Seòmar agus comataidhean

I will be giving you a lot more detail on this, but my first answer to your question is that it would give us the numbers that are being killed by particular traps. It would give us information on, for example, non-target animals that are being trapped and killed, which is an important consideration and something that we should be looking at. It would also, in my view, be beneficial to include the manner of death, in order to shed light on how well traps are operating in the field. I hope that that will become part of the licence conditions in due course.

Apparently, newer designs of spring traps are better at killing instead of injuring, and they are less likely to catch non-target species, but we will not know that for sure unless records on those traps are kept and reported on. That seems perfectly reasonable to me. I think it legitimate to ask those who do not support the amendment why they do not believe that that information, which would already be collected, should be reported. What do people have to hide who do not want this information made public?

Coming back to my earlier point, I note that, at committee, Jim Fairlie asked:

“What is your view on the suggestion that licensing should be supported by statutory reporting? In other words, if you set 100 traps, you have to say where those 100 traps are, what you have caught in them and how many animals are killed each year.”

In response, Alex Hogg of the Scottish Gamekeepers Association said:

“We would agree with that and, again, it is about training. We do it with snaring at the moment, so it could easily be done with trapping. It would provide feedback to the Government and NatureScot about what animals were being trapped and dispatched or whatever.”—[Official Report, Rural Affairs and Islands Committee, 14 June 2023; c 58.]

The minister says that NatureScot can make this a condition of a licence, so clearly it is possible to do this. However, it should be more than that; it should, and clearly can, be a requirement.

Finally, on amendment 118, Hugh Dignon, the head of the Scottish Government’s wildlife and biodiversity unit, said in evidence to the committee that one of the Scottish Government’s intentions with the bill was

“to improve animal welfare outcomes even when those traps are used lawfully ... ensuring that the highest standards apply and that people are operating to those high standards”.—[Official Report, Rural Affairs and Islands Committee, 31 May 2023; c 62.]

I agree that that should be the basic principle, but it should be reflected within the bill.

There is something else that you have not been able to put a timescale on yet. Four years after the legislation to establish the bank was passed, you have not yet established an advisory board to oversee its work. Do you have an update on the timescale for that?

Following on from those questions, we know that the budget is challenging, but we have heard that the budget overall is up. The departmental budget is down by 8 per cent, but the cuts to the enterprise agencies are three or four times higher than the overall cut in the budget—particularly for South of Scotland Enterprise, which will see a 22 per cent cut. Given the huge economic inequalities across Scotland—for example, the south of Scotland has the lowest wages and the highest level of outward migration of young people, because of the lack of high-paid, high-skilled jobs—what does the budget say about tackling the economic inequalities in those areas, when you are cutting the enterprise budgets in peripheral areas by so much?

I think that we will see more investment, and what we will certainly see from a UK Labour Government is growth, which we have not seen from the Scottish Government.

Sticking with the issue of financial transactions that you mentioned, cabinet secretary, what progress do you expect on SNIB’s ability to access existing capital beyond them? One of the issues raised with the committee by the chair of SNIB was securing the regulatory permissions necessary to manage third-party capital. What progress do you see taking place in the forthcoming year to enable the bank to do that and to access other forms of funding?

Just give me an idea of the timescale.

We are seeing those opportunities; as the minister knows, the south of Scotland has the highest number of wind farms in Scotland. So far, though, we have seen very few of those renewables jobs, and I hope that that will change.

As well as the cuts to enterprise agencies, the Scottish National Investment Bank is seeing its budget being cut by a third, to the lowest level since it began to operate, despite the fact that the chair of the bank says that the planned £2 billion public capitalisation will not be sufficient to meet the bank’s mission. Why is that cut so large, and is the Scottish Government still on track to provide the £2 billion that is committed to SNIB? Do you still expect, for example, the bank to be self-financing by 2025?

Is there a timescale for that yet?

So, the idea of using turnover should continue. If you were to reduce the poundage—

Good morning, panel. To follow on from Murdo Fraser’s question, the impact of the budget was hugely deflating for many businesses in the south of Scotland. Hospitality businesses were looking for that additional rates relief. The concerns over that are obviously well documented. What may not be as well documented, though, are the wider issues around business rates, which I know that you have strong views on. Leon Thompson touched on that at the beginning when he said that turnover has risen among a lot of businesses, which is positive, but not to the same scale as costs—energy costs, staff costs and everything else—have risen, so profit margins have fallen. Obviously, that has a big impact on business rates, given that we calculate business rates for hospitality on the basis of turnover. Given those issues, can you say a little bit more about what the sector is looking for from the wider reform of business rates?

That is helpful. The convener will not let me carry out a full review of business rates at the moment, but, Colin, you have lots of ideas, according to Leon—[Laughter.]—about how we can change things. Do you want to share some of them?