Hansard

First, I congratulate Douglas Ross—as both he and Emma Roddick have mentioned, the debate has been a long time coming. We have raised the issue in the Parliament several times, and, in Finlay Carson’s members’ business debate last week, we asked a question on the point that we should not have to wait for an informal application to go in—we need the Government to step in now.

I welcome everybody who is up in the public gallery. It is a long route down the A9—I do not know whether they came via Aberdeen or down the A9 today, but I am very conscious that we have held them up a wee bit, so I hope that their bus is going to wait for them for their trip home. I am grateful to them for coming to Parliament, because—as Douglas Ross said—it is not always easy for people who live so far away to come down here.

However, people are motivated and really concerned and anxious, and they have come to me in the hundreds. I have a folder in my inbox that is filled with emails from people from across the north-east and the Highlands, all the way to Caithness, who are concerned about the proposals. Douglas Ross got it right when he said that Moray Firth is just not the right location for these proposals: it never was, and they should not go forward.

I am, therefore, speaking today not just with my voice, but with a shared voice: a voice for all who have worked on the issue and all who have written to me, because there has been concern from communities about how the project has been handled from the very beginning.

As Douglas Ross said, I hosted a public meeting, and I could never have expected that more than 600 people would attend. I had to move the meeting to a different venue; we also had to create a satellite venue, and we still had people who were trying to access it online as well—and OSG did not even turn up. It is not as if the company even gave me a lot of notice—it literally did not turn up the day before, and that is just not on. If you trust your proposals, as Douglas Ross said, you should just come along.

We are now in a position in which more than £1.5 million of public funds are being spent despite the widespread local opposition, and despite unresolved questions about whether the facility is actually needed at the scale that has been proposed. The case for the project rests on the claimed need for wet storage for floating offshore wind foundations, but the available figures suggest that that need is far less certain than has been presented. If that is correct, the central claim of an urgent need for a dedicated flow park becomes much weaker. Surely, at the very least, it demands a transparent, updated, independent needs assessment before any further public money is committed to the project.

I know that a large number of freedom-of-information requests have already been put in to try to clarify the status of the Moray FLOW-Park proposal. I am conscious that the marine directorate has confirmed that there is no EIA scoping and screening, and that engagement—in its own words—is described as being only at an “early stage”. It is worth reiterating the point that no consultation was done prior to the money coming from the public purse and the project going forward.

The responses from Crown Estate Scotland to FOI requests show that it did not progress beyond phase 1 on the project. As Douglas Ross said, we heard today that a report was put out on 6 February. I had not even seen that report, because the company had hidden it away, and it had the audacity not to even come forward to me with it, despite the fact that I had asked it to send me any information. The report seems to be suggesting that the company does not need to do a full EIA on the project, which—to be frank—I think it does.

When communities turn out in such numbers, when detailed challenges are raised and when funding decisions have broken the £1 million mark, Government should step in early. It should test the case regularly and be willing to say “Stop” if the evidence does not stack up.

That brings me to my question to the cabinet secretary—it has always been my question regarding the need for the Government to step in. We want the proposals stopped, and we want OSG and the Government to come to the table with the local councils and stakeholders and have a real conversation together. Here is my question: will the cabinet secretary agree to ask officials for a short written review looking at the need, the numbers and the strength of local feeling, and on the back of that review, will she meet with key stakeholders in Moray so that we can finally agree a position moving forward, rather than leaving us in limbo as we currently are?