Seòmar agus comataidhean

Are you talking about the Official Report?

It feels like I have never been away. [Laughter.]

Thank you for asking me to give evidence on the draft UK statutory instrument, the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (Amendment) Order 2023. The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board is a statutory levy board funded by farmers, growers and others in the supply chain. It provides services, advice and support to our world-class food and farming industry.

The AHDB comprises the four statutory levy-paying sectors that are currently included in the scope of the order, which are the cereal and oilseed industries in the UK, the milk and bovine dairy industry in Great Britain, the pig industry in England and the beef and sheep industry in England.

The amendment order is a UK-wide instrument, as has been said, to be made in the exercise of powers conferred by the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 on the secretary of state, acting with the approval, for Scotland, of Scottish ministers.

The main purpose of the order is to deliver a set of modernising updates to the principal order, the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board Order 2008, which will enable it to deliver operational and financial improvements.

A UK-wide consultation on the proposed amendments was launched on 4 December 2022 and closed on 28 February 2023. It was led by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which contacted all stakeholders by email. It received 17 responses and the majority of respondents agreed with the proposals included in the instrument.

I will not outline all nine amendments, because you have them in front of you. I support the changes that the order makes to deliver those improvements and I am happy to take any questions.

You are probably referring to the business and regulatory impact assessment, which sets that out. There was a great deal of collaboration with my officials ahead of the bill’s drafting, and the review group met a number of organisations and businesses, including representatives of many grouse moor estates. As well as meetings, there were questionnaires that were targeted at landowners, land managers, gamekeepers and other interested bodies. A few years ago, we commissioned research on the socioeconomic impact of licensing, and quite a lot of financial information from estates was collated in order to provide an evidence base.

Of course, it is not just estates that are involved. We also looked at the implication of banning the sale of glue traps, for example, so there were meetings with the pest control sector and we looked at the implications for people who sell glue traps. They are actually very cheap, so there was not much implication there.

In effect, I am saying that a great deal of work was done in speaking to stakeholders and reaching out to them in a number of ways to ascertain any financial implications that the bill might have for them, as you always have to do for bills, and we thought that they were minimal.

The proposal for a licensing scheme is not problematic in itself. We want to make it simple and NatureScot has said that it wants to make it simple. We do not want it to be too complicated or to take time away from the day-to-day work that land managers do. NatureScot says that it currently does not charge for licences, but I wonder how sustainable that will be. That is something that NatureScot will need to decide.

Perhaps people on this committee will need to decide whether a lot of applications for licences will be made to NatureScot. NatureScot seems quite happy that it can continue with the situation, but I would say that it is going to have to do quite a lot of work. Therefore, we might need to look at that. Even so, I think that any fee would need to be minimal, just to cover the administration costs.

You could look at environmental health, for example. Licences would be suspended in environmental health if it were thought that there was a public health risk. You are absolutely right that there are a myriad of areas in which that could happen.

You would hope that something so serious that required such action to be taken would never happen, but if NatureScot did not have the flexibility to do this and something like this happened, you, as MSPs, would be coming back in future years and asking for additional secondary legislation to amend the provision. The bill gives that flexibility, as you have said, in the way that quite a lot of other licensing schemes do.

Norman Munro wants to highlight some examples. I have been talking about environmental health, but I was obviously not anticipating your question, so perhaps the lawyer can jump in here, too.

That would come down to the definition of a glue trap. I might have to turn to my officials about that level of detail about what could constitute a glue trap. We can write to the committee and give you the firm definition. However, to me, a plank of wood with a layer of extremely powerful glue would constitute a glue trap.

Yes, because we absolutely do not want to do the alternative. Grouse moors make a significant contribution to the rural economy, and they provide jobs. You have heard from many of the people who have those jobs. They also make a significant contribution to countryside management and biodiversity. Grouse shooting brings a tremendous amount of people to Scotland to spend their money. There are licensing schemes for many activities across Scotland. The licensing scheme in the bill is the option that Professor Werritty has recommended that we take forward, should other measures not solve those problems.

It is fair to say that, in any area of life, certain things can have unintended consequences. The science and evidence that comes out of monitoring that activity, particularly on the impact on the environment—for example, on peatland—will offer us and land managers the evidence base to be able to say that we would not have known that X activity had a detrimental impact on a piece of land had we not had that monitoring in place. Licensing gives us the mechanism to do that.

The main reason, Mr Allan, is that the alternative for the rural economy is not where we want to go.

It is not significant enough. Raptors are still being persecuted and there are still issues about land management in some places that we think should be addressed. We are bringing forward the proposals. The committee will be able to make recommendations and say whether it agrees with the proposals, but we feel that this is a proportionate measure to deal with some of the long-standing issues and areas in which there are not necessarily improvements to the degree that we would like.

I am sorry to disappoint you and not to chum along with you in thinking that annual licensing is a good idea, but I am really open to any suggestions about the licensing period being longer. That goes back to something that I mentioned to Ariane Burgess about NatureScot wanting the process to be as easy as possible for people who are applying for a licence and for the administration not to be onerous.

I am completely open to suggestions as to how long the licences should run for. I do not see that a licence of longer than one year would necessarily have any unintended consequences. I am open to the period being longer.

Mr Carson, you have been here long enough to know that no bill stays in the form in which it is introduced until stage 3. Amendments are lodged—

It is very unusual for a code of practice to be in a bill. I can think of only one bill where that was the case in my seven or eight years here, and that was not in this portfolio. The code of practice was a recommendation of the Werritty review, but, as you will have heard from NatureScot, the code will be developed by it in consultation with stakeholders. I was pleased to hear how vociferously that was put forward. It is only right that the code of practice is a collaborative effort and that there is agreement on it. I think that everyone the committee has spoken to in that space will be involved in the process and invited to collaborate.

As far as the committee’s deliberations are concerned, I do not need to tell you how to operate, but requiring more information on the code of practice is very much putting the cart before the horse. NatureScot will deliver on that code of practice. The bill is to put in place the law that will facilitate the licensing scheme.