 Rossi Macdonald ond a gwaith agelwydag a'r Ffairfairyaeth Rhaol Gweithredeithas Gelf fron y Ffairfairfairfair i'r Gweithredeith Gwaith yn y cyflawn y Gweithredeith Gweithredeith inniad longio i'r Ffairfairfair i'r Ffairfairfairfair i'r Gweithredeith Gwfriadol i'r Ffairfairfair i'r Ffairfairfair i'r Gwfriad Grwyddon i'r Gweithredeith i y myd yn gynnwys eich hwyl i'r byw y dechrau i bôn i'r Mfairfairfairfairfair, i mwywyr bernwyr, ond byddai ei gael i rhan o herfodol i gael i'w ddwyliadau. Fel y cyd-dweithiau, ddim yn gweithio i'r cerddydd, ac yn fawr, byddai Robbie Carnahan, y directoraeth ffordd gredinolion gyflym Nathredigor Scott, Dr Marnie Lovejoy, head of evidence and environmental law from the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, ydym ni'n ddwyliadau, Dr Gwyn Nid, yng Nghymru Cymru, yw'r cooordinator o Poliys Scotland, Ross McLeod, yw'r head of policy in Scotland for the game and wildlife conservation trust, Ashley McCann, yw'r legal adviser for Scottish land and estate, Duncan Orr Ewing, head of species and land management from RSPB. We have Max Walenski, campaign manager from Revive, and remotely we have Jamie Whittle, who is a committee member for the Rural Affairs Subcommittee from the Law Society of Scotland. We have Ian Thomson, my apologies, the good welcome Ian. First of all, Jamie, if you wish to add to the conversation, if you put an R in your request a sweet box in anyone else, if you raise your hand, I will bring you in. Can I say from the outset that you don't have to respond to every single question, and if someone said something that you agree with, probably given the time constraints, if you just say that rather than going over the question again, I'll kick off with the first question before going round the table, and it's probably one that most will want to answer. So it's a simple question. Do you agree that licensing is a proportionate response to the issues identified by the Warrity Review, and can it resolve the issues about raptor persecution, and if not, what are the alternatives? Who would like to kick off? I'm going to pick someone. Ian Thomson. Aris Bibi Scotland has been campaigning for licensing of the grouse shooting industry for at least a decade. We have a long history of involvement in assisting statutory agencies, particularly the police, in the investigation of wildlife crime cases. For the last 25-30 years, we have been the only body that has collated and published the figures of raptor persecution on a UK-wide basis. Obviously, over the last 10 years, the Scottish Government has been publishing similar figures to ourselves. The situation is very clear. Raptor persecution has been a persistent problem, and there is an overwhelming weight of scientific evidence, witness evidence, the results of police investigations that links the majority of raptor persecution crimes with the grouse shooting industry. Successive Scottish Governments have taken various steps since devolution to try to bear down on the problem, vicarious liability, pesticide disposal schemes, introduction of the facility for Nature Scott to revoke general licences, and, although those steps have all been welcome, raptor persecution continues. We feel strongly that that is both proportionate and a necessary step. The same body of evidence that Ian mentioned from the RSPB also shows that between 2007 and 2021, the raptor persecution or illegal killing of raptor has decreased by nearly 75 per cent. That is a massive progress. The illegal killing of raptor raptors is fully covered by the Scottish Law, the Wildlife and Countryside Act. We therefore do not think that it is necessary that we introduce further regulations or a licensing framework. I endorse what Dr Lovejoy has said. I have a great deal of respect for the work that Ian and his team do at the RSPB, but the reality is that the successive measures that the Scottish Government has introduced to tackle the issue have done their job. However, putting the question of necessity to one side and the other part of your question, convener, is related to the proportionality of licensing. In assessing proportionality, the law requires there to be a rational connection between the content and the design of the licensing scheme and the same, which, as you alluded to in your question, is to tackle raptor persecution. The scheme that is proposed in this bill fails on that rational connection test because it goes much further than is needed to tackle raptor persecution. It allows NatureScot to refuse licences, to take licences away for an unlimited time for conduct that has nothing to do with raptor crime, not let alone crime at all. It allows NatureScot to remove licences for conduct that is less than criminal. Putting it in plain terms, the SLE's position is that the bill goes much further than is needed to tackle a problem of raptor persecution on Gwysmurs to the extent that there is one. That makes it bad law. Bad law leads to unintended consequences, so it is incumbent on the committee to consider narrowing the scope of the licensing regime to address that. Ian, before I bring you back in, Ariane Burgess has got a supplementary question. I just wanted to pick up on the apparent decline, but the figures that we have in our papers that were provided by Police Scotland show that there are 88 offences over those five years. I would be interested to hear, Ashley, do you consider 88 offences to be a small number or do you have other evidence to show that raptor persecution is really in decline? 88 offences are 88 offences. That is 88 killed raptors. I do not have the benefit of the statistics that you have got in front of you, but do those say that all the evidence points to them all being committed on Gwysmurs? What is lost in this debate is that raptor crime, like every other form of crime, is not committed by one single class of people for one single motivation. For example, if you look at the official wildlife crime in Scotland report, the very latest one that was published as for 2020 to 2021, there were 12 raptor incidents. That is not prosecution, that is recorded reports to the police that have been investigated. The majority of them related to incidents in Dumfries and Galloway, and there are no Gwysmurs in Dumfries and Galloway, so I think that it is really important to contextualise those numbers and not allocate all incidents to one land use. That would be wrong. Iain Thomson It is very easy to focus in on absolute numbers of bodies that were found. What I would say is that the people who are committing crimes against raptors are not wanting to be caught. Those crimes are taking place in some of the remotest areas of Scotland where witnesses are few and far between, where evidence is easily disposed of. We have found, for example, satellite tags wrapped in metal thrown into rivers. We have found bodies buried on the ground. Professor Newton mentioned in his evidence last week that the crimes that are actually being uncovered represent very much the tip of an iceberg. What is a much clearer indication of whether raptor persecution is truly declining or not are the populations of birds of prey on our Gwysmurs. Species such as henharrier and Peregrine continue to be largely absent and certainly not continually breeding successfully. I think that that is the clearest evidence of anything that raptor persecution continues unabated. I am going to bring in Ross McLeod and then Dr Lovejoy. I just wanted to comment on the conservation status of golden eagles, which since 2015, when the latest framework report came out, indicated that they have achieved the threshold of good conservation status at over 500 pairs. It is the case that, in certain circumstances, golden eagle chicks are being translocated to the South of Scotland golden eagle project, and that surely could not happen if those populations were not in robust status to enable that to happen. I agree that there is some patchy information about henharrier figures, for instance, but there is another framework. I think that the framework report is coming out this year. I think that we ought to be led by the evidence to see what the situation is with those and other species. Certainly, I think that the Warrity report has galvanised interest in understanding that raptors are part of a functioning ecosystem and we have seen considerable change in attitude, which may not yet be feeding through into official statistics. Dr Lovejoy. Yes, I would like to come back to the point of proportionality. The fact that criminals are hiding their crimes is inherent to them being criminals, isn't it? That isn't unique to wildlife crime and it's surely not unique to criminal offenses that happen on managed grouse moors. That's just a fact. We have a decrease in illegal killing of raptors of nearly 75%, which is a really positive outcome. I don't think that there is any justification to bring in a legal framework and a licensing framework that is so far-reaching and so intrusive as the bill which has been put in front of us. It is so far-reaching and I'm sure we will come back to the point, for example, of the suspension of a licence based on the mere existence of an investigation. But it is so far-reaching that it breaches with the most fundamental procedural guarantees a person should be able to enjoy in a democratic society and that can't be proportionate and it can't be right. So if we look at and Ashley mentioned it, if we look at the quality of law which is proposed here, if we take it out of a very controversial debate on whether we like driven grouse shooting or shooting in general or not, but if we take the bill which was put in front of us out of that context, we all have to agree that it needs work. It is not yet at the stage where it can be implemented into law. I'm going back to last week's evidence session and Professor Ian Newton said, as we understand it, the situation that persecution of birds of prey has not declined substantially in the year since the report was written. In fact, during the year with the most lockdown, which is 2020, the rate of killing or the number of cases reported by the RSPB was the highest for this century. In other words, when there were fewer people in the countryside, the level of persecution was certainly increased. I won't go into the figures. I'm aiming this specifically at you, Ashley. I'm sorry. Marine and Ross, do you accept that there is a persecution of raptor problem in this country? I accept that the crime of raptor persecution is being committed in Scotland. What I don't accept is that it is a problem that is exclusive to grousmure management. I come back to the point that I made in response to Arianne's question. The deterrent effect of the regulation that has already been brought in has reduced the instances of those crimes on grousmures to a level that means that the Scottish Government has done its job. There are a number of motivations for killing raptors. As I say, the recent statistics—we can only go on the most authoritative statistics, which are the ones contained in Scotland's wildlife crime supports—suggest that it's not actually happening on grousmures to any great extent. With respect to Arianne, a lot of what he is saying is grounded in suspicion. The sector is effectively being asked to prove the absence of crime. How do you go about that? If the evidence that we are hearing states that in the vicinity of grousmures there is a death of breeding pairs of peregrins, henharriers, et cetera, is the causal effect anything else other than persecution? Can you give me an example of that? I will stay in my lane. I am not a scientist, but I understand, for example, that some birds of prey are very territorial. In areas where golden eagles are doing very well, you may not see as many other words of crime, but there are people who are more well equipped than me to answer that question. Does the scheme go further than it needs to to address the issue of raptor persecution on grousmures, if you are right in saying that there is one? The answer to that is yes, it goes much further than it needs to, and that means that this measure that is proposed in the bill is disproportionate. That is a key point. Police Scotland is in partial, however. We want to reduce crime across the board, and my life crime is no different because we support the licensing scheme in general terms. I can provide some clarity around some more recent statistics and figures for the committee. Since the publication of the Warray to report in 2019, there have been 11 crimes against birds of prey reported happening on or very near to grous shooting estates. Of those offences, there have been broken down into four poisoning cases, six shootings, and one mure burn, which resulted in a nest disturbance. Those are crimes that have been recorded. Over and above that, though, there have been 20 suspicious cases where there has been insufficient evidence to conclude that a crime has definitely occurred. I appreciate that suspicion is quite a subjective term, but I think that we have been very fair in how we classify a suspicious incident, so it is things like sudden stop no malfunction, as we call it, of satellite tags. I know that you will be far more expertise in this area of business than me, but for my knowledge of satellite tags, they will have a general decline in battery life or they will show signs of malfunction usually prior to stopping to transmit. We are talking about incidents where a satellite tag has literally stopped transmitting, which we consider to be suspicious. It is birds of prey carcasses that were found by, say, a member of the public. By the time police officers have arrived in the scene, the carcass has been removed, which could suggest that someone is potentially covering other tracks. Again, it is suspicion as opposed to recording a crime. It is things like birds of prey carcasses that have been found and we are yet to hear back about forensic results, PMs, toxicology and things like that. We are of the belief at Police Scotland that raptor persecution is an on-going issue. Arguments can be made about the extent of that, and whether rates are increasing or decreasing, but it is still on-going. I think that is key here. In terms of Dr Lovejoy's point about wildlife crime, it is very different than any other criminality. I appreciate what you are saying about all criminals trying to cover up their tracks and things, but wildlife crime is very different in the sense that your conventional policing methods, door-to-door CCTV inquiries and witnesses do not have these things with wildlife crime generally. They are happening in very, very rural areas and are very hard to detect. I appreciate that it is the minority of estates that are potentially being involved in this kind of incident, but those who are involved in it are talking to people who have got a vast, vast knowledge of their land and of where they can potentially do things that could be out of view of the public. It is key to remember that it is incredibly difficult to detect, so it is widely accepted that the figures that we have could be an underrepresentation of what is actually going on. I will bring in Dr Lovejoy and then Ross McLeod. Thank you very much. I would like to respond to that directly. All crimes that happen in a rural setting are facing these problems. That can be crimes committed by farmers, can be related to the use of pesticides, can be related to poaching, for example, can be related to hair coursing. All crimes in this setting are difficult to investigate and difficult to prosecute. However, so this is not limited to what happens on a managed groundsmore. What we have to bear in mind here, the fact that a criminal offence is difficult to investigate, the fact that law enforcement is difficult doesn't give the state the right to infringe in fundamental procedural guarantees an individual must be able to enjoy in a democratic society. We do have the presumption of innocence. A suspicion is not a criminal offence prosecuted and a person found guilty. I think we have to be very, very careful with that. If we again, if we take that out of context, there would be public outcry if we'd have these provisions in any other criminal offence. If I would suggest that we take a driver's license away based on a suspicion, it's actually not even a suspicion. It's even if the relevant authority is satisfied, is not satisfied that the criminal offence has been committed, they can suspend the license. Imagine if we would suspend driver's license even though we are not satisfied that the driver has committed a criminal offence. It's unthinkable. The other problem is if you are highlighting rightly how difficult it is to investigate rural crimes with all the investigatory power the police has, imagine how difficult it is to disprove such a crime for an individual who has none of the investigatory powers. That's the crux of the problem here. We are dealing with a bill that is, as Ashley mentioned, it's bad law. It is not drafted in a sensible way. It is disproportionate. It is infringing in rights. We just need to take it out of the context in the political discourse and we can all see it has to be worked on. We're still on question 1. I'm going to try and bring this to close. I'm going to bring in Ross, Max and then Rachel's got a supplementary before moving on to the next question. The GWCT is a research and education charity, so we're not experts in raptor crime as such, but we do want to see sensible recording. One of the downstream effects of the Warrity report, which mentioned it needed to understand the conservation status of three key species of raptors in or in the vicinity of Managed Moorland. The effect of that is, for us at least, to try and establish a basis on which that could be measured because putting a line around an area of Moorland is quite challenging, but we've done that. The reason for that is if you look at NatureScot's special heritage zones, they're quite large areas. They cover more than just Managed Moorland, so we need to be a bit more refined about that. What the GWCT has established is a series of area transects in different parts of Managed Moorland in Scotland. The effect of that is twofold. First of all, it's concentrated minds on understanding what is out there. It's performing a useful purpose in that regard, so we understand a little bit more. It has engaged the keepers in understanding exactly what we're recording out there as well. In the longer term, what we're looking to make sure is that data is shared in a safe space with other parties who are interested in collaborating about the conservation status of raptors. There's a positive aspect that has come out of Warrity already, and that's what we are focused on. I'm going to bring in Max. Robbie, I'll bring in because I haven't heard from you yet. Thank you, convener. On the question whether it's proportional and whether it will work, first of all, while it will work, we certainly hope so. There's been a wide body of evidence over many years. The pattern of behaviour suggests that, yes, there is a link between raptor persecution and gross moor management. There have been steps, as the Government official said, in the first session that has been taken, which might have had an impact, but it certainly hasn't stopped the issue from taking place. We certainly hope that it will work after many years since our very first First Minister, Donald Dure, called the issue a national disgrace. We're still here in 2023 discussing this issue, so we hope that it works. As to whether it's proportionate or not, that's a real question, but we're talking about huge proportions of Scotland's land being managed in many separate ways. The central issue to this is the maximising of gross numbers here. Revive is a unique coalition of environmental, animal welfare and social justice organisations that have come together to look at gross moor management, because it unites us on the issues of animal welfare and environmentalism and social justice, large tracts of land managed so that a few people can shoot some gross. In the situation that we're finding ourselves in, we've got sessions looking at this, the trapping of wild animals, hundreds of thousands of animals killed so that more gross can be shot for sport, whereas large tracts of land being burnt so that more gross can be shot for sport, which is at the heart of the issue here. It's wholly proportional that, as a country, as a Government, the Government actually regulates those huge tracts of land. The very fact that it hasn't been regulated up to this point in any significant way is indicative that we need a substantial amount of change. Will it work or not? The legislation looks good from where the revive coalition is standing in terms of bringing the next step of reform. We certainly hope that it does its job of ending raptor persecution. The primary purpose of the bill is to try to address the blight that is raptor persecution in Scotland. We absolutely support that raptor persecution has no place in modern-day Scotland. The issue about understanding the statistics is that we know that raptor persecution is still occurring and that it is still related to management of moors for gross. Although the official crime statistics might not reflect that accurately, we know that there are still unoccupied territories of some of our best raptors in and around gross moors. There is ecological data that is helping to inform the bill, which does not seem to be getting much air time. In the context of existing licensing frameworks, we have five general licence restrictions in place at the moment, based on intelligence from the police all and around gross moors, all to do with trapping offences, shooting and poisoning. It is still pervasive in Scotland, and I do not want to underplay the significance of it. The second point about the ambition in the bill is that it is a mistake to look at the bill just through a raptor persecution lens. We are in a nature-and-climate crisis, and what we can do with those provisions is up the standards of everybody involved in managing Scotland's uplands for nature and climate. We will come on to that, I am sure, as the discussion continues. Us, as a licensing authority and as a regulator, we have been advocates of better regulation ever since we took on licensing functions from the Scottish Government. We can be proportionate and we can be targeted and we are trying to increase accountability here. My final point is that we are not really talking about criminal burdens of proof in this space. We are talking about civil burdens of proof and we have lots of experience of that, where we have lost trust and confidence in those operating under licences. We can act accordingly. Finally, on the opening question, I will bring in Jamie Whittle. A couple of comments, if I may. One of the comments that the Law Society of Scotland made in its consultation response at the end of last year and in May was that a licensing scheme in of itself may not be the ultimate deterrent and that it is important to couple it with enforcement and information sharing. A second point that I just wanted to make, which was picking up Robbie Kernahan's point a moment ago, is that we obviously sit in this context of climate and biodiversity emergencies and there is potential further land reform coming through that has been consultation on that. One of those has been to look at management plans more widely for larger land holdings. This may come into discussion later on, but it is just to mark that as a point that, in terms of drafting law, whenever law can be made clear and consolidated so much, one of the real chapter of wildlife law in Scotland is that it is very fragmented and that can lead to complexity and understanding. The more that those elements can be dovetailed together, the better. I wonder if I can address this one initially to the police in the Law Society, but then anyone else can chip in. It is about the list of relevant offences that are set out in the legislation that we are talking about for which a section 16AA licence might be revoked or suspended. What do you think about that list of offences? Is it too short, too long? What should be in it? Is it workable? Since you are sitting next to me, David, I will start with you. Police Scotland does not really have a massive opinion on the list of relevant offences. It is important that anything that is included in that list of relevant offences relates to good Grousmure management. Ultimately, with the list, I believe that there are links in terms of the legislation in the relevant offences that could tie in with Grousmure management. I am probably not an expert in terms of the kind of links there, but I will just refer something very quickly. In terms of those, we have obviously the likes of the protection of badgers act. I think that there is some indication that the likes of badgers and things like the European protected species could potentially pose a risk to young Grous as they are being raised and released. That is part of the thinking behind that, I believe, but Police Scotland is not involved in including those offences. It is important that they relate to Grousmure management. Police Scotland does not have a massive opinion on that. I am just driving it here. I appreciate that there is not much that you can comment on, but just looking at what is being proposed as a police officer in terms of its workability. We will investigate those offences, regardless, ultimately. The only difference will be that we would investigate those offences and would notify Nature Scotland of our investigations as it is progressing, and a decision could be made about whether it is proportionate enough to restrict a licence. It would not really affect Police Scotland as such, because, as I say, we will investigate those offences. If one of those is reported to us, one of the relevant offences is reported to the police, we will carry out investigations thoroughly, regardless. The only difference will be that we notify Nature Scotland of our apologies who would then look at whether it is proportionate to restrict licences. I think that a lot of it comes down to whether or not the bill is intended to protect wider wildlife and Grousmure management, or specifically wrap their persecution. I bring in Rachael for a supplementary on that. That is just quite an interesting point that you made there around badges. I just wondered what evidence that Police Scotland has to suggest that anyone who operates a Grousmure is culpable for the persecution of badges, for example. Is that included in any data that is included within the raptor persecution data? Certainly not that I have a hand at the moment. Obviously, as I say, Police Scotland, we are not involved in including these relevant offences. So you do not agree that that is related? I believe that there could be certain links. For example, in terms of mammals, there is the Wild Mammals Protection Act. I do not know this as a fact, but I have heard that there are links between ticks that can be found on mammals that can then pass to Grous and can pass disease and things like that. I know all that, having worked in the countryside and campaigning to protect against ticks to stop Lyme disease. The key point here for us to understand as a committee is the evidential basis that you are inferring that there is a link between badger persecution and Grousmure. Is that correct? Not that I can evidence right now in terms of statistics and figures. But why did you say that? Obviously, it has been included for a reason. Obviously, as I said, Police Scotland, we are not involved in including this legislation in the relevant offences. So I do not know who has included it, but they may be better placed to discuss why it has been included and the proportionality of that. As I have said, it will not really impact Police Scotland. I think clearly that there is a linker that it will not be included. I do not think that they would just have pulled this legislation out of nowhere and included it in the bell. Well, perhaps somebody around the table could. Can I bring in Dr Lovejoy? I am in the privileged position to work at the interface between law and ecological scientists. I have some statistics that might help here. Badgers do not tend to live on Grousmure. It is not their preferred habitats. Badgers live in arable land, grassland, woodland, but they do not live on bog and heath. Actually, in 2006, a Scottish Badger Distribution Survey was done. Out of the eight habitat types surveyed, heath and bog were the least preferred by badgers. In terms of figures, per kilometre square, there is 0.019 badgers set, so they are simply not there. So there is no link, there is ecologically no link between crimes against badgers and managed Grousmures. Grous are not released, by the way, so I think there is a little bit of a confusion between reared game birds and wild game birds. But what it shows to us is that parts of this bill is based on stigma rather than reality. The same applies to hunting with dogs. There are no fox hunts on Grousmures. Thanks, convener. Just coming back to Alistair Allen's initial question, which was around the list of relevant offences. I'd like to address my question to RSPB Scotland. RSPB Scotland recommended in written evidence that the list of relevant offences that could result in licensing being suspended should also include offences under the Animal Health and Welfare Scotland Act 2006. I'd be interested to hear why you take that view and if you've got any examples that would help us understand it. It basically wrapped a persecution as a symptom quite often of a wider pattern of offending that occurs in some of these intensively managed areas. We agree with the relevant offences included, and we suggested that animal welfare should also feature, because, for example, the use of crow traps on intensively managed Grousmures is widespread, and often—and we have substantial evidence that we've passed to Nature, Scotland and Police in the past—that shows that a significant number of these traps are misused or abused—in other words, contrary to the terms and conditions in the general licence. Often, those offences include the suffering of animals, hence the animal welfare provisions. Grousmure management entails a significant amount of predator control. I think that most of that we acknowledge is legal. Whether the scale of that predator control is suitable during a biodiversity crisis is perhaps not for the scope of this bill, but, inevitably, unfortunately, there are also misuse of traps and snares as part of this. Having a wide scope range of offences that will tackle the pattern of offences that is not just restricted to rapt a persecution is entirely appropriate. Mr Allan responds, I think, from my perspective. We need to think about how land management takes place in reality. Grousmures do not operate in isolation. They operate as part of an estate that will have integrated uses for farming, forestry and agriculture. Quite a lot of the wildlife management is undertaken by the same staff, so, although farmers might not be a significant issue on Grousmures and themselves, quite a lot of the management activity will be around integrated land use. From our perspective as a regulator, if we have lost trust that anybody can comply with the Badger's Act or the Wildlife Agency Act or the Habitat Regs, we have to ask ourselves the question, are those the kind of people that we want to issue licences to for all of those purposes? It is really important that we look at the context of what is happening in the round and not just through a lens of rapt a persecution. I think that the wide scope of relevant offences in this bill does is effectively say that Grousmures operators are being held to a much higher standard in law than any other type of land manager. It has discriminatory effects. Now, if you are going to interfere with rights that have got huge economic value, that support jobs that are essential to operating a business, then you need to have a good reason, a good evidence-led reason for that interference. There is absolutely no evidence that the wide range of offences that do not cause harm to raptors that are included in this bill are occurring at any higher rate on Grousmures than in any other land management context. The desirability for an additional deterrent for these crimes is not enough to interfere with rights. It needs to be evidence-based. Those crimes are already covered by the law. They are already covered by really punitive civil criminal sanctions, as well as, as Robbie has alluded to, the ability to remove general licences. The effect of this bill would be to say, if you commit a crime under the conservation legislation referred to on a farm, you will continue to be able to operate your farm. You will have the benefit of only suffering a penalty if your guilt has been proved beyond reasonable doubt. Two miles down the road in a Grousmure, a completely different story. You can have your licence taken away without any proof to any standard of your guilt. Robbie talked about the civil standard of proof being what underpins this bill. It is patently not. The bill says in terms that licences can be suspended for an unlimited time where the regulator is not satisfied. What that means is that there is no proof whatsoever. That is draconian. Thank you, convener. I was going to say that if the focus of the bill is much more on raptor persecution, then my thought is that, in the interests of fairness, it is important to make sure that the relevant offences are focused on that end point. However, as I mentioned in my last set of comments, there was a wider contextual aim set against wider legislation of looking at biodiversity issues more generally across the countryside. I can see much more how that wider set of relevant offences and pieces of legislation could fit into that context more easily. However, there is a danger of not being fairness if there is a different level of treatment that is being applied to Christmores versus the wider countryside, and that just needs to be taken into consideration. It was just on the lowering of the standard of proof that Jamie Whittle, in your opinion, violates any articles under ECHR. I have not considered specifically the human rights position before, so I would need to consult with colleagues at the Law Society and I am very happy to respond to the Parliament separately on that. What I would comment on the standard of proof is that the way in which we have read this is that the civil standard on the balance of probabilities would apply to the powers given to nature of Scott when it considers the various options that it might have of a warning or a temporary suspension or a revocation, and that would be quite analogous with other licensing regimes where that civil standard of proof has been applied. I understand that it is the same with licensing for other wildlife licensing instances. Separately, aside from perhaps a revocation or a warning by nature of Scott, it may then escalate into a different layer of enforcement where Police Scotland and the Crown Office have brought in. That would be a separate exercise where the criminal standard would come in against the context of wildlife and countryside acts. In answer, I think that it does fit. We are going to come on to HCHR a bit later, but if you have a very brief comment on this. Two very brief comments. First of all, whether we are in the realm of civil law or criminal law in the view of the European Court of Human Rights will be assessed autonomously in the European Court of Human Rights. So just because we call it a civil sanction doesn't mean it is a civil sanction under human rights law. So they will look at, for example, the intrusiveness of the sanction imposed. I think that brings me to the second point. We have to be very careful to compare this licensing framework to other licensing framework in this sphere. So, for example, the general license framework to control pest birds. To control pest birds is not as important as to get a license to take grouse. So what we are looking at here is a license which effectively determines whether a person can go on with their professional in their business or not. So we are in a completely other sphere and we are looking at completely different legal interests. So I think that partially answers the question regarding the ECHR, but we'll come back to that. Ashley, it's very brief. Just a point of clarification on what Jamie has said. For the avoidance of doubt, we are not talking about the civil standard when we're talking about suspension in relation to section AAHC. We're talking about no standard of proof lower than the civil standard. We're talking about the regulator applying punishment where it's not satisfied just for the record to clarify that. On that point that Ashley Cain raised there about the standard used and that the penalties used and you described that as draconian, I just wonder if you have a view on the fact that Professor Wherity gave evidence to her committee and essentially, as far as I can recall, I'm saying that he couldn't see another way of dealing with raptor persecution other than a licensing scheme. A licensing scheme predicated on the civil standard of proof, that's not what we're talking about. The Scottish Government consulted with the public on a licensing scheme that allowed penalties to be opposed where natureScot, as the regulator, is satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the crime has occurred fine. That is one proposition. That is not what is on the face of this bill and I think that one of my concerns having listened to the evidence sessions so far, looking at the Bria, looking at the policy memorandum that underpins this bill, is that there's a real disconnect between what the Scottish Government is saying this bill does and what the black letter of the law actually says. The bill, as proposed, allows licenses to be removed where there has been no proof to any standard, not the civil standard. So, if we're getting a licensure and regime fine, let's make sure that it is improved so that it's workable so that we don't lose those benefits to Scotland that Professor Newton talked about last week in terms of biodiversity, investment, wildfire mitigation etc. We need procedural safeguards and that's what I'm really hoping will come out of this discussion today. How do we improve the bill if licensing is happening? How do we make it workable? I just want clarification from nature, Scott. You said the licence would be suspended if a crime has been committed. Can I ask, would you use the term crime or just say a breach of the terms of the licence? Is this important to distinguish between civil and criminal? So the key principle underlying all of this is on the balance of probability. I'm asking you is it there's been a breach of the terms of the licence, would you use the term crime because that seemed to me to move it into the area of criminal responsibility where it's beyond reason, etc. I just want clarification. Can I maybe stop with you, Christine? I'm going to get Karen to ask this question because it will be covered in her question. I was wanting to dig a bit more into the suspension of licences and what was behind that. I do note that we have heard that it may be for suspicion but my understanding of it was when there was an official investigation has started and not just mere suspicion. Just for clarity, the DVLA can revoke or suspend a driver's licence when there is an official investigation under way. I was just going to talk a bit more about that and then ask in NatureScot where they feel that they would regard an official investigation under way and feel that it's appropriate to suspend a licence. Just to try and provide some reassurance to members around the table how I envisage this work in practice and our experience today tells us, as proponents of better regulation, we will make interventions based on the best level of information that we've got in front of us and that needs to be robust, otherwise we will be challenged. I can never envisage a situation where we will suspend a licence based on no evidence. Again, in constructing a framework of how this will work in practice, as we did for general licence restrictions, we will work with state codes to say that this is the type of evidence that we will consider. These are the type of circumstances that we will consider, suspension or revocation or modification. We will not construct a licensing framework which we are not comfortable with and scrutiny. Having done the same for general licences when we constructed this framework, we were taken to digital review. The process that we put in place about robust evidence, about an appeals mechanism, about the right for people to be heard and the right to respond based on our assessment of the evidence, all with student scrutiny. I cannot envisage a situation where we will not try to replicate that through this bill. Would I be able to ask Police Scotland, Detective Sergeant Lynn, what would you clarify what you would deem as an official investigation? I've heard some different points being made about that, about whether it's the point at which someone contacts the police if that's an official investigation under way. I suppose it entirely depends on the incident itself and how it unfolds, because very quickly you could identify that there is no crime, so therefore there is technically no investigation. You could identify that very quickly. You could even potentially identify that based on the text of a call from a member of the public on receiving an incident, reviewing it, thinking that there doesn't appear to be any criminality here, going out and very quickly establishing that. So it's difficult to give a hypothetical answer, because every situation is very different. However, that does often happen. An incident is discovered that there's no criminality very early on, in which case a full blown investigation doesn't really commence, whereas that very well could be the point where an investigation commences when someone contacts the police and it obviously goes from there. So just to clarify, there would have to be evidence of criminality before an official investigation was launched? Well, you can carry out an investigation, no, not entirely, because you can carry out an investigation and criminality can come to light during that, or at some point you could realise there is no criminality. So it might not happen at that immediate point in time. It could happen initially when the call comes in, it could happen a few hours, a few days. It depends entirely. Again, it's hypothetical, so it's very difficult to answer considering the wide range of calls we deal with. But at any point you could establish criminality, and that's, I suppose, the purpose of an investigation to establish criminality and to deal with it thereafter. Is there such a thing as an official investigation? No, not really, because everything's recorded, it's all, everything's on systems. As soon as someone contacts the police there's an incident which needs to be updated and disposed of accordingly, so that needs to be disposed of. We work on the Scottish crime recording standards, so basically we need to write off incidents as such when someone contacts the police to report something. Now, whether that be a crime report has been raised and established, or there's no criminality, or for example in maybe chair protection matters, social work will be moving forward with this, so you can write off incidents in different ways. So technically there is no such thing as an official investigation, because once someone contacts the police there is a paper trail there that needs to be finalised. So immediately someone contacts a police with a complaint which involves some sort of criminality, an allegation of criminality, that is then an official investigation? Yes, technically yes, because it needs to be resolved in one way or another. Now it could be very, very quickly that that is established, there's no criminality, in which case it would be an incredibly short investigation. So there's no timescales to an official you're suggesting? No, it's very quick or very long. It could take time to establish whether there's criminality or not. Okay, thank you. Dr Lovejoy. Thank you very much. I think this discussion highlights exactly what is wrong with this bill. So if you read the letter of the law it clearly says that a licence can be suspended, unlimited in time, even though the relevant authority is not satisfied that a criminal offence has been committed, if there is an official investigation and we heard that in some cases an official investigation is as much as phone call to the police. This is exactly the problem of this bill and with all due respect for people affected it's simply not enough to get an informal reassurance from Nature Scott, which says well yeah but we won't apply it in that way, we will be much more pragmatic. You might be much more pragmatic but the certainty in law which we require has to reflect that. That's how laws should work in a democratic society and that is why that needs to be worked on and I just want to add one point if I may. The problem with an official investigation is that we are operating in a sphere which is very highly politicised and there are unfortunately incidences where people who are opposed to driven gross shooting are meddling with traps, are meddling with snares and are staging evidence to show that there might be a criminal offence where there isn't and I just want to highlight one figure. In 2014 the Scottish Government has commissioned BASC to conduct a study on how many incidences of meddling with traps and snares and vandalism they can record. So we got in only one year recording of 193 traps and snares being meddled with so the fact that someone opposing this can call the police start an official investigation is a reality, it's not a hypothesis. Okay thank you, I've got Rachel Hamilton a supplementary on that. It's all been covered thank you but I would like to that part but I would like to press David Lynn on the definition of an official investigation. So if as has happened because we heard it on Monday a gamekeeper walks into the police station with a dead raptor what happens at that point because does that become an official investigation? Yes. Sorry apologies. Well because what is the process because there was the police dean that there was no criminal activity at that point there was no official investigation so is it inconsistent your approach? There wouldn't necessarily, and suspicion wouldn't necessarily fall on the gamekeeper in that case however it's difficult to speak about these situations having no experience with the incident itself because I could have been decisions made behind the scenes that I'm unaware of. I would probably expect there could have been reasons not to go down this route but I would expect that there would be a post mortem or some sort of toxicology if a raptor's found with no obvious indication of reason of death. Well there wasn't in that case. I think we've established that an investigation is an investigation whether it's an official or not. I want to move on. I'm going to bring in Ashley and then Christine for a very very short supplementary. Just to give an indication we are more than two thirds through this and we've got another 10 questions to ask so we need to keep the questions and the answers as succinct as possible so Ashley and then Christine. Thank you, I'll be brief. One of the points that I think has not been stressed enough is that suspension is not, as the bill team confirmed in evidence, a short term penalty. There is nothing in this bill in the black letter of the law that limits suspension to let's say a period of weeks. Now what we've heard over and over again prior to the introduction of this bill in fact is that police investigations into wildlife crime such as raptor persecution are very difficult and they can become protracted and take a long time to complete. That means the damage caused by suspension in the interim will be permanent. Now it's all well and good saying that Nature Scott as a regulator will be even handed in its approach but the reality is that the ease with which licences can suspended will mean that this bill has disproportionate effects. It will mean that long-term investment into Gauss-Mure management is no longer an attractive proposition and I have to say as someone who works in courts, appeal rights are very little comfort in that respect. There is no obligation on Nature Scott to share any information with the licence holder in advance of that suspension being imposed. Not in fact is there any obligation to notify the licence holder that they're considering suspension. How then are you supposed to challenge that decision in the courts? I think that that would be very difficult on a practical level. I don't think that this provision really does provide access to justice. What we heard from Professor Colin Reid last week was that this really is a very, very big step to take and it is a trigger for suspension that he would imagine Nature Scott would use very, very rarely, if ever, to use his words. My respectful suggestion to the committee would be that the balance ways in favour of not including it, this scheme already materially adds to Nature Scott's toolbox by providing the civil standard of proof for suspension and revocation. This investigation trigger goes too far. I'm completely muddled here about the levels of proof because we're using the term criminal when we're referring to licensing, which is a civil matter with civil remedies and breaches. So, if I just put this proposition to sort of understand what would happen, the licensing scheme is in place. The police receive a report that there has been an incident. They check it out. Let's assume there is absolutely sufficient evidence that a crime has been committed to meet the standard of proof in the criminal courts and the owners being on the prosecution. I take it you would do you. By past Nature Scott, simply go to criminal prosecution. Don't answer just now. That's my first one. The second one is you get a phone call, you do an investigation, you don't think they're sufficient to take it to the PF. So, do you then take it to Nature Scott, who then look at what you have and they decide whether or not on civil balance of probability to suspend the licence? That's what I'm trying to get into my head because the word crime is being used in your context and in your context, and I need to know and I think land owners would need to know as well how does that work. So, there you go. That was quite short. Robbie, would you like to... I appreciate the complexity and the interplay in all of this, and I do think there is a little bit of each case on its merits in that if there is an investigation starting, we're in fairly regular contact with Police Scotland about the nature of any potential offences, and of course we would also look at the context in which that's taken place, so we're not acting in isolation. We will have intelligence and background in the history and an understanding of whether or not this most recent investigation continues to remove our trust and confidence that an operator can act with the intention and spirit of how we're issuing licences. So, if we have lost trust and another investigation in context means that we've not got confidence, we may well suspend the licence, and we've already got discretion in all of our licensing functions to carry these things out, so this is not new territory. It hasn't been prescribed in law in the way that it is in this bill, but as a licensing authority we already have discretion to think about how we might ratchet up the sanctions, or the conditions, or the expectations about who people behave under licence, and that's a civil issue, not a criminal issue. I understand the difference, but you could bypass nature, would you bypass nature, Scott, when you think, well, right in front of us here, we could go to, so you would go to them, but the prosecution would take priority, I'd take it, over anything else. We would do both. All we would do is be notifying nature, Scott, of the investigation that we have, whether that met the kind of threshold for charging, reporting someone or not, because obviously the threshold is different, and the criminal threshold obviously exceeds that civil threshold that nature, Scott, will be working under. So, for both the examples you gave, we would be engaging with nature, Scott, because obviously the threshold is different, and it would obviously be up to nature, Scott, as to whether they feel there was enough there to impose any licence restrictions. So, it would be a dual thing, but we would go straight to prosecution and you'd have suspended the licence, and you'd have taken it. Possibly. Okay, I'm going to bring in Ashley, and then we're going to move on to the next question. I'll be very brief. To compare general licensing and gross licensing is to compare apples and oranges. The legal tests, the legal checks and balances that are required in this context are fundamentally different. When nature, Scott, is exercising its general licensing functions, what it is saying is, you can do something that would otherwise be illegal, it's what we call a derogation from the law. If your licence is restricted, your general licence is restricted, effectively what it means is that you're not entitled to right touch regulation in that respect anymore, so you would apply for a specific licence. Grouschute licences suspension or revocation is fundamentally different. It involves depriving a person of their property rights, which is a huge amount of value, which underpins jobs, which has a ripple effect on rural communities both economically and ecologically. The gravity of those consequences means that they can't be compared. We need procedural safeguards, we need decisions that amount penalties to be underpinned by evidence, at least to the civil standard. To Christine's point, the criminal law and the civil law sanctions well dovetail, so it's a double whammy, and that can be distinguished from the likes of SEPA, for example, which I'm guessing is why you're asking the question. Jim Fairlie. On that very point that you've just made, that phrase that you, the gravity of the consequences of this actually isn't, so Robbie, I want to come back to you on this. I'll make an observation. The gravity of the consequences of raptor persecution and any other wildlife crime that is within the bill is such, to my mind, that it would absolutely deter anyone from carrying out the crime in the first place, and that, to me, is the important part. Robbie, actually saying that the example of a general licence restriction is not comparable in terms of the ability to limit the licence of a grouse more manager, are you confident that there are sufficient safeguards in your system that would allow you to make the informed decision given the gravity of the consequences based on your current system or how this is going to work? I think that's a useful way of framing it, Jim. To be honest, again, we will not develop a framework for imposing these suspensions, modifications or restrictions unless we're doing it in consultation with stakeholders. We will build a framework which hopefully provides the reassurance that we are proportionate, that we are targeted, that we are evidence-based, and I have no doubt at all that the first time we decide to suspend our local licence, we will be challenged, and I suspect that we will go through legal scrutiny to make sure that we have got a framework which is robust and defendable, because that's exactly what happened with general licence restrictions as well. I hear Ashley's point about apples and oranges. Some of the principles in here are very similar for me, that we can ratchet up the conditions associated with any of our licensing based on the severity of the offences or breaches in front of us, and that is all about proportionality. Those are the issues that are either going to follow or not in terms of ECHR, and indeed, if we roll out a framework and apply it in its challenge legally. I'm going to bring in Dr Love-Johnny. I'm going to clarify that point very briefly. The point that Ashley and Dr Marney have talked about in terms of vexatious actions by other people. When you talk about ratcheting it up, does NatureScot have enough experience and understanding, so that when you get a report from Police Scotland to say that there has been a raptor persecution incident on this particular estate, you only need to look at it from the licensing point of view? Do you have enough of a relationship and an understanding of these situations to be able to say, yes, we believe that that's vexatious. Therefore, we will not revoke a licence on this basis at this time. Dr Love-Johnny referenced the BAS study in 2014. We've carried out an awful lot of work as well, understanding the potential issues with existing provisions and interfering with trapping and snaring. Those vexatious issues have been occurring for a long time and we've been working within a framework, which means that we can explore that and give it sufficient air time and allow estates to make their own representation to us before we make any decision. Indeed, we've been encouraging reporting of trap tampering, because that's all intelligence that is useful for us to help to make a decision on a case-by-case basis. There's not going to be a revocation of a licence on the basis of a phone call to say that has happened. You're not going to suddenly suspend a licence. There will be a process that will be gone through. Absolutely not. Again, just to reassure committee, we would never do that. The purpose of developing a framework that helps people to understand the way in which we would licence is crucial to all of this. One sentence to boil this down. The problem is the imposition of a sanction which infringes people's property rights and infringes the most fundamental procedural guarantees of individuals. With all due respect, based on the trust and confidence of NatureScot, it's plainly unlawful. What we need to focus on is the facts on the ground, not the trust and confidence of NatureScot. I don't mean that in an offensive way, it's just a matter of fact, isn't it? Ashleigh, did you have a shot? Very short. I just want to paint a picture for the committee of a real-life example. In spring time last year, a gamekeeper in Perthshire found a dead golden eagle and reported it to the police. He handed the bird over. A police investigation was instigated, as you would expect, and in the call for evidence for people to come forward, the police alluded in that message on Facebook and every social media platform that raptor persecution could have been a cause. During those months, it would have been well within NatureScot's rights to look at the face of the bill to suspend the licence. What happened in that case was that there was absolutely no criminality whatsoever. Had the scheme been in place, permanent damage would have been done to that state with no right to redress whatsoever—no proper appeal right—because how do you prove a negative? That's the kind of situation that we're talking about here. That kind of sanction should only be imposed where the regulator is satisfied that there's guilt to the civil standard. We're going to move on to a section on code of practice. Jim Fairlie. I'd like to ask the views. What is your view on the need for a code of practice for grossment management and what would you like to see included in the code? Does the bill itself provide enough clarity here, or is this about leaving some flexibility in the system for adaptive management? We'll start with you on that one. Thank you, Jim. I think that, again, taking away from some of the specifics and the hard choices about licensing, there is no doubt that there's an opportunity in this bill to continue to drive up standards. I'm sure that's something that we'd all support. A code of practice will allow us to do that. We can set quite clearly a framework out to help practitioners understand what they must do because it's a legal requirement, what they should do, and what they could do in terms of best practice. We've got quite a lot of experience of these types of codes in other sectors, whether it's deer, we've got a deer code that does exactly the same, we've got the outdoor access code, and we've got the Muirburn code in itself. All of these codes, I think, under statute, can help drive up standards. We've already got some work moving forward to think about that framework and using a colleague through the Moorland forum to help populate it. I think that it's a useful addition, again, to drive up standards. I'm going to agree with Robbie. I think that the code is essential in ensuring that we have grousmures that are managed in an environmentally sustainable and legal fashion. It basically needs to be comprehensive in its content, in addressing things like predator control, mountain hair management, under licence, Muirburn, and cross-referencing, that the second part of the bill to do that, the use of medication, the creation of hill tracks, and things like that. We suggest that the code needs to be developed by NatureScot, which is clearly happening and signed off by their Scientific Advisory Committee. It needs to be founded in evidence. It also needs to be robust. A number of codes that currently exist have provisions that are voluntary. We certainly feel that they have to have provisions that must be followed to ensure compliance. I'm going to bring in Beatrice Wishart here, who's going to open up the question of the code a bit broader than I'll bring in. Those have indicated Beatrice. Thanks, convener, and it follows on from what Ian is saying. How does the requirement for a code of practice for grousmure management fit into the bigger picture of the climate and ecological crisis and wider context of upland management? Is the Scottish Government being joined up in how it's looking at upland management, including relating to the coherence of the requirements being put on land managers? I'll bring in Ashly and then Max. The point that I'd like to make on the code of practice is that SLE isn't opposed at all to a code of practice being developed, but it's really important that it's developed in consultation with the stakeholders who actually practice land management, not those who are opposed to it. I think that our other issue with the code of practice is the role that it actually plays in the licensing scheme. The one that's been described in the papers underpinning this bill is really, really broad-ranging and covers land management activities that aren't exclusive to grousmures. Penalties already exist for the type of conduct that the Aeons are talking about—their self-contained regulation. If you breach the law on mureburn, then you'll suffer penalties set out in the Hill Farming Act. We can't have inconsistency in how the law is applied. That would have discriminatory effects. I think that it speaks to this overall theme that we're hearing. It's about the proportionality of the bill, ensuring there's proportionality of punishment. As the bill is currently drafted, the code of practice is a basis for refusing a licence and for taking it away. That, again, is a step that's far away from raptor crime. Regarding the text of the code of practice that reads as follows, how land should be managed to reduce disturbance of and harm to any wild animal, wild birds and wild plant, how the taking or killing of any wild bird should be carried out, how predators should be controlled, revive the coalition would also like to ask why these activities are happening in the first place as well. Welcome that the legislation on the trapping is going to put trapping under a national framework and that it's going to legislate for all these kinds of traps nationally, which is very good. The question of why, if one was to apply for a hypothetical licence for reasons for killing wildlife, whether it's on a grousmer or otherwise, a legitimate reason might well be protecting livestock, it might well be for ecology or conservation, but should a licence be given for the purpose of increasing grous numbers for sport shooting? Revive as a coalition doesn't think so. We're bringing that question to the table, but certainly it's very important that the code of practice is going to be part of a legal framework from our point of view so that it can be enforced and linked to the licence legally. Just a quick point in response to Max. I say this with respect. This debate isn't about whether or not grous shooting should continue in Scotland. It's about whether this bill is a proportionate response to the perceived issue of raptor persecution on grousmours. It's whether this is an effective and proportionate deterrent. Thank you. We're now going to move on to the topic of annual licences, a question from Alasdair Allan. Thank you. A reasonably quick question, I hope, and that is about the period of the licence. So the bill sets out that 1680 licences must be for a period not exceeding one year. I just want to ask people if they have views if that's the right period of time. Ashleigh Kickoff. The annual licence framework is very problematic. All that will do is add to the cost of the scheme and to the administrative burden of nature, Scotland, where we already have a full plate, without delivering any evident public benefit. The justification given in the policy memorandum is irrational. It basically says that licences will be granted annually because grous shooting is a seasonal activity, but the significant financial investment that goes into grousmour management is long-term. The employment of gamekeepers is long-term. The capital investment is long-term and requires a long-term outlook. Unlikely, the concerns about raptors that underpin the scheme are long-term. That's not a seasonal problem. It's certainly illogical as far as we see it. We think that the licences provisions should be amended to provide that licences are granted indefinitely. Nothing is lost by doing that. You would still, in a long-term licence, be able to remove it or suspend it. You would also be able to impose some form of reporting requirement if that was possible. In summary, the annual licence causes problems without delivering any benefit. Do you really mean indefinitely? Why not? I think about premises licensing. What's lost by doing that? Trap licensing, for example, is ten years. What's needed here is clarity and certainty for businesses so that they can continue to invest in moreland management. If that investment is disincentivised, Scotland's rural economies and rural environment will suffer. I'll bring in Robbie just to answer that. Why do you think an annual licence is appropriate? To be honest, convener, we would probably prefer to see a little bit more flexibility in the bill than the prescription that's there just now. For a variety of reasons, administrative efficiency is just one. Can I ask a question? I presume, if our licence is granted indefinitely, that we have ability within the bill, as it sits just now, for the conditions of that licence to change without the applicant having to apply if, through secondary legislation, there were changes to the licence requirements. Would that be right? I think that all I'm saying is that I would prefer to see an opportunity for us to think about a sensible timescale on which a duration of licence would work without necessarily being tied to an annual prescription. I think that this goes back to the severity of the crime and the potential repercussions for the person who owns the licence. If somebody held a licence for raving control, we had to have a licence every year and it got to the point where it was just a case that you put your form in and it's returned. I get that that might cause administration issues for yourselves, Robbie, but what it also did was clarified in your mind that it was breaking the law and you had a duty to make sure that your licence was in place before you actually started to control something that was causing you a severe problem. I get that that might be slightly more on us on yourself, but would you accept the fact that the annual licence would actually keep people's minds firmly on the fact? I don't think that anyone operating a grouse moor at the moment is forgetful of the fact that they may lose their ability to operate a grouse moor as a result of those restrictions. I come back to the point that if you have a licence, it can be taken away if you commit an offence or if you are alleged to have committed an offence, suspected to commit an offence as it is currently drafted, irrespective of whether that licence operates for 10 years, for 20 years or for one year. NFU, for example, back is up on this, you know, they say, applying and gaining a licence on a yearly basis is an extremely short time frame and we would strongly suggest making this a period longer. The licensing regime should not be overly complex, only this are burdensome for the land manager who will already have multiple competing priorities to contend with. That is an organisation that does not even have a grouse shooting interest, telling you that businesses need certainty. Again, it comes back to these principles of better regulation. It is about the regulator enabling people to carry out their activities in a lawful way, and I am afraid that that is lost when you get into the context of an annual licensing scheme. Thank you, convener. In many ways, it is echoing some of the points that have been made already, but, certainly, if the process of renewal is not a straightforward one, then the law society has commented that it could be unduly burdensome, not just on Nature Scotland, Police Scotland but also the States. We had suggested in our responses that it may be more appropriate to look at the timescale of, say, three to five years, bearing in mind also that under other licensing regimes such as civic licensing, they often use a three-year timescale. I am picking up on the point about certainty. It is really the point that many grouse mirror operations will be taking bookings before a year-long period is ended. They are taking bookings in advance, and it is just that certainty that they will be able to plan for guests coming to Scotland or shooting elsewhere. Thank you. I don't love joy. Thank you. I fully endorse what Ashley said on the point of annual licenses. I just want to add that we are not just looking at business investment, but we are also looking at investment in nature conservation. A lot of these investments undertaken by land owners are long-term and privately funded, and an annual licence and the uncertainty of an annual licence will risk undermining these long-term conservation projects. By the way, just to offer a comparative view from England, we have an annual licence to release game birds in and around protected sites, and this year the licence has been changed at very short notice, which led to significant economic, environmental and legal impacts. The uncertainty in relation to an annual licence is a real problem. I am going to bring in Max, and then Ross. Just very briefly, it is important to mention that for the public interest as well that, regardless of whether it is a year or a bit more, for the licensing to be renewed, full cost recovery will be important, so that there is not a burden to the public purse in this scheme. I just wanted to raise that point, that regularity of accruing the fees for the licence might be an important thing to consider in this debate as well. A couple of mentions so far about better regulation, and I am relieved to hear that NatureScot will be working to that. Within the conditions of better regulation laid down by the regulator's code, there are things like positive enabling approach and pursuing outcomes that contribute to sustainable economic growth, evidence-based protocols to target action where it is needed and help those that regulate to design simple and cost-effective compliance to improve confidence in day-to-day management. Certainly in our work so far, we will aim to support that objective of better regulation. It is important to underline that. Before we move on, just a question to Robbie. You suggested more flexibility. How would that actually look? Would that be an annual rolling licence? Would it be a five-year ten-year licence? Can you tell us what your thoughts are on that? I agree with most of the points that have been made around the table. We need to make sure that there is a balance struck here between providing certainty for investment decisions, absolutely, but at the same time we need to make sure that we have sufficient flexibility to review what is happening on an annual basis. We would expect annual returns as part of any licence, because that is one of the conditions that we would expect. We want that intelligence to come back so that we can be better informed about what is happening under licence. I suspect that the licence duration of between three and five years sounds about right and it sits much more comfortably with other civil licensing schemes, which we know work quite well. One of the things that Lerrity did or did rather recommend was that NatureScot would have power to impose fines. NatureScot can clarify whether that is what we are now talking about and whether it should be. I am very conscious during Professor Verity's considerations that a range of civil sanctions could come into play to think about how we continue to tackle the inherent problem wrapped in persecution. Civil penalties were absolutely part of that discussion. I do not think that our thinking has sufficiently moved on to think about whether or not that as a tool within the toolkit is going to aid or not this particular issue. So, would you have the power to impose fines? Within this bill? Within this bill, no. No? No, but you do not feel that that is an area that you would want, a power that you would need to have an effective range of sanctions? Well, again, I think that the most likely successful civil sanction that we have talked about so far is the removal of the licence that is going to have as a backstop power, Mr Allan. I think that that is probably the one that we would put in. OK, can we move on to a question now about the cost recovery that was touched on earlier? Karen Adam. Thank you, convener. We did touch upon that. It is just in regards to there being a fee for a licence, and does the panel agree with the approach in the bill on fees, and how do you feel about the way that the licence scheme would be resourced? I would like to open that up. Looking at the bill's final bria and the financial memorandum, it appears that ministers have failed to make any real assessment of what costs might be borne by owners and occupiers of land if the regime is introduced. I have a quote from the financial memorandum that simply states, individuals in businesses may apply for a licence if they meet the specified criteria to continue to be able to take grouse, use wildlife traps and make more burn without cost. Well, that is patently wrong. The cost of regulation extends well beyond the fees charged by the regulator, and it is deeply regrettable that the bria fails to identify and analyse those cost impacts. That is a vital point for this committee, because robust brias that are underpinned by reliable data are what help you to make laws that do not have unintended consequences. That is what allows you to strike the right balance when it comes to regulation and identify those unintended impacts and mitigate them. I am conscious of constraints on time, but I would like to just draw the committee's attention to some of the main deficiencies with the bria. The first one is that the Scottish Government's own toolkit for brias, that is its guidance on how they should be conducted, says that it should engage in face-to-face discussions with six to twelve businesses on the impact of proposed legislation. Despite that, not a single business, an individual who was affected by this bill, was interviewed. That is exactly the kind of failure of process that leads to bad law. The simplistic justification given was that the proposed changes will minimally affect businesses that respect wild animal welfare and the associated legislation. How can you arrive at that conclusion if you have not interviewed a single business? The complacency in that approach is hugely disappointing, especially given the emphasis that the Wherity Group placed on the need to better understand the socio-economics fear that we are operating in here. The bria does not help us to understand, for example, that the role that grousmers play in the rural economy, the breadth of jobs and businesses that might be affected, and on the specifics of the scheme proposed the impact of the one-year licence, as we have just discussed, the ease with which they can be suspended, which should be discussed. Those are all cost impacts. It is vital that they are looked at when we are having this discussion. This is a real world impact, and that is why I am being expansive when we are talking about people's lives, jobs, tied accommodation and being put at risk here. I was just wanting to get the specifics on the licence fee itself and if that was proportionate for what was being asked. Maybe it is appropriate to bring Max in here because he touched on that earlier. I think that there are two issues at play. There is a commitment in the Bute House agreement to full cost recovery, but that does not form part of this bill. What is said in the bill is that— It is not unreasonable to ask people to pay for a licence that happens across all licences. A licence fee, I do not think that SLE would oppose their being a licence in Perse. The point is that the overall cost has not been assessed as part of this bill. I should say that we are opposed to full cost recovery, but again, it is premature because it does not form part of this bill. I agree with what Karen Adam said, that it is not unreasonable to expect payment for it. I welcome the SLE. We all know that budgets are constrained, and that will apply to NatureScot as much as it does for anything else. NatureScot's remit also covers nature protection and recovery. In our view, it is absolutely imperative that resources are targeted at those objectives and not diverted to the administration of a licensing scheme. We absolutely agree that that should be cost-neutral at least to the public purse. What are you reviewing and what are your options with regard to cost recovery? We currently do not charge for any of our licensing functions. We issue 5,000 species licences per annum. Some of those are quite clearly delivering public interest and therefore it is maybe not appropriate to charge, but increasingly, as Ian said, we are having to look afresh at where there are opportunities to ensure that our licensing burden is actually not meaning that we are putting all of our resources into administering things, where arguably there is a strong rationale for full cost recovery and charging. We are going to move on to our final topic. Can I just go back to the code of practice, just to briefly what you didn't notice that I'd indicated? I just wondered if any of the stakeholders had any comment on whether, if a code of practice was any part of it, it was not followed. RSPB might have a comment on this as to whether a licence could be revoked or suspended. In our view, the code of practice has to have statutory provisions. If an assessment on a licence application is based on one of the criteria being on whether an applicant is adhering to a code of practice, then yes, potentially if they aren't, they could lose their licence or be refused a licence in the first place. I think that that's entirely reasonable. Is that the position that nature of Scotland holds? The reality is, again, it depends on circumstances but compliance with the code of practice. If there is any breach of that code, it would be part of our considerations about whether or not a revocation suspension modification is necessary. We would want to take into account the code when considering it, but it depends on the nature of the breach. Is the code of practice going to be developed with stakeholders, but how do they know what that code of practice looks like? How can we scrutinise it if we don't know what it looks like? I don't think that the code will benefit from parliamentary scrutiny. If a licence is to be revoked or suspended, then surely it is up to our committee to scrutinise what it looks like. That's just a point. Dr Lovejoy. I agree with Rachel. We don't know what the code of practice looks like. How can anybody in this room make an informed decision of whether the bill is proportionate or not? We need to know the full extent. It goes back to the clarity of law. We need to have some certainty here, and at the moment this bill is lacking it. Alex Rowland. Just to be fair, on that point, this is true of literally every piece of legislation that has either subsidiary legislation or regulation or dependent licensing based on it. We've been through many bills in this Parliament. We've had this discussion, but there is an issue of carts and horses here. Yes, we can scrutinise licences, but we can't scrutinise them until that we've got legislation to empower organisations to have licence. Briefly. I think the problem is that the sanctions can be so far-reaching that it is a very important point in this case. I do appreciate what you're saying, but I think the intrusiveness of the bill requires more clarity. Okay. Before we move on to the final topic, Jim Fairl has got some questions just to tidy up the ECHR question. This is specifically aimed to yourself, James. We've heard views from various stakeholders that believe that this could not, may not be compliant with the human convention on human rights. Do you have any, do you have a view on the concerns raised by the stakeholders that the provisions of the bill on the licence may not be compliant? For example, due to potential disproportionate interference with property rights, what is your view on that? As I mentioned earlier, thank you for that question. The Law Society of Scotland has a sub-committee on human rights and they haven't specifically considered the bill from this angle, so I can go back and seek a written response to the Parliament on that in particular. What it may be saying just about property rights is that across Scotland, property rights lie on various different levels and you see whether it's ownership or leases or rights of access that are affected by legislation in different ways. I just see it all coming together, it all fitting in a matrix of different laws and different levels. I think that by default, whenever there is any legislation created, it has the potential impact of limiting people's rights. That's just part and parcel of the way in which the law works. You would write to the committee to give us the view after the work finished today. Yes, I'll put feedback to the Law Society of Scotland and ask for a written response on that particular point. Thank you very much. Property rights under article one of the first protocol one of the European Convention of Human Rights are indeed not absolute rights, as Jamie mentioned, and they can be infringed by state interference. However, the infringement of state interference has to follow three conditions. First of all, it has to be implemented in law, which would be the case here because we'd have a statutory instrument. It would need to be in the public interest, which is debatable here, so there are two very different opinions. Fundamentally, it needs to be proportionate. In order to assess the proportionality of an infringement in property rights, procedural safeguards are one fundamental element. So if we look at just the provision which we discussed earlier already, that the license can be potentially suspended for an unlimited amount of time based on no wrongdoing whatsoever, simply based on a phone call to the police which triggers an official investigation, I've no doubt in my mind that this would be considered disproportionate and I've no doubt in my mind that this will lead to court cases. Okay, thank you. Christine? We haven't touched on appellate procedure and that would deal with ECHR. If somebody has a license suspended, if you just briefly say how quickly, depending on circumstances, an appeal might go against either revocation of license, suspension of license or, indeed, varying the terms of the license. I think that that's very important that somebody's rights, when a judgment has been made that they have a right to appeal on a cause shown. On any potential suspension on receipt of information received could be from a variety of sources. Our first protocol would be to contact the licence holder to understand what might be going on. Before we took any decision to suspend, procedurally, on your point, fairness, there's a right to respond to any suggestion that we may revoke a licence. That is us safeguarding ourselves as a public body that we are being proportionate and discharging our regulatory functions. That's built into the framework that we've already got for general licence and would need to be built into any future framework. It's not in the law. Thank you, Christine. It's a really important point. I really welcome Robbie's commitment to that, but the internal appeals process, the internal notification that he talks about and the right to be heard is not enshrined in primary legislation. The bill needs to be amended to reflect that. There's a second very short point on appeals, I promise. The bill doesn't allow the sheriff the discretion to provide on an interim basis that the suspension or revocation imposed by NatureScot is of no effect pending determination of the appeals. Now, as a litigator, appeals take a very long time. You could be waiting well over a year to get your determination. During that time, if that business isn't able to operate, the damage would be permanent. There's no reparation. We have a concern that the appeals process is quite one-sided. Proceedings appear to be limited to consideration of decisions to suspend or revoke a licence. It's our feeling that, in the interests of justice and even handedness and compliance with the R-House Convention, a person should be able to appeal the granting of a licence or the failure to attach a condition or the failure to modify, suspend or revoke a licence. It would be extremely unusual to see that third right of appeal in the context of a statutory appeal structure in this context. It would be open to parties to agree to judicial review decisions, which is the much more appropriate forum for that kind of dispute. Robbie The Jindicate Rehearsing some of our existing controls in place when we do restrict general licences and there is an appeals process internally with the NatureScot. The suspension is effectively on hold. There is no suspension past an appeals undertaking, so that safeguard exists within our processes already. Again, to provide some reassurance, we fully expect that that would be the case in any future licence scheme. It's very significant on the financial implications. If because you have these powers and there could be financial implications, does it mean that article 6 of the ECHR could that be then violated? I don't know whether it's the Law Society that should answer this, but do you take the financial implications into consideration and do you have due regard to the violation of article 6? That's maybe not a question for me on the specifics of the ECHR, but our founding legislation, the Natural Heritage Act, requires us to apply our balancing duties in considering... But how do you do that? Well, it's really in behaviours and frameworks, like I've talked about today, in terms of this is what we consider to be a proportionate way of responding to all of those issues. And do you believe that the framework is proportionate? The ones that we operate today, absolutely. Today? To date. To date in this bill? And within our existing licensing functions and we fully expect to consider to apply those similar principles in any future legislation and licensing regime. Okay. We're going to move on to our final topic, unfortunately. We've got very little time for this again, so we'll keep the questions and answers succinct to it. It's on SSPCA powers and Ariane Burgess. Thanks, convener. The committee would be interested to hear what are the key considerations regarding whether or not Scottish SPCA should have additional powers to investigate wildlife crime. I would be interested to hear from people who haven't come representing from the previous panel because we had that question last week. So maybe I'll start with Jamie Whittle. Thank you. In the response to the law society provided, we suggested that criminal investigations could be kept refined to the police and the crime prosecution service, rather than extending to the SSPCA. One of the thoughts behind that was with the SSPCA being a registered charity, whether it was appropriate for that scope of investigation to fall on its behest. And then maybe I can hear from RSPB and revive. They weren't here last time. We support the extension of SSPC powers. SSPC already have powers to investigate some wildlife crime on the basis that an animal is suffering. To give a very brief example, a few years ago a member of the public was walking across a grousemure and found a gull floundering in an illegally set spring trap bleeding heavily. Because there was an immediate welfare implication, the Scottish SPC were called an inspector attended within an hour and euthanised the gull. What his powers did not allow him to do was to search for similar traps. And it was only a week later when the police went on to the ground using their powers under section 19 of the 1981 act that was found. There had been a line of 10 traps set across that hillside. Had the SSPCA been given powers to search land under the Wildlife Incantricide Act, then there was the potential of that evidence. Could you be uncovered much quicker and potentially speared other animals from suffering? So there were animals in those other traps? No, there weren't. They weren't found, that's the thing. What was found was where they had been set. I would certainly, just to say briefly, I would agree with Ian with that. Any measures that can take place to increase the capacity for increased animal welfare across our lands is to be welcomed. As Ariane Llywodraeth wedi cael ei wneud, mae gennym ni'n cael ei wneud o'r concerns on this last week, but I would echo the sentiment of the Law Society and I would also endorse the response that Police Scotland has provided on this, which is that it is simply not appropriate for a charity that has at its core an animal welfare concern to be investigating wildlife crime. It creates a huge amount of scope for bias and conflict of interest. Yes, so this is a discussion that's been going on for a number of years and Police Scotland have maintained a consistent approach to this issue. We have several concerns really. We believe we should remain the lead enforcement agency in terms of wildlife crime. We're concerned about a confusion amongst members of the Republic about who to report incidents to, if they were to report incidents directly to the SSPCA and they were to commence investigations to a greater extent than they can now. We have concerns that the investigation could progress and, when police do become involved, we may be at a disadvantaged position because things we would have done maybe earlier would not have been done. In partiality as an issue, it's been discussed already in terms of an animal welfare charity having increased powers, for example publicly opposing snaring, which is a legal practice if done properly appropriately. Capacity in terms of training, resourcing and things to accommodate additional powers. I've got some anecdotal evidence of an incident fairly recently within the last couple of years where police and the SSPCA were working on an operation together and a member of the public was very resistant to being ultimately told what to do and being controlled by the powers under the SSPCA and said that he was more than happy to speak and engage with the police but was very reluctant to do so by what ultimately is an animal welfare charity, by a charitable organisation. There were issues there and the officer that spoke to about that has made reference to that. It was clear that there could be that resistance from the public as well. How do you respond to stakeholders like David to have concerns about the SSPCA carrying out further official duties given their charitable and funding model? The SSPCA is a reporting agency that is already able to report directly to the criminal office and procurator of fiscal service. They are the lead body in animal welfare cases. This is about criminality and investigation of crimes. It's not about animal welfare issues. No, but they investigate crimes. They have a special investigations unit, for example, that investigates crimes related to puppy farming. By and large, in our experience with them, they work very much in partnership with the police, so they complement each other. Very quickly, David, this is specific to yourself. You do currently work with the SSPCA. How does it currently work? You probably answered that already. You will have concerns about extending the powers of the SSPCA if that provision was to go ahead. We do work well with the SSPCA. We are in regular contact with them. We work together regularly. We work well together. We appreciate the hard work that they do and the contribution that they make. Generally speaking, their powers at the moment are primarily in relation to non-wild animals. I believe that it is the section 19 powers that they are looking to take on. They are very broad powers. In police terms, section 19 powers are excellent. They are very strong powers that we have. As I have said, I have outlined the kind of concerns that we have in relation to extending those powers to the SSPCA. I think that that was the last question that you have just asked, unless there are any other comments on SSPCA. If it is on SSPCA, yes. Yes, it is. I do not know if it is to Ian or David, but just in some of the Police Scotland's written evidence, it states that the stuff that you do with some of the inquiries around organised crime, that if the SSPCA were given more powers, it could hinder some of that. I just want to get some clarification around that as to why there is a difference in opinion here. Obviously, this is about ensuring that investigations are more successful, I suppose, so we need to make sure that that criminal investigation is robust. Why do you think that the RSPB have a different opinion to you in that term? When it comes to increasing power, the key thing about it is that it could potentially hinder police involvement. SSPCA could commence an investigation, for example, a hypothetical situation. It could commence an investigation, start working towards the ultimate objective and we could become involved down the line, but at which point some investigative opportunities may not be there any more, because SSPCA does not have the same access to systems that we have, potentially financial inquiries, which is a big part of wildlife crime now. I think that wildlife crime that we have read in a report recently relates to the fourth highest generator of illicit funds internationally, so financial aspects are a big part of wildlife crime now as well. I think that the SSPCA have the ability to do phone downloads, but I do not have that from memory. I do not believe that their power extends far beyond that in terms of things like access in public space, CCTV, if it were to be relevant in an unlikely event with wildlife crime, but there is a possibility that things like that could come into play. It is just general access to systems. I know that they have their own intelligence database, but obviously we have the Scottish intelligence database, which is a network of intelligence that shows links to nominal areas, vehicles and things, so we could potentially put a picture together fairly quickly based on our intelligence that we hold about links to serious and organised crime, links to other individuals, so very quickly a small investigation could branch out into a much wider investigation, so there is just a bit of concern about the lack of access to systems and the resources that we have which could ultimately hinder any investigation if we come into play at a later time. I do not know what extent of powers that are being discussed. That is one of the concerns in this. It is quite a vague concept of what extra powers the SSPCA will get, and I absolutely agree that section 19 is huge. As far as I am aware, it is limited provisions to access land that they are looking for, not powers to stop vehicles, search vehicles, etc. From our perspective and in dealing with cases on the ground, what the SSPCA can do is provide that very early initial capacity when you have an animal dangling by its broken legs in a trap. In rural areas in particular, it is often very difficult to get a police officer to attend. That is not a criticism of Police Scotland, but it is about resource. Scottish SPCA has 68-odd uniformed inspectors whose sole function is dealing with animal welfare issues, and invariably, they are able to respond quicker in many circumstances to Police Scotland officers. I would hope that whatever happens down the line, there is very good partnership working as there is now, and I do not see any extra powers of the SSPCA would get compromising that. What was the trap? When was it? On our small visit on Monday, we were told that, if a trap had been tampered with, an incident like you described with the gull could happen, but some of the older types of traps, such as the fenn traps, could not happen anymore. All gamekeepers are licensed to work the traps, and they showed us how they worked. Certainly, a non-target species would not be able to enter that trap. The bottom line is that those were traps that had been set illegally. It was a line of fenn traps that had been set, baited next to rabbits across a hillside. And are fenn traps still used? Fenn traps are still used, but they are permitted for catching weasels. Those traps were not set legally. Fenn traps, prior to the change in law a couple of years ago, they still had to be set under cover to target musselids and rats. Those ones were set in the open next to a bait and covered in a thin layer of moss so that they were invisible. And what happened is that the gull obviously went down to feed from the dead rabbit and got its legs smashed in the trap. Okay, just for official report, when was that? Um, forgive me, I think it was 2016. Okay, um, Christine, a very, very brief supplementary, because we're half an hour over time. I declare an interest as a member of the SSPC, and I absolutely appreciate the commonality and the goodwill between both the police and the SSPC. Why would the SSPC be seeking more powers, and what circumstance would they be seeking it? Presumably, as Ian Thomson has referenced, occasions like that where in animals perhaps trapped or in need of assistance. Presumably, for occasions like that. Would you accept that, if there were those limitations, you don't want to compromise the evidence that might be available for a prosecution, would you accept that that might be the very circumstance where the powers would be useful to extend them? Because they can just, and I'm probably government will not forgive me for this, but they're not enough, while like crime police officers, that's just a fact. And that they're able to just do that early bit to secure it to see, and then you could take over in certain circumstances. I mean, in theory, very limited powers. We wouldn't be against very limited powers in an occasion like that. However, I don't know if there's really an ability to do that, though. I think once you're giving them the power to enter on to the land under section 19, it opens up a broad range of possibilities from then on. We can find out, and it's always available at stage two if we want to get it more specific. If it was for the purposes of purely entering on to land to protect an injured animal or retrieve an injured animal and co-working with the police, then it's something that we could discuss certainly. Thank you. That brings the session to end. Thank you all very much for your patience and additional time that you provided. We're going to suspend the meeting until 11.15, but if I could ask witnesses to leave, the room is quickly as possible to lie the chains over witnesses. Thank you very much. We've now reconvened the meeting and I welcome our second round table. On this round table on Muirburn we have Ross Ewing, the director of Moorland from Scottish Land and Estates. We've got the deputy assistant chief officer, Bruce Farkasyn, from the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. Dr Miranda Gilhood, the policy coordinator from the Scottish Crofting Federation. Nick Hesford, from the Scottish Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust. Dr Emma Hinchcliff, director from the IUCN UK peatland programme. Robbie Cernahan, once again, is a gliton for punishment, the director of the green economy from NatureScot. Finally, Douglas Begarpardon, Duncan Orr Ewing, the head of species and land management from the RSPB. Anybody who would like to contribute if they raise a hand and if all the questions and responses could be directed through the chair, we have, in 90 minutes, we're very tight on this because unfortunately we've got a further committee after this, so I'd appreciate again if the questions and responses could be as brief as possible. Once again, I'm going to kick off with a very broad question. What is your understanding of the pattern of Moorburn across Scotland? We were fortunate enough to be invited to a Gricemoor yesterday and on Monday and got an idea, but could you tell us what, on an annual basis, typically what would be burnt, how long the rotations typically are and how do burning practices differ for Gricemoor management compared to farms and on-cross? I'll start with Ross Ewing and then Nick Hesford. Thanks, convener, and good morning, committee. Thank you very much for having us here today. I think probably just important to maybe give you a flavour of, I suppose, what the national overview of the Moorburn footprint looks like. The best source of this, I would argue, comes actually from the Scottish Government's stage 2 research into the socioeconomic and biodiversity impacts of driven Gricemoors and, in particular, the paper by Keith Matthews and others in 2020. They mapped grouse butts onto rough grazing in Scotland, which covered 491 land holdings in all, and that spanned a total of 1 million hectares. Of those 1 million hectares, about 858,000 hectares were classified as rough grazing, of which 163,000 hectares—that's 19%—were subjected to Moorburn. If you look a little bit more granular, if you go within two kilometres of the grouse butts, the total area of rough grazing falling within those two kilometres was 584,000 hectares, and off that some 146,000 hectares—that's 25%—was subject to Moorburn. If you're looking at the extent of it across Scotland, it probably applies certainly in relation to driven Grousemoor management to about 163,000 hectares. In terms of the rotations that you mentioned, convener, you're talking usually between 10 and 25 years, although between 10 and 15 years is probably more commonplace for Grousemoor management. The size of the Moorburn strips can vary. Obviously, we don't have a practitioner who does Moorburn on the ground here today who can give us this insight, but we've consulted widely and generally fires are kept to between about 10 to 15m wide, and they generally get smaller over the years because the fuel load is being managed over that time. What I would argue here as well is that there are much crossover with agricultural interests because clearly these land uses are integrated. You've got sheep farming operations quite often coexisting with Grousemoor management operations, and as a result, some of the Moorburn for Moorland game and wildlife tends to benefit livestock and vice versa. I think it's important for us to understand that Moorburn, in terms of its size and rotation period, varies significantly depending on the spatial, temporal or even environmental context. So, for example, where you have drier areas, they might be burned more frequently than, say, wetter areas where vegetation regrowth would be slower, but typically, as Ross has mentioned, a rotation may be anywhere between 10 to 25 years, and even beyond that depending on the vegetation itself. When managing for a red grouse, the aim is to produce a habitat mosaic of small, interconnected burns, so you have a real diversity of heather ages, and a GWCT would not advise fires any larger than a 30 metre width, but typically these fires are much smaller than that. We do hold data at GWCT for about 25 upland estates across Scotland where driven grouse shooting is the primary management objective on how many fires, the size of those fires, peak depth at the ignition point of those fires, but that is not data that I have analysed or could share with you today, but we could potentially look at those data going forward. Yes, so just to say, convener, we're contacted every year about breaches to the Moorburn code, and that could be damage to birdness. I'm coming to the stats here. Yes, so we're just looking at the pattern on Moorburn, rather than because we've got about 20 questions, which we'll look into the reason. Just on the pattern of Moorburn, we have conducted a citizen science project in recent years, a Moorburn app where people can report Moorburn incidents, and just for the purposes of this discussion, 17 per cent of the burns were on peatland deeper than 50 centimetres in the 2022-23 burning season. That's 28 out of 162 incidents, and I think the other very important point for this discussion is that actually there is science conducted by one of our people, David Douglas, which shows that particularly on grouse moors, Moorburn intensity has been increasing in the past 20 years, which is one of the reasons why we're having this conversation. Yeah, it's really difficult to say. There's a sort of the extent of burning on peatland. Obviously Duncan has just provided some stats, but there's a lacking, a common definition of peatland, which provides some challenges. Sorry, can I start with you there again, because we will be coming on to that. It's just specifically about what the picture is at the moment regarding the pattern of Moorburn across Scotland. Miranda? Yes, so what I would add to that is that one of the key concerns for us is also about the definition of Moorburn, so I think a lot of the statistics that we're hearing is what we generally perceive Moorburn, quite large-scale header burning, but it's our understanding that actually the bill would apply to any use of fire for the control of vegetation, which could be much broader, which might not be adequately captured by the statistics that we're seeing, because it could be really small scale, could consider just burning of course, for example, but actually that the requirement would still apply in that context, so the breadth of the requirements could be much wider than actually what the statistics are suggesting. Okay, thank you. Alasdair Allan? Just on that point about the pattern of Moorburn and how it differs across different sectors, obviously one of the things that's different about crofting is that sometimes this is being taken, sometimes this is happening rather on common grazings and involves multiple crofters, and it's a different kind of activity, I don't know if you want to comment on that. Miranda? No, I can agree with that, but I have nothing else to add. It's a very, very quick point. Duncan O'Whaean just mentioned there about the intensity of Moorburn increasing, I've got to say that that is contested, and indeed the paper by Matthews and others, as part of the stage 2 research, said that there were incidents where it was both increasing and decreasing, so I'll just put that on the record. Jim Fairlie? Sorry, Robbie Tienham's going to come out on the pattern for crofters, I think. There is limited precise information about the extent of Moorburn, both current and historical, but NatureScot has developed a semi-automated protocol to map the extent of burning using Sentinel-2 satellites, so just for context, the last three years there's been about 10,000 hectares of burning. What we haven't been able to do is break that down into specific Moorburn prescription versus fires that have gotten out of control, so our ability to monitor burning is improving all the time as technology improves, so one of the benefits of a licensing scheme is to give us that type of data and we can have a bit more confidence in it. Okay, thank you. Jim Fairlie? Yeah, we actually have just answered part of the question I was going to ask in terms of what the monitoring was, how you would monitor it, and will the Moorburn provisions help to achieve a more complete understanding of how the burn is used in Scotland in its effects? I have to say that hindsight is a wonderful thing, but it would have been great to have some of the people who were actually handling the fires that were going up north last week, so real pity we don't have some of them here today to talk about what it actually means, but one of the benefits of the licence is the fact that you'll get better data as the time goes on. I have expectations through the licensing scheme as we will know what's being burnt where, for what purpose, and being reassured that the appropriate standards are in place. Okay, Jim Fairlie, go to Bruce Ford. Yeah, well I think Bruce would like to come back in as a practitioner. So just to be clear, I'm your burnt practitioner however, I have got experience with fires and it's just a point of clarity that the fires that happened last week have got nothing to do with Moorburn. Moorburn season is completely finished and we're now into a completely different season, so fires that are started from mid-April onwards really to conflate them with Moorburn is inaccurate. But in terms of the ability to actually control them if they get out of hand, I was just talking from the point of view of how we actually manage that and what the licence and scheme yelled at. Absolutely, the skills that are brought to bear by those are practicers in Moorburn and the equipment that they hold and the experience and knowledge that they hold is invaluable for the fire service. Okay, thank you. Rhoda Grant. Just a small supplementary to Robbie's answer about tracking Moorburn, you said you couldn't tell whether it was actual Moorburn fires or wildfires. Are you able to track that with maybe reference to the fire service? Because they would be aware of what's a wildfire and what is that, they wouldn't have involvement in a managed Moorburn. Yeah, we can certainly drill down to get a better detail on the specifics of what has prompted those fire incidents, whether it was Moorburn, whether it's something intentional or indeed arsyn. So we can drill down to provide a better understanding of what's happened within those 10,000 hectares on an annual basis. But again, the benefits of the licensing scheme suggest that we shouldn't need to do that because the data will be coming in to us to give us that intelligence, which we currently don't have. Okay, so you're not able to provide that at the moment? Not without going to do some further work. Nick. Thank you. As I alluded to just previously, GWCC in Scotland already working with landowners and land managers on ways in which they can collect data on their Moorburn. So, as I said, about between 20 and 30 estates, big upland grousemoors, they are currently collecting data on the date that they're burning, the peak depth at the ignition point, some vegetation measures that those aren't always collected but they often are, and also the size of a burn. So these data are currently being collected and held centrally with GWCC or those data are owned by the estates, which is why I've not been able to share any of that information today. Okay, thank you. Rachel, did you have a supplementary? No, I don't think that that was asked. No, erroda. Thank you. Can I ask, with the new licensing regime proposed in the bill, whether that will strengthen the role of the Moorburn code and will that mean the best practice is more prevalent? Maybe. Erroda, so we have a Moorburn code already, it has no statutory basis, and this bill will allow us to effectively put in place a Moorburn code that provides that statute, which we would certainly hold practitioners to account for under any licences that we would issue. So, again, here's the supportive of the need to underpin existing practice with greater strength, which is what this bill allows us to do. Oh, well, I'm going to ring Bruce, Nick and then Duncan. I would echo Robbie's comments that the underpinning of the existing code by a licensing scheme would be hugely beneficial. There is perhaps some scope for the code to have some amendments made to it to reflect practice that, as Miranda said earlier on, we've got a broad range of activities that are captured under Moorburn that are very different from each other, but the licensing scheme would absolutely be a benefit. Against you, he would agree on that position. We think that the Moorburn code should be reviewed and updated to reflect emerging research, though. Without that type of framework, regulation proposed in the bill is unlikely to prove effective. The problem with the current Moorburn code is that it's largely treated as voluntary, and we could provide lots of examples, even in this report, that we produced about breaches to the Moorburn code. Burning out of bird nests that was mentioned earlier, an incident was mentioned in the previous evidence of Moorburn close to a gold nickel nest this year, for example. Burning out of tree regeneration. Burning on steep slopes and scree. Actually, in the current Moorburn code, burning on peatland is not allowed, but we know that a lot of burning still happens on peatland soils. Ross, thanks, convener. Just to say, the vast majority of grossable managers specifically do already adhere to the Moorburn code, and indeed there's been a really concerted effort just in the last year to undertake the voluntary training, the Lantra-approved training that's been developed by Brightspark, Burning Techniques, NatureScot and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, so just to put that on the record. Also, I was struck last week by Professor Newton's sentiments, who said, and I quote, The management of fires in general, at least on grouse moors, I think has improved enormously, at least in my lifetime. I'd certainly endorsed that and supported it, as opposed by saying also the development of new equipment from fogging units through to leaf blowers. Equipment like this basically enables Moorburn to be conducted really professionally, and just a final point, convener, just to say that just back to your kind of key question, Rhoda, your analysis of the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee call for views noted that there was 46.5 percent, that's a majority of people, against the proposed licensing system for Moorburn, and two of the most commonly cited words were unreasonable and disproportionate, so just to kind of give you a flavour maybe of the wider views associated beyond this room. Maranda. Yes, we support more effective implementation of the code and looking at options of how to achieve that. For example, mandatory training, however, we have questioned whether licensing is the right way to go. That does come down to questions of accessibility, how well is it suited for small skilled landholders, and also we have cited in a written response to this that there is research conducted in other countries where they have introduced licensing requirements, where it's actually shown that that hasn't resulted in better compliance, for reasons for example being that people do not obtain the license, and then actually when things go out of control or too afraid to raise the alarm because they have reached that, so I think those will have to be taken into consideration when looking whether this is the right route for more effective implementation of the Moorburn code. Okay, I've got Jim Fairlain then, Rhoda Grant. Yeah, very quick kind of observation. We're talking very much in the round of grousmour management in terms of Moorburn, but it's not just grousmour managers that manage Moorburn, quite often farmers, then my sheep farming friends might not thank me very much for raising this. What is the prevalence of fires that get out of control that are on grousmour as opposed to sheep farms? Bruce. The statistical analysis that we've carried out shows that Moorburn is not a significant factor when it comes to wildfires, and the percentage is around about 5% of Moorburns carried out in driven grousmours result in wildfire. When we take in the broader term of Moorburn that includes what farmers and crofters and others do, then the figure does increase, but it's still not a significant factor in the instance of wildfire. So as wildfire generally accidental cigarettes, stuff like that, it's always human behaviour in this country, we don't have natural phenomenon that cause wildfires in Scotland yet, and I add the word yet with the caveat of climate change, but human behaviour is the predominant reason that it's usually accidental. Okay, go ahead Robbie with that one in terms of the licensing for, because if the licence is going to be for Moorburn grousmour management, how does that pick up farmers, crofters and people who don't necessarily have grousmours on their property, but they still want to burn Heather in order to improve habitat for grazing and what have you? So I mean it's a good point Jim, and I think there is something again just to drive from the point that Moorburn doesn't just happen on grousmours. Moorburn is a fairly widespread practice and quite a lot of those burns are up in the north west where no grousmours exist for the purpose of agriculture and actually for game management and thinking about deer to provide a first early bite for livestock and for game. So I do actually think we need to make sure when we're considering this bill that we think about Moorburn in the round, it's not just about grousmour management, it's about how burning is managed and the standards associated with that in the crofting world, in the agricultural world and how we continue to reduce the risk of inappropriate burn and the very real risk of those fires getting out of hand. We will be moving on to wildfires in a little bit more detail, but Bruce, a question to you, Moorburn code, should it include obligations for landowners where there is a risk of wildfire, increased risk of wildfire to control the fuel load and so on? So in the likes of Portugal they have strict laws on landowners to ensure that some type of Moorburn, it's probably not called Moorburn in Portugal, but it's carried out to reduce the risk of an incident like we had in Inverness last week. So the Scottish welfare reform, which I also chair, issues welfare danger assessments when the threat of welfare reaches very high or extreme and the recommendation that comes along with that and it is just a recommendation is that those that are carrying out Moorburn take cognisance of those alerts and either don't burn or burn in a much more small and managed way than perhaps they have been planning. The practice of Moorburn however is instrumental in reducing the risk of welfare because it manages the fuel load and it's the fuel load that's the real problem when it comes to the intensity of fire that we're seeing. So climate change isn't having an impact on the number of fires we're having but it is having an impact on the fire behaviour we're seeing and the intensity of fires. That combined with an increased fuel load or an unmanaged fuel load will result in a perfect storm for wildfires. So in that case, should the Moorburn code also cover those who are not burning for biodiversity or grice moor or agriculture purposes but basically to reduce fuel load? Yes, it should as a short answer. The Moorburn code should have differentiations though between the different types of burning. So we have, as we've mentioned, Moorburn for driven grouse, we've got Moorburn for farmers, we've got Moorburn for crofters and all are different but they're all being captured under one set of obligations and they are all very different. So if we were to subdivide Moorburn into those categories, I think that the Moorburn code would be a hugely powerful tool but it should be within the code that the risk of wildfire has to be a consideration before a flame is applied to vegetation. Okay, thank you. We're now going to move on to the topic of burning on peatland and not peatland and a question from Rachel Hamilton. I just wanted the panel to give us their views on the distinction that is made between land that is peatland and not peatland for the purpose of Moorburn licensing. Okay, I'll start with Nick. Thank you. There is no consensus within the scientific literature that supports the definitions that are laid out in the bill currently. There is no consensus that burning is damaging to peatlands and if anything the most robust science, and I'm happy to take questions of what I mean by robust, but the most robust science suggests that actually there are positive impacts of burning on peatlands for a range of ecosystem services and this is supported by the NatureScot report 1302 which noted that there is a lack of evidence to determine the impacts of Moorburn on different peat depths and as such I would say there is no evidence then to support the recalibration of peatlands of 40 centimetres as outlined in the bill and further to that, peat depths vary considerably within just a few metres across Scottish Hillsides and there is currently no spatial data at any reasonable resolution for peatlands of 40 centimetres and this makes it absolutely impossible for practitioners to be sure that they would be in compliance if a peat depth, even if a peat depth survey were to be carried out in advance, the resolution of peat depth surveys being a part of the issue there and our concern is that these definitions may either disincentivise Moorburn because of the confusion or lead to the licences being revoked if found to carry out actions against the code or the bill. Therefore, if peatlands, and I think it's important on the definition of peatlands, that we really need to be able to ensure this adaptive management approach should be taken in that respect given the uncertainty around what we define peatland and not and so that we can continue to contribute to that evidence in a real way and I should say that peatland definition on as it currently is should really be moved towards a focus on ecosystem functioning as opposed to arbitrary depths of peat. Duncan and then Emma. Many bodies have looked at this issue now including the Climate Change Commission and they have recommended that the who have advised on Scottish Government on land use and tackling meeting net zero targets and there's a general consensus across these bodies, I mean we support it but there are other bodies that think this as well that there should be no burning on peatland soils. We recognise that the bill as it stands provides provision for on peatland soils for control of wildfire and I think broadly we can accept that I think but it needs to be in extremis rather than normal and we would say that provision needs to be made within the bill to stop this from becoming routine because essentially the intention of the bill will therefore be bypassed but I think you know if you are going to I mean the original Scottish Government response to the wearity report indicated that there would be a statutory ban on burning on peatlands and we certainly support that it would be the easiest to enforce as well rather than going for sort of peatland depths as seems to have been the I mean so so now we seem to be moving in the direction of of moving away from that statutory ban on burning on peat. For us a peatland depth of 40 centimetres is unsubstantiated but we believe if we are going to use a peatland depth then 30 centimetres could be substantiated because that's what's used now by the peatland code it's also referenced in the UK peatland strategy and it's supported by the international sort of approach for example Richard Lindsay's wetland book also supports a 30 centimetre peat depth definition. Just a supplementary on that I understand that CCC are actually reviewing their position on peatland so that's not at the moment that's not a definite yes or a no from CCC but given that mureburn which is carried out under the the mureburn code only burns the vegetation it doesn't actually burn the peat so why are you suggesting that 30 centimetres or 40 centimetres is actually important when it doesn't burn the peat at all and we heard from in the Scottish Fire and Rescue that I think it was or it might have been Robbie if the only 5% of fires that wildfires are on grouse mure and it's the wildfires that actually potentially burn peat. So I'm going to defer to Emma on this because the IUCN have produced some quite useful guidance on this but essentially we're concerned about what goes on below the ground in terms of peatlands you know the surface is just one indication of what's going on here we're concerned about the drying out of the peat below the below the surface but I'll defer to Emma. Absolutely, in response to your comments around cool burns I mean logic would tell that putting a match to anything brings risk and especially when our peatlands are largely in a degraded state through drainage and agricultural management, periodic burning through prescribed burning, all changes the peatland vegetation towards a drier state so even attempting a cool burn there is a risk when you put that much to that vegetation that you cannot control it and because of the drier nature of the degraded peat there is a risk it can go out of control and burn the peat so I would like to reflect on that. Okay, I've got Ross and then Bruce. Thanks, convener and I appreciate your point about the climate change committee's report because their actual words in their 2023 report to the Parliament was that climate change committee isn't the process of reviewing its previous recommendations on the practice of rotational burning so thank you for that clarity. Just to be clear about what this does so this will create in effect two licensing schemes you'll have a licensing schemes for peatland to currently defined as where the peat is deeper than 40 centimetres and a licensing scheme for non-peatland which is patently everywhere else. Now the public consultation that preceded the bill's introduction was had a majority of people again opposed to that definition of peatland so it's not something that's unanimously supported and I'd come back to the point that you made, convener, it strikes me as very illogical to regulate an above ground activity using a below ground metric you know those two things are separate and I think we only need to look actually to England to see about what the potential implications of following this course of action could be so just for everyone's awareness in England the heather and grass burning regulations were brought in 2021 and that will basically license mureburn on protected sites where the peat was deeper than 40 centimetres so they've got a similar scheme although it's not as kind of widely set out as what we're being what's being proposed here and in England the regulator has received 1,600 reports of illegal peatland burning on the back of a campaign primarily headed by the RSPB and off those reports that resulted in one warning letter which was due to a technical breach and one court case due to a misunderstanding of the regulation so that's an attrition rate of 0.0625 per cent but I think the important thing to note here is that if we're going to have these continued campaigns from several environmental NGOs which is their right to do about kind of peatland burning which is an inaccurate characterisation then we're going to see vast amounts of money expended through the regulator in investigating frankly nonsense incidents which just have no bearing whatsoever to the peat depth so I really would like I think to put on the record as well what Professor Colin Reed said last week in responding to a question from Jim Fairlie where he did describe the measuring of peat as a problem those were his words and I think you know it's really important that we we try and ensure that this licensing scheme when it is developed it doesn't become weaponised because I think frankly that's what's happened in England and I think the committee does need to be aware of that. Can I bring in Emma Natt's specific point and then I'll come to you. Thank you yeah I'd just like to reflect on the fact that you claim that peatland identification is an issue because the forestry sector is able to undertake survey and definition and assessment of peat down to 10 centimetres under recent planting guidelines so if the whole of the forestry sector across nationally in Scotland and UK wide indeed due to the adoption of new guidance can manage to achieve it then I would push back. Do you understand the difference between obviously peatland obviously sorry mureburn which was an uprogrammed aboveground activity in forestry which involves obviously planting below the ground I think that's where I struggle to draw the difference. But both we're looking to protect both habitats and peat soils through that activity so I would push back again that it is a consideration of peatland as an ecosystem with aboveground vegetation and the peat soil supporting that ecosystem. Thank you Bruce. A lot of the comments that have been made on the table are reflective of my own however I think the differentiation in peat depth is from my perspective irrelevant there is evidence perhaps not entirely empirical but very practical that a managed cool burn as a phrase that was used the mureburn across the surface does not penetrate any more than a centimetre below the surface of peatland but my concern is that if we restrict where mureburn can be carried out by bringing in a specified depth then what we're doing is allowing a larger proportion of the fuel loading to be unmanaged and the very thing we're trying to prevent which is damaged to the peatlands will in fact be at higher risk because a wildfire absolutely will damage the peatland whereas a mureburn I acknowledge does carry some risk because there is never a zero risk application of fire to vegetation so it's a smaller risk however because it's managed controlled and the phrase that's current is cool as opposed to a very very hot and uncontrolled wildfire. I'm going to bring in Robbie before going to Alasdair Allan. Thank you, convener and I think again we have to be honest with ourselves that the evidence base for the benefits or disbenefits of burning on peatlands both from a carbon lens and a nature lens is complicated but I'm going to take a step back and just remind ourselves in a nature and climate crisis where 50% of our emissions are coming from land use and between 15% and 20% of those are coming from peatlands the existing position that nature scot takes is that burning on peatlands is not a good idea it is already not recommended through the peatland code and this bill is providing I think additional safeguard to ensure that if we are going to burn on the peatland which has to remain a tool in the toolbox it's for very specific purposes in very specific places and that is primarily to address the issue of wildfires getting out of hand and to protect some of our important carbon and biodiversity assets that for me from the policy perspective is absolutely sound and it's based on the precautionary principle in light of a climate crisis. Nick and Ross both want indicated in the bag of that contribution. Thank you convener we absolutely acknowledge that the science around Muirburn is complex to say the least but where we do see a distinction in some of the differences in results from science is where you look at the length of time in which studies have been conducted and typically where you see negative impacts on ecosystem services through Muirburn on peatlands they tend to been conducted over a three-year period maybe a five-year period at best because that reflects the funding models for most of our academic institutes in the UK. If you start to look at longer term studies looking at burning over an actual real term period of a burning cycle you start to see that over time you actually get ecosystem service benefits and at the moment if we look at the bill as it is being introduced there is and the separation of burning on peatlands and land that's not peatland there is no provision in the bill to allow burning on peatland to deliver these ecosystem service benefits and that I think will tie the Scottish government's hands in terms of what they can do to deliver on biodiversity and climate change. Thanks convener and completely support Dr Hesford's analysis there of the science and certainly the limitations around shorter term studies and those studies that used before after control impact methodologies tend to be the ones that produce the most robust evidence. I think I was just a little bit taken aback by what I just heard from Nature Scots I mean I think I just need to set out very briefly if I may convener you know what do we stand to lose if we don't properly conduct Muirburn and thereby manage the wildfire risk and you know I think just looking at a very brief example Saddleworth Moir fire in 2018 seven centimetres of peat were lost in that fire it will apparently take 200 years to restore that peat and it released somewhere in the region of between 17,798 and 26,281 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent from the soil carbon losses and that does not take into account the emissions from the vegetation that burned as a result as well so I think we just need to remind ourselves you know about the the role that burning can play when it comes to reducing fuel load because as far as I'm concerned it's fundamentally important. Briefly Emma. Yeah I just touch on that point but I wanted to discuss mainly the consensus in the science but very briefly in response to fuel load there are other ways to manage fuel load so I would argue that rewetting given the you know Scottish Government's commitment to nature and biodiversity crisis supporting peatland restoration rewetting of peatlands is a major way to challenge and sort of deal with the fuel load issue once you rewet a peatland within five to ten years there will be a reduction in heather cover which reduces that fuel load issue I could just touch very briefly on the consensus of the science we believe that there is a consensus in the science actually and there have been misleading interpretations of the science repeatedly published which fuels this lack of consensus debate we're hearing much of the research which you refer to in relation to long term studies that indicate burning is beneficial is found to be very lacking due to lack of peer review in the academic community and also huge methodological inconsistencies in defining peatland so we're just in brief much of that research produced today inconsistently and inaccurately describes the peatland type condition and past present management regime and generic terms that are used in that research such as moreland encompassing both peat and non-peatland types make interpretation of the science really difficult I could just say we all agreed that a shared goal here is healthy peatlands and restoring peatlands back to health so I think we do need some further scientific work to compare burning management and healthy peatlands rather than comparing two degraded states hey Duncan yeah and I was just going to say just referring to what Ross Ewing said there the nature scot report that was published recently looking at Muirburn and peatland said there was a lack of evidence from Scottish or UK studies that a reduction in fuel loads arising from Muirburn influences the occurrence of wildfire on moreland and that's a direct quote from that report I mean I think you know we're talking about a climate crisis here 80% of our peatland resource in Scotland is damaged and in 2019 it emitted 6.3 million tonnes of co2 which is more than the energy supply and residential sectors the Scottish government is investing 250 million pounds in restoring peatlands and there is evidence now growing evidence including from Saddleworth more actually in England and our neighbouring reserve there at Dovstone that actually restored habitats are more resilient to wildfire than non-restored habitats and actually we found that also in the flow country of Forsnard and there's about to be some papers published from the University of Highlands and Islands which will make that very point. Nick Ross and then we'll need to move on. Thanks, Comedian, and to save this committee the experience of two academics bossing heads over this the back and forth there between Emma and I does illustrate quite clearly how complex the issue is and really highlights the need for an adaptive management approach going forward. On the point that Emma made on alternatives to Muirburn they are untested. If you think that the science on Muirburn and the environmental impacts is complex and requires more study then there is even less science on rewetting and there is even less science on cutting. Rewetting for example has been suggested to be able to increase flood risk through things like saturated overland flow which essentially when you get a saturated peatland you get a heavy rain you can you see increased risk of flooding but also it poses an increased risk of methane emissions. Methane is 80 times more damaging in a climate context than carbon and so whilst we think these are cutting and rewetting are important management tools they shouldn't be prioritised over Muirburn they should all be in one toolbox and they should be reviewed in an adaptive management context. Briefly Ross. Thank you convener. The Duncan's assessment there are a characterization of the NatureScot report. He actually missed out quite important detail which is where they said that there was a quote plausible mechanism through which the intensity of wildfire could be influenced as a result of control burning and indeed I'd refer the committee as well to Professor Newton's remarks from last week where he said all the big ones we're talking about wildfire have been on areas that have not been burned for several decades so there's a huge build-up of dry trash on the ground to get the fire going and I completely support rewetting as an endeavour as a tool in the box for managing wildfire mitigation but I think we all need to be clear that it's not on its own going to cut it and actually the fact that we've seen wildfire kind of engulfing places such as Forsenard and Dovstone that RSPB manage you know just shows that rewetting perhaps on its own just isn't quite cutting it, convener. Bruce. My points have largely made, convener. Emma's absolutely right that rewetting is a valuable tool in the box but as both Nick and Ross have said it's not the only tool in the box and it's perhaps not the most effective tool in the box. Wildfire will damage wetland and can and does every year. Cutting is absolutely a tool that can be used but it essentially creates a dry litter layer that the fire will spread through. Burning is the most effective although the most risky approach to film management. Okay, thank you. I just want to make a point on the question that I originally asked. I mean how could, would it, there not be a circumstance where NatureScot could make a differential between a non-Petland and a peatland in terms of when issuing a licence without there being two licensing systems? Receipt of any application Rachel, for a piece of land we would expect an applicant to be able to be clear about why they're burning, where they're burning and what controls are in place and that can include peatland and non-peatland habitats but the purpose will be different because it's different in the legislation so we need to be really clear that if you are going to be burning on peatland it is under exceptional circumstances and it is quite clearly for the purpose explained in the bill. Just coming back to that discussion about the importance of the peatland resource, whilst I understand the debate about how this plays out in practice on grouse moors, most of the peatland resource in Scotland, it's not on the monoleths and the cairngorms and the angus clens and the southern uplands and south persia which is where most mureburn happens for grouse purposes, it's in the north and west so that the conflict between peatland as a resource and a mureburn for grouse moors seems to be dominating this discussion but actually quite a lot of the peatland resource are in areas out with grouse moors where there's still mureburn and the current and where we need to make sure we get adequate controls. I just thought that's a point worth making. I just apologise. Did I jump into Alistair's question? I think that Ariane had a question as well, I think that that's been covered as well so I'm going to move on to question from Karen who is just going to probably explore that a little bit for that. Yeah it'll probably just take it a little bit more because it will have gone quite a bit in-depth here, I'm excusing any puns but just to dig in a little more to the definition of peatland just asking opinions on the definition of that and for the purpose of obviously of mureburn licensing what the individual witnesses thoughts are on that. Yeah Ross, thanks convener. I think Karen in response to your question that I'd refer again to last week's remarks from Professor Newton which I thought were quite instructive in this point where he kind of talked about one licensing scheme covering the lot and I think that's really important because from our perspective we do not think that the mechanisms for determining peat depth will provide sufficient certainty to land managers and ultimately the provisions of the bill currently would technically you know make it an offence to make an erroneous submission you know and if you've not followed the methodology to the letter then there is a real risk I suppose of you being prosecuted or caught out by the legislation so the fact that we don't have a methodology to actually scrutinise here is a big part of the problem you know and so I think on that basis we would advocate for a licensing scheme which kind of removes the peatland licensing scheme in total so you've got one licensing scheme with the broadest range of licensable purposes but you've still got Nature Scott kind of applying its discretion perhaps in those areas where the peat is that little bit deeper if that's its concern and I think one of the principal motivations of this committee that I must set out which is really important is that paragraph 202 of the Moliseum Emerandab acknowledges that national survey data for peat measured at 40 centimetres does not exist and that massively exacerbates the uncertainty for land managers and I think it's really important and quite instructive actually that during the development of the heather and grass regulations in 2021 one of the foremost things that the secretary of state did before he actually pushed their green button on those regulations was ensuring that on designated sites that there was peat mapping data there at 40 centimetres and I think that's absolutely fundamental but if we're going to be absolutely pushing this narrative that we need to have a you know a peatland licensing scheme based on some measure of peat depth because the data exists at the 50 centimetres threshold our strongest view is that really it should be at 50 centimetres and Professor Warrity said last week you know the existing map is based on 50 centimetres and if you migrate away from that then clearly you have a challenge in how you determine that and he also went on to say that developing that new national data set at 40 centimetres would be a major undertaking to effectively remap Scotland's peat soils and the final thing Cymru just before I finish is that I draw your attention as also all committee members to the 40th report of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee which states in relation to the ability for Scottish ministers to amend the definition of peat and peatland via the affirmative procedure that and I quote it considers that any change this provision may merit greater parliamentary scrutiny than just the affirmative procedure. Thank you Emma. To reflect a little bit on Ross's point there I agree completely that the mapping data is very very challenging and you will never get a map that is perfect on the ground it will always need to be ground-toothed and checked which means that there will be a requirement for practitioners and landowners to go out and do that survey and there are several easy accessible tools in the box such as using monsel colour charts, vompo soil texture and vegetation indicators, peat depth probes etc but just reflecting back on your question Karen about the depth definition as well the classification of peat has led to shallow areas of degraded peat being completely excluded from policy and land management decisions and that is quite a major concern so I would certainly welcome a more holistic look and a move away from an arbitrary depth definition in relation to peat and I certainly welcomed Nick's comments earlier about that sort of more holistic approach looking at the ecology and hydrology of the system rather than an arbitrary depth being applied to that. Nick. I was going to reiterate that point so thank you Emma, but we would agree with Ross in terms of in the absence of better data retaining a 50 centimetre peat depth definition is should be adequate for now and that remapping that could easily happen through an adaptive management approach where land managers are taking measurements in the field similar to what Emma is talking about there and those data could feed into the redefining that in fact that is happening already on the Scottish uplands and those as I said before those data are currently sitting with GDFCT. Very briefly as a land owner land manager that is already doing peatland code work where we're doing the kind of testing you know of peatland depth that Emma's just described there is an easily and readily accessible method for doing this there's also a development method that's used in relation to wind farms and that kind of thing but just for us you know now that like a lot of landowners we're moving into developing peatland code applications and that kind of thing some consistency would help us so that is why we would advocate a 30 centimetre depth and that's what the peatland the national UK peatland strategy also says we would we would appreciate that kind of consistency I mean the forestry commission or forestry in land Scotland forestry Scotland actually use a 10 centimetre peatland peatland depth so you know let we argue go with where the sort of consensus seems to be across the peatland community. Can I address my question to Robbie please and just could you describe what methodology might be used to determine if a piece of land is peatland and how do you think stakeholders could be supported in the sort of practicalities of that? Well this is is fascinating to hear the discussion so far because we do understand the need to provide prescription and detail and that was part of the discussion last week's committee about the need for flexibility within the system versus very hard prescribed targets so there are a range of tools out there as Emma's suggested which will help illustrate peat depth and the most simple one of which actually is just a probe a peat probe which is becoming much more commonly used for restoration work and is something practitioners can use. I think there's a point of first principles we'll come back to as well here. If you are going to go and burn an area of peatland in a climate nature crisis where the peatland resource is so important I would ask why you're proposing to do that without really understanding what's going on under the surface and that is not an unreasonable expectation of an applicant to be able to demonstrate they have knowledge of that. We don't have the data nationally it's always going to be really hard to get that data nationally therefore there will be an onus on an applicant to demonstrate they've got an understanding that the right safeguards are in place but I suppose again I'll come back to first principles we're in a climate crisis we are expecting transformative land use now this is change and I expect people will struggle with it but from our point of view we are not going to get to net zero unless people start changing behaviour and burning is absolutely part of that protecting our peatland resources part of that which is why Scottish Government are putting £250 million into addressing some of the damage and modification has gone on to lead to peatland's being in poor condition so the last thing we would like to see is any applications coming forward which risks that any more than we've already got. Do you believe that the bill as drafted is flexible enough to be adapted to new science and change in ground conditions? Yeah I mean again in applying a licensing regime come back to better regulation here we will need to continue to refine that as our knowledge improves and there are gaps in our knowledge and quite a lot of the data we will secure as a result of the licensing returns and the data coming in will help plug those gaps so we are on an adaptive management journey to think about how we best protect our natural assets. Ross and then Nick. Thanks convener and just following on from Robbie's comments I completely accept the points we are in a crime and biodiversity emergency but we're also in a just transition and I think the onus is on us to ensure that land managers actually have the tools at their disposal to be able to go out and do what government is asking of them properly so I think the 50 centimetre depth base would not be unreasonable given we have that data available and secondly you know there's been a lot of talk about the use of peat probes which I understand are very simple to use but the nature scot review of off muraburn last year noted that there is however a constraint with this method in terms of the time required to carry out a survey which will depend on the scale involved and the level of detail required. Now clearly in the context of our larger land holdings that presents a significant challenge so we would massively welcome much more greater information I suppose at this stage about what sort of methodology will be used for determining the peat depth because that is a clear kind of vacant area within the bill at the moment but would certainly kind of echo the sentiments about the climate and nature emergencies and the importance I suppose of managing fuel load on peatland to protect it for years to come. Nick thank you convener I'd like to pick up on the point of peat probes as well we acknowledge the methodological methodological limitations of using peat probes but they do provide a quick and easy assessment of peat depth although it is subject to some issues but the land holdings we're talking about as Ross mentioned can be quite extensive and therefore peat probe survey across even the whole of the hillside would still leave large areas either categorised as peatland or not under the current way it's laid out in the bill based on the simple resolution in which you can probe therefore we would advocate for ignition point recording and adaptive management so collect that data over time and let us learn from it. Okay thank you we're now going to move on to wildfire given that one of the purposes for which a license can be sought is to manage the risk of wildfire and I know we touched on it earlier but can I ask Robbie is nature scot confident that you'll be able to assess the wildfire risk for the purposes of granting licenses? That's quite a difficult question to answer, convener, but again coming back down to first principles we know mureburn as a tool has to remain absolutely an integral part of our ability to reduce the risk of wildfire so again I just need to make that point absolutely clear it has to remain a tool in the toolbox and the main reason on peatland habitats and other habitats is to try and protect our assets and that does require a bit of strategic planning about where we're going to burn and how best to burn to try and reduce the risk of wildfire but again the onus on that actually is in an applicant to be able to demonstrate that in their view on their property this is the most sensible place to do it because you know let's be honest owner occupiers know they're going better than we do so the the onus is actually on an applicant to be able to demonstrate in this case we think these are the areas that need to be burnt to protect and to deliver on the core purposes in the bill so it's very much a joint consideration and again coming back to our relationship with applicants based on trust and confidence so turning it on its head so we're talking currently about landowners actively seeking a license to to reduce wildfire risk we turn on its head is there a need for some legislation to force landowners to assess wildfire risk and be forced then to take appropriate action that might well be to mure burn to reduce the fuel load because that was and the basis of asking this question is because there was a suggestion that the fire up in Inverness somebody should be held account for not managing that fuel load which was ultimately at some point going to lead to wildfire so again i think just taking a step back the context in which we're operating and expecting to see an extra one degree between now and 2050 in scotland means that wildfire risk is heightened and it's going to continue to heighten we have hosted european delegates both from forestry and nature conservation agencies in scotland over the last two or three weeks and in many of those countries wildfire risk is the single biggest issue they are faced with in terms of protecting forests and peatland soils and the reason i highlight that again is that it is increasingly important for land managers both of forests and peatlanders to strategically think about how best to protect those stocks and wildfire being one of the tools not the only tool by any way stretch of the imagination so it is again just asking people to think much more differently in light of a climate crisis in light of change environmental conditions in light of increased risk of fire how we mitigate those risks okay i'm going to ask bruce if you will do risk assessments as part of your role so that's buildings or activities or whatever do you think you should be carrying out risk assessments on moorland or grassland and you have potentially powers to to make a landowner take action to reduce that wildfire risk the duty to carry a risk assessment is the landowners rather than the fire services so if we if we use the context of buildings as an illustrator the risk assessment for this building is the responsibility of the duty holder and that can be any of the owner or somebody delegate that authority similarly in the rural environment there absolutely needs to be an assessment of risk whether that be for new plantations or whether it be for established sporting estates or crops or farms and that assessment should be not just for the here and now but for the lifespan of that plantation or for the next 10 20 30 years there's need to revisit it absolutely and there's need to make sure that it is aligned to guidance that is given us to what the risk assessment should contain we currently have the powers for buildings to assess the risk assessment and identify whether it is suitable or not but we are not the enforcing agency in relation to that similarly in the wildfire context we will be able to assess whether our risk assessment is suitable or not whether we should be the enforcing authority is a separate debate but the risk assessment in my view should be the primary factor to decide what land management activity is carried out and when rather than arbitrary figures such as depth of peat but the fuel management is the key but that's the bit that will burn first and possibly give cost to the peat being burnt afterwards so the risk assessment is a key part in that in my opinion okay thank you rosh your thanks convener just to see that scotland in estates support our members in terms of developing integrated wildfire management plans and also placing their resources if they feel they're able to on the community asset register which allows them to be used by the scotland fire and rescue service in the incident of of a wildfire taking hold i just want to draw the committee's attention to two key problems as we see it surrounding wildfire with a bill so the first is the presumption that exists against murban on peatland which basically says that scottish ministers may grant a license where the license relates to peatland if they are satisfied that no other method of vegetation control is available now we think that carries catastrophic consequences not least because what it does is it ultimately prioritises other methods of vegetation control the most obvious one being cutting now incidentally with cutting using a flail more that's a land management technique that we know even less about than murburn in terms of its impact on the peatland below so i think i draw strongly urge caution about prioritising that but i think in our view that that provision around kind of prioritising other methods of vegetation control over murburn needs to just be removed from the bill and the second point to note is that the the bill is completely silent on the issue of back burning now back burning for those that are unaware is a tool that's employed at its type of murburn essentially that's employed during a wildfire incident to ultimately get rid of the mutual fuel load in front of the fire this bill is completely silent on that but it was you know back burning has been commended in two such parliamentary motions this year one from Fergus Ewing and one from Kate Forbes and indeed was used quite extensively as i understand it during the cannec wildfire which took place over the last few weeks so just to set that out that there doesn't appear to be any provision made convener for back burning in this bill whatsoever okay and you bring in nick thanks convener i want to comment again on the point rost made on alternatives to murburn and the fact that they are not tested and therefore we would support what SLA is saying in terms of removing that that section of the bill if you look at things like rewetting it stands to reason that a wetter bog may stop a stop a fire and you know the science suggests that during prescribed burns a rewetted more you know a area of wetter more more than could stop the fire but though that's prescribed burns which happen october to april during a cooler period if you got a wildfire they predominantly happen in the summer where the water table even the most ecologically intact and well functioning bog can drop by up to 30 centimeters so these just because a bog's been rewetted doesn't mean that it doesn't pose a risk to wildfire okay and then rest of time i'm going to bring in rhoda grant he's got a further question on wildfire then i'll bring in the other stakeholders rhoda thank you um my questions for bruce sifachers and you said in your evidence before that murburn was one of the most effective although riskiest form of managing wildfire is there anything else from your experience that would be useful any other tools that will be useful in doing this and also whether you think the regulatory framework is appropriately designed for that kind of activity thank you for the question i think there are other tools definitely for managing fuel and a few have been mentioned today in my opinion and in what i have seen when i've gone around the country and spoken with various people murburn is definitely the most effective because it removes the fuel in its entirety cutting is effective to a point but i use the analogy quite regularly of attending a fire in a house of a hoarder rather than a fire in a house of a minimalist and the cutting would leave that dry layer that actually encourages the spirit of fire now cutting is used to control murburn but when that is the case the cut material is still wet and that's the key part when it's allowed to dry out you have that fine fuel moisture fine fuel underneath the the top vegetation layers and that propagates and encourages fire rewetting is absolutely a tool it's a long-term tool but again as has been said a number of times today the science is conflicting on that and there's a bit of work required there similarly variegated planting of species has a demonstrable impact on how fire will spread rather than having a continuity of similar fuels but murburn is absolutely the most effective way of removing the fuel which then manages the the landscape and prevents the welfare from happening i think the legislation as we doubt has a critical emission and it's a requirement for training to be mandatory for anybody that's going to apply a flame to vegetation given that we've mentioned a few times to how risky that activity is to have that completely untrained and no input given as to how that can be carried out safely seems to make to be quite an emission okay should there be a duty on people to manage that fuel load you talked about you know in public buildings there's a duty of people to mitigate fire risk should there be a duty on land managers to mitigate fire risk yes is the short answer yes i can bring in maranda dunker and then ross yes i i i wanted to um to say something about the fact that what we've heard here is that a lot of well some of the key resources like the pete is in the crofting counties we've seen some of the recent wildfires were in the crofting counties but actually when we were looking at sort of the way this this bill has progressed and some of the reports that were underpinning it was very little recognition for crofting i don't think it was mentioned once we as a small organization we're trying to feel that kept here but i think there Felly, we can facilitate that to engage with people on the ground who are actually using fire to better understand what the practices are there, so we can better engage with this. Ultimately, how are they able to identify their areas. I am hearing fire management plans. How applicable are those in a small concept. How accessible does fire remain as a tool? If indeed we see some of these measures being brought in that might be better suited for larger land managers, Daddym массol a ralles o'iℚ ia while a file went out of control was instigated in a garden but got into a field of rank vegetation and got out of control very quickly and then it hit a well grazed common raisings and it stopped, but that is in some areas the exception to the rule. We're seeing common raisings that are increasingly collected, where there cwm ni'n ddweud i gael ei ddweud o'r sydd o enwau cyd-gweithio'r cyd-gweithio'r cyd-gweithio, i'n ddweud o'r sydd o'r llaw yn y synodol, nid o'r cyd-gweithio'r cyd-gweithio, ac mae'n gwaith efallai'n ddweud. Ond, gwnaeth byddwch chi, ac mae hi'n ddweud i gael ei wneud i gael ei dechreu i'r llaw, ac mae'n meddwl i'r llwyddiadau. Mae'n meddwl i'r cyd-gweithio'r cyd-gweithio ysgolwyr, reilydiew. HE www.шьgou.chu There's another consideration here. I mean recognising all of us want to prevent wildfire, we may have different ways of going about it. No, I mean the approach that there was a duty on managing fuel load that required people to to burn or remove excess fuel. That sort of builds on the history of the approach that we've had over many years. Myndwyd, mae'r llei cwmwysydd yn fwrdd o'isio gyda sydd yn ei collad yw oed porffirau a rhaidio ambygwydol ac os ydwod gyda ff tiedeir, fyddai'r llei cyffredinol fel hefyr milineir. Fy hoffi cael eu gwleidau o quite ar mwyncaf, os roeddwn i ddweud ddwy willag ar y llei cyffredinol, rwy'n gweithio'n dweud o feithaf cyffredinol o'i llei cyffredinol dros ddwyllol ar amgylchedd. ac yn cyfnodd ar gyfer yn gweithio'r wych. Felly, mae'n gofyn nhw'n gwneud o gwyfodol o'r tîm, am ddim yn gweithio'r gwyfodol. Mae'n gweithio'r gwyfodol o'r gweithio i gyfnodd gyfnodd. Mae'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio, ond mae'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio i Penedig yn saucb ליכaeg o'r llun ar y cyblodau enw i gydymaetheidol i gyngretaeth bwysigol ac yn cael credu bwysigol i gyngretaeth bwysigol. Rwy'n credu i gyngretaeth bwysigol a chyflodd, mae'n cyflodd mwy o gyrtaeth bwysigol yn gyrtaeth bwysigol i gyngretaeth bwysigol, Ac yn siaradion gan ychydig ar gyffredin. ac mae'n hyn i armengwr i gyngretaeth bwysigol i gyngretaeth bwysigol, I'm speaking with the Woodland Trust who are concerned about this, there are people in the south west who are talking about the emissions and the impacts that planting and forestry is having to people in this south west, whether it is to 30 centimetres. On the point that we are making ar gilydd y byddwr atimerio, fyddai'r ffordd a'r ei wneud hyn o'i gael y cyflwynig yw gwathol yma, oherwydd mae'n ddigon dim i'r gael i'r cyfrŵr, ac mae'n ddigon i'r byddw i'r byddwr, mae'n credu y habitat, ond mae'n ddigon i'r cyfrŵr erbyn hi fel'r blynyddech chi i'r cyfrŵr. Yn hyn yn gwybod i'r cyfrŵr yma, rdyn ni i fel'r cyfrŵr i Brws, i gwybod i'r cyfrŵr i'r bobl, i'r cyfrŵr i'r bobl – Gwiydd Silgrin i'r mynd i'r amlwg i'r bod latrachwyr yw i'i'r mynd i'r amlwg i'r mynd i'r mynd i'r amlwg i'r mynd i'i'r amlwg i'r mynd i'r amlwg i'r amlwg i'r amlwg i'r지도n i'r mynd i'r mynd i'r amlwg i'r накlyw gyda'l eu virus? Mae'n gwirio i fod y pryd ac yn dweud yn cael ei gŷnol. Mae'n credu wedi bod chi'n gwybod fel Robby yn ystod. Mae'n credu i fod yn cael eu gŷnol. Yr wrthodol yn gweithio unrhyw ar gyfer bwysig ac yn ysgrifwyr, mae'r gennymau hytradei yn ymgyrchau i gael ymddangos, sy'n gweithio i gyd, mae'r unrhyw hyn yn cael ei gyd. fewn i'retoedd i Gŷ i Gŷ i Gŷ, fel i'r ddymeku ddechrau am y cyd-dwylliant i Gwlaffaethau i Gŷ—a cyd-dwylliant i Gwlaffaeth Cymru i g armszliadau gyntaf. Yr ystod y dyfodol phones â'r ffordd o fewni'r gweithio gwylliant i gyrsedd ar y ddechrau, ond ond dwi'n gawr o'r gwnaeth, ond nhw'n ôl i fynt o gydaint i gwasfer, ond ti'n gwylliant i is you are preventing succession by the land management natural succession of woodland vegetation and other scrub vegetation that would take place in the absence of Muirburn. So, you know, longer term, we need more... But how are we regenerating which is for pollinators? No, but it's widely recognised that we need more woodland in terms of meeting the carbon challenge and some of that is going to have to be on grassmores. In fact, some grassmores are already putting in new native woodlands around grassmores. I think we're now drifting away from the topic. I'm very conscious the session should have finished 20 minutes ago, so... Can I just get the answer on the fuel load? Absolutely. So specifically about fuel load. So for us, you know, the way we manage our land, we are trying to create more resilience in the habitats that we have on our land to mitigate against wildfire. And that's largely... I mean, we have a lot of peat bogs on our land, many of which, you know, have been degraded before we acquired the sites. We're investing hugely in peatland restoration at other sites. We're putting in, you know, native woodland or encouraging native woodlands. But in Spain, wetting peatland has been found that wildfires are going to occur because of drought. But Spain is very different from the UK. We have a completely different climate here. Okay, and we're getting into the minutiae of the topic. I think we need to be just conscious of the time. We're bringing Christine Grahame on wildfires. Yes, I'm looking at the licensing. And it says... The licensing, where the satisfy that mubren is necessary and no other method of vegetation control is available, I would have prepared the word appropriate. Appropriate or practicable. The second thing is, I think you mentioned training. And I would ask if under licensing one of the questions that would be asked is what training has been undertaken on the estate with regard to the various methods. It was a very good point, but you wouldn't put that in primary legislation. But it might be a question the licence provider would ask of that to ensure that even when they're granting it, the people who are exercising the licence know how to appropriately do it. Just if I may respond on those points, absolutely. One of the questions we must pose is why burning in the absence of alternatives. I don't think that's an unreasonable question. And I'm sure there'll be lots of answers why burning is the most appropriate method. Appropriate's a better one. And secondly, on standards and training, we're working quite hard to make sure those people who are undertaking this activity are appropriately trained. That is on the face of the bill and I think it's incumbent upon us on the Scottish Fire Rescue Service and practitioners to make sure that we set that bar in the right place. Recognising that standards and skills are appropriate on grousmours who are exemplary in the field of managing fire. We've got to try and think about the consistency of standards about how that squares are crofting communities and farmers who have not got the same resources and skills. And we would like to see standards raised consistently applied so we are assured that the safeguards are in place. Forgive me, I haven't got the bill in front of me. Is the word available on the bill rather than appropriate? I think it says available in the bill just now, but I... I don't think that's the right word. OK, I'm going to bring in Bruce and then Ross to bring this section to a close. Thank you, convener. I just want to go back to the points that were made by Rachel Lilliaron in relation to the... Would the welfare have reacted differently? I think I'll answer the state that we've managed by Muirburn. And we'll go back to what Nick said earlier on that that interconnected mosaic of burning presents a fantastic opportunity for the firefighters to actually either put in a fire break or mountain attack from a portion of land they know is safe from the fire coming on to. So in relation to how a welfare will progress across an area that has been managed via Muirburn, it's very different when the fuel has been managed in that way and allows us a great opportunity to deal with the fire. It was mentioned that the context of our climate is very different to that of Spain and that it absolutely is at the moment. But in 2018 we had a man called Mark Castell now who is a worldwide recognised expert in relation to wildfire based in Catalonia. At the Scottish Welfare Conference in Edinburgh in 2018 he stated that in his research and opinion the wildfire context within Scotland would be similar to that experienced in Portugal within the next 30 years. By context Portugal loses hundreds of people to wildfires every year. What we need to do is identify what we can do now to prevent us getting to that point and in Spain the reintroduction of prescribed burning is absolutely part of the arsenal they are using and we are seeing that in Australia and California with other countries that have a significant wildfire problem. So it's the management of the fuel that is key to prevent us getting to the point that Portugal finds itself in right now where wildfires are uncontrollable and present a real and significant threat to life. Thank you and very briefly Ross. First convener, I wholly endorse what Bruce has just said. Just a point of concern that's been raised by some of our members who are undertaking peatland restoration which is something we fully obviously support and something we need to be doing. There is concern among some members about the risk posed by an increased fuel load buildup as a result of the provisions in this bill about their investment that they've obviously put into peatland restoration and indeed the vast amounts of public money that have gone into it as well. So just a note to say that the implications of this bill will carry implications also for things like peatland restoration which clearly a lot of people invested money in and the public purse has been used on that. I think it's important that we make sure that this bill adequately provides resilience for our landscapes to protect it from wildfire risk. Thank you. We're now going to look at the role of NatureScot and a question from Alison Allan. Just truly to ask about resources and we've heard a bit about the kind of task that NatureScot would face in licensing new burn. What are the implications for resource for your own organisation and are you in a position that you're confident about being able to meet the requirement? So what we've tried to do both in the financial memorandum and in discussion with sponsor colleagues in the Scottish Government is be clear on the transactional nature of these new licences. So we've tried to quantify that as far as we're able but quite a lot of this activity is unregulated just now so it's very difficult to be absolutely specific about who's going to come forward with applications and how well informed those applications are going to be. So it comes back down to the point about trying to ensure that we are adequately resourced to deal with that demand and that's an on-going conversation we're having with the Scottish Government that as this bill progresses that we've got reassurance that we can deal with probably what will amount to between five and eight hundred new licence applications on an annual basis. Thank you. How compliance with the Mureburn code and other licensing conditions will be monitored? So monitoring and enforcement and compliance is going to be pretty fundamental to this it comes back down to resourcing actually. We know that compliance monitoring is going to be key to make sure that we take that adaptive management approach and learn from experience so we can draw some reassurance that as technology improves we can use very efficient means of monitoring burning as part of our compliance condition. We're still operating on the base of trust and confidence that we're getting returns and information about how well licences are being complied with but we will need to secure enough resource for us to be able to go out and spot check from time to time and ground truth that licences are actually being complied with and that will form part of the on-going drive for improvement as we move forward in this space. Jim Fairlie. Thanks, convener. There are stakeholders suggested there's broad discretion for NatureScot in granting and making decisions around issuing suspended or revoken licences. So what does NatureScot see as its role and how will you ensure you take a proportionate approach? So proportionality, again, common theme through the discussions today. All I think I can do is provide some reassurance to committee that in pursuing both a licensing approach which will be informed by a framework about how we expect applicants to come forward with applications, about how we monitor compliance and indeed how any sanctions would apply in practice. That's a commitment that we work together to do that. We've given that commitment to develop the code. We've got that experience about how frameworks work previously. So I am hoping to provide you with reassurance that as a public body we are accountable and the safeguards are in place both in legislation and indeed as a public body that if people are not happy they've got an opportunity to appeal decisions which is on the face of this bill. We would impose it anyway just through our desire to be I suppose, again, exemplars of the better regulation agenda. We're subject to public service omenspin complaints and indeed ultimately judicial review if people are not happy with how we're conducting our regulatory functions. So that's as much safeguard as I can provide committee to do. Just to say that there is significant concern from land managers particularly around the notion of ascertaining peat depth, which is clearly something that NatureScot is going to want to try and monitor. We feel it be really important that there could be some sort of provision included that says it would not be an offence to make a false declaration when applying for a licence to make beer burn on peatland provided the methodology was followed because as we've just heard, peat depth can be hugely variable and how do we know that the same bit of land, for example that NatureScot come and probe when they do their assurance check, is the same bit of land that was probed when a land manager did their survey if that's what's required. There really does need to be some consistency and clarity here. 100% support the point that Nick Hesford raised about the ignition points being the point at which you actually do that measurement because that at least provides you with a little bit of clarity. The point at which the fire starts, the point at which you measure and that would make it much easier for land managers to follow alongside that provision. Finally, Karen Adam. Thank you, convener. I think that that follows on great from there. Stakeholders have suggested the need for adaptive management as new science becomes available. So to ask NatureScot, how will you ensure that this new information is reflected in decision making and new guidance around licensing? So yeah, I mean we fully appreciate because we've heard already that there is so much uncertainty in the evidence base in what is a new regulated framework that we need to learn by doing. And there will be some risks in amongst all of that, both for practitioners and indeed for us as a regulator. So come back to First Principles that we have signed something called what's called the shared practice for best practice for wildlife management, which is about really, it's again about working together, about good communication, about transparency in the evidence base and a desire to continue to improve. That's how we work as a regulator and again with representative bodies around this virtual table and others through the mollum forum. That's how we would expect to behave moving forward. Very briefly, Aran Burgess. Thanks, convener. This is to RSPB and it's about the moment the season is going to be until April. And I understand that you have some concerns about that and it would be interesting to hear that. So just in relation to the Muirburn season, particularly the spring end, which is clearly when birds are starting to breed, the current provisions in the bill set out an end of Muirburn season data 15th of April, by which time many mollum birds are already breeding and looking again at the climate change predictions, the bird breeding seasons are coming forward by a day every eight years as a result of climate change so we can expect that trend of earlier breeding, of mollum birds to increase. Now ideally, we would suggest that an end of Muirburn season of the 15th of March would be more appropriate than 15th of April. By the 15th of March, birds like gold needles, for example, have started breeding in late March. Many wading birds have started breeding as well, including red-listed species that are concerned. This is climate and nature crisis, remember here as well. The compromise might be the 31st of March, but for us, the 15th of April is too late. Can I bring in Nick and then Ross? I'd like to draw a committee at this point here to draw your attention at least to the British Trust for Ornithology report that was published in 2021, which looked at breeding bird laying dates and it confirmed what Duncan is saying in terms of laying dates are advancing, but despite this, it concluded that there is a little overlap between the current birding seasons and the nesting attempts of most upland bird species. It also concluded that, overall, there is a very low risk for populations of upland species from your burn, and those species where there is a greater overlap, things like golden eagles, there are other provisions in the code which put us a buffer around areas where they are breeding and for species which are at risk, potentially because of the greater overlap, like lapwing and golden plover, they nest on rank heather anyway, so you wouldn't expect to see any damage from that point of view. I think Duncan wanted to come in the back. The final point on this is that we get reports every year from members of the public concerned about Muirburn having burned out bird nests, so this is a real issue. Just to make quite an obvious point, it doesn't serve the interest of a grousemoor manager to burn out nests because clearly you're trying to produce grouse, which are ground nesting birds, so just to make that kind of obvious point and also to say that I think the far greater risk to ground nesting birds comes from excessive fuel load build-up and the dreadful instant it can, goodness knows the amount of ground nesting birds that probably perished during that wildfire, so just to make that point that we've got bigger problems than just the Muirburn season to worry about here. Beatrice Wishart. It's a final question for Emma. It's a yes or no answer. Is IUCN involved in the drawing up of the draft statutory guidance on Muirburn? No, I actually requested to NatureScot just yesterday for a place at the table to help with the Muirburn code. We have been involved in Muirburn code drafts previously and we were very much welcome the opportunity to feed in. We would like the Muirburn code to be drafted with a sound scientific evidence base and both panel with scientific members and practitioners. I think that's really important to have that communication and partnership across the two elements. Thank you. That concludes our evidence sessions this morning. I'm going to suspend the meeting very briefly to allow witnesses to leave. We have further items on the agenda, so we've got to ask committee members to stay in their positions. Thank you. Our next item is consideration of three negative SSIs. First, we have the public intervention and private storage aid suspension and miscellaneous amendments Scotland regulations 2023. Do members wish to make any recommendations on the instrument? No. Rachel Hamilton. Can I draw your attention to the comments from the NFUS on this particular SSI? I just want to confirm that it is 2023-150. The NFUS acknowledged the importance of having a framework for market support during crisis situations expressed concern, causing caution regarding the potential impact of proposed changes on stability and confidence in various sectors. They also stated that, with the up-and-coming agricultural bill, it would provide adequate powers for Scottish ministers to intervene when necessary. I'm not minded to put a motion forward to annul this, but I think that once again we find ourselves in a situation convener where quite a considerable body representing quite a number of farmers are sharing caution with this committee. I seek your advice. I echo the views of Rachel Hamilton. It's concerning that the NFUS have raised concerns. However, they believe that the agricultural bill would offer adequate provision. I'm not aware of any draft agriculture bill or any provisions within that, but it would appear that the NFUS have had sight of the agricultural bill to give them that comfort. That concerns me that we are potentially making a decision without knowing whether a forthcoming bill will actually mitigate the concerns that they have. My other comments are that this suggests that the private intervention cease to have affected Scotland for a period of five years, but no impact assessment has been made because it was for a temporary period. I would have thought that five years is a fairly extended temporary period, and an impact assessment should have been carried out five years is a long time, so of concerns that there's not more details on that. I think today we could write on the back of those concerns, but otherwise are we content to... Rhoda. The reading of the regulations was that this instrument, if something happened, it could be brought back into force. The five years was to allow for the agriculture bill to make provision that would take over from the instrument. Those are maybe asked for confirmation of that as the case, but also when we're looking at the agriculture bill to make a note of this for our looking at that bill to make sure that it does what we assume is the plan. Absolutely. I think particularly given that it does state that it could leave Scottish applicants at a disadvantage if we didn't mirror the rest of the UK when the temporary PI provision ceases, so I think we certainly need to write on the back of that. Today really the option we have is either to annul or to say we're content but write to the Scottish Government with seeking further clarity. Are we content to do that? Is it possible without annuling to seek clarity? On the policy note, it says that if Scotland do not choose to mirror the rest of the UK it leaves Scottish applicants at a disadvantage. How does the NFUS not take that same view? Practicality is the reporting deadline on 26 June, so today would be the last opportunity for us to deal with it. Can we write? No, we can write, but the instrument would come into force on 1 July. Okay, so how long have we had with this instrument? We've had 40 days. Okay, so first I've seen it, sorry. Okay, are we content to write with our concerns relating to this, but Alasdair Allan? I'm concerned with that approach. Content with that approach. I don't sense there's a movement to annul, but just to get a clearer idea of what the letter to the Government would say of what the tone of the content of it would be. Certainly, I think we need clarity on why the NFUS have been given comfort that the forthcoming agricultural bill will offer adequate provision for the Scottish Government to intervene where necessary. I'm not aware, and I haven't seen a draft of the agriculture bill, so I can't have any comfort that that's the case, but the NFUS appeared to have so I would like to find out on what... The appear to have been given comfort on that point, which isn't the same as them having seen the bill. No, there being the assurances, those assurances will be something that the Government, or any Government, can't renegon, they've obviously been in discussions. That's not the same as having been shown in the book. Yes, I don't think they've seen a bill. My point is that I don't have any comfort or reassurance from anywhere that the agriculture bill will offer adequate provisions given the Scottish Minister's power. So to make a decision on that, I would find difficult, because I don't have any reassurance that that will be the case. I'm also concerned that there was no risk assessment based on a potential five-year period, which I would suggest is slightly longer than I would consider temporary. I think perhaps just the right to the Government in saying regarding the NFUS, it's our understanding that they've got comfort that it's excellent. Can the Government just confirm that that's the case? I'm sure it is. I'm seeing those lines. That's sufficient. Is it not? I've got to go, actually. That's a ideal moment to introduce controversy. I'm happy with that approach as long as we draw that distinction, but we're not trying to suggest that a bill has been shown to third parties. No, no. In the response, it says that they stated that the forthcoming agriculture bill would offer adequate. If we're given reassurances, it would be good for the committee to be given those reassurances too. That's fine. If we're content to note that. Secondly, we have the Seed Fee Scotland Amendment Regulation 2023. Do any members wish to make any recommendations on this instrument? No. Lastly, we have the feed additive, former provisional authorisation, cobalt 2 compound, Scotland Regulations 2023. Do any members wish to make any recommendations on this instrument? No. In this instance, we have this in front of us because there was a failure to apply for appropriate licence within the time that has led to this SSI coming forward. I did have concerns that, given that this was animal health, situation why the minister for women's and public health was the minister to make the decision, but I have been informed that it's the food safety Scotland who deal with this and that sits within her portfolio. If everybody's content, that concludes our meeting in public and we now move into private session.