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I am going to continue in the same vein as earlier this morning, because it is important that we take the opportunity that is offered by the bill to take action to improve biodiversity. That is why we are seeing so many amendments at this point that are rooted in a lot of the frustration of members that practical action has not been taken to protect biodiversity and restore the environment in Scotland.

I will try to be brief in my comments. Four years ago, in its programme for government, the Scottish Government pledged to

“phase out the use of peat in horticulture.”

That included a ban in order to protect peatlands and

“to restore the health and vitality of the natural systems that sustain us.”

That pledge remains unfulfilled, and about 1,000 hectares of our peatlands are actively dug up every year. That is enough peat to fill 68 Olympic-sized swimming pools. As we know, peat forms at the very slow rate of about 1mm per year, so it takes 1,000 years to form to a depth of 1m, but diggers can strip out the same amount of peat from the ground in just a couple of weeks. Peat is not therefore a resource that can be renewed within a human lifetime. Once it is gone, it is gone.

Amendment 32 is therefore about giving us the chance to change the fate of Scotland’s peatlands and to save the peat and carbon that they hold for future generations. I do not think that there is anything new in the amendments, and everybody in the room is probably in agreement with the policy intention, but there is a concern that it has not happened yet despite years of commitments.

Amendment 32 would insert a requirement for the Scottish Government to use powers that it already has via secondary legislation under section 140 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, which is a part of the 1990 act that has already been used. The ban on single-use vapes follows those powers, and amendment 32 would follow a similar model. We have done this before. We have innovated in the Scottish Parliament to achieve things on a four-nations basis across the UK.

Scotland is not alone in its impatience about the lack of direction from the UK Government on this. The chair of the Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee at the Welsh Senedd recently wrote to urge the UK Parliament to increase pressure to get progress across the UK, and I understand that Northern Ireland has now committed to a firm date for the phasing out of the use of peat in horticulture. Within the devolved constitutional settlement, including Northern Ireland, nations are moving forward, setting dates and delivering action in this area. Why can we not do that in Scotland? I am sure that the minister will tell me why in a minute.

One of the stated objectives of the Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill is to cover key actions to deliver biodiversity targets, and this is a key action that is long overdue.

I note that Rachael Hamilton has lodged a number of detailed amendments to amendment 32, and I will listen carefully to her unpack those in a minute. I respect her work as chair of the cross-party group on horticulture. We will see where we get to, but I am looking for an acknowledgement that action is long overdue, that there is a pathway to banning peat extraction and that the Government is prepared to take that action and we can move forward in the months to come.

I will leave my comments there.

I move amendment 32.

I will speak to amendments 78 and 79 on behalf of Ariane Burgess.

Amendment 78 would establish a requirement to consult with communities in relation to new forestry. It is very similar to an amendment that Ariane Burgess lodged at stage 2 of the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Act 2024. It is informed, as are Mercedes Villalba’s amendments, by the recommendations from the RSE, which has called for forestry applications to be subject to more EIAs, including the important public consultation element. The amendment would increase the consultation requirements without requiring a full EIA to be conducted.

Amendment 79 would bar Scottish ministers from providing and approving public funding for deer fencing, including any on-going maintenance of existing fencing. That draws on the report from the John Muir Trust, which raised concerns about the proportion of forestry payments that support deer fencing as opposed to other deer population control measures. Its argument is that the current funding model is an inefficient use of taxpayers’ money and is not a long-term strategy for increasing nature restoration. The funding for deer fencing concentrates deer density on unfenced land. Moving to a natural regeneration approach would focus on controlling deer populations to lower densities and allow for more natural and effective woodland restoration.

It is argued that that approach would also create healthier environments at a landscape scale by allowing the free movement of other wildlife.

I will speak to the amendments in the name of Ariane Burgess. I support the majority of the amendments in the group, and I particularly support the approach that has been taken by Maurice Golden and Sarah Boyack. There is a wider issue about the management of our marine environment, which the bill so far does not tackle, so we need to go further at stage 2.

Amendments 90 and 91 would strengthen the reporting on the status and condition of Scotland’s marine protected area network by giving Environmental Standards Scotland a formal role in assessing the network. The evidence that we have had from Open Seas stressed the lack of real protection that is being delivered by Scotland’s existing MPA network. The Government has acknowledged that MPAs might not be meeting legal objectives, so giving ESS a more formal role in assessing the network’s objectives and achievements would mean greater accountability for any marine-related targets that are set by secondary legislation.

Amendment 90 would strengthen the reporting by requiring ESS to report on whether there has been any deterioration in the MPA network. Amendment 91 would then require ministers to include in their reports to Parliament under the 2010 act a summary of the pressures and impacts that human activities are having on MPAs.

Amendment 92 relates to the national marine plan 2, which ministers are currently developing. The intention is for the new plan to set out ministers’ policies for how different sectors will interact in the marine environment. That is important, because we all recognise that there is a demand for access to marine space, from fishing to energy to recreation, and deciding what goes where is the critical role of that national marine plan. However, we are concerned that the current proposals from the Government suggest that the new national marine plan would significantly weaken protections, including by dropping the fisheries objective from the new plan entirely. Amendment 92 seeks to rectify that omission.

Fisheries management measures are deemed to be a national or regional marine planning matter under the 2010 act. They are part of the first national marine plan and the Shetland regional marine plan. The proposal, which attempts to treat fisheries management decisions as separate from the wider national marine planning, is concerning. We need to join things up here rather than put fisheries in a siloed box. Amendment 92 would make it clear that fisheries objectives are categorically part of the national marine plan and cannot be interpreted otherwise and removed at the whim of a serving Government.

Amendment 301 would make two straightforward changes to the current light-touch regulation of the wrasse fishery and finish the work that was begun by this committee and the Scottish Government in the area. First, it would close some of our marine protected areas and special areas of conservation to the fishery all year round—specifically, the SACs for which rocky reefs are a qualifying feature and the MPAs for which kelp and seaweed on sediment are a protected feature. Those are the MPAs and SACs for which the various commercially fished wrasse species listed in amendment 301 are the keystone species, which are hugely ecologically important to the future of those habitats. There might be a case for closing the fishery in all MPAs and SACs, but, in those specific areas, wrasse are absolutely integral to the survival of those habitats. You cannot protect rocky reefs or kelp forests and other seaweed habitats if the wrasse that they depend on can be taken away.

Amendment 301 would close the wrasse fishery during the five months when wrasse spawn and guard their nests. At the moment, the closed season is completely misaligned with the spawning season, again risking the future of the fish and the ecosystems that they are part of. Protecting vulnerable fish stocks during the spawning seasons is an absolutely fundamental part of good fisheries management. I am at a loss as to understand why that is not being applied in relation to the wrasse fishery.

We all know that wrasse are used in large numbers by the salmon industry for lice control, and, no doubt, the industry would like the fishery to be open all year round, to give it flexibility. However, that would not be in the industry’s interests if it intends to rely on wrasse for the longer term. It has been reported that local wrasse populations have collapsed in some areas. That is a dire outcome for important marine ecosystems, but it is also a problem for the aquaculture industry. We need better regulation in the area. I think that Ariane Burgess’s amendments take that final step and ensure that there is a sustainable recovery of our wrasse across Scotland.

I appreciate your giving way. I think that there is quite a link between the amendments in this group and what Ross Greer was attempting to do in an earlier group. Emma Harper has made a strong case for reforming the penalties and offences relating to salmon poaching. We see poaching in our MPAs, particularly off the Arran coast, and the purpose of Ross Greer’s amendments in an earlier group was to address that, but there was no commitment to work with him ahead of stage 3. Is that because the Government does not consider the issues that Ross Greer raised to be of concern, or is it because the issues are too hard or involve a different minister? I do not know, but I would like there to be progress in tackling such offences, which are serious regardless of whether they relate to our rivers or our seas.

Once again, we are doing a lot of heavy lifting in the committee this morning, are we not, convener?

There is a conversation to be had ahead of stage 3. I still believe that a restatement of the commitment to ban the supply of peat for horticulture is needed in legislation. Regardless of whether that restatement reflects a need to extend the readiness period or to deliver a transition, I think that the destination is quite clear—we are moving towards making horticulture peat free in Scotland. I think that everyone acknowledges that.

We should reflect on the fact that, in Northern Ireland, a date has been set. At the very least, we could get a consensus on that.

Both of the amendments in this group relate to delivering nature networks. As the Government rightly highlights, nature networks deliver multiple benefits beyond biodiversity: they store carbon; they mitigate floods; they regulate temperature in our towns, villages and cities; and they improve our mental and physical health. They are a keystone of the Scottish biodiversity strategy, because fragmentation of nature is a key driver of its decline.

Amendment 76 would introduce a requirement for ministers to report on progress towards the establishment of nature networks and on their effectiveness. Embedding a reporting requirement at ministerial level would ensure co-ordinated delivery that complements the bottom-up approach at council level. We are all aware of the excellent work that councils are doing on the ground to establish nature networks and to embed them in local planning. Without amendment 76, we risk nature networks being overlooked. The Government has set ambitious goals for the planning system to deliver positive effects for biodiversity and for private finance to support the ambitions of the biodiversity strategy, but, unless a strategically co-ordinated pipeline of projects is identified through nature networks, we risk missing those opportunities.

Amendment 77 would add a requirement for the forthcoming land use strategy to consider the ecological connectivity that is delivered through nature networks. The land use strategy provides the context for the major land use decisions that are needed to meet Scotland’s climate ambitions. Given that a key principle of the bill is the need to tackle climate and nature together, it makes sense to explicitly include ecological connectivity in the land use strategy. The strategy also underpins regional land use partnerships, which engage communities in shaping the land use changes that are required to meet climate targets. Elevating nature to the same level as climate in those discussions would ensure that communities are involved in the decisions, especially those on nature networks.

I move amendment 76.

I do not have an answer to that question, but we could certainly explore that in discussions with the minister.

I think that there is scope to reflect on the situation ahead of stage 3. Would you like to come back in, minister?

Thank you—that is helpful. I think that it adds to the evidence that we have taken already. Before other colleagues come in, I will move on to briefly discuss the definition of ecocide. The committee has spent a bit of time looking at the terms in your bill, such as “widespread” and “long-term”, the latter of which has been defined in the bill as 12 months. There is no definition of “serious adverse effects”. I am interested in your reflections on the evidence that we have taken, particularly in relation to the concerns around those specific terms. What is your response to those concerns, as you head into stage 1?

You might have seen that we took evidence from NatureScot in which it suggested that 12 months is not an ideal definition of “long-term”, because it is very difficult to see how any ecosystem can recover, even from a relatively minor environmental impact over that timescale, so there are some questions about particular definitions in the bill. The question for us as a committee is whether we have the opportunity to think through a lot of that detail ahead of stage 2, which could come quite quickly on the back of stage 1. Therefore, your response to those questions at this point is quite important.

I appreciate that. I go back to my original question. Part of the argument that you make for creating an offence of ecocide is that it forces us to look from the top of that regulatory pyramid down at the regulatory framework, and there are questions that emerge from that. If we put a permitting defence into the bill, does that mean that we are totally okay with everything else in the regulatory framework that protects the environment and sits underneath that defence?

If we accept a permitting defence—there are a lot of other ifs in that regard, such as if the bill gets to stage 2—we are effectively creating a protection for regulators, consenting bodies and those who have permits. That leads to the question whether we are okay with that and whether we think that any potential ecocide events could happen under the current permitted regime. What I am getting from your answer is that the current regime is fine, but culpability and intention remain at the top of the pyramid and are not captured by the strict liability offence at its highest level. I will leave it there, but it is on the record.