Hansard

Welcome back. Our next agenda item is consideration of three petitions. I refer members to paper 3, which provides some background information on each petition, each of which we have considered before as a committee. The first petition that we will consider is PE1750, which was lodged by Alex Hogg of the Scottish Gamekeepers Association in August 2019. It calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to introduce independent monitoring of satellite tags fitted to raptor species in order to assist the police and courts in potential wildlife crime cases and to provide data transparency. On 15 March, we agreed to keep the petition open and to write to NatureScot and Police Scotland for views on the implementation of the new data-sharing protocols in the first year and on the robustness of the data that is being gathered. We also agreed to write to the Scottish Government to ask for its views. All three have replied. I also note that we have received a late submission from the Scottish Gamekeepers Association. I invite the views of committee members on how we should take the petition forward, and I refer you to paragraph 11 of the meeting papers.