Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Official Report 596KB pdf

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Subordinate Legislation

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Conservation (Natural Habitats, &c) (Miscellaneous Amendments) (Scotland) Regulations 2019 [Draft]

The third item on our agenda is evidence on the draft Conservation (Natural Habitats, &c) (Miscellaneous Amendments) (Scotland) Regulations 2019. I am delighted to welcome back Roseanna Cunningham, the Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform, who is joined by Hugh Dignon, head of the wildlife management and biodiversity unit of the Scottish Government. Good morning.

Members will recall that we considered the regulations on 24 September and reported on 27 September. The instrument was subsequently withdrawn and relaid. The committee also wrote to the Minister for Rural Affairs and the Natural Environment, querying two matters in relation to the instrument, and we have had a response on those. The committee’s letter and the Scottish Government’s response to the queries is available at annex B of the relevant committee paper.

The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee considered the regulations this morning and had no comments to make. Do any colleagues have any comments?

I have a brief comment about enforcement on the back of the letter that Mr Dignon sent to the committee. The regulations are very welcome and extend the provisions on how we tackle invasive species. However, I notice that the letter says that there has been only one enforcement agreement on giant hogweed in Scotland and that no control orders have been put in place. The suggestion is that a letter from Scottish Natural Heritage is often good enough to get some action from landowners. However, it is plain that that does not seem to be the case on the ground.

How do we improve enforcement? It is fine to create a long list of invasive species that we do not want to see coming into Scotland—there is also the pressure of climate change and other issues—but if we are not carrying out any enforcement, except through an occasional letter from SNH to a landowner that will get ignored, what is the point?

Hugh Dignon will deal with that question.

The question is very relevant to much of the invasive alien species policy in Scotland, but it is not dealt with directly by the regulations, as it is covered by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. The point that SNH is making is that most approaches to clearing non-native species, whether that is Himalayan balsam or giant hogweed, are best conducted on a large scale—typically a river-catchment scale. SNH’s policy is to use the enforcement mechanism where a landowner does not want to co-operate and so renders useless the activities of the other landowners.

SNH is saying that it usually finds that people are willing to co-operate and that schemes go ahead. There are plenty of schemes throughout the country to remove invasive species from river catchments. Where someone indicates that they are not prepared to co-operate with their neighbours, a letter pointing out that the enforcement powers are available to SNH usually has the effect of persuading that person that it would be best to work with their neighbours to remove the species in question.

You say that that is usually the case, but when we first looked at this issue, committee members raised numerous examples of places where action is not happening at all. A letter from SNH does not really do it. In your response to the committee, you said that no control orders have been issued, which means that none of this is being enforced and there is just a bit of coercion to try to get landowners to do the right thing. That may happen in most cases, but it is not happening in all cases.

SNH has not made me aware of any situation where it has tried to co-ordinate a wider approach to controlling an invasive species that been frustrated by an individual landowner and where there has been an opportunity to impose a control agreement and that has not been done. As far as I am concerned, where SNH seeks a wider collaborative approach, it usually gets co-operation from the landowners concerned.

I could send SNH a list—I am sure that other members have lists, too.

I want to follow up on that and ask whether Hugh Dignon is aware that Aberdeenshire Council—which is not led by my political colleagues, even though I am saying good things about it—is taking action following the discovery of giant hogweed. Is that typical of what is happening across Scotland? Are local councils simply getting on and doing it, so it never really comes to the attention of the enforcement system at all? The example of which I am aware is exactly such a situation—the council is simply getting on with it.

As there are no more questions, I will move on to the next agenda item and invite the cabinet secretary to move the motion.

Motion moved,

That the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee recommends that the Conservation (Natural Habitats, &c) (Miscellaneous Amendments) (Scotland) Regulations 2019 [draft] be approved.—[Roseanna Cunningham]

Motion agreed to.

I thank the cabinet secretary and Hugh Dignon for their presence this morning.

That concludes the committee’s business in public today. At the next meeting, on 5 November, the committee will hear from the UK Committee on Climate Change on the Scottish climate change adaptation programme. The committee will also take evidence on Scottish Water’s investment plan.

11:52 Meeting continued in private until 12:50.