It was interesting to consider medicated grit after we had considered issues to do with muirburn and mountain hares. In each instance, we did an implicit risk assessment of what was necessary to produce ultimately beneficial outcomes.
When it came to use of medicated grit, our risk assessment went along the lines of giving the sector the opportunity to improve, under a voluntary code of practice, in all the areas that had been identified, and which we listed as concerns. That should be monitored by SNH, which should have ownership of the code, and have the power to check that the code is being followed, to look at documents and to inspect sites. If, after five years, there is still demonstrably poor compliance with the code, licensing should be introduced.
We collectively made that judgment on risk assessment, but we are looking for regulation of an area that has hitherto been largely unregulated. There have been codes of best practice, but nothing more. This comes down to a point that I would like to expand on more generally: unless there is monitoring of compliance with codes, they are largely ineffective. That is a huge issue—not just in relation to medicated grit, but across all the codes of practice that we have been talking about. Unless SNH has ownership of the codes on behalf of the Scottish Government, and has the resources to monitor compliance, the systemic change that we are looking for will not happen.