Welcome to the 25th meeting of the year of the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee. Before we move to the first item, remind you all to switch off mobile phones, et cetera, which can interfere with the sound system, there will be committee members who might be consulting tablets during the meeting because they provide meeting papers. Agenda item 1 is a decision on taking business in private. The first item today is to decide whether consideration of its approach to the scrutiny of the Community Empowerment Scotland Bill at item 4 should be taken in private. Are we all agreed? We are agreed, so we will move that item into private. The next one is agenda item 2, Scotland's climate change targets. The second item today is to take evidence from the minister on Scotland's climate change targets, which follows the evidence session of stakeholders last week. I remind members that there are four committees that have been looking at the Low Carbon Scotland meeting our emissions reduction target 2013-27, the draft second report on proposals and policies, which is also known as RPP2. Racky is now going to take a broader view of RPP2 and the climate change targets in the light of three successive years of not meeting the immediate targets. I welcome the minister and his officials, Jim Gilmour, policy adviser, director for energy and climate change and John Ireland, deputy director of the Low Carbon economy division in the Scottish Government. I refer members to the paper in front of you and ask the minister if he wishes to make any opening remarks. I hope that that is okay. Please do. Thank you, convener, and thank you, committee. Momentum towards a new global climate change agreement is mercifully growing at the UN climate summit in New York in September. World leaders committed to finalise a meaningful universal new agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris in 2015 and to arrive at the first draft of such an agreement at the UN climate conference in Lima in December this year. Over our part, the Scottish Government is committed to playing as full a role as possible in international effort and to achieve concerted international action to bring global emissions down to a level consistent with containing increases in global average temperatures to two degrees Celsius or less. Scotland's domestic commitments are ambitious and remain an inspiration to many. While there are undoubtedly challenges that lie ahead, we can be proud of our achievements to date. Scotland is over halfway to meeting our national Scotland-wide target of a 42 per cent reduction by 2020. Latest figures indicate that we remain on track to achieve a 42 per cent or better reduction in Scotland's emissions by 2020, and I want to stress that point. We have made significant progress to achieving the low-carbon vision outlined in our second report on proposals and policies, as demonstrated in the RPP2 monitoring framework that was published earlier this year. In June, we announced a package of measures to keep us on track to the 2020 target, including the establishment of a new Cabinet sub-committee on climate change. Stop Climate Chaos Scotland said, and I quote, "...announcement show that the Government is serious about getting us back on track to meet future targets." In addition, our independent advisers, the Committee on Climate Change, have advised that, and I quote, "...underlying progress remains on track in most sectors." However, despite this progress, I freely acknowledge that we have fallen short in meeting our statutory fixed annual tonnage targets. Nobody is more disappointed than I am that this is the out turn. The annual target report to be laid in Parliament later this month will therefore show that emissions in 2012 exceeded in tonnage of emissions the level required by the annual target, set under the act by just over 2.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. The key factor impacting on our ability to meet annual targets is upward revisions to the baseline against which the amount of abatement and performance against our targets are measured. By summer 2014, the baseline had been revised up by 5.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent compared to the data available when the annual targets were first set. That is an upward adjustment of more than 8 per cent, or actually it is 7.7 per cent, I correct myself convener, between the 2008-based and 2012-based inventories. Revisions are the result of improvements in methodology as there is more accurate monitoring of emissions and understanding of the impact of greenhouse gases, which improves over time in each successive greenhouse gas inventory. As the Scottish Government paper documenting the key reasons for successive revisions to the greenhouse gas inventory over the last five years was published earlier this week, as a result of those revisions, the fixed annual targets, which do not adjust or as it were set in stone, are now considerably more challenging than when they were set. While we remain committed to delivering a 42 per cent reduction by 2020 and a minimum of an 80 per cent reduction by 2050, overcoming the methodological issues arising from improvements in data and estimation techniques, rather than material changes in emissions, is a challenge that I would contend needs to be addressed. Our independent advisers, the Committee on Climate Change, have identified two basic options for addressing inventory revisions. First, to adjust targets, for example, by recasting those in terms of year-on-year emissions reductions, or by revising the targets to allow for adjustments arising from each annual inventory revision, or to adapt to the inventory change by finding additional opportunities to reduce emissions that could be on current and proposed policies, in effect seeking even deeper percentage reductions by 2020 and 2050 than were chosen by Parliament in 2009, i.e. the 42 per cent and 80 per cent figures. I would welcome the committee's views on the merits of these or other options that the committee might have. By demonstrating solid progress towards the targets that are set by our Climate Change Act 2020 and a progressive partner in international negotiations, I believe that Scotland can continue to be a model for the international community by demonstrating the opportunities of the low-carbon economy, which is creating jobs, investment, trade and growth benefits for the people of Scotland. We are by no means perfect, but in a world that faces an enormous challenge to avoid societal, economic and environmental damage arising from uncontrolled climate change, Scotland, our country, has shown and continues to show leadership of which I think we can all be proud, thank you, convener. Thank you for that opening statement. We know from the evidence from the UK CCC that Scotland has often made an appropriate contribution, as Dr Ruta Collier put it in her evidence last week, to delivering the UK's first carbon budget. However, we also know from WWF and many others that, although the progress in renewables has been excellent, the efforts with regard to energy efficiency transport in areas such as renewable heat need a good deal more effort. Now, I wonder if you have particular concerns that we can attend to these issues and increase our efforts in those areas as part of our on-going work in climate mitigation. Well, certainly, convener, I agree that it's an extremely important area for progress. The Committee on Climate Change has been complementary about what we're doing in energy efficiency in Scotland, but Dr Ruta Collier pointed out in her evidence that, in the current situation, more devolution is being discussed with Westminster, so you could look at those areas if you really want to deliver in Scotland. You might need to push for more control over those issues. She went on to say that she cannot do much about the energy company's obligation, which is true—it's a reserved area—and that she knew that the Scottish Government has tried to influence DECC, which is true, but that she perceived that DECC was not delivering. I think that that is a challenge for us. It's not to particularly have a pop-up at DECC. This is a difficult area for everybody, but we may have a different approach if we had control over such matters and, clearly, for energy efficiency in tackling not only climate change, but our fuel poverty targets. This is an extremely important area of policy for Scottish Government, and it's one that we would want to progress as fully and as fast as we can. I note your remarks with regard to matters that we dealt with by Lord Smith of Kelvin from various parties' potential inputs to those things. In terms of our own budget in the next period, we'll be discussing some of those in detail once the budget documents are presented. However, we are looking for greater progress, so how do we plan to secure that on the basis of the resources that we have? That's a key consideration. We have a high level of investment in energy efficiency in Scotland, but you attack that from a number of different angles. Obviously, the planning system and building regulation have a role in driving building standards, but we have to recognise that we have a relatively slow turnover rate in terms of building. There's a huge pool of buildings that are already out there, so retrofit is an extremely important consideration. Therefore, money does become important there. You can change new buildings through regulation, and that is important. I note for the record that between 1990 and now, we have improved energy efficiency of new builds by about 70 per cent. There has been progress made at Scotland level over that period, but the problem is that the challenge remains that we have a lot of old solid wall properties around Scotland, older buildings that desperately need to be retrofitted with energy efficiency measures. Although there has been great progress in cavity wall insulation, I think that two thirds of the properties that could be cavity wall insulated have been cavity wall insulated, and a very high proportion of buildings that could receive loft insulation have been insulated. We are now running into more difficult properties—rural stone-built solid wall construction properties and non-traditional designs—which is going to be more of a challenge for us. The committee knows that rural poverty and fuel poverty is a major issue that needs to be better stated in statistics, because, if they were, I think that it might be possible for us to see the direction of policies to try and solve them. However, the hard-to-heat and hard-to-treat houses have been known about for a long while. Is there anything specific in this next round of your activities that can give us some security that we understand that this will be tackled? Indeed, in June, around the time of the announcement of the figures, we announced by colleagues Margaret Burgess about the allocation of heaps funding. A £60 million of £79 million that has been allocated in this year is going into area-based schemes across Scotland. An additional amount within that, an extra £5 million has been specifically earmarked for off-grid properties, recognising that the options are more limited in terms of improving the heating performance and energy efficiency of those properties. We are trying to direct more money to harder-to-treat properties in harder-to-treat locations where people may have fewer options than they would do in an area connected to the gas grid and with more available, better building design in the first place. It is a challenge, but I am confident through the work that is being done by colleagues, Margaret Burgess, in particular, that the efforts are being made to tackle these harder-to-treat properties. Nigel Don wanted a supplementary. Good morning, Minister. In that precise context, I recognise that this is not your portfolio directly. There seems to be a lot of evidence that harder-to-treat houses are also old houses, and the ones that are not being treated are in private hands and often rented, which is why there is the least incentive for the person who owns it to improve it. Can you bring some encouragement to your colleagues to see whether we should be legislating in that area? I think that that is probably what is required if we are going to get all the least properties up to standard, many of which are quite simply not even wind and water tight at the moment. I am happy to take that issue forward in terms of bilaterals with colleagues in housing, Margaret Burgess, and we are relevant with the local government and planning minister, Derek Mackay. Those are important issues. We certainly recognise that regulation can be a driver where there is perhaps no incentive for the individual to do the work. We can get details for the committee of government programmes that have been extended to private landlords to try and incentivise them to improve the efficiency of boilers and other measures. There have been steps taken to try and make it easier for landlords in private sector rented accommodation in rural areas to try and adapt their properties. However, I will take forward the point that Mr Don raises about whether regulation could drive that to my colleagues' relevant portfolios. I think that the next questions follow on from that Graham Day. Hitting the initial targets was always said to be the easy part, that the difficulty increased further into the process that we went through. Yet, last week, Dr Rutherford Collier, the Committee on Climate Change and Evidence to the Committee, was talking about a situation in which we are owing to the EU trading scheme changes and further inventory changes that are coming. We are actually chasing a moving target in reality and we are going to have a major, major problem next year. You talked about going even deeper in making changes, but to put that in perspective perhaps, Dr Collier equated what was needed to insulating every solid wall home in Scotland and all the outstanding cavity wall homes in Scotland in one year at a cost of £5 to £10 billion. If that is a good analogy, is it not an almost impossible task and don't we need to get realistic here about where we are at? I certainly agree that we need to be realistic about where we are at both in terms of the resources that are available but also the mechanics of how the legislation is working. Dr Collier's point was a particularly useful one in illustrating the scale of the task. It is not just about the money, it is about how physically you can deliver that amount of retrofit to, with a small shrunken construction sector during the recession, how you can expand the activity quickly enough to deliver that. There is an actual practicality issue as well as a financial issue. Clearly, there are other options. Dr Collier was, from what I saw of the evidence, was characterised in putting it into a single-issue response to the challenge, how do we make up the shortfall of one megaton and this is one suggested way as we do it. We do have more options than that clearly, but I think that it was illustrative of the scale of the challenge. If I could put it in perspective, there has been a lot of focus on the missed targets. That is entirely right as the legislation is set up to monitor performance against the net emissions figures, including ETS. ETS has, if I can put it frankly, been a bit of a let down in terms of the Europe's desire to move to a more ambitious target for 2020. The debate has moved on, as I think Dr Collier and others acknowledged last week, to looking at 2030. The pre-2020 ambition has fallen by the wayside. We are left with a position where we are reporting against something and targets were set on an assumption about going to 30%, which does not look like it is likely to materialise. To give the committee confidence in how we are progressing, I could just read out some figures. I appreciate that you want to keep the figures down to a minimum, but I think that this is important in terms of the actual emissions. In 2010, our target was 53.65 megatons. Our source emissions—our actual emissions, as a country—were 58.3, so we missed by 4.6 megatons. In 2011, our target was 53.4 megatons. Our actual emissions were 52.5 megatons, not 0.9 megatons under the target. The problem is that we are reporting against emissions net of ETS, and ETS adds in emissions, paper emissions, that have not been emitted because that is the way that the system works. We are reporting against something that, in some respects, is a bit abstract for people to think about. We are reporting against something that, in some respects, is a bit abstract for people to think about ETS and carbon trading schemes. The actual amount of gas that we are pumping into the atmosphere was below target in 2012 and 2011, but I feel that you will admit that it was well above target in 2010 for reasons that were explained previously about bad weather and so forth. The cumulative emissions gap is about 3.4 megatons in those terms, but it goes up to 7.6 megatons if you take ETS into account. It is a very complex picture. It is a very hard thing to get across to the public. It is a complex picture and we need to get some realism about the point that Mr Day has made. We need to be realistic about our resources and the nature of the targets and how they are moving with the baseline position and becoming more challenging because the actual targets are fixed. We need to have a mature discussion because that would bind any future administration, not just ourselves, and get a consensus about how we tackle the particularly challenging aspect of our legislation. However, I am very proud of the legislative framework that we have and the consensus that we have in the Parliament about tackling climate change, and we are very lucky in that respect compared to other countries. Thanks for that and some minister's interesting figures. How confident are you that the measures that you have announced earlier this year that will be implemented will get us back in track, whether in paper or real terms? If they are not, do not we seriously have to look at changing the targets? It may send the wrong message, but do not we actually have to do that? Dr Collier made the point that she would not suggest to change them in their up to 2015. That would not be appropriate, but we may have to do that further on. What are your thoughts on that? I have read that evidence with interest. Dr Collier, more than perhaps any of us, is well aware of some of the statistical revisions that are likely to come down the line. We know of at least one or two that will affect us in the next set of figures in June 2015, including the uprating of methane from 21 times the potency of CO2 to 25. It is clear that that will have an impact on the agriculture sector and other parts of the waste sector, where methane is an important issue. We know that further statistical revisions are coming, and that will likely make the challenge even harder. The baseline will yet probably move again. We do not know how we have performed against targets in terms of emissions, and we will not know until very close to that publication date in June. We are in a bit of a vacuum at the moment as to our performance, but this is the most challenging year, the one that we are about to report on in June. I take the point that Dr Collier and others have made about the sensitivity in running to Paris. A number of stakeholders mentioned last week that we have a challenge to try to make sure that there is a unity of purpose across the world in laying down commitments, and it would not look good like other Governments have in recent times, pulling back from their commitments or being seen to. Regardless of what we ever do, we will take advice from experts like the Committee on Climate Change on their view as to how we should proceed, and I will be listening to Dr Uty Collier's views on this in due course. However, we will be absolutely clear that we are not reducing our commitments in terms of tackling climate change. We are absolutely committed to delivering the 42 per cent that we have declared and the 80 per cent that we have declared. That is really important for the international negotiations that other Governments know, even though we are sadly not a member state of those discussions, but they know that Scotland is committed to delivering its target. However, we might achieve that, it is just to recognise that the realistic point that is getting tougher and tougher to deliver the tonnage target that the legislation requires. I am very confident in percentage terms that, given our higher baseline, we are on a steeper trajectory at the moment than the legislation required of us when the targets were set. In a nutshell, we have a bigger drop to go down, but we are dropping faster than the legislation initially intended. We are doing our best to close that gap. How well do you feel that climate change policy fits in with other Government policy? Could it be that lack of coherence could be one of the reasons that targets are being missed? It is clearly like some other areas of Government policy. It is one that is cross-cutting, and it cuts across a number of different departments. It is an important issue that you raised. One of the reasons why we have the bilaterals is to try and uncover where other departments are in terms of the difficulties that they have in implementing RPP2. The RPP2 document itself was developed jointly with colleagues across different parts of Government. The technical officials in each team were asked to come up with their proposed measures that would be able to deliver the 42 per cent target by 2020 and, obviously, the annual targets thereafter up to 2027. There has been good engagement with officials in other departments. There are areas that are important to emphasise in picking up Mr D's earlier point that we need to make sure that proposals get converted into policies, and colleagues recognise that. It is why I think that the Cabinet Sub-Committee will be particularly useful, both from my perspective and from colleagues, to be able to air any difficulties that they are having and to use the collective wisdom. I hope that I recognise that there is some collective wisdom in Government, but we use our collective wisdom to try and come up with solutions, maybe help colleagues and see if there is any way that we can share the burden. We do not have sectoral targets in terms of the climate change legislation in Scotland, so it is important to recognise that, if one part of the economy that is expected to deliver emissions abatement of X does not deliver X, then other parts of the economy have to pick up the slack, so we have to find a response somewhere else. If it is proving challenging to deliver what we intended in one part of the RPP2, we will need to pick it up elsewhere. In that respect, there is a recognition that there is a problem shared, and we all have a collective responsibility to deliver the targets. However, it is always going to be challenging because we are asking people to go faster, harder and, in some respects, using technology that is pioneering and perhaps novel in its application, and therefore we are taking risks. That is difficult because we are a front-runner. It would be easy to be in the pack in other countries looking at us and seeing where we are going wrong and being able to learn from that. We are the ones who are having to find out by doing it first, so it is challenging. I recognise the point that you make, and it is something that I take forward in my bilaterals trying to encourage colleagues to do as much as they possibly can. I no doubt that we can reflect that in the remarks that we may make to you after this with regard to the cross-cutting nature of those things. We heard last week when we were taking evidence that there was still scope to secure further action in quite a few areas. For example, SEPIN, Stop Climate Care Scotland, mentioned that more action could be done regarding peatland. They also said that they would support something like a voluntary carbon auditing in agriculture, although we also heard that agriculture had already reduced its emissions by about 27 per cent since 1990 or so. Very opposite with transport, which is obviously a big polluter. There was very little change, I think, about 1 per cent or so change in transport since 1990. WWF also noted that RPP2 only had one policy regarding transport, so they thought that there should be more action there. Chris Wood G mentioned the energy efficiency of houses, but Chris Wood G, of the Sustainable Scotland Network, noted that there was considerable scope existing to improve the energy efficiency of existing buildings. I would be interested in what plans the minister had to introduce new policies or proposals in RPP2 in some of those areas or other areas that we could help to tackle our emissions for the future. I am glad that the minister has raised that. I have heard this often said before that there is only one policy or one approach in transport, and I think that we need to recognise that there is a lot of good work being done in transport. To put it in perspective, had things gone on unchecked, we would have probably seen a massive increase in emissions from transport between 1990 and now because of the higher vehicle ownership. The people are driving further. Unfortunately, there is a bigger commuter pattern now than it was in 1990. Suburbanisation continues apace. There are societal issues, which mean that we have increased vehicle use. To be fair, European Union has tried to improve the energy efficiency of engines and that has been effective up to a point, but it has not been as effective as we had believed and all other Governments had believed across the European Union when the regulations were put in place. There was an anticipation that alone, but it would have reduced transport emissions. People are responding by having more efficient engines, driving further than they would have done otherwise, because they can afford to do more leisure trips. There is a bit of a spring back in terms of emissions performance. I recognise transport and housing. The two areas are probably where we have had the most challenge in terms of delivering substantial decreases in greenhouse gas emissions. In the residential sector, we have the complexity that this is where weather has an impact on our emissions. In 2011 to 2012, when I asked officials to correct me if I'm wrong, I think that it was about 11 per cent jump in residential emissions because of poor weather. We saw a similar phenomenon between 2009 and 2010. While it is dismissed as us having excuses for why emissions are failing to make targets, I see Mr Hymnodding nodding. There is an element there that we have to be, to take Mr D's point, realistic that that is the nature of the beast and that we have to try to influence behaviours. Up to a point, we cannot seriously say to people, don't turn your heating on if they are freezing, particularly pensioners and others who are vulnerable, so we have to be realistic about where we are. Yes, agriculture has been great progress. I noted Jim Denson's points last week about potentially that plateauing or potentially going back the way in terms of how agriculture might unfold in due course, but we are obviously trying to explore through things like farming for a better climate programme and how we can demonstrate to farmers that it is not only good for the climate but good for their bottom line to deploy improved agricultural practices that lower their emissions as a by-product. The primary driver for them, from a behavioural point of view, is that it will strengthen the finance of your business, but ultimately the benefit for us as a society is that it lowers emissions. We have got the complexity of methane being uprated, so that may have an impact on what we have to do in due course. In the June announcement of the cap, the Cabinet Secretary announced that farms of permanent grassland would be asked to do more in terms of fertiliser management, and we will obviously provide support to those farms in doing so, but in terms of advice on how they can achieve that and try to make it as simple and non-bureaucratic as possible. However, that is one way in which farmers can actually help the environment by lowering their fertiliser use, but it is actually a very sound thing to do because it will save them money. If they are using too much fertilizer, they are wasting money. If they are using the right amount, they are optimising their resources and are not wasting money unnecessarily. We need to find new and innovative ways, and we are constantly trying to review what we are doing. In some respects, RPP2 is already out of date, and we appreciate that, but it still provides a strategy that departments can use to get us there. In areas such as transport, the additional investment that was made in sustainable active travel in June—smarter choices, smarter places and funding—will, hopefully, help to move us slightly further than RPP2 was showing us. I know that the minister, Keith Brown, has been working closely with stakeholders in sustainable active travel to look at what the vision would be of Scotland in 2030 and working back from that to find out what is the funding programme, rather than just saying arbitrarily that we are going to increase spending each year up to a percentage and looking at what the vision is required and working back from that as to what we have to put into achieve it. There are a lot of people who want to come in. Thank you very much, convener and morning minister. Just at a point on transport, a number of years ago, the royal mail I think it was, we are doing an experiment on hydrogen fuel vehicles running along the north-east of Scotland, therefore Peterhead to Inverness and put in the various bits and pieces to allow them to do that. I am not quite sure where that got to, but it strikes me that, given our capacity in terms of our ability to generate electricity and given that there is plenty of water here as well, developing the hydrogen economy is something that could help greatly in terms of the long-term reductions in emissions. Given that a lot of the electricity is being produced in the north, that is where I would like to see a hydrogen economy based with all the jobs and things that would flow for that.  Is it a sci-fi type of thing that is 10, 20, 30 years away or is it something that you feel we should be pursuing in the short term? I am old enough to remember watching tomorrow's world and lots of the things that I thought were sci-fi back then are reality now. Indeed, Star Trek, the personal communicators and so forth, we have mobile phones. Today's sci-fi can quite often become tomorrow's accepted wisdom and mainstay technology. Hydrogen has potential. I am not a scientist in that respect, but everything that I have seen about hydrogen is very enthusiastic that it has potential to be the next big thing in terms of transport fuels. Currently, we are investing strongly at the moment in infrastructure to support electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles, because it could be genuinely the next technology. At the very least, it is going to be a transitional technology. I very much agree with you in respect of the aspect that there is no reason why that technology cannot be exploited in a rural region like the Highlands and Islands, where there is obviously the huge amount of renewable energy that could be used to potentially create hydrogen fuel in terms of the process. We clearly have the ability to use that technology, where perhaps we have a surplus electricity being generated at night if that can be stored through pumped hydro storage or indeed the fuel can be created at night when it is not being used. The electricity is not being used and that would be a very complementary technology to the development of our renewables potential. For a number of reasons, it would be an attractive option to pursue. It is one that Scotland, if we could take an academic lead in that area, would potentially gain the employment impacts and the research and development impacts of pursuing that technology. I will just ask my colleagues if they are up to date with them. Is there anyone who has hydrogen, John Irwin, that we can say beyond what I have said? No, I think that is it. I appreciate that it is still an emerging area, but we can come back to convener through writing if there is anything that colleagues can update Mr Thomson on in terms of the development of that sector. It is just a wee bit logical to follow on from that. I asked last week about the difficulties of different nozzles for charging points for electric cars. When you are at the EU Environment Council next time, can you ask your colleagues when they are going to get this sorted in your international role that you report back to this committee on? You can see the references in column 23. I fully acknowledge that that does not look particularly sensible from a consumer's point of view. If we are trying to develop tourism offering across Europe and allow people to travel across Europe with sustainable vehicles, it would make sense to have them able to use the charging points. The good news is that by the end of the financial year, we hope to have up to 1,200 charging points across Scotland, many of them will be publicly available. The bad news is that people might need a big adaptor to be able to use it from what was said last week, but I promise that I will raise that issue if I get the opportunity at council. Thank you very much. We have Alec Ferguson now. Thank you, convener, and good morning, gentlemen, morning minister. I wonder if I could return to the field of agriculture for a moment, if I could, which has obviously been our stories looked on to play quite a large part in this process. The minister has already mentioned the farming for a better climate initiative and indeed the fertiliser efficiency measures that are envisaged within RPP2. Of course, there is also great stories laid on future technological developments to deliver carbon savings. What I wanted to ask you about is that all of those measures require voluntary uptake and a great deal of voluntary input. What I have never quite understood is that, unless there is a really good method of monitoring and evaluating how all those things are taken up, it must become extremely difficult to be able to attribute any resultant carbon savings. I just wondered whether the minister could expand a little bit on what plans the Government has to monitor those various initiatives, whether there is a thought there that in order to make them more effective they have to change from being a proposal to a policy, and whether that will therefore take away the voluntary element, and some of it might have to become compulsory. I wonder if you could expand on that a little bit. On the last point, whether something is a policy or a proposal, if you change one from one to the other, it does not necessarily make it a mandatory thing, that would require you to make it a mandatory requirement, which is a separate decision. As we take forward measures that have been outlined in agriculture forward and make them firm policies, they are still, in many cases, assumed to be voluntary rather than mandatory. We have done work already in terms of evaluating the effectiveness of farming for a better climate, and that is why we have expanded it, because the evaluation evidence showed that 10 or 11 per cent improvement in carbon efficiency of the farms that we are taking part in. We can get detail to the committee if that would be of help, convener, in due course, just as to what the messages were from the evaluation. It is a limited evaluation, and there is a very small number of monitor farms to start with, so I have to recognise that, but we are expanding the coverage up to eight monitor farms to try to get a better diversity of farms in different geographies to be able to demonstrate further the impact of that. In the measures that were announced in June, we have also announced use of farm carbon audits on a voluntary basis, and they will be supported under the new SRDP farm advisory service. There will be guidance to individual farmers as to how to go about undertaking a carbon audit if they want to volunteer to do that, and that is important to get that across. We do not expect them to do it off the road back without any support at all. They will be given advice as to how to do that, but we need to strengthen the monitoring evaluation, because there is one aspect of it that is important to recognise that farmers do not necessarily listen to politicians, as I am sure we all recognise shock horror, but they will potentially listen to their peers. I have been to visit one farm, and the board has certainly recommended to Claudia Beamish and others, and Jim Hume, if he has already been there, I am sure he probably has, to Robert Neill's farm up in his bit, which is a good example of how a farmer by doing this can communicate to his peers in language that they understand and accept in a convincing way, in a way that a politician very much can. I am not one who, like myself, does not have a farming background, so I think it is important that we recognise the role of peer groups and see what they can do, but I recognise the point that there is much monitoring and evaluation information that we can put out there in the public domain might help to influence decisions on a voluntary basis to do something similar. In 2013, we undertook a formal data-gathering exercise on the uptake of a range of the measures that the Farming for a Better Climate programme has been piloting through a national survey, and further analytical work will take place to refine our assumptions of uptake of those measures in informing delivery of RPP2 clearly. We are also working with Shruck to better understand the distribution of farming for a better climate uptake across Scotland, so the effectiveness of that peer message, if you like. We will try to get more to you on that. I am grateful to the minister for that explanation. I absolutely do not wish to try in any way to undermine the value of those initiatives that are being put in place, but if I could just specify one particular initiative, which is the fertilised efficiency measures, there is a great deal of weight given to the fact that apparently a 90 per cent uptake of those efficiency measures will start in 2018, and therefore, in all the documentation and the forecasts, there is an allocation of carbon saving given to that measure. How on earth do we know that there is going to be a 90 per cent uptime? I appreciate that as a guess, but unless there is really effective monitoring, it will be impossible to know what the uptake is. Do you have sort of answered that? Obviously, we need to work hard to try and get as much coverage of carbon audits as possible to be able to scale up from the audits as to what we expect the whole of Scotland to be doing. We also need to understand whether people who are doing a carbon audit are typical of those who are not doing a carbon audit, so there are a lot of ifs in there. Clearly, we need to look at how we can influence farmers to do this, and I have always maintained that it is better to try and do this through voluntary action if we can. I am confident that farmers do recognise the importance of this, but if we can use a behavioural approach and encourage farmers to do this because it is a pretty smart thing to do from their farms point of view, there is a pretty daff thing to be wasting money if you can avoid wasting money. If you can point out the relevance of doing a carbon audit, not necessarily just from a greenhouse gas perspective—important though that truly is—but also from the point of view of strengthening their farm business, hopefully we will get a higher take-up. Whether we achieve 90 per cent or not is something that we will need to work on between now and then and try to encourage and interact with NFUS and other stakeholders on who effective this policy is. Through the interaction with stakeholders in the run-in to the June announcement, we have taken forward the approach in terms of permanent grassland and having nutrient management effectively measures brought into permanent grassland, which is accelerating something that was in RPP2 in effect, bringing that forward to start in 2016. Subject to agreement of the European Union, I have yet to sign off on the CAT package. I was going to ask about the agricultural issues because of the serious concerns about the contribution to emissions. I am pleased that my colleague Alex Ferguson has asked that question, but I still have concerns about whether there will need to be regulation. A lot of the very good practice that has been taken forward through the climate monitor farms and the voluntary carbon audits will make an impact, but we will have to wait and see, I suppose, how they roll out. However, I do have concerns. I want to highlight that point that I do not think that we should be in any way ruling out regulation if we have to go down that road. For the record, I apologise to Mr Ferguson, as he probably said, when he was asking the question as well, that we could resort to mandatory measures if there is insufficient progress, and I think that the industry recognises that. We do have powers under, I believe, needs to check the detail. Johnathan and I are wrong under section 44 of the act to bring in mandatory measures, if necessary, to deliver on our climate change targets. However, whether it is applicable here or not, we will need to ask the lawyers whether that would work. There is a recognition that farmers understand that, if there is insufficient progress, we may need to take mandatory measures and put them in place. We have to recognise that, although agriculture is a very important part of our emissions today, it will be a huge share of our residual emissions in 2050. We have the twin objectives of maintaining livestock production and livestock numbers, but at the same time, delivering climate change mitigation economy-wide, so that agriculture by necessity will become a bigger and bigger component of what is left in terms of emissions and more and more emphasis will then probably fall on farmers, fairly or unfairly, to deliver on our climate change targets. I hope that we can use behavioural aspects and point out that this is a very smart thing to do from a farmer's perspective and save them money, but, at the same time, we have the backstop, we could use mandatory powers to do so, if necessary. Just to expand the areas that are under discussion, which have been touched on briefly already this morning, could I ask a broader question about whether you have concerns about funding for research in relation to what you have already referred to as pioneering technology, and if I could just very briefly use the example of how it is an evolving issue, as you, of course, know Minister. In relation to, Pete Lans was highlighted in RPP1 and now has gone from proposals to policies quite rightly, and Marine is now in RPP2 and will hopefully be, I would expect, should be in the future, but I'm really wondering whether you can give the committee some reassurance about the funding for moving these big policies through in the future. Absolutely, committee and convener and Ms Beamish. I mean, the blue carbon is an area that is probably about where we were at with Pete Lans in RPP1 terms, in that at that stage in RPP1 we didn't know sufficiently what was possible and what sort of emissions were related to Pete Lans and, importantly, what a sequestration you could get from investment in rewetting Pete Lans. That's still an emerging area. There's still, as you probably know, some work to be done on developing Scotland-specific figures for Pete Lans restoration that will then further inform policy. In blue carbon terms, we have had some work done. I think that it was SNH to have done some preliminary work for us on looking at the significance of seagrass meadows and kelp forests and other areas of the economy. Thank you in terms of the significance to Scotland. It does look like it has a potential to be a very significant asset for Scotland in terms of tackling climate change, but we are not yet there in terms of understanding fully what types of activities and what type of investment would be required. However, for example, shellfish production and seaweed harvesting might be two areas in which you could invest as an economy and actually sequester a lot of CO2. We know that shellfish, as they grow, sequester CO2 in their shells. Seaweed, as a plant, absorbs CO2 in its growth. There are potential sectors there, but we are just not ready enough yet. However, I commit to Ms Beamish that we are interested in finding out more about that. I will fulfil my commitment if I am still here in terms of RPP3 to make sure that we flag up the opportunities in blue carbon. It is a very important area of emerging policy in the European Union. I also want to thank Commissioner Portocinac, who is an outgoing commissioner, who is interested in the blue economy and what we can do to tackle environmental degradation of our seas and to improve its performance in tackling climate change. Graham Day has a supplementary question again on that. Briefly, thank you, convener. I understand what you say about taking the voluntary approach with the agriculture industry, but it is an industry that receives very large sums of public money. Surely, we are entitled to expect a sizeable contribution in this area. Can I be clear? Would there be any barrier, if the Government so chose, to making the carbon audit mandatory and linking performance to payment levels in the next cap, by which I mean that anyone who has performed well will have made savings anyway and be financially advantaged? When we get to the next cap, the poor performers could be penalised. I suppose that the simple answer to that is that we clearly could put more emphasis on carbon audits in due course. We have certainly announced in terms of the measures on nutrient management that we will ultimately meet as a situation where we would need people to have a plan, a sort of fertiliser management plan, or something along those lines as part of their requirements for those. You can obviously link issues to cross compliance and other measures to the common agriculture policy. If it would help, we can come back with the cabinet secretary's assessment of what he would be able to do, what powers he has to be able to do that, without committing to doing it, so that you are aware of what we could do if Parliament wished us to go down that route. However, it is a really important point that a lot of subsidy goes into agriculture, rightly, because we need to produce food and food security. At the same time, that gives us some influence on how that is delivered and how we can encourage good practice to be disseminated and taken up by others. That is very good. We are going to look at EU emission targets now, and I thank Angus MacDonald for the question. Thank you, convener. Good morning, minister. I think that you used the term, or the word, mercifully, in your preamble this morning with regard to increasing support for a 40 per cent EU reductions target by 2030. We already know that, according to the emissions projections set out in RPP2, the only scenario that will result in annual emissions targets being met every year up to 2020 requires that all policies and proposals will be implemented and that also that the EU adopts a 30 per cent reduction target. First of all, would you agree that a 30 per cent reduction target is off the table, and what implications does this have for Scotland meeting its future annual targets, especially if the setting of a 40 per cent target doesn't materialise? Well, I suppose that the straight answer is that I don't think that it's entirely off the table, but I think that the reality is that it's not likely to materialise. So, in all intents and purposes, I don't think that we'll get a 30 per cent target now, which will be a pity. I think that the debate has moved on. There's obviously some countries in the European Union who are pushing back, even on a 2030 target and ambitions for 2030. I think that the real politic of it is that the debate has moved on to trying to secure as much ambition as possible within the European Union amongst those, obviously, less ambitious countries to get them to commit to something for 2030. I greatly regret that, because I think that pre-2020 ambition is going to be essential. However, we have to recognise that at least some progress has been made, and so I think that, mercifully, we are, as I say, getting to a position where the key parties at the negotiations, including the European Union, and many other developed countries that have up to now been more progressive, are now being joined by other countries, particularly the larger emitters, who are now looking like they are serious about coming to the table with an offer themselves. We are in a better position than we were this time last year. I regret that we are looking like we're not going to get sufficient ambition at EU-wide level. There are some very progressive countries in the European Union that would dearly have loved to have gone to 30 per cent or more for 2020, and we would have been one of them. Unfortunately, the reality of the negotiations is that that seems to have been left by the wayside. We have to push as much as we can to get a steeper trajectory for 2030, as possible. We share the UK's ambition that that should be 50 per cent if a global deal is on the table. The agreement to date by the European Union appears to be settled at 40 per cent, but I would certainly encourage the European Union and members of the European Union to consider laying on the table a 50 per cent offer if a globally ambitious deal is on the table to help to secure that. We know that Scotland has set annual targets up to 2027s. We were already committed to about 58 per cent emission reduction by 2027. The initial targets were set on the principle that we should try to achieve, although that is not yet a formal target, 60 per cent by 2030. We are well ahead again of the pack in terms of emissions. We have done it unilaterally, unconditionally. I have communicated that to all the key players in the negotiations in Lima, including the co-president, the commissioner head of guards, who is an outgoing commissioner, and others just to say that this is Scotland's offer. We have made it. We are sticking to it 42 per cent by 2020 and 58 per cent by 2027, so they understand that we are committing to that and we have to try to help to encourage others to follow suit. Of course, it is not just other countries in the EU that have a lot of ambitions. It seems that it is also the case in the UK. You may have noticed criticism in Wales over the Welsh Government's climate change performance. Indeed, in Wales, there seem to be Labour-backed benchers and, indeed, a former environment minister calling for a statutory framework. There are serious concerns that the current trajectory in Wales will fail to reach its target of a 40 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020. Are you aware of the difficulties that are experiencing down there? I am. I was quite surprised when a sort of Alan Davies' comments. Obviously, he is free to express himself, he is clearly expressed concern about the Welsh Government's targets. I think that it is an interesting choice that he has presented to his colleagues in Parliament that they have a choice as to which approach to take. He is certainly recommending a legislative framework from what I have seen. He is suggesting that they can either go down the same route of Scotland in having annual or at least a statutory framework involving annual targets or do a carbon budget, such as the UK Government has done, which is easier to meet and is probably quite telling that other Governments around the world tend to be picking up that example rather than our own, because ours is stricter, it is harder, it is tougher, I experience on a regular basis, as you know. It is why it is really important, and it is very important to our stakeholders, including the international NGOs and other local stakeholders that we have. He has a strong model that can be deployed elsewhere, because he sees the actual benefits from the point of view of the accountability of the Scottish Government to the Parliament, driving our ambition. I am not sure that there are criticism around the table, I am not assuming everyone's support of what we are doing, but the process itself does work because it places us under pressure to deliver. That is what the world needs. Governments are being challenged constructively, but they are challenged to deliver on their targets. The more Governments we can get to pick up our example, the better the world outcome will be, because that rigor, the scrutiny of Parliament, as has been demonstrated today by the committee and others, is really important to driving the process, and we need to have strong legislation across the world. The more we can do to make our example as a positive one as possible for other Governments to copy the better. However, I was interesting that Alan Davis is saying that they have not done enough. The Welsh Government, of course, is important to point out that, while it has a 40 per cent target, it is only in the areas that are devolved to Wales that it applies that target. We have applied our target to 42 per cent, 80 per cent across the entire economy, even areas in which we do not have legislative responsibility that are reserved to Westminster, and we have gone one extra and we have international aviation and shipping in there, which is almost unique. I think that it may well be unique in a global sense, where the only Government that I am aware of that has actually done that. Okay. Those supplementaries on that question, on emissions data, Nigel Don. Can we see heard that there is a time lag compared with other places? It is 18 months after the end of the year before we really get the data. I am wondering whether the ministers had an opportunity to talk to the UK Government about whether we can improve that, but I am also wondering whether, in fact, there are surrogates that we can use. For example, the tonnage of beef might well convert into methane by some factor. Presumably, we know how much petrol is sold in Scotland and we can assume that it is all burned. What options have you got to improve the data, please? It is a source of frustration. I saw the evidence last week. It is a source of frustration to stakeholders, to the committee, clearly, and no doubt to myself in terms of the fact that, ironically, when I gave my first statement on climate change, it was relating to 2010, before it had even been elected. That shows you the nature of the time lag that we are dealing with. To make today's figures for 2012, when we are in 2014, that is frustrating for us. In terms of the approach that is taken, I understand that it is a two-step process. I think that it was discussed last week at the committee that you would have the initial draft figures at UK level and there is no Scottish set that is created at that time. It is only when the more precise data is produced at UK level that is then possible to drill down and use estimates of the kind that you are talking about to calculate a Scottish equivalent for the publication that we get a few months later in June of each year. I was looking at the issue last night when I was reading the evidence. I do not think that there is, sadly, at this moment in time great scope for us to accelerate that process, because the data in which our figures are based can only be produced once the detailed UK figures are ready, because then they have to apply population factors and other GDP ratios, et cetera, to another detail. I will ask John Arland to comment on the detail. The good news is that we are developing our own macroeconomic model, which can then be used to inform future decisions that are being taken by the Scottish Government as to investment priorities. We will have a much better understanding of how the economy works in terms of investment of £1 million in one area. What does that mean in terms of carbon impact? We will be able to have a much better understanding of our own economy, but at the moment we are still reliant on DEC producing the figures and to produce them as quickly as possible. John, do you want to comment more detail on that? I think that the important thing to bear in mind here is that there is a trade-off between timeliness of data and the quality of the data in terms of its accuracy. At the moment, I think that we have not an ideal compromise, but we do have a compromise between getting the data out as quickly as possible and having relatively robust data, but the confidence intervals for that data are still pretty wide. I fear that any attempt to produce a much more timely data series in the same way that you are suggesting would just lead to data that was much, much, much less at lower quality with much higher confidence intervals and would probably confuse us more than help us. Can I just explore that? Can I just come back to one of the other issues that the Minister mentioned earlier? Once you have shrunk the amount of carbon that you are emitting, those that inevitably must do so, for example those producing beef, become by definition a larger fraction of what is left. Are you specifically working on one, how that can be measured, but two, how it can be reduced? Are we moving to the days when beef, for example, are produced in sheds and the methane that goes up to the roof is burned off to CO2 before it is emitted as methane? That would be the chemist's solution without having to worry about the engine. I think that I would leave that to a subsequent Minister to explain that to the farmers gladly, but certainly in terms of SRDP, we have obviously brought in some measures specifically to help the beef sector through challenging transition in terms of cap. One of the rationales for doing that is to try and help to make the beef sector more efficient, both in terms of its use of materials, but we are also doing work through research strands picking up Ms Beamish's point earlier on the Charmill name green cow project in various other areas. There is a lot of work being done to try and look at the methane performance, if I can put it that way, of trying to think polite ways of expressing it, of ruminants such as cattle to reduce the missions that they are in or thereof. We have a challenge to be there, but in terms of the measurement, if I can perhaps ask John or Jim, if they know of anything that is being done to improve the measurement of the data. One of the reasons that we have so many revisions in the data and these upward revisions is that there is a very thorough programme of statistical research going on to improve the quality of the data. As we have learned more about the science, we get better accuracy of the emissions that we managed to measure go up. There is a significant amount of research going into measurement, particularly in areas in which the quality measurement is less good than we would like. You can see the evidence of that in the data that is revised backwards, and it creates the issue of upwards revisions. There is a lot going on here. Claudia Beamish wants to ask about that. Thank you, convener. It is a brief supplementary minister just about the compatibility of data in relation to its collection from the public sector, private sector and also the whole range of sectors about how that can be moved forward and what progress is being made on that. It is a very important area. As Claudia Beamish will be aware through the peacecraft group that we are doing work in the public sector to try and improve the consistency of recording and reporting. Indeed, we are looking at potentially making a mandatory provision for reporting in the public sector, not just local government, which is already doing a relatively good job in reporting on such matters, but trying to get a consistency of how within local government they report that data, so that it can be aggregated up and used in assessing our performance against RPP2. Clearly, we have to do something similar in the private sector. It is really positive that we have got the likes of the climate 2020 group of businesses that are working with us and are participating in peacecraft, so they are aware of the agenda that is unfolding on a public sector basis. Ian Marchion was attending the most recent meeting of that group and was able to put forward the business perspective of what they do as well. However, we are in this area and indeed in by a diversity duty. We are trying to look at how we can develop a template that companies can use. Hopefully, some bigger companies will be very well resourced and will have internal specialists that can help to provide lots of information. That is true in the public sector, too. However, smaller companies need to have something that is possible for them to deliver as well. Perhaps building around a core of information, it would be good to see listed companies reporting their performance against climate change and having the ability for people to augment that if they feel that it is something that they want to do from a corporate social responsibility point of view or because it is a core part of what they do as a business. We need to find exemplars. The Scottish Government itself is, by no means, the finished article, but we want to become an exemplar organisation ourselves to try to demonstrate to others how we will report on those matters and how we will demonstrate what we do. I do flag up when people forget that organisations such as SEPA and SNH are ultimately businesses. They may be public sector businesses, but they are operating in a very business-like way. They have shown the way in terms of how they report on climate action that they are taking as organisations. They open themselves up to criticism by doing so. However, at the same time, it is being commended by WWF and others as being the right thing to do, because they are showing what is possible and taking a lead. You have already referred to the new cabinet sub-committee on climate change, which you announced in June. Could you tell us a little bit more, as appropriate, about that, particularly in relation to the delivery of RPP2, which we are looking at today, and the delivery of future climate emissions targets, particularly wondering whether there are discussions about issues that may be politically challenging for all parties, such as in transport demand issues such as low emissions, zones and road pricing, or indeed what alternatives there would be that have been raised by some stakeholders about CCS, if that does not come online? Those are just two examples. Obviously, I am not asking you—I do not know if it is a public discussion or not, but I am not clear on that. It would be helpful if you could tell the committee a bit more about it. Absolutely. The most important thing to say is that I very much welcome the creation of that in the cabinet's agreement to have a sub-committee. I think that it provides the delegated decision-making powers that come with a cabinet sub-committee. It involves all the ministers who have a role to play. It does not mean that other ministers are not responsible for climate change. I put that on the record, convener, for future reference. However, it allows us to make use of the time of those who have some portfolio responsibility. That includes ones that you might not think of, including Alasdair Allan, who is education, but has a research role in the academic research community. Schools and the education institutions have a role to play in helping to deliver that. There is a full range of ministers involved that we believe should have an insight and an opportunity to speak from a portfolio perspective on that. It is importantly connected to the work of the climate change delivery board. A climate change delivery board is clearly charged with one of the governance changes that took place as a result of the RPP2 process. The climate change delivery board has responsibility at a senior official level within government to monitor performance against delivery of RPP2. You have seen that in the initial work that has come out in the reporting on progress warts and all as to how we are doing in relation to RPP2. The climate change delivery board is doing the day-to-day monitoring, if you like, of what is happening on the ground. The cabinet sub-committee can then give political leadership to that group and be a forum for problems being brought to the cabinet sub-committee to say that there is a challenge in this particular area of policy delivery, and the cabinet can then have a full and frank discussion about where we go in terms of delivering on that objective. As to specific issues that might be discussed, I cannot determine what cabinet will choose to look at, but we will be able to explore all the options that the Government has available to it politically difficult or not, otherwise, in trying to achieve our target and make sure that the delivery is as robust as possible. There will be clear linkages between that and the climate change delivery board, and below that, we have the peace clalf group and the clog group, which is the officials in local government and public sector bodies. There are a number of different strands, but the cabinet sub-committee provides political leadership to that process. Minister, when you are here just now, I want to ask you a question about severe weather events, which have been mentioned in the context of the increase in our emissions for RPP2. However, the severe weather events that have battered the north of Scotland this week, coasts, homes, harbours and indeed shipping, have meant that we need to be able to monitor those things very carefully. Minister, be aware of the engine failure of the Danish registered vessel Parada, which was transporting irradiated cement from Scrabster to Antwerp, which drifted towards the Beatrice oil platform that had to be evacuated and has now been taken by a tug in the direction of the Cromarty Firth. Minister, is there any further information about the effects of severe weather effects on our homes, coastal homes, harbours and at sea? In the course of the meeting, there will have been an update produced just at half past 10, which I will have missed, but notwithstanding that, we know that there was some damage from the severe weather yesterday in Mr Don's constituency and that there were properties evacuated along Stonehaven waterfront there because of the tidal surge and overtopping at Stonehaven, which is obviously a concern to residents of Stonehaven. A number of properties experienced relatively minor flood damage, thankfully, but it does obviously affect the individual's concern and my sympathies go to them in terms of their property damage. However, the incident that you referred to with the vessel that was transporting nuclear waste is obviously an issue of concern. I know that the cabinet secretary said that he is wanting to meet with the office of nuclear regulator as soon as possible to discuss the arrangements. Whether or not the vessel was sea worthy, clearly if I have no reason to believe that it was not sea worthy, the fact that it had a fire on board meant that it drifted and in those weather conditions that becomes a serious challenge, because I know that workers on Beatrice platform had to be evacuated in case the vessel hit the installation there. It clearly has implications for others, it has implications for the environment and I am sure that the cabinet secretary was taking this very seriously in terms of discussions with the office of nuclear regulator to make sure arrangements are better in the future. That being the end of the questions just now, I would like to thank the minister and his officials for exploring this issue with us. We are very keen to make sure that we have as much knowledge of the issue as it is an on-going matter of the utmost importance. So thank you minister. We will now have a short break, both change over witnesses and for a comfort break, just now five minutes. Agenda item 3 today is for the committee to take evidence from the Crown Estate in its annual session with our committee. We welcome for the Crown Estate Gareth Baird, the Scottish Commissioner, Ronnie Quinn, the Lead for Energy and Infrastructure in Scotland, and Alan Laidlaw, Rural and Coastal Portfolio Manager for Scotland. Welcome, gentlemen. I do not know whether you have any initial remarks to make, Gareth. A brief one, convener, for me. Thank you, convener, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We are delighted to be here again for what is our third annual appearance before this committee. Those appearances have been helpful in enabling us to understand your perspective, and your questioning has prompted changes in how we work, and in particular how we report that work. Two years ago, you questioned the fact that round three of offshore wind in Scotland, which is beyond 12 miles from shore, was not included in the finance section of our Scotland report. This is something that we addressed. Last year, some of you asked how we engage with communities, particularly in the context of our local management agreements. Again, we have made significant progress with more agreements coming through, and a charter on good engagement that we are now set to finalise shortly. Offshore renewables remain central to our work in Scotland, and the consenting of Murray Firth offshore wind projects, which includes the first round three project to reach this stage in the United Kingdom, was a huge milestone for the industry. Equally, we were very pleased that our investment, alongside that of the United Kingdom Government, Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, in the major tidal energy project off the Cathness coast, means that the first phase can proceed, opening the way for Scotland to play a leading role in the development of larger commercial tidal schemes that can make a real contribution to future energy needs. However, there are major challenges ahead in the sector, and we are working with industry partners on cost reduction, which is critically important if we are to maintain investor and developer confidence in projects. You will have received our Scotland report on our work in the last financial year. You are very keen to address any questions that you may have on this or, indeed, any other aspect of our work. Thank you very much. We will start off the questions with Graeme Dey. Thank you. Good morning, gentlemen. Just a couple of scene-setting questions really emanating from the 2014 report. I know that the current total property value is given us £267 million, which compares with £237.3 million in the previous year, which is quite a leap. I wonder if you can maybe outline for us how that has been arrived at. I am particularly interested, given the previous session that the committee has just had, on climate change, in the suggestion that greenhouse gas emissions from the Crown of the States have been reduced by 3 per cent overall. Just briefly, if you could outline how you achieve that and how you intend to maintain or improve that performance in coming years. If I may, the increase in capital value, you will see from the figures, is a large part of that, due to the increase in the renewables capital value. That is not totally unexpected, because just at the tail end of this reporting period, we had the consensus coming forward for the more effort that the Government mentioned earlier on. There is still discounted in our accounts, but it takes it into another bracket, if you like, and that has a substantial increase effect on the capital valuation of particularly the offshore renewable site. As far as the work that we do ourselves, we have initiated green workplaces initiative within all our offices. Small things—we have quite a lot of recycling in the offices now, and various other initiatives throughout the office. Switching off laptops, switching off monitors—all that kind of thing adds up and reduces the use of bottled water. We have an in-house team that is co-ordinated across the Crown of the States. We have a small team in Belzebray, here in Edinburgh, and they work across the piece to try and reduce our impact across the environment. That suggests that you have done what you have done and you are where you are, but how are you going to build upon that? I am not on the green workplaces committee myself—I do not think that Alan is either—but I know that there was another meeting last week. I do not know what new initiatives will be coming forward. I am sorry, but I do not know. I think that I could possibly add to our chief executive, Alison Nimmo. His sustainability runs through our veins, and she has driven this very hard. There is a sustainability discipline right across the business now and everywhere we act. There will be a consistent level of increased focus on that. I hope that that will bring benefits forward. In terms of the core team in our business, the actual office premises and our activities compared to the other interests that we are involved in are quite small. A lot of the work that we are looking to do on climate change and carbon reduction is influencing our tenants and helping to inform that debate. We have an important role to play in the interpretation of some of the science and policy into reality on the ground. That is where I think that I could cut water use in our office for 38 staff by 100 per cent, but if 10 of my farmers on the ground continue to do different things, that would be a tiny difference that they could make. A lot of what we are trying to do is to influence those behaviours. Would you encourage active way your tenant farmers to carry out carbon audits on their farms? I know that a lot of them have and are already engaged in the early adopters. They are doing it. They are right down the precision route and use of fertilisers and inputs. Then there is a romp that is looking at it from a different perspective. We are trying to inform that. We have a workshop with our livestock producers in early November with Morden, the research centre. We are working in partnership with them to talk about efficiency and diseases and all that sort of stuff to make sure that output per methane producing body is as high as possible. I think that, from my point of view and in particular in the rural estate, that is where we can make real differences rather than a 50 per cent reduction in maybe water in the office, because it only needs two or three burst pipes and two or three days of people ignoring them to completely mitigate any benefit that we do. I think that that is a key point from my point of view. It is in terms of property value and what you include in that. Obviously, you have the seabed. Do you only value seabed where you have a licence issued to somebody, or do you look at the total seabed that you have and place any value in that? Obviously, around the shores of Scotland, there is a massive amount of seabed that you own and a massive potential. I wonder whether that should not be valued in some way rather than purely when somebody asks you can they do something on it and you then get a rental or do whatever you do. We use the red book valuation principles and it is done by an independent valuer or a team of independent valuars, but in essence the valuations are only applied to those areas of the seabed where we have some activity and some lease or agreement for lease activity. The wider aspect of the valuation would be, I think, outwith the red book, the industry standard norm. If you are not going to be deriving a value or a benefit from it, it would be difficult to value that under the red book rules. I might follow up briefly, convener. It is fair enough that we can understand and accept what you are saying there, but if someone has an estate in the Highlands or whatever, that estate is worth, whatever it is worth, irrespective of almost of what is happening on it, if there is very little happening on it, it still has a value. The value would change if other things are happening. I wonder whether you have your figures in here for current total property value, £267 million, which represents 3 per cent of the UK total, but I would imagine that the potential value of your seabed, of your estate and terms of comparing it with the rest of the UK, because there is so much shoreline in Scotland and because of the amount that you have. That value would be actually pretty large in comparison with—I wonder whether it would not be a useful measure for us to have, even if you only quantified the area in comparison with the rest of the UK, so that we would get an idea of the potential value of that if there were further developments. I think that something that we could do is to identify the square kilometre of the seabed, but the value, as an alum will probably have more to say on this than I do, would find it very difficult to put a value on something where there was not a recognised foreseeable income stream. As I understand it under the redbook rules, it would become very contentious as to what that valuation would be. It is probably worth saying that, if there is not an active interest or an agreement, it carries a management responsibility and, potentially, with that management responsibility, other views might be liabilities as well. That is where the RICS redbook guidance would get into some difficulty in creating value there. The quantifiable quantum of what we manage and look after is absolutely possible, in particular on the coastal estate that I am responsible for. There are many areas that are long stretches of coastline that have limited value because there are limited interests. Just to put a blanket rate per kilometre of foreshore would probably be slightly disingenuous, and I certainly would not like to see that in our accounts. Claudia Beamish is a supplementary in this area, is she? Okay, and then Jim wants a different area. Thank you, convener. Good morning to you all. Could I ask you about the general duty of the CEC? I understand that it is under the Crown Estate Act of 1961, which is certainly some time ago, even for someone like myself. I understand that it says that, while maintaining the Crown Estate as an estate in land, and then goes on to say to maintain and enhance its value and return obtained from it, but with due regard to the requirements of good management. I am wondering if any of you could comment on whether, obviously this is part of an Act, so it would require legislation to alter it, as I would understand it, although I stand to be corrected on that, but whether there is any consideration of changing this duty to move it forward into today, in relation perhaps to a carbon commitment, or a social remit, or sustainable development, or other duties, and even if that was only within a mission statement, and there may well be plans afoot, or there may well be ways in which this is being brought forward anyway, so that there is some sort of a statement that is more for today. With regard to the Act, we are just wholly directed by that, and that is for Governments to consider whether there is any change. All I could assure you was that, if we go back to the straplines of the Crown Estate, which are commercialism, integrity and stewardship, so the assets that we are entrusted to manage by the nation, we have to take a commercial view on that, and we very much hope that there are lots of examples that I hope we can bring to your attention later today, where that is a win-win for everybody. We have to do any commercial activity with a long-term view, if you like, so there is the stewardship part of it, and we have to do it in an open and transparent fashion. As far as the sort of carbon footprint of that is concerned, all I could do is really refer back to earlier comments, where our chief executive has brought this sustainability view and way of working to the whole team and to all the sectors of the Crown Estate. So all I can absolutely assure you is that the carbon footprint part of that is absolutely taking precedence now. In terms of that and a more focused social remit, which last year and the year before has been increasingly highlighted to us, do you think that it is possible to have some sort of a statement that the public could look at to engage with that commitment? I have said to the committee before when we discussed land reform, and it takes on from Mr Thomson's point there that we can only create value in revenue or capital terms when we are doing something with the assets. Because we are not a trading business, we can only do something with our assets with a partner, so that is a community or a developer, an energy company, or a farmer or whatever. I have never seen the two of those being exclusive to one another. We can only create value in our estate and in revenue by working in partnership. I think that the case studies in the annual report this year reflect that what we do to invest in long-term projects creates value beyond that. I am really proud of what my team and the team in Edinburgh and around Scotland deliver, because we are delivering a commercial return, which we have identified through the act of Parliament that we must do, but the wider impact of those is far greater through those enabled opportunities. There is a bit of tension, but I do not see a lot of tension in those areas. I think that a lot of the activities that we do, whether it be the mountain biking investment in Glenlivet, which has created more jobs in the long-term tourism hub or whether it be working with communities on LMAs to take their local management agreements or to take their interests forward, are delivering our requirements into the act, but they are also delivering on the ground. There is also seen, if I may, on page 1 of this year's report in fairly bold print, where it has set out a role to make sure that the land and property we invest in and manage is sustainably worked, developed and enjoyed to deliver the best value over the long-term. At the heart of how we work is an astute to consider a collaborative approach that helps us to create success for our business and for those that we work with. That is a mission statement type of thing that you are referring to there. Just in case we forget it, we are all issued with a little card that we have with us and I carry it with us, putting more values as to how we work and how we do our business. Beyond each annual report, would it be appropriate, I am asking the question, to have a mission statement that brought us into today for yourselves? Would that be helpful in relation to the interface with communities and with the public? I think that we could work on that. I think that the charter that we are working on, engagement with communities, would help to reinforce that. The toolkit that we brought last year, when we appeared, was all about how we get a greater understanding of what the desires of the communities are and how we help to deliver that. I do not see any issue with that at all. Jim Hume. Thank you, convener. Good morning, everybody. Last night, of course, we had the cross-party group on rural policy and it was talking about some challenges for younger people. We have mentioned social remit from Claudie and Stewardship from yourself. We heard a bit about an ageing population in some of the rural industries and, of course, your estates cover agriculture, forestry and farming. I was just wondering what policies and proposals that we could say are happening within the crown estate to address some of those issues. If I could kick off and I am sure that Almond will come in later on, that is an area that is very close to my heart. It is one of education at all stages, particularly for the offshore renewables sector. It has evolved. I started off speaking to people in colleges and universities telling them about how the industry was moving forward and what would be required. I quickly realised that, to a large extent, many of the students there had already made their life choices and where they wanted to go by the time they had got to college or university. We started speaking to secondary schools in particular and realised that the pupils and the young people were very enthused about the industries, particularly because it is not an industry that they can learn about from their parents because it was not there. We then realised that the industry was creating a small industry in itself and that we could spend forever in a day doing that. What we have done recently is piloting a schools programme that fits into the curriculum for excellence from the Scottish Government. We have called it clean energy from the seas. That has been piloted in four secondary schools—Orkney, Kipglol, one in Ceph Ness and another in West Lothian. That has been very well received by the pupils. We are now in discussions with the industry and other bodies as to how that could now be rolled out on a more nationwide basis or how that can be more broadly received. We are very keen to see that as very central to us in Scotland and the UK deriving the best benefit that we can from the emerging industries. There is no point in us doing all this work and getting this there for commercial gain. We want to try to maximise that as much as we can. We are keen to have as much home-grown talent coming into those industries as we possibly can. Scottish Renewables published earlier on this year that more than 11,000 people are already working in those industries in Scotland just now. It would be good to see that growing year on year. I want to continue on from what Ronny said. The Clean Energy from the Sea project was something that came out of the back of our project for us for the future, which we developed with the Forestry Commission and in line with curriculum for excellence. It is about opportunities that are within the assets that we manage being opened up to wider audiences. A lot of what we do in terms of direct investment in our assets creates opportunities, so agriculture has just been highlighted as a growth sector that is heading for £2 billion. However, the figure that I saw in the report that the minister at Mr Wheelhouse commented on yesterday was 10,000 jobs in rural areas. Those are really important jobs in remote communities. In terms of agriculture, the members of the committee that came to Glenlivet last year saw a younger profile of farmer than they would elsewhere. That is because there is investment in fixed equipment and they recognise that their units are viable and progressive. When those people are taking those choices at 17, 18 to wherever, they know that they can go home on to their unit and it is viable and they have a partner that will work with them. What we are trying to do is signpost to the opportunities for growth. That is marine tourism as well. This summer, in particular, Scotland has basked in some great results for tourism. It is interesting in terms of young people. If you look at the only local authority area that has a demographic increasing in the 20s of population, it is the Cairngorms National Park. That is because tourism and adventure tourism and recreation is a core growth sector for those areas, which is keeping those people. There is a choice to, rather than returning when you are 60 to your home area to retire, you can return immediately post university because there are opportunities. Marine leisure tourism, from my point of view in our sector, is a really great opportunity to do that. That is, again, investments in working with communities on new pontoon projects. Our Gareth was at Loch Maddi recently in the opening of a new facility there, which has already had a significant impact on the local community. That will bring people back because they have a viable opportunity. Do you want to say something about Loch Maddi? There may be subsequent questions about local management agreements, convener, but I was privileged to be through the opening of the Loch Maddi marina in North East. When the Princess Royal came to open it, it has been quite extraordinary. I know that, when we reported to you last year, I think that we had one definite local management agreement in the pipeline. We now have four completed LMAs and 11 further future LMAs, in which we are communicating with the local community. The outstanding feature about Loch Maddi, and it has been great that it has been the first LMA to be delivered, was that there were real leaders in the community. There is an individual called Gus Macaulay, who heads up Coman-Namara, the Society of the Sea and North East Estates, were very strong in driving that. The Crown Estates activity in that was able to fund a feasibility study for this new marina, and then we invested £414,000 in the construction of the new marina. The thing that astounded me when it went up in the beginning of September for the opening was the colossal use of that marina. There were yachts that were turning up even before it was completed. At that stage, it had 300 yachts, and some of them were coming from as far away as the Baltic. It had the tallest two-masted schooner in the world that had been in, and it had cruise ships without notice coming in to almost scout the area. On the ground in that small community, the economic effect of that has been that the small village shops' income per week had risen by £1,000, the local hotels had risen by £3,000, and they have converted three part-time jobs into full-time jobs. Alan mentioned the marine tourism industry in Scotland. As you know, we have a Scottish liaison group, where we have just invited 30 stakeholders to our November meeting. As I said before, with all those people, it is very difficult to go into detail. We now have sub-sector groups, and we met a marine tourism group just about a fortnight ago. That industry is now worth £300 million per annum to Scotland. I figure that it is not known, and it is more than golf in Scotland, which astounded me. Last year, I talked about the string of perils, so how Scotland plans its marine routes for the high net worth people to come in and spend money in coastal communities. The Crown of State has helped in its publication on Scotland's welcome anchorages, where all those details are laid down in a magazine. The east coast is still to do, but that is work in progress. As Alan said, the outcome of the new LMA has been an extremely collaborative process, and we are very proud of it. I may say on the day that Princess Anne came to open it that three other communities came to Lork Marri to ask our officers how to take their potential communities forward. We should move on to another sea-born topic now, with Nigel Don. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning, gentlemen. It's good to see you again. Aquaculture, fish farming in particular, would be where I want to start. We've heard all the time, over the past few years, about expansion of that. It makes good sense for all sorts of economic and food security reasons. I notice that it's in your report. Can you tell us how you see that progressing, please? Perhaps how far you see it going? The press coverage talks about agriculture moving to a £2 billion industry by 2020, employing 10,000 jobs. That growth is very important. On sustainable growth, aquaculture has a tension between food production, demand and a sustainable environmental impact. I think that there's a huge amount of work going on in terms of making sure that that industry is robust and can defend its credentials and whether that is being used to treat fish lice or other sustainability methods. I think that there's a huge demand for it, whether it's for quality protein or a premium product from Scotland. I think that the growth targets are ambitious but achievable. We met recently with the aquaculture subgroup a real buoyancy in that industry about the opportunity, but we are competing. We are competing with Norway and we are competing with Chile. They were very clear that at the moment there are significant investment decisions being taken about where to invest. Scotland is on a pitch with other areas and needs to make sure that they are open for business for aquaculture. I think that there is an opportunity for sustainable growth. One of the interesting developments that has been in the aquaculture field for a while is more offshore aquaculture and how far offshore the technology can take it. The convener mentioned extreme weather events in the previous session. Putting some of the equipment into some of the areas that we're talking about is hugely challenging, even with all of our expertise from oil and gas and engineering. It's about finding the right places to grow aquaculture and the right way to do it. I think that the community engagement that a lot of the operators are doing now is far greater than it was in the past. They're holding community road shows to say, do you want aquaculture in your area? If you do, what does it look like? I think that that's a huge development because then examples quoted in the past that aquaculture arrived in the lock in the 70s and we didn't want it. I think that those days have to be past us now and the planning processes. We're reading spatial planning, which is winging its way towards us at the moment, and community engagement on terrestrial planning has meant that the operators have to get that right up front. If we can get the sustainability credentials right and keep them working and keep the industries good work that they're doing on that, get the community peace and the buy-in from their point of view, aquaculture still has a lot of growth to do. The value that's created in that sector, both upstream and downstream, is phenomenal. We're hopeful for that. That's why we help to invest with R&D, a lot of the transfer of planning responsibilities and things like that is a crunch point at the moment to make sure that available sites are optimised and used, but also to make sure that Alex Adrian, who leads our aquaculture team, who lives in Strucker, is an industry expert because he's been at it for a really long time, and to make sure that the opportunities that present themselves are taken, but also that it's not just vacant sites as something that's been often talked about. There's an opportunity to do different stuff on some of these sites, whether it be trout or halibut, or whether it be shellfish rather than finfish. There's a lot to do, but there's a lot of opportunity. We're also working with some of the big companies about trialling wave technology to power the fish farms themselves and to reduce the need for diesel generators on the platform. That's going forward just now as well. Thank you for that extraordinary comprehensive answer. I was going in all the places that I was expecting I might have to push you, because particularly as a committee when we went through the aquaculture bill, the one thing that came across was that you would avoid the conflicts the more you go offshore. Equally, of course, you do want to engage with the communities that are going to have to work there, and of course those environmental consequences are also very obvious. I guess that the follow-up question then is to what extent do you need our support as a Parliament or as a Government to achieve some of those things that you can talk so eloquently about? Do you have all the powers, all the enthusiasm that you need to make that work? I would say that successive Governments have been very supportive and the Parliament has always been supportive of agriculture. I think that that support is welcomed by the industry, but they know the responsibilities that they have to do. The community piece and the offshoring is actually quite a difficult dynamic, because when we speak to local authorities, they want to make sure that the economic activities are close to home and dry land as possible, and in the subgroup recently, as part of our greater engagement with the local authorities, we had a member from the islands group involved in that discussion. Straight away, it was great to see industry talking with local authority about what each of them's aspirations were. It is also about making sure that the local areas benefit from those, and that is quite a challenge. I think that in terms of powers and that sort of thing, agriculture is a well-supported industry. There are interests that seek to fight agriculture in every step that it takes, and it is always understanding the value. The case study in the annual report this year looks at agriculture and gear and how important it is to services, whether it be ferries or schools. I am keen, and I am sure that I have told the committee before that when a young manager was placed on an agriculture site, the community was delighted and the feedback was exceptionally positive, and their company could not understand why it was so positive. It is because he had three kids at core ages that kept the school open. To make sure that we understand the impact of agriculture, and the Marine Scotland report that was produced earlier this year by a manny developments who did archae studies as well, is really first class in identifying those upstream and downstream values. As long as Parliament and parliamentarians keep that in mind and understand the value and the industry keeps delivering as it has done in terms of R&D and improvements and sustainability, I think that it is in a pretty good place. Seashore things and so on, and then offshore before we move on land. I have got a question because I was at the launch on Saturday evening of the Dornock project at Glen Moranje distillery, which is using anaerobic digestion, but also the way in which the excess nutrient goes into the sea is being used to spawn muttle larvae and oyster larvae in the Dornock Firth. Obviously, there is not aquaculture, but it is the kind of natural development that you would be involved in. Have you had any site of this particular project yet? Clearly, it is in waters that you manage. I personally have not, but I know that the team is working on that. When shellfish and shellfish farming, and some people would call it ranching, it is still aquaculture and it is still a very high value product. I think that downstream flow of nutrients and other uses for feed of aquaculture products is really important. It is something that we have been looking at in the R&D side of things. It is like macroalgae and seaweed cultivation as well, a cultivation of different seaweeds for feeding of anaerobic digestion that creates power and heat, but also creates animal feeds, pharmaceuticals and then nutrients that can go back into the system. Alex and the team have been working quite hard on a lot of those aspects, because there is real opportunity in aquaculture to close some of the gaps that maybe agriculture cannot quite close as easily. Again, Mr Thomson identified that there is a lot of seabed out there and there is a lot of opportunity for those long-term sustainable business streams to go. Seabed cultivation at the moment is relatively low in terms of intensity. It tends to be collection rather than farming, but for the last three years, we have been investing in R&D about how that could be scaled up. It could go all the way to smart grids on islands that have ADs that help to produce power and heat, that produce agricultural fertilisers. There is a really virtuous circle that can be developed, but the key for us—and it is back to Claudia's point about sustainability—is that we have challenged in making sure that that works. The last thing that we want to do is to have activities going on to the seabed that are not sustainable or that go and create havoc in communities and things like that. It is worth promoting and investing in following. It just has to be done correctly. Claudia, you have a question about foreshore matters. Is that right? Thank you very much, convener. It would be helpful if you could clarify for us how much of the foreshore has been handed over to communities if you have any figures now or that you could get back to us with. If you have any future targets for that. Gareth touched on local management agreements already. When we spoke last year, there were four in-train. We have now got a list of heading towards 16 across the areas. My small visual aid here, if nothing else to highlight that, will send us to you at the help of the press this morning. They are predominantly in the west, and we would dearly like for some of the communities that are doing some interesting stuff on the east to come forward. In terms of areas—it is not something that we have a figure on at the moment, because each of those proposals is looking at different areas—what we are doing is piloting foreshore sales with the Carlaway estate trust at the moment, which is working with them as many of the committee will be aware. I am sure that they are going through their ballot and buy-out process. When that became clear that they were going to be successful in moving that forward, and before they submitted their land fund application, we went to see Carlaway and said that we have some foreshore interests in your area, and you have some ownership that I think will transfer with your purchase, would you like to look at buying and taking control of that foreshore in that area? They are going through their due diligence process at the moment, and we have helped them through that. We are looking to take a go-no-go decision, because they are approaching this from a very—as you would expect—a very responsible decision for the community. We have decided to buy the land part of our asset, and we need to know more about the foreshore side. That is something that we are working with High and the Carlaway estate trust on. I am hopeful that that will work well and progress. It can be rolled on beyond that. In terms of the number of kilometres, because some of the LMAs are for 10 yards of foreshore, but what they unlock is massive. We could give you an update on where we are with all those dealings, but it probably would not be an area-based report. One of the things that we did do in response to direct feedback from you last year about promotion of LMAs was that we went to the Community Land Scotland AGM in June, and we had a workshop with community owners about the opportunities. That was engaging those over 21 different community organisations in the room and others listening to the opportunities. That has awoken the interest in that. I suspect that the membership and the make-up of CLS members is why it is in the north and west, but we are still trying to push LMAs on the ground elsewhere. It was interesting that one or two people who foreshore was not owned by us were saying that we could really do with some help in terms of what is going on in our areas. We have been able to work with some of them because of seabed interests to develop their projects. They are right down from small-scale agriculture and muscle farming to large-scale projects and pontoons. Discussion yesterday afternoon regarding a large-scale project in Harris, which is looking to unlock a significant amount of public funding and to connect the Loch Maddie piece to what is going on. As Gareth said, we have community groups now asking to come and speak to us or us to go and speak to them because they have heard good things about other groups. I am quite proud that we have local ambassadors saying that this really worked for us. Go and speak to them and they will help, which is progress, I think. The second part of the question is about any future targets. Could you explain a little bit more about the nature of the agreement, the degree to which it is about handing over of management of assets to local communities? Is it on a commercial loan basis or could you explain that as well? That is absolutely right. An LMA is not designed to be a rigid process. It is almost a light-touch introduction. That could lead to a full-scale lease of a foreshore and seabed. It could lead to an investment such as Loch Maddie or it could lead to nothing because it has decided that it can do what it needs to do without an interest. There is not a sort of LMA equals lease investment, etc. Some of them on the list include funding, such as Glendale Trust and Sky. They have a small scale development at Loch Pulteil and we have put £5,000 towards the investment into a feasibility study there because we think that it is a good idea. It is in its early stages and it is in line with our investment to create value and we are happy to put that money in. Loch Maddie was a more developed proposal of community where, as Gareth alluded to, really firing on all cylinders had a well-developed proposal and their business plan was really robust and that allowed us to invest. That is a commercial investment but different to being a former bank manager but I am okay now. Different to that, we set up the investment in there and return with a risk element to us and it is based on the profile of what they expected the growth to be.  We have taken in terms of skin in the game, we have taken risk in there that it might not all get paid and that is a greater understanding and reflection of what is happening on the ground, particularly in marine leisure tourism. That is that in terms of LMAs. In terms of targets, I have said to the committee before through the land reform process that local management of assets is something that we support and more of these we can do in line with what we are able to do. I am happy with that. As many as possible—I reiterate my request last year to you guys to bring forward ideas in your constituencies and projects that you see on the ground. You have piloted, you have got the agriculture industry responsibilities and you guys are engaging on the ground. If there are opportunities that we have not heard about, we would be happy to see them come forward. I am going back to the foreshore issue, if we can. A brief question was about how detailed are your records with regard to foreshore ownership. When you mentioned the Calaway state, I know that in the western isles there are crafts that have rights to foreshore, but how detailed is that information? It is pretty detailed and we think that it is quite robust. It is a huge number of dealings and records. I think that in the six kilometres at Calaway that we were talking about, there are something like 32 agreements that the community thought there were probably six. We started talking about outfalls and things like that. Our records are pretty robust and we made the commitment following the LRG report in terms of land registration to make sure that we are active in recording that publicly where possible and making sure that information is there. I am not going to say that it is perfect, but I think that it is in pretty good order. We are working with Registers of Scotland and others to make sure that that data sets as robust as it can be. In your constituency, we had a recent request for information that a large processing plant could not establish exactly where the foreshore started and ended and where the ownerships were. Our records were able to help them on that. It is pretty robust. Since you have robust records of those things, did you sell the foreshore in the 18th century to the Duke of Sutherland and others, who own vast acreages of the foreshore now? Ten years is my time horizon in the Crown Estate. I would have to defer to some of my colleagues who have been there slightly longer, but not in that sort of time horizon. We can ask the question of what the arrangements were in those areas, but I would not like to comment at the moment. I can understand why you would not want to comment, but it would be interesting to see whether they were given away or whatever, compared to your current behaviour, which is to sell parts of the foreshore. That seems to me to be an answer that we should get from you to see if there has been a change of policy over the centuries. Will you change back to Parliament in 1961? I think that that is fully the biggest change. I will just stay offshore for a minute. We explored in some detail the community benefit that can be expected from marine renewables. We have heard about your investment in the Maidgen tidal scheme and indeed the expected go-aheads of the two large offshore wind farms in the Murray Firth. Have you any clearer figures in the total asset value that you mentioned about the expected income per annum from those schemes? I am happy to try, as best I can, to give an overall picture here. I mentioned last year that the offshore wind schemes should be built for the far offshore schemes, which would be under the round 3 scenario, at 2020 values, something in the region of £7.6 million per gigawatt. For the closer inshore schemes, a typical valuation would be for rental for one gigawatt, which would be about £4.3 million per gigawatt. Marine renewables, by that I mean wave and tidal, would be for something about 10 megawatts. A typical rental would be in the region of £30,000 per annum for 10 megawatts. That is the figures that are being worked on. Are they included when you said that the offshore assets were the capital values that you had? No, if I can make a distinction between the capital value and the revenue, so that would be the annual rental issue that we would be expecting to see on deployment and generating electricity. Are those items now being included in the Scottish figures? Absolutely, and you will see that we have a value there of £800,000 over the piece. There is, to be honest, some rounding up here, so it is not quite fully that sum, but that includes some rental income from offshore wind, as well as some other revenue in respect of £1,000 from wave and tidal, and some revenue in respect of CCS. We look forward to updates on that as we go along. It is of considerable interest to us and many communities as to what might become available to them in the future, because the offshore material that is being produced, not just in the way of jobs, is something that they look to in the way that they would from onshore wind development. I would like to ask you a question further about land ownership. In the past, you have divested yourself of certain Scottish properties and urban properties in order to invest in supermarket developments or whatever in other places. Are there any parts of your properties likely to be sold in the next year? We work to our investment strategy and look to invest in areas where we can. In my area, the areas of sale that we are talking about are transfer or some forshore transfers. I have got about 11 acres on the market in small plots. If anyone is in the market for a small housing development in Murray, we have got a number that are not moving as fast as we might like, but there are no significant sale disposal discussions being undertaken at the moment. In actual fact, in terms of our wider investments, we are still investing in some of our urban assets in terms of improvement of those. There are no major sale proposals at the moment. There are some minor transfers that we are talking about, so we talked in the past about oysters and mussels and transfer to the Scottish Government. I understand that that has now been hopefully approved and that will make progress, but there are no substantial proposals at the moment. In the context of the current debates about more powers for Scotland, I will be interested to hear more about how the Crown Estate needs to change to reflect that. I will be particularly interested in comments on the land reform review group's suggestion that the Crown Estate commissioner's responsibilities under the 1961 act should be fully devolved to the Scottish Parliament. If I can to state the overall strategy, if you like, clearly it is not for the Crown Estate to make any decisions on this, that is a matter for Governments throughout the United Kingdom. What we have set ourselves out to do and I hope that we are doing is that we are very engaged in discussions with Scottish Government, local authorities, all our stakeholders, communities and, of course, the Smith commission. Our efforts in that are solely directed to providing all those bodies with the clear facts about the Crown Estate's activity in Scotland. Clearly, it is for others to take the decisions about what happens with those assets and the on-going management of it. I was in front of the committee in 4 June discussing the LLRG report. What we outlined then was that a lot of people are getting a greater understanding of the role that the Crown Estate does have and does not have. That is the key point, which is to make sure that people understand what we do. There are areas—the map probably highlights it quite nicely—that there is huge interest in foreshore and seabed. There are also significant areas where there is zero interest in that as well, which is interesting. We need to make sure that the strategic management of seabed, in particular, is borne in mind for aquaculture, marine leisure and offshore renewables and the work that Rony does. We need to make sure that we provide information into those discussions. We have met a number of different people participating in the Smith discussions to make sure that that information is readily available. I have another point about your estate, which Graham Day wants to ask. Thank you for being a fairly topical subject. I just wanted to investigate with you. Does the Crown Estate own any land or seabed in Scotland in areas that could become the subject of the shale gas extraction? If so, what position do you take on fracking? In terms of do we own seabed in areas, I am sure that we will, because there are some pretty significant lines being drawn on maps—not by us, I hasten to add. I am sure that we will have interests in there. Rony, I think that you probably— As far as offshore is concerned, the extraction of oil and gas would be a matter for deck offshore. I am thinking more that if there is something on a coast slide where they go down and out through the seabed, would that not impact upon yourselves? It would still be a matter for deck. And on land? The regulators, which would not be us. But you do not have a view on the wisdom of this approach? Yes. In terms of due process and following planning and community consultation and engagement, there has been a significant amount of discussion about fracking in the Parliament. There was a cross-party group meeting last year that I attended that there were some fairly robust exchanges of views. I think that we would follow Government guidelines and policies to where that opportunity lies. That would be Scottish Government policy. Well, thank you very much, gentlemen. I think that we have had a good range of discussions. I think that you might agree with us that this is a valuable meeting to have, and that we get updates. There are many other things that we obviously can ask as the year goes by if we are required to in between, but we hope to continue this process in future. So thank you very much, panel, for being here. We now, as agreed earlier, will be moving into private in a minute. I will just finish the open part of the meeting by saying that this is the last meeting before the October recess. At the next meeting on Wednesday 29 October, the committee will take evidence on wildlife crime 2013 annual report from senior police Scotland representatives and the Lord Advocate. At that point, I closed the public aspect of this meeting and asked the people in the gallery to move out.