Public Petitions Committee, 27 Jan 2009

Meeting date: Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Official Report 340KB pdf

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New Petitions

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Biological Data (PE1229)

We return to item 2. PE1229, by Craig Macadam on behalf of Biological Recording in Scotland, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to establish integrated local and national structures for collecting, analysing and sharing biological data to inform decision-making processes to benefit biodiversity. I welcome petitioners Craig Macadam, Murdo Macdonald and Patrick Milne Home to the meeting. Craig will make an opening statement.

Biological records, whether relating to species or habitats, are at the heart of environmental decision making. There are many sources of records, including the monitoring by agencies such as the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and surveys commissioned by agencies, developers and local authorities. However, individual volunteers make the majority of biological records.

Biological data are essential for public bodies, so that they can fulfil the biodiversity duty that was placed on them by the Nature Conservation (Scotland) Act 2004. Data on species and habitats are required for the completion of, among other things, environmental impact assessments and development control issues; reporting on progress for biodiversity action plans and the Scottish biodiversity strategy; targeting agri-environment schemes under the Scottish rural development programme; and local and strategic planning. Biological data are also the basis for the assessment of protected sites, such as sites of special scientific interest and special areas of conservation.

The lack of a strategic vision for biological data in Scotland has resulted in an underfunded and incomplete network of local record centres that are often answerable only to local partners and which sometimes work to their own, locally agreed standards. There is an urgent need for a robust new system for data management and sharing that covers the whole of Scotland. The national biodiversity network—or NBN—provides a United Kingdom-wide facility for storing and providing access to biological data. However, the NBN is merely a tool for providing access to that collated data. There is a need for local data management to collate biological data for submission to the NBN and to interpret such data for local circumstances.

The local organisation of biological recording activities can foster existing expertise and enhance the quality of data collected by volunteers, many of whom are highly skilled. It can also deliver significant benefits through public participation and awareness, which are key objectives of the Scottish biodiversity strategy and Scottish Natural Heritage's corporate strategy. Our view is that there is a need for a national vision, implemented by a system for data management and sharing, to provide independent, reliable, one-stop shops for the collation, interpretation and provision of information on species, habitats and sites, and the co-ordination of local biological recording activities.

As neither of the other petitioners wishes to say anything, Robin Harper, our Green member, will lead on the issue.

I draw attention to my entry in the register of interests because I am a member of a number of environmental organisations, in whose interests a national structure for collecting and analysing biological data would be. Do you have a clear idea of what the organisation you recommend would look like? Or does that need further discussion among all the interested parties?

A number of organisations currently collect biological data, but probably only about half a dozen local record centres operate well in Scotland. There are recording schemes and societies that involve specialised groups looking at individual families or orders of species, and there are also local recording groups. We need a structure that can bring all that together and collate and manage the data so that they can be used in local decision making.

That sums things up. It is important not to worry about the fine detail of what the structure would look like; rather, it is important to consider what it would do. At the moment, a huge amount of the biological data in Scotland is collected by volunteers, as Craig Macadam has said. A robust system is needed to get all the data that they collect, which are fed into disparate groups and societies, into one place where they can be interpreted in a local context and turned into useful information that local authorities, agencies, developers and other interests can access and use to inform decisions and fit with biodiversity strategy policies and other policies that Craig Macadam outlined.

For example, the local biodiversity action plans—LBAPs—took an unconscionable time to complete throughout the country. In some places, they were completed relatively early, but in quite a lot of other places they were completed relatively late. If we had the structure that you suggest, could all the LBAPs have been completed a bit earlier?

I used to be an LBAP officer, so I know about the problems with LBAPs. A big problem in our area was that we did not have a record centre, so information was not available to us. We still do not have that information. We relied very much on local knowledge—on people out in the field who had been recording for years and kept everything in their notebooks. We had to go to them and question them about what was happening in the area. We would like much more accessible information. We want to be able to find information easily and we want other people to be able to do so too.

Finally, the point of the petition is to ensure not only that we have information, but that it is accessible so that people can take action when that is necessary. We are not there yet.

We are nowhere near there.

Robin Harper mentioned the LBAP process. I have been involved in the LBAP process in Highland, where I am based, since it was established. The situation there is different in that, nominally, we have a record centre based at Inverness museum. However, the reality is that that centre has not been resourced for the past 10 years or so. Indeed, it has now reached the stage at which it simply does not exist as a functioning record centre.

Three years ago, come April this year, the LBAP partnership in Highland was asked to prioritise various projects to allow the LBAP to happen. The formation of a system for collating Highland biodiversity data was at the top of the list. We are only now, more or less as we speak, considering letting a contract to establish exactly what the appropriate form of the record centre would be. Rather than a record centre supporting the LBAP, as you suggest it should, people involved with the LBAP in Highland are trying to get a record centre in place. At the moment, a local recording group that I am involved in is handling the data set with the help of Scottish Natural Heritage grants. It is doing little more than keeping that data set up to date. A very limited service is supplied—the work is done by me with my laptop. The situation is unsatisfactory, even in the short term. That is a different aspect of the story.

It is clear that the issues that we are discussing are increasingly important, with, for example, environmental impact assessments now having to meet European standards. Typically, SNH will ask for a lot of detailed information about major developments. From the point of view of a developer, how would your proposal improve the quality of information that is provided to SNH?

I assume that at the moment, a developer commissions a consultant to look at such things and, from what you are saying, the consultant, whether an expert in the particular field or not, has to deal with quite a broken or non-existent network of informal volunteers and information that is held in a variety of sources. Alternatively, the developer starts to gather fundamental data from scratch. Is that a fair understanding of what currently happens? It would be helpful if you could flesh it out a bit to give me an insight and say how that process could be improved with the central database that you are talking about.

The developer would be asked by the local authority to clarify which European protected species are on the site, which is just a small subset of what is around.

Typically, developers talk about bats and badgers.

Those are European protected species, as well as otters—

Great crested newts.

Yes, that sort of thing. However, the vast majority of Scotland's wildlife is not considered in impact assessments. The UK biodiversity action plan lists 1,200 priority species and the Scottish biodiversity list, created under the Nature Conservation (Scotland) Act 2004, lists another 2,000 species important to the biodiversity of Scotland and the UK. If the data are not there to flag up that there might be a problem, those species are not considered in impact assessments. If the data have been collected, managed and interpreted locally, planning applications can be screened according to that system, issues on or near the sites can be flagged up and the planning authority can then ask the developers to commission the appropriate surveys. That happens in some areas. There is a record centre in Lothian where they offer a planning screening service that works well. However, that has been an organised centre for some years and they have a big data set. There is no record centre in other areas, such as around Falkirk and Stirling, where the only species covered are European protected species.

In those areas, how would a developer or a developer's consultant typically respond? What sort of information can they provide and how do they gather that information?

I fairly frequently get requests from consultants who are employed by developers to look at the environmental impact of the site. They want some basic biological data and they ask for lists, usually specifying the European protected species, as Craig Macadam said, because that is the gold standard of protection in this country. They also ask for lists of other species of conservation interest, which would include the UK BAP species, the Scottish biodiversity list species and sometimes others that have for one reason or another not got on to either list, but are still of local importance. Those lists are passed to the consultant, but I never find out what the consultant does with them unless I go into the process in some detail. However, they have the best information that they can get.

The problem is that, without a fully resourced system in place, you cannot be too precise about the areas. Sometimes I get requests about areas for which we have no or very few biological data. That does not mean that there is nothing of conservation interest there; it means that the data simply have not got to us. As Craig Macadam mentioned, the Lothian centre goes out and surveys specific sites at the request of consultants if the data are lacking, which allows it to give a much more targeted answer to the questions that they are asked.

Is there a charge for that service?

Yes. We have mentioned the volunteer side today, and we want to stress that the huge majority of such data comes from people who simply collect them as a hobby. That does not mean that they are not rigorous or robust in their work—many are national or international specialists in their field—but they are not paid for it: they freely provide the data to the general pool of knowledge. Clients will pay for a service that adds value to that by interpreting the data locally or nationally, analysing them in a specific way for a specific purpose, or in a local context with local knowledge.

There is a definite lack of information at present for some local areas—certainly in my local area, the Highlands and Islands—with regard to renewable energy projects such as wind, hydro and tidal systems, and the effects that those will have on local biodiversity. On that issue, and on the issue of aquaculture and how it affects wild fisheries, it is almost impossible to get what I would call rock-solid information from SNH or SEPA, although I have tried on occasion to do so.

A new structure would fill a hole, but I do not believe in the establishment of too many quangos. How will you avoid duplication—or reinventing the wheel, so to speak? Is it possible, for example, that SNH would be replaced?

I do not think so.

I sense a manifesto commitment coming on, Jamie.

I am not suggesting that for a minute.

One obvious difference between SNH—let us stick to talking about that agency, although the issue extends to the Forestry Commission and to other agencies—and the voluntary sector is that SNH knows a lot, or sometimes not even a lot, about the biological data from its designated sites, such as SSSIs, national nature reserves, European sites and so on. However, it would be happy to admit that it knows virtually nothing—in relation to its own data set—of what happens in the wider countryside.

As soon as one steps over the boundary of an SSSI or a national nature reserve, the collection of data is down to the volunteer naturalists. I have no problem using that term, although some people put an interpretation on it that is perhaps not terribly flattering. A huge army of volunteer naturalists records data for the places where SNH, the Forestry Commission and SEPA do not have the resources to go. It is far more likely that any proposed development will involve the wider countryside, much of which is of high biodiversity value, rather than an SSSI or the middle of a national nature reserve. The voluntary sector will provide the information on the areas that the agencies—for whatever reasons—do not cover.

When you talk about the voluntary sector, are you referring to your group? Are you talking about establishing a body out of voluntary sector organisations?

No, I do not think so. The voluntary sector will always be the primary source of wildlife data. There is a long tradition of naturalists in Britain, whether birdwatchers or others, who collect information that is of a high standard—there is nothing suspect about its quality.

We need a system for getting that information into the arena where developers, agencies and local authorities—everyone who comes under the public biodiversity duty—can access the data. More importantly, they should be able to access the information that derives from the data. The data themselves are often not terribly informative; the interpretation that local entities can put on them is often more important.

We are not too far away today from some sites of special scientific interest. There were problems to do with development at Gartcosh, in connection with the great crested newt. Scottish Enterprise Lanarkshire became involved in the project, and it was able to put in place the necessary measures to protect the great crested newt on the site.

I come to the issue that I wish the panel to comment on. I am concerned about cases in which local developers, who are responsible for doing environmental impact assessments, bring in consultants. I think that I picked up an earlier comment about environmental impact assessment reports not always being fed into the process—either to local plans or to national bodies—in the way that we would want and that would produce an accurate reflection of what is happening. My fear is that, in some cases, the developer might decide to ignore the biodiversity in the area concerned, on the basis that it might impinge upon their current or future developments. Do you find that a problem? Do you have a concern on that point regarding the collection of local data?

There are two points in that. One of the problems with consultants' reports is that the data that are contained in them never make their way back out into the wider arena. They are kept on a shelf and are never disseminated. In future applications or whatever, people do not gain from the knowledge that has been bought—essentially—and the surveys that have been undertaken.

The question of environmental impact assessments being ignored or data being left out of them is very much down to the professional conduct of the consultant. The consultant has a moral obligation to do the best job that they can; it is up to the planning authority to assess that and to consider whether the EIA is valid.

The developer takes the information that is provided to him. If the records have not been updated, or are available only in a general sense—they might have been taken by a volunteer—they are not in the public domain. Therefore, understandably, the planning authority must take the report at face value. There is no particular reason why a developer should have picked up on species that were not brought to his attention.

It is quite important for records to be available not just to the developer, but to local authorities, too. It should be possible, as has been said, for them to be interpreted. Some local authorities will go back to the recording and the central position; they will ascertain whether the data are correct and will ask for guidance. Other authorities do not do any double-checking of that sort.

My concern is about who collects the data and how they are made available. There are questions about how the data are collected, the formats that are used to collect them, how they are made available, whether they are computerised and whether local authorities should have a duty in relation to data. Under the Nature Conservation (Scotland) Act 2004, local authorities are supposed to have a duty regarding the collection of biodiversity data. There are clearly issues around how those data are conveyed. Have there been discussions among your colleagues about the best way to collect, store and retrieve data?

There are national standards on this, which anyone working in this field should aspire to meet. For the past half dozen years or so, we have had the national biodiversity network, which Craig Macadam mentioned earlier. It is a central point that is available to everyone. You can log on to the internet and get a map of whatever species you are interested in. You will be able to see whether that species has been recorded in a particular area, who recorded it, when it was recorded and so on. There is a system in place. What is lacking is that the network is not complete; it is only as good as the information and data that are fed into it. An example of that is that if you look for the distribution of the Highland midge, you will find one dot in Scotland, which was recorded in 1984. The fact that a dot does not appear on the map does not mean that a species would not be present if somebody went to look for it.

There is a problem with interpreting what you see on the dot map. There is a lack of completeness in the data provided to the NBN and it is necessary to interpret the data—particularly the absences. That can only really be addressed locally. We need a structure that creates the nodes on the network, so that completeness is achieved, through whichever route is appropriate.

I will summarise the situation on biodiversity data in Scotland, as I see it. We do not even have locally centralised information across the country, let alone nationally centralised information. People might be engaged by developers and others to do environmental impact assessments but, however good those assessments are, in most places in Scotland we do not have sufficient data to benchmark the information that comes from them. That means that a lot of environmental impact assessments are not as sound or as good a guide as they should be. Not to put too fine a point on it, the situation is a bit of a guddle. What we have is certainly not fit for purpose.

I am minded to write to the Scottish Government to ask whether it will establish integrated local and national structures for collecting, analysing and sharing biological data in order to inform decision-making processes, so that we can act wisely and properly. If the Government is not minded to establish such structures, we should ask it to explain why not. We should also write to SNH, the national biodiversity network, the Biological Records Centre and the National Federation for Biological Recording to ask for their opinions, so that they can be fed into this discussion.

As we conceded earlier, some of us had a fairly sketchy knowledge of the detail to which you are referring. However, having explored the issues that you have raised, it strikes us that the fact that we are not gathering the information probably does not assist us in knowledge acquisition. We can take on board what Robin Harper said. Are there any other suggestions from committee members?

I agree that we should write to the bodies that are mentioned in the paper. Progress in areas such as aquaculture and renewable energy have made these data much more important.

There are two important points. First, we should emphasise that we are suggesting that the issue be tackled not through a centralised organisation but through a network. Secondly, as Jamie McGrigor indicated, all the political parties want to encourage developments in relation to renewable energy and aquaculture, but we want them to be in the right place and to be developed in the right way. We should make it clear that our aim is in no way to block development, but to encourage the right sort of development in the right place.

The petitioners will sense from committee members' contributions that we are willing to take your petition to the next stage. We will write to the agencies that deal with biodiversity issues and to the Government, which has responsibility for those issues, to get some clarity for you. I hope that that will be of benefit. We support the recommendation to take the petition to the next stage.

Margaret Curran is here in support of a petition that we will consider later, but she must move on because of other commitments. I thank her for her attendance, her patience, the contribution that she has made and the warm welcome that we have received in her constituency.

I did not say much. Obviously it is better when I am silent.

I am trying to give her compliments, but she will not shut up. That is the Margaret Curran that I know and love. I hope that her area has benefited from the Public Petitions Committee coming here.

I will follow up on a couple of points locally.

That is fantastic. I thank the petitioners, too, for their patience—I know that it has been a long afternoon.

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Lessons from Auschwitz Project (PE1227)

PE1227, from Hannah Newton, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to continue funding educational trips for school pupils, as part of the lessons from Auschwitz project run by the Holocaust Educational Trust. Members may be aware that today is Holocaust memorial day, and events are taking place across Scotland in recognition of the fact that we should always be aware of those horrific events in very modern European history. The lessons are, I hope, that nothing similar can ever occur again.

The issue has also been debated in the Parliament, and the Scottish Government has committed itself to continuing to fund educational trips for pupils in 2009-10 and 2010-11, as part of the lessons from Auschwitz project run by the Holocaust Educational Trust. We all welcome that change of opinion; there is consensus among the parties on the matter. The petition has fulfilled its purpose, so I request that we close it formally while recognising that the petitioner raised an important issue. Those of us who have the opportunity to participate in democracy should never forget the reality of what happened to too many of our fellow citizens in Europe less than 65 years ago.

Do members agree to close the petition?

Members indicated agreement.

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Tail Docking (PE1230)

The final new petition—we also have current petitions to consider—is PE1230, from Dr Colin Shedden, on behalf of the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, the Scottish Countryside Alliance, the Scottish Gamekeepers Association and the Scottish Rural Property and Business Association. The petition calls on the Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to amend the Prohibited Procedures on Protected Animals (Exemptions) (Scotland) Regulations 2007 (SSI 2007/256) to allow prophylactic tail docking of working dogs under tightly specified circumstances. PE1196, on the same issue, is to be considered later in the meeting. We may wish to discuss both petitions collectively. Do members agree to delay the discussion until that item?

Members indicated agreement.