Current Petitions

The next petition is PE691, which calls on the Scottish Parliament to investigate the Forestry Commission's implementation of its guidance on consultation with residents of areas that have widespread logging, drainage and planting activity nearby.At its meeting on 7 January 2004, the committee agreed to write to the Scottish Executive to seek its comments on the issues that are raised in the petition and an indication of whether it is content that the Forestry Commission adheres to its guidance on consultation. The Scottish Executive passed the committee's request to Forestry Commission Scotland, which states in its response:"In relation to the concerns of the Burnawn Residents Group, as expressed through Boyd Calder's petition, we can assure the Committee that Forestry Commission Scotland has adhered to its guidance in relation to consultation, and has sought to encourage the various parties involved to discuss their concerns."The commission provides details of its consultation procedures and a case history of the issue identified by the petitioners. Do members have any comments?

I was concerned that the paragraph that the convener read out from Forestry Commission Scotland's response states that it had "adhered to its guidance". Does that mean that it has adhered to the forestry guidance? If so, it might be worth asking about the comparability of the forms of guidance because as we all know—we have seen it ad nauseam in health boards throughout Scotland—different ways of consulting can produce different results. I would like clarification on that point. We should perhaps write to the Forestry Commission to ask what its guidelines are and on what basis it formulates them.

The point is that we know that for a long period of time guidelines have been updated regularly in different agencies and different Government departments, but we have uncovered that in some cases the last time that the guidelines were updated was a date that was not acceptable. That is the clarification that I seek. It would be useful to write to the Forestry Commission to ask it for a copy of the guidelines and to find out when they were last updated.

In response to Helen Eadie's comments, I think that the point of the petition was that the petitioners were aware of what the guidance was and they did not believe that the Forestry Commission was adhering to its own guidance. That was the problem.The Forestry Commission has written back to say that it thinks that it has adhered to its guidance. If we were to write to the petitioners, we could ask them to clarify where they think that the Forestry Commission has not adhered to its guidance and we could take matters from there. I do not think that our receiving the guidance would help us to consider the petition.

I am happy to support that, but there is the gatekeeper issue. The Forestry Commission is saying what the guidance is, but I would be happier if we could see what the guidance is.

I accept the convener's suggestion.

We will ask the petitioners to give us a response. That will enable us to assess the issue from both sides. Is that fair?Members indicated agreement.