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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.

That can be done by all the individual component parts of the UK working in concert with one another and having shared ambition. That is my answer to that. When we do not have shared ambition, that jeopardises the devolved Governments reaching their targets. For example, one of the biggest inhibitors to us meeting our net zero targets is the fact that the electricity that Scotland generates is too expensive for our citizens to use, so they cannot decarbonise. That is simply the nature of the situation that we are in as part of the UK.

However, we have regular interministerial meetings on all of that. I have regular meetings with my counterparts in Northern Ireland, Wales and the UK to discuss all those issues. If we take net zero as an example, the fundamental point is that the UK will not be able to meet its net zero target of 2050 without Scotland meeting its net zero target of 2045, and vice versa. Therefore, the four Governments must work in concert with one another.

We will find out.

I recognise that some stakeholders, and people who have given evidence to the committee, have expressed that there is potential for a narrow interpretation. I will take you through how the topics were arrived at. They were recommended in expert scientific advice that was provided by the biodiversity programme advisory group—for brevity, I will call it PAG from now on.

The group comprised a panel of experts and was chaired by the Government’s chief scientific adviser for environment, natural resources and agriculture. It advised on all three elements of the strategic framework for biodiversity, and the bill includes the group’s recommended topics for which we must have specific targets. The bill also contains the power to add other topics. What stakeholders say on that aspect is interesting, and it will be interesting to see, in future years, whether we require to add other topics.

On the particular topic that you mentioned, which is the status of threatened species, we felt that it was important that it was the status of species, not the rarity, that had to be considered. That effectively meant that it would cover more than just rare species, including species that are under threat now and those with declining populations, which might not be classified as rare but are under threat. We might be seeing a threat to their existence, or they might have restricted genetic diversity. They might be under threat because of impacts on their habitat or food chain. There might be impacts from other factors, such as has happened with avian influenza whereby pathogens have devastated particular species.

We wanted to ensure that we had—and PAG advised us to have—a broader definition, because we did not want to exclude certain species. We do not want species to get to the point at which they are rare; we want to be able to intervene at the point where we see threats to them. That is why there is a broader definition.

I do not want to be prescriptive about particular actions. I want the bill to give us agility in the way in which we address issues, and I am absolutely open to scrutinising how the bill, as it is, could allow more targeted action. However, there are a number of provisions in the bill, particularly in part 2, that will allow us to be more fleet of foot in how we deal with emerging and changing issues. I can come on to this when we talk about part 2, but I included part 2 to give us that responsiveness and agility in a number of areas. That will mean that we do not need to wait for primary legislation to be able to deal with an emerging situation or a trend that we have identified and which needs attention quickly.

A lot of the provisions in part 2 will allow us to do that. I am open to that because it is a real concern. We depend on quite a lot of volunteers to manage some areas, particularly our river banks. It may be that, in the associated action plans, local authorities need to pay more attention to things that are happening in the invasive species realm. However, I will not commit myself to anything. We can have a chat about that.

Yes, and it is about being responsive to changes in nature and better data collection, better evidence gathering and improvements in some of the technology that is associated with that.

There are already criteria associated with target setting. I will take you through that. The 2023 consultation was used throughout the development of targets. The criteria to be taken into account in the selection of targets are alignment with the Scottish biodiversity strategy high-level goals; alignment with the global biodiversity framework; alignment with European Union environmental standards, including those on nature restoration; and synergy with existing and forthcoming Scottish legislative frameworks and strategies.

I refer back to my point that targets do not exist in isolation but follow a lot of other policy development. We want to align with the global biodiversity framework and with European Union environmental standards. We are mindful that our targets have to galvanise cross-portfolio work across Government and cross-sectoral work across Scottish society, and they have to be measurable, achievable and realistic.

Those are the target-setting criteria that we have been using. Will we continue to develop the criteria? Yes. I come back to the words “agile” and “responsive”. I am not quite sure what Open Seas was thinking, but perhaps it has particular things in mind that it wishes to see as the criteria. I am, of course, happy to meet its representatives and those of any ENGOs about what those could be.