Chamber and committees

Thank you, minister, for laying out the purpose of the draft amendment regulations before us. Members have no questions for the minister, so I thank him and his officials for their evidence.

Item 6 is consideration of the motion on the instrument. I invite the minister to move motion S6M-02977.

Motion moved,

That the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee recommends that the Local Authority (Capital Finance and Accounting) (Scotland) (Coronavirus) Amendment Regulations 2022 be approved.—[Tom Arthur]

Motion agreed to.

We have come to the end of our questions. I thank the witnesses for their evidence on the bill. I will suspend the meeting briefly to allow a changeover of supporting officials.

Under agenda item 3, the committee will take evidence on the draft Non-Domestic Rates (Valuation Roll) (Modification) (Scotland) Regulations 2022 from the Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth. For this session, Mr Arthur is joined by Anouk Berthier, who is non-domestic rates policy lead in the Scottish Government, and Susan Robb, who is a Scottish Government lawyer. I welcome the witnesses to the meeting.

I invite Mr Arthur to make a short opening statement before I open up the session to questions from committee members.

Agenda item 2 is an evidence-taking session at stage 1 of the Non-Domestic Rates (Coronavirus) (Scotland) Bill. We are joined remotely by the Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth, who is accompanied by the following Scottish Government officials: Sandra Reid, bill team leader; and David Smith, lawyer. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting. As all the witnesses are appearing remotely, I would be grateful if Mr Arthur could make it clear if he wishes one of his officials to respond to a specific point.

Before I open up the session to questions, I invite the minister to make a short opening statement.

Item 5 is to take evidence on the draft Local Authority (Capital Finance and Accounting) (Scotland) (Coronavirus) Amendment Regulations 2022 from the Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth. For this item, Mr Arthur is joined by Scottish Government officials Elanor Davies, who is head of local authority accounting, and, once again, David Smith, a lawyer. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting. Before opening up to questions from the committee, I invite Mr Arthur to make a short opening statement.

I have a number of questions, one of which Karen Adam has just asked. I appreciate the cabinet secretary’s response.

This morning, we will consider a motion to annul the instrument. I would love to understand what the impact of that would be on the area in question.

Without that protection, what could we see happening in the area?

What would be the long-term impact of having no protection for the next two years? I know that that might be a hypothetical question, but I am concerned about the possibility of having no protection in place.

Thank you. I have a few other questions.

The evidence that we received last week from Mike Heath on the need to allow the stocks to recover and to mitigate unintended bycatch and discards was compelling. What will the cabinet secretary do to address those issues through the future catching policy?

It has been good to hear that there is great consideration of the collaboration that has been taking place and that will go forward, and a recognition that that needs to be underpinned in future activity.

Does the cabinet secretary consider that the RIFGs are suitably democratic? Why are community and environmental voices not present at their meetings? Where should those voices make their arguments, if not in the RIFGs?