Cameron Buchanan and I had a useful discussion yesterday and, since then, I have been doing some work on the points that he has legitimately raised. Even if members accepted everything that he said, to throw the baby out with the bathwater by annulling the SSI would be completely the wrong thing to do because of the huge consequences.
I will go through each of the points that Cameron Buchanan raised and deal with them.
The first concerns consultation. I will make a distinction between the consultation on the order
and the consultation on the guidance that will flow from the order once the committee has agreed it, as I hope it will.
We have consulted widely on the SSI with Confor and others. I have checked and can confirm that any commitments to consult on it have been kept. Furthermore, we have already started the consultation on the guidance. There was a seminar on consultation on the guidance on, I think, 11 December that involved Confor and others. Therefore, the commitments that Derek Mackay and Paul Wheelhouse made on consultation have been fulfilled.
The consultation on the guidance is not yet complete or exhausted. There will be other opportunities to contribute to it and I will ensure that every organisation with an interest in the matter has the opportunity to provide its input into the guidance. I am happy that we produce draft guidance before we finalise the guidance so that people can point out to us the unintended consequences in our draft when we give it to them.
I am totally committed to consultation because I want to get the legislation right. As I said at the start, we need to get a balance. We need proper control of our rural environment to ensure that it is sustainable in the long term but, at the same time, I do not want to impose unnecessary burdens on the industry and nor do I want to impose a planning system that is disproportionate to what we are trying to achieve. Therefore, I make it absolutely clear that, before I approve the guidance, I will need to be satisfied that we have given every opportunity for Confor and others to be heard and that any substantive points that they make have been taken into consideration.
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There is already a commitment that we will review the legislation after 12 months from the date of implementation. I have decided that that will be an independent review and will not just be done by the Government. I will appoint somebody who is independent and who has the relevant qualifications to review how the legislation is working and being implemented after it has been up and running for 12 months. That will allow us to quickly learn where anything is going wrong or where there are unintended consequences that need to be dealt with. I give that absolute commitment to the committee.
The second point that Cameron Buchanan raised related to the administrative burden. Substantial processes are already in place for foresters in relation to the plans that they have to submit to the Forestry Commission. I believe that the additional requirements that arise from the legislation are fairly proportionate, because much of the information is already available in the plans that foresters submit to the Forestry Commission. We have an arrangement with the Forestry Commission that it will make all that information available to the relevant planning authorities so that companies do not need to duplicate or repeat what they have already done with the Forestry Commission. The only additional work will be in providing any information that is required on top of what has already been submitted to the Forestry Commission. For example, companies submit a longer-term strategic plan to the Forestry Commission and, obviously, at some point a company might decide that it needs an additional or extended track that is not in the plan that it submitted. Obviously, that would require to go through the process under the new legislation.
As I have said three or four times, I am keen to ensure that the industry is satisfied that we are not introducing a lot of duplication and putting unnecessary burdens on it, and I will work with Cameron Buchanan and Confor on that—I am happy to involve myself in the process. This morning, I emphasised again to my officials that, when we produce the guidance and implement the legislation, it needs to be proportionate and sensible while achieving the objective of balanced development in our rural communities. We will work with the industry to ensure that there are no unintended consequences. If any arise, we will deal with them through the independent review, which will take place after 12 months, and get them sorted. I hope that the quality of the consultation will be such that no unintended consequences will in fact arise.