Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning, cabinet secretary. I want to go back a wee stage to how conditionality will be implemented, which the convener talked about. For folk who may not be as au fait with how the system works, framework bills and legislation, if something is set out on the face of a framework bill, that will become an act. However, there might be scope later to bring in stuff to help to achieve the objectives. Is that why the details and the conditionality have to wait until later? Does that make sense?

So, if we put everything right at the start, it would be fixed, and primary legislation would have to be amended in order to change anything as things developed.

I presume that you are taking views from across the country.

Okay. In a previous Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee meeting, Jonnie Hall of NFU Scotland said:

“If we took an ELMS-type approach in Scotland and we phased out direct support and things such as less favoured area support for our more disadvantaged areas, that would be almost the death knell for Scottish agriculture.”—[Official Report, Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee, 16 December 2021; c 9.]

If we wanted to adopt a different policy and we had a different scheme in Scotland to support less favoured areas, could the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 present an issue for the funding that comes to Scotland?

No, I am not actually clear on what your response was.

If you ban the use of glue traps, will you ban the sale of them?

What evidence is there to justify the need for additional regulation of grouse moors? Has an on-going link been established between grouse moor management and raptor persecution, and why is licensing preferred to the alternatives? What alternatives did you consider?

What alternatives were considered? You have introduced vicarious liability and taken measures to do away with poisons, as you said. Was there any option other than licensing at this stage? Why did vicarious liability not work?

Why should there be a revocation of a licence provision for those acts on grouse moors? Are there not already fairly stringent penalties for perpetrators of those acts? Why should the revocation of a licence be added to that?

We have all the other sanctions in the definitions of relevant offences in the legislation that I spoke about earlier. It goes back to the earlier point about a vexatious claim if someone’s business is suspended on 12 August and how that will have a real impact.

I am asking these questions because they might be the main areas of debate as we go forward with the bill. Is it fair to add the revocation of a licence to the sanctions that already exist? What would be the methods of ensuring that people were not targeted?