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Agenda item 2 is appointment of the committee’s new convener. On 15 June 2021, the Parliament agreed motion S6M-00393, which resolved that members of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party were eligible to be chosen as convener of this committee. I understand that the Conservative nominee for convener is Edward Mountain.

Edward Mountain was chosen as convener.

Congratulations, Edward. I pass over to you to convene the remainder of the meeting.

But there is no obvious transparency about that overall impact to make it clear, whether it should be the board’s oversight or indeed the minister’s oversight.

Could I give you an example? We have talked a lot about volume and you have talked effectively, I think, about how you are managing volume. However, clearly, if Registers of Scotland or lawyers make a mistake, it could have consequences. I think that the rejections could be seen as a good thing—as gatekeeping potential problems with what has been presented. However, clearly, the risk of that is greater—you have said this yourself—from a 2017 case than it is from a more recent case, because trying to manage that risk, or to rectify a problem, whether it lies with your organisation or with the supply chain of lawyers providing the applications, is more problematic if you are carrying more older cases. The potential severity of that impact needs to be measured somewhere.

I am not sure that that is transparent either in what you have been saying to us today or in your corporate plan, or indeed in what I have seen in the risk register; it is just service inputs as opposed to risk outputs to the economy. We are the economy committee, so clearly we are interested in that. It may not always be you, and it might be individual lawyers. Between you and your major customer base—lawyers; obviously, you work very closely with the Law Society—how do you manage the risk of things going wrong, as can and does happen? We know that it will not be large cases; it will be small cases, but those cases could have a major impact.

Do you have a duty of care at all and who holds responsibility for any impact on individuals—you will know about mental health issues that we will come to you about—as home owners or indeed businesses? Where does the risk of that impact lie? Where does the accountability lie? Is that with individual lawyers, the Law Society, your board or you as an organisation? There is definitely a risk there, but who is managing that risk and how do we make it more transparent that it is being managed properly?

Yes.

Somebody needs to do that, and that is probably what people are really interested in. Rather than hoping, it would be very helpful if you could consider some kind of collective oversight—you referred to an ecosystem; it is that—to ensure that those risks and that impact are managed.

I would like to ask about your risk register. We understand that it is published every month for your board. We can find a June 2021 risk register, but I would like to ask about the transparency of that for scrutiny purposes and access for this committee and also about how it has informed your corporate plan.

It is fair to say that a lot of your risk management is on the supply side and is about how you operate as an institution and an organisation, but clearly the importance of Registers of Scotland lies in the fact that it is vital to our economy, to our businesses and to individuals. The impact of the risks that you carry can have quite life-changing effects on people. Who manages that outward-facing risk and why does that not appear in your corporate plan or indeed, from what I have seen, your risk register?

Thank you. Your sound is fine, but your visual is not as secure, although we can see you. The broadcasting staff can indicate if they want to do something about that. However, we definitely heard what you said there.

I will ask the same question that I asked the previous panel. Looking at the international picture, and with COP15 coming, what expectations do you have and what is the interaction between the current consultation on Scotland’s strategy and COP15?

I will go first to Calum Duncan, and then to Craig Macadam and finally to Susan Davies, so that broadcasting can help us with any issues with Susan’s connection.

Good morning, everyone. I will chair today’s meeting following the resignation of Dean Lockhart yesterday. We are sorry to see Dean go, but we wish him well in his new role, and we thank him for his service to the committee and for being a courteous and consensus-seeking convener of it. With the committee’s agreement, I would like to write on its behalf to express our thanks to Dean for his work, particularly in seeing us through the energy price inquiry and in our long and continuing investigation into local government and its partners delivering on net zero. Once a motion on the new Conservative member of the committee has been agreed to, the committee will agree to appoint a new convener at the first opportunity.

This is the 23rd meeting of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee in 2022 and our first meeting following the summer recess. It is lovely to see everybody.

Agenda item 1 is to consider whether to take items 3, 4 and 5 in private. Item 3 is consideration of the evidence that we will hear today, and item 4 is consideration of the committee’s work programme. Under item 5, we will consider a list of candidates for two adviser posts to support our work. Do members agree to take those items in private?

Members indicated agreement.

Item 2 is our first evidence session in relation to the Scottish biodiversity strategy. I refer members to the papers from the clerk and the Scottish Parliament information centre for this item.

In June, the committee agreed to scrutinise biodiversity policy and the proposals for the Scottish Government’s new biodiversity strategy. That will be the first substantive update of Scotland’s overarching biodiversity policy since 2013 and the starting point in a process that will lead into the development of rolling delivery plans and statutory nature restoration targets through the introduction of a natural environment bill. The Scottish Government is currently consulting on the strategy. The consultation will end next week, and the strategy should be published later this year.

Today, we will hear from two panels that will focus on land and marine environments. The session will be an opportunity to discuss what is needed to address the biodiversity crisis, reflections on the outcomes that are specified in the consultation, and views on the legislative requirements and what else needs to happen to deliver those outcomes.

We will start with a panel that will focus on land. I welcome our panellists, all of whom are joining us in the room. Professor Elisa Morgera is professor of global environmental law at the University of Strathclyde and director of One Ocean Hub; Suzie Saunders is policy advocate at Woodland Trust Scotland; Dr Paul Walton is head of habitats and species at RSPB Scotland; and Bruce Wilson is public affairs manager at the Scottish Wildlife Trust. I thank the panellists for accepting our invitations; we are delighted to have you here.

We have allocated around 70 minutes for this session. Members will ask questions in turn. As members know, it will help broadcasting if they direct their questions to a specific panellist or set out a running order for answering the question if it is relevant to all the panellists. I would like everyone—members and panellists—to try to be concise in their questions and answers, if they can be.

I will begin with a question for everybody and will go to Professor Morgera first. Scotland has so far struggled to make progress on slowing and reversing biodiversity declines. What are the key challenges for Scotland and the reason why some targets have been missed to date? I will allow everybody to answer that key question.