Rural Affairs and Islands Committee 10 December 2025 [Draft]
I will come back to the last point, but, first, if the minister is saying that there is progress, I am willing to accept that. What I am saying is that, from the outside, those of us who are not in the ministerial corridor, or who are not officials, cannot see that, because the written answers cannot tell us anything about the progress. That is why Fergus Ewing lodged the first written question and had to lodge a second written question. If the information can be shared in any way, it may provide some reassurance for the communities—particularly in Moray, Elgin, Nairn and Inverness—who are concerned about this issue. That is why the minister travelled to the area to hold the summit.
The point that the minister finished with—that it will not matter who holds the power to issue the licences—makes my point. If, according to the minister, it does not matter who holds that power, we should take it away from NatureScot, because it is not using that power effectively. It is issuing decisions that are, to use the minister’s own word, ludicrous. I would have thought that, the day that the minister decided that NatureScot’s determination of applications was ludicrous, he should have said, “The game’s up. You are not suitable as an organisation to both be in charge of conserving bird numbers and to deal with the applications to control bird numbers.” That is why I believe that those licensing functions should be removed from NatureScot, because of its significant conflict of interest, and that is why I have provided the options of giving those functions to local authorities, taking them in-house to the Scottish ministers and enabling another body that is not conflicted in that way to carry them out. All that I am asking for in amendment 257 is to remove the functions from NatureScot.
12:15Amendment 258 would give the licensing functions to local authorities, and amendment 259 would enable licensing to be carried out by the Scottish ministers.
All three of the amendments call for consultation with interested or affected persons. There is no doubt that there is a feeling out there that there was a lack of engagement from NatureScot until the minister held his summit, and that there has been none since then. It is a top-down body. It tells people what it believes, but it does not listen and it does not respond to local people.
When the topic was debated in the chamber, Rhoda Grant rightly mentioned John Divers, who is a Labour councillor in Elgin. He has been dealing with the issue for a long time in the city that he has represented for many years. He is someone whose great experience should be used by bodies such as NatureScot to learn about the problems in those communities and how to respond to them.
NatureScot should be speaking to Elgin community council. It was not invited to the minister’s summit and has planned its own summit for next year. The organisation is spending a significant amount of the Elgin common good fund’s money to deter gulls in the area, because it is not getting the action that it requires from NatureScot.
I would love NatureScot to listen more to the Nairn business improvement district and to the Inverness business improvement district. I know that they were invited to the minister’s summit, but Lucy Harding and Lorraine McBride know more about NatureScot’s licensing and operations than anyone else I have met. They have been through the problem year after year after year. They proposed sensible solutions to licensing that were dismissed by NatureScot at the summit.
In the end, what came out of the summit was a recommendation that—I will not do the actions again—people should wave their arms when walking down the high streets to deter the birds or draw googly eyes on pizza boxes. Those are the recommendations that NatureScot is making, rather than listening to people who are on the front line dealing with the issue day in, day out, month after month, year after year, who have the expertise.
Another person that I would urge NatureScot to listen to is Bruce Robertson. I know that he wrote to the minister and received a response recently. Like others, he has a wealth of knowledge and experience that is not being utilised by NatureScot, because it is a body that thinks that it is untouchable, that what it believes is gospel and that no one else’s views count.
I urge the minister to at least accept that the consultation element of my suite of amendments is necessary, because NatureScot is not engaging widely enough.
I will move on to amendments 260 and 261. Amendment 260 would require the Scottish Government to conduct an analysis of the spend by local authorities on gull management and deterrence. Why have I lodged the amendment? The big flagship announcement from the minister’s gull summit was that £100,000 would be committed to local authorities to deal with gulls. That is a drop in the ocean, and we need to know what funding is required. I know that my local authority, Moray Council, has spent around £100,000 in recent years. That is one of 32 local authorities. I know that Aberdeenshire Council has spent a huge amount of money on the problem, and I know that Dumfries and Galloway Council, in the convener’s part of the world, has spent a huge amount of money on it, too.
However, we do not know the total spend. Some of the spend has been pieced together through freedom of information requests, and some of it is set out in committee reports. Surely, if the minister got advice from his officials to go up to Inverness and announce £100,000 to be spent across the local authorities in Scotland, that figure came from somewhere. Was that based on how much councils are currently spending or projected to spend, or was it just plucked out of mid-air so that the minister could get some positive press coverage out of his visit to Inverness and the summit? We have no idea how that quantum of money was reached and how it will be spent. We still do not know whether that will be sufficient. Based on the limited information that we have in the public domain, we know that it will not be sufficient to be spread across 32 local authorities.
The most surprising thing about amendment 261 is that it was supported by RSPB Scotland. I noticed in its briefing that it was the one amendment in my suite of amendments that the RSPB supports—it gave it a green rating. As a former member of the RSPB, I think that it has lost a bit of its appeal for me. I no longer pay my membership—but not for those reasons. It has been against a lot of what I have said about gulls. It takes a very different view from me, and I respect that. However, even the RSPB agrees that we need an annual survey of gull numbers in Scotland.
Time and time again, this minister and others will come to the chamber to say that gulls are a protected species because their numbers are reducing. They may be reducing in coastal areas, which is their natural habitat, but they are increasing in our urban communities. The minister and his officials do not have the information that they require to make the case that licences should not be approved in those areas, because the numbers are going down. I and others believe that the numbers in urban areas are going up. If even the RSPB can support amendment 261, I hope that the minister can, too.
I take this issue very seriously, because it affects many of my constituents. I will not reiterate the many horrifying cases of people being badly injured by gulls, but the situation will only get worse unless we have proper licensing, which we are not getting from NatureScot. Let us support the amendments that remove the licensing functions from NatureScot. Let us give those to a body that is not conflicted in the way NatureScot is. Let us ensure that we know how much local authorities are spending on actions to deter and control gull numbers. Let us have an annual survey of the numbers in urban and coastal communities, so that we can make informed decisions going forward.
I move amendment 257.