John Lamont

The hon. Member makes an important point, but I think this is about balance. We do not want to stigmatise many of the people coming into rural communities, who are keeping the village shop open and the local tradesmen going during the harder months. I believe there is a balance to be reached. Many councils, and certainly those in Scotland, already have the powers to allow that balance to be reached, such as the second home council tax premium. I think we need to be careful about the language we use regarding second home owners. That leads me to the planning system. Builders in Scotland say that a shrinking supply of land and poor viability are behind the fall in house building. Planning departments are under-resourced, and decision making takes too long. In the Borders, there is a particular pressure that I want the House to understand: the sheer volume of large electricity infrastructure projects. Wind farms, battery storage, data centres and grid upgrades that have resulted in massive pylons coming across the border—these have all made the Borders the epicentre for the expansion of the energy network. Most large wind farms are decided by Scottish Ministers through the energy consents unit, not by the council, but the council must still assess each application, respond as a consultee, work through the environmental information and answer to local residents. These applications are often vast and complex. In the past year alone, the council’s planning committee has had to consider proposals such as Scawd Law and Glenburnie. When the council objects, Ministers can and do override it, as they did at Ditcher Law, where the council has now been forced to take legal action to review the Government’s decision. All of this falls on a planning service that has had little extra support from the Scottish Government. Every hour that a planning officer spends on a 200-metre turbine is an hour not spent on an application for six family homes in a Borders village. If the Scottish Government want councils to deliver their energy ambitions, they must properly supply and resource the planning departments to do the work, and they must also give local communities a proper say. My final point relates to infrastructure. In my experience, communities are not against new homes; what they are against are new homes without the GP appointments, school places, roads, water and drainage that go with them. Put the infrastructure in first and we win the consent for the homes. In the Borders, that means transport, properly staffed rural schools and nurseries, bus services to all parts of the Borders, well-resourced GP practices and roads without potholes. The hon. Member for St Ives is absolutely right to raise these issues. Whether it is in Cornwall or the Scottish Borders, the message is the same: people need homes they can afford in the communities they love. That means building more homes. It means a planning system with the resources to do its job, it means recognising that rural areas are different, and it means putting infrastructure in first. The Scottish Government must do better by their rural communities. I will keep pressing them, as I hope the UK Government will, to act on behalf of the families across the Scottish Borders who simply want a place to call home.