Chamber and committees

This will be your final question, Mr Lumsden.

Sure.

For the record, “YPS” is the young persons scheme.

I invite contributions to the debate from members.

The question is, that motion S6M-11994, in the name of Fiona Hyslop, be agreed to.

Motion agreed to,

That the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee recommends that the National Bus Travel Concession Schemes (Miscellaneous Amendment) (Scotland) Order 2024 [draft] be approved.

Welcome back. Our next item of business is an evidence session with Environmental Standards Scotland. This will be a wide-ranging session that will touch on ESS’s first annual report as a statutory body and other topical issues for ESS, as Scotland’s new environmental watchdog.

Following on from our 16 January evidence session with environmental stakeholders, at which we discussed last year’s Scottish Government report on that matter, we will also discuss ESS’s views on environmental governance in Scotland in the post-Brexit landscape.

Joining us from Environmental Standards Scotland, I welcome Dr Richard Dixon, deputy chair, and Mark Roberts, chief executive. Thanks for attending the meeting; it is appreciated.

I note that Jim Martin has intimated his resignation as the chair of ESS. On behalf of the committee, I put on record our thanks to Jim Martin. We wish him all the best in his future endeavours.

Before we move to questions, I invite Dr Richard Dixon to make a brief opening statement.

Are they on this area?

Monica Lennon has a supplementary question on whether you have sufficient technical expertise to fulfil your statutory role and complete work at sufficient pace.

That is helpful. We will move on to the issue of sewage discharges.

Those are helpful answers and your forthcoming report will be extremely important in clarifying both the similarities and the differences between the position in Scotland and that in the rest of the UK. It will be important for the public and our constituents to understand that, so we await that report with interest.

We move to the issue of biodiversity; my colleague Jackie Dunbar has some questions on that.