Why the SNP's Green hangover is more than just a headache in Galloway

The scene at Castle Douglas’s auction mart last Thursday was like a medieval court, the audience on tiered seats looking down on the circular fence where sheep and cattle are normally displayed for sale. In this bear pit, the 300 jurors were there to decide whether they would buy the Scottish Government’s plans to turn much of Galloway and South Ayrshire into a national park, over which NatureScot is supposed to be the unbiased arbiter. Here, the judges were themselves on trial by ordeal, an ordeal of facing question after question for which they had few answers.

Farmers, landowners and tree-huggers opposed

The prosecutors-in-chief were two middle-aged women from Gatehouse of Fleet as far from the caricature of self-interested landowning types who supporters of the new national park believe are driving the growing movement to block the plan: retired accountant Liz Hitschmann and her friend Denise Brownlee who describes herself as a tree-hugging hippy who runs a community garden, but has first-hand experience of working as a ranger in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park. Both featured on BBC Scotland’s Debate Night programme last week, broadcast from Dumfries, and in the interests of full disclosure, I’ve been involved with giving them some support.

While it’s undeniable a clear majority of farmers and landowners are also opposed ─ rural business organisation Scottish Land and Estates found 91 per cent of members in the affected area are opposed ─ the women’s concerns are driven entirely by a belief that a national park is a needless expense when the area has so many other priorities to address, and will only attract more tourists to an area already struggling to cope.

Similar themes arose in the four other areas considered for national park status ─ Lochaber, Tay Forest, Borders and Loch Awe ─ but with some MSPs and Dumfries and Galloway councillors then still tentatively in favour and low public awareness of what it involved, there was a sense amongst politicians and campaigners in the other areas that Galloway presented the path of least resistance.

A Green pledge that stuck

But a new national park was not an SNP manifesto pledge and didn’t feature in its ten-point plan to make Scotland greener. New national parks were a Green party commitment without specifying where and creating at least one new park became a Scottish Government policy as part of the Bute House Agreement where it still remains, despite the deal’s collapse.

But establishing a new park in Dumfries and Galloway was a specific Scottish Conservative promise, so no wonder that, when it came to a choice of one out of five bids, Galloway would be the pick of the bunch when the party traditionally regarded as the political voice of landowners was seemingly on board.

How times have changed, with the Conservative MSP for Dumfriessshire Oliver Mundell and new Dumfries and Galloway MP John Cooper both firmly opposed, and the previously supportive MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries, Finlay Carson, writing to Rural Affairs Secretary Mairi Gougeon last week to ask for the consultation process now underway to be halted to give time for local concerns to be properly considered.

Splash out on park while making cuts

The SNP MSP for the South region, Emma Harper, is said to be going very cold on the idea and in the summer issued a statement calling for independent information on the proposal and saying this consultation “cannot simply be like other government consultations and sit on a website”.

Against this background, it’s hard to see why a government which has just had to slash budgets by £500 million would chose to plough on with a proposal which could cost £15m to run by the time it is established. Further, if one of the central claims about the benefits of a national park is to boost tourism, it’s even harder to explain why spending £15m a year on a park will lift tourism when at the same time the national tourism agency VisitScotland has had its budget cut by £6.4m to £43.9m and is now closing its information kiosks.

Then there is the fact there already is a park in the area, the Galloway Forest Park, with an important tourism attraction, the International Dark Sky Park. A national park would apparently be good for the local economy, but other than a brand it’s difficult to see what it can achieve that South of Scotland Enterprise (2024-25 operating budget £35m) and Scottish Enterprise itself (2024-25 budget £272.4m) cannot.

All hypothetical

The NatureScot officials in Castle Douglas week struggled to answer questions because, apparently, it’s all hypothetical and nothing has been decided. Everything is possible “in principle”, but “in principle” everything can be left out, so the audience were left wondering what they were being asked to understand.

What they did understand was that major employers like the Cairnryan port hadn’t been approached, nor had a major service provider like NHS Dumfries and Galloway. So it’s not difficult to see why Finlay Carson MSP thinks coming to a conclusion by the end of April, the timetable set by NatureScot to complete the consultation, is impossible to meet if it is to be done properly. The fact that the consultation proper, with the public able to submit views online, isn’t due to start until November shortens the timeframe even more and questions are being asked about how much scrutiny the submissions will receive.

The suspicion is this is all a done deal no matter what the public responses may be, driven by a Scottish Government target of conserving 30 per cent of land for nature by 2030. In a region dominated by extensive dairy farming interests, no wonder people are worried. Maybe the plan is just to tell people it will be fine until they believe it. And then it will be too late.