Seòmar agus comataidhean

I believe that the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill needs to have regard to legislation in the same subject area that will impact it—and it will have a big impact on land reform.

As I said, we tend to encourage large-scale ownership in the way that we distribute agricultural funding. For example, 50 per cent of the agricultural budget goes to the top 7 per cent of recipients. To me, that seems to fly in the face of the land reform agenda. Therefore, I believe that that agenda needs to be taken into account when we are looking at how we distribute agricultural subsidies and that the subsidy system should not set up any false incentives that perpetuate our uneven distribution of land.

The other amendments in the group seem to be fair. I cannot support Rachael Hamilton’s amendment 131, because I think that it is important that we follow EU policy where it is possible and where it is in our interests to do so. The EU is a competitor and it is one of our biggest markets. It is important that we continue to be able to sell into that market.

I am grateful to the committee for giving me the opportunity to speak, and I am grateful to Derek Noble for pursuing PE1974.

I share the committee’s disappointment at the cabinet secretary’s response, because it repeats what has been said before. It takes no notice of the fact that residents on the other side of the Stromeferry bypass need to cross the bypass for hospital care and secondary education and to support the economy of the area. That is a major issue on the road. The alternative route takes six hours, and that cuts off the area’s economy. It means that someone would get to Glasgow and Edinburgh sooner than they would get to their local hospital. It is a 130-mile detour. You have to go all the way back to the east coast to come back west again. The Scottish Government’s response is so disappointing, because it just seems to be saying no, despite the evidence, and there is no right of appeal.

In a way, the response adds insult to injury by talking about priority bus routes and cycle lanes, because there are no buses other than the school buses, and a cycle lane would take up the total width of the road. There is no option to put those things in place. Money is available for that, but there is no money available for the very basics.

I have some figures from 2017. The costs varied from £37 million to £129 million. Using the Scottish Parliament information centre’s inflator, I note that those costs would now be £46 million to £159 million, but we know that the costs of roads and inflation are much greater than that. Even if we took the figure of £159 million, Highland Council received £33.6 million of capital funding this year. How many years using its full capital budget allocation would it take for it to fix the road? It is absolutely not feasible.

The Scottish Government’s response has basically said to those communities that it is tough, that Highland Council cannot afford to do the work because the Government does not fund it adequately and that it is washing its hands of the whole situation. That is not a sustainable position.

I ask the committee not to close the petition but to look at another option to appeal to the Scottish Government to work with Highland Council to try to find a funding option that would allow the road to be improved. It will take the Scottish Government to provide Highland Council with that funding or ways of accessing it.

The Government might also want to involve Network Rail. We are talking about the road, but the rail line is just beside the road. The road saved the rail line, to an extent, after the most recent major rockfalls. In fact, the rail line was used as a temporary road to avoid the long detour. However, if the Government is washing its hands of this, it is only a matter of time. When there is a big rockfall, the road will close and there will be nothing to protect the rail line. We could lose both the road and the rail connection. I do not know whether the committee has spoken to Network Rail to see whether it has similar concerns. Could that help with some of the capital funding?

Highland Council provides some capital funding. I know that it is struggling at the moment, but all three bodies could look at the problem. If we are looking to Highland Council to sort it out, it would take its capital funding for the best part of a decade. That is just not going to happen.

I just want to get this right in my head. With scallop dredgers, there is a 28-day grace period if their equipment fails, but for the pelagic fleet there is no grace period, so they have to stop fishing and come back. They have a short season, and they could be tied up for a number of days, waiting for someone to come and fix their equipment. Is there any way that they can get an exemption, if an issue is no fault of their own, to allow them to fish during that time, or is that just tough?

It could be more catastrophic for a pelagic vessel to be tied up, waiting for repairs, than for a scallop vessel, which can continue to fish for 28 days.

Some of your members have already fitted and are working with REM systems. How often do those systems become faulty and how long does it take to fix them?

Does the system give feedback? If someone was fishing in a place where they would not usually fish, would that be indicated? When a fishery is closed, we know that people move out of their usual fishery into a different one, because they have to make a living. Does the system warn people that they are moving into an MPA? Does it warn them of any criteria that they need to meet in different areas? Does it work both ways? Does it give fishers a better idea of what they should be doing where?

Joe, are you able to answer that?

We covered a lot of this earlier, but I will push us back a wee bit. There was discussion about REM being the carrot rather than the stick. Has the Scottish Government been clear with the industry as to how it would work as a carrot? How is the information going to be used for scientific research and to provide more sustainability in supply chains? Has the Government demonstrated those positive impacts to you?

I am sorry to interrupt. That is interesting, but that almost concerns the policing part of it. I am just wondering how the science—the data that was gathered from REM—was used to create a situation whereby the gear was more selective. The fishery was going to stay closed unless it used REM, so that seems a wee bit like the stick. I am wondering how that information was used to make the fishing more selective, aside from the option of not fishing as much and people being told, “Don’t dare catch anything that you shouldn’t be catching.”

I have what might be a wee bit of a left-field question for Helen McLachlan. Helen, you were talking to Rachael Hamilton about the effort that has to be made to look at all the data coming in from cameras. Has anyone used artificial intelligence to, say, pick up different species and process that information a lot faster?