Chamber and committees

Yes, we are probably going to come on to that later.

Alasdair, do you have further questions on the offences?

We very much appreciate your insights and the work that you carried out way back in 2016. Thank you very much for joining us.

As that concludes our business in public, we will move into private session.

There was a sort of unwritten code of conduct. Do you think that it resulted in any improvements in the situation with regard to what constituted illegal hunting?

What are your initial impressions of the draft bill in relation to your review?

Would you like me to move on to the next question? I will bring in Rachael Hamilton.

Our second item of business this morning is consideration of the draft Plant Health (Fees) (Miscellaneous Amendment) (Scotland) Regulations 2022 and the consent notification for the Official Controls (Plant Health) (Frequency of Checks) Regulations 2022. I welcome to the meeting the Minister for Green Skills, Circular Economy and Biodiversity and Scottish Government officials Rachel Coutts and Caspian Richards. I invite the minister to make some opening remarks.

Thank you. We have a number of questions. According to the notification, the new approach is based on the EU principles for risk-targeted inspections. Why does the Scottish Government feel that a new approach is required, and what are the deficiencies of the existing approach?

There will be a brief supplementary question from Rachael Hamilton before we move to questions from Beatrice Wishart.

Sadly, we are now coming to the point in the meeting when I have to ask members to keep their supplementary questions very short and direct them to a specific witness.

What are the deficiencies in the current scheme that require you to bring in a new approach?