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NatureScot said:

“We support changes. It does not make a lot of sense to us to have legislation that we cannot easily amend. Giving the power to change legislation in response to changing technologies, climate change and so on seems sensible to us.”—[Official Report, Rural Affairs and Islands Committee, 28 May 2025; c 38.]

NatureScot is supportive of the power.

Our legal assessment is that we do not have the flexibility to be responsive enough to the changes that climate change, in particular, will cause to happen in our natural environment. We would not be putting the provision in—I would not be putting it in—if we had the ability through guidance to meet those objectives. This change and this part of the bill are there to allow us the flexibility to be adaptive and agile in a dynamic situation.

Unless there is any other legal advice that I can get from Stewart Cunningham on this, I am convinced that the power needs to be included in order to enhance biodiversity and allow us to be responsive to what is a literally changeable environment, particularly as a result of climate change. Having this bespoke provision for Scotland in the bill will give us that ability, which we do not currently have.

Are you suggesting that Scotland should have responsibility for offshore as well as inshore waters?

Absolutely. I will also be in front of you at stage 2. Members who know me and who have been through other bills with me will know that my door is open to any members who have suggestions on how bills can be strengthened. If there is anything in the Welsh bill that you think the Scottish Government should put in this bill, by all means come and speak to me about it, because we can maybe work together on something. It does not have to be just the Government that lodges amendments; it can be members as well. I enjoy working cross-party with members to make bills stronger.

What Tim Eagle has just suggested makes sense on the surface, because delivery has to happen at a local level and in a pan-Scotland way. It cannot be about a centralised document that sits in the Scottish Parliament. Delivery on these very ambitious objectives rests on all the public bodies and on our citizens as well.

Given your constitutional allegiances, I am not sure that you want to go down that path. We are getting further into the area of asking whether the Scottish Government, which wants to have responsibility for Scotland as a whole, should have powers in relation to the entire marine environment, and you know what my answer would be.

I am glad that we got there in the end.

That has kind of been bottomed out in the negotiation with the UK Government on what it proposes for the Electricity Act 1989 through the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. However, that does not account for other developments outwith offshore wind, which include the development of the transmission infrastructure that is associated with offshore wind. There is not much point in having offshore wind if you do not have the means to get the energy from it into the grid.

We have identified that there has been a gap there, but that is not the top-line reason for the powers in part 2 being in the bill; the top-line reason is to enable us to be responsive to a changing climate. With those two pieces of legislation, the UK Government has given us the flexibility in relation to offshore wind developments, but there is still a gap in relation to ancillary developments that would get that energy into the grid. There are technologies that are not to do with offshore wind that are nascent and could develop. Again, we are interested in a future-proofing element.

I want to emphasise the point that we have two exciting but nascent technologies in Scotland—wave and tidal—that are not accounted for in any of the UK legislation that we have mentioned.

They have to. It goes back to my point that the Government cannot do this alone. The reach of public bodies and local authorities extends throughout Scotland, and their actions affect the whole of the country. They make decisions that affect biodiversity. References to councils’ duties on biodiversity and emissions reduction are woven throughout the national planning framework. In planning cases, councils are not allowed to make decisions that would threaten the climate change objectives or the biodiversity objectives. In fact, they actively have to build in action to improve resilience in relation to biodiversity and to reduce their carbon footprint.

We are keen to continue to review that. As I said to Beatrice Wishart, the biodiversity delivery plan is an iterative piece of work. Everything to do with nature, climate change and the environment cannot be set in stone and put on a shelf for ever, because things change. The nature of those issues is such that we must be adaptive.

I am always looking to ensure that the duty that we have placed on public bodies is as effective as possible. We did not think that legislative changes to that duty were needed, because it already exists, but we must scrutinise the effectiveness of the action plans associated with the reports on compliance with the biodiversity duty. That is work that we need to do.

It goes back to the convener’s central point that we have not been able to halt biodiversity loss through other methods. The biodiversity strategy has been in place since 2011, and we need to ensure that it is strong and robust, and that it focuses on delivery.

That is not within the scope of the bill, but I would be happy to talk to you about it. I am sceptical about whether it is an issue for the bill. We might be able to do something more agile.

Yes—absolutely.

We can look into whether more clarity is needed.