Chamber and committees

So, 70 days after they phone the Government to say that they want to build a couple of houses on a small plot, they can start talking to people.

I said that we were up against it timewise, and I want to get through part 1 of the bill in the next 11 minutes. I invite Monica Lennon to ask her questions, followed by Douglas Lumsden.

I think that you have pushed your one question into becoming several questions.

That brings us to the end of the first part of the meeting. I thank Jill Robbie and Don Macleod for their evidence this morning. Fergus Colquhoun and Gail Watt are staying put for the second session.

The fact that this session has taken so long probably proves that there are complexities with a 110-page bill. There is always the chance for the witnesses to feed in written comments as a result of today’s discussion. That is not to say that we will not ask them—or other solicitors, for that matter—for further comment at future meetings.

I suspend the meeting briefly.

So, we can take that one out.

Okay. The latest full mortality figure, for 2022, is 36,000 tonnes, which was 25 per cent of the population by estimates of fish that had gone to sea. Do you see that number as a figure against the amount of production? The production had not gone up, but the number of fish deaths had gone up. Is that a fair assumption?

And the same amount of fish have died, so the situation is exactly the same as it was in 2019. I think that that is the answer to my question.

So, bigger fish are dying.

Has stayed the same.

Earlier, Emma Roddick asked whether sea lice numbers were reducing across Scotland and your answer was that they were. Can I confirm that you were talking purely about farmed salmon in that case?

Is it the case that deaths from amoebic gill disease, cardiomyopathy syndrome and jellyfish are increasing across Scotland?