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There are two views on reporting. The Scottish Government would like the reporting requirements to be removed from the bill, but you have received some alternative views. Some stakeholders would like there to be an incident-level reporting provision so that, if an ecocide offence was committed and there was a conviction, there would be some kind of reporting after the incident. What are your views on that?

I think that that is clear.

I agree with most of what the minister has just set out—I think that that should be the process going forward. However, I invite him to consider the quite rare circumstances in which it would make sense to bypass the voluntary control agreement process and allow NatureScot to take action. If the minister is confident that there could not be any circumstance at all where urgent action would need to be taken, I accept his argument. However, if there is any doubt about that, I ask him to have a conversation with me between stage 2 and stage 3 and to think about lodging an amendment in that space that could be better than mine and could leave it open for urgent action to be taken without undermining the important voluntary agreement approach that has been established. We are all behind that approach and wish the minister well with it, but we have concerns in relation to exceptional circumstances.

Were those aspects considered in the development of the draft climate change plan?

I am reflecting on what the cabinet secretary said about the need to move from reviews into action and delivery. That is the essence of Ariane Burgess’s amendment 303; it is about saying that the existing system of land management orders is not delivering the action that we need to restore nature. When people look around their communities, they can see SSSIs degrading in plain sight, so it is clear that the system is not working. I recognise the on-going invitation to discuss the matter ahead of stage 3, so I think that Ariane Burgess and I will take you up on that, cabinet secretary, and we will want to explore with you the provisions that the Government brought forward in the initial consultation and whether there is something either in the bill or outside it that we could take forward to improve that, because delivery is not happening.

I will not press amendments 67 and 67A today, but it is clear that Ariane Burgess is hearing about these concerns from the communities themselves, so it would be good to relate them to you directly, cabinet secretary.

On the other amendments in the group, it is not entirely clear what Rachael Hamilton is trying to achieve. She talks about tree planting and woodland, so I am not sure whether that relates to commercial trees or woodland restoration.

I wish to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 67A, by agreement, withdrawn.

Okay. Thank you.

I am thinking about the primacy of the national park plan. If public bodies are engaging in the national park plan, surely they are actively furthering that plan through operating in that park and supporting its aims. I am trying to imagine a situation in which a public body would be operating in the opposite direction to a national park plan. That would be concerning. It could have regard to the park plan, but there is no commitment for it to work with the park plan that it would have been part of by putting its views in.

That was very well put. It cuts both ways: the park plans need to reflect the wider public objectives that public authorities are working towards, but they also need to reflect the views of communities, as well as considering the biodiversity targets that will be set under part 1 of the bill.

I will leave my comments there. I hope that we can get into some meaningful discussions with you, cabinet secretary, and that we can come to stage 3 with a tighter grouping of amendments that drills down into what we can do now. Perhaps we can have conversations with you about what happens after the national parks designation process. Where do we take the aspirations of communities, and where do we take the debates? If it is not in part 3 of the bill, where should it be for the next Scottish Government and for the local authorities, which have invested a lot of time and effort in getting the debate about national parks going? They have nowhere to go with that now, to the point that it is not showing up in your inbox, apparently. There is nowhere to take it now, and that is a shame, because national parks are working and are achieving things. We need a clear vision of where they will go in the future.

I will end there, and I will press amendment 201.

Gosh, that got interesting. Amendment 28 would allow ministers to transfer NatureScot’s deer function to another public body that might be better equipped in the future to discharge those duties. Other public bodies currently in existence, such as Forestry and Land Scotland, already have significant engagement with sustainable deer management over a large part of Scotland. The intention of the amendment is not to transfer those duties right now, but to future proof the governance of deer management in Scotland by providing the minister with that flexibility in the future. That is all that I have to say.