 Y fyddechrau pelwgol Cll 뭐�iau gyntaf, energi, ddwyll, ac gychwyn diwrnodd fynd. The first item on the agenda is taking a decision on taking business in private. We have to consider whether to take items three, four and five in private. Item three is to consider the evidence that we will hear today on the Biodiversity delivery plan. Item four is to consider a list of candidates for the appointment to the role of committee advisor and item five is to consider the list of recommended candidates for appointment to the Scottish Land Commission. Do we agree to take these items in private? We are agreed. We also have to make a decision on whether, in context of our work programme, at future meetings whether we take that in private are we agreed that we should do. Yes, I'm seeing that's agreed. So our next item of business is an evidence session on the draft strategy plan to accompany the Scottish Government's new biodiversity strategy. The committee has continued to continuing work. We started last autumn when we took evidence on the draft strategy. It is clear that the practical delivery of the strategy was going to be crucial and this session is about that new draft strategy. Today we have a panel of experts on marine biodiversity to share their views on the draft and we will discuss the terrestrial aspects of the plan early in the new year. This morning I'm very pleased to welcome Claire Cavers, Senior Projects Manager for FIDRA. Callum Duncan, the head of conservation for Scotland Marine Conservation Society. Elsbeth Macdonald, the chief executive of the Scottish Fish and Men's Federation. Gosh, that proved a bit difficult. Tavish Scott, the chief executive of Salmon Scotland and Phil Taylor, the head of policy operations for the Open Seas Trust. Now Vicky Paxton was going to be joining us remotely. She is from the partnership manager for Murray Firth Coastal Partnership but she is unfortunately unwell and so is unable to join us today. Thank you for those who are here joining us. We've got just over 90 minutes on this session and just before we move on to questions I want to make a declaration of interest which I always do when we discuss salmon in any shape or form. So the committee is aware and the members on the panel are aware. I am a joint owner of a wild salmon fishery on the east coast of Scotland. That wild salmon fishery generates income and employment into the local economy and in my mind is not affected by aquaculture on the west coast of Scotland because the salmon migrating from the river that I am involved with do not move through the aquaculture zone. For clarity, I take the importance of wild salmon to my heart and I was concerned this morning that the international union for conservation of nature has actually listed salmon as part of wild salmon as part of their red list, which causes me concern. So there should be no doubt in anyone's mind that I have an interest and I'm passionate about it and have been passionate about this subject for probably about 40 odd years so I'm not going to change. So on that note we'll move straight to questions if we may and the first question I'm going to pass to each of you in turn so you'll all get a chance to answer it. I've read your submissions to the committee and I don't think anyone's universally supporting the way that goes for where it's going forward. Some people think it doesn't go far enough, some people don't think it goes too far as it is. So maybe I could just start on the left with you Claire and just say without giving you a platform for an hour and a half. A couple of minutes on why you think it's either good or bad what we're looking at at the moment and I'll come to you each in turn, Claire. Sure, thanks very much for giving me the chance to give evidence today. I think it's a good start. I think we need a biodiversity strategy. These things always seem to come too late or later than we would like them to come. One of the main things that sprang out at me is the lack of strong timelines in there for quite a lot of the actions. Some of them do have timelines so they've obviously been thought through, others do not. The other thing is there's a lack of attention to chemical and plastic pollution and the impacts they have on biodiversity. There's a focus obviously from this committee as well on climate change and the impacts that has on biodiversity but there, according to the IPBEZ global assessment report that only came out a few years ago, there are five drivers, main drivers, direct drivers of biodiversity loss and one of those is pollution and another one of those is climate change. Pollution is a major source. In Scotland especially, the chemical investigation programme has not been as extensive as in other parts of the United Kingdom and that needs to be extended and made more transparent. Understanding the pollution that is going into our environment is one of the first steps to mitigating it and we really don't have enough of that knowledge yet. One of the other things was the lack of attribution of responsibility to different bodies. Some of them are names such as CEPA to some actions but others aren't so then you're going to have a bit of a gap happening and if people, we've seen this happening in salmon farming with the wild salmon which you'll be aware of, there was no direct responsibility so it wasn't being addressed directly and then you're not going to get allocation of resources so that is something that has to be laid out quite firmly. I'm not going to stop you going through all of the points but everyone along the panel is thinking oh she's stealing all of my points. Can I move on but can I just say my manners left me briefly at the beginning of the meeting for which I apologise and I should have welcomed Finlay Carson who is convener of the Rhaid committee and Rhaid Grant, both of whom have joined us today and will get a chance to ask some questions at the end. Following the evidence that I gave last year, I really appreciated the committee recommending to the Government that there should be a strategy to tackle the nature emergency. In terms of the framing of the strategy, we're supportive of that, recognising that there is a crisis here and that plays out in the ocean as an ocean emergency, the UN recognises that. There's much in the draft strategy and action plan that we welcome. Of course, as we've seen with recent events, there needs to be support and there needs to be political will and there needs to be funding and resourcing to make sure that the welcome actions in that strategy are delivered. The devil will be in the detail in relation to the ecosystem recovery framework in terms of licensing and funding and how the national marine plan 2 is developed. Some actions are almost meta actions because they're talking about, for example, fisheries management plans but the concern for us is what detail is in the fisheries management plans. There are a number of dependencies there that relate to how the actions that are being recommended are taken forward and many of those for us around fisheries management. We're very supportive of sustainable fisheries and sustainable agriculture but we welcome the fact that the strategy recognises that they should be nature friendly and the detail of making those nature friendly depends on how the fisheries management plans and some of the commitments in the bute house agreement are delivered because some of those have actually been dropped. Key for us is what does enhancement and protection look like. We think that that is key part of the suite of measures that we need at sea. We need strict protection, international science and policy makes that clear. How is that going to be addressed through the strategy? How are the fisheries management plans going to be delivered there? The inshore cap is again a bute house agreement but the strategy doesn't mention the second part of that which is that that must be a ceiling from which you reduce pressure that disrupts the seabed. We welcome the framing of it but the devil's in the detail is on how the actions that are in it are then delivered. There are gaps that we know straight away that aren't even featured in the strategy. The strategy doesn't even refer to the marine nature conservation strategy which has a welcome three-pillar approach, which is a good lens through which to look at improving nature at sea. It's very confusing. You don't need to push the buttons. Don't touch it. The gentleman on your left and on my right pushes the buttons. It helps us and I'm sure it's going to help you. I shouldn't be let loose with pressing buttons, that's fine. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to give evidence to you today. As Callum has outlined, there are a number of activities, a lot of activities, a lot of policies, a lot of initiatives that are already underway in the marine space. At various stages of development, some have been running for many many years, the marine protected area network, for example. Others are newer to the table, things like the development of the fisheries management plans, but a lot of these seem to be being put into the strategy now. I think that it would be helpful to have some mapping from the Government to actually understand how all of these different initiatives are expected to contribute. There seems to be quite a lot of double batching of activities that are underway elsewhere. I think that our frustration that we have with this piece of work is that we have not been thus far particularly much engaged with its development. The strategic environmental assessment that accompanies the consultation talks about doing that assessment with relevant stakeholders, but we didn't get the opportunity to partake in that or be involved with that. I think that the lack of engagement in the creation of the strategy, the draft delivery plan and, as I said, the SEA are very disappointing. A concern that we have running through this is the lack of good baselines. Where are we starting from? Where are we starting from and where are we trying to get to? That is really important when it comes to setting targets and whether the targets should be statutory or not, whether they are smart or not, whether a better approach is around looking at trends and qualitative assessments. I think that with a very clear understanding of the starting point and a very clear commitment to science that will be needed to assess whether progress is being made, we have to be very careful about being sure about what we are attempting to measure and assess. Something else that we felt was very much missing from the package that is currently under consultation is the failure to include a socioeconomic impact assessment. That does not allow us to answer some of the questions that are in the consultation. The consultation talks about trade-offs and looking at the impacts on businesses and the economy and society, and it is difficult to do that without having that socioeconomic assessment. We have some concerns around the timescales. Having a rolling five-year delivery plan, five years is a very short time period to start to see change of the magnitude that is being suggested here. Although that is clearly a necessary endeavour to consider biodiversity loss and how we address it, I think that there are a lot of issues with the particular package here in front of us that we would like to... Thanks, Elspeth Tavish. Thank you to the Parliament for taking an interest in that matter from the marine side. I would like to share a lot of the concerns that Elspeth has articulated, but I would like to say at the outset that the salmon sector absolutely supports Parliament's intention to tackle the biodiversity crisis. That is a laudable aim for parliamentarians, and I look forward to seeing your deliberations as to how you pursue the detail of this, because I think that that is the issue that has not been looked at with enough parliamentary interest as yet. As Elspeth says, I do not think that you can see this in isolation. You have got to see this biodiversity strategy in the context of all the other strategies that we certainly as an industry are subjected to—the blue economy, the agriculture vision, the export, the innovation strategies and indeed the economic transformation strategy that was launched last year. I think that there is a question for parliamentarians about how all these strategies fit together, and is there a consistency of policy purpose behind them? I would suggest that that might be an area that you would wish to look at. Two other points. Just on the consultation itself, we have concerns that the way in which this has been run so far mirrors all the mistakes that were made with HPMAs. As Elspeth rightly said, there is not a baseline on the marine side. Yes, there may be on the terrestrial side, and as you said, convener, there will be a panel next year on that. On the marine side, if I have read the proposals correctly, by 2025, when you will be considering as a parliament the national environment bill, the marine data will be 10 years out of date. You just need to go back to HPMAs. I do not think that that is the baseline that is needed for, as Elspeth rightly said, the robust analysis and setting of targets based on real-time information allows you, as parliamentarians, to consider that carefully. That is point 1. Point 2 is accountability. I just think that we need to be really clear about who is responsible for this. I find it incredibly puzzling to find out who actually is the minister in charge of these matters. NatureScot has four ministers, as I am sure you are aware. I do not know if all four appear in front of you, but I have great sympathy for an agency who is responsible for this, directly responsible for this area, and yet have four ministers. Who is the chief accountable officer? Again, some of the issues that you have been dealing with in parliament over the last number of years seem to me to have fallen down on the basis of the scrutiny of who is actually responsible. That is really important to business. The final point is cost. Elspeth was quite right that you could also cite the business regulatory impact assessment, which, as you know, convener, is a legislative requirement, a very formal requirement on government in terms of proposals that will have a cost. I think that parliament would want to satisfy itself that it will know the cost. I notice all the work that the finance committee has been doing on financial memorandums. I applaud that work because it seems to me really important, particularly how, in the challenging times that Cillee were in, in public, the finance of the moment, for Parliament to be satisfied that they know what the costs of this endeavour will be. Those would be my three suggestions as to where parliament might want to exercise the oversight. Thank you. Thanks, Tavish. Phil. Thanks very much, convener, and thank you, committee, for taking evidence on this really important issue. You asked if it's good or bad, and Claire started by saying it's a good start. I'd like to say that it's not a start. We have had biodiversity strategies in the past, and this is not the first. A key point and a key learning point here for us, I think, needs to be that biodiversity strategies we've had in the past have not met their goals, have failed to prevent the loss that we've seen in the intervening 10 years, and have put us on a trajectory which is somewhat downward. I'll just focus on, for example, seabirds, a great Sentinel of the health of the marine environment because they are picking up the forage fish that everything else is relying on. Just last month, we had the decade-old census of seabirds recorded and published, and we saw 40 per cent declines in kittywakes UK-wide, 35 per cent decline on art tip turn. These are species that are relying on those top-level forage fish, as well as above 10 per cent declines on puffins, depending on how you cut a cake. You can put these declines in different figures. We've also seen very significant declines in the health of the marine environment and the habitats that are underpinning it. The Scottish Marine Assessment, which was published at the end of 2020, presented lots of that information. I won't rehearse that here. You guys, as a committee, will have understood and received a lot of that information already. This isn't a bad start. What is good here is it is a very welcome occasion to be acknowledging that there's a nature emergency. My learning colleague, Tavish, even mentioned in their own recognition within the industry of this nature crisis we're in in the sea, is extremely welcome. I think that that imparts upon Government and this Parliament a real responsibility to address what has happened over the past several decades in our seas and to turn it around. What we really cannot have, what would be extremely sad and extremely unfulfilling, is for another committee to be sat in 10 years and another set of stakeholders sat here, telling you that sadly we have still continued these trends, these negative trends, and we now need to come up with a new approach. Tavish spoke about the need for bringing principles together in a sort of principled approach and I think that that's what there's a real opportunity for within this nature emergency approach that's being taken by Government here, mainstreaming. Both Tavish and Elspeth have spoken about the fact that stakeholders haven't been fully consulted in this process. Well, there has been some stakeholder forum and I believe both of those organisations have been sat on that forum and one key message that came out of that was the need to make sure that the biodiversity elements here are mainstreamed throughout policies. So they provide guidance, they provide guidance to all of these other strands of work and they provide then support and mechanisms for those other industrial activities, activities that are designed to help to deliver better social economic good or better jobs or better export markets, whatever those things are. They also have that thread of biodiversity going through them so that we're not working in silos and not competing with one another. That is integral to what we achieve here. I've got several, there's several ways in which we, this is a great start, this is a good start, is what Claire said, it's a great start to be talking about a nature emergency here in Parliament and it is a real credit to you as a committee to be taking this evidence now. But it's not quite a start, it's a middle and there's ways in which this can be significantly improved, I'm very glad of an opportunity to present some of those ideas here today, I hope that we can provide that support. Thank you all for starting off like that, I don't think that anyone would agree that the status quo is acceptable or we've got 10 years to let it run, we probably don't have that. So, we'll drill down into the questions and I think the first ones are going to come from Douglas Slumston Douglas. Yeah, thanks community, I just want to drill down a little bit deeper on the delivery plan. I think Phil, you mentioned about the lack of, well no sorry, Elspeth and Tavish mentioned the lack of engagement, Phil, you seem to suggest there was quite a lot of engagement, so maybe go back to Tavish and Elspeth, was there not a forum that you could contribute to or why do you feel there was a lack of engagement, but obviously other people feel it was met? Yeah, we felt from our perspective there was very limited engagement on this and I think some of the things that we did get involved with there certainly was a pretty, it wasn't a particularly balanced discussion I think it would be fair to say. I think a frustration too around we had a consultation last year on the strategy itself, we contributed to that consultation, but the strategy itself is largely unchanged other than including some references to things that hadn't been included in the first version of the strategy, so having gone through that exercise last year to find the strategy essentially much the same only with some additional references I think to the global biodiversity framework that begs the question so you know what was the purpose of that consultation, so I think as I say when we start to get into now looking at delivery plans and looking at how this is going to turn into and something to be implemented, not engaging with businesses about you know what are your views on this, why not engaging us in that process of the strategic environmental assessment for example upon which a lot of the delivery plan is based is disappointing and I think it means that it's missed an opportunity for organisations like ours to have to be able to contribute our perspective to that and as I said a moment ago we would strongly request that socioeconomic impact assessment and as Tavish also said our business regulatory impact assessment be carried out on these proposals and we would absolutely want to be much more engaged in these, so I mean there is so much going on in the marine space, Callum mentioned many of the other things that are going on at the moment and we're having to cover all of these different initiatives which is absolutely right and that's what we're here to do to represent our interests in those different activities and policies that are underway but I feel that this is one that has not perhaps gone through that same sort of very broad consultative process and sort of getting us to this stage. I had just two thoughts to those observations, the first is I do think there's probably a difference in the way in which the agencies NatureScot and others have looked at land use as opposed to marine use and I suspect marine use and you'll want to test this as a committee but I think marine use has been hasn't had the same level of or well certainly there's not the same level of expertise around on it there's not the same level of baseline information around it which is the point I was making about baseline information being potentially out of date and that I think is a gap so I think there's a bit of a catch-up job to be done if that's helpful Mr Lomston by the agencies promoting these measures to you as a parliamentarian about have they got the level of expertise and knowledge in order to pursue and prosecute biodiversity strategy with the far-reaching implications it needs to have in terms of the marine and the other point convener is a more simple one we're not just dealing rightly as Ellsworth says with this I mean my organisation dealt with 10 Scottish Government and public body consultations in the last year four from the UK government and one from the EU and next year we already know there are another 10 coming so as Ellsworth rightly says that's what we're here to do as a trade bodies for our sectors of course that's what we do but don't please don't see this in isolation there is a heck of a lot of other stuff that flows at us all the time so you could be critical of us of not attending every meeting we go to I don't know how people in my team to go to every meeting were invited to go to by the Scottish Government and the government are doing you know they're trying to do the right thing they're creating forums for people to meet but believe me I could bore you all day with a number of meetings we're asked to go to I think at times there needs to be some focus some pulling together of these initiatives and some consistency of the point I was seeking to make to convener some consistency across policy I'm not sure we see that all the time you raised the point of baselines and maybe can ask the other members today do you feel that the proper baseline has been done so we can actually measure things going forward there's plenty data there that enables informed decisions to get on with protecting biodiversity in the ocean I mean I've been involved with mpa management workshops going back eight years and the measures to protect the remaining inshore sites and offshore sites are seven eight years delayed if we start saying oh well we need a fresh baseline do we really want to delay another seven eight years we know we've got some good data in the bag we need to we need to use that and apply that to make sensible decision making so there are you know there are commitments there that need to be that need to be delivered in any case for example the the mpa measures that I mentioned but equally there's sufficient data that informed policy recommendation to improve the protection of some vulnerable priority marine features beyond the mpa network and again this is a this is a policy commitment that dates back about seven years you know we've got very good records for fragile seabed habitats and particularly that we know about and if we don't get on with protecting those and somehow waiting to collect more data they might be they might be gone by the time we get around to any action so you know it's always going to be more difficult in the ocean you can have satellite images showing the extent of habitat you need to get under the water and do surveys but there's a really comparatively impressive data set there I've been in front of this sister committee several times over the decades saying there's you know there's good data there so we can we can make good informed policy based on the data that's there and then we just need to get on with it second what Callum said that there's sufficient data to be making good decisions now Callum and I have been involved in many of these discussions for a long time where the data is already showed that action needs to be taken the lack of data there is not not sufficient and there is plenty data to provide a baseline but I said that I'd like to present some ideas and ways in which the committee can potentially progress some of these pieces of thinking we have of course some very significant amounts of funding available from Scottish government for various activities around marine issues that's the marine fund Scotland and around nature recovery so that's the nature recovery fund and significant amounts of that money is being put into projects which include data collection my lonely colleague over here for the Scottish Fishmen's Federation is running a project on fisheries observer data paid for by public money through the Scottish government now that data would inform one of the actions the key actions that set it in the delivery plan to identify spawning and nursery grounds for some of these species we then understand where those small fish are where they've been by court and how then we can develop policies around that that data is not in its current system being made publicly available in in in that way and there's a real opportunity then to ensure that those those uses of public money around this work are delivering I'm not singling out that project but sorry I did I didn't mean to you in a in a sort of exemplary but I meant to just simply suggest that there are projects like that which can um easily collect data that are collecting data and can easily present that data into the spaces where those decisions need to be made it's already being collected using public money why don't we make it a condition that that data is then put into public form I guess when you're saying that that's that's in progress just now does that not highlight that the baseline data is not actually there as far as I don't want to speak to my colleague but I can just clarify what the purpose of that particular programme is this is an independent fisheries science support scheme as Phil said it is about providing data from fisheries observers that is not a programme that has a great deal of flexibility around it the whole purpose of the programme is to meet it is we deliver for the Scottish Government and they are obligations to the fisheries data that they are required to produce for IC stock assessment so that is the purpose of that programme we've been dealing we've been doing that now for I think about 15 years initially through EMFF funding through European Union funding and since the UK left the EU through Marine Fund Scotland as Phil rightly said but that programme is specifically about providing the fishery observer data that is that the Scottish Government is legally required to submit into the IC stock assessment process and I might also add that whilst we are exceptionally grateful to the Scottish Government for making those resources available through Marine Fund Scotland because it's a really important part of the stock assessment to have that data we are concerned that we don't have very much indeed any long-term funding commitment to it we we enter into a process every year with the Scottish Government about whether there will be resources to continue that programme obviously we have to have people running that programme who understand what they're doing they're skilled or knowledgeable and it can be quite hard to retain those people through a programme when you can't make any commitment beyond a one-year funding settlement so we obviously understand the funding pressures that the Government faces but I think that's quite a good example actually of how that not having that long-term commitment to funding science in the marine space can actually be a very very limiting factor okay thank you and I'm just going to one more question in terms of I think you mentioned five years isn't it sort of long enough to for the for this plan what's your views on everyone else is five years not ambitious enough for should we be looking at further I would agree that five years isn't long enough I think you maybe have five years stages and then reassess after every five years but I would say you'd be wanting to put something probably 15 years type of framework in place some of these things are going to take years to work out and then for example the the delivery plan has a lot of reference to plans in but not how to implement those plans so in five years you may come up with lots of plans and then there's no actual plan to implement the plans so you need to be having a longer framework in place in my opinion okay anyone else we can't afford in this first iteration to have a longer time frame than five years but I think that Claire's suggestion that five years be an interim step is a very good one I think that Claire's point that lots of the proposed deliveries items actions are in fact plans just shows that we need we need that deadline sooner you know we have in the marine space the marine director has you know an allergy to meeting deadlines you know we've talked already about the marine protected areas stuff we've already talked about the fact that deadlines have been have been failed consistently around that in June when cabinet secretary mcallon made her statements about highly protected marine areas she committed to consultations around offshore marine protected areas on the other side of summer recess those still haven't been brought to the table and we're coming to the end of the year and I believe that they've now been pushed into to next year this is this this this sort of addiction to fate setting targets and failing targets is a real serious issue in this space and is one of the main reasons why I'm not particularly happy with what's in the proposed delivery plan because it itself includes several delays on on on set targets so we need that deadline soon and we need that deadline to be smart you know we need those targets to be smart and we need that deadline to be firm and yes that's that i'm not going to suggest i know more about how you as a committee will engage with those but clearly there's a there's a very significant role for a parliamentary committee there to hold government to account to what it says it's coming to do and we would really appreciate that action thank you avish wants to come in and explain why the industry won't invest in a five-year plan will it no very we invest in 20 year plans in terms of my sector so no bother at all with five-year plans just to help mr lumpson and i think phill's last point is right about oversight just to calm and i might slightly differ on on our perspective on the science not that uh not that i disagree at all with calm's point about about the specific areas where science absolutely has uh has a bed rock and a baseline but if you take the marine environment as a whole i don't think anyone could argue that too so maybe the better question for parliamentarians is to ask the marine directorate about their science strategy i think we'd all agree on that and the and the quantum of the money is going into science because whatever we may whatever we may debate today in front of you and whatever we may forward to you i'm not sure the marine directorate science uh quantum their budget is adequate for the needs that we'd all have whether it's business or or or or conservation organisations in terms of supporting the long-term aspirations that we have and that might be something you may wish to explore Douglas uh mark wants to come in so i'm going to bring mark in and i know callums get wanted to come in so maybe you could i'll let you come in i'll come back to you Douglas if you have just a brief point convener i was picking up on what elspeth and talish were talking about in relation to strategic environmental assessment i'm just interested to know at what level you would wish to be more involved within that whether that's a screening stage scoping stage development of the environmental report so i'm trying to understand what that kind of missing missing bit of engagement was and and how appropriate it is for you to be involved at different stages and i think given what you said yourself talish that you know you don't have enough staff to go to every single meeting how involved can you be in in the science and setting of baselines that's required through that kind of process so can you just tell me what what what you felt was missing through your engagement in that sea process well i think certainly um what that what that um environmental assessment did in this case was um i think there were certainly two areas that they that they it was quite a strong focus on whether restoration or regeneration was the right approach and what the sort of time frame for approach should be should it be a longer term or a shorter term time frame and certainly the impression from the assessment is that stakeholders views were in it were stakeholders were involved in in um how that assessment was then presented in the final document i think in general um i mean we are frequently involved in strategic environmental assessments we would be involved we would be um we would be involved at scoping stage to see what should be in it um we would then be consulted we were often we're often engaged in this on marine licensing applications for example we we were recently able to contribute to the scoping stage of the sea for the national marine plan too so um so it's very common for us to be involved in these things you're absolutely right as tavish said and as i have said you know we are we are stretched over a number of of areas but we are also good at prioritising our time and understanding where we where we need to really focus and where there's other areas where we um where we perhaps um have to perhaps put to one side if there's a higher priority but this is uh this is an area that we would have been would have wished to have been more involved in and it certainly appears from the document that that there was a stakeholder engagement in this but it certainly didn't involve ourselves okay yeah i suppose mr ruskell the the balance for all of us is suddenly in business is is a stakeholder engagement as opposed to really affecting decisions you make a very good point about what role is there what is the appropriate role and that's what judgment parliamentarians have to come to and ultimately nature scot and government have to come to we'll attend as many meetings as we possibly can when invited by nature scot and indeed by core government we'll do our level best to always be part of the process but when it comes to when it comes to these kind of judgments that's why we've highlighted the importance of a socio-economic study which i think nature scot are sympathetic to and i'm very grateful for their consideration of that because it does strike me and you and i may have debated this in the past but the the important balance between environmental social and economic factors is is at the heart of these uh that all is going to be at the heart of policy making in this area and we'll all come to a slightly different perspective on this but you'd be surprised to not be surprised to hear those of us who who represent organisations companies and businesses seeking to create wealth in scotland today that we that will do our best to make that you know to make that business case and we have great confidence in the systems that government have put in place which are there under legislation that will be the bria sorry jargon the business regulatory impact assessment and the and the socio-economic study and we hope that those will be part of this ongoing process but i entirely take a point that we'll do our best to attend every meeting we can yeah hallowan would like to come in yeah i just want to reflect a little bit on targets timelines baseline um in relation to this discussion and some of the comments um clearly we're not going to have uh our sees in the state that they should be in five years that's not the point it's the point is to have um the plans commence so that there's targets that ensure decline of nature is halted by 2030 it was supposed to be halted in 2010 i can remember that one or two and by 2045 you've got net you've got net nature positive so you we need to get um the the policy commitments and actions that are already delayed progressed and in the bag they need to be done we need we need to do that and there's there's plenty data to do that um this discussion also highlights the importance of you know the sister aspect to that this which is the need for nature recovery targets in law and this is where this space is catching up or seeking to catch up with the climate change discussion where there's climate change targets in law and yes some targets will be missed but the difference is if we get them into law it creates leverage to make sure that they happen and drives the seriousness with which policy and sexual action needs to take the biodiversity emergency because full touch and the previous biodiversity strategies good actions in them many of them not implemented because they don't have a a legal hook some leverage to make sure that they happen so we need to get so there's that aspect and the other thing to be clear on again just coming back to baselines i don't want the committee to have a picture of this kind of blank canvas there's incredibly detailed um data breakdown in scotland's main assessment yes some of it's modelled because as i said before you don't have satellite imagery that can see through the ocean to the seabed there's there's incredibly detailed one there and i just beg your patience here just for the last point we we have submitted evidence of decline before the biodiversity strategy has that in the intro but i just wanted to update it with the ospar quality status report so this is the state of the northeast atlantic ospar 2023 report majority of 22 fish species assessed in the northeast atlantic in poor state eight of nine ospar habitats in the greater north sea in poor condition one unknown in the unknown condition six of seven habitats in poor condition in the Celtic seas with the seventh unknown plankton not in good condition seabirds not in good condition marine mammals not in good condition food webs of great concern you know this this is the experts in the northeast atlantic presenting a very troubling picture we need to we need to get on the action perfect um Douglas do you want to come back on any of just really one last point and it's around the socioeconomic study that's been mentioned by a couple of people in terms of claire callum fill what's your view on that obviously we've heard from elspeth and tavish maybe claire first of all sure i think socioeconomic assessment is really important and also a business impact assessment but i think they can also follow i don't think they should be i don't think this action should be paused at all in order to then carry them out i think a lot of these actions can be started immediately and the same with you know callum has mentioned the amount of data that's available for baseline already that aside you don't necessarily need baseline data to start preventing pollution so i don't think um you know we now have a a UK regulator for chemicals for example each of the individual nations can submit to that UK regulator any chemicals of concern that they would like to see stronger regulation and i don't think the individual nations actually know that so we can start looking at chemicals of concern they're entering the marine environment ourselves working to prevent that happening because we know that's going to be having an impact on biodiversity already okay i'm just thinking can you really do the socioeconomic study afterwards because if you're not read then obviously some of the things may be implemented may actually cause harm to the socioeconomic benefits of a community i'm not saying um i'm not saying start all the actions complete them and then do the socioeconomic study but there are some actions that can be started already there are some in progress already there are some that have been delayed i think we don't want to delay this any longer in order to do socioeconomic impact system okay callum i think the the it's important that there are socioeconomic impact assessments of policy that's that's part of policy development it's important that when those are done they also look at the the socioeconomic benefits of policy and i think um i'd like to make that point in this space because i often feel there's a there's an unfortunate sort of i call it a false dichotomy a sort of polarization of action for biodiversity can challenge well-being and economic benefit and and if if that's a perception we're doing something wrong collectively so um we need but it's more difficult to get the data to show the socioeconomic benefit including indirect benefits and we saw that with the recent you know discussions around the hpa may measures you know done right these conservation measures can are about helping to show up local socioeconomic benefit and helping provide local sustainable opportunities in local sustainable businesses is whether that's capture fisheries or aquaculture or any of the other sectors that aren't represented here so i just wanted to make that that point of principle and phil i think it's just a question of where you put the socioeconomic impact assessment and i suppose that's a question for government and then for parliament to scrutinise elspeth spoke about prioritisation and where they would invest their time in in in sort of evaluating these socioeconomic impact assessments so the delivery plan is a suite of many actions which go marine terrestrial and some in the in the middle you know coastal um and each of those policies when they come into an actual action or uh you know something that's going to change on the water which is where our interest really lies will at that point obviously have a socioeconomic impact assessment so take for example the priority marine feature um protection so that's a process that's been underway since 2017 um and that has already gone through several rounds of sea and uh socioeconomic impact assessment and strategic environmental assessment uh we as stakeholders have been involved throughout that process um there will as that comes to uh be delivered in a in a practical way so far it's been very theoretical high level discussions uh as that's delivered in a practical way um i'm not going to speak for government but i presume they're going to deliver a socioeconomic and briar impact assessment and the business regulatory impact assessment i'll engage with it at that point i don't know that there's necessarily much value in engaging with it at the delivery planned stage because the social impact assessment will be so big and expansive it will have to offset the value of for example delivering that that policy which will deliver economic benefits to low impact fisheries as well as um environmental benefits to uh sorry benefits the environment against you know a policy about upland moorland restoration which will probably impact on the same community let's take um you know the area around torridon or uh ulapool for example those policies are going to be both those policies are going to be impacting the communities of those towns villages and um so yeah i think at the delivery plan stage it's going to be such a big complicated confusing and overlapping picture socioeconomically that i don't think that that's the right place to engage with it myself but um yeah clearly i pay attention to it i think the place to engage with it is in the delivery of those policies as they come down and as i said at the beginning the key opportunity here is to put a thread of biodiversity through everything so that those individual policies and those individual official teams you know because these are teams of individuals at government having to sort of wrangle with quite a competing demand put on them have clarity as to how biodiversity should be mainstreamed into let's say fisheries licensing which is that you know subject to a legal dispute between ourselves and scottish government or upland management or terrestrial planning or offshore planning you know that's that's the key here that's the real opportunity here i think sorry sorry can i just say i've tried to let this conversation run which of course is going to come back and bite me at the end because not every committee member will get everything they want out of this session so i'm going to slightly squeeze each of you to to give a succd answer as possible i'm going to move straight to bob doris next for the next lot of questions thank you convener um why don't you ask my question might ask yourself can you know just to work out whose answer is quite challenging not not being in the room but um i've been listening carefully to the evidence we've received so far convener and a lot of it's process driven um but the delivery plan needs to identify meaningful appropriate actions across key sectors groups or regulatory areas so i'd be quite keen to know where the witnesses believes that is contained within the delivery plan or what won't be done to to make sure that it does exist within what is currently a draft delivery plan of course in the key areas within corvus fishing aquaculture plastics and chemicals original and community coastal partnerships and acknowledge that it would appear according to spice that there's no apparent actions in the delivery plan relation to marine renewable so what is there in the plan that can deliver identifiable meaningful inappropriate actions across key sectors just so that we're clear that what could potentially work well but also where the gaps are okay i'm going to get to well speth first sorry if you all look if none of you throw your hands up i will just nominate somebody which is always dangerous but because i won't nominate the same person each time but elspeth and then i'll probably come to uh either phil or calum so elspeth thank you um thank you that's a really helpful question and i think it touches back to something i said i think in my opening remarks about um doing some mapping of what is in the delivery plan i think the way that the delivery plan is set out is it's quite it's not a particular helpful way of actually seeing is this a really sort of holistic and correct approach to deliver the objective so it feels a little bit like it's pulling together a lot of things that are already underway as others have said you know we've been working on marine protected area network for 15 years we've been working on priority marine features for six years we've been all very involved in that but it feels a little bit like the delivery plan is double dodging as it's pulling together a lot of things that have started somewhere else and have been perhaps designed for other purposes the fisheries management plan for example fisheries management plans have come from the uk the new uk fisheries act and they've there's lots of objectives that these fisheries management plans have to meet and and there will be a lot of different objectives that that they will have to balance to achieve their overall purpose so it feels i think it would be more helpful to undertake some sort of mapping of certainly trying to extract the marine elements from the delivery plan because as phill said it covers all all environments and actually see you know are these the actions that are going to deliver the change that we need and if so in what sort of sequence should they be done how are they going to be resourced i think there's been a lot of discussion already about the resources for the delivery of all of these things when you look at the timelines that are set out in the delivery plan there it's all very high level there's not a lot of detail underneath them but but there's a huge amount of detail that sits underneath every single one of these actions there's a lot of work that will be needed to deliver every single one of them none of these things in the marine are particularly straightforward or quick to do so i think there needs to be a much better way of drawing together the different elements of work that the strategy and the delivery plan feel are required to deliver the objectives of the strategy to map these properly in relation to the marine environment and then to look very carefully at so what what is the priority for those things and how are they going to be resourced because as i say i feel that there's there's a huge amount of detail that is not in the plan and that the devil will be in the detail actually of how these things can be delivered see just before the next witness comes in can i just check and i put on record that i don't have any depth of experience in relation to this but again that was quite process driven it's a bit mapping out let's see what should be in the plan my question was about what is in the plan and what you think is identifiable and might be beneficial and achievable i get that witnesses might think there should be things removed from the plan other things put in the plan pulling things together and again i'm now starting to talk in very general terms myself and asking the question but is there anything in the plan that's identifiable that you think is of value and would be beneficial well the i mean the priority marine features obviously was spoken already about them that process started a number of years ago the purpose of those was to protect biodiversity out with the existing marine protected area network so clearly that is the purpose of those is to improve the situation with with marine biodiversity and we've been very engaged in that process absolutely want to strike that right balance between how we have conservation and protection of our marine environment but how we also have sustainable use so absolutely lots of the things in the plan can deliver the objective of the strategy but it feels too disparate at the moment to actually see how we go about doing that in in so that i think when i think we have to be really clear about the fact that we do not have endless amounts of money to deliver this and we need to spend the money that is going to be available for this on the right things at the right times and in the right way and i think that's critically important Caledon you want to come in yeah no thank you and good question i'm gonna briefly introduce another strategy here which is the the marine nature conservation strategy which actually predates the marine act and that is a useful lens which i think would be good to look at organizing the actions in the biodiversity strategy through for for the marine environment because it talks about a three pillar approach to nature conservation so that's recognising species specific measures site specific measures and wider seas measures such as fisheries management and planning so you do that filter and then the there's lots of welcome actions i touched on some of them in my introduction some of them are things that are committed to anyway that should be happening but of course they should be in the plan because they're part of that sort of three-pillard approach so having the having the npa measures having the pmf measures that are delayed and you know we might have a slightly different view about how those should be implemented we think there should be a whole site approach to have fisheries protection measures across sea bed npas for example and there's discussions about how protecting the pmfs can be done in a you know in a spatial way we just for transparency on the record i've put in this room in one of these rooms i've said that one of the scenarios that i put forward for strategic environment assessment testing was a distance from shore closure like half knuckle mile as part of the scas so there's different ways that you could look at how you could place those measures um the sea bird strategy the citation strategy there's lots of things that are in there that are that are should be happening anyway the important there are such as answering your question there are some additionals so the ecosystem recovery framework is welcome in order to have a meaningful framework that needs to look really clearly at licensing because it's difficult to license the ecosystem restoration you need to use rather clunky existing licenses such as construction licenses so again that's an action to have a plan or a framework but it's it's something new and welcome and additional that's in the biodiversity strategy and for that framework to work you need to improve licensing you need to have the funding in place and that's another huge discussion about adequate funding for for restoration we have SMEF scotish mean environment enhancement framework fund sorry that doesn't have enough funding how can we get more funding to to support restoration and there's also the um the commitment to protect vulnerable marine ecosystems between sorry between 400 and 800 meters that is a new welcome addition and just for transparency we actually said the closure should be as shallow as 600 meters we've said that in the past um so the three pillar approach lens existing things and and there are some new things in there I'm sure you'll get the hang of this by the end Calum that if I cough gently and go like that it means you're you're about to wind up because it just means I don't have to cut your microphone off I'm going to let Tavish in very briefly if you can do that Tavish and then Claire and then back to you Bob thank you convener just to help Mr Doris and it's a fair point I think the point I'm agreeing with Elspethon Mr Doris is that if that mapping exercise does not take place then I think the delivery plan and the strategy will be challenging when it comes to the strategic environmental assessment and the social economic assessment and to the Bria so we're trying to help the committee and help indeed the the promoters of this initiative by pointing out that I think what that mapping exercise does is give you comfort that those things have been covered off yes thank you I think there are some good references in there as far as plastic and chemical pollution are concerned you know we welcome the action to develop policy by 2028 to address contaminants they exceed the ospa threshold values although we'd like to see a shorter timescale than that obviously reduce marine litter and marine plastics through enabling improved plastic pellet handling that's very welcomed as well and that's got a timeline of 2025 so you know we there are some sort of short timelines in there and then as far as acrocha goes it references the acrocha vision which we're supportive of quite a lot of the intended outcomes of that again not great timescales in the vision however and then also references to support seep in the implementation of the sea lice risk assessment framework so as far as acrocha and plastics and chemicals goes there are some good references in there and references as I said before to the chemical investigation programme but again Scotland has not got a lot of detail around it compared to the other nations bob do you have any further questions no convener it was generally very helpful i'm conscious this is a draft delivery plan and witnesses will want to try and shape what that final delivery plan looks like and therefore what we hear is things that are not in the plan mapping exercises and other matters but it's important the committee hears what is in the plan that would be welcome and could make meaningful changes I think we've got some of that so I won't come back in convener okay and I would help if for any witnesses thought there were particular things that we've missed out on the plan that they add that as a bit calm I'm going to ignore that but but but because I need to go to the next person but if you've got a additional stuff you'd like to see in there please could you come back to us I'm going to go to the next question which is going to come from uh mark ruskell mark yeah thanks convener I'd like to come to the topic of the 30 by 30 targets that are coos in you know embodied in the in the global biodiversity framework hugely important but ask you specifically what you think the implications are for both designating protective marine areas but also the management of those marine areas and also to get your reflection given comments that they made earlier on about mainstreaming where do you think these targets should sit should they sit at the top of the aquaculture strategy should it be there for the fisheries strategy as well should they be an explicit ambition or secondary ambition for sectors to be working towards the delivery so maybe I'll just start from the right and then I'll move across the table so that's your left I think you're right oh it is yeah I'm left hander so fill fill thank you um and thanks for the question so uh you asked where should they sit I think it's the national marine plan it's the overarching policy here um but as part of mainstreaming they should sit in everything subsidiary to that too um the national marine plan is the key delivery mechanism for delivering spatial management in our sea using the key legislation for management of scotland seas in fact it's the legislation that gives Scottish ministers powers for um the waters beyond 12 nautical miles so that 2010 legislation provides that entire framework and it is within that that they should be established there should be um a mechanism for the distribution the planning of other activities around that 2030 30 target the key issue with the the 30 by 30 is of course as you've uh noted the lack of management and um the majority of the marine protected area network as it stands at the moment doesn't have that uh management from fisheries activities in particular which are causing harm within them as we've evidenced just last year using our own rov underwater data um in fact over the past 10 years we've arguably gone backwards with a marine protected area designated for protecting spawning and juvenile fish uh what's known as windsock um actually losing protection so trawling being permitted within that area having initially uh been banned so we've actually gone backwards rather than forward so again this point about the last decades the last decade has been you know a bit of a failure we need to really step up our game and there's a real opportunity for us so uh yep in if it's mainstreaming it needs to be in everything and you mentioned a suite of policies there that this target needs to sit within as well but the top of that tree in my opinion uh is the national marine plan and we need to see that implemented across industries and policies thank you okay thank you uh mr oscal so two points for you if i may um the first is uh there are many uh existing marine uh designations in the marine space which have uh seafarms within them so we have lived for 30 years as an industry with uh a continuous suite of marine uh designations that of course used to flow out of the european union uh and are now a devolved responsibility of edinburgh so um you know a sensible balance that's my point about the sensible balance as we've discussed between the environment um social and economic factors can be achieved i i would readily suggest and we would be happy to submit an additional note on that to for covena so so wanted to make the to speak to that particular point in terms of detail um where where does it sit um i feel makes an entirely fair point about the national marine plan the only observation i'd make is that um some of our areas around of course are way ahead of where national policy's been on this shuttle was doing a local marine plan in 2000 2001 and it was to try and sort out the spatial squeeze issues long before spatial squeeze became the issue we were all much more uh much more obsessed by in in the current terms and that was because at that stage even then um in the islands i was uh very much part of home we were already dealing with that those those challenges and the environmental one was there and that's why we at that time made sure our local fisheries college could put money into science and try and baseline what was going on for example in the inshore in the inshore fisheries issues and it it it worked so i entirely take the point that there has to be a overarching marine national plan but i would encourage parliament to think carefully about the areas of of our of our coastal community so actually really good at the stuff know it inside out and actually have if i may say so some degree of success in delivering a a local marine plan which achieves that sensible balance between these factors can i just say that would that then feed into more designation of marine protected areas i won't put an H on the front of it but but would that sort of approach that you suggested in is working in shetland so i'm very comfortable designation and better management because that is the objective of 30 30 i'm very comfortable with science and data and evidence being behind the policy consideration of modern marine designations i think where these things fell down if i may say so hbm is absolutely fell down is those promoting it couldn't say what the evidence was behind it now i know that you'll disagree with that but but i think some of us very strongly argued that and a government accept that argument what i would plea with mr rustle is don't try and do hbm is by the back door make sure that if you're going to be up front about more designations you say what will be allowed and what won't be allowed because the big challenge as we know with hbm is is that that was that nothing was going to happen in those areas and not unsurprisingly people like me who lived to live in shetland all my life never going to accept that as a mechanism so to win your argument you have to put data evidence and science behind it that is a fair way to proceed okay elspeth can we get you back to the 30 30 yes thank you i'm in relation to the 30 30 of course in relation to marine protected areas where we all we're already there in terms of the designations we've got 37 percent of scotland seas designations as hbm is but as others have said and i completely agree the management measures are not yet in place for the majority of these sites and and that process has been delayed both for the insure ones and the offshore ones government has set out its intended timescales for doing those and and we know that those are are behind but we are fully committed to engaging with that process have been engaged in that process from the outset and we'll continue to be so as i say i think the the key challenge is finding the right to management measures that strike the right balance between protecting sites protecting conservation protecting nature but also allowing sustainable use and i think that hearts to that to the point that that tabish made in terms of where targets sit i think it's or where targets should sit i think there's a step before that which is about thinking really hard about how if targets what targets should be set and how they should be set i think we have we have concerns about the setting of of of statutory quantitative targets i think in an area where for all the reasons we've already discussed we have we have data but we don't have comprehensive data and we know that there will be issues around resources to monitor and and check compliance with targets so i think we have to be cautious about that and we have to think about other other indicators and i think thinking specifically about fisheries we have now a legal obligation to deliver the fisheries management plans requirements of the of the fisheries act and they have to balance a number of different objectives of which protection of the marine environment protection of species and habitats is absolutely one so i think there's there's layers through which these will sit okay calm yeah i agree with field nationally plan has to be the overarching framework the the biodiversity strategy should be the thread through all sectoral strategies because that underpins sustainable work sustainable activity to achieve 30 by 30 much the network currently paper parks so we need the measures in place and you know we've worked closely with SFF and others on those we might agree to disagree but it's been a constructive process so to put that to perspective only 0.6 of the inshore area that is historically trolled is currently protected within the existing NPA network so there's a long way to go to get the measures in for the existing network 130 by 30 i'd just like to also acknowledge the the convention of biodiversity recommends a balance within the NPA networks between sites where all extractive activities are prohibited to ensure nature resilience and recovery and sites with sustainable uses permitted permitted and it's really unfortunate how the the hpm process went because if for me it's almost a framing issue if you if you say can you work can we work with you local communities places that maybe are less important or places that you want to see enhanced to recovered and you know international science shows us that you can you can increase the amount of sea life in those areas by five times and let's let's plan this and think about where these could go and that can help your local fishery you know that that's a positive thing we mustn't see these things as draconian or shutting down activity is the opposite so that that needs to still be part of the conversations part of the discussion and the science is there that does show the benefit of these kinds of areas whether that's communicated or not as part of the consultation i'll leave others to judge but indeed right glad okay um yeah i mean i also you know support the overarching applications national marine plan i think there needs to be uh that you need to ensure that there is enough resources for local planning authorities for example when you're talking about things such as aquaculture applications to really assess um the impacts they're going to have i think we may have a lot of um protected areas on paper at the moment but how effective are they actually being the further forth is one of the most uh highly polluted areas of the world as far as plastic pellet production goes um and one of the worst sites is triple si in south queensbury so um you know why we have those protected areas at the moment it's not enough and we need to see more okay okay um i know time is marching on but i've got one more question and maybe i'll just focus this on a on a couple of panel members and it's about fisheries management i mean we've already touched on this so sticking with 30 30 now sticking with targets sticking with nature restoration ecological restoration within our seas what are your thoughts on the current approach with fisheries management is it actually delivering that objective what needs to change so i'm going to bring in phil and then elspeth and then cowham i think on this thank you um no i don't believe that it is uh that's backed up in particular by the scottish marine assessment um concluding that fisheries was the main and the most widespread main pressure on the marine environment um and the impacts included a removal of non-target species as bycatch which much of which is being discarded and much of which includes juvenile fish and surface abrasion which is just a sort of technical way of saying you know the impact of dragging a net or a dredge across the sea floor um the way to address it in my opinion is to integrate um well to ensure some of this biodiversity strategy and the thinking around that is integrated into fisheries decision making um we've already talked about the national marine plan um and i've mentioned in passing uh our own legal challenge to the Scottish government uh in which we uh argued that the Scottish government must take account of the national marine plan when it makes fisheries licensing decisions the Scottish government is in effect i'm straw manning this somewhat but bear with me argued that they don't have to in those licensing decisions specifically now um the judge has decided in our favour in that case but it's going through an appeals process um so we need to it's just a good example though of how things are silo wise and how the environment and and you know these are really fragile beautiful places um which i would entree any committee members if they wish in the summer to come out and see with us using our underwater drones um really beautiful wild places very important for the functioning of the ecosystem these are places that act as nursery habitats or spawning grounds that need protected and we've already spoken about the fact that the mpa's the priority marine feature review um but also these additional delivery plan actions such as the protection of spawning and nursery grounds which is an additional action that i would have mentioned if i responded to mr doris's question these are real opportunities within this policy here to actually start to deliver protection for those ecosystems and then to start to recover the ecosystem above and that's a really um you know that that recovery is going to be really fundamental to places like the inshore west coast of scotland where as committee members will be aware much of the ecosystem in that area is somewhat degraded and um rather than being this vibrant colorful places a bit of a brown flat substrate underneath a gray sea um i think there is progress being made in terms of opening up some of the dialogue around this and ensuring that biodiversity is considered within these fisheries decisions but i am also somewhat saddened by the fact that um uh as as calin mentioned he and i you know have been involved in the mpa management for a long time and in 2015 for example we were involved in a workshop with um fisheries stakeholders including active skippers to discuss management on the on the map you know actual this area protected that area not how does this all work out in a very specific way and that was a really detailed but very productive meeting in some ways we came to some agreements we had to make concessions there was a lot of progress made i felt but none of that was implemented following that meeting and it was all taken off the table and taken away into to back rooms that then were were lobbied against and that's where some of this stuff's falling down and that's where you know um not to take this to a process point mr doris but um you know that's where some of the process issues around these outcomes that we all want here um really need to be better scrutinized and better challenged okay pardon sorry okay thanks elspeth could i just caution you that this is not the place to to to air opinions on either side we've mentioned it i'd rather we we moved sideways from it and let it take its course through the natural procedures sorry to interrupt mark yeah go back to thank you um yes the Scottish Government has an extensive programme of activities around fisheries management we've touched on some of these today this future fisheries management strategy which dates back to about 2019 i think 2020 we've now got the fisheries um UK fisheries act and all the fmp's that have to come from that we have 20 fmp's or at least 20 to have in place by the end of next year i think um there's a lot of policy development underway things like future catching policy and that is a critically important part to addressing um some of the things that that phil has perhaps touched on or although perhaps rather oversimplified the complexity of some of them but i think the challenge that well a real challenge i think that we have at the moment is i think we have moved from a space of actually being able to have constructive discussion and really look at proper practical problem solving and finding constructive ways forward into a space now where i feel um there are perhaps you know too many barriers to finding actually practical problem solving and i'll actually find the ways to do our fisheries management better our industry is is committed to good fisheries management our future success depends upon it we've been very heartened this year to see a suite of scientific advice from ICs on many of our commercial stocks that is really positive we've had it we've been able to allocate um a catch of of cod on the west coast for the first time in a number of years there's some really positive things there but there is a um a pretty extensive ambition for fisheries management that the Scottish Government has but i don't think that the current model of going about that is actually helping us find solutions do you members though fundamentally see the need for restoration in the inshore well i think there's um i think in some the strategic environmental assessment was interesting on this because it talked a lot about restoration and regeneration and and i think tended to come down on the side more of regeneration rather than trying to restore something if conditions have changed in such a way whether that's climate or whatever has changed in a way that you can't actually restore something to the conditions of the past and also where do you where do you decide the past was you know what are you restoring it to is it 10 years 20 100 200 a thousand how do you decide that point i think there are probably specific cases for restoration uh maybe uh maybe a good idea maybe possible things like maybe oyster beds for example um but regeneration then do you remember support regeneration in the inshore and is a is a cap part of that well again i think the um the suggestion we haven't yet seen any proposals from government of a cap the idea of the inshore cap came from the house agreement um it has not seen the light of day in terms of any detail so i think until we see the detail of what the government is thinking on that it's it's hard to have you'd like to see the detail on that we would we would we certainly support a mixed a much more mixed fisheries economy we think that um creating um that's a complete fleet segregation on the basis of of geographic limits is an oversimplified approach and we think that for example the use of the inshore marine protected areas is a much better way of saying if you've got if you've got habitat species features that need to be protected in your inshore waters use that mpa network to do it and that's the process that we have all been part of albeit it has been going extremely slowly but we should allow that to run its course we should allow the the review of that process that is properly built into it to run its course and then tell us is is there still a problem is there a problem that we're trying to fix if so what is the way to go about that okay come thank you um and excuse me for unloading some of my answers to this earlier if i'd known this question was a writing to this one brief we've run the good fish guide we assess over 600 stocks and species we in fact we want to see as many of them green rated as possible we support sustainable fishing and we recognise that you know industry will work within the framework and that you know artifacts can arise from that if the framework is flawed and if you know if there's an unknown there that obviously can create fear and uncertainty so we've long called for clarity for spatial management of fishing the mpa process was productive because you had a discrete bit of sea and you had a discussion about how you used that space and that I've long said we need to have that discussion for in chunks for the whole of scotland seas in relation to fisheries and I think that's particularly keenly needed for the inshore getting back to mr Doris's point that the part missing from the biodiversity strategy was was a part that we support which is the second half of the inshore cap which would be a ceiling from which to reduce pressure on an evidence basis but that would need to include all stakeholders in a transparent decision so everybody feels part of that discussion because with respect it's not it's not just about getting the important areas protected and recovered it's about better managing the conflicts within the within the industry and that's particularly the case inshore and we give quite detailed written evidence to the committee on the petition on the inshore limit on that where we were saying that the the range of commitments if implemented well some of which are in the biodiversity strategy could take us towards a low impact zone inshore so really keen will be the national marine plan and general policy nine within that needs to survive and that needs to be a thread to everything that was useful terms of exploring implementation I don't think I have time to go into aquaculture convenience I'll leave that to you well there's an assumption clad did you want did you want to say anything I just want to say I don't particularly have any knowledge of fisheries that's not my area of expertise but as far as sort of regeneration and restoration goes I think there's a real lack of attention to additional pressures we're looking at sort of they tend to look at degenerated areas and there seems to be an assumption that regenerating it will be it will will suffice but you know you've got constant increases in chemical and plastic pollution coming in so we really need to be looking at the wider picture of that especially the sort of whole source to sea network I appreciate today we're just looking at the marine aspect of this but I do welcome the fact that the plan does talk about that to a certain extent and it refers to NatureScot's saucy document as well so I think that was that was really my main point thank you thank you very much Monica I think you've got a couple of questions I do I'll pick up on funding and investment resources have been mentioned a bit already but before I do I was quite concerned to hear Mr Tavish Scott say that it's a struggle to keep up with you know government invitations attend meetings and respond to consultations I think that's something that you know we'll reflect on I'm sure government will to and I think it's important that all stakeholders do have have capacity but what's even more worrying for me today is that the broadcaster and RSPCA president Chris Packham made quite a big intervention yesterday and has called for in his words the halt of catastrophic expansion of Scottish salmon farms seeing that a moratorium is needed as mortality rates jump now I know we've heard today a lot about the importance of data and evidence I'm keen to get a better understanding but we're reading in the press that salmon mortality in Scotland is at record levels this year which is catastrophic for fish welfare and Scotland's environment so I wonder Mr Scott is Chris Packham wrong or does he have a point well Mr Packham is a well-known opponent of our sector and has been for a long time and he's trotted out his usual arguments we've invited him many times miss linen to visit our farms and to meet any of our people and to discuss any of the issues he has and he's never taken us up on that opportunity and if you wish to come I extend the opportunity the invitation here in front of the convener this morning so please don't necessarily read the guardian but come and actually listen to fish farmers themselves and they'll describe exactly what they do and they'll answer all your questions that you'd wish to pose in this area is mortality an issue yes it is are we needing to tackle it in an ever greater way yes we are are we determined to do that absolutely and millions of pounds of investment is going into that the fundamentals to mortality this year and last year have been warmest ease we've had an only new effect in terms of how we've had to confront the challenges in our marine environment and much has been learned over the last year we are an evidence and database sector that's the only way we can successfully develop our businesses and to that extent that is why we spent so much time working with scientists oceanographers and others to ensure we understand what is happening but the most fundamental issue is we have seen different types of microorganism in the marine environment of the last couple of years which frankly haven't been seen for a decade or more in our waters and our ability then as fish farmers is to deal with that to find ways to manage that and to put in the correct mitigations and that's what we are determined to do so you raise a perfectly fair point in a fair way I would just suggest that sometimes others do not and are you taking that up with the guardian not at all I leave the guardian to write whatever it wishes but I just read it carefully okay well I'm sure I've not heard the last of that because serious issues have been raised we won't get to the bottom of it today but we have heard many calls for better regulation for better enforcement that brings me back to the point about about resources in written submissions many stakeholders have raised concerns about about the strategy we've also heard about a big reduction in the budget for bodies like nature scot so I wonder if I can maybe start with Dr Claire Caverton work along the table do you have concerns about the the resourcing of of the strategy which I like to think of as not just a biodiversity strategy but it's about Scotland's nature emergency where will the funding come from or what does the funding need to look like for this to to work effectively I don't I don't think I have the solution to where the funding will come from perhaps an unfair question ahead of the budget yeah slightly I think there definitely needs to be more funding I think we can maybe look to what happens in other nations where industry supplies some of that funding as you know we don't oppose industry we as as an organisation we work with industry to try and make sure they have minimal impact on the environment so we totally accept that industry has to be there but industry also has to first of all be aware of its limits and its impacts and work to mitigate those impacts and part of that is the extent of producer responsibility and part of that is potentially funding mitigating mitigating actions and going back to the the point you had before about aquaculture I think you know the industry itself omits it has challenges that it needs to address but at the same time it's still wanting to expand and our view is that it should be addressing its challenges and then expanding and that seems to make a bit more sense otherwise you just seem to be firefighting constantly along the way and on that point then you tend to be agreeing more with Mr Packham who's calling for a moratorium until we look at this issue with mortality rates I think to a certain extent yes and it doesn't necessarily mean stifling the industry I think the industry you know as Tabar said they have they are very aware of the challenges they're facing the thing is they've known about these challenges for a while and there doesn't seem to be a real acknowledgement of the fact that climate change is happening and needs to be dealt with it tends to be used as an excuse so we've had high mortalities this year because of climate change there doesn't really seem to be an acknowledgement an acknowledgement that because the climate is changing perhaps we should be moving our farms perhaps we should be doing things slightly differently so there is action there is innovation happening but I think potentially legislation and regulation could support that and push that a little bit I think that CEPA's sea lice risk assessment framework is doing that to a certain extent but these things have been a long time coming okay well perhaps panel members can respond to that but before we move on one of the points meeting your written submission was that the biodiversity impact screening there should be biodiversity impact screening for any recipient of public funds including in their supply chain could you briefly say why you think that's important I think that goes to producer responsibility you know I think everything every industry is going to have an impact on the environment in some way that is and that's not avoidable you can't say any road is not going to impact the environment for example that then access is a site but that should be assessed and the biodiversity impact should be part of that okay that's helpful thank you Callum yeah thank you I mean absolutely on the funding that's a concern we we wrote to deputy first minister highlighting the 40 percent real terms cut for nature scot 26 percent real terms cut for CEPA so that is a concern I suppose mainstreaming biodiversity would also include recognising that improved nature helps wellbeing as well so it might be you know innovative ways to to use other budgets as well the the Scottish mean environment enhancement fund is is a welcome fund that is helping to resource projects quite often for actively restoring nature including seagrass beds and native oyster beds and support what my colleague to my left elspeth had said on that we support oyster restoration and involved with projects on that but we there's very it's a drop in the ocean so we need more of the industries that benefit from a healthy environment contributing to that pot and helping to be even better local stewards to improve nature where they operate and we're very proud to be part of the Dornach environment enhancement project where the Glenn Moranjig whisky company has demonstrated leadership there I think in sort of recognising their local steward of the Dornach and they want to go further than compliance so more industries that benefit from the sea contributing to the SME fund that can help support community aspiration for restoration around our coast and I wouldn't add to what Claire said about that. Short answer to your question you know are we concerned about resources to deliver this yes absolutely I think be in no doubt that what is set out in the delivery plan is a very resource intensive set of proposals and I come back to my point I made earlier about that so I think it's really important that very careful thought is given to what are the right things to do in what order and that the resources are targeted at the right things in the right way. I think we have a concern and I think several of us have touched on it already marine directorate part of the Scottish government are have been working on a new science strategy we're yet to see that but I fully expect that that is going to be stretched increasingly resources that will have to deliver that are going to be stretched increasingly across a very broad range of areas all the things we've been talking about today all the other responsibilities that they have so yeah I have real concerns about the resources to deliver and I think it's important as well we don't just think about resources in terms of money but also we think about resources in terms of skills and to deliver this in the marine environment requires a very extensive range of scientific economic all sorts of professional skillsets and I think we have to make sure that the investment that government and society makes in education and how we train people how we retain and have the right skillsets in Scotland to actually help us deliver these ambitions is all part of the mix isn't just about money it's also about having the right people with the right skills to do these things and I think one of the suggestions we got in our written submissions was that the marine directorate should undertake a strategic review if I can read my own handwriting of its enforcement assets so looking at equipment as well and I think the point being made was that we need to have effective deterrents of illegal activities is there a concern about equipment so we have well I think increasingly enforcement bodies well they all they increasingly I think across different sectors not just ours use intelligence led approaches so they can't be out there looking at everybody all the time so use intelligence to identify where there may be problems and then target the resources you've got on these problems as we've talked about in the marine environment obviously everything is a bit different because you're you can't see under the sea particularly easily the the compliance part of marine directorate have vessels they have access to aerial surveillance they have they'll have use of data from different sources so I think again it's about looking at the skillset that you need the date the information that you need and how are you best resource to deliver that okay thank you yeah thank you first of all can I just gently push back on the suggestion that we haven't as a sector embraced the challenge of climate change that's why we have a sustainability chart that's why we're committed to net zero by 2045 in line with your aspirations as a parliament and and as a and the government as well so I don't accept the remark that was made by one of your witnesses earlier on just on regulation miss and you ask a really good question we pay for all our regulations so it's full cost recovery and I accept that that's as it should be business should pay the costs of regulation so we pay all our supercharges all our local planning charges and other regulators who we take a service from our argument is is not for less regulation all right our argument is for better more streamlined regulation that's why professor russell-griggs reported to the cabinet secretary a year and a half ago on exactly that and we applaud that direction of travel so our fear is never for more regulation because regulation can be an asset for business good regulation allows business to sell its product into marketplace with confidence because it is properly regulated so I I absolutely accept the role of good regulation in scotland and to be clear we in scotland are more regulated than any other salmon sector anywhere else around the world so I don't want you to go away from today thinking either we're not regulated at all or it's like regulation the reverse is the opposite of the case but to be absolutely crystal clear on your very fair point about resources we pay for our regulation thank you very much so I agree with the point made by many that a lot of this the delivery plan will require additional action or action that will require costs and and and that the government bodies that are responsible for some of it are slim on resources I think that there's an opportunity here to use some of the funds that are in existence calum's mentioned smith which is one of the world's worst acronyms but there's also the nature recovery fund and there's the marine fund scotland to better incentivize and drive change than is currently being done so marine fund scotland you know last year paid a huge amount of money to put solar panels on a on a fish processors in peathead and bought boats within fleets that are arguably over capacity so adding to the problems rather than addressing them and driving some of that change I think with nature recovery fund what would need to be done is for there to be a slight adapt adaptation as to what the remit of that fund is allowed to fund at the moment because my understanding the albeit somewhat limited is that actually that fund you know a lot of what we need to do to restore the marine environment is actually better regulate impact rather than take initial steps you know like progressive additional steps there's additional steps great projects like the seagrass restoration oyster restoration but those aren't going to address the overarching problem which is that we've still got a declining health out with that sort of in you know near shore area very near shore area and so if we can one thing I would like to suggest is that there be some kind of thought about how that those funds can be used to better incentivize change Mr Lenard spoke about compliance um the key aspect of compliance agreed by everybody including marine marine scotland science teams is remote electronic monitoring so this is monitoring of what's caught where and that will also then feed right into the understanding of where those nursery grounds are those juvenile grounds are there's a bit of a cost it's not massive cost but it's a bit of a cost and it's a bit of a cost that will currently come on businesses and there's a clearly an opportunity here to ensure that some of these funds which are already you know committed to the spend already there in in budgets so you're not needing to go back out to finance ministers and ask for brand new pots of money um but to adapt and and sort of open up those funds so that they can be made more relevant to what is in effect marine nature restoration responding to the nature emergency and the final point I'd like to make is we've spoken a lot about delay and a lot about consultation and a lot about things that have not been delivered that have been said to be delivered every year these delays happen more money is spent on that project so you know there's a it feels like there's a bottleneck of all these policies coming together at one point but a lot of that is simply policies that were due to be delivered a long time ago that are just getting shunted and shunted and shunted and if we end up going toward 2030 and we haven't delivered up uh uh delivered you know uh our biodiversity nature emergency plan we're going to have 2030 40 50 policies that need to be implemented in anwana there's going to be huge stress on government and officials and is therefore going to cost government and officials a lot more money um so get on and deliver those commitments that have already been made and that is in itself a cost saving exercise thank you i'll hand back to you because i'm conscious of time thank you very much that's kind i'm going to just move to the two members who've joined the committee for the day then i'm gonna what would you like coming now would you like coming after them whatever suits you deputy convener i don't want to upset you if i may just just a quick question sorry um it was just uh in relation to points that uh dr cavers raised earlier and also relate to to mr duncan as well when i do beach cleans not too far from here in my constituency at wordy bay for example the prevailing issue over and above the human litter and pollution is nerddles and dr cavers you mentioned the plastic pellet prevalence on on the beaches of south queensford as well similarly so i just wondered in terms of our considerations today but also if relevant considerations to do with the circular economy bill if there's anything further that either of you would like to add about the the issue of plastic pellet pollution otherwise known as nerddles uh how what the situation is and and what can and should we do about it uh yeah and definitely can answer that and thank you very much for the opportunity um i think there as we sort of touched on before there is no um uh organisation that is directly responsible for dealing with that and we saw gaps happen in in with the aquaculture regulation with wild sand with that and it's the same uh at the moment with nerddle pollution in scotland in um england for example the environment agency has approached companies that it's identified as being sources of plastic pellet pollution there is no responsibility for doing that with any organisation in Scotland at the moment and there isn't a mechanism for that to be put in place and that could apply to all sorts of sources of plastic and chemical pollution um so i think that is that is one of the main things to do moving forward is a tribute responsibility for that to an organisation for monitoring and then for regulation as well anything further my son yeah first thank you for helping out at wardy there's a great community there and they're there to be commended for all the hard work they do absolutely i would just to the circular economy bill is really important for us we need the economy to be circular so plastic doesn't leak in the ocean so that that runs through everything that we're doing and i would endorse everything dr cavers has said um what i would say is that any policy or law or strategy that's implemented you know has to has to be in mind enact the principle that dr cavers mentioned which is now in the continuity scotland act which is that environmental damage should be rectified at source so if we're turning off the tap at source these items aren't getting in the sea if nerddles are getting in the sea the people that are making them are not handling them properly i've been involved with that for a couple of decades was finding them and cramming 20 years ago we had tours of places that make them you know if they're still getting in the sea and they're fresh it's not working and so ask the people that are making them and thank you for that that feedback and information do either of you see the circular economy bill as a possibility to to make a difference in this regard perhaps dr cavers first yes sorry um yeah definitely um we we really welcome sector economy bill um we do advise caution around uh sector economy because there is a tendency to just focus on recycling in the physical sense where you really have to be aware of chemicals and if you're recycling um products and materials with uh has those chemicals in then you're just keeping them in circulation so we really need sort of robust chemical regulation to go alongside um our sort of recycling and that applies to things like compostable substances as well but in terms of plastic pellets is there anything specific more that we can and should do legislatively or is it as the government I think requires to act here in other ways sorry sorry there's strong legislation coming out of Europe at the moment and I think Scotland has ambitions to mirror that so they have got quite good microplastics legislation that has been passed recently and I think um I think it's going in the right direction and we do we know we welcome as I said before seeing the reference to plastic pellets in the biodiversity strategy um I think um the bearing in mind the impacts on uh sort of SMEs as well is something that that probably comes under the sort of socioeconomic consideration we had before and support for moving into some of these systems so you need to ensure that if we're asking businesses to change practices to ensure that um there's a just transition processes in place to help them make those changes thank you very briefly Mr Duncan yeah I'm I'm happy to come back to you on that if you could write to the committee that that would be helpful yeah thank you thank you for thank you uh Ben Mark you want to come in I'm just going to say that unfortunately Phil Taylor's had to leave for another appointment so uh there is an empty chair there he's not being an empty chair he's had to leave so Mark with your question I'm chasing on um yeah I just want to go back to that point actually that the deputy convener's race around just transition because we spend a lot of time as committee thinking about what a just transition looks like for the energy sector we've considered how a just transition is embedded into the climate act as well do you see those kind of principles as being important for embedding in this approach I'm thinking about you know perhaps if I can ask our sector representatives if there was say a a transition in the inshore away from scalp dredging uh are there other economic opportunities might arise out of that is is it important that there's a just transition approach applied to that or with salmon farming for example maybe in the future there might be a retirel of open pen salmon farms you can imagine that towards other technologies how do you take workers how do you take sectors with you I was interested in this word that you politicians use about just um you need to explain that to 12 000 people who work in our sector mr uskill how just would that be on their futures how we employ people in lots of parts of scotland who wouldn't have a job at an average salary of 36 000 pounds I'm very proud of that very proud of that where there isn't much employment I can go all the way up the west coast to the islands I live in and everywhere else and you you with respect kind of say in broad terms we could close down open net farming that will close the industry down in scotland be really clear about that um what you've just suggested is closing the industry down in scotland and you'll forgive me but I'm not going to agree with you on that either technology isn't there be it hasn't worked at scale anywhere in the world and see the science data and evidence isn't there and fourthly the energy costs of what you've just suggested which is onshore farming are enormous so um when those of you who make that kind of argument think about it you need to also think about the other side of the equation not just the one that you've possibly been pitched to by those who made that case you perhaps sort of jumping on that as a as one potential way forward I think the whole point of just transition is that it's led by workers it's led by people within those sectors so they're coming up with the solutions be it sea lice be it biodiversity impact and they're using their technical innovation to do that now I don't know what solutions are for your sector I don't I don't work in that area but is there something about the principle of saying okay we've got strict biodiversity targets we've got the need to to move forward how do we involve sectors in that change how do you actually deliver the change which I think you acknowledge needs needs to happen and the same with fisheries as well same with the energy sector how is this driven by sectors themselves in a way which is just driving to say we don't want the change we've phenomenally changed in the last 10 years the last 20 last 30 years Mr Russell I'm not going to accept that we sit in aspic and nothing changes our industry from the industry I knew in Shetland in the 1980s is chalk and cheese to where we are today and I'm again very very proud of that the difference is enormous and you're very welcome anytime to come and visit us and and see that change I've always disappointed that some parliamentarians don't take up our invitation in that way to come and actually learn and listen and talk to people don't need to take my word for it come and talk to scientists and people who run these businesses and come and see for themselves but you make a good point if the Scottish government would give us the regulatory ability to innovate and trial in for example deeper water areas then we could you're on to something but the regulatory restriction so someone earlier mentioned we could just simply move to other sites we can only do that with regulatory approval so if as happens in Norway there is a regulatory system that encourages innovation and allows us I don't ask you to invest in it we would make the investment I'm not asking the public sector to do that we would make the investment but to do that and to trial some of the innovations that we'd like to do we need to have the regulatory approval to do that and that's I would simply suggest the gap at the moment. Ellsworth I don't know if you want to react to my comment I should say I did speak to a scallop dredger a number of years ago who was interested in making a transition. I wouldn't want to suggest what what into so yeah well I think what's really important to remember is that the fishing industry like the salmon farming industry is very innovative and is always looking how to move forward what can we do better what can we do differently how can we reduce our emissions how can we reduce our impact there's work on going at the moment for example in universities in scotland looking at different types of gear for catching scallops that will have a lot less impact so I think that the people in the industry are always looking forward they're always looking for better ways to do things to do things more efficiently to do things that will lessen their impact I could we have a vessel in the fleet in the prawn fleet in Fraserborough new vessel just launched earlier this year the business that runs this vessel invested spent more money to make modifications in the design and the propulsion of that vessel that it will it burns less fuel it has lower emissions despite the fact that they've it has cost them more to make those they see that as the way forward that is that and that they're showing leadership in the industry and others will follow that lead I fully expect because they can see the benefits that that will bring I think what we must never lose sight of in all of this both in in Tavish's industry and in mine is that we are producing food so we have there's a growing demand for seafood globally we have a growing population seafood plays a critically important part in feeding not just people in Scotland but people around the world and if you if you reduce or limit or constrain how much food we can sustainably produce from the sea that food will have to be produced for some from somewhere else quite likely with higher impacts seafood compares extremely favourably in terms of its environmental impacts its carbon impacts compared to other foodstuffs so I think suggesting that there might be a sort of transition away from food production and I know that's not exactly what you were suggesting but a just transition for the oil and gas industry for example is a very very different proposition to a just transition in relation to food production yeah thanks for those reflections tight on time and I'd like to give both Finn and Ryder two questions each but not to every member of the panel just to be clear mr Carson convener firstly I probably should declare an interest has been the species champion for the native oyster bed I'm the unique position of a species champion and actually eat the species that he's trying to protect and I enjoy the odd one I must admit I think what we've heard this morning is that there's certainly we've heard about crowded seas we've heard about marine spatial squeeze I think what we're seeing now is a policy squeeze we crowded ministerial responsibilities and I think that's one of the reasons I'm here today is because it's there's still a this fluffy idea of actually who takes responsibility we've discussed marine issues in our committee particularly around the lack of fit for purpose data just how much is actually collected properly and how much is modelled that that is a concern and we've clearly saw from the beauties agreement driven Clyde cod box debacle that and embarrassing situation with marine scotland officers trying to defend adequate data to change policy that there's issues there but from the rule of affairs point of view we understand that creating a biodiversity positive marine environment is of critical importance we can't forget the socio economic impact of policies that is equally important so arguments are often made without actually touching on the positive or negative aspects of socio and economic impact because it sometimes just doesn't fit the narrative of those groups or organisations that are trying to promote a particular point of view but in agriculture we have rural land use partnerships who bring all the stakeholders together and are supposed to look at landscape scale policies and impact that has right across I was surprised there was nobody touched on regional inshore fisheries groups which are supposed to be the group where fishermen and stakeholders can actually input and comment on policies does that suggest the government are not serious about really engaging with the fishing industry through these sort of regional inshore groups because far as I can see they're inadequately funded and not really fit for purpose so can have your comments on whether specifically regional inshore fisheries group have got a role in ensuring that we can have a biodiversity plan that actually works for biodiversity and for fishing communities come in first on that one I mean I think the regional inshore fisheries groups are a good idea but yes I think they are they're not particularly well resourced I think to get greatest value from them you know their purpose should be for to be able to really engage with people at the sharp end of the industry actually those those those involved those impacted by policies those who as Mr Ruskell has just suggested may indeed have good ideas and good suggestions and actually ways in which the industry can bring ideas to the government's table so the Scottish government has just I think in the last year or so rearranged the inshore fisheries groups a little and have appointed a new set of chairs to I think there's six of them now and their intention is I think to review their effectiveness at some point next year but I think they could work a lot better and I think there's a real opportunity there but they would need to be resourced and the important thing too is I think certainly from my member's perspective and from industry's perspective they have to see value they have to see a purpose in them attending these things they have to see some benefits some change something that is is actually being delivered because these are busy folk particularly in the inshore fleet they're often running very small businesses they don't have a lot of spare time to go along and just be in a talking shop so it has to be something that is meaningful and will deliver something. I'm going to bring Callum in and then I'm going to push you for your second question you gave quite a long statement but Callum. Thank you, thanks for championing the native oyster as well. The inshore fisheries groups are important it's absolutely critical that local fishers have a voice and a forum to formulate what they would like to see as policy and management. My concern in Scotland as I think I've raised at the environment committee as well is how the inshore fisheries management integrates with other activities in the inshore because we still don't have our regional marine plans and I've seen this play out in real time representing Lencom the Clyde Marine planning partnership for example and it's quite challenging to get integration so we do look with a certain amount of envy to the inshore fisheries and conservation authorities in England where they've got regional statutory bodies where conservation and fisheries management are integrated and I think a lot of the challenges particularly in the inshore Scotland arise because there isn't that integration you've got conversations happening about the same sea space in different forums so I've just do have a role but the inshore governance needs to be improved to better integrate the fisheries management with the conservation and also to hear other voices as well because the IFCAS have boards and other stakeholders are on those boards as well as I've submitted in previous evidence as well okay okay um the delivery plan doesn't appear to be cost you've touched on the equivalent of financial memorandum but it's very ambitious it's a bit like the agricultural bill that we're looking at very ambitious no boundaries to it don't know how much it's going to cost do we need to be more pragmatic going forward ambition is good but if you can't deliver on your ambitions you know targets that can't possibly be met you know there's an argument about climate change targets we're far too ambitious and we need to be more pragmatic does this plan need to be more pragmatic but still to pay actually effectively deliver because elspeth did the last one and then probably Claire if you want to come in on that so very briefly I think Mr Carson makes a really good point business would like clarity and clarity comes with good definitions and good targets I mean fairness to field he mentioned smart targets I entirely endorse that I think that's that's the right thing to do and I hope parliament all very very fully scrutinised what the nature of exactly that but I remember back in the day you know ministers not hitting climate change targets there were statutory I don't remember anyone losing a job over it so I think parliament would want to take a view about so what now if it's to mean something and you want you parliament want business to go with it then the points that elspeth and I have been seeking to forward about a really good regulatory assessments I think are really important we'll go with it as long as you show the benefits of it we'll be absolutely with you all the way on that but yeah I'd be firm making it real to people because I think that actually makes if I say so my other colleagues jobs easier if we can perhaps understand what we're all trying to achieve and at the moment it seems all up there I fully agree with everyone that's talked about smart targets today as well I think more definitive timelines and responsibilities if you're I've said it previously say if you're attributing responsibility to organizations and sectors then you're going to hold people accountable and they will have their targets that they have to meet and they're presumably if they don't meet their targets they have consequences that come back to them as well my questions are around the same theme so I won't make any kind of introduction to them I was interested about the lack of a social and economic impact and I think we're all committed to a just transition can you have one without the other if you don't know the impact of what you're doing how can you transition that's helpful I don't really have a lot to add because I think we've probably done that one to death but I think Ms Grant makes a really good yes or no answer yes I agree I agree but I would I would sorry emphasise what Phil had said that a lot of the policies in there have an SCIA process as well so it's not that it wouldn't be part of the process I agree of course but there are also actions such as police and prevention and monitoring that don't necessary have a social and economic impact directly and we could be doing more of that righta okay thank you we seem to have focused on fishing and fish farming today but there is a lot more going on in the marine environment and we hear more about a squeeze on fishing but also things like offshore energy and the like should we be looking at that and how listen I'm now asking two questions in one sorry you'll only get one answer and also we've heard about how complex this consultation is and how do we engage stakeholders because what went really wrong with the hpma process was it was top down and it was imposing things that people largely didn't understand or know about enough about because it was just a huge lump of policy that nobody actually disaggregated and spoke to people about the impact on them how do we avoid that because this seems just the same it's like a big top-down exercise not involving the people that it's going to impact and I just fear it's going to get the same reaction given there is a huge amount of distrust out there to the first question and I think else was and I would very happily discuss marine spatial squeeze and the parliament's interest in that I think it has to be local to do it effectively so the Clyde or areas seem to me so it kind of links to Mr Carson's point about what is the right structure in order to achieve that objective but absolutely there need to be there need to be those discussions we're working for example with kelp businesses now that there's a growing seaweed industry in scotland we very much welcome that there's lots of and this is maybe a bit of a challenge for some of elsewhere's colleagues in the inshore sector and I would accept that and recognise that point but but a huge potential for us in the biodiversity space of working with kelp businesses is very compatible with salmon farming so I think there is there are there are good things that happen out in space but it is a complex discussion and to find the right forum I think it just has to be local you can't do these things at a national level they've got to be structured in a way which allows the local players to be in to be involved in that and to make you know as effective good decisions again based on good science and data which I'm afraid drives us right back to the point that Mr Carson and others were highlighting about the investment by government and indeed industry in science that's where we can all coalesce to help us make sensible decisions. Callum just just to get if you agree absolutely I think I think having conversations with people in the room local people getting their knowledge having having those discussions is absolutely fundamental I think there's a lot of information that can inform those discussions and I think once it's there and people are looking at maps you know people can have respectful agreements and disagreements but at least if they all know what the purpose is those discussions can be can be convivial and productive but again you know it's an investment of time and resource to be able to do that effectively and I know that there's some successful work that's been done on that in relation to deer management and the common ground work there and people with quite different views coming together so we absolutely support that that's also why we support you know region marine planning and integration of fisheries management and regional marine planning but that's delayed as well so we do need to have those spaces to have those conversations and the local stakeholders know the environment we absolutely respect that. Okay I'm afraid right we're on our time limit but can I just say that I'm going to ask a final question which is yes no answer and one sentence and you'll all get a chance to do it so my problem is that what I've heard this morning is there needs to be a balance between nature environment and jobs and that's absolutely critical but we have some dichotomies say for example when it comes to electrofishing for razor clams are there unseen effects on other species do we know what that truly means when it comes to dredging are there habitat destruction and is there a huge length of time to recover. With agriculture I'm not going to pass comment except I think the rec report was absent in 2018 and rains absent today but there are conflicts potentially there between wild salmon and other crustaceans when it comes to renewables it may affect demersal fisheries may affect chopping up seabirds who are suffering from avian flu at the moment and should we be taking steps to stop the sand eel fishery to make sure they've got enough food when it comes to plastic waste the damage it does to all our flora and fauna. We all want to be good neighbours but we're all competing for the same space so is it possible to be good neighbours and develop everything the government wants yes or no and what's the one thing that you need to do each of you to make sure that happens so Tavish do you want to start off with that? Yes it is possible to be good neighbours I absolutely agree with you convener on that and what is the one thing the sector needs to do continue to invest in science I forgive me for being boring on this but I can't emphasise enough how much we depend as a sector on science and I believe that government needs that too so that's probably if you're going to give me one thing that would be the one thing. Long sentence Elspeth. Yes I think we can be good neighbours whether we can deliver all that government wants remains to be seen but I think one of the challenges to that and something that we all need to do better is we actually I think need to educate people better about the complexity of what we're trying to do these things are really this is a very long sentence apologies but educating people in general about the fact that these are not simple things to fix these are really complex issues and they can't be fixed by simple slogans and simple solutions. By making the case better for why protecting and recovering nature is good for people and to continue and increase the conversations around all this policy area and how it interacts and helps benefit good nature benefits local people. I really agree with that as well you may have industries but industries involve people and people have lives and they have lifestyles I think between industry and people between different sectors such as all ourselves we want to see better potentially collaboration and compromise and transparency. Okay so I'm walking away with four yeses which is probably as positive as I can get. Thank you very much for for sharing your expertise with us this morning. On the 9th of January we're going to be taking evidence from a panel of experts on terrestrial diet but biodiversity we'll then write a letter to the Scottish government to input our views on the draft plan before it's finalised and we look forward to sharing that with you. Thank you very much and we are now going to move into private session.