 Felly, wrth gwrs, wrth gwrs, yn dweud. Felly, fyddwn i ganddwyd defineid y 27 ymgyrch yn ysgrifennu cyngorau, Cymru, ac yn edrych yn ystafell y gyrch, fyddwch chi'n gwybod, i fynd i ddweud hi'n gwybod i'w bwysigol, ddweud i'n gwybod i'w gwybod i'n gwybod i'r cyfnodol, os aelodau. Felly, wedi gael ei wneud o'r tygau, mewn ffwrdd, y bydd o'r cyflwytoedd, i gael eu bydd o'r cyflwytoedd mewn cyflwytoedd yn eu cyflwytoedd. Genadau 1 ymgyrcheg yn fforddol. Felly, mae'n ddweud i'r cyflwytoedd Ysgolwyr Cymru, 24.shli.nl. 24.s-258. Felly, mae'n ddweud i ni'n ddweud i'r cyflwytoedd yn rwyf i'r cyflwytoedd, i'n zes Moments. Is there any comments that are to be made, members. If you have no comments to make at the moment, we will agree that we won't make any recommendations. Anguschoddiktas. Yr ystafell businessman yn ei hyd, tape cert iaeth yn ei sn Shitzogau. Rydyn digwydd nodi wast Karen Mengor, Genial, Fel Captain sadness. Racintai, sef, mewn ddechrau i Poir Cymru aethogedd y Stitch indeed— cymrydau faddu mewn gw привyr yn myfawr i gyllidol gyda'u bod yn gyffredinol i'w ddweud o'i rhai mwylaid oedd y ddarluniaidau ac yn gyfrifoeddodol. Rhaid i chi'n fawr? Beth oeddwn i wneud? A ymddw i g arkfymodau o sefydlu i ddweud i gyd àl i gael dim dweud o'r instrumentau. Rwy'n fawr i gyd ddweudio i gael gennym ni i'r cyfrifodau a'r cystafell yn leoladol The second item today, we will take evidence from the minister, Paul Wheelhouse, and is assisted today by Hugh Dignan, wildlife manager branch team leader, and Karen Hunter, wildlife crime policy officer in the Scottish Government. Welcome to you all. Minister, I guess we should straight into questions, you don't wish to say anything at the beginning. I would if that's okay. Well, yes, please. I appreciate the opportunity. I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you. I hope it will be of value to the committee. Thank you, convener. I'm pleased to be here to give an update on Scotland's second annual report into wildlife crime. We're all here clearly because the 2011 Wildlife and Natural Environment Scotland Act introduced the requirement for the Scottish Government to lay an annual report before Parliament into the extent of wildlife crime. As you're aware, this is our second report, and I'm pleased that we've been able to implement some improvements based on feedback that my officials and I have received. Last year, I said that this publication should serve as a reminder of the importance of doing everything that we can to challenge these abhorrent crimes. The reasons for doing so remain the same, because until they are eradicated, the impacts of wildlife crime will continue to stay in Scotland's reputation. I know that I'm not alone in holding the view that this is simply unacceptable. Whilst we cannot possibly see trends in data in only two years, this report has shown that poaching and coursing are again a high-volume area of crime. Whilst poaching may not harm the conservation status of deer, certainly the loss of a golden eagle such as fhernan at the end of 2013 or the mass killing of red kites in Russia in March this year will certainly have consequences for those local populations of rare raptors. I share the revulsion of many people that these cruel and selfish crimes against raptors still occur in the 21st century. The 2013 report again includes court proceedings for wildlife crime offences over the last five years, police recorded crimes for the last five years, recent legislative changes and the future direction of wildlife crime policy. We've endeavored to simplify the look of the data in the report by recording offence type by species rather than legislation. We've also added subtotals to tables to better see the changes in numbers across a five-year period. I hope that you'll agree that these minor changes have improved the reader's experience and understanding of a complex and difficult area. Before I move on, I'd like to take a moment to thank some of the key contributors to the report, the Scottish Government Justice Analytical Services team, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, Police Scotland and the National Wildlife Crime Unit have again, once again supplied figures and explanation to this year's report. Post-Scotland stakeholders have also participated by providing advice and feedback, which I know has been valued by my officials. Last year I said it would be ideal if we could track each criminal case from discovery through to detection, prosecution and ultimately the court disposal. We still are at a point where the justice system data simply doesn't allow that follow-through, but it is clear that, for example, data on recorded crime is almost impossible to reconcile with court statistics because of the often lengthy time periods between the crime taking place and the court hearing. Some information is also available on a financial year basis with others on a calendar year basis, and last year I talked about these difficulties and the need for change in that respect. Indeed, as ACC Malcolm Graham said last week when he was sitting here in the committee room, I know that key officials from the various agencies are starting work on getting the data more consistent for next year's report. If we now look at 2013 in some detail, we saw that the first ever case went to court to consider prosecution under the vicarious liability provisions brought into force by the 2011 Wildlife and Natural Environment Scotland Act. It remains to be seen what the outcome of this will be, but I am in no doubt that close attention will be paid to its outcome, not least by me. I am aware of the second potential case, which is due to commence this month. In February last year, I announced a further two years funding for the National Wildlife Crime Unit in Livingston. The National Wildlife Crime Unit provide a valuable service to police nationwide by providing intelligence packages and investigative support. I also announced three new measures to assist in the fight against wildlife crime. Professor Mark Poustie from Strathlite is midway through the review that I initiated of wildlife crime penalties and will report back to me probably now in the early new year. Both Police Scotland, who appeared before you on 29 October, and the Lord Advocate have confirmed the use of all appropriate technology for investigations, including surveillance cameras. I note that ACC Malcolm Graham has outlined the restrictions that they face in this regard, but I am confident that such technology can be used where it is appropriate to do so. The Lord Advocate has made clear that this is an option available to Police Scotland. Perhaps the new measure that has attracted most attention has been my announcement of the introduction of new restrictions on the use of general licence by Scottish Natural Heritage, where there is evidence of wildlife crime taking place. This measure was formally announced on 6 October, and while that alone may not eliminate such selfish and cruel practices overnight, I firmly believe that it will be a deterrent to those contemplating criminal acts. Both in terms of its practical impact on those landholdings to which it is applied and its reputational impact, too. We should also bear in mind that the general licence is a privilege, not a right. It reflects whether we feel that we can trust its provisions to be responsibly used or not and constitutes a very light-touch form of regulation. It seems absolutely right to me that we are based on evidence provided by Police Scotland. There is a strong reason to suspect that wildlife crime is taking place and that trust has been lost, and that privilege should be withdrawn and greater scrutiny applied. Crucially, SNH will be able to consider the restriction in cases from 1 January this year, so it remains to be seen when the first restriction will be imposed by SNH, the circumstances it will be deployed in and the effect it will have. I know that implementing this restriction has not been straightforward measure, and this is reflected in the length of time taken to finalise the scheme, and I would like to thank all those who were involved in its implementation. I can confirm that both informal discussions with stakeholders and the Crown with regard to a pesticides disposal scheme, which I will formally announce shortly. The scheme will focus on removing illegal substances that are most commonly used in wildlife crime, and it is already an offence to possess. Those are listed in the possession of pesticide Scotland order 2005, but can include strychnine, carbofurant and cyanide. Finally, convener, this report is designed to inform our response to wildlife crime and ensure appropriate scrutiny of trends as they emerge. Wildlife crime is an issue that I am determined to attempt to eliminate, and the report is a useful tool in monitoring progress. I look forward to answering your questions on the annual report. Thank you. Thank you minister. I am sure that members will take into account your initial remarks when they come to their questions. I would like to start off with a report that is due for 2013. Because there are so many different sources of information, have you got them all to agree to do them on a calendar basis? What is the situation that we can expect? There have been discussions on this matter. I mentioned ACC Graham last week. It has been, since the previous report, a cause of frustration that there is difficulty in reading across from different tables and tying up trends in that way in future years. So I think that there has been obviously some difficulty in determining a solution, but I do believe that there is a willingness to take forward that approach to try and get standardisation of reporting on a consistent basis. But I just wonder if you dig in a comment further on the discussions that have taken place where I have not been present in those discussions. Certainly. Yes, as the minister says, it certainly is our ambition to do that. We have been working towards it. It is not as easy as one might hope in as far as that these data systems sort of stretch right back as far as the officer on the ground or the court official inputting data at the very beginning of a data collection system right through to the way that data is collected and stored and analysed and then reproduced by the statisticians at the end of the process. So I do not think that it is something that we can change overnight. I hope that we can certainly make progress with that in the next report. I am not guaranteeing that we can find everything in a standard format by next year, but it is certainly something that we are working towards. Are there any particular ones of your sources who are finding it more difficult to bring this into a calendar year format than others? I am not aware that there is any particular organisation that is finding it more difficult. I think that what is happening is that people are now recognising that this is something that is a regular piece of work. It is a substantial and important piece of work and we think that they are giving it the attention and providing the input that we think it deserves. We are making progress across the board. Thank you. I have one comment, convener. There is also the complication, not just the calendar year. Please stop me if it is something that you are going to ask about yourself, but there is the complexity of the nature of the charge that is laid. In some cases, the wildlife offence is a relatively minor or secondary offence to the main offence that is being taken forward by the Crown Office. Therefore, I am picking that up and identifying cases where perhaps the crime is not the main charge that the person is being pursued for, but it is another cause of difficulty and complexity, which sometimes causes some concern to stakeholders who have identified that the offence is appearing in the tables and it is because it has been difficult to isolate it from the main charge that the accused has faced. Thank you for talking about appearing in the table. Given that tackling poaching is one of the priorities in the wildlife crime strategy, why does the report not present data on all types of poaching offences? If there is any specific community, could you draw attention to anything that you are particularly concerned about that is not appearing in the table? We are talking about deer poaching, we are talking about issues related to poaching on rivers. Sometimes it is easier to catch river information, less so on deer. I certainly would acknowledge that poaching is a serious matter and, indeed, in Paws Scotland there are some stakeholders for whom that is their principal issue of concern and is raised on a regular basis with us. Members of SLE, Scottish Gamekeepers Association and BASC and the British Deer Society are very conscious of the level of crime, some of it unreported, which is occurring across Scotland. That is an issue that we hope to improve data quality with stakeholders as we go on. Clearly, game birds are something that we are particularly interested in noting. We have a number of challenges in terms of all forms of wildlife crime. Some of them relate to the area in which the crime is taking place and, therefore, the difficulty in finding any evidence. Indeed, people may not stumble across a dead raptor because of the distances involved between the offence and where the bird dies. In other cases, crimes may go unreported because of a wall of silence that I have referred to in previous occasions. In other issues, it may just be that the tension has not been drawn to that crime. However, if you dig in, I believe that I wanted to come in on a point of technical detail. I would say that, in table 1A, where the first column says offence is relating to, it has deer listed separately, it has hunting with dogs, which is essentially coursing, it has the poaching and game laws, which is essentially offences under the Wildlife and Countryside Act in relation to wild birds, and it has possession of salmon and trout, which is obviously salmon poaching and further salmon and freshwater fisheries offences. Therefore, they are broken down to that extent. Maybe it could be a bit more explicit in that column exactly what we are referring to, but I think that the different sorts of poaching offences are indeed shown in table 1A. We will look forward to seeing their presentation such that lay people can understand those things. Do you report or why do you report on the actual data on penalties for wildlife crime? Well, clearly, as I said earlier on in my opening remarks, sometimes there are difficulties in read across already, we are aware of, between the year in which an offence might be reported, the year in which an offence is successfully prosecuted and, indeed, sentencing and penalties arise. I take the point and we can have a look at how issues to do with penalties are reported in the report, but until we crack that particular problem about the read across between the offence being committed, prosecution and, indeed, the sentence or penalty being applied, it may well not tie in very well with the data as it is currently presented, so that would be something that we would need to heavily caveat so that people do not conclude perhaps that you may have a situation in one year where you have fewer offences and you have penalties or sentences, which would obviously look somewhat odd, even in the context of those of us who study these things closely. We need to obviously bear that in mind and make sure that it is actually intelligible, and the point that you made very fairly about the headings in terms of how the charges are recorded. Similarly, we need to look at those issues as well, about how we actually read across from one table to another and that people can understand the follow-through into our successful prosecution. Thank you very much. That leads us perfectly into detection of wildlife crime. Jim Hume. Just going on to detection of crime, wildlife crime in particular, of course. Mark Avery from the Scottish Wildlife Trust thought and reported that the discovery of such crimes are just the tip of the iceberg, and we pushed Police Scotland on that last year, where they said that, no, they did not agree with that. It was much more than the tip of the iceberg, not giving an exact figure, of course. It would be interesting, therefore, to find out that the Minister's view is on the detection of wildlife crime. Are we detecting a vast majority or just a tip of the iceberg? Well, this, I think, is an extremely important issue that Mr Hume has raised. I think that there has been a lot of narrative around this area online and indeed in person, and indeed I have addressed it previously at not this year's wildlife conference, but last year's wildlife conference, where I raised the point that we know there are areas of Scotland that are perfect habitat for hen harriers, golden eagles, other species of raptor and indeed other wildlife where they just aren't there. There is no reasonable explanation as to why they are not there. It is certainly an area where I would like to see more work done, more analysis, so that we can get a better understanding of why that is the case. But clearly, I have a concern that perhaps in certain areas of the country where we are not seeing species that have perfect habitat available to them and they are just not appearing that something untoward may be happening to them, we can't obviously take it for granted. That is the case. There could be other factors at play, other natural causes of that situation, and so hence we need to do more work, but it is certainly something worthy of investigation. So in respect, I did see ACC Graham's comments on this issue. My gut feel tells me that there are crimes being committed that are not being recorded, and that is not to criticise the police or any of the justice authorities. I think it is extremely difficult to detect in many cases crimes, and some people go to great lengths to hide the evidence of their crimes, so they never come to court. So I think that for that reason I believe there are more crimes being committed than we record now. I need to acknowledge that as a minister, but this is the best available data we have, and therefore it is what we have to use to try and tackle the challenge, but we need to be mindful of the fact that it may not be capturing every offence that is being taken forward in Scotland at the moment, and therefore we cannot afford to be complacent even when we see relatively no numbers in the case of poisonings and other crimes. To follow that on, I mean just looking at how we do detect or try to detect more wildlife crime, and I appreciate that you will never ever be able to find all the crime due to the vast areas of Scotland. You mentioned there that there were areas where there was no explanation why there had not been a repopulation, so would there be a focus by Police Scotland or officials on those areas as a method of increasing detection or other tools in the box that you could use regarding better detection rates? I think that there are a number of different aspects to the point that Mr Hume raises. First of all, we can work with SNH and other conservation bodies to understand if there is a natural reason why that is happening. Obviously, the police and justice authorities may be aware that from previous recorded instances there may be a suggestion in certain areas of the country that there is a possibility, at the very least there is a possibility that wildlife crime is being conducted, and I would certainly encourage, although I do not interfere in operational matters, certainly encourage the police to take that very seriously and to use whatever tools they feel are available to them to try and identify if a crime is being conducted. At the same time, we need to do more perhaps on the science and the research through SNH and other institutions to try and identify. Is there a natural reason for this, or are there changes in agricultural practice or things that are not messy offences but which are having an impact on the prey that the birds rely upon and thereby the impact in terms of their numbers in that locality? However, we have to be aware that there could be a wildlife crime that is occurring and we have to trust the police and other prosecution authorities that they will examine any evidence that they have and where necessary to take forward an investigation to discover if a crime is being conducted. Okay, and just to finish up on that, there was some scientific evidence said by Macmillan, which was published in Scottish birds in 2011, regarding scientific studies of populations of golden eagles, red kites, peregrins, hind harriers and gush-hawks and the like. That stated that there was more illegal persecution on those birds than was recorded. As the minister thought about putting some of that scientific evidence into the report, even though it is not detection and actual crime found, it is scientific evidence suggesting that there is extra. I have not read the report that Mr Hume refers to, but I will certainly look it out myself and obviously have the chance to have a look at what is in it and see how relevant it could be to the annual wildlife crime report. Clearly, if it is a report that was conducted in a fixed point in time, it may not be as helpful to us in terms of an on-going development of an annual report and therefore monitoring of trends, but I will certainly look to see if there are any messages in there that might be helpful in exploring what else we might try and capture in terms of evidence that might be suggestive of crime even if we do not get any hard evidence. That is something worthy of examination, but I cannot make any promises about future annual reports. It is something that is done in partnership with Police Crown Office and other agencies, so we need to have a look at that in the round and take views from all involved in preparing the report as to the relevance of the information. I do not know whether Hugh Dignan has read that report. I do not know if you have got the knowledge of it. I am not sure that I have read the precise report that you mentioned, but there have, over the years, been a number of reports that have suggested that the persecution is one of the factors that underlies missing populations of a number of our raptor species. In terms of whether we can get that into the annual report, it might just be worth mentioning that the Poor Scotland partnership has recently established a science group with one of the purposes of establishing that group was to examine whether or not those scientific reports could be used to guide police investigations or to guide law enforcement activities. We could also use that information that is coming out of that in the annual report to help to explain the position more generally with regard to raptor persecution. OK, that has got to be useful, thanks. OK, Graham Day has got a supplementary. Thank you, Cymru. It is specifically about the prosecution of wildlife crime. The figures in the reports show that between 2008 and 2013, there were 1,554 wildlife crimes recorded, yet proceedings were taken in only around 19 per cent of the cases. Now, whilst that figure did rise in 2012, 2013 to 23 per cent and appreciating the difficulties which arise with detecting and pursuing certain types of wildlife crime, would you not agree, minister, that the figures that face value and do leave one with the impression that the authorities are not taking wildlife crime as seriously as they ought to, albeit that I realise that you do? Well, I do believe that there is increased level of awareness of the public concern on wildlife crime. I think that all the partners in Paul Scotland have taken very seriously recent incidents, certainly since I have been, minister, that I am aware of the support that we have had from around the table for tackling wildlife crime now. That is not to say that the response every time to every incident is perfect. There are some comments that have been made that I think have been unhelpful in recent times, but I do believe that everybody, certainly on the law enforcement community, is taking it seriously. As to whether they could do more, clearly we have issued guidance to the Lord Advocate about using investigative tools. That is with a sincere hope that we can give some support to the police to take perhaps use of techniques that might be challenging to some in the community, because we recognise the very great difficulty for certain types of wildlife crime, particularly those, unfortunately, involving raptors. Quite often, even though you suspect that the crime has taken place, because the bird may have flown off from a poisoning site and that it can never be found, or at least somebody would search for a needle in a haystack effectively to try and find a deceased raptor when they have a wide range that they may have flown to before dying, depending on the substance that has been used or whether they have been shot or or injured in some other way. It may always be difficult to get sufficient forensic evidence to be able to prosecute, but clearly we are stepping up our efforts through SASA in terms of the forensic evidence. We are now developing DNA tools to be able to identify if a trap, even if there is no body present, may have been used to trap or injure a protected bird, such as a red kite or, indeed, a hen harrier. Those are very iconic species and ones that we are very keen to protect. We are making steps forward, and those are things that are being pushed forward by the agencies saying that we think that we can do this. Clearly, as Mr Dignan has pointed out, the science group on POS Scotland will, that is another aspect of looking at how we can strengthen the evidential trail, how we can make it easier to secure a prosecution. It is not just on raptors, there are obviously other wildlife crimes that may be difficult to trace, but it tends to be the case, I guess, for the point that was made earlier on by the convener, that some crimes are easier to detect. You catch someone poaching, it is a fair cop-gov. It is going to be easier to secure a prosecution than somebody who may have laid poison bait in a very discreet location and have killed the bird as a consequence. However, it is something that I am very aware of. We are trying to make the report more explicit, so that it has that impact where people start to apply a little bit of, perhaps, constructive pressure to improve performance across the sphere, not just the agencies but government as well. I think that that is a healthy thing, that is what the report is there to do. We are looking at issues related to additional measures such as the general licence. Minister, do you think that the restriction on general licences to control corvids will be an effective sanction? When will it still be possible for an effective estate or licency with a general licence restriction to apply for an individual one? On the first point about whether I think it will be effective, in truth, time will tell whether it has been effective. We have designed, we have got relatively few options available to us in terms of interventions that we can take. Clearly, I have signalled that if the new regime with general licence provision does not work, I have signalled to stakeholders that it is in their interest to make it work, because we may have to contemplate options that would be perhaps of a more general nature rather than the targeted approach that we are trying to take with the general licence provision. We are trying to target the impact of this measure on those areas of land where we believe that there are issues, rather than trying to hit all businesses, including ones that are acting fairly and delivering on their conservation obligations with a perfect degree of voluntary action without being compelled to do so. We are trying to be proportionate by taking a targeted approach. I hope that it is taken seriously. I know that there has been some concern expressed that it is purely an administrative exercise, and it is easy for land managers to get a licence through another route, to get an individual species licence. There is provision, obviously, for an SNH2 issue, an individual licence, if someone has had their general licence withdrawn for them to then apply on a case-by-case basis, which will increase the hassle involved in doing so. However, there is no guarantee that SNH would issue a licence unless they think that there is good justification for doing so, perhaps in order to protect another species of curlew or wading bird, perhaps it needs protection from its eggs being destroyed by corvids, or another bona fidee reason why that licence should be granted. As I said in my opening remarks, general licence is a privilege, it is not a right. We have, in the past, trusted people on a universal basis across Scotland that they can be trusted. It is clear from the nature of wildlife crime across Scotland that there may be some individual land holdings where we no longer trust the activities that are going on there to be done fairly and use a general licence appropriately, so it is necessary to take this step. We know that these licences will be publicised in the SNH website. Is that something that is going to be updated monthly? Obviously, we have not had the first one yet, convener, but we can obviously get some feedback from SNH on their proposals there. However, I would imagine that, as cases are added, they would be added on a live basis. So the public can be assured that they should get fairly speedy information about this? That would be my hope and the serious intent that that information is provided. I think that a reputational driver, as with vicarious liability, is one of the most significant aspects of the vicarious liability provision. Is it's reputational impact on the land holding and the owner of the land holding? I think that that reputational driver should be used. Thank you very much, convener. Good morning, minister and colleagues. Really, just to follow up on this general principle that's involved here, the balance of probabilities, rather than beyond all reasonable doubt, you know the criminal civil law level of proof. I'm touching a wee bit on the previous question as well, where it's clear that it's very difficult to get the evidence for some of these crimes, especially the likes of the poisoning and so on, much easier if you have water bailiffs on the edge of a river catch and somebody poaching. So it's difficult to get the evidence. One of the points that was raised last week with the procurator fiscal service was, and the police, that given that it's so difficult, can we be assured that the people prosecuting and police themselves will always go that extra mile to push this, because the difficulty might discourage them from coming forward with police reporting to the fiscal, or the fiscal saying, okay, we've got a case here that they should always sort of try to push the bounds, if you like, to ensure that we do get these cases into court, because even if they lose a case in court, there would be sufficient evidence, possibly, from a criminal case that would allow you to take action under the likes of the license provisions, because your burden of proof would be the balance of probabilities, rather than the beyond all reasonable doubt, which a criminal case would require. So it's just to get your own view on whether it should be almost as a matter of course the police should be going forward, possibly, when with other crimes they might say, well, we don't have enough evidence here, and the fiscal should also take the case to court, even if they feel they don't have enough evidence for the criminal, because it then gives ammunition to you in relation to this. Well, I recognise the points that have been made in respect of the challenge that there is. I suppose it's worth stepping back and saying that in terms of the criminal burden of proof, we would have been talking about perhaps prosecution of an individual that we could prove had committed to crime. In some cases, that might be possible if you have a trap, which is tagged now for the individual who's laid it, and it's got DNA evidence of a bird that's or indeed a corpse is found in the trap, and it may be possible to connect that offence of using a trap to kill a protected wild bird. In most cases, you may find a poisoning and a dead bird on a land holding, and you could be reasonably confident that the poisoning took place perhaps on that land holding, and the bird died on that land holding as a result. Therefore, it's possible to say with the civil burden of proof that in all likelihood a crime has taken place on that land holding, but not be able to pin it on an individual that would enable you to secure criminal conviction. That gives more flexibility to test in ancient circumstances where it's been impossible to prove that a particular individual was responsible for the poisoning or the shooting of a bird, but that that bird definitely, or at least in the eyes of the authorities, most likelihood that there was a wildlife crime committed on that land. Therefore, those responsible for managing that land have been involved, but we can't pin. There may be several different general licenses on one land holding, but you know for certain that that land holding, or as best we can do with the civil burden of proof, that that land holding has had a crime committed on it, and therefore the general license provision would kick in. As to the point about whether the police or the authorities should take forward a prosecution if they're unsure that they can secure a criminal conviction against an individual in the hope that that will then strengthen the case for SNH. I suppose that any prosecution decision or prosecution is obviously a matter for the Crown Office, Procurator Fiscal Service and indeed in liaison with the police, but it would give confidence that there is an information sharing protocol that will be in place between the police and SNH, and that would be regular meetings, and if they feel they have evidence that they believe that they are fairly confident that a crime has taken place on a particular land holding, that that will be shared with SNH. SNH can then take a decision on restriction of the general license in that case, but we've got to be very careful to make clear to people that the general license applies to the land holding, not to the individual, and if you're looking for a criminal conviction, then you have to have a criminal burden of proof, which is beyond reasonable doubt, as you quite rightly say, that you can prove that that individual has committed a crime, and this is a still a fairly rigorous burden of proof in terms of civil burden of proof, but it's one that allows us to have some options where we can't prove which individual was involved, but we can be certain to the civil burden of proof level, at least, that a crime has taken place. Thank you very much, Minister, for that. That's very helpful. Obviously, we have to be careful because we don't want injustices to take place. We don't want landholders being unduly penalised for something that they haven't done. It's maybe easier when you've got massive land holdings, and something right in the centre of it appears. If you've got lots of relatively smaller land holdings, it's very difficult to pin that down. I'm glad to hear what you're saying there. In terms of what you were saying about cases then, there will be an automatic procedure where the police get a complaint and investigate something, but maybe they feel that they can't put it to the fiscal because they don't have sufficient evidence, that they would be duty bound to pass that to SNH, or is there a protocol set up to ensure that cases that don't progress to the fiscal but where there is, because there's not enough for a criminal case, would automatically go to SNH? Well, certainly there will be an information sharing protocol and with the police. We would hope that the information would be supplied if, for whatever reason, the Crown Office believed that a criminal conviction can't be secured. The police would share the information that they have with SNH on the basis that there may be a possibility that they are comfortable that they believe in the terms of a civil burden approved that, as I say, they are reasonably confident that a wildlife crime has been committed that they can provide that to SNH. SNH can then take a decision as to whether they believe that the case is strong enough to remove the general licence. It's worth pointing out that it's an important part of the process that people will have a right of appeal and I think that natural justice is important that people have a right of appeal to make their case, to explain why they feel that removal of general licence would be unjustified. However, I would hope that the information sharing protocol would mean that SNH would have a fairly solid case before they even contemplate taking that forward. If they believe that it's necessary to apply a general licence restriction, they would be reasonably confident that they would be able to withstand any appeal and secure that move. However, we can't force the police to provide information, but I am confident that the police will be collaborative and will indeed have an interest in seeing wildlife crimes stamped out. They certainly always indicate a desire to do that, and I would hope that this would be a useful tool to all the justice authorities to send a signal that perhaps it has been unable to secure a criminal conviction. It is still there are sanctions that can be applied where we are confident that a wildlife crime has taken place. I would hope that that will ultimately help the police by deterring people from committing those crimes in the first place and making their life easier in the long run. You have not been surprised that there are several supplementaries on this interesting area. First, Jim Hume, then Alex Ferguson. Thanks, convener. I am just wondering if the rationale to make it more difficult to control corvids in certain areas and wonder if that's an intended consequence of that could be detrimental to some bird species. Obviously, corvids are a personal experience of helping black grouse. One of the main problems with getting the black grouse numbers up were hooded or carrying crows and taking the eggs off the black grouse, so there is plenty evidence out there that controlling corvids at a reasonable level helps all wildlife. I am interested in the rationale of restricting the control of corvids, which could have a detrimental effect quite badly on quite a few bird species. I am also interested in, just to put all my little questions together, is it the land or the individual that you would be restricting and would have to licence? Obviously, if you own a piece of land in a town and somebody has a crime on it, it's not the person who owns the land that holds liblets. How would that work? Would it be the land that would have to be licensed or would it be the individual that has a balance of probabilities that there has been a crime committed? On the issue about corvids, it's certainly true to say that we are aware that corvids can have an impact on a number of species, could have an impact on livestock in some cases and we're well aware of that. It's important to stress that we are not saying that a general licence means that there is no route for a land manager to control a species such as corvids if there's a good justification of doing so. They will just have the privilege, if they like, of being trusted to control a number of species without any really serious degree of scrutiny of that in the past, having been applied, removed from them and they will have to apply for a species by species. If they want to control corvids, they apply for a licence to control corvids and they'll have to make the case. Now, if there's a good case to be made for conservation grounds or to protect livestock, then clearly that's something that SNH would take into consideration and where reasonable cases are made in respect of a number of different species, the control of species. SNH has always been supportive of applicants when they make a bona fide application, but we're not going to just take it on trust that people can control a number of different species any more without having to go through a little bit more scrutiny and to make life a little bit more difficult for them, to be honest, in reflection of the fact that on that land holding we have sufficient evidence to believe that a wildlife crime is taking place at the civil burden of proof level. To reassure Mr Heumann to reassure those who are concerned about that control of corvids issue, if there's a bona fide reason and on conservation grounds it can be justified or protected in livestock, then they can still apply for a licence. We're just not going to give it to them as if by magic that they can control as many species under the terms of general licence as they like without any degree of scrutiny of the method they're going to use and the objectives they're trying to achieve in controlling the corvids. As to the issue about the land holding itself and the fairness of taking this approach, we, as I've said to Mr Thompson, there's a challenge in terms of using the criminal burden proof view. You have to identify the individual and they're obviously vicarious liability kicks in if it's the employer that has employed that person who's committed the criminal offence. In this situation, we need a tool that helps us where we are confident enough to say that a wildlife crime is taking place but we can't pin it on any individual and we need to reflect that in that general land we can't prove which individual who may have their own general licence has committed the offence. Unfortunately, for those who are innocent, we have to place a restriction on that land holding but then, obviously, as I say, licences can be applied for to control individual species. It's not an absolute stop on genuine grounds for control of whether it's corvids or other species but we just have to have additional scrutiny where we can no longer trust those operating in that land holding to do so legitimately. That would be quite concerning for a lot of people out there, I'm sure. Just to clarify, you are only talking about licencing to control corvids where there has been a balance of probability concern regarding wildlife crime. Is that just to clarify that? We're talking about the general licence, the privilege of having a general licence which allows a land holding effectively to control a number of different species without any degree of real scrutiny as to the purpose, the techniques. I suppose that, in truth, it's similar to other forms of regulation where we have tried to take an approach whereby we are being proportionate. In this case, where we have reason to believe that a land holding has had a wildlife crime committed on it, we feel that it's entirely fair that a privilege, which has been to trust people in the past, where a very light form, a touch form of regulation is removed and that we've put in place a slightly more rigorous form of regulation to ensure that we can be confident that the techniques being deployed are being used properly in accordance with the law and that non-target species are not being captured in these traps and other techniques. I think that it's entirely proportionate and reasonable to do this. As I say, for those who Mr Hume suggests might be concerned, I believe that we have an appeals process, so if they are able to come forward with good evidence as to the fact that they were not responsible for what happened, that would be something that SNH, I'm sure, would look at. The appeals process is there for a reason, so we're not automatically assuming that because the evidence comes forward and the general licence is proposed that that person is automatically guilty, they've got a chance to—sorry, the land-holding, if you like—has been automatically deemed to have been guilty of an offence, so they are given the chance to contradict the evidence if they can do so and therefore a different decision might arise and that proposal might be withdrawn to remove their general licence. So there are checks and balances in there. We are conscious of the need to be proportionate and to be fair to people in this situation, but if after all of that is still concluded that in all likelihood a wildlife crime is taking place, I don't think it's unreasonable to make life a little bit more challenging for people and to apply a bit more scrutiny to what they do. I apologize. I was just getting an absolute clarity. I appreciate what you've all said, but you're not talking about a general licensing to control corvoids on areas where there's no evidence at all of any wildlife crime. You're only talking about where there's a balance of probability issue. Indeed. It's the land-holding where it's believed to be a crime that's committed, rather than every single land-holding of that particular individual, if that's the point that you're trying to— Do you want to make that clear on the record in case there's any concerns otherwise? Thank you. No, to tell. I like Ferguson. Thank you, convener, and I'm sorry in a way to prolong this, but I think that this is a quite important part of these discussions. I must admit that I have got concerns about the ability to introduce fairly punitive measures without having established an incontrovertible burden of proof, but I hear what the minister says, and I'm willing to go with that as far as it goes for the time being. However, there is an aspect of this that does slightly concern me. I don't think that anybody can argue that every incident of wildlife crime brings with it an almost increasing atmosphere of accusation and speculation from both sides, if you like, and there's been evidence of that in the Russia incident of all sorts of speculative accusations being made. I'm sure the minister would agree that this does nothing to lessen tension between NGOs, charitable organisations and land management organisations and representatives as well. Does he not feel, as I think I'm beginning to think, that this measure will do very little to reduce that tension and reduce that type of speculation that I don't think does the argument any favours at all? I kind of feel that this measure is likely to exacerbate that sort of activity, particularly through social media, which, of course, I play such a large part in this, and I just wonder what the minister's thoughts are on that. Certainly, if I can see it outset, I also share Mr Ferguson's concerns that sometimes there's a need for cool heads when things happen. I completely appreciate the concern when any such incident occurs, but, as we've seen, it's not helpful to the police investigation to have random theories out there about what has happened. Indeed, I have to be very careful, as the minister, not to comment on what I know I've received from the police in regard to a case because it could prejudice the investigation. I think that there's responsibility in everybody to behave sensibly, not denying that people are going to be angry. I've been very angry when I've seen some of the incidents that have happened where I'm very confident that a crime has been committed, but you have to still hold yourself back and wait for the investigation to come up with the evidence. On the point about whether general licences might exacerbate this already tense situation that I acknowledge, I would hope that it might have the potential to do the opposite. A lot of the frustration that occurs around wildlife crime is that people feel that there's no sanction and that people are perhaps beyond the reach of the law in some cases because of the difficulty in improving definitively that an individual has committed a crime. By having a new tool in the armory to be able to tackle wildlife crime, that may give people some confidence that even if a criminal conviction of an individual might not be pos, but at least some sanction is in place to make sure that it's less likely such a crime will occur again because of the increased scrutiny that would come with removal of a general licence and the need to demonstrate quite clearly there's a conservation purpose or a need to protect livestock behind the use of a species-specific licence. I think that hopefully it will create a slightly more constructive atmosphere. People think that there is a route to remedy the situation if a crime has been suspected in a particular locality and they will then trust the police to conduct their investigation if they are unable to secure criminal conviction but they are confident that a crime has taken place. They obviously, through information protocol, would supply that to SNH and SNH if they are similarly convinced of the case, can remove the general licence. So at least there is something there that may help address the challenge. I should also mention, as I said in my opening remarks, that Professor Pousty is looking at environmental penalties as well and clearly whether they are sufficiently a deterrent is one of the key considerations, but I would hope that we can see this having to be applied very rarely if it works as a deterrent and people realise that this would be a serious bugbear for us to have to go through additional hoops to get a species-specific licence. It may well just encourage them not to commit the crime in the first place. I certainly hope so. I hope that we are not having to wade through reams of general licence restrictions being posted on the website, but if needed, then so be it. Just a very brief comment, if I may, convener, thank you. I absolutely understand what the minister said and I share his hopes for the outcome, but I do think that there is a potential there for this measure to increase if you like unfounded speculative accusations, particularly through social media, that could be prompted by a desire to see action taken against a particular organisation or individual when the burden of proof just does not exist. I hope that I am wrong and I hope that you are proved right. If I can reassure Mr Ferguson one point, I take very seriously the issue of having to have a proper evidence trail. I do not think that it is going to be trialled by social media of any individual. I trust entirely the police and SNH to look very sincerely at the evidence, and if they do not feel there is a strong enough case to take forward, they would not take that forward. Equally, if they do feel there is a strong case, I would very much hope that they would take it forward as a means of trying to stamp out this activity. However, I am not an advocate of trial by social media, believe me. Politicians need to tread very carefully in terms of trial by social media, of course. Will the stats and future reports offer a read across in this area, so that when a recorded crime or multiple recorded crimes result in the revocation of a general licence, will we see something there that allows us to get a more accurate picture of clear-up rates for a one-of-a-better expression? That is an entirely reasonable point. If I may convener, I think that we will have a think about how we can work that into the report and we can come back to the committee as to how we can reflect any such evidence and any cases that I have been taking for it through the general licence restriction, because it will obviously be the first time that we are reporting in the annual report on how that could be worked into the statistics to give a read across, as the member asks. I think that I must try to draw this particular bit to a close, but to make sure that we do not have speculation about particular crimes. Nevertheless, the statistics that led to the creation of the Wildlife Act in its first place, which is that there have been several dozen, to put it mildly, convictions for those kinds of crimes in the past 15 to 20 years, which have led the authorities and the Government to create that law. Therefore, we are not talking about speculation in terms of the fact that those things have happened. They have. It is obviously something that we do not map every year, but when we are trying to deal with trends, I do not think that those facts should be forgotten. Indeed, if I may just add one very brief point that I do not go into those measures lightly. I certainly listened to voices when I first became Minister of Environment and Climate Change that we are saying that things were on a downward trend. We do not have to worry, but unfortunately, in the middle of last years, long ago, we were already seeing evidence that fences were increasing again. I take some heart from those progressive voices that are across the land management sector, who are really trying very hard to win over those within the wider population, but, unfortunately, there are those who will not listen to their progressive voices and will continue to commit wildlife crime. I think that we have to be realistic about that. As I said, we have tried to target measures rather than to have measures that affect everybody equally. The innocent and the guilty, we have tried to target measures that will have an impact on those who are committing these crimes and committing unacceptable practices in the 21st century. I really do hope that we do not have to go beyond that, but we may have to contemplate that in the future. Following on from your comments regarding a review of wildlife crime penalties to establish if the act is a sufficient deterrent, you have just mentioned that Professor Poustie is leading a review of wildlife crime and that the review was due to report in December. The report states that a group has been set up to conduct the review of wildlife crime penalties and expects to report back in late 2014, and Police Scotland will use the appropriate investigative tools at the disposal to investigate crime scenes. Last week, DCS Robbie Allan stated that the group would review wildlife crime penalties, but it would hold its first meeting in November 2014. Is there any reason why it has taken so long for the review of wildlife crime penalties to begin work? Will the review still be completed by December, as you told the Parliament in May this year? I believe that Mr MacDonald may have uncovered an error in the report. There have been four or five meetings of the group, so we will have to look closely at the area that you have uncovered that may apologise for any misleading information there. It is true to say that the report has slipped somewhat. We believe that it will be early in the new year rather than December, but Professor Poustie is working very well in terms of delivering that report, and we will get the report relatively soon, but it may slip slightly into the new year. It is also worth stating that, in the commitment that I gave in the chamber to Claire Baker in the recent wildlife crime debate that we have asked Professor Poustie to take on the task of undertaking a desk review of regimes in terms of management of shooting activity, sporting activity, which was a commitment that I gave in that debate. Professor Poustie has agreed to do that, but that will be after he completes the report of the penalties, because that is obviously the immediate priority. Just for clarification, the review has been under way for some time, and the first meeting was not in November. I could ask Mr Dignan to clarify when the first meeting took place, because I was not conscious of the specific dates. It is slightly embarrassing. I do sit on the review committee, but I cannot remember when the first meeting was, but it was certainly several months ago, probably in the summer. June, possibly. We can confirm that in writing. We can get your details of the meetings when they were held to give you a more complete picture, but apologies for the error in the report. Okay, thanks for that. That is certainly more encouraging than the information that we received last week. Thank you. I have a follow-on from Graham Day. I note your comments at the outset about an imminent announcement on the pesticide disposal scheme. I recognise that you may not wish to give too much detail on that to the committee today, but can I ask how long such anamnesty might run for? More importantly, would the penalties for possession of things such as carbifurin be part of Professor Poustie's review, because it strikes me that, if you offer anamnesty, the penalties that are then in place thereafter should be severe? I note Mr Day's comments, and I have some sympathy with the point that when people are given an opportunity to remove such pesticides from circulation, the justice authorities should note that they did not take the opportunity to remove them thereafter. However, just to be clear, we expect to be announcing details of the scheme very shortly, as I said at the outset. The scheme will not be an amnesty as such, as is important to me in that distinction, but it will allow controlled and safe disposal of substances that are obtained in the schedule of the possession of pesticide Scotland Order 2005, and there is a defined list of substances there. Those, just for the record, are alde carb, alpha clorolose, aluminium, phosphide, bendio carb, carbifurin, which is the main vehicle by which birds are poisoned, unfortunately. Mevinfos, sodium cyanide and stricnene. It is an offence to even possess those at present, and they are most commonly used substances relating to poisoning offences. It is worth saying in response to Mr Day as well that there are two principle aims of the proposed package, and we will give more detail in due course, but to get highly dangerous toxic substances out of the environment, and I think everybody, including the justice authorities, recognises that that is a very important objective. Secondly, to remove any possibility of someone claiming in future that they had these poisons because they had not had an opportunity to get rid of them. Therefore, I very much sympathise with Mr Day's point that working in partnership with those involved in the land management sector and sporting interests to make sure that it is communicated as widely as possible that opportunity, if it has not been taken up, then we have to read into that perhaps. It may not be definitively the case, but there may have been a desire to avoid giving up these substances, so I would hope that the authorities would certainly investigate that aspect of it if it came to it. But in terms of the penalties, Minister, would there be significant penalties in place for somebody who is found guilty of that? I cannot say at this moment of time that it is clearly a matter not only for myself, but for Crown Office, Lord Advocate and, indeed, I would obviously have to wait and see what Professor Pousty comes forward with in terms of the existing penalties as to whether he believes they are sufficiently rigorous. I am happy to come back to the committee, obviously, in light of the forthcoming announcement with more detail on that, if we feel that we can tie in with the Crown Office and the Lord Advocate, they are their own views on that issue. Another question from Claudia Beamish. Can I briefly say that, more generally, I believe that the work that is being done by yourself and by the whole range of partners has really focused minds in Scotland on what you have described as a stain on Scotland's reputation and is positive about moving that forward. I will turn quite specifically to one area, which is some use of video in evidence. Obviously, detection in remote rural areas, as we all know, is extremely difficult, and we heard last week from the evidence that we received from the panel about the range of investigative tools. ACC Malcolm Graham explained the position on video evidence, and I do not want to go into a great deal of detail, because it was explained last week, and I am sure that you know it well. However, there is the concern that it requires authorisation from senior police officers and must be done in accordance with human rights legislation, which is absolutely right. However, if other organisations or members of the public are taking video evidence, the Crown Prosecution Service—sorry, Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service—did explain that Scotland's law can admit evidence obtained irregularly, and that there is no problem if a farmer takes a film on his or her own land on a mobile phone, but it becomes complicated if it is not on their own land. In view of the remoteness and inaccessibility of places where there is crime, could you comment at all on that? I would like a brief supplementary on it, depending on your answer. It is not to pre-empt things, but it is a slightly different tack. I certainly thank Claudia Beamish for her remarks about the work that has been done, because I am sure that I appreciate it, not just by myself but by everyone involved in taking forward these issues. I agree with Claudia Beamish that one of the biggest challenges that we face is the remoteness and rurality of where these offences are being in the large part committed. We have to recognise that police resources are stretched, as they have always been in policing rural areas because of the geography of those areas. Therefore, it is difficult to have an officer in place to provide eyewitness evidence of a crime being committed. I think that it was significant that the Lord Advocate gave guidance to the police to use all investigative tools, which is the direct quote. That did include video surveillance. I am aware clearly of the concerns that were raised by Malcolm Graham last week in terms of ensuring that it is compliant with the legislation, the RIPSA legislation, in particular just the human rights aspects of that. Clearly, the example given by Miss Beamish of a farmer perhaps willingly having cameras in his land is clearly one that would not fall foul of that because we should recognise that many land managers are very sympathetic to conservation issues and they may be concerned to protect a bird's nest from egg theft or from nest disturbance themselves and be quite willing to collaborate on that basis. However, we also have a situation where clearly many land managers are not many, I should be careful about that. However, some land managers may be resistant to having any surveillance on their land and that places the police in a difficult position, but clearly if they have some evidence that they believe a crime is being committed then that strengthens the argument that they may have with getting permission to use video surveillance evidence and I would hope that they would have political support from across the chamber for doing so. It is very difficult, obviously, for any minister, especially myself. I would not want to be seen to be interfering in policing operational issues, but I think that I have tried to make clear the concern that it is difficult to prosecute and we need every resource available to be used to catch people committing these crimes. I would just for the record say that we are not asking for indiscriminate use of video surveillance, but we need appropriate and proportional situations where, as I say, there is good cause to believe perhaps on past performance that a land manager or their staff are committing wildlife crimes. On the issue of third-party video surveillance, I might take advice from Hugh Dignan on this. I believe that there is a case that is looking at the admissibility of third-party video surveillance evidence in Scotland at this moment, so I do not want to prejudice this outcome, but clearly we will be looking to see what comes from that in terms of the judgment as to whether that is admissible. There is a slightly different situation in England because the legislative framework is different and so we have to see it in the context of the laws that apply in Scotland, but it is clearly an area that we are taking a lot of interest in because, for the reasons that Claudia Beamish has cited, the difficulty in securing a conviction is ties in with Mr D's point about the perception of the inability to secure a prosecution. It is something that we have a concern and I am sure that the police and Crown Office Procurate Fiscal Service also share that concern, because it is seen to be getting results. Do you think that there is the opportunity through poor Scotland perhaps to increase public awareness of what it can and cannot do? Maybe that work is going on already, but people do not necessarily know what the options are. Can you clarify, just with Ms Beamish, the investigative options that you believe that we should clarify? If somebody in the public is aware that something is going on, what would they actually be able to do and how would they go through reporting it? Not without asking for the detail of it at this point, of course, but how is that awareness being raised in rural Scotland? Thanks for the clarification. I think that that is an important point. We have obviously tried to pause Scotland and we have an excellent media adviser and Louise Batchelor, who has obviously had an influence with the media working subgroup of the Post-Scotland group to look at various approaches. Obviously, in terms of communication through the media, we have tried to emphasise technological breakthroughs such as the roll-out of DNA evidence. The point that I was referring to earlier is that Sasa now has the techniques to be able to prove that a trap has been used to capture a protected species such as a henharrier or a red kite. Obviously, over time, we would hope that that DNA profile would expand to other species. Post-Scotland now has an app for mobile phones, which gives guidance to people as to what evidence to collect. That is helpful in informing the public and not to disturb evidence very importantly when they find it, because that could contaminate a site and make it more difficult to secure a prosecution. I take the point that perhaps we can make more explicit what full range of, perhaps not giving too much detail away to potential criminals, but the generality of the kind of tools that could be used just to make them aware that they could be on candid camera at some point. That would perhaps be a deterrent effect in itself. Thank you very much. We want to move on to wildlife incidents this year, Dave Thomson. Alex Ferguson has already been mentioned very helpfully by the incident on the Black Isle with the red kites and the buzzards. You mentioned it briefly yourself. You are always very helpful, Alex. You mentioned it yourself, Minister, a wee bit earlier as well. You will be very well aware of the press release that the police put out on 24 October, which caused a bit of a star. I think that more speculation than was certainly intended. When we talked to the police last week, they were making clear that they had chosen their words very carefully and had said that it was most likely not targeted deliberately, but that the birds were the victims of pest control measures. You also stated earlier that you are very concerned and angry about the rumours. Of course, with a situation like this, there are lots of rumours flying around, and some of them are not so helpful. I wonder if you would like to comment in a bit more detail about where the police investigation is insofar as you can. In particular, there is the statement that 16 of the birds—there were 22 all together, so we do not know what happened to the other six yet— 16 of them were killed by an illegal poison. I am unfortunate when I am in a difficult position, and it always feels awkward when I ask these questions, because obviously your natural desire is to be as helpful as possible in answering them. However, for reasons of the fact that there is still a live criminal investigation, I cannot comment on the method or the assumptions that the police may have drawn about what has happened in this instance, because it may have further added to the speculation as to the cause. We have to trust the police to release information as and when they feel capable of doing so. They are having on-going reviews in terms of the case, and I am sure that, when they feel able to give more detail, they will do so. However, as Dave Thompson has indicated, the police have already indicated themselves that a high proportion of the birds that were found have been poisoned. As far as I am conscious, there is still a criminal investigation under way, so I can only ask the committee to reflect both those facts and not perhaps read too much into the press release that was issued in the 21st of October, as is being referred to by Mr Thompson. However, clearly, this was a particularly difficult and upsetting incident. Indeed, I have met Andrew Goddard, who knows who raised the petition in relation to his concern about the issue and his desire to see more done to tackle wildlife crime. I have no doubt about the strength, the feeling and the black isle and the wider highland community about the nature of the offence. I welcome the fact that all stakeholders in the area came together in this incident to offer a reward and I commend RSPB for starting that process and others for augmenting it. I still hope that, if there is a possibility of a criminal prosecution of that, it may well be helpful in yielding evidence of what actually happened, but beyond that, convener, I cannot really go, I am afraid. I hope that the committee can understand why. Just a wee follow-up, convener, please. I can understand what you are saying there. Those birds are fairly dear to Mo and Hart. I was along at the Tully feeding point helping to open it just a couple of years ago, so it would have helped to feed some of these red kites and so on. It is really sad to see them being poisoned like they have. The rumours can cause all sorts of difficulties for local landowners and others, and I have a lot of sympathy for that. One aspect of the investigation that strikes me as being interesting is the time that it took the police to actually get warrants to go and look for poisons a couple of weeks or more, and they went to specific farms, which everyone will be aware of, which can further star the rumours. First of all, are you planning to carry out an investigation of any kind once this case is wrapped up, if you like? Are you going to be looking at just how the police operated, how the investigation was carried out? Is there going to be an investigation into that at some time in the future? I feel that maybe we could learn a number of lessons from this, and I dare say that you will be getting a report from the police in due course irrespective of whether they bring this to a prosecution or whatever. That is the first point. Will you be looking at this in some detail in terms of how things were carried out? The second point, just to follow up, is where you consulted about the pressure lease and the wording of the pressure lease from Police Scotland before it went out? On the latter point, I believe that we did not have an awful lot of notice of the pressure lease going out, so I certainly did not have any input to it at all. I do not know whether colleagues are shaking their heads, so I do not think that our own team had any input to that pressure lease. I am afraid that, in that instance, we are trying to work closely with the police on all media and comms relating to wildlife crimes. It can be difficult, obviously, because an offence might be discovered in what would, in the past, be described as a local divisional area and a local communication might be put out to local media about that incident. We are trying to get a degree of consistency of how those instances are reported in partnership with the police, and I know that they recognise that process. Unfortunately, it is not one that we had any input to. As to the investigation itself, we do not interfere in operational matters, as I say, but I am aware that the police will have made a decision as to what kind of warrant they needed or whether they need a warrant at all. I am aware that, certainly, if the police had any, as I understand it, any reason to believe that evidence was being tampered with or moved, they could have gone in without a warrant to investigate straight away. I am not a lawyer and I put that on the record convener and perhaps I will leave it to the justice authorities to say whether or not that is appropriate, but they felt that they must have needed a warrant to go in. As to whether we can ask for review of the case, it is something perhaps that might be best addressed to Lord Advocate and, indeed, to the justice secretary, as to whether that is something that they might want to contemplate. I do not have portfolio responsibility for policing, but we have on-going engagement with police through Paul Scotland and, clearly, a good relationship, I believe, with them. We can ask for their own perspective as to whether there is anything that they feel in retrospect that they might have done differently. I should just add, for the sake of clarity, that Police Scotland discussed with us the fact that it was going to release that press release and the broad terms of what would be in it, but the detail of its natural size of the release, we did not see any of that, so that was just to be clear about the exact process there. I want a couple of follow-up points on this. The concerns that were raised about this from people who have had their properties searched included members of the National Farmers Union of Scotland. When I asked police last week about who the partners were in the pause, they said that the NFU was not a partner. However, I noticed from studying who it is that Scottish land and estates are partners. I have had some constituents from the NFU organisation in the Highlands asking if the NFU ought to be a member of pause in order that they are part of that discussion. On that point, convener, I certainly acknowledge that if we are going to have a broader partnership as we can and get as much concern and action, and I welcome NFUS's strong condemnation at the time of the incident in Rossshire, which I think was very helpful, I understand that there are discussions taking place about NFUS's involvement in Paws Scotland, so we can come back to the committee once we have more detail of what they want to do, because clearly we cannot force NFUS to be involved if they do not want to, but clearly it is encouraging to hear that colleagues in the Highlands area at least are keen to be involved and consulted on measures, so that is something that we can take forward as part of those discussions to see if it is possible. Further and more about pause, would it not be a good idea for it to meet in Rossshire for one of its meetings rather than in some central place in Livingston or wherever? To be fair to the members of pause, I think that usually they are trying to help me by meeting in Edinburgh to make it easier, so I am probably the guilty party there, convener, but I take the point and I think that there may be a case at some point for having a meeting where obviously clearly many of the fences are being conducted in rural Scotland. I think that there would be perhaps an important message to take the pause Scotland out to those groupings at some point. There are quite a few people who would probably like to claim a meeting, this being the most high profile event of this year. Prompt me to suggest that I think that people would be reassured if they saw this meeting in some other parts of the country, and of course the minister is always welcome to attend as well in our part of the world. I am reminded by Hugh Dignan that we have already discussed having a meeting in the Cairngorms, so that we have started the process. I think that it is in the eastern Cairngorms from previous discussions, but we can obviously provide details so that I can see Mr Day looking very interested in that idea. It is within the national park boundary. We were conscious of the relationship between the Cairngorm national park and wildlife crimes being committed in the national park, so we are going to take a meeting of Paul Scotland to the national park. We are happy to communicate the timing of that and to make sure that members are aware of the opportunity. It is nice to tour the country. I would like to ask a specific question that also affects the pause. I asked the detective chief superintendent, Alan, last week, about whether there was a map of where carcasses were found of red kites. Given that there have been large numbers of deaths in that particular area, he said that a Paul Raptor subgroup was conducting an on-going exercise to map the various carcasses, but that the police do not chart or map every carcass. In the case of a crime like this where there were 16 red kites poisoned, I think that it would help the public to know exactly that the police are creating that kind of map. In the past, as I said, there have been quite a number of deaths in a similar area, and it would be very useful to see where the carcasses were found. I have certainly recognised your point and the importance of mapping, as you have indicated, that you have been doing good work on developing mapping. The police have records of recorded crimes involving all Raptors. The whole data on incidents where they suspect foul play was involved in dead or missing Raptors, and RSPB have published a paper on the effects of crime on red kites in Black Island, showing the equivalent population down south. However, it is also true to say that not in every case do we find a body or a carcass of a Raptor. We have lost a seagull recently, very tragically, and to this date, at least, I am not aware that we have found any physical evidence of the death of that seagull, so it will remain a mystery as to what has happened to it. Therefore, it is difficult to then map exactly what happened and where. However, in so far as we have definitive evidence of where birds are found, I believe that the police would be very constructive in helping to provide that information for mapping purposes. It may well be that the explanation for the point about not being able to map all incidents is largely because they cannot remember the public hands in a bird and then cannot see where they found it, or the bird has disappeared and therefore we are unable to locate it. However, I remind the committee and the wider public of the Post-Scotland app, which is a tool to help to map where you are taking a picture of the carcass, which will help the police to find the carcass. We certainly encourage people not to move the evidence before that very reason, because it may be moving it from potentially one land holding to another if people are inaccurate about where they have found the bird in the first place. Further more, I suppose, we should emphasise that it could be poisonous to them for handling the bird. Absolutely, that is a very important point. Right, we have a further question in this regarding the collection of evidence from Dave Thomson. Well, it was the powers of the SSPCA in particular that I was keen to ask the minister about. When we were discussing this with the police in the Procurator Fiscal Service last week, a number of interesting things came out of this. I was drawing a comparison between the powers of what are bailiffs who are essentially appointed by the private sector through the salmon fisheries boards and so on. They have extremely wide powers, although the police said that they hardly ever use them these days, because they tend to involve the police at an early stage. Nevertheless, the powers are there and the water bailiffs have them, powers of arrest and seizure and all sorts of other things, I believe. There is also the aspect of local authorities who have power under the Animal Health Act in relation to animal disease and movements of animals, and a number of local authorities appoint specialist animal health officers. The Wild Fisheries Review also mentions briefly the water bailiff issue, and it mentions the potential to integrate the bailiffing system more effectively with Police Scotland and other wildlife crime functions. I noted that the Procurator Fiscal Service said that they deal with animal welfare issues, as well as broader wildlife crime and so on. It strikes me that there are just a number of different enforcement bodies and others involved. I just wonder if it might be useful for the Government to have a look at consolidating some of this, because is it necessary that local authorities are enforcing the Animal Health and Welfare legislation, or should that be something that could go to the specialist police unit that is already dealing with wildlife crime and so on? I wonder if it is still necessary for 32 local authorities all to be doing their own thing and doing it at different levels. It ties in fairly neatly, I would suspect, with the whole Animal Welfare issue. Of course, that brings us to the SSPCA. Sorry, I am giving you an awful lot of questions here. The possibility of the SSPA being authorised to carry out greater functions than they currently have power to do. Well, certainly on the Wild Fisheries Review aspect, I know that they obviously did make a recommendation, which will be taken as with other recommendations under advisement and coming back with proposals in due course, but they did recommend that the national central unit would be deployed to co-ordinate the issuing of warrants for the water bailiffs. The potential to integrate the bailiffing system more effectively with Police Scotland and other wildlife crime functions, so that is something that we will look at in due course and come back to committee and other stakeholders on our views on that. I take note of the point that Mr Thomson makes about consolidation and perhaps an opportunity to have a greater degree of standardisation and perhaps consistency of how those things are done. In relation to the SSPCA, it is worth pointing out that there are certainly interesting parallels. I know that they have been made between the water bailiffs and the SSPCA in this respect. I have just note for the record that I think that the point that was picked up earlier on in discussion with Mr Day and indeed the convener that we have a generally speaking a better record of prosecuting offences against salmon and other poaching offences relating to salmon perhaps than we do other aspects of wildlife crime and it may not be unconnected to the fact that we have more eyes and ears on the ground or in this case on the water looking for people committing offences. One of the purposes behind the consultation not only because it had been a commitment given at the time of the Wain Act going through Parliament that we would undertake a consultation on extra powers for the SSPCA is because the reason that Claudia Beamish was indicating earlier on in terms of the need to use all investigatory tools, we have very few eyes and ears on the ground and despite the best efforts of the police it is always going to be difficult to catch criminals in the act so therefore it is of interest to us to take soundings from people on the potential at least for SSPCA's powers to be extended. It is worth stating that already on completion of appropriate training SSPCA inspectors can without a warrant enter non-domestic premises for the purpose of taking possession of a suffering animal or destroying an animal if the inspector believes immediate entry is appropriate in the interests of the animal. They can enter non-domestic premises to search for and seize any evidence, including animals, as evidence in relation to a related offence if they believe that any delay caused by seeking a warrant would restate the purpose of that search, which maybe goes back to the earlier point about other incidents that we are aware of, and inspect any non-domestic premises for the purpose of ascertaining whether or not an offence under part 2 of the 2,000 act has been committed and with a warrant they can enter any premises for the purpose of taking possession of a suffering animal or destroying an animal where appropriate and enter any premises to search and seize any animal or any other thing as evidence in relation to a relevant offence under part 2 of the 2,000 act. They already have quite substantial powers in relation to animal welfare issues. The consultation is really looking at whether that should be extended to instances where perhaps you find a trap illegally laid, but no animal is yet being caught and therefore no suffering is being experienced. Or if there are other reasons to believe that a wildlife crime is being committed. It has been quite well defined, I believe, in the consultation as to the potential powers that SSPC might be considered to have. Obviously, we are going to look through the analysis of the evidence that has been submitted. We have published the responses to the consultation already but I am hoping that we will have analysis of those responses to me by the early next year at the latest. We will then come back to Parliament with our views on those proposals. I am not sure if I have answered everything that Dave Thomson asked me, convener. That is a pretty good effort, convener. Just when we follow up, the Wild Fisheries review in relation to the bail-offs highlighted the need for accountability and the unit, as you say. I think that we should maybe be looking at a much more broader look at the whole legislative area there anyway, but one of the big issues I think about giving further powers to the SSPC would be that issue of accountability. How do you hold them to account? That is a good point. Clearly, it is an issue that we would have to take into consideration in considering any further extension of the powers, but I suppose the point that I was making is that the SSPC already has quite extensive powers in relation to animal welfare and presumably are felt to be accountable for what they do in relation to animal welfare issues. I hope that, if we decide to proceed with additional powers for SSPC, it would not be inconceivable that accountability can be demonstrated. Obviously, appropriate training would be given to SSPC officers in advance of them having an extended role of this kind. In relation to the bail-offs, they work very closely with local police, wildlife crime officers in particular as part of their duties and work with the local procurator of fiscal. There is already a good example where water bail-offs are working very closely with the justice authorities, but I will have to consider in-depth the concerns that have been expressed by the police and other consultees and those who are in favour of the proposals and come back with a considered view as to what to do in relation to that consultation. I have to move on. I think that a supplementary please from Angus MacDonald. I have just fallen on from Dave Thomson's point regarding the SSP. As you have mentioned, Minister, it is clear that Police Scotland is not convinced that the SSPC should have extra powers in evidence last week. Dave Thomson's rightly raised the issue of checks should extra powers be given to ensure that these powers are not or would not be abused. I would urge you, Minister, should you decide to go down that route that the concerns that SSPC officers could overstepp them should be taken into account? I wholeheartedly agree that we would have to give confidence to people that any change that I have not yet made my mind up yet, whether we, for the record, go ahead with additional powers for SSPC. I am waiting for the analysis report to give me the basis on which to make a decision, but I absolutely agree with Mr MacDonald that, if we take forward any additional powers for SSPC, we have to give confidence to the widest possible population stagles that this will be a measure that is proportionate. It is accountable that the SSPC is accountable for their actions and for their staff. I am sure that they would be keen themselves to make sure that that was all above board and that they did not suffer any reputational damage themselves from taking on these additional powers. I would hope that we can come forward with positive proposals on that if it is needed. Thank you, convener, and good morning, Minister. In the Government debate and wildlife crime back in May, you said that, if you judged it necessary, the Government was committed to taking further action. In your opening statement today, you said that the Government is determined to eliminate wildlife crime. At what point will you consider further measures to tackle wildlife crime, and if there are any measures that you are currently considering? Yes, that is an important point. Obviously, we have had the announcement of a number of measures, the general licence provision that we have debated today is probably the key one, but Professor Pousty's review of penalties will, in due course, be equally important in terms of whether Professor Pousty determines that there is a case to be made for extending penalties further to make a more deterrent effect, and that is something that we would take forward with serious consideration. Viewing that package in a row, we would need to give some time to see whether those measures have had an impact. Clearly, the formal announcement of the general licence provision only happened on 6 October, although it is backdated to 1 January in terms of any offences that are committed since 1 January. It would, in theory, be one that SNH could consider a case for removing the general licence. It would be fair to take advice from the committee clearly as to what the committee's view is on that, but I would hope that we would have some time to see whether those measures are proving to be effective and, indeed, any additional measures that Professor Pousty recommends. I have reiterated today my commitment to Clare Baker that we will undertake a desk review of regimes elsewhere, so, at least, we are doing the preparatory work in the background to ensure that we know what other options are available to us, and I reiterate the point that I have tried to be fair and honest with all stakeholders on that. They need to help us to make this work, because otherwise we will have to maybe contemplate things that would be unfortunate for those good land managers and good estates who are doing the right sort of things that they would be caught up in extra bureaucracy associated with an additional licensing scheme. However, if that is necessary to crack down on those who continue to ignore the law, then we may need to go down that route, but we do not have a definitive timescale as yet as to when we would do that. Minister, you have anticipated my supplementary work, so I do not need to ask. I was going to ask for an update on the review of the game bird licence, so I am pleased. Just to reiterate the point that Professor Pousty has agreed to do that, and I hope that that will commence as soon as possible after the review of penalties and concluded early in the new year. We will keep the committee advised as to the timing of that, if that would be helpful. Thank you for that. Nigel Dawn, thank you very much for being here. Good morning. If I could just pick up on the very specific issue of gun licences, the point being made by many folk is that those who are dependent on a gun to do their job, and that will be many, would be seriously disadvantaged if their gun licences was taken away for inappropriate activity. The question has been asked before, the answer has been given, firstly, that the subject is reserved, and secondly, of course, that the gun licencing is largely related to safety in the context of assaults on humans, shall I say, was the preservation of life, and the gun licencing criteria do not really have anything to do with wildlife crime. I am wondering whether that is a subject on which the minister might have anything to say, and whether that is something that he feels we ought to change. Well, it is an interesting point. It is not one that I have really considered in any depth before. I appreciate the point that is made about the legal responsibilities and powers in relation to firearms offences. Clearly, some of the provisions that we have talked about today are because it is difficult to prove that an individual is responsible for wildlife crime, and clearly, if an individual was convicted of a wildlife crime, then that would be tied to an individual, and perhaps it might be a matter that the authorities in relation to offences might be able to take into account. However, I know that, with your permission, if I can invite Hugh Dignan to comment on the legal position, because I know that he has a lot of experience in this area that he may be able to comment on what would be possible under current legislation. As members of the committee probably know, the decisions as regards firearms licensing are a matter for the chief constable of Police Scotland, ultimately, and we are aware that firearms licenses are removed in certain cases, and we are aware also that where wildlife crimes are being committed that firearms licenses have been removed, so that is already in play to some extent. We are interested in poor Scotland in examining further, in exactly what circumstances and what is the procedure that is in place for taking into account wildlife crime offences, when looking at a firearms application or renewal application or whether to remove such a licence. As part of that, we have, as part of the work with a poor legislation and regulation group, have written to the chief constable and asked him if he would explain to us how that system currently operates. I do not think that we are under any illusion that we can sort of interfere in that process. It is something that is strictly and rightly a matter for the chief constable, but we are keen to know how that operates and to be reassured, I think, that it is working to the best possible effect in helping to tell wildlife crime. For the moment, I am encouraged that it is being looked at, and clearly it might be an area that we would want to come back to. I am wondering if I could pick up on a completely different issue, and that relates to the reporting of crime in this report. I am wondering whether it would be possible to put together the statistics of, in co-aid crimes, the ones where a trap is found, but no bird has actually been damaged as a result. That is a legal trap has been found, or, for example, an inappropriate poison bait has been found. No damage has yet been done, but it feels like it is a crime because it did not actually work. I do not think, I see any evidence that those are reported, and I am wondering whether they are reportable, if the data even exists, and if that is the case, whether they should be reported, please. I believe that those sort of offences should be captured here, but we can come back to clarity as to exactly how they are recorded. Perhaps it ties in with the earliest point that was made by the convener himself as to perhaps the clarity. Obviously, this is an evolving document, and we can try to improve the clarity of maybe footnoting, et cetera, where appropriate to make clear such numbers are relevant. However, I entirely take the point that it ties in with the point about the SSPCA powers as well, about whether perhaps there is a site of an illegal trap, but no obvious victim of that trap, and therefore it limits their ability to intervene. However, hopefully they would then report that to the police if they saw that now, but in the intervening period that evidence might be removed, so they might then miss the chance for a prosecution. I take the point, and we can come back to the committee as to how best we can reflect that in the report, if it is not clearly explicit to members of the committee. We need to work harder on making that explicit. I wonder if I could just pick up on the issue of vicarious liability. Patrick Hughes commented from the Crown Office and Prosecution Service last week that his impression is that the provision is effective, certainly at present. I was encouraged by that. Does the minister have any other view on how vicarious liability is going? We will know, hopefully, relatively soon how the first case is received by the justice system, and whether the vicarious liability provision is robust and is able to withstand scrutiny of a defence lawyer and a very good one from what I can gather. We will know in due course whether it is robust. I take the point that has been made by Mr Hughes. It is reported to me that the threat of a reputational impact has resulted in many land managers or other land owners ensuring that their staff are properly trained to know what their legal responsibilities are. Clearly, we still see wildlife crime being committed, so it has not been entirely successful in deterring some serious offences that are being conducted. We have to wait and see if a conviction can be secured. Those who are sitting on the fence on the issue might finally judge that it is worthy of them noting that they are at risk of being prosecuted under that provision. I hope that it is not that landowners are encouraging their staff or that they are being permissive of their staff doing such activity, and that they genuinely are taking all steps that they possibly can to encourage their staff to behave and obey the law. However, we clearly need to see a successful prosecution before that threat is a real one for people. Thank you, minister. There is a large degree of public interest in what is happening. The report for this particular year is very helpful for us to focus on that. We have given it a good deal of time. We think that that is necessary. We look forward to learning in the next report just exactly how much progress is being made both to solve those crimes but also to report them in a fashion that the public can understand easily. We thank you very much for the detailed answers that you and your officials have given us just now. Thank you for that. Thank you, convener. I add my own thanks to the committee for their clear interest in this issue. It is very helpful to me to have your own thoughts on how we should proceed. There will be a letter in the post. We have five minutes of a break to turn over briefly and recessed us now. We must be quick because we have a large session to follow. We will move on to the next formal item, which is agenda item 3, the Scottish Government's draft budget for 2015-16. The third item today is for the committee to take evidence on the Scottish Government's draft budget on the theme of forestry. The committee will hold further evidence sessions on the draft budget with stakeholders on the theme of SRDP and then from the minister and the cabinet secretary respectively. We welcome today our witnesses, Jamie Farker, from the Scottish National Manager for Confor, Willie McGee, founder member and management committee member of the forest policy group. Joe O'Hara, deputy director of forestry commission Scotland, Scottish Government. Hello, I'm Michael Millard, president of the National Farmers Union of Scotland. Hello, and I'm Jim Colchester, the head of forestry at Buclew estates. Welcome to you all. We had a long session on wildlife crime, which is obviously a matter somewhat related to what the forestry commission has to deal with, I'm sure, but we generally want to deal with the budget now. I just want to kick off the question to ask you generally. We don't, in the future, all have to answer every question, or we might have to suspend the rules of the Parliament. What do the witnesses think about the overall level of forestry commission funding in the draft budget? I presume that we should ask people other than the forestry commission first, but fire away, just indicate if you want to speak and I'll call you. Willie McGee. The level of budget that we feel is that, while it will do the job for 2015-16, the forest policy group believes that it should be set higher. I put a figure for the grants alone in my written submission of £45 million. I would like to see it higher than that, possibly £60 million. However, I think that forestry, in terms of its weighting in rural development and contribution to the rural sector, deserves more money. Just for the record, I would like to see it more fully integrated with agriculture in terms of the way in which it is handled. Anybody else? Nigel Miller. Probably I should make some comment. Having read your other submissions, I can see exactly where Willie McGee is coming from. I think that all sectors would like to see more money. I think that there are certainly strands of expenditure there, which will look as if they are quite difficult. However, given the overall package that we are looking at and some pretty significant cuts in other areas, to get big increases at this stage can only be at the expense of other sectors and is therefore very difficult. In many ways, we are in that ghastly world where it is a matter of prioritising and it is a bit of a compromise. The Scottish Government is supporting our sector extremely well overall. If you look at a budget of £60 million, £65 million, it is a very successful sector and delivers to virtually every agenda that Government sets us. But there is some fairly radical disparity within the way in which that £65 million is dispersed. We have said that and continue to argue for the authority of Forestry Commission to be maintained and for it to retain its autonomy as the forest authority. We have always supported the money that they require to retain their expertise to be able to deal with a very complicated tactical industry. However, where the budget fails is the expectation on the private sector to deliver virtually all the new planting targets. I echo Willie's comments there that straightforward maths shows that £36 million wouldn't be sufficient for that or indeed 30 million. At the end of the day, of the £36 million going to the private sector, in fact, Scottish Government is only putting up £16 million because the rest comes through in EU co-funding. You have heard me say in this company before that I think that that is a pretty pathetic sum of money to commit to the successful sector that we have. I am the convener, of course, not the chairman, but we are happy to accept the terms that you state at the moment that I should ask Joe Hara to perhaps respond a little, but with a supplementary have you spent all your money from last year before we were thinking about using the money for this year? When you say I spent all of our money for last year just to be clear, do you mean the year that we are in? The year that we are in or the year that before that was the money spent in the budget allocation in total? Yes, it was. We have our allocation for the grants, we also have the allocation for our work as a department and we also have the allocation for the National Forest Estate. So we have these three very different headers, if you like, within our budget and sometimes we move between the headers depending on what plays out during the year, but we did spend it. I think to come back to the question of grants, I do take Jamie's point and we've been discussing this very actively with the sector through our customer reps group. Bearing in mind that this is a one-year budget, so far we haven't rejected new planting proposals because there hasn't been enough money. We've been able to meet demand with the money, but those proposals haven't met the 10,000 target and we're particularly concerned about increasing the amount of productive woodland in that. That is a challenge for us. However, we feel that on balance what we're doing for the year ahead, what we've pushed in for the year ahead and what we know is coming through in the pipeline from discussions with the sector and through some of the initial conversations that we've had that the figure that we've got into the budget of next year should meet the demand for new planting. There's no question that if suddenly that demand did increase, the amount of money in the budget at some points could hit the buffers, but we think for next year, knowing where we're at, that this is a fair allocation. Did you want to come back, Jamie? Thank you, yes. The microphone's handled centrally. We know when to cut you off, but not yet. Yes, we spent all our money in 2014 and, indeed, we're lucky to get some extra euros out of the 2007-13 programme that had been unallocated at the end of the programme. In fact, I think we actually spent about £41 million in something like that. The unfortunate side of our business is the time and the investment that has to be made in bringing forward new planting schemes. It is taking on average 18 to 24 months to bring those schemes through scoping and consultation. That's just a fact of life nowadays and we complain about it the time it takes every now and then, but in practice we understand that's the reality. But if you go back 18 months or two years, the message was quite clear. 2014 will be a transition year and so we don't know when the grants will be open again. I'm sorry we won't be able to award contracts. Well, the sensible agent on behalf of his client simply sits back and gets on with other business. This is an unfortunate cycle we have to follow because of the Royal Development Seven-Year programme. It does produce these peaks and troughs and we are short on the number of schemes that are likely to come through in 2016 as a result. Thank you. I'd just like to echo Jamie's point. We have, being active in this role, we have schemes which we took at the risk of not getting a contract at the right time because you have to purchase your trees well in advance because they have to be grown for when you're going to need them. The complications of the SRDP-1, the scheme was not really fit for what it was trying to deliver. The new scheme will be better. I mean, the Forest Commission have taken a lot of what we recommended on board. This new scheme will be designed to be fit for purpose but that meant that there was a considerable risk for people who are trying to undertake this and so it was decided on many cases to delay this. So there is actually quite a lot of latent demand out there to do new planting and with the changes in the subsidies that you are talking about, the land that is probably more ideally suited to productive forestry will start to become more economically viable to go into forestry as we move towards 2016, 17, 18, 19. So there is a chance that the productive element won't be front-end loaded in the next SRDP. It will come towards the end because it actually, and that's probably better for all parties because we can go into this and design it properly. But it is a fact that, as Nigel Miller has said, we've got tight budgets and they are imposed upon us. Indeed, we hope that the minister is providing as good an opportunity as possible for you. We've got several people who want to ask questions about that, perhaps Willie Rennie could incorporate what you were just going to say once you hear what those are. First of all, we've got Graeme Deynau. I note the comments from both Jamie Fack and Ann Wally McGee indicating that there's a need for an enhanced budget, but can I ask whether they've got ideas from where else, from where in the overall rural pot, this money could and should be dried? Are they simply saying it? I'm sure that Nigel Miller would say on behalf of his organisation that they can justify asking for more. Yes, thank you convener. It does tie in with what I was going to respond to Nigel on. When I'm talking about forestry and woodlands and trees, perhaps I need to be a little bit more explicit because what Jim and Jamie and to a lesser extent Joe are talking about is blanket afforestation. That's taking a piece of land and covering it with trees, but we know through work that we've done with farmers in the south of Scotland and one of those is sitting two places down from you, where we had a pioneering scheme to put trees into the Scottish landscape at a low density parkland trees, where the farmer directly benefits and receives the funding. So, coming to Nigel's point about the reallocation, what I would be making a plea for is not to take money away necessarily from farmers, it's to move it around and to target farmers and say, you know, you're not being asked to sell land to give up huge chunks of land here. What you're being asked to do is to create upland parkland where trees are in the landscape. It's not the commercial forestry that Jim and Jamie are talking about, but it's a different way of looking at the whole issue of forestry in Woodlands and how they integrate with agriculture in Scotland. Okay. You want to follow that up, Jim Hume? Having declared an interest. Yes, absolutely. I should say that I was a trustee of Borders Forest Trust along with Willie Meaghey many moons ago and obviously was involved in some of the innovation that carried on. Following up on Willie's very point and it's part of the question, I was just about to ask, and that is on integration rather than having the old farming v forestry sort of argument. I think it would be interesting to hear about some innovative ideas that we could do about seeing forestry as a crop rather than a competitor to farming land and also, of course, with a vast area of Scotland being tenanted, where that crop could be seen as a tenant's improvement rather than something only landlords do, and therefore it's going to take away good grazing land, et cetera. I just wondered on people's views on that. Maybe you could tell us. Yes, exactly. Get it on the record. Sorry? On the record, there will be a few. Yes, I think that there's not enough effort made to work between foresters and upland, specifically hill farmers. First of all to do, as Jim says, to put trees into the landscape. What we did was we had a subsidised scheme where farmers received the money, materials and assistance to put those trees into the landscape, so that it improved upland pastures. Jim's point about working with tenants where new areas of woodland or existing areas of woodland, and we're talking about benefiting farmers here. Farmers, if they have more diversity of income through working in shelter belts or new areas of woodland, would be able to add to their income in a way that made them more resilient to changes in things such as livestock prices or agricultural subsidies. That's my top of the world. Nadia Miller? I can only base the point of that. I think that the reality is that there's been a new conflict between agriculture and forestry, I guess, over the last few years, and I've been guilty of being involved in that. I think very much because we just don't have enough land, and those 10,000 hectares seem to threaten the critical mass of Scottish agriculture. You've got that tension there, but we've got to be smart and look at ways of doing it, which allow us to work together. That's a good example. In the present moment, there are some outstanding priorities here. My understanding of the real driver for forestry is climate change targets, but maintaining the critical mass of commercial forestry to maintain those jobs. Maybe we've got to look at restocking and commercial forestry in a more imaginative way, so we get more biodiversity benefits out of it. The reality is that unless we do get that planting rate up, there's going to be more and more pressure on our very limited land mass. If we can get multifunctional solutions, what Willie is talking about on upland farms, where we can get open woodland with grazing in it, but we can also look at commercial forestry so that it's in the fringes or in glades producing the biodiversity benefits that everybody wants. Maybe we've got a solution to try and juggle a very tight land mass into the benefits that we all need within those budgets. One of the points that Confor made was that there was a limited budget for restocking and a more imaginative restructuring of our plantings. To me, that might be one of the priorities. Can we do that better to get multiple benefits? I think that a basic one for me is plant health and research. A very flat budget there, the reality is that we seem to be facing a minor crisis as far as tree diseases go, and that's maybe climate change driven, but the reality is that unless we crack that, the whole sector is under threat and therefore at this point it would make sense to try and prioritise spending, to try and push those threats back. I think that these are obviously the kind of things that we'll be taking up with the minister in due course, but we'll also be following up issues about the acquisition and disposal policy of the forestry commission slightly later in this session as well. Thank you for that. Did you have any follow-up on your question, Jim? I'll move back to the core part of the question, which will be my supplementary, so I'll do it backwards. Obviously, there are targets of 10,000 hectares per year. I don't think that in Scotland we've reached them since for about 12 years, and if we go back about 30 or 40 years, we're only doing about a fifth of the planting that used to happen in those days in the 70s. Obviously, we have climate change, mitigation targets as well, which seem to be getting missed too. With those two issues, I was wondering what implications some of the panel thought regarding missing the planting targets is having on our mitigation targets regarding climate change. Who wants to answer? Nobody? No, that's fine. Good, we can move on. Jamie Farker. Can I just quickly go back to... I think I'm going to offer Nigel Miller a job in Confor because I have a flaw in a lot of the status. Nigel is guilty of having a short memory of the delightful we-ag process that has gone on over the last several years. Firstly, Forestry Commission is doing an exceptionally good job at the moment in raising awareness within the farming fraternity by virtue of a series of workshops and seminars on wood fuel, which is a real given of really making farmers and other landowners aware of the asset they now sit on. So there is that integration going on at the moment and we fully support it. But when it comes down to meeting climate change targets, there is no better way than no disrespect to Willie's wishes for parkland type landscape. Scotland's very lucky and has a lot of it particularly in some of the finest managed lands in South West Scotland for instance on Drumlandry and that sort of place. And that's been integrated land use for a very long time. But if you want to meet your target, your carbon targets, you need to plant productive conifers in this part of the world and that will be the quickest way of meeting those. And that is where the headline figure of our planting targets is so wrong. As Joe said, we have a real problem in failing to meet the productive conifer element of the target. We are some 9,000 hectares behind already in the last two years. Graham Day is a supplementary. Just to go back to my original point if I may Mr Facker, have you identified where the additional sums of money you are looking for might come from or do you simply feel justified in saying we need more? Yes, I'm afraid I don't have the information beside me. I'm happy to send it back but I did present this in the spring when we were talking about CAP and SRDP. CONFOR did in fact make highlight from memory somewhere in the region of £40 million which is going to several different programmes, funding streams within SRDP, where in our submission those could have been either given lower priorities, lower allocations or indeed they could have been funded from other streams outwith SRDP. Just to finish on the body of the question regarding climate change, mitigation and planting targets and some witnesses wanting more trees planted obviously. There is another conflict, not just the farming versus forestry history that we have, but it's also peat-based soils versus mineral-based soils and the views that planting in peat-based soils, which there are many of in Scotland, releases a lot of carbon into the air and therefore it takes perhaps more than the life of the tree to sequestrate that. I don't know if anybody has any views or facts on that to add or subtract. The great fortune of being involved in the trees and carbon business for the last 15 years, I think, two things. One, not meeting the targets. I mean, I've just done a kind of a back-of-the-envelope calculation which I please do not take as gospel, but if you miss targets by 5,000 hectares per annum and you use a very conservative average of something like 50 tonnes of CO2 per hectare, then you're about a quarter of a million tonnes per annum down. I mean, as I say, that's not a guess just because that's taking an average of over the life of a forest. The question of peat-based soils on shallow peats—I mean, Joe will say her own thing about forager commission guidance on planting on peats, on deep peats—should not happen. On shallow peats like peat-based glazes, peat-based glazes on the borders, you will get an initial release of carbon dioxide from the soils and that will take you through to 10 years once you get canopy closure in the forest thereafter. Work that Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and Edinburgh University and others have done have shown, quite convincingly, that forest will then become a positive contributor. That question, Jim, would apply on deep peats, and I'm not going to go in there. Can I just make a point at the moment just to clarify this for all of us? What is the equation? If trees are longer in the ground, because, as you say, in this case, after 10 years on shallow peat, they're actually going to be becoming a sink, if you're planting parkland trees or shelter belts or farms are involved in this, they're looking for a crop. In fact, broadleaves and native woodlands are actually in the ground a lot longer, so aren't they actually sequestering more than the 40-year cycle of whatever it is for commercial forests? He's shaking his head. The answer is yes and no. I will explain very quickly. A native woodland in poor upland soils will take a lot longer to sequester the CO2 from the atmosphere than a fast-growing sick-caspruce block. However, you're correct. You then remove the sick-caspruce block after 40 years and you will have emissions not only because you've removed the timber but you've disturbed the soils. You would be able to say that a long-established, slow-growing native woodland is a steadier sink of uptick in greenhouse gas, whereas, with a conifer crop, you may have a failure to restock or patchy restocking or something happens, which means that it's less efficient or the long-term. We'll look forward to some references to that perhaps for our benefit as well. Willie is correct that it is an extremely complicated picture, but the reality is, with construction timber and productive forestry, you are taking material off-site into something which has a long life, a stored carbon. It's the whole purpose of timber frame building. So, actually, if you add up subsequent rotations, you can actually get to a higher carbon sequestration than you can with a native woodland because a native woodland is not generally being harvested at the moment. I think that's something we should probably look at over the long term anyway, but you will come to a point of equilibrium where the trees will start to die and regenerate and you don't actually increase the level of stored carbon on the wood on that site much more at all. There is some benefit to the improvement in the carbon in the soil, but there is very little gain after a certain point. The graph goes flat, whereas with productive conifer it will go up, down, but it is gradually climbing all the time. We could talk about the science quite a bit, but you talked about timber for construction. How much of the output of commercial forestry is actually for construction and how much is for paper-making and fence posts and the like, which don't have a long life? The average sickest bruce crop that's grown to 40 odd years, we would be looking in the region of 50 per cent of that into a log of which probably 40 to 50 per cent of that will go into stored volumes. Probably about 30 per cent of the carbon that is on that crop will end up in long-term storage. Willie, just a very quick point here. This is where it gets to the science. We know from looking at forests in other parts of the world, temperate forests, that have been around longer than our temperate forests. We have very, very, very few that we can look at, that the graph is not flat, that what happens is that the forest starts putting more gym eluded to it and they are carbon into the soil and you get very, very high quantities of stored carbon in the north-west of the states, in the north-east of the states and in European forests. We just don't have them around long enough to have the data on that. Jo, did you want to... Oh, Nigel wanted to... Ladies first. I think that was a really helpful discussion around the trees and peat. It is complicated. I wish there was a magic formula that we could bring to the committee and say, you know, x plus y equals z, it does depend on where it is and what you do with it. We do have guidance as was referred to, so we don't plant on deep peat now because the science doesn't stack up in terms of the carbon, so I just wanted to make sure the committee was clear on that. The other point I'd like to make because I didn't get a chance to come in referring back to the budget. A lot of the discussions seem to be just around the SRDP part of the budget. I'd just like to remind the committee of the work that's going on in the national forest estate in terms of integrated land use and the third of the national forest estate isn't actually forest, it is open and we are introducing starter farms exactly to try and start to tackle this issue that it's not farming versus forestry. It's all land use at the end of the day and as Nigel says, we have a constrained area of land and it is our responsibility as Forestry Commission to try and get the best public benefit from that land that we can, be it carbon, be it feedstock for industry, be it benefits for urban populations as well and I think a lot of the discussion has been around the grants that we pay to the private sector but obviously the rest of the budget is also funding that on the public forest estate and through things like research and advice that we fund as well. Nigel. Yeah, it has been fascinating to see the conflicts from the forestry sector, it's good to see all as far as carbon sequestration goes. It's an extraordinary complex subject. I guess from our point of view, these targets were actually developed when we didn't really and we maybe still don't totally understand carbon sequestration and I think since then there's a lot of evidence that shows that permanent pasture systems are actually pretty good as well even on mineral soils rather than just peat ones and maybe in the next I suppose period of development we should actually be revisiting the scientific evidence and looking at our land mass in a fresh light to see whether how we should manage it for the best outcomes and certainly there may well be prescriptions for grazing management which actually improve its performance and I think we need to up our game on carbon management not just in forestry but in farming as well and I think we can do that. Well we know that we're in a climate crisis and that you know it's very difficult to take these things over too long a term we're going to have to stick with the targets at the moment. The minister yesterday was answering about the gas emission targets you know and we recognise that they're becoming tougher measures every year so we all are in the view that we have to to have as good information about this as possible so I think this discussion was worth having and Nigel's points are correct. We'll get more chance to answer some of the detail as we go through. Graham Day, next. Thank you Kivir and I think we've really strayed into this already but just to get a feel for your general views on whether the government has got the balance right between funding for forestry and funding for agriculture, taking Moe Migueille's point on board from LL. So the balance, can we have a short answer on this or is there a thesis? We're perfectly happy with the balance and I think you know the relative has been pracing different cuts, there's no real business development programme at all in the nag culture except for new entrants and in your priority catchments, you have a big change there and you fall another spending or cuts another spending so you know that every sector has felt pain and you know maybe that's right given the spending round we're in, it's a tough spending round that's reality and I think you know the balance, you know the forestry sector at least have got a flat budget rather than a cut one. Jamie. I don't disagree with Nigel, I think the balance is an inevitable one at the moment. One of the barriers to new planting has been not trying to be positive but a farming mentality that says I don't want to go there and in any case I'm getting good money to go on doing exactly what I am doing. It's the way in which the support is delivered to farmers is therefore critical and we have just had clarity and we're very grateful for that that in this programme if a if a farmer decides to plant he will retain his eligibility to have direct payments and that is vitally important so that he's got this this choice now of how he may then could I hope and they will start to wake up and realise there's a real opportunity on a lot of upland farms to contract their stock onto a slightly smaller area and plant trees which will be a very profitable thing for them in the future. That leads me very neatly into the area of questioning I wanted to just explore briefly and I absolutely understand what Joe Harro was saying about the the national forest estate and the whole range of land use options that it has to look at and manage and encourage but the fact is at the end of the day it is up essentially it's up to the private sector to invest in and manage the commercial forestry expansion that has been targeted under the Scottish forestry strategy and the main mechanism of supporting that is through the woodland grant scheme. Now consistently ever since this Parliament began and I'm sure before Confor have been adamant that the amount of funding going into woodland grant scheme is not going to deliver the target set by the forestry strategy and is there anybody who disagrees with that statement? We have £36 million in the draft budget for woodland grants and for reasons that were broached earlier on relating to SRDP-1 it would seem that the proposed planting for next year of 2015 is around about a third of the target well I think we're looking about 3,000 hectares which now that to me suggests is going to be a bit of an underspend in the in the budget for next year is that correct? Joe, yes please. In terms of the stuff that we formally know about versus the stuff that we informally know about so the figure that Confor put in their submission about the the 3,000 hectares in the pipeline that's the stuff that we formally know about however because we're in this old transition year and the scheme the new scheme hasn't opened yet but it will open in 2015-16 is we're anticipating getting more in when we open the new scheme so the 3,000 is the stuff that we formally know about but we are aware there are other schemes coming through as well so we would anticipate it being higher than that next year but given the sort of 12 to 18 month period of preparation a lot of that initial preparation has been done because our conservators have been working with agents to get the schemes to a point where it's it's easier for them to put those in. Is it possible to speculate what you think next year's likely new target might be? Excuse me just have a look at my notes if you just give me a minute in terms of whether we've got that at the moment we're aware the the team is saying that we it's in the region of about 2,000 hectares more than you already know about so we're looking possibly 5,000 hectares. Yes but obviously individual owners may take different decisions about when exactly they put those in I think this is the challenge of dealing with we're here today to talk about a one-year budget we've got a seven-year SRDP we've got spending review next year forestry is a long-term business so you know where we are in that cycle and the way we need to manoeuvre between years to respond to demand makes this quite a dynamic budget to work with that's where we are at the moment and we think that the 30 million is a reasonable anticipation of what we will need to meet demand next year 36 million sorry but even if if sorry thank you for that but even if you even if you double the likely you see you've got 3,000 hectares you know about even if we go up to 6,000 hectares that's planned that still tends to suggest there's likely to be an underspend in the budget is that right I think it depends on what what type of planting they are because the planting rates are different I mean all of our modelling suggests that we're about right but to be honest we do have to respond in year as well that this is our best guess as we stand at the moment with a scheme that hasn't opened yet with schemes that we don't know the exact detail of going through so this is this is our best guess as we stand at the moment and just sorry before I see a lot of other people wanting to come in but just just to try to finalise this section of the of the this discussion it Mr Colchester spoke earlier on about this whole programme of planting over the next seven years being sort of back loaded do you do you still have confidence that the targets under the Scottish Forestry strategy are likely to be met over the SRDP period I know we're only looking at a one-year budget I think it's really challenging right that's that's fine I know there are others I've got a supplementary but what are you McGee on that point then at that point and relating to the point that Graham asked about I make no bones that I think there is an imbalance between the forestry and agriculture budget my big caveat on that would be as I stated at the beginning I would I don't have a a pat answer about where the money would come from but my target would be arable farmers my natural constituents are in in the uplands and are hill farmers and I think that the whole conversation about planting planting targets would be a more smooth and confident one where there are more incentives for hill farmers to to be recipients of funding that came from the SRDP arable pot and went into a greater incentive to get them to put trees in the ground I think it's possible the rates for the what used to be the the farm woodland premium if they were upped farmers would look much more kindly on planting more trees you had a supplementary yeah well it's a further the further question if I may convener but Dave Thompson wants to come in as well was on this point if he wants to come in on this point then I can go on for the next one well it's really just to get a view from the panel while I was talking there about hill farmers and upland and so on my constituency Skylach Aber and Badenock with lots of crofters and so on just to get a view from the panel on what's happening to help to encourage forest crofts and and to get crofters etc you know into this mix rather than just farmers in more prosperous areas you know in Scotland I mean there is there is crofting forest there's two sides to this there's woodland crafts and crofter forestry and we're supporting both and working with crofters organisations on both of those at the moment so definitely an area this is so multifaceted and the issues in different parts of the country throw up different different issues and what one sector wants one sector the farming community suits their needs in one area might be different in another area but we are working with with crofters groups on both of those aspects at the moment. Is there any in terms of what what crofters would be able to grow given the the good land in crofting areas is probably quite often equivalent to your upland land further south and the poorer land up in the hills and of course there's a lot more deep peat and stuff as well what's the sort of general guidance or maybe there isn't any in terms of what crofters should actually be planting is it like conifers or is it and I'm not sure they are suitable for say wood burning stoves or as suitable as other woods I mean what's going on in terms of directing them towards the most profitable type of forestry you know in these very difficult areas that Chris Marsh produced a crofting forestry handbook a number of years ago now and to be to be honest you say the most profitable it's really what will grow and what will grow tends to be stuff like downy birch willows it's not it's not profitable but it would be quite feasible to to run a firewood business of some of the stuff that you grew on your croft and it would be on the in by ground the out by ground very often is is not that suitable for anything other than scrub you know thanks for that and I see Nigel wants to come in as well I just want to make sure that there's plenty of encouragement and cash going to come to the crofting areas as well as the other areas you know this is kind of obviously straying off budgets a little bit having you been with members on sky who've gone through this process and some have had your significant benefit but other members of crofting townships have found it quite problematic in that you know parts of the common grazing have been allocated to regeneration and what's regenerated is exactly that a bit of willow and a bit of birch in patches and that's it yet you know the planting grants mean that they can't actually go back in there and graze around the trees even after 10 or 15 years and that's a real issue for maintaining croft viability and I think if we're going to go down this sort of crofting route you know we've got to have the flexibility to actually maybe recreate the environment but actually once you've done that open it back up again to multiple land use and you know displacement of deer also been a huge issue in sky with you know with planting regenerative real problems for crofters so you know this is something that's got to you have balance about it and I think you know the weag process hopefully means that planting programmes in the future will be smarter but if we look at areas like Lairg where the crofting communities you'll really be under a lot of pressure and we've seen a lot of I suppose loss of activity certainly in my lifetime out of that area in the last sort of 20 years 20,000 years have come out of there so no wonder the layer sales isn't as big as it was now you're getting the stage that there's a critical mass issue there now there's land there that could go into forestry but if a lot goes into forestry that crofting community will die and is actually these weren't poor sheep these are north country cheviots which actually were worth quite a lot of money going through Lairg so you know this weag process has got to protect these communities and make sure that the good your land around Lairg and some of the good hill land you know goes back to sheep and by all means look at your strategic planting there but you know but the weag process is absolutely vital if that community is going to survive thank you to go tester the technical issues on Crofton up in the north west may be different to some of the low ground in the order the southern uplands but the fundamentals of how the revenue comes in in these particular pots are the same and it's the partly the problem of the fact that you get paid to farm or you get paid to forest it's the actual fact as we should be doing of being paid to be paid to run that business in a rural environment it's a rural business it may involve a bit of forestry it may involve a bit of what firewood it may involve sheep it may involve cereals but it's a rural business and the more inch crater they become the better we will start to deliver the true all the rest of the items in the forest strategy okay we've got Jim Hume thanks thanks very much for your enthusiasm convener just on that very question i know i realize that more specific just a very specific one to be clue estates who are neighbors of herself down in the borders and with that and respecting what we've been talking about integrating before what would be clue estates look favourably upon their tenants planting trees as their own crop and thereafter when that tenant maybe has to leave for to go on to better places or or for whatever or retiring and look to reimburse those as as like a tenant's improvements is that something that the clue would consider or approve the problem isn't in the principle the problem is in the mechanisms at the moment that are in place to actually able you to do that as a forest i have no problem whatsoever with that particular thought of the tenant actually planting ground that we want but it must be an agreement process you know if the tenant forestry is once it's turned out once land has turned over to forestry under the current legislation it's in forestry forever so if the if the tenant is going to be leaving at some point in the future the farm the landowner is left with having forestry there so there has to be an agreement process but i personally would not have a problem with entering into a dialogue so that actually fitted all parties many many of the plantings in the southern uplands are on a shelter belt basis they are there for the benefit of the farm so if the tenant is getting a more benefit out of strategic planting with some of that that's got to be of the benefit for everyone so the answer is yes providing we can find the mechanism to work properly okay work to be done perhaps yep thank you very much and i like very much of us at the next part to his question please do yes enlightening discussion thank you very much convener 36 million has been allocated to woodland grants i understand that 30 million has the cabinet secretary has decided that 30 million of that should go to new planting specifically leaving some 6 million over which many would argue is not enough to cover everything that it's been asked to do given the discussion that we've just had on the importance of of integrating forestry and farming and agro forestry schemes can i ask how it is justified that particularly the establishment of agro forestry systems is not going to be open to grant us to financial support over the period of the budget we're looking at that forestry infrastructure will be equally excluded and that a tree health grant which in this day and age tree health is surely top of the list and i just wonder whether joe in particular could address that particular situation of course we checked it that check this the forest health the tree health will be open next year so that's um i can be assured the committee on that um so that one will be open as far as the agro forestry um one as you as you can imagine i mean i i we've worked extremely hard to get a smooth transition from the old srdp to the new one i came in on the tail end of the last transition and i saw the damage that had done both to my own staff and to people around so i'm aware of the pain the last time we've worked really hard and the sector of work really closely with us to try and make this one as smooth as possible however i'm sure the committee is aware this is a very very challenging thing to do have to make decisions about which ones we open first agro forestry will be open but the decision was taken that that's something that will that will open a bit later but we wanted to be able to open quickly with the the new wooden creation and with the with the tree health um and the the forest infrastructure those ones will be open at the start of the new programme that is our intention the other ones we've had we've had to delay and we had to take a decision of which were the ones to prioritize but they will be opening it's just appearing in this budget obviously we're only looking at one year so i'll hope hopefully that gives you some reassurance i'm certainly reassured that the tree health yes support will be available because i think that's obviously very topical at the moment obviously thank you thank you okay um i want to ask the forestry commission and the other witnesses comment on the profit and loss situation of truly commercial forests within the national forest estate in comparison to private sector woodlands how can we compare these can we compare them what are the ballpark figures in terms of profit and loss that to me or would you like i think you would start yes the forestry commission was the this this issue of what is a truly commercial forest particularly when you're talking about public sector forestry is a very tricky one because our whole reason for existence and the reason why we have a state forest service is for delivery of public benefit and as a result we managed the estate to deliver net public benefit now the forest enterprise which is the agency that runs the national forest estate have done a pretty detailed analysis of the estate to say okay are there any areas of woodland on here where on balance the net public benefit of the state being involved you know there isn't something important about them in terms of the net public benefit and anywhere we could say actually you know whether this was in the private sector or in the public sector it would still be delivering the same public benefit and they're the ones that we've been looking at in terms of repositioning and I think this this committee's looked at the repositioning of the national forest estate previously so in terms of saying what is a truly commercial forest in a in a state forest service where the objectives are to deliver multiple benefits and multiple public benefits it's very very difficult now I did I thought this might come up now you have the budget which is a few pages in terms of the details of the forestry commission accounts which I'm sure Jamie's very familiar with um we publish our accounts each year which go into huge amount of detail around the operating costs um that we spend on the estate but trying to say that this block of woodland here is commercial and this one isn't I couldn't go to any area of the public forest estate and say this is truly commercial I also think it's a bit risky as well because as we've already heard when a land manager is deciding what to do with a piece of land with the trees on it often they're wanting to get many things from that from that woodland um and their objectives will be multiple as well so this doesn't only apply to the state to the state sector so I think the premise that you that you could identify and account for commercial forestry separately is problematic however we do try to do it so the way that um we manage the um the the accounting system with FE when I'm in discussions within my directors in discussions with um their chief executive about the balance what we say is that their sustainable forest management activities which is the harvesting and the restocking is managed in one way and then we and then we have a separate accounts for the other added value stuff like the um the woodlands in around towns program branching out mental health stuff the recreation things and that is shown in the accounts clearly um you can get the information on what we call the sustainable forest management accounts so um I think there is a lot of that the activities are pretty transparent financially although that wouldn't come through in the budget because that necessarily has to be constrained to quite a small document yeah we're just coming to that and uh did jamie farker want to kick in on this one however um I am familiar with um the lightweight document that um Joe's just waved at us um takes a lot of trees it is not actually a particularly simple document to interpret but I I do accept what what she says but it's it's the next you can't with the possible exception of going into the heart of of somewhere like Estelle Muir um you it is very difficult to just pick out a a woodland or an ownership of woodlands and say that's productive or that's not you can immediately look at um a stand of trees and you can rub your hands glee and think this is 10 grand coming my way every hectare here and then you can look at another stand and think I'm going to have to put how many thousands of pounds into that to just to to rejuvenate this and and and perhaps get nothing back it's it's not an easier equation but public benefit in the round in managing commercial woodlands um is being delivered by the private sector as much as it is by the national forest estate the difference is the waiting that you would give in the national forest estate to some of the other agenda items which a private owner might not be prepared to invest in like mountain biking facilities or um a particular access on this sort of thing okay this could become more complicated than I thought but anyway willy miggy statement of the the difference between the public sector and the private sector I'm not quite sure what has prompted the question but certainly the forest policy group and the the constituents of people like our members who are neither in the confor camp maybe have one foot there or have dialogue with the public sector we would see them as as very different and as Joe outline delivering very different things I think one of the the things in terms of the complexity is that what happens with the forestry commission is that if you are building a new sawmill and or a biomass plant then the commission um may be something that you want on your books for a certain percentage of your supply because you have the surety of continuity of supply so the straight profitability per hectare may not be there but the commission fulfills different roles in terms of supporting rural development and or industrial development in a way that sometimes I wouldn't say always but sometimes the private sector may not be able to do just because of pricing and or continuity of supply but we have the situation that the inheritance of the estate of the forestry commission are in areas that probably should never have been planted if anyone was thinking about how they were going to be harvested you know when I think about areas in my own constituency and those of Dave Thomson's in particular so you know given that that's private and public though that's both absolutely Jim Colchester. I'd just like to add to Joe's point I mean with the clue we're almost a microcosm of the same problems that forest national forest estate has in the fact that we have some that you could call commercial woodland and but we also provide an awful lot of other woodland but we do provide mountain bikes paths around and around villages etc and we have to cross subsidise that from the commercial pot so I fully emphasise with the problem that Joe has within FE and trying to do that on a national scale very tricky because even within the lifetime of a crop its priorities can change so that's that the real question I think is is forestry commission forest enterprise operating efficiently on those commercial woodlands and from my outside looking in I'd say it's not doing a bad job. That's a ploddart indeed. Nigel Donne. Thank you Ben I'm just wondering if I could pick up on your suggestion that some forests in the wrong place and could the panel enlighten me? Has anybody ever actually looked at the map of Scotland, noticed where the forests are, noticed where they aren't and said were they really ought to be here? I have. I know the question. Are we planting in the right place? Anybody looked at the grand plan it's called a map of Scotland. On forestry it is that forestry goes where forestry can and agriculture no disrespect agriculture has dominated in terms of finance and land values so forestry was always forced into the uplands into the more marginal land onto the land that Ron was just talking about there in terms of the flow country and or areas that were highly unsuitable so you could look at it and you could say yes it's on some unsuitable land where would you like it to be? Well perhaps it might be on on good quality arable land close to centres of population but the fact is it's not going to go there anytime soon. Or it could be on grouse moors but that's a matter especially in your constituency Nigel Donne. Anyway I want to ask the forestry commission about this question. There are increasing numbers of renewable projects that you are facilitating. We haven't found out what the profit and loss account is for them given that it's got a responsibility to communities that get community benefit out of them and I see long lists of projects which have been undertaken. Can you tell me where that appears in your accounts? We can write back to the committee if you would like me to do that. Well it's quite an important part of income stream. Do you have any idea about a ballpark figure? Yes we're talking about an income of around 11 million next year set against timber income of around 70 million. So it's a growing aspect of the income and basically it's to try and broaden the to make the national forestry state more resilient I suppose in terms of the timber cycle, timber prices we know go up and down like this, public sector money goes up and down like this and when we're solely reliant on the timber income stream that's not a particularly comfortable place for for us enterprise to be because when the timber income drops they've got nowhere else to go other than back to government for the money. So the strategy has been to grow the income coming from the renewables but I'm happy if you would like us to write back to you on that and point out to the section in the accounts if that would be helpful. It would be very helpful indeed yes thank you. Claudia Beamish will take us on in this area I hope. Thank you. I was going to say good morning good afternoon to everybody. In the written submission from a Scottish policy sorry the forest policy group there's a highlight that the forestry commission's current disposals programme might be used to encourage new entrants to forestry and I know this has started I understand and in in your submission which the highlight just for speed about communities and but also people of and I quote ordinary means in that so I wonder if firstly Joe O'Hara you might comment on developments both in terms of sale and leasing and also if Willie McGee or other members of the panel would like to comment on how this can be taken forward. Okay this is this is slightly sort of moving on from I think from from the budget because there's some things which is about it wasn't there's not a budgetary constraint there's been some legal constraints and supporting things like woodlots for which we we have been working very closely with the woodlots association and putting money into the woodlots association to try and develop that we're also looking at whether there are opportunities with for example the community empowerment bill to overcome some of the the legal barriers that there might be for creating woodlots on the national forest estate so that's work in progress but it probably wouldn't you know it doesn't appear as part of the budget there's also the work on crofter forestry and woodland crofts as well that we're we're working with stakeholders to develop that I think the other thing that again over the last year we've really been looking at is ways of lotting up the forest sales so as I mentioned earlier the review of the estate those ones where the net public benefit doesn't warrant the land remaining in public ownership when we bring those on to the market it was pointed out to us that although it might get the best return for the taxpayer by selling it to a single owner there were maybe some other agendas about diversifying land ownership where we could also address this so we're looking at when you when we are marketing properties now we are looking and consulting local communities and looking for opportunities to sell them in smaller lumps so that they are made more available for a wider section of the community it's not strictly a budgeting issue but that's how we've been trying to address that issue we're very keen to and I've put it in the written evidence 3.1 there's a lot made of starter farms and I think that's great and Jim Humes just walked out the door but we started that thinking in the borders he might come back he might come back yes and we would like to see starter forests so if the commission is buying land and it's having a starter farm there's no reason why it cannot have a starter forest that concept should be fairly and squarely on the table secondly you're correct that we've been working with forest enterprise it's been a very productive relationship they've been looking at sales of forests from the northwest down to the central belt and how to put those into smaller blocks rather than selling them off as one large area subdividing and selling them off now we see great public benefit in that and we'd like to you know to say that forest commission has performed admirably in our estimation the wood lots wood lot is different to lotting a sale that is the where we are pushing for leasing of areas of forest land now we have had discussions with paul wheelhouse we've discussed this with forestry commission we've made submission to the community empowerment bill we would really like to see forestry commission grabbing this one and saying we will have half a dozen pilots across scotland and we can do this within some jiggery pokery that doesn't mean that we run up against what is the the forestry act and that's something else that we put in the submission the forestry act is the better part of 50 years old it's no longer fit for purpose and i think scotland should have its very own forestry act sounds like a very good item for our legacy paper for 2016 yeah so but but marx ff10 for the forestry commission very high well here we go we have to deal with both disposals and acquisitions in this next sort of period so disposals first of all inevitably you don't do the disposals you use land agents in many cases whose interest obviously for you is gaining the best kind of prices to add to your your total cash budget but is it the best way to deal with these things because land agents very often are in a position usually to be attempting to do a different kind of job because communities and certainly the the issue about small pieces of land which are no longer required really should be targeted specifically at local groups rather than at commercial sales and indeed we had the issue about the sale of Russell the way in which that was handled was less than happy in my constituency and i'm wondering if you could reassure me that you've got a grip of whichever land agent you're using to give them an idea of how you see the general public interest being served as well as the cash interests in any disposals yeah so i'm not sure if the committee remembers but last time i was here was almost exactly a year ago and i just just started the job and rossel was just kicking off when that all when that happened and i think we have learned a lot from the the rossel experience effe definitely have from what i've seen in the way that they i'll just backtrack a bit in terms of forest enterprises role as custodians of the national forest estate they managed the estate in the interest of the people of scotland and i'd just like to be clear that the money that's generated from these sales is really there is a very strict process for any money that's generated from the sale gets reinvested in the estate in order to deliver more public benefit it doesn't go into our cash flow and it's not used to fund revenue so i just wanted to remind folk that that's that's where this money goes um some of it is going into fund starter farms some of it is going into some of the more urban areas and some of it is going to help with some of the more community activities so it's just to be clear that that's where them regenerate more money the money is then going back to deliver more public benefit i think that's an important principle however um what we did learn from rossel is i think um the sensitivity of the handling of these sorts of land transactions and being being more whilst generating the best value for the taxpayer also being much more sensitive to um to local concerns we have had sales that have gone through subsequently we took rossel off the market and it's gone back on to the market um and i would i would hope but i'm going to be interested to hear your your take on it in terms of what you've seen happen since then um in terms of the way that sales have been handled in in this way because i have seen a change in the way that forest enterprise are handling it the instructions that are giving to the agents to act on their behalf are much clearer on this and they've been much more careful about the way things are marketed and lotting is definitely appearing um is there anything specific well i i realize that this could become quite detailed on a specific thing which could probably be dealt with uh in terms of process another point because the budget is what we're here to to focus upon but um the point is that some of the people in scotland are part of the the nation in local areas who look for very clear communication and indeed hope to gain access for example to show that the national forest land scheme is actually working on behalf of local communities because you know if we did an assessment of how well it has performed so far we might well find that we're not as happy with that as we could be and that indeed those elements related to the needs of communities where land becomes available with trees on them or indeed forestry commission owned land that is not with trees on them is is disposed of it's quite important to a lot of people and i think we could probably that's my comments in general about this but i think the public estate is going to have to be a lot more sensitive about the way in which it deals with these things and this is not a criticism it's just an observation with a barb um no i'd rather we we better move on from that but my point is that land agents are there to make a profit so the instructions which you say are more specific are very welcome indeed so thank you for that we're right uh alec ferguson i think you've got something to do with now here with regard to acquisitions okay start off the very simple question can i ask what the what the graph is of the forestry commission's acquisitions budget the acquisitions well how much is set aside for acquisitions at the moment it's at zero because we haven't been able to generate enough revenue from set so at the moment that that pot is sitting it's at about breakeven um we as i say we have this mechanism for ring ffencing any money that we generate from disposals in order to fund acquisitions where we are at the moment is that we have acquired land because of some of the sensitivities around um nfls and other issues with with community sales and and other issues we haven't been generating as much revenue from disposals as we might otherwise have done so where we are at the moment is we have a a portfolio of sites many of which haven't been planted yet i was speaking to forest enterprise this morning and i think the figures we've got about three and a half thousand hectares of land that has not yet been planted um that's associated with new acquisitions um but we need to get the money in from the disposals in order to get that new planting done and that's those hectares contribute to the 10 000 target as well so so this this thing we don't um the acquisitions and the disposals are inextricably linked so so really your acquisitions budget is dependent on disposals is that yeah and is that likely to continue to be the case yes we've we've reviewed it we have met the um the target that was originally set and we're reviewing it at the moment but we are but we are finding for exactly all the points that rob's raising um disposals are becoming and also because having reviewed the estate we've done we've we've identified the sites where there is a low public benefit those have been sold the ones that are left we are getting to the point where actually the estate is now most of the woodlands in scotland that are delivering greater net value net public value so disposing of them gets more and more problematic but equally what that then means is when we want to do new things on new land with the public forest estate we don't have the the money generated in order to do that so they're two sides of the same coin okay welly McGee very quickly on the on the disposals and acquisition um again we've been working with forestry commission over their um the disposals scoring scheme if you like how how do you make a decision on what it is that you sell and one of the things that we um are hoping to to pursue with forestry commission is a is a positive attribute in other words where communities would benefit in terms of rural development or or access to timber rather than what is at present a disposal of if you like the the uneconomic the rump the the marginal the fragmented and and that's a that's a dialogue that we're continuing to have with forestry commission well we have to do with the disposals question more at the sharp end i mean it's argued that forestry commission um is able to outbid local bidders for particular pieces of land and clearly where an agent is selling on behalf of a private owner they're happy to get the highest amount that's possible from that land but there isn't a mechanism to see that local interests actually are taken into account in this market transaction and where you're trying to maintain your budget and so on so in terms of your acquisitions um what do you do to try and make sure that you're not cutting across the potential for local people to actually use that land who already are resident in the area this is a very tricky one for me to answer and i think i would have to refer to the chief executive of forest enterprise in terms of what they're doing in this regard at present but as i said to alex as regards what's what's coming up we have very limited budget at the moment for doing acquisitions anyway we do go through a lot of processes before we decide to bid on something and as far as mechanisms that they have in place for checking that i'm afraid i'll have to come back to you in that or ask forest enterprise about it because i'm not sure if that's a how that relates to the budget well i think it does in a way because you're saying there are 3 000 acres that have not been planted and therefore that is a store of land so the acquisition of more land at the moment which you might be able to afford could affect local interests. Nigel Miller mentioned the Lerg area i think he was meeting a very very large area of my constituency but i can think of an example a small example in the area near to Lerg where you know a local family were extremely disadvantaged by the way in which a private sale went through and the forestry commission was able to bid more than they were for a particular piece of land which would have allowed a family business to expand so anything you can give us back from forest enterprise about that would be very useful. I have a lot of farmers in Caithness who are extremely upset about the string of sales that have taken place there and acquisitions of what could have been sheep farms that Nigel Miller was discussing earlier on and therefore i think some some evidence of this for the committee would help us in our budget as well as our more general understanding of land use if you can provide them. Jim Colchester it's a bit of a shame that the leasing scheme that forest enterprise tried to do didn't gain more speed than it has i think it's still a viable and a valued way of doing it because it does remove this competing for land problem because you're actually dealing with someone who's wanting to plant on that bit of ground farmer, state owner, whoever it is it does remove this pying land and i think a bit more work and a bit more tweaking of that and i think you'll actually start to see more a better option that way to actually deliver the planting target that we actually want right after the trees in the ground. Yeah, Nigel Miller sorry just really to you know echo your concerns convener you know and you've given some really you know key examples i think of you know where these pressures have ar risen and i think anybody who's you know driven around Cathness recently must wonder you know how some of these decisions have actually been rolled out and you know similar things have happened in the Scottish border so it's it's not just you know the northern part of Scotland and the reality is that you know that the pressure on planting has actually raised the value of permanent grass and rough grazing in marginal areas that's the reality so that all farming interests are now competing against that a very much higher baseline thank you that's all handy to know but we'll look forward to some more details if we can from joe about these matters that's very good right yourself thank you from here grim day but apologies for not asking this a little bit earlier it picking up on joe hara's point about the disposal's funding acquisitions on a ring fence basis that being the case what does the substantial income from renewables go on? Sorry you're getting into the details of effort do you mind if i just refer to my business plan in terms of we are trying to encourage forest enterprise to move the national forest estate into a position where it can provide a growing level of public benefit to the people of scotland at a reducing cost okay so that that's what we're trying to do with the estate and we've already talked about the number of different benefits that can accrue from the estate be it to urban people rural people and everyone in between the means by which we can do that are varied in terms of the way that we can generate revenue and where we can spend it the revenue that comes from the renewables certain aspects of that will go into improving the return that we get from renewable investment but most of it will go into the delivery of other public benefits from the estate it goes into their net bottom line so if you see at the moment we are subsidised we're paying forestry commission scotland 21 million forest enterprise scotland sorry 21 around 21 million per year that's the net subsidy that goes from from government all of their other activities they fund through income generation including the renewables okay so the money that's coming from the renewables is goes into the pot for expenditure on the sort of the recreation facilities the biodiversity work the starter farms the investment in forest infrastructure some of the liabilities we have for example in terms of wrong trees in the wrong place and liabilities to do with steep slopes so so that element i'm pretty certain that that element they don't ring fence that that's just for renewables that goes into the pot and it reduces the amount of public subsidy that we are having to to go from the forestry commission budget to run the national forest estate is that okay thank you for that yes please if we want a slightly different subject confor in the written evidence question just what exactly is funded under the programme costs header i think they've suggested five uh possible headings contribution to forest research funding timber development timber transport including the scotland strategic timber transport scheme tree health and development of the wood fuel sector i wonder if joe hara can confirm that they're right in that assumption and perhaps outline for us what else comes out of this 21 million pound budget header the biggest item that's missed on that is that includes the funding for all our conservancy staff so all of our regional offices which is the bulk of our our staff in the regions who do advisory work administer the grants and and all of that side of thing is also it's not particularly clear jamie i can understand that that's that's the biggest chunk of it that that doesn't come out of that thank you in light of that can i ask gmf5 does that satisfy conforce concerns in any way um yes i i am that's a relief because there was a big hole otherwise my understanding of the sort of sums of money that might have gone on the headings i i'd identified the one thing i was actually uncertain but is it right that it does include some money of two forest two forest research within that or is that tied up with the plant health so yes it does yeah so to be clear that the five headings that they have confor have suggested are accurate yes yes largely i think it was just the programme costs there's a whole lot of stuff in there um but it does include the the running of the conservancy offices which i think doesn't come through particularly clearly does anybody else want to comment on that would be comfortable could i just reinforce how vital the the the three the five things at least that i have identified i mean those are immensely valuable to continuing confidence in the sector and therefore the sort of investment that you're seeing at the processing end of of our industry yeah just very quickly i mean i guess from from the forest policy group standpoint um we appreciate the the funding that comes from forestry commission to support the scottish woodlots association um and other items of funding um for if you would like community development community empowerment they've got a dedicated member of staff in forest enterprise who does this i would like to put a marker down and say i would like to see more funding allocated within the commission to the very question of diversification of ownership management of woodlands using local communities just for the record claudie abimage rspb in the written submission states and i quote that they consider the prioritisation within the budget allocation for forestry in 2015-16 lacks sufficient focus on meeting the biodiversity needs of scotland and the scottish government's commitment to them and that's both within srdp and the management of the national forest estate do any of the panel have any comments on that please jimmy placard i will be corrected if i'm wrong but i believe that agri environment measures have received a very considerable boost in terms of the srdp budget and rspb i'll have a very very significant influence on the on the way in which the support measures under srdp are given i'm surprised by that comment frankly um and i would certainly disagree with my limited experience on some of the specific projects such as black gross and that's the thing the work is being led through um through fc and presumably all bearing the cost as a result niger miller my views are pretty similar but i think they did draw a sort of tension to the actual threat of the various plant diseases and how that might impact on habitats and i think that was a valid issue and i think it's uh you know it's probably you know having read both conforce and the rspb's uh submission you know to me that's a common strand and probably from the agriculture point of view you know uh maintaining the plant health seems to be pretty crucial at this time and uh you know flatlining that the research doesn't seem particularly sensible and if there is some slack in the budget over the next year or so because of lower planting having a flexibility to actually try and uh you know take this uh challenge uh head on uh so we can actually try and push it back you know would make perfect sense and they have some real examples they're obviously about uh you know you know native pine forests or or uh supposed historic pine forests and and blares and things like this you know key parts of our habitat but it's it's far wider than that it's it's uh uh you know ash and other trees as well so you know i think that was a point well made but certainly the uh the overall thrust i would have been the same place as others thank you for that um Cara Hilton you have perhaps a question at the end um yes um in Alex Ferguson already touched on this before to do with tree health and Claudia Nigel's given a bit of an answer to um yeah in the written submission rspb scotland highlighted the work of the forestry commission carried out in relation to threats posed by forest diseases and confer also talked about the wave of tree health issues so i would like to ask the panel do you think the size of the budget for tree health is sufficient going forward or do you think it needs to be increased no it's not sufficient yes it should be increased okay anyone else uh there's nothing like saying it should be increased so we've got to find out where that comes from i guess but she put the words Jamie we we said in and uh and have been saying for two years now that we believe forest the forestry budget on its own is not necessarily the right place to expect all this all the money to to fund plant health issues um that there are you know for those of you who've been into the heart of Galloway or or up into parts of the flow country the devastation from the two respective diseases is is on an environmental scale of a horrific proportion and if you look at the problem that we are facing in in the flow country of trying to move two million tons of timber at the moment on a road that we are restricted to just 10 wagons a day we are not unless we can move the whole discussion sideways into another another box where we can draw down some other money we are not going to solve that problem and you are going to have an environmental nightmare up there with more trees on the ground more trees disease but this is probably not the the time for this particular conversation with me but it is a it's a problem that is really quite desperate i understand we are talking about that this is talking about perhaps parts of the other budgets that need to be helped in order to create this possibility but we do notice in my constituency areas of roads which are not trunk roads that have been designated as trial areas of road to see how they're wearing under the increased forestry traffic at the moment and how we actually fund that to answer which which helps you know would would be very interesting for us to discuss but we're going to have to discuss it with other people so thanks for raising that did anyone else have something to say jezz joe ohara for i'll just come back on it um it's always difficult when you see a fairly high level budget um proposal for one year the amount of work that's going on on tree health underneath this this is more than just about the money um it's absolute top priority for our research budget i think we're also um grappling with the definition of a new type of forestry this is a this is not an issue just for forestry commission it's an issue for the practice of forestry and where are we going with it what should we be planting when we clear the large for example in that that's been diseased in galloway what should we be planting and some of the expenditure is hidden so you asked about the programme budget that the the 21 million in there a large chunk of that will be for for research some of it for the timber transport fund which is helping to fund um some of these issues to do with with transport so it doesn't appear in the headline and the other place that obviously is spending a lot of money is um forest enterprise on the national forest estate because most a huge chunk of the large that was hitting galloway was actually on the national forest estate land so some of this money that's been generated from renewables and and timber is going into to address some of those issues down there so it's all it's not doesn't always just come down to what the budget figure is. Nigel miller, you know, obviously I've made a comment before so I really just reiterate that that's my position but I think that you know Joe's comments about you know the actual impact and and Jamie's you know it is pretty significant and the reality is you know this is about priorities and you know if we're looking at you know different approach to planting you know now's the time to actually come up with that different approach before we plant again and and create the problems so you know if it means dragging money into this budget to actually accelerate that work and installing other work that to me is how you prioritise because you know you're going on without taking or cognizance of where we've got to you as a mistake. Jim Hulme? Yeah, thanks. If only money did grow in trees, I think all their answers or answers would be answered. Yeah, just come back to practice and budget and different approaches and obviously plant health and some of you have talked to this about before off the record but we have seen a tendency to use very large nurseries sometimes in lands not in Scotland. Within the budget has there been any develop which of course can lead to plant diseases jumping very rapid areas because you're not buying from a local source, you're buying from out with Scotland. So is there any budget development regarding developing local nurseries where you can buy your trees from a local nursery therefore reduce the risk of bringing in disease from much further away? The nursery sector is a small but hugely significant sector in forestry and it often gets forgotten about because people think about forests and I would say it's a small but crucial part pretty exposed with all of this both in terms of fluctuating planting figures and in terms of what's happening with disease. We have worked very closely with them, we had the nursery resilience plan and extra funding that went in over the last couple of years to help nurseries move. I think the realities of large scale planting and I'm talking about 100 hectares plus type planting is small local nurseries can't service that demand because they need to be able to operate at scale in order to be viable businesses large local nurseries. So it is a sector that we are working closely with, there are key parts in the chain, they're particularly affected by the plant health thing, we have new and stricter plant health controls in place and the way that we're enforcing those. So I think you're right to a light on the nursery sector as a key player in all of this. Thanks. Okay Jamie Farkar yes finally. Could I just say that the Confor has a special nursery producers group which meets on a regular basis and we have now having an annual meeting with Forestry Commission and Forest Research which is proving very very helpful at this moment when we are facing the justice of the problems you're talking of, Jim. If it would be helpful I'm sure I can get the group to give yourselves a briefing of what they've been up to. That would be very helpful indeed, thank you. Well we've had quite a detailed session here, it's an important one because I don't think we've actually looked at forestry in recent times specifically with regard to the budget and every sector that we look at wants to get value for money and to deliver value for money but that's a very detailed and varied issue which you know the budget throws up and I'm glad that we've been able to do this and I'd like to thank all of our witnesses for giving us their opinions because when we question the minister we'll be able to reflect that varied set of interests that there are so I'd like to thank the witnesses but particularly I'd like to thank Nigel Miller because it may well be his last parliamentary appearance before he submits office. Nigel has applied his sharply focused leadership to the NFU on behalf of farming and crofting and we thank him very much for that and it looks as though he might even get a job in confor but that would be ironic but nevertheless thank you all and thank you Nigel in particular for that. I will close this meeting just now by saying that our next meeting on Wednesday the 12th of November the committee will take evidence from stakeholders on the draft budget and will consider the goose petition PE1490 following responses from the Scottish Government. I close the meeting now.