Chamber and committees

Sarah, would you just excuse me for one minute? Jackie McCreery used the phrase “binding arbitration”, which means that, once you have signed up to it, you take the outcome whether you like it or not. The two previous witnesses mentioned “arbitration”, which means that, if you do not like it, you can go to somebody else. Is everyone talking about binding arbitration?

It will have to be the last comment on this section.

That is helpful.

As Mark Ruskell has indicated that he is not prepared to agree, we will go through the process of seeing what the committee wants to do and ask members to vote. When we have decided on that, we can decide on the next steps. The substantive question is, are members content with the SI?

On that basis, are members happy for me to sign off that letter once it has been drafted by the clerks? We are quite up against it for timescales, so are members content with me signing the letter?

Members indicated agreement.

I bring in Jackie McCreery briefly—you will literally get 30 seconds—before I move on to Mark Ruskell.

You are in charge of your questioning session, Jackie.

I have noticed that all of the witnesses are waving their hands at me. If you want to come in, look at the questioner.

If no other members wish to say anything, I would like to make a couple of observations. One is that when I got the bundle of committee papers for this week—there were 206 pages of them—I looked forward to reading the UK SI notification and to finding out instantly what it all meant. However, it took quite a lot of reading to get through it. I do not think that the Government’s briefing was helpful or concise.

I then looked at each of the species, some of which I had never heard of before. They include small Asian mongoose, which I am sure cannot survive here; coati, which is another form of mongoose; whitetop weed, which is sometimes confused with hoary cress in this country; and the water hyacinth, which has already been mentioned. My concern is the fact that things are changing quickly, climate wise, and we are seeing invasive non-native species coming into this country that are never meant to thrive, but do thrive.

The example I see from home is ranunculus weed. It was never an issue on the Spey, because that was always too cold and too fast flowing, but things have changed, temperatures have warmed, and ranunculus weed now is a major problem on the Spey. I declare an interest that I have a fishery there. It does not affect the fishery but it absolutely smothers out freshwater mussels, which are an endangered species.

We need to be really careful in what we are doing. Therefore, I support the committee’s recommendation that if we are going to approve this SI, which I am minded to do, we ask the Government to keep it under review and to look at the effects of the changes. In addition, if other species are going to come off the list in the future, the Government should make somewhat clearer what it is doing. There is mention in the paper that DEFRA was asked for a comment, but that is still forthcoming. We are making this decision slightly in the dark.

Those are my comments. If there are no other comments from the committee, I move to the substantive question. Is the committee content that the provision set out in the notification should be made in the proposed UK statutory instrument?

Members indicated agreement.

Is the committee happy for me to sign off the letter on behalf of the committee when it is prepared by the clerks?

Members indicated agreement.

My issue is that if you are valuing 500 ewes at Martinmas and they are all empty, the valuation is considerably less than if the ram has been put in and has been working and some of the ewes could be in lamb.