Meeting of the Parliament 02 May 2024
I am glad that Mairi Gougeon raised that issue, because she is a minister in the Scottish Government and, as I said at First Minister’s question time, the Scottish Government needs to use its devolved powers. It cannot, as the Minister for Energy, Just Transition and Fair Work did, wash its hands of the consultation and of this process.
My background is in the energy sector. I know the importance of proper consultation, and SSEN’s consultation has fallen woefully short of an appropriate standard. It has totally and utterly dropped the ball. The anxiety and stress that it has caused my constituents is simply unacceptable. Yesterday, SSEN committed to consider alignments that are proposed by communities and landowners and confirmed that it has delayed the overhead line alignment consultation. It is such a shame that it has taken a very visible demonstration from community groups to push SSEN into landowner and community consultation.
Affected residents know that, once SSEN has made its choices, the final decision will not rest with local councils. The buck, as I have said, will stop with the Scottish Government’s energy consents unit, and that is what terrifies those residents. That is because many communities have already gone through the trauma of being steamrollered, with industrial-sized wind farms being put on their doorsteps.
That is bad enough, but, last year, SNP MP Alan Brown even tried to remove the right of local planning authorities to have a public inquiry into situations such as this. That has not been lost on local communities. That change was averted thanks to Andrew Bowie, the Scottish Conservative MP for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, who stopped it in its tracks. We will fight to retain the right to have a public local inquiry where the developer and the community are not able to agree terms.
Just last week, the Minister for Energy, Just Transition and Fair Work washed her hands of the whole issue. She said that it was up to the transmission operators to bring the affected communities with them. That will be hard for her constituents in Turriff and New Deer to hear.
The reality is that this is the wrong kit in the wrong location. It is perfectly possible to put infrastructure underground or offshore, and that needs to be an option.
I support the communities behind Save Our Mearns, Angus Pylon Action Group and Deeside Against Pylons in their petition to change the SNP Government’s approach to what will be a generational change in our landscape. [Applause.]