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A PETITION calling for an investigation into procedures used by bureaucrats to select and designate marine Special Areas of Conservation in the Hebrides has been rejected by the Scottish Parliament.
Barra-based group SHAMED - Southern Hebrides Against Marine Environmental Designations - has been opposing plans for conservation sites in the waters of the Southern Hebrides. In November 2008 members of the community joined to fight Scottish Natural Heritage’s proposals to designate the Sound of Barra and East Mingulay as SACs.
Two petitions were set up locally asking the Scottish Government to abandon its plans and the proposals were also condemned at public meetings hosted in Barra and Eriskay by Scottish Natural Heritage earlier this year. Last month SHAMED submitted a petition to the Scottish Parliament asking for an enquiry into the way in which SNH and Scottish Government officials went about selecting and progressing the sites up to the point of public consultation.
The Public Petitions Committee has now declared the nature of SHAMED’s petition outside its remit as it cannot set up investigations, nor “intervene in the operational decisions of another public body such as Scottish National Heritage”.
The Assistant Clerk’s letter ends by stating: “The role of the Parliament as a whole is to hold the Scottish Government to account with regards to its policies and guidance.”
Angus MacLeod, SHAMED’s chairman, said: “Although it is a major disappointment and setback to receive an outright rejection from the Public Petitions Committee, the response is not altogether unexpected. We spent a lot of time drafting our text, knowing that it was not going to be easy to comply with the committee guidelines in view of what we were looking for.
“However, we will now work on submitting a new petition as we are sure that this is a matter in principle for the Scottish Parliament. Our petition specifically requested an investigation into the conduct and actions of the bureaucrats at SNH and Marine Scotland, the very people who carry out the policies of the parliament. As far as the process for designating Special Areas of Conservation is concerned, there is absolutely no public scrutiny of the way in which policies are being implemented by these organisations until it is too late for the public to call a halt. Basically, the implementation of the Habitats Directive is designed to keep democratic scrutiny out.”
Current petitions listed on the Scottish Parliament’s website include pleas for the Scottish Parliament to promote policies to encourage the growing of fruit trees in school playgrounds and to prevent the inbreeding of Staffordshire bull terriers.
“These petitions reflect the concerns of members of the public elsewhere in Scotland and we're glad to see that the Public Petitions Committee is able to give them a fair hearing,” said MacLeod. “However, we are in the unfortunate position in this community of fighting against something that the politicians locally and nationally find immensely embarrassing: we want to reject European conservation designations because they will have a dramatically negative effect on the current and future economic prospects of this area. But conservation, as far as the politicians are concerned, is a vote winner. No party wants to go up against the green vote.”
