Meeting of the Parliament 27 January 2026 [Draft]
I will speak to amendment 22, in the name of Beatrice Wishart, and amendment 23, in the name of Lorna Slater. I listened to members’ views at stage 2, and I am pleased that we have been able to work together to make these changes to our public sector biodiversity duty and the purpose of the targets. I am grateful to Beatrice Wishart and Lorna Slater for their constructive engagement on those matters. For that reason, I am happy to support amendments 22 and 23 as a means of strengthening the provisions in the bill.
15:00Amendment 22 seeks to place an obligation on our public bodies to take into account the biodiversity targets when they are fulfilling their public sector biodiversity duty. I again make it clear that it is the responsibility of the Scottish ministers to ensure that the targets are met. Amendment 23 seeks to make it clear that a purpose of the targets must be to provide a means of supporting and measuring progress on implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity. For those reasons, I encourage members to support amendments 22 and 23.
On amendments 24 to 26, 46, 47 and 63 to 66, proposed new section 2C of the Nature Conservation (Scotland) Act 2004 sets out three target topics under which the Scottish ministers must set statutory targets. Those topics have been recommended by our expert programme advisory group on the basis of careful scientific consideration, which I believe is of the utmost importance on such matters.
I again reassure members that, when we set the biodiversity targets by regulations, they will be specific, measurable targets. The appropriate place for that level of detail is in secondary legislation that is properly informed by expert scientific advice.
I also point out that, if any of the proposals for additional target topics or targets were to be included in the bill, not only would that mean deviating from the science; careful consideration would need to be given to how they fitted in with the existing proposed suite of targets and how they could be appropriately measured. That would take a significant period of time, which would mean that ministers would be delayed in their ability to set targets, given the requirement in proposed new section 2C(2)(a) of the 2004 act, under which ministers must set at least one target in respect of each topic. That is not a position that we want to be in, and I know that stakeholders are rightly concerned about that. Given that we are in a nature emergency, none of us wants there to be any delays in taking forward this important work.
John Mason’s amendments 24 to 26 deal with a very specific matter in relation to the management of feral species—specifically, St Kilda sheep. I understand Mr Mason’s concerns about that matter, and I assure him that the Scottish Government is taking the issue very seriously. I understand that Mr Fairlie, in his capacity as agriculture minister, has been engaging directly on the matter. It is not appropriate for Scotland-wide biodiversity targets to be used as a vehicle for tackling such a specific matter; that is not the way to deal with the issue. The National Trust for Scotland, which is the owner of St Kilda, is undertaking a full review of concerns that there is suffering among the sheep on St Kilda. The NTS is hoping to inspect the sheep in the next few weeks as part of that review.