Hansard

Of the many reasons that we owe a debt of gratitude to the Roman civilisation, one is that it bequeathed to us the principles of natural justice. One such principle is audi alteram partem: one must listen to both sides of the case.

When I, like other members, was inundated with expressions of concern about this particular development, the levels of which were unprecedented in my 26 years as a constituency member, I sought a meeting with Mr Rowley, the head of OSG, to get his side of the case. Before the meeting, I availed myself of the opportunity to look at the company accounts, which are publicly available, and found that it is a microcompany. Microcompanies put in limited accounts to save money; they are generally not able to grow fast and have no, or limited, potential for raising money.

I found out that OSG’s net assets were £207,000 in 2023 but had fallen to £131,000 in April 2024. As a former energy minister, I know that no project manager of any billion‑pound project would for a moment conceive of taking on a contractor in the supply chain that was a paper company and did not have the capacity, if it failed to carry out the work, to make recompense for that failure. Any project manager who did so would be sacked—none would do so.

I asked Mr Rowley to explain why he thought that he would get contracts, but I got no answer. That leads me to assume that the intention is not to carry out the development, but to get the permission and sell on. Incidentally, no accounts for the company have been lodged for this year—they are late.

I also found out that Scottish Enterprise has extended a grant of £1.83 million to the company, most of which has been paid out, despite the fact that that is about six times more than the company’s net worth. How did that happen? When I asked Adrian Gillespie of Scottish Enterprise—someone with whom I have worked over the years, for whom I have great respect and who has done great things for Scotland—what due diligence was done, there were no clear answers, other than that the grant specialist team had looked again at the application and checked it off.

When I asked whether the Scottish Government had been told, I got a very carefully worded answer—we have seen a bit of that recently—and I am not sure whether the Scottish Government was involved or consulted in any way. I say to the cabinet secretary that there will be freedom of information requests on this matter, so she should open the books and allow us to see the whole story, because if there was any such involvement or consultation, I would like to know about it.

Equally, if there was not, how can it be that in Scotland we extend, through our enterprise company, and through Crown Estate Scotland, which allocated £41,000 at an earlier stage, £2 million without any involvement from the minister? Is that not wrong? If I were the minister, I would be asking, “What is going on here?”

Do we need this project at all? I do not think so, because we have storage in ports and storage on land. The cabinet secretary and I have both visited Aventus Energy; I know the estate that is involved, and I know that there is extensive land and unused capacity there, as David Ross has illustrated in his excellent work. The project is not required at all. When I asked the Crown Estate whether it was required, it said, “We cannot express an opinion. We are only the Crown Estate.” Well, goodness me.

I will conclude, as I have only 20 seconds left, but I would like to say a lot more. I want to pay tribute to the people who have come down here for the debate—that shows just how much anger there is.

This is much worse than Flamingo Land—this application should never get anywhere. Incidentally, it is not a live application; there is nothing to prevent the Scottish Government from stopping this now, because there is no application to prejudice. Of course a marine assessment is required; it is required under regulation 7 of the Marine Works (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2007. I just looked at it—it takes about 30 seconds to look it up.

This is one of the worst applications that I have ever seen, and it must never go ahead. If all parties join together—including the SNP, which I used to serve, and did so for 50 years—we will see off this proposal and spare the people of Moray and Nairn any further misery. [Applause.]