Chamber and committees

I cannot talk about hypothetical situations.

I am here to talk to every line in the bill. I am not here to look into a possible future situation in which someone is not content that NatureScot may have operated in a certain way. However—

Because there is the potential for an incident to be so severe that it might have to suspend a licence quickly.

I do not understand your question, but I think that Hugh Dignon does.

I am not involved in the investigation of wildlife crime.

Actually, that is not the case. In the previous session of Parliament, when we were considering the Animals and Wildlife (Penalties, Protections and Powers) (Scotland) Bill, we heard from a wildlife officer at a round-table session; of the members here today, I think that it was only me and Mr Carson who were at that meeting. There is already a strong relationship between the police and the SSPCA. The wildlife officer at that meeting recognised that there could be an issue with hiding or removing evidence, and they said that it would be regrettable if somebody from the SSPCA were called to a scene and could not gather evidence that would help the investigation.

They want the protocols to be established.

As Hugh Dignon has said, this is a compromise position, because people wanted us to go further in this area. I think that that is where a lot of the police criticism has come from—it was about the other position that we were taking, which would have given far more powers to the SSPCA.

You make a really good point about smaller landowners and crofters who might have to apply for a licence. I would expect NatureScot to take that into consideration and that, when it liaises with stakeholders, it would speak to crofters about how the scheme might impact on them. It should do the same as it puts the licensing scheme together. Again, the scheme cannot be onerous: it cannot place a series of requirements on crofters to prove, measure or provide evidence of things that do not even apply to their land. It would be ridiculous, frankly, if that were the case.

I come back to what I said earlier. I have listened to NatureScot, and I very much get the impression that it wants to work with all sectors that might be affected by the licensing scheme, so it must have buy-in and the application process must not be onerous for people.

Lots of things in the code of practice will not apply to certain landowners, so I come back to the idea that the code should require people to have due regard to items in it rather than the idea that every single item in the code will be relevant to a crofter. Some parts of the code will be relevant to crofters and other parts will be completely irrelevant, so that must be taken into account. The code must be meaningful, must work for everyone who engages in muirburn and must have buy-in from them all.

You mentioned the science and the evolving data. The licensing scheme will enable data to be collected, and that information will be provided to people involved in various scientific efforts relating to peatland, in particular. It will be very helpful to have information on what is happening where, because we do not know what is happening where in relation to muirburn practices on peatland. That will allow us to give evidence to anybody who wants to undertake a scientific survey on the effect of muirburn on peatland. We cannot pre-empt that and say what the effect is—it might be positive or negative—but the code needs to provide flexibility so that NatureScot can react to the evolving science. I cannot look into the future to see what the data will show, but the fact that we will have a licensing scheme that will provide better data on what is happening where might allow the science to develop in a way that has not been possible so far.

No.