
followed by Business Motions
followed by Parliamentary Bureau Motions
5.00 pm Decision Time”.
Motions, questions or amendments mentioned by their reference code.