Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thanks very much, minister, and thank you, too, for taking the time to lay things out in quite a bit of detail and for the work that you have been doing on the regulations.

I would be interested to understand why the Scottish Government feels that regulations are needed now, given that the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has stated that

“there is no requirement for a review of capital accounting”

and that, during last year’s consultation, directors of finance said that

“no clear rationale for this review has been provided to support the proposed changes.”

Thank you.

That concludes our questions in that evidence session. I appreciate the minister’s and officials’ provision of information.

We turn to agenda item 7, which is consideration of the motion on the instrument. I invite the minister to move motion S6M-12003.

Motion moved,

That the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee recommends that the Local Authority (Capital Finance and Accounting) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2024 be approved.—[Tom Arthur]

Motion agreed to.

The committee will publish, in the coming days, a report setting out its recommendations on the instrument.

At the start of the meeting, we agreed to take the next item in private. I therefore close the public part of the meeting.

Thank you for your opening statement. It was helpful that you went into some of the detail and acknowledged the very helpful Scottish Parliament information centre blog with the calculator. It was also helpful to hear about the awareness-raising campaign on renters’ rights, which certainly came up in our evidence sessions on the regulations.

On the topic of rent adjudication, I am aware that the Scottish Government is listening to the needs of both landlords and tenants. For a rent increase that may be allowed on adjudication, the draft regulations propose a lower limit of 6 per cent and an upper limit of 12 per cent. To what extent does that strike the appropriate balance between the needs of tenants and the needs of landlords?

The question is, that motion S6M-11979, in the name of Patrick Harvie, be agreed to. Are we agreed?

Members: No.

Thanks for that.

I go back to the reference in the regulations to “a board”. Could you go into a bit more detail about what that means and about what you imagine the chair and the commissioners will be doing?

That was really helpful—thank you. Indeed, it is, I would say, reassuring.

I am also interested in understanding in what situation the Scottish Government would appoint only one commissioner who is

“representative of ... the food business or ... third sector”

and only one commissioner who possesses the “expertise or experience” with regard to the list of “food-related issues”. Again, why would we not want all commissioners to fulfil at least one of those criteria? I understand that this is about flexibility, but I just want to understand what you are imagining here. I know that you are trying to create flexibility in order to bring all kinds of people in, but surely, as you thought through the SSI, you would have imagined certain scenarios where that might have been the case.

It is clear from the committee’s fisheries adviser’s advice, as well as the stakeholder evidence that has been sent to the committee over the past few days, that the SSI before us is necessary but is not sufficient to restore the Clyde cod stock. As the deputy convener has said, we are aware of the PhD work on the Clyde stock assessment, which is being supervised by the marine directorate and the University of Strathclyde. The committee’s fisheries adviser, Professor Paul Fernandes, said that such an assessment is necessary in order to properly manage the Clyde stock and that peer review is not essential for it to be used to inform policy.

As many of our comments and questions today have indicated, there is concern about the scientific evidence. I would appreciate a commitment from the Government that the PhD work in relation to the SSI will be shared with the committee, although I understand that it is a draft. That is the work of the marine directorate and Professor Mike Heath at the University of Strathclyde on the state of the stock and the recommendations for recovery.

I would appreciate a commitment to using the latest science, including that PhD, when such SSIs are developed—I am thinking, in particular, of the replacement SSI on the Clyde cod closures from 2026 onwards. I would also appreciate it if the Scottish Government marine directorate could begin scoping additional measures to protect the stock, especially bycatch reduction measures, because the latest science says that that is the main pressure.

Thanks for that. It is good to hear that that work is being done. I understand that the Strathclyde university assessment provides clear evidence confirming the results of peer-reviewed studies that show that high fishing mortality, not disturbance of the sea bed, is the key cause of low population size.

I go back to my earlier point that bycatch from nephrops trawling is part of the issue. It is interesting that we end up returning to bycatch in a discussion about creeling, but I think that we need to keep at the forefront of our minds the fact that it is trawling that is the issue.

Earlier, in response to a question about the benchmarking of the stocks in the west of Scotland, Allan Gibb made a point that I want to bring into the conversation. In a letter to the committee, Gillian Martin said:

“In the West of Scotland ICES benchmark report (ICES 2022), it is made clear that … , the best scientific evidence indicates that … Clyde cod are very likely to be a distinct stock from the rest of Division 6a”

but that they are lumped together with those cod—that is, the other west of Scotland cod—because of “data limitations.” I want to get the message out there that those stocks are considered to be separate.

That comes back to the issue around data that we have been getting into today. I know that we carry out our work on the basis of scientific evidence, but we are now asking what that scientific evidence is and who is using which evidence. Elena Whitham made a good point about gathering evidence in partnership with the sector and with the tremendous marine environmental non-governmental organisations that are doing work in the area. We need to get a much better understanding of the picture that we are looking at, and Gillian Martin’s point about data limitations shows that there is work to be done if we want to get the best picture of what we are trying to support in terms of stock recovery and so on. I go back to my point about the fact that we are trying to ensure that there is a flourishing fishery across all sectors.