Seòmar agus comataidhean

On that note, I draw our session to an end. I thank Kelly McBride, Fiona Garven and Talat Yaqoob for their comprehensive and helpful answers. That very useful discussion complements our previous evidence session, and I thank you all very much for your contributions and your participation today.

With that, I suspend the meeting for a few moments.

PE1859, which was lodged by Barry Blyther, is on retaining falconers’ rights to practise upland falconry in Scotland. We last considered the petition on 1 December 2021.

The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to amend the Animals and Wildlife (Penalties, Protections and Powers) (Scotland) Act 2020 to allow mountain hares to be hunted for the purposes of falconry.

In our meeting in December, we agreed to write to the Scottish Government to seek its views on how it expects captive falcons to differentiate between legal and illegal species. We thought that the whole thing sounded a bit difficult to follow through. For example, how is a bird of prey supposed to tell the difference between a rabbit and a mountain hare when it is exhibiting natural behaviours?

The committee also asked the Scottish Government to clarify when falconers would face prosecution should their bird take a mountain hare, including what the penalties might be for a breach, and how the current legislation is enforced.

The Scottish Government’s response states:

“It is the responsibility of the falconer to eliminate, or at least significantly reduce ... risk ... by only undertaking falconry where mountain hare are unlikely to be present.”

I felt that we had verged on the slightly ridiculous there. I will not say that the landscape is riddled with mountain hares, but it transpired that the Government’s definition of where they are unlikely to be present amounts to some 2.5 per cent of Scotland. Allegedly, they are present in 97.5 per cent of the landscape. It reached a point at which I almost felt as though the Scottish Government was advocating that falcons should be trained in the use of satnav, because they were apparently to understand that the M8, the Harthill service stations, Aberdeen and points towards the coast were where they could go about their business. That all struck me as being slightly removed from reality and playing to the questions that we were considering.

The final submission from the petitioner focuses on the role of falconry in pest control, and points out that there is an exemption for falconry so that gulls can be deterred, even though they carry the same level of protections as the mountain hare.

The Scottish Government’s submission notes that Police Scotland is responsible for enforcing legislation and that penalties for wildlife crime vary depending on what offence has been committed.

I know that Fergus Ewing is quite keen to contribute on that particular item in the first instance.

The next petition is PE1914, on banning school uniforms in secondary schools, which was lodged by Matthew Lewis Simpson. The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to remove the requirement for school uniforms for older school pupils. The petitioner cites a range of reasons for lodging the petition, including uniform costs for low-income families, pupil choice and the need for comfortable and weather-appropriate clothing options.

The petition was previously considered on 19 January, when we agreed to write to the Scottish Government, the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland, the National Parent Forum of Scotland and the Scottish Youth Parliament. At that meeting, we heard that the Scottish Government had committed to updating its school uniform guidance and that a public consultation on the issue was imminent. We have now received responses from the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills and all the other stakeholders that we have contacted, included the Scottish Youth Parliament, which was unable to come to a determination on the issue. I thought that that was interesting.

At this stage, we probably want to keep the petition open, pending the consultation that the Scottish Government is about to undertake. We believe that it is likely to take place during the summer.

Would colleagues like to make any comments or recommendations?

Do colleagues agree to keep the petition open and to proceed on the basis that has just been discussed?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you, David. Are colleagues content with that, or do they have any other recommendations?

I reassure Rhoda Grant that we were given to understand that the National Services Division and the Scottish Government co-ordinated the response that we received. I understood that, although we did not receive separate responses, there was input from both into the Government’s response.

Are colleagues content that we keep the petition open and write to see whether we can expedite some of the information that we are looking to receive?

Members indicated agreement.

Sorry—there was a misstep in our communications.

Paul Sweeney, is there anything that you would like to add?

Would Fiona Garven like to come in?

Fiona, you particularly wanted to come in at this point.

I will play devil’s advocate. We are not here to establish a balance sheet between the two, but I am interested in understanding what you would say. A lady who works at my local baker’s, which I get my messages from—to use the antique term—said to me that she elects me and has absolutely no interest in any discussion or involvement. She thinks very carefully about how she is going to vote for her elected representative and will get rid of them if she does not like the decisions that they make. That is how she wants to operate. Is that lady being marginalised by farming out the decision-making process to people over whom she has no democratic control? She has no mandate to determine who they are or what they discuss, and she has no control over the decisions or recommendations that they make. The process is voluntary; we cannot mandate that people participate. As politicians, we know that there is a very wide community of people who are not apathetic but who do not want to involve themselves in such a process.

I have posed this question in other forums, too. If one community is very interested in being involved in deliberative democracy and consultation and comes forward with a series of recommendations, but the community in the village next door is not interested in being involved and does not agree with anything that that group says, has that community been marginalised? The risk is that people could find that decisions that are prejudicial to them are being arrived at simply because they chose not to participate in a voluntary deliberative process.

I am not necessarily advocating that as a risk, but I am trying to articulate what I think might be an unforeseen consequential risk of the process being, in whatever sense, successful.

I am not sure whether Kelly McBride wants to have a bash at addressing that.

We come on to the recommendations in the report. Paul Sweeney will lead on that.