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The graph gets jagged in the way that it is here.

I suppose that goes back to the point you were making to the convener earlier. If the chancellor had just bitten the bullet and made the substantial tax reform that has not been made in 40 years, we would not need to resolve that much bigger question about the interaction of national insurance and income tax.

I appreciate entirely the case that the cabinet secretary has laid out. Like her, the Greens support the principle of an ecocide law but recognise that there are issues that need to be resolved with the Ecocide (Scotland) Bill.

My concern is about sequencing, because the Ecocide (Scotland) Bill might well fall and, by the point that Parliament has made that decision, the consideration of the Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill will have already concluded. Is there not an argument for us to collectively come back to the issue at stage 3 to ensure that, at the least, amendments are made to the Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill to give the Government regulation-making powers that allow us to do something in the event that Parliament cannot agree to the Ecocide (Scotland) Bill? If we find ourselves unable to resolve the issues with another bill, it would be a shame not to have the opportunity to come back under this bill and create something in a space in which I think there is broad consensus.

I understand, to some extent, where the cabinet secretary is coming from, but my comments are similar to those that Maurice Golden made a moment ago. It is frustrating for the Parliament to be asked to wait again, particularly given that, with some of my amendments, I am trying to rectify a situation that has been out of date for more than four decades now and which gets more and more out of date the longer we wait.

Some of what I propose is very specific and, I would argue, quite minor—for example, giving the marine directorate the opportunity to issue fixed-penalty notices to the charterer or the owner of a vessel, and not just to vessel’s master. Is the cabinet secretary saying that there is no way that the Scottish Government would be amenable to working on at least some of my amendments for stage 3, and that the Government’s position is that they cannot be dealt with in this session of Parliament and must be dealt with in the next session?

I am jumping the queue here, but will the cabinet secretary take a brief intervention?

I appreciate that, and I would be happy to engage with the cabinet secretary and Maurice Golden. I agree that a holistic approach would be ideal.

Does the Scottish Government have any specific issues with my proposals? It is one thing to argue that they take a piecemeal approach, but has the Government identified any problems with the amendments? If so, I would be happy to discuss that with the Government ahead of stage 3.

The argument that, as a matter of principle, we need to consider the issues holistically rather than piecemeal makes it feel very much as though the Government is kicking the issue into the long grass, even though some of the proposals are pretty minor and would involve making helpful adjustments immediately, before engaging in a more holistic exercise.

I have not yet heard an argument from the Government against any of my specific proposals.

On the basis of the cabinet secretary’s offer to have discussions ahead of stage 3 about what we can do in the space of the RRA, I am happy to withdraw amendment 299.

Amendment 299, by agreement, withdrawn.

Amendment 300 not moved.

Amendment 301 moved—[Mark Ruskell].

I will defer to my colleague Mark Ruskell on the specifics of Douglas Ross’s amendment, but I think that he made a compelling case. This is about effective enforcement. If the vessels that are charged with enforcement are, at best, hours away and, in some cases, days away, enforcement will not happen and people will not be caught. That is one of the core issues. A lot of what I am proposing would not be relevant if we cannot get to the point where someone is caught in the act and evidence of it is gathered. Therefore, Douglas Ross makes a compelling case, but I will defer to colleagues who are on the committee on the specifics of his amendment.

On the point about updating the fixed monetary values, we, as a Parliament, need collectively to learn the lesson that we cannot keep putting such figures into primary legislation without putting in associated provisions to update them via regulation. It is almost comical that some of those figures are more than four decades out of date and have lost the vast majority of their value.

Amendment 296 seeks to address one of the most egregious features of the current enforcement system, which is highlighted by my example from Arran. As the Government has set out in answers to various questions over the years, including to Tim Eagle and me, if a fisher ignores a fixed-penalty notice or chooses not to pay it and is then charged, taken to court and convicted, the fine at final disposal is often lower than the penalty would have been in the fixed-penalty notice that they were initially offered.

Members may know—not from personal experience, I am sure—that if a motoring offence attracts a fixed-penalty notice, that penalty is always at a discount on any fine that would be imposed as a result of court proceedings. That is designed to encourage people to accept the fixed penalty in clear-cut cases and to save the courts time. At the moment, there is an incentive in the other direction when it comes to offences related to fishing; in other words, there is an incentive to ignore the fixed-penalty notice and to take the matter to court in the hope of getting a lower penalty. Of the 17 unpaid notices in the period that was covered by Tim Eagle’s question, only four led to convictions, and, in three of those cases, the fine at court disposal was below the level in the fixed-penalty notice.

Amendment 296 would, should the court convict, require a fine at court disposal to be at least 50 per cent higher than the unpaid fixed penalty. That would offer a clear incentive for people to accept the notices in the first place and avoid taking up court time.

I appreciate the cabinet secretary’s line of argument, but it does beg the question, because £40,000 is not the same in 2025 as it was in 2014. Is the Scottish Government’s position that it is content that the relative maximum penalty is weaker than it was in 2014? Surely the Scottish Government would acknowledge that there was reason why the level was set at £40,000 in 2014 and that, albeit it would not be £100,000 in today’s money, some level of uprating is needed to reflect inflation since then.

I will be relatively brief, and certainly briefer than I was in the previous grouping on marine enforcement.

We have already discussed some of the issues with fine and penalty rates being set in primary legislation and, as the years go on, their relative value being eroded. I therefore propose taking a similar approach to the maximum fine rate that is set for significant environmental harm offences in the Regulatory Reform (Scotland) Act 2014. There are two options: amendment 299 could be agreed to now, while I consider amendment 300 to be a probing amendment. I am interested in the Government’s position on amendment 300 and, if the Government was amenable to it, I would certainly go beyond probing to move the amendment.

Amendment 299 would increase the maximum fine from £40,000 to £100,000, in recognition of the fact that the £40,000 figure is now more than a decade out of date. As it says plainly, amendment 300 would replicate the penalties that were set out in a recent European Union directive that sets the maximum levels for fines as a percentage of the total worldwide turnover of the legal person concerned. That would make sure that the fine is proportionate. If, therefore, an individual or a small business commits serious environmental harm, they will still receive a financial penalty, but it will be proportionate to their ability to pay it. If, however, a large multinational corporation was to commit a serious environmental offence in Scotland, it is only right that any financial penalty that it might face should be far higher and proportionate to its ability to pay.

I lodged the amendments partly because of a Scottish Environment Protection Agency investigation in my region. I will not talk about it in detail as it is on-going, but, as a result of it, I began to look at what the penalties could be. I came across this area as another example in which fines, penalty rates and so on that are set out in primary legislation have simply eroded in value and there does not appear to have been any effort or on-going process to update them.

As I said, amendment 299 could be agreed to now, while I lodged amendment 300 because I am keen to hear the Government’s view, particularly given its welcome general position of attempting to maintain alignment with EU regulations.

I move amendment 299.