Seòmar agus comataidhean

I see—so we were second choice. In fact, I raised the fact that you were coming in with the First Minister last week at a meeting of all the committee conveners, and she was very keen to meet you. I gather that you are going to be seeing the First Minister in a little while, so that you can discuss the petition with her. Is that correct?

What is special about the bottle?

Out of interest, Callum, what did the council say? The council manages all the schools, so it could be one of the groups that could give everybody a reusable water bottle. Is it away to think about it?

That is a lot of bottles.

That is fantastic.

Sue Webber is with us, as I said earlier. Sue, would you like to contribute to our thoughts and the discussion?

Welcome back to the committee’s fourth meeting in 2022. We will resume item 1, which is consideration of continued petitions, with an evidence session with petitioners.

PE1812, which was lodged by Audrey Baird and Fiona Baker, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to deliver world-leading legislation giving Scotland’s remaining fragments of ancient, native and semi-native woodlands and woodland floors full legal protection before COP26. Of course, COP26 took place last November, so that deadline has passed, but we are still interested in the aims of the petition and the issues at its heart.

When we considered the petition previously, in February, we decided to invite the petitioners in to hear from them directly. It is great that we are able to do that again, so I give a warm welcome to Audrey Baird and Fiona Baker. We will then be hearing from a number of organisations that are interested in the issues that have been raised.

Both our petitioners are here on behalf of Help Trees Help Us. We also expect to be joined by Jackie Baillie MSP, who spoke on the petition at its first consideration last month. She is on her way, so we will welcome her in due course.

We have a number of questions and an opportunity to test some of the objectives of the petition and what you might want us to do. What would the petitioners specifically like to say to us at this stage of our consideration, by way of an introduction?

And commercial harvesting is okay if you have permission.

Paul—you wanted to ask Andy Leitch the same question.

Paul, are you happy with that answer?

I think that Andrew Weatherall was going to follow up on what Arina Russell said before we moved to that question.