Seòmar agus comataidhean

No—it is the technology, not you.

The third item on our agenda is to take evidence on understanding barriers to local elected office. We have two panels of witnesses joining us. For our first session, we are joined remotely by Jessie Duncan, development officer from Engender; Hannah Stevens, chief executive of Elect Her; and Talat Yaqoob, consultant with and co-founder of Women 50:50. I warmly welcome you all to our meeting. We will direct questions to specific witnesses where possible, but if any of you wishes to contribute, please type an R in the chat function and the clerks will let me know.

I will open the session by asking a few questions. I would like to begin by taking a broader look over the past 10 years, and I will direct my question initially to Hannah Stevens. Given the effort and will that have been evident over the past 10 years, do you have a sense of why there is such a slow pace of improvement in the number of female councillors in Scotland?

Thank you very much. We have come to the end of our questions. Your evidence has been very helpful. We really appreciate you joining us this morning and we look forward to other times when you will join us.

As we agreed at the start of the meeting to take the remaining agenda items in private, I now close the public part of the meeting.

I was curious about local labour, and that issue has been covered.

Can I come in on that, convener? Regional marine spatial planning is an exciting opportunity. Lucy Kay said that it needs to be supported. Will you be more specific? What would need to be in place to support that?

We are moving on to the theme of sustainable fisheries management, although we have been touching on that. Scotland’s marine environment faces many pressures, as we have been highlighting, such as a change in composition and distribution of species due to climate change; declining seabird populations and the recent bird flu crisis; and sea bed damage due to fishing pressures.

We are interested in the issues around climate change and what is happening on that; a future catching plan and remote electronic monitoring; the proposal to introduce highly protected marine areas; fisheries management plans; and importantly—this has come to light in some ways—enforcement and the lack of resources for it. The evidence shows that there is a need to restore the biodiversity—that has come out in the conversation already and there is agreement on it. We have also talked about the spatial squeeze.

With the arrival on the horizon of the proposal from the Scottish Government and the Greens in the Bute house agreement on HPMAs, I would like to hear first from Bally Philp about how we will manage the spatial squeeze if we bring in HPMAs. We have had conversations about that issue in the past, and it would be good to hear your thoughts.

I want to come in on what Lucy Kay just said, about something that is emerging for me in this conversation. We keep talking about fishers, but there are more stakeholders in Scotland’s inshore, so we need to increase community engagement and that kind of thing. Some weeks ago, we had Marine Scotland in the room and we were talking about HPMAs, and there was a commitment for a co-design—I cannot remember the exact words—and that the community would be involved. What do we mean by “the community”? I am curious to hear what you think. Who should be around the table in thinking about HPMAs around Scotland?

Good morning. I am Ariane Burgess, MSP for the Highlands and Islands region.

We need neutral science, and I am interested in hearing about how we would get that. Someone said that that should come through the Scottish Government. It seems as though you need to be out on the water to get that, and there is an opportunity to do that through vessel monitoring systems and REM. Hannah Fennell mentioned data gathering in Orkney. Do we need Government vessels in all the inshore fisheries groups—I think that Marine Scotland has 18 vessels—so that we can gather information on what is happening on the ground? How do we get to the point at which we all agree on what needs to be gathered and looked at? It seems as though the situation is a bit of a mystery to all of us, and concerns are flying around that we are not basing our decisions on the right information.

Agenda item 3 is consideration of a piece of subordinate legislation. Because the instrument is subject to the negative procedure, there is no requirement for the committee to make any recommendation on it.

Do members have any comments?