Chamber and committees

The 2021-22 programme for government and the shared policy programme with the Scottish Greens include many commitments that relate to animal welfare, including to strengthen controls on sea lice, wrasse and escapees from fish farms; to consider whether the Scottish SPCA should be given extra powers to investigate wildlife crime; and to explore the introduction of a public register of species licences. How can SAWC support the areas of legislative policy development that are set out in the programme for government and the shared policy programme? Will those announcements have an impact on your work programme? I realise that that is a very big question, so a high-level response will be welcome.

I have another question on a different topic. I noticed from your work programme that you will be looking at abattoirs. What are your views on local and mobile abattoir provision? Would such provision help to improve animal welfare and, if so, how? What other benefits would local abattoirs provide for animal welfare?

Thank you for joining us. I hope that the technology works throughout the meeting.

I am pleased to see that your work programme includes the task of preparing a report on welfare on salmon farms. Could you please tell us whether and how that will build on the report of March this year by Compassion in World Farming and OneKind, “Underwater Cages, Parasites and Dead Fish: Why a Moratorium on Scottish Salmon Farming Expansion is Imperative”? Do you believe that there is sufficient reason to put in place a moratorium on new salmon farms until animal welfare concerns are addressed? If not, would you propose strengthening aquaculture regulations through legislation to bring the legislation on welfare for fish more closely into line with that for other species?

I am not sure who to direct the question to, but maybe Cathy Dwyer can help me with that.

Does anyone else wish to respond to Willie Coffey’s questions?

Thank you. It is a bit tricky to see, but I do not think that any member wants to come back on anything, so we will move on.

I thank the witnesses for joining us and for bringing their perspectives. Their contributions to our scrutiny sessions have been useful.

I suspend the meeting to allow a changeover of witnesses.

Welcome back. We will now hear from our second panel on the draft Valuation and Rating (Coronavirus) (Scotland) Order 2021. I welcome to the meeting Jonathan Sharma, policy manager for local government finance at the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, and Kevin Fraser, principal officer for local taxes at Perth and Kinross Council. We will move straight to questions. If our witnesses wish to respond to a question or contribute to the discussion, they should type R in the BlueJeans chat function. The chat function should not be used to write responses to questions, as they will not be recorded.

We are covering a range of themes this morning, starting with the Scottish Government’s rationale for the measures and moving on to principles of taxation. We will then cover parliamentary procedure, workload issues, the impact on local government revenues and other types of support. Some of that may come out earlier in the discussion, but I wanted to give you an overview of what we hope to cover this morning.

I will start with a question that I asked the previous panel. The committee understands that many businesses, particularly small ones, have been hit very hard by the pandemic and that the proposed order might feel like another obstacle to recovery. However, we also understand the Scottish Government’s perspective that market-wide economic changes to rateable values should be considered only at the point of revaluation, to ensure fairness to all ratepayers, not all of whom have the resources to lodge appeals.

Do the witnesses believe that MCC appeals are an appropriate route for supporting businesses in the face of such a widespread impact or would they like to see alternative forms of business support that might be fairer or more effective?

Thank you for that important point. I do not think that anyone else wishes to respond, but, as we have a little bit of time left, I will go back to Alastair Kirkwood, who was cut off in full flow as he was laying a foundation for us. Alastair, do you want to get across anything else that you feel has not come across in the questioning?

I will move on to a question on the principles of taxation, continuing on the theme of fairness. Does the Scottish Government’s proposal to retrospectively rule out appeals on the basis of Covid-19 run counter to the principle of fairness and certainty that underpins the Scottish Government’s approach to taxation, or do you consider the proposal to be justified by the unprecedented circumstances of the pandemic? You have kind of touched on that already.

We will move on to theme 3, which is parliamentary procedures. My colleague Paul McLennan will pick that up.

Kevin?