Chamber and committees

In its representation to Environmental Standards Scotland, WildFish Scotland says that the new framework focuses on the wild salmon protection zones. Obviously there need to be parameters. The zones do not include any rivers where wild salmon populations used to be but no longer are.

I have a concern about environmental degradation. SEPA is studying only eight zones at the moment—and I understand the capacity issue. There are sites operating now where nobody is monitoring the protected zone around them. If further environmental degradation has happened in the meantime, when the time comes to examine those zones, we could be at risk of losing some data and understanding because we are focusing on only eight of them. Will you respond to the allegations made by WildFish on that?

I will follow on from Beatrice Wishart’s questions. I am interested in the social contract that Professor Griggs recognised is needed to represent communities. Your report states that there is

“a lack of shared arenas for voicing concerns and dialogue which continues to fuel a perception of secrecy and misunderstandings.”

How can we help communities to have their voice and their needs recognised during the consenting process? As you have rightly identified, there are binary views out there, but there are communities that need to be heard during the consenting process. Beatrice Wishart asked about communication, the understanding of the science and the reality of the situation, but how do we address that issue?

The importance of the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill cannot be overstated, and my thanks, too, go to everyone who has got us to this stage. The bill will provide the much-needed framework—the scaffolding, in fact—for the measures that the Scottish ministers will use to develop the critical support that farming and rural communities need in order to adapt to new opportunities and challenges and to prosper in an ever-changing world.

The bill will be the platform for measures that are focused on the Scottish Government’s key outcomes of high-quality food production, climate mitigation and adaptation, nature restoration and wider rural development. We need to ensure our food security; protect our environment and enhance biodiversity; and support and empower our rural communities to thrive.

The vision for agriculture outlines the goal of transforming how the Government will

“support farming and food production in Scotland to become a global leader in sustainable and regenerative agriculture.”

It puts farmers, crofters and land managers at its core, and values their efforts to help feed the nation and steward our countryside. The Scottish Government understands that the sector needs flexibility, now and into the future, to best respond to the pressures and challenges that we will continue to face. NFU Scotland has told us that being nimble and flexible is key.

As we move forward, the bill will allow for the provision of adaptive support to farmers, crofters and land managers in the near-term, medium-term and long-term future. As the Scottish Government continues to co-develop the measures for the four-tier support framework, it remains committed to supporting active farming and food production with direct payments now, and it will take a phased approach to integrating new conditionality. There must be no cliff edges in either support or conditionality.

It is important to reflect on the fact that the bill was informed by the insights of five farmer-led groups that reported to us. Those invaluable groups made contributions on the suckler beef, dairy, pig, arable and hill, upland and crofting sectors and demonstrated a shared commitment to, and appetite for, change across the industry.

During consideration of the bill, many expressed the view that there needed to be much more detail in the text of the bill. Although I understand why some felt that way, it is not practical to lay out detailed schemes in primary legislation, as that would remove the opportunity to create flexibility to respond to unforeseen future issues. That is why the framework bill is the right way forward. Secondary legislation will lay out detailed schemes that will sit within the framework of primary legislation but will be best able to respond to change. It is also important that we ensure that there is space for the relevant committee to scrutinise future iterations in a way that is effective for all. I agree that it is imperative that we see the rural support plan as soon as possible.

One of the first sessions that I attended as a new member of the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee was when we hosted 37 land managers and community representatives from across Scotland to help to inform our consideration of the bill. I found the session to be highly informative, and I came away contemplating how we create space for, and provide support to, our smaller producers, and how we ensure that the voices of rural communities are amplified and those communities are supported to thrive. I would be keen to hear from the cabinet secretary on both those issues when she sums up.

Finally, it is important that we reflect on the reason that the bill was needed in the first place, which is Brexit—a change that this country did not vote for, and which has been quite disastrous for our rural communities. While Scotland was in the European Union, we enjoyed the benefit of a seven-year multi-annual framework that reflected the uniqueness of our agricultural landscape, with Scotland receiving nearly £1 billion in funding annually to support farming, food production, woodland creation, environmental protection and wider rural priorities. Since Brexit, Scotland’s funding has been allocated annually, with no certainty beyond next year, and scant dialogue from UK ministers, despite the best efforts of our cabinet secretary. Perhaps an incoming Government can have better dialogue with us.

In addition, we must recognise the threats that the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 places on our agriculture sector, and the difficulties that it creates with regard to our ability to tailor agricultural payments to the specific needs of Scottish farmers, crofters and land managers in the future. I do not think that we can underestimate that.

This framework bill is needed, and I urge the Parliament to support it today.

I have a great interest in the welfare of wild Scottish salmon. Although you have no locus in relation to the health of wild salmon, as you said to my colleague Ariane Burgess, you have responsibility for ensuring compliance with the reporting requirements for fish farm escapes. I accept that there is a complex picture in relation to why wild salmon populations are decreasing. Is the number of fish farm escapes being recorded accurately? Is there a need to strengthen the current fines and sanctions, or are they appropriate? I suppose that that was too many questions to ask at once.

Thank you, convener—I will answer to anything, really. Good morning, Charles.

Last week, the committee heard from Professor Sam Martin that mortality normally starts to drop off in the winter time, when we have colder waters and colder weather. However, more recently we have seen warmer winters, which has caused more significant issues in relation to gill health, causing a higher level of mortality. The REC Committee had already recognised the serious challenges presented by poor gill health and disease, particularly in the context of rising sea temperatures. On the basis of on your surveillance work, are you able to say whether the prevalence of diseases has increased or decreased in recent years with the warmer weather?

Do you feel that the data is being collected in the way it needs to be collected so that the industry can start to address the issues, obviously with input from the Scottish Government? Do you think that we have the data that we need to see how climate change is affecting the sea temperatures and impacting the aquaculture sector?

The thrust of my question is about the sanctions regime that you are responsible for in relation to the number of escapees and how escapes are reported. Is the regime strong enough?

I, too, place on the record my deep appreciation for Gillian Mackay’s tireless work in getting her important bill to this stage. Its significance is monumental. I thank her team and the committee, and I thank Back Off Scotland for the pressure that was brought to bear by its resolute activities, the brave women and staff and the Humanist Society Scotland, which has ensured that women’s rights to access healthcare have been vocally championed. I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests, as I am a member of the Humanist Society.

Abortion care is healthcare, and women must have the right to access such care without fear of, and with freedom from, intimidation, harassment or public judgment. That core belief of mine was formed when, as a 15-year-old in Quebec, I watched as a fellow female citizen named Chantale Daigle was blocked from abortion care by her ex-partner when he sought and was granted an injunction. I protested in the streets of Montreal as she took her case all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, ultimately winning and securing women’s rights across the country.

With the reversal of the landmark Roe v Wade judgment in the United States and with women’s rights increasingly being impacted globally, we must resist anything that interferes with us exercising our hard-fought-for rights. We must be able to exercise our bodily autonomy without anyone else seeking to persuade us or influence us as we approach a facility for care or, indeed, after we leave. No service user, nor the providers of such care, should have to run a gauntlet of protesters as they access an abortion care facility.

Everyone has the right to agree or disagree with abortion but, fundamentally, that is not the issue that we are dealing with here. The bill is about the right and ability of women to access that type of healthcare free from the fear of being publicly shamed or judged, as women have been for millennia.

I am fully aware that the bill also has at its heart the balancing of rights under the European convention on human rights, specifically the rights and freedoms of religion or belief, expression and assembly, and the right to respect for family and private life.

As has been said, it is important that we look to the recent unanimous decision by the UK Supreme Court, which ruled that the safe access zone legislation that was passed in Northern Ireland is fully compatible with protesters’ convention rights. In a very detailed legal analysis, the judgment examined the well-versed argument that convention rights are sacrosanct and the much-touted unlimited free speech argument. Rights are often misrepresented in that way, but it has always been the case that convention rights can be legally restricted in a proportionate way in certain contexts to achieve a legitimate aim.

As was underlined by the Supreme Court, abortion is legal as a result of democratic decision making, and opponents of such legal healthcare cannot be given unfettered access or an ability to harass or intimidate individuals or healthcare providers who are going about their daily life or work. Indeed, there is no legitimate reason for protesters to take their protest to outside abortion clinics. To do so represents an attempt to undermine the rights of individuals to whom the Parliament has given legal rights to abortion care, and to create a climate of fear to dissuade them from accessing necessary healthcare.

Much was said at stage 2 about silent prayer and policing of thoughts. The bill in no way seeks to criminalise prayer or thoughts; it seeks to curtail activities that go beyond unobtrusive silent prayer or indeed legitimate chaplaincy services. For much of history, women have been subjected to having people standing in judgment of them, silently or otherwise. We cannot ignore the profound impact of walking past those who choose to stand in judgment. As the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee heard in evidence,

“One person’s idea of engaging in silent prayer can look very different to the person on the other side who is alone and accessing healthcare.”—[Official Report, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, 27 February 2024; c 18.]

We must bring it firmly back to intent: what are the intentions of those who are gathered?

It is my hope that today, across the chamber, we can all support Gillian Mackay’s Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Scotland) Bill. I have been heartened by the collective working that has been demonstrated thus far, both at the committee stages and today. The bill is not an attempt to restrict freedom of expression or religion but aims to safeguard public health and to protect the right of women to access healthcare without obstruction. Women deserve no less.

I thank Tim Eagle for bringing this important debate to the chamber.

Those of us who represent rural areas are acutely aware of depopulation and its consequences for our communities. Since I was elected to represent Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley, I have seen the impact that depopulation has had, especially across our former coalfields.

There has been a brilliant oral history project on the go, supported by the Coalfield Communities Landscape Partnership and the University of Strathclyde, to document life in Ayrshire’s lost villages. I have been fascinated to hear of the bustling communities that built up around the pits at places such as Lethanhill and Trabboch, where miners and their families toiled to power the industrial revolution but were beholden to their employers for the miners’ row cottages that were tied to their employment.

Some of those settlements consisted of only a few rows, while others became villages, complete with community halls and reading rooms that were constructed via funds raised by the villagers themselves. One such place even became the place of footballing legend. There is very little left of Glenbuck today, but that small village of 1,700 folk, who lived without electricity and indoor plumbing, was the birthplace of the Glenbuck Cherrypickers football club and was home to pioneers of the game. It produced 50 professional footballers, six Scottish internationals, four FA cup winners and, most famously, Liverpool manager Bill Shankly. I urge anyone who is a Shankly fan to visit the memorial at Glenbuck and take a moment to look around and contemplate what was lost along with the buildings and the pit closures.

When I was COSLA’s spokesperson for community wellbeing with responsibility for migration, I worked across parties and local authority areas when we convened a working group to look at the significant demographic and depopulation patterns across the west of Scotland. We recognised then that a concerted effort had to be made across all spheres of government—UK, Scottish and local—to look at the drivers and consequences of depopulation, coupled with an ageing population. It was fully recognised that communities must be supported and empowered to help drive regeneration.

It was apparent that depopulation quickly becomes an unstoppable force that can result in a community shrinking rapidly, unless concrete interventions are developed to stop the exodus of young people towards more urban settings, from which they do not venture back when they start families of their own. I emigrated to Canada at the age of six, but my family are very unusual in that we all came back.

Connectivity, opportunity and amenity, including access to employment opportunities, health and social care services and leisure, are key for the areas at risk in my constituency. Housing pressures are very different in places such as New Cumnock. We had a mass exodus when the last of the pits closed, which led to an oversupply of social housing; creative thinking was needed to try to consolidate the town’s future and, as a result, derelict properties were demolished and new amenity properties were built closer to the town’s core centre.

Central to that activity was the coming together of the community to create the New Cumnock Development Trust, which spearheaded community empowerment via the creation of a community-led action plan, leading ultimately to a town master plan for regeneration. Recently, the trust has secured £1.8 million from the Scottish Government regeneration capital grant funding round and also £165,000 from levelling up funds to put towards its goals. It also supports the community with access to leisure and activities, dignified food provision, youth activities and social enterprise.

The area has seen a proliferation of renewable energy, and the nine community councils representing the areas that are most impacted, including New Cumnock, have come together to create the 9CC Group—which is not a 10cc tribute band—to help manage and distribute community benefit allocations from new and future wind farm developments. It aims to strengthen its community councils through increased participation, active citizenship and cross-membership with other groups.

The group believes that communities should have full control over the disbursement of community benefits and recognises that to deliver long-term legacy benefits and regeneration, it is imperative that those community benefit moneys, when disbursed, are pooled and co-ordinated. Recently, an initiative between the group, East Ayrshire local employability partnership and local employer Emergency One Group provided more than £1.5 million funding over four years for 20 trade apprentices, to give local young people brilliant opportunities.

I believe that what is happening in New Cumnock is ground-up regeneration of a rural community, supported at all levels of government, and I am sure that the same thing is being replicated in other areas across the country. However, we must ensure that we provide the means by which other areas can forge a path for the thriving future of their own communities.

The committee is aware that WildFish and the Coastal Communities Network have submitted a complaint to Environmental Standards Scotland about SEPA’s sea lice regulatory framework, which has already been touched on. Would you like to add anything about why you have submitted that complaint and what your key concerns are?