Environment and Rural Development Committee, 06 Dec 2006

Meeting date: Wednesday, December 6, 2006

Official Report 189KB pdf

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Petition

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Fish Farms (Protection of Rivers, Streams and Lochs) (PE941)

Good morning. I welcome colleagues, members of the public and any press to the meeting. First, I remind everyone to switch their mobile phones to silent. I have received no apologies for today's meeting.

Agenda item 1 is our consideration of petition PE941 by Frank Buckley, on behalf of the Society for the Protection of Salmon and Sea Trout, which calls for the Parliament to urge the Executive to ensure greater protection for the rivers, streams and lochs of Scotland, such as Loch Broom and the River Gruinard, from fish farm developments. The Public Petitions Committee has formally referred the petition to us and has passed on the written evidence that it requested from a number of organisations. Colleagues should have all that material in their committee papers.

We have recently taken evidence on the Aquaculture and Fisheries (Scotland) Bill, some of which addressed the issues that are raised in the petition, including the conservation of wild fish stocks through the control of parasites and the prevention of escapes from fish farms. Having read the papers, we must consider whether the subject of the petition fits well enough with the background for our evidence taking on the bill. Members have had time to read the petition and accompanying papers—would they be happy if we were to incorporate this in our general consideration of the bill?

I think that that would be appropriate. It would be a bit difficult to introduce this as a special petition at a time when we are considering the overall merits of the Aquaculture and Fisheries (Scotland) Bill.

I think that there have been specific problems with these areas. It is important for us to take on board the fact that people will be left unhappy at the end of the process, given the state of wild stocks and so on. Therefore, I urge the committee to reflect some of the concerns that we are discussing in the debate and to allow there to be some sort of review of the situation afterwards. If we simply subsume the petition, it will be lost in the general debate about the bill. It would be worth coming back to the petition after the stage 1 debate, once we have learned what the Government has to say about our proposals and our report.

Are there particular issues that you think are relevant? A number of the comments that we have got refer directly to the bill and how the petition relates to the bill.

If the petition were subsumed, would it disappear?

From my reading of it, it contains a lot of relevant information. As you say, some of it parallels evidence that we have had on the bill more generally and some of it adds more value. However, the petition is very much in the territory of the bill. I would be keen to know what particular issues you felt that we had not picked up on thus far.

I do not think that there are many that we have not picked up on. However, I am concerned about the committee receiving a petition and simply saying that we will take it on board as part of our general discussions. That does not seem to be a satisfactory way of closing the petition. Having a short review of the petition at a later point in the process would be neater.

This happens all the time. Yesterday, the Justice 2 Committee subsumed a petition into its consideration of another piece of legislation that it is working on. Although the petition that is before us relates to a specific part of the country, the issues are those that we have raised in relation to the bill. Naturally, people will be thinking about areas in which there are specific problems, but I do not think that that is separate from the bill.

The people who live in the area that the petition is concerned with will keep an eye on what is happening. If the bill does not address the problems, that can be raised later.

I echo what Maureen Macmillan said. In some ways, the petition is a test case for the effectiveness of the bill. If the bill can deal with the situations that are described in the petition, it has got the approach right. I think that we should bear the petition in mind as a background test case.

It might be appropriate to refer to some of the issues that the petition raises in the debate on the bill. They are good practical examples.

I suppose that the petition will be treated as part of the evidence that we will consider, will it not?

That is how I would view it.

On a matter of process, it would have been quite useful if we had been able to consider the petition when we were considering the other evidence. The timing was just a couple of weeks out of kilter.

Absolutely. The petition was lodged in February 2006 but the Public Petitions Committee did not refer it to us until 15 November. The clerks have done their best to put it in front of us timeously.

I take Rob Gibson's point that we should not lose sight of the petition. I suggest that we write to the petitioners to say that we will consider the points that they have made as part of our consideration of the bill. If people feel that there are particular issues that require amendment at stage 2, that option remains open. Once we agree to take that action, we can close the petition. As members have said, the test of the bill will be whether the kind of problems that the petition raises will remain in the future.

Do we agree to do that?

Members indicated agreement.

It was important that we had a proper discussion on the issue. We will write to the petitioners and include an extract from the Official Report of this meeting. We will also tell the Public Petitions Committee what our views are.