Seòmar agus comataidhean

I will bring you in at the end, Mark.

We move on to the issue of public service reform, although I know that we have already started to touch on that, and the Verity house agreement. I will bring in Miles Briggs, to be followed by Colette Stevenson and Mark Griffin.

That is very helpful. That concludes our questions. Many thanks to the witnesses for joining us this morning and for your useful contributions. Let us hope that we can talk about something very different 12 months from now—that would be great.

As the committee previously agreed to take the next three items in private, and that was the final public item on our agenda for today, I now close the public part of the meeting.

The second item on our agenda is to decide whether to take in private items 4 and 5. Do members agree to take those items in private?

Members indicated agreement.

I was about to ask whether we could be reassured that there was a budget line for the plan.

I appreciated Christine Grahame’s line of questioning, which I found very useful.

At the round table with stakeholders, which was very useful, the stakeholders spoke about the importance of investment in and resourcing of regional fisheries governance and co-management structures. We heard from a number of people, so I will use a couple of examples to give a flavour of that.

We heard from Alastair Hamilton, who is a representative of the regional inshore fisheries groups network. He said:

“More local control would get community buy-in and increase compliance, because what is happening would be known, as opposed to what we have at the moment with the remote service.”

Dr Cook said:

“In America, they ensure that the evidence on which the management is predicated is shared so that, instead of presenting people with an assessment of scientific evidence and saying, ‘We’re going to do this—what do you think?’, they go in at a lower level where the industry itself is involved in preparing the evidence on which the management decisions are made. As a result, they get much more buy-in to the whole process.”—[Official Report, Rural Affairs and Islands Committee, 4 September 2024; c 37, 50.]

I would be interested to hear what work is being done by the Scottish Government to review the existing regional networks, including by looking at co-management models in other jurisdictions to inform potential reform of regional fisheries management in Scotland. I add that we also heard about the fisheries management and conservation group and the sub-groups, and about the degree of frustration with the lack of movement in some of those sub-groups.

I am asking about co-management models and whether there is scope to increase investment and provide more local powers to support fisheries co-management. We have also been made aware of the models—I think that they are called inshore fisheries and conservation authorities—in England, which are based out of local authorities and have more of a focus on local control.

What is the timescale for the call for evidence on looking at different models?

Before I move on, I will stay on the theme of co-management and collaboration. It is important that the Government is looking at that work, because there are so many different fora, such as FMAC, RIFGs, national marine plans—and something else, I think. It is a very confusing landscape for people to engage with and know where they can go to get their voice heard.

Finally, I am interested in understanding why the Scottish Government chose to spend money on appealing the Open Seas judicial review. That non-governmental organisation, and others, are concerned that it is trying to hold the Government to account for its obligations, and Open Seas won. Why is the Government not carrying out its obligations rather than spending money on appeals?

The point is whether we can get a more detailed breakdown of individual budget lines, so that people can easily see where things are going and raise questions and concerns. As you can understand, many people have their eyes on the budget this year, and in an on-going way, because of the transition that we need to make.

I did ask about the budget—that was in my question.