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You have sort of answered your own question in that the most likely circumstance in which the Scottish Government would need to consider secondary legislation would be to align with a UK environmental outcome report, and that would probably happen in relation to the marine environment. The UK Government has legislative competence in the Scottish offshore region, but the Scottish ministers have legislative competence in the Scottish inshore region, so there could be a need for alignment there.

As you said, it is important—especially for renewable energy developments—that there is consistency. There has to be a degree of interoperability. We do not want to be bound by a false boundary because of who has the power.

If two regimes have fundamentally different legal requirements, there might not be an option but to pursue legislative change. Again, that part of the bill is about future proofing, given that we do not know what developments will be on the table in the future. We want to be able to be responsive and to work with the UK Government to align on issues where a lack of alignment might be a barrier to any deployment, which we would not want to be the case.

I would not say that they are incompatible; I would say that we have a changing environment, and having particular protected areas would not allow development. For example, a particular site might have been designated for overwintering geese and, in economic terms, nothing can happen on it, but the protections that are associated with the site are not needed anymore because the geese no longer overwinter there and have gone elsewhere. The issue is not about incompatibility; we are adapting to the reality and taking on board the most up-to-date data and evidence. There is no fundamental incompatibility between net zero and biodiversity, because the two go absolutely hand in hand.

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.

There is no simple answer. I know that you have heard from some stakeholders who would like to see a non-regression clause in the bill. We want to be able to adapt our legislation so that we can meet the challenges ahead of us in a dynamic way and so that we can respond effectively to the twin crises. We do not believe that non-regression is completely and utterly objective.

There are no easy answers when it comes to environmental protection. We believe that decisions should be taken on a case-by-case basis. There can be very complex and competing issues within particular areas, so, in order to make the right decision about what to do, you must look at things case by case, and a non-regression clause would limit the ability to do that.

First, I will set out why we do not believe there should be a non-regression clause in the bill. Such a clause would limit the flexibility that is required to operate in a changing climate and it is also difficult to quantify what regression means. It is quite subjective.

I am sorry if it took me a wee while to get there.

You mentioned the pandemic. That was an example of our having to look at some of our legal mechanisms, which were not responsive enough. Obviously, we had quite a lot of things with sunset clauses and so on, but that is just an indication of something that happens very quickly and needs to be responded to very quickly. The word “dynamic” is better than “agile”, because Parliaments and Governments need to be able to respond to things. The very nature of climate change, in particular, means that things happen that we have not seen before. Maybe some species that we have not seen before arrive in Scotland, and some of the species that we had protected are no longer in the protected sites that we created, because nature changes, moves and adapts to environmental circumstances.

It is interesting that you have linked that with human health. We do not talk enough about how biodiversity and nature are inextricably linked to human health. If we do not protect species in Scotland, we put in jeopardy our food systems and the health of the environment that we depend upon if we are to be healthy. That is an interesting analogy.

Obviously, I have already talked about the provision that will allow new topic areas to be included in the legislation in the future.

We decided that we would go for including

“the condition or extent of any habitat”

as a target topic. That resulted from the merging of two separate topics—habitat condition and habitat extent—on the basis that we did not think that condition alone would demonstrate whether the outcomes of the biodiversity strategy would be achieved. Habitat condition and habitat extent were therefore merged to become the single target topic of

“the condition or extent of any habitat”,

as recommended by the PAG.

I think that Scottish Environment LINK also mentioned ecological connectivity. We did not include that as a specific target topic because of the need to select and consolidate target topic areas. However, ecosystem integrity was seen as a high-level, scalable topic.

Scottish Environment LINK and other stakeholders have all said that they would like to see various topics in the bill. There are two points to make about that. We have made sure that our topics are broad enough to include some of those suggestions, but we are not ruling out any topics, should we have more robust indicators in future. I hope that that explains that we have chosen the topics based on the independent advice of the PAG and on the topics being broad enough to incorporate many of the concerns of stakeholders—and all of us—about what we need to measure. We also have the flexibility to scale up those topics or to add topics in the future. I hope that I have given the committee the confidence that that is available.

That is something that I want to discuss with them. I will work with stakeholders on their understanding of what we are trying to do.

I have laid out the protections that exist in relation to how the power could be used. The intention behind the power is in no way to dilute environmental protections; it is to enable us to adapt and improve environmental protections in a changing landscape and environment, and to ensure that we are not frozen in time.

I set out the restrictions that exist in relation to the 1994 habitats regulations. We need to be responsive and adaptive to new data, new evidence and changed circumstances—for example, by modifying the boundaries of protected sites or taking away protected site status where it is no longer needed and applying it to another area where it is needed. We need to be able to be fleet of foot in that respect. I think that I have perhaps not communicated the importance of that well enough to the environmental NGOs, and I want to have those conversations with them and give them assurances.

In response to your point about future Governments, I go back to what I said to Mercedes Villalba: Parliament holds Governments to account. The areas in which a Government would be allowed to use the power in question are quite limited. The power is binding in that regard. It would not allow future Governments to dilute anything.

The purpose of the provisions in part 2 is to get us to our goal of halting biodiversity loss as soon as possible and regenerating nature by 2045. I would not put anything in the bill that does not help us to do that.