Chamber and committees

Are you talking about the Official Report?

It feels like I have never been away. [Laughter.]

Thank you for asking me to give evidence on the draft UK statutory instrument, the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (Amendment) Order 2023. The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board is a statutory levy board funded by farmers, growers and others in the supply chain. It provides services, advice and support to our world-class food and farming industry.

The AHDB comprises the four statutory levy-paying sectors that are currently included in the scope of the order, which are the cereal and oilseed industries in the UK, the milk and bovine dairy industry in Great Britain, the pig industry in England and the beef and sheep industry in England.

The amendment order is a UK-wide instrument, as has been said, to be made in the exercise of powers conferred by the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 on the secretary of state, acting with the approval, for Scotland, of Scottish ministers.

The main purpose of the order is to deliver a set of modernising updates to the principal order, the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board Order 2008, which will enable it to deliver operational and financial improvements.

A UK-wide consultation on the proposed amendments was launched on 4 December 2022 and closed on 28 February 2023. It was led by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which contacted all stakeholders by email. It received 17 responses and the majority of respondents agreed with the proposals included in the instrument.

I will not outline all nine amendments, because you have them in front of you. I support the changes that the order makes to deliver those improvements and I am happy to take any questions.

You are probably referring to the business and regulatory impact assessment, which sets that out. There was a great deal of collaboration with my officials ahead of the bill’s drafting, and the review group met a number of organisations and businesses, including representatives of many grouse moor estates. As well as meetings, there were questionnaires that were targeted at landowners, land managers, gamekeepers and other interested bodies. A few years ago, we commissioned research on the socioeconomic impact of licensing, and quite a lot of financial information from estates was collated in order to provide an evidence base.

Of course, it is not just estates that are involved. We also looked at the implication of banning the sale of glue traps, for example, so there were meetings with the pest control sector and we looked at the implications for people who sell glue traps. They are actually very cheap, so there was not much implication there.

In effect, I am saying that a great deal of work was done in speaking to stakeholders and reaching out to them in a number of ways to ascertain any financial implications that the bill might have for them, as you always have to do for bills, and we thought that they were minimal.

The proposal for a licensing scheme is not problematic in itself. We want to make it simple and NatureScot has said that it wants to make it simple. We do not want it to be too complicated or to take time away from the day-to-day work that land managers do. NatureScot says that it currently does not charge for licences, but I wonder how sustainable that will be. That is something that NatureScot will need to decide.

Perhaps people on this committee will need to decide whether a lot of applications for licences will be made to NatureScot. NatureScot seems quite happy that it can continue with the situation, but I would say that it is going to have to do quite a lot of work. Therefore, we might need to look at that. Even so, I think that any fee would need to be minimal, just to cover the administration costs.

You could look at environmental health, for example. Licences would be suspended in environmental health if it were thought that there was a public health risk. You are absolutely right that there are a myriad of areas in which that could happen.

You would hope that something so serious that required such action to be taken would never happen, but if NatureScot did not have the flexibility to do this and something like this happened, you, as MSPs, would be coming back in future years and asking for additional secondary legislation to amend the provision. The bill gives that flexibility, as you have said, in the way that quite a lot of other licensing schemes do.

Norman Munro wants to highlight some examples. I have been talking about environmental health, but I was obviously not anticipating your question, so perhaps the lawyer can jump in here, too.

That would come down to the definition of a glue trap. I might have to turn to my officials about that level of detail about what could constitute a glue trap. We can write to the committee and give you the firm definition. However, to me, a plank of wood with a layer of extremely powerful glue would constitute a glue trap.

I understand the worry, and it is probably not enough for me to say that it is unlikely that the police would ever fall for or be convinced by such activity. We need to accept that people are still worried about being accused of something and investigated. I was struck by how vociferous Alex Hogg was—I do not quite remember, but I think that he used the phrase “scared to death”—so we need to have due regard to that worry.

I reiterate that I am open to any suggestions that might be made in the committee’s report or might come from individuals about stage 2 amendments that members or the Government might lodge. At the moment, we think that the other offences provide enough of a deterrent, but we are open to suggestions—I cannot say it much more strongly than that.

I know that the committee heard from NatureScot that, to suspend a licence, it would have to be convinced that something serious had happened. It would not suspend a licence on the basis of supposition.

We are only at stage 1. It is my job to consider any proposal that a member makes ahead of stage 2. Having been on the other side of the table for many years, I encourage members to ask for meetings with me so that we can look at their proposals and see whether the Government can support them.

If we had a date, we would give you it, but we do not.

I will have to ask for more clarity in relation to your question. Are you saying that there is not a connection between the evidence and what we are doing in the bill? What do you mean by “rational connection”?