Chamber and committees

Dr West and Ms Hood touched on the Sewel convention. I will not speak for too long about the Sewel convention, but I am interested to know your views about whether you feel that it will be a real thing in the future, or whether you feel that it has been tested to breaking point already. This week, the Parliament has made pretty clear what it is likely to do with the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill in terms of consent. Is the Sewel convention a real factor in how these relationships are played out in future, or do we use the past tense about the Sewel convention?

Thank you.

My other question is about rabbits. You have touched on some of the issues to do with hare coursing, but I want to ask about pest control in more general terms. Some of our previous witnesses do not like the term “pest control” as they feel that it might cause offence in relation to some species, but I am going to use it. Are you satisfied that the inclusion in the bill of measures for rabbits leaves adequate room for legitimate pest control?

You touched on the definition of certain words, particularly in section 1 and 2 offences. Others have discussed the use of words such as “reckless”, “stalking” and “flushing”, so I will not cover that old ground. However, in the evidence that we have received, people have asked what it would mean if a person “reasonably believed” that they were acting under an exception. That is mentioned in section 2(4). Is the term “reasonably believed” defined well enough?

I will return to the process, as it were, by which the Government developed the bill. We have heard from Lord Bonomy, who said fairly positive things about the bill. Although it does not include everything that was in his report, he seems to think that it is well drafted. What was the thinking about how to get from the Bonomy report to the bill and what alternatives were considered on the way?

I have questions on the next couple of themes, convener. Do you want me to run them together or come back to you?

Do you have a view, minister, on the powers of search in the bill? The Law Society of Scotland had questions about whether they were sufficient in every instance.

On a slightly but not completely different point, the police told us that they would find it difficult to give an opinion on some aspects of the bill until they had seen the licence. When will we hear more detail about what the licensing scheme will look like?

Could you say a little about how you think that hunts could or should be monitored in future? Previous witnesses have told us about how the police and others have relied on video evidence of how hunts behave. How do you see that being done in future? What sort of evidence do you think that the police would be able to use? Would that be based on any form of monitoring?

Finally, I have a question for David Smith. You have all been talking about how the purchase could involve 75 per cent of the company falling into the hands of one giant. Could you say a bit about what that would mean in terms of the biodiversity of what would be on offer culturally? We have talked, quite rightly, about what the implications might be of this situation economically for Scotland, but just as Derry is keen to know how Derry is represented to itself through drama and other types of programming, so is Scotland. What would be the impact culturally in terms of diversity of the offering if so much of the channel was in the hands of one organisation?