Seòmar agus comataidhean

Okay. Thank you.

Okay. My final—[Interruption.]—Please come in, Daniel. I am sorry.

Thank you. This is my final question. You have already touched on the availability of vets at tracks. The GBGB tracks have a vet on site, and you have mentioned the informal arrangements at the Thornton independent track. Have you had to avail yourselves of vet services when your dogs have been racing? You say that most injuries are muscle strains, but catastrophic injuries could happen to dogs. If vets were on hand, those dogs could be treated much more quickly. Could you say a bit more about vets being on hand at tracks and whether you have had to use them?

I will follow on from the question that the deputy convener has just posed. Like many others, I am interested in understanding how the Scottish Government and the marine directorate will resolve the data deficiencies. In her letter to the committee of 8 February, Gillian Martin outlined that the three strands in question were enhanced observer coverage, passive acoustic monitoring and a science presence on compliance vessels. I am interested in understanding how we can move firmly into a co-management principle sphere, where we work collectively with our fishers, who have a vast knowledge of the area that they work in. They also have an interest, as we all do, in ensuring that the bedrock of the marine environment is protected. That is a key plank in our planet’s ecosystem, but it is their livelihood.

You have already alluded to the fact that you have had meetings with the CFA, and I hope that you will meet the Scottish Creel Fishermen’s Federation as well, but, given the financial pressures that the marine directorate is under, how do we ensure that we involve the industry in developing shared scientific data? There will always be vested interests in different aspects of this matter, but, given that we do not have a shared understanding of the scientific data at the moment, how can we involve the industry meaningfully?

You have made a really important point, which alludes to what Emma Harper said earlier. We also have fish that are moving for climate reasons. It will be very difficult to manage fish so that they stay in one area when other pressures are influencing fish behaviour and where they go. It will be important for us to understand what the science tells us is happening beneath the surface of the sea. That shared scientific data, which our fishers and our marine directorate will come to together, will be really important.

Thank you.

I think that I have learned my lesson about not volunteering to go last. I will be as brief as I can be.

Cabinet secretary, you mentioned a just transition for our farmers and crofters, which is really important, especially when we are looking for them to redevelop their skills and practices, as we have just been speaking about. A big part of that will be continuing professional development. The committee has heard in evidence that there needs to be a massive culture shift in how our farmers and crofters take up such opportunities. We have to be cognisant of certain groups, such as female farmers, new entrants or younger farmers.

Although stakeholders and respondents are broadly supportive of CPD, they have raised a number of questions about how it would be implemented and what the Scottish Government’s intentions are for those powers. I am thinking about measures to compel versus measures to incentivise. When can we expect to see any regulations in that area?

Good morning, everybody. I am not sure whether this is something to declare, but I note that I am the nature champion for the hen harrier.

That is in the Drugs Death Taskforce’s report, which speaks to the variation of services throughout the country and perhaps the need to roll some things into the national specification. Work is on-going with stakeholders, through the various working groups that are in place, to consider what type of more formal service specification would benefit people who rely on services, but we are pushing ahead with the roll-out of the medication-assisted treatment standards, which is one part of the national specification of treatment.

We are thinking about residential rehabilitation and we are working towards a national commissioning protocol for that, so that we can make sure that local areas are able to effectively get people on their journey into residential rehabilitation and then back into the community. It has proven to be quite difficult for local areas to do that. Scotland Excel, which those of us who have been in a local authority know—I see a lot of wry smiles here—is a body that helps with that kind of procurement work.

We are now at the point where we will be looking to go out to the tendering process, and organisations that provide residential rehabilitation facilities will be able to get themselves on to a national framework. That will provide a directory for local areas, but also a directory for individuals. As it stands, people do not know what residential rehabilitation is out there for them. They do not know what each type of service might provide for them, and we hope that bringing that under national oversight will mean that individuals’ journeys and their access to those facilities will be easier.

On the governance structures around that, a national specification, when we get to the point of understanding what the working groups are telling us, will help us to read across both spheres of government and all the partners and their individual responsibilities. That will help us to quantify what a national specification should look like in practice, with clear lines of accountability. I obviously have accountability on a national level, but we also need to look to local partners’ accountability, and a national specification will help us to do that.

I do not know whether Orlando Heijmer-Mason has anything to add.