Rural Development Committee, 18 Mar 2003

Meeting date: Tuesday, March 18, 2003

Official Report 190KB pdf

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Petition

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Predatory Birds (PE449)

Members will recall that petition PE449, from the Scottish Gamekeepers Association, seeks an investigation into the impact of predatory birds on wild birds, fish stocks and reared game birds. After taking evidence from the petitioners, Scottish Natural Heritage and the Deputy Minister for Environment and Rural Development on 25 February, the committee agreed to write to the minister to draw attention to potential gaps in the research on the impact of raptors on other bird stocks and to ask for further independent research to be undertaken, possibly in consultation with the moorland forum. The committee also agreed that PE449 should remain open pending receipt of the minister's response, which has been received and which members should have.

We must decide how to proceed. Should the committee feel that the issues are being addressed satisfactorily, it could agree to close consideration of the petition. Alternatively, the committee might feel that further correspondence was warranted or might refer the petition to the Public Petitions Committee with the recommendation that it be considered by the successor to the Rural Development Committee in the new session. I would be grateful for observations.

What is the situation with petitions? Do we have to refer petitions that we are dealing with back to the Public Petitions Committee for it to re-refer to our successor committee, or can we hold them over for the next session?

I understand that we must refer petitions back to the Public Petitions Committee, which will decide how to deal with them in the new session. We have a legacy paper, which we will discuss later.

I thought that we agreed on that at a previous meeting.

We decided that we wanted to keep the petition alive through that system if we were not satisfied with the minister's response. Perhaps we need to discuss whether we are satisfied with the response.

I thought that we decided to refer the petition to the Public Petitions Committee.

I do not think so. My reading of the situation was that we kept the option open, but we will hear what members have to say.

In the second last sentence of his letter, the minister says:

"I shall ask the Forum to advise me".

I would like our successor committee to have the opportunity to consider the outcome of that, because the moorland forum's remit does not cover all the ground in Scotland on which the raptors—the subject of PE449—operate. We should simply keep the matter open. It costs nothing to do so and the subject is still live—that word should be in quotation marks—so I would like our successor committee to have the opportunity to have the petition referred to it by the Public Petitions Committee's successor.

I am sorry that I could not attend the meeting when we had the opportunity to seek answers from SNH. I understand from Geva Blackett that Mr Rumbles flummoxed one witness who, although he could give the exact number of raptors of each species, could not answer his question about how many birds raptors killed. That is a serious and fundamental gap in the research, as Bert Burnett's letter says.

In keeping the matter open for our successor committee, might we invite the Scottish Gamekeepers Association to say whether it could keep that committee advised of research that it believes should be undertaken. I presume that the SGA will request specific research in writing from the moorland forum. I would like to ensure that the SGA feels engaged in a process and that its recommendations about what should be done, acting on its knowledge, are used by the moorland forum. Perhaps all the bodies concerned could report to our successor committee, to ensure that progress is made as I hope that all members want it to be made.

I have no difficulty with that. Rather because of the committee's prompting, the Scottish Gamekeepers Association is involved with the moorland forum, so I presume that it will pursue that end through the forum's meetings.

My problem is that the raptors working group, which produced the major report, was controversial. Dissatisfaction was felt with the process, but I will not go into that. I do not want that dissatisfaction to be replicated. I have no reason to believe that it will be, but it would be useful for everyone to know that we take a keen interest in the matter and would like it to be developed so that something happens and we start to find out the impacts of prey species on birds.

I am genuinely not trying to make difficulty and I am happy to discuss the issue again, but I was under the impression that we agreed two weeks ago to refer the petition to the Public Petitions Committee to keep it live and that we awaited the minister's response. I did not think that we would keep it up only if we were dissatisfied with the minister's response. I thought that we had decided to keep it open because we looked at so many issues two weeks ago that have not been dealt with. For example, in Allan Wilson's letter there are statements that can be interpreted in two ways. He says:

"My officials have already begun discussions with Scottish Natural Heritage on those areas where the Rural Development Committee has felt more information was required."

We could take a generous view of that and believe that someone will religiously go through all the points that we have identified. I was rather hoping that the minister would come back and say that the Rural Development Committee identified issues A, B, C and D, but that is not in the letter.

There is no doubt that a huge amount of information is not available. You will recall that I wanted the committee to commission research but that that suggestion was not taken up due to the imminent closure of the Parliament. We discussed in great detail how we could keep the issue to the fore because it has not come to closure. Even though the minister's response was helpful, it certainly does not bring the issue to closure. We should be duty-bound to refer the petition back to the Public Petitions Committee to keep the issue on the table for the next Parliament.

I do not disagree with that and I do not believe that anyone else does. We should give the Public Petitions Committee our reasons for doing so and strongly encourage it to refer the petition to our successor committee after 1 May. Are members content with that?

Members indicated agreement.