Seòmar agus comataidhean

You have referred to other regulations, such as the REACH regulations. I will take away that comparison that you have made and I am open to discussing that with members. The whole point of us sitting in front of you today is to hear your concerns and to think about how we can bottom those out, so I will absolutely take that away.

There might be other avenues that we can consider in respect of safeguarding. I am absolutely open to that. My officials and I are having those conversations even as I am sitting here listening to the committee’s concerns. Let me take that away.

The premise of your question is that the Scottish Government cannot meet its offshore wind ambitions, but, in fact—

It is not that we have not had those conversations with DEFRA. We have done an analysis of regulation 9D and we do not believe that it gives us the flexibility to respond in an agile way to situations on the ground and in the sea.

I would say the opposite. The very fact that the powers originated in EU law means that there is a gap now. The parent act was the European Communities Act 1972. That was a moment in time. We left the EU in 2021, or whenever it was, and we now have a fundamental gap. The purpose of part 2 of the bill is to fill that gap, which we do not believe has been addressed, in order to give us the flexibility that we used to have to respond to a changing climate and changing situations in nature and the environment.

We can have a look at that.

I will say a couple of things on that. The targets themselves are very robust—there will be legally binding targets associated with the goals that feed into the biodiversity strategy. The high-level purpose is to align with the biodiversity strategy, but that informs the secondary legislation and the targets, so they would be binding.

None of us has control over who forms the next Government; the people of Scotland do. You would hope that biodiversity is so important to the people of Scotland that they would not elect anyone for whom biodiversity was not a consideration. We cannot future proof any legislation against future Governments coming in and overturning it or bringing in new legislation that rescinds some of the goals of the previous legislation.

I think that we are going about this in a robust way. The biodiversity strategy has been laid out. It informs the target setting, as does the advice that we have from the PAG, and the targets are set in secondary legislation. It is up to the Parliament to decide what goes through. A future Government that wants to rip up this bill or the biodiversity strategy would be scrutinised and held to account in doing that. That is parliamentary democracy—that would be my answer to that.

If there are suggestions on strengthening the language, that is what stages 2 and 3 are for, and I am happy to consider anything. However, I do not think that there is a particular risk with this bill in comparison with any other piece of legislation that we have ever passed in the Parliament. Legislation is always subject to change based on who is next in government.

The UK marine strategy brings it all together.

I often have discussions with the Welsh Government on a range of subjects in the portfolio. I am interested in your suggestions. The beauty of the relationship between the Welsh and Scottish Governments is that we often learn from each other and take on each other’s good ideas.

I am alive to Tim Eagle’s point that local authorities may be delivering on reporting but might not be taking the associated actions that are identified in those reports. Having 32 local authorities across Scotland means that there will be different ways in which each local authority can contribute or not—we want to get rid of the “or not”. There will obviously be different actions for Highland Council, the islands councils and Glasgow City Council, but we want to make sure that their actions are proportionate and relate to areas in which they have identified that they need to go further.

The Welsh idea is interesting. Their bill will create a duty for the Welsh ministers to give guidance and direction to particular local authorities. We need to make sure that Verity house is always taken into account—local authorities are in charge of their own destinies and we do not want to dictate what actions they have to take on the ground. However, there is already a statutory duty on them to report and to put their action plans in place. I will take away what you have mooted. I was in a meeting with the Welsh Government just yesterday. I imagine that, in the next couple of weeks, I will have the opportunity to speak to it again, and I will certainly look at some of the provisions in its bill.

I do not see why not—I am just looking at my officials. The advice that PAG gave us is very robust. I am getting the nod from Lisa, so we will of course pass it on.