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Is SEPA looking at any areas of concern at the moment?

Obviously, as an organisation, you have a range of different approaches to your work, and you spoke about working more at the informal resolution end of things by trying to resolve issues first. However, you also have the ability to mount a judicial review—or to attempt to—in some cases, so how do you maintain flexibility in staff and budget? An informal resolution would presumably require a lot less staff resource and a lower budget than mounting what could be a lengthy judicial review, and it is obviously difficult to predict when you might need to use each of those tools.

What are your general thoughts about budgeting, and how did you come to make the request that you made to the Scottish Government? Also, how does your organisation maintain the flexibility and teeth that are required to take whatever action you need to take as circumstances dictate?

Yes—the relationship between the Parliament and ESS is very important.

I want to ask about the memorandum of understanding that you have with your counterparts in other parts of the UK and how developed that is at present.

How would Creative Scotland seek to work with the levy?

We have had quite a lot of evidence from cultural organisations about the potential use of the transient visitor levy. You all present quite a stark picture, with the possibility of a quarter of cultural organisations—many of which are anchor institutions in communities—going under. What are your thoughts about the transient visitor levy? Is that being built into council planning and income projections? Is there an appetite across all Scottish councils to introduce that, or is it just for the Edinburghs?

Should there be an expectation that, if councils are raising funds in that way, a proportion of them should go towards supporting cultural institutions, or should the use of such funds be purely at the discretion of councils?

I was reflecting on your points about the short-life working group and the mainstreaming of cultural work across other colleagues’ departments. How transparent will that be in the forthcoming budget? Will we be able to look at the health or justice budget, say, and see a thread of cultural and wellbeing work with numbers attached to it, ideally, that might or might not add up to 1 per cent, but which, regardless of that, will actually show what impact that work will have in the forthcoming year and where the spend will work in a cross-departmental way? Is it too early to have that kind of transparency in the budget?

I want to follow up Mr Cameron’s question and your reflection on that eternal question about short-term funding or “projectism”, as I think that it is called. It is a question that needs an answer, because I see a lot of public money being wasted due to the fact that projects have to eternally reinvent themselves. That wastes core staff time, which is spent on funding applications and trying to develop new projects on the back of those. What organisations really need is multiyear long-term funding to enable them to get to a place where they might well innovate and move into a different space. However, in the meantime, they need a space to grow into that. You mentioned the power of convening. How do you answer that question? How do you crack that issue, because it has been there for years and it is grinding the entire voluntary sector down—not just in the culture sector but in many other sectors.

I see an official nodding at that.

I thank members who signed the motion for debate and those who have put time aside during this very busy day at Holyrood to listen and contribute. I also thank the organisations and campaigners who work tirelessly on greyhound welfare and rehoming across the United Kingdom, including Scotland Against Greyhound Exploitation, OneKind, the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Blue Cross and Dogs Trust. Some of those organisations are outside Parliament today with greyhounds. I invite all members and members of the public to join them after this debate.

I admit that few of my Holyrood motions garner support from all corners of the chamber. However, I was delighted to see strong cross-party support for this motion, and I look forward to hearing everyone’s contributions.

It is worth reflecting on what that level of support means. First, it means that greyhounds are a much-loved and iconic breed of dog that are loved as much for their good nature as for their speed and grace. It also shows that society’s attitudes to greyhound racing have seriously shifted.

In recent years, greyhound racing tracks around the country have closed down. Once, there were more than 20 licensed tracks in Scotland; now, with Shawfield stadium in Rutherglen having hosted no races since 2020, there are none left.

Thanks to dogged campaigners and organisations that have exposed the harms of that so-called sport, it is now impossible to ignore the brutal reality of greyhound racing. People have voted with their feet. Tracks have shut down and sites have been repurposed for housing. However, greyhound racing is still not banned in Scotland. With the de facto closure of Shawfield stadium, there may not be any operational licensed tracks left, but there still remains one unlicensed track at Thornton greyhound stadium in Fife, which operates under no obligations to meet industry welfare rules.

It will be no surprise to members that I am calling for a phased end to greyhound racing in Scotland. I am not the only one. Concerns about the levels of injuries and deaths of dogs at greyhound racing tracks across the UK have been growing, and the positions of bodies including the SSPCA, the RSPCA and Dogs Trust have now shifted decisively to back a phased ban on greyhound racing.

Those calls for a ban do not come lightly. They are evidence based, and they follow years of patient working with the industry to drive reform of welfare standards. However, the attempts at reform have, unfortunately, failed.

The Greyhound Board of Great Britain, which is the regulating body, has been required to publish injury and death statistics annually since 2017. In 2018, it introduced a “Greyhound Commitment”, which aimed to improve welfare and reduce injuries. Despite those measures, the latest data reported 197 injuries and 15 deaths between 2017 and 2020 at Shawfield stadium alone. The injuries data for Shawfield in 2020 nearly doubled.

Fundamentally, greyhounds cannot be raced against one another at 40mph around a circular track in a way that does not expose the dogs to unacceptable risks of injury and death. That is the crux of the matter, because even having a vet present at a licensed track does not remove or mitigate those risks. It is fundamentally unethical to race dogs as a spectacle for entertainment and gambling knowing that they face those unacceptable risks of injury and death.

It is clear that the current laws are inadequate and do not protect greyhounds from harm. The Animal Welfare Bill went through the Scottish Parliament in 2005, and the evidence sessions briefly focused on greyhound racing. I was a member of the committee that dealt with that bill. The committee as a whole felt that the duty of care placed on animal keepers to ensure that animals are

“protected from suffering, injury and disease”

was enough to drive better welfare for greyhounds. I agreed with that position, but, unfortunately, the Parliament was proven wrong. Welfare problems have increased, not declined, and greyhounds are being wilfully subjected to, rather than protected from, suffering and injury.

Even in the absolutely clearest cases of abuse that would breach the legal duty of care, the GBGB rules of racing are applied internally by its own disciplinary committee, with details published only four to five months after the offence. The SSPCA has found that that does not allow it enough time to gather evidence and mount a prosecution under the statutory time limits.

The risks at unregulated tracks such as Thornton are potentially even greater. Thornton is now reporting up to 30 dogs running on race nights and, as the last track standing in Scotland, it might attract trainers who previously raced greyhounds at Shawfield.

Unregulated tracks have no requirement to apply governing body rules, provide veterinary support on site or test dogs for doping. There is also the likelihood of ex-licensed track racers being sold on to race at Thornton, where they would be more prone to injury because of their age or health issues that come from a long career in racing.

Last week, Dogs Trust, the RSPCA and Blue Cross called for a phased end to greyhound racing. Reviews that those three charities have conducted have found disjointed and ineffective regulation in the greyhound sector, a lack of transparency about industry practices and concerns about the enforcement of regulatory standards.

The charities’ proposed phase-out across the UK is expected to be feasible within five years, to allow the racing industry and animal welfare organisations to carefully plan and co-ordinate the care of the many dogs that would be affected. The Scottish Animal Welfare Commission, which has already called for an end to unlicensed greyhound tracks, has committed to considering the joint work of the charities before coming to its own position on the future of licensed tracks.

The previous Scottish Government was right to end the exploitation of wild animals in travelling circuses when their use had dwindled away and when there were strong welfare and ethical arguments for a ban. We have reached the same point today with greyhound racing. Instead of asking whether we should ban greyhound racing, the question to ask is really this: who wants to keep it alive?

Is greyhound racing one of the biggest issues facing Scotland today, of all days? No—it is not. However, if we can spare an hour in the chamber, even in the hardest of times, to give a voice to animals who are voiceless, that speaks volumes of our compassionate values as a Parliament. With that thought, I look forward to members’ contributions.

It is obvious that the 2006 act has been highly effective in some areas of welfare reform—in ensuring that the welfare of animals is protected and that adequate prosecutions have been brought through—but does the minister believe that there are particular problems with the application of the act to greyhound racing, and that it has not been effective in driving the reforms that we all want to see?