Seòmar agus comataidhean

Urgent action was called for in 2019, I think, and we are now quite a long way off from that.

In connection with that, I am interested in understanding what is being done to manage the chemical impact of the sector on the environment, in particular on the sea bed.

I thought that we were supposed to be reducing that.

Do we know the timing on that process?

Do you ever do that?

I want to stick with impacts and to understand whether the regulatory framework touches on this or whether it is something else separately. At the moment, there is permitting of one farm at a time. Why do we not look at the cumulative impact if, for example, a number of farms are close together? I hear your point that the industry is beginning to think about moving offshore and getting larger, and maybe that will change things, but, at the moment, existing farms are having a cumulative impact with things such as hydrogen peroxide, but we are not looking at the whole permitting system. We are already looking at a situation where there are a number of farms, and then we are saying that another farm can go here but we are not looking at the overall situation.

Again it is about balance. Surely it would be better to have an overview of the impact of the entire industry on other users of the sea. For example, we know that the chemicals have an impact on commercial fish stocks, particularly crustaceans—crab, lobster and prawns—on our priority marine features and on our marine protected areas. There is something there about needing to look at the bigger picture. Is that something that this new framework does for you?

Okay. I have just a final supplementary—

I am going to ask a question about good practice, but I want to put in a thought about farming and why we are not paying so much attention to it. My sense is that we have very good practices on the land in animal welfare and that type of thing, whereas understanding what we are trying to do in the marine space is new to us.

In terms of good practice, one of the key findings in your report is that there is good practice in Norway, where the Norwegian research council provides for

“four aquaculture-relevant funding themes every year”

and you say that that could be replicated by the UK Research and Innovation research councils. You have made that recommendation and it seems as though that could be a way of dealing with fragmentation. I got the impression that there is a bit of a competition for funding if different bodies want to look at a particular area. Could you expand on that a little bit more?

Okay. You are saying that adopting approaches that are taken in Norway would be a good thing for Scotland.

Thank you.

Convener, could I ask a clarifying question?