The issue is too important for there to be further delays. Every day that passes is another day in which those rights are not enshrined in law. I know that the Scottish Youth Parliament is, understandably, concerned about getting those rights into place. We also have issues in Scotland, such as our national qualifications agency being subject to statutory action from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, that shows how vital those rights are. When can the Parliament expect a timetable for a revised bill, and how soon is “in due course”?

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on its plans to incorporate the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child into Scots law. (S6O-00356)

I thank the minister for advance notice of his statement. I agree that our priorities have to be Covid recovery and delivering on the climate and nature emergencies, but the key message from COP26 is that it is not enough to have targets; we need effective planning and funding for implementation.

What new resources will come through NPF4 to enable local authorities to deliver on the infrastructure—for example, to make flood plains safe for residents—and to build in adaptation infrastructure for new investment, such as the rapid transit networks and the high-speed rail that are mentioned in the NPF4?

Given their negative environmental and climate impacts, will the document rule out fracking proposals?

For the most part, we have had a very good debate. There have been some very constructive comments, and there is clear agreement on the need to support our coastal communities and fishing industries, but to do so within the context of the climate and the nature emergency and the need to deliver sustainable fishing.

As my colleagues have said, Scottish Labour believes that we need to address five key areas in the coastal state negotiations. Colin Smyth outlined those areas at the start of the debate, and I will summarise them. The first is the need to prevent overfishing and enhance local food supply chains. Secondly, we need an immediate review of how new and existing fishing quotas are allocated. Thirdly, we need to end fish being landed abroad—I will come back to that. Fourthly, we need to invest in building capacity and infrastructure in fishing quays and the processing sector to regenerate our all-too-often neglected coastal communities and to get a fairer and greater share of the fishing in Scotland’s waters for Scotland’s fishers. Finally, we need to make sure that quotas are used to incentivise a change that moves us towards forms of fishing with a lower impact and less bycatch. Those are crucial issues.

From the COP26 events that I have attended, it is absolutely clear that there is widespread agreement that we have to act now. We need to halt global warming at 1.5°C. That also means addressing our nature emergency, be that the pollution of our waters by plastic or other waste, or as a result of overfishing. That is why we need to support our fishing industries in the future.

We need more political leadership from the Scottish Government. In a briefing that we got in June this year, the Sustainable Inshore Fisheries Trust highlighted that Scotland’s marine areas play a central but often overlooked role in the nation’s carbon budget. The sea and many marine species and habitats, including kelp forests, sequester carbon dioxide. Of particular importance is the role that marine sediments play in storing carbon. Scotland’s sea loesses have some of the richest carbon stores on earth, containing many times more carbon per unit than our terrestrial peatlands. However, while we protect our peatlands and are considering restoring them, marine sediments continue to be disturbed and damaged by heavy mobile fishing gear, so we need to act.

We need to encourage and support sustainable local fisheries, such as the Clyde creel fisheries and other local organisations.

Scotland’s marine assessment 2020 found that fishing was the most significant and widespread pressure on Scotland’s seas. In particular, it noted that bottom trawling and other mobile bottom-contacting fishing methods had led to widespread changes in our ecosystem. We need to reduce the use of those methods and incentivise change. That is critical for the future of our industry.

In addition, discard practices are resulting in vast volumes of fish being killed and thrown back into the sea. As well as being environmentally damaging, that contributes to food waste. Given that many of the fish that are thrown back are juvenile fish, because they are too small to market, that reduces the following year’s fish catch. The practice was supposedly made illegal in 2019, but it is apparently an open secret within fisheries management that it continues today. Most egregiously, an additional uplift quota was created in an effort to help with the transition to no-discard fisheries, but rather than incentivising change, it has been used by some in the fishing sector to continue to discard fish, which is compounding overfishing and resulting in yet more environmental harm.

Now is the time to use the powers that are set out in the Fisheries Act 2020 and create marine protected areas. The Arran marine protected area is a perfect example of the benefits of such protection, which not only vastly improves the sea bed and biodiversity in the area, but provides a safe haven for fry and increases fishing yields in the surrounding areas. We also have good evidence of how the Gaelic language is helping to protect our fisheries through the passing down of local knowledge through the generations. That shows that the issue is a cultural as well as an industry one, and it shows how deeply intertwined our communities are with the seas that they work with and the need for us to support them at a local level.

We have had an interesting set of exchanges across the chamber. There have been disagreements but, at the end of the day, fisheries management is the responsibility of the Scottish ministers. Although fishing communities have a key role to play in responsible management of the seas, the Scottish ministers have a critical role to play in deciding how our seas are used. We may have fewer incomprehensible regulations, but that can result in a race to the bottom. The Scottish Parliament is a powerful one, and I hope that we use the agreement that we have across the chamber to support more decisive action.

Fishing makes a vital contribution to local economies. Some of the most powerful and emotional contributions that we have heard today have reflected the fact that colleagues know that. Fishing is an industry that lies at the heart of many communities, and one that has a history and a culture of its own. We need to protect that.

I found it really ironic that some of the speeches of Conservative members about Brexit did not accept the reality of its impact. We need only look at the impact on demersal fishers in Douglas Ross’s area. Fish are being landed abroad, which means that Scotland’s economy and food system are being bypassed, along with Scottish jobs. Many large fishing businesses have elected to land the fish that they catch abroad and to supply them directly to processing factories there. We need change, because jobs are flying out of the north-east fishing towns. Skippers have been on the brink of financial ruin, as others have said, yet the Conservatives are patting themselves on the back. Fifty-five per cent of the mackerel that was caught by Scottish fishing vessels last year was landed at a foreign port. That cannot be acceptable. We need action.

We urgently need the Scottish and UK Governments to work together. We know that they will not agree, but the Scottish Government must be respected. It must be at the top table with the UK Government. We need engagement and the sharing of expertise and knowledge. Crucially, as Michael Marra and other members across the chamber said, we need to make sure that funding reaches our coastal communities to support the sustainable fishing and the jobs that we have all said that we support. Let us have constructive collaboration. People do not need to agree on everything, but if we are to support our fishing communities, our environment and, crucially, jobs in our local communities, we need the Scottish and UK Governments to work together.

Fracking.

Thanks very much, convener. We want to set up the group after a lot of reflection from the members of the group and after learning from experiences, particularly during the previous parliamentary session. The term “culture” covers a huge number of areas, and there was a very strong suggestion that it is too broad a term for a cross-party group. For example, the Scottish Government has separate culture and creative industries departments, with a full department for each with different aims, objectives and strategies. We therefore think that the proposed group would make a lot of sense in relation to exploring accountability issues.

There is also a real grass-roots sense about it, looking at the two areas of communities and the industrial sector. There is the publicly funded sector of libraries, museums and national performing companies, and we have lots of community arts and culture groups that want to have a voice and speak to us in the context of a CPG rather than through a committee. We also have the industrial sector of publishing companies, record companies, entrepreneurs and the media. There is therefore a huge area to cover.

We have spoken to Culture Counts, which represents the sector, and we think that, if we had two cross-party groups, that would allow both MSPs and the sector to have a proper focus on both areas. I reassure the committee that we are not necessarily planning on having eight CPG meetings a year, as opposed to four, though. In the first year, we are thinking of experimenting with having two meetings for each of the CPGs, with the opportunity to have more, depending on the members of our groups.

I think that that will work really well, and there is a lot of enthusiasm for it. I hope that the committee will be okay with it, because we think that it is a good idea.

No, not at this point. The meeting that we had was a high-level discussion with a big attendance. Culture Counts commented that we could have about 20 different culture groups. We are thinking about the whole range: crafts, fashion and textiles, design, photography, writing and publishing, heritage, cultural education and performing arts. It is still a huge section, even without thinking about the CPG on music. We are not worried that we will overlap.

That is on our form. We have formally applied as a group, have we not?

The only thing that I did not clarify is that we would be looking at the publicly funded sector and the creative economy CPG would be looking at the private sector. That goes back to the different Government departments. That was a key issue for us.

For each cross-party group. There will be a cross-party group on culture that relates to communities and then one that will be concerned much more with the culture industry. We wanted to mirror the two Scottish Government departments, so we will have one for each. To be honest, as we come out of Covid, we are thinking of giving ourselves the aim of having two meetings each. We have had one first meeting of everybody and we reckon that, in the next few months, we will have another two meetings for our cross-party group in the first year. We might have more in the future.