Seòmar agus comataidhean

Welcome back. Our second item of business is an evidence session on the draft Town and Country Planning (Marine Fish Farming) (Scotland) Amendment Order 2025. We are very pleased to be joined by a panel of five stakeholders to discuss the instrument.

We have Sean Black, senior scientific and policy officer for aquaculture, Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; Elspeth Macdonald, chief executive, Scottish Fishermen’s Federation; Mike Spain, director of aquaculture, Crown Estate Scotland; Dr Iain Berrill, head of technical, Salmon Scotland; and—joining us remotely—Professor Paul Tett, reader in coastal ecosystems, Scottish Association for Marine Science. I thank you all for being here.

We had invited other stakeholders, but, unfortunately, they are unable to attend. It is disappointing that we do not have any representatives from our local authorities, because one of the major concerns is about their capacity to deal with this new legislation. However, we will carry on, and I hope that we will get some information from them before we have to make a decision on the instrument, in a couple of weeks.

We have allocated around an hour for the session, and we have a few questions to get through. Once again, I ask everybody to be as concise as possible with their questions and answers. I remind everyone that you do not need to operate your microphones—that will be done for you.

I will open with a very broad question, which I hope will set the scene. What are the possible risks and benefits of locating fish and shellfish farms beyond 3 nautical miles, and is the current evidence base and regulatory regime good enough to enable assessment of those risks and benefits of siting farms beyond 3 nautical miles before allowing developments to go ahead? Who would like to kick off?

You stated that we now have 20 years’ experience of the aims, so the bill is only updating them. Surely, at some point over those 20 years, we should have had an independent review of how national parks are performing.

Currently, we have annual reports, but they are produced by the national park boards. We have heard the argument that boards are, in effect, marking their own homework. Given that the 2000 act is more than 20 years old now and we are making amendments that are supposed to improve how national parks function, is it not time to have an independent review, to see what national parks are delivering, in order to have confidence in their aims?

Would you like to comment, Professor Tett?

I believe that there is a fire drill happening at the moment, so Professor Tett’s connection is muted. Would anybody in the committee room like to respond?

Before we move on to the next question, I note that, as part of its work on the salmon farming inquiry, the committee recommended that the Scottish Government commission research into the potential risks and benefits of moving fish farms further from the coast to more exposed waters. The Government did not respond favourably to that and, in effect, said that it was up to the Crown Estate, local authorities, SEPA, the marine directorate and other statutory consultees to do it. It agreed that there was an opportunity to use innovation sites to look at the impact, but it said that that would not be delivered until after a successor for the sustainable agriculture innovation centre funding had been set out. So, there might be an answer to some of the questions there.

Let us move on to part 2 of the bill, which sets out powers to modify or restate environmental impact assessment legislation and habitats regulations.

Before I ask Nick Hesford to respond, I will take a question from Tim Eagle, which will tie the issue together and might help Nick to form a response.

As we have no further questions, I thank all of you for joining us today. Your evidence will certainly help the committee in a couple of weeks’ time, when we will have the minister before us and we will consider and dispose of the instrument.

I suspend the meeting to allow the witnesses to leave before we move on to the next item on our agenda.

That would contradict what Professor Tett has suggested with regard to the flow of waters and the cumulative impact. If that sort of thing is not done on a far bigger scale, local authorities will be making a determination on individual sites instead of looking at the potential overall impact.

Rhoda, do you want to come back in?

In section 1 of the National Parks (Scotland) Act 2000, the aims are listed in subsections (a), (b), (c) and (d). Was there a hierarchy in the aims? Was it a case of there being priority 1, priority 2, priority 3 and so on? Does that approach roll into the proposed updates in the bill?

Given that the policy direction is to halt biodiversity decline by 2030, and we will probably not pass the bill until 2026—it will take perhaps another year to get secondary legislation in place—is reporting every three years appropriate? Should we be looking for interim reports or on-going reports? Given that we have a biodiversity crisis, is it reasonable to suggest that three years on would be too far in the future?