Hansard

Maybe the minister has accepted the argument. We are making progress at last.

I urge members to vote in favour of amendment 60A—I think that that is the amendment that we will come to first—which simply urges, asks and requests the Government to do a survey of the population of urban and coastal gulls, because we know that, at the moment, NatureScot is taking decisions and determining licence applications without the data and information. If amendment 60A is not successful, amendment 60 will not be worth the paper it is written on. I urge members to vote it down so that we can go back to the stage 2 amendment that was passed by the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee.

I turn to my other amendments in the group, starting with amendment 148 on the gull management fund. The minister said that there is no need to assess how much local authorities are spending on gull management, but I think that there is a big need, because taxpayers’ money is being spent on protecting buildings and people from the menace of gulls.

If local councils across Scotland are going to hike up council tax—as is very likely, because of the budget settlement that has been proposed by the SNP; indeed, the SNP representative for finance on the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has said that it is a very bad budget for local government—and if local councils are going to be spending the increased money that they get from local residents on projects to protect buildings, individuals and communities from gulls, we should know how much that is. In my local authority area, Moray Council, it is tens of thousands of pounds. We should know how much is being spent in Perth and Kinross—the minister’s local authority area—and all around Scotland, up to the islands and down to the Borders. We need that important information.

It is not just local authorities that are affected. I have done a lot of work with the business improvement districts in Inverness and Nairn, and Lucy Harding and Lorraine McBride have explained how much money they have to spend week after week, month after month and year after year on tackling the menace of gulls. That money is a BID levy that businesses pay. It should be used to promote the local economy and the businesses in those BID areas, yet a lot of it has be spent on measures to protect properties and people from gulls. Therefore, amendment 148 is important.

The minister mentioned the £100,000 funding that the Scottish Government proposed in October at its gulls summit in Inverness, but that is a drop in the ocean compared with what individuals, businesses, BIDs and councils currently spend on gulls. We need to know how much money is being spent in total and where that money could and should be coming from.

Amendments 149, 150 and 151 are all alternative amendments, by which I mean that I am offering three different alternatives for bodies to consider licences to control gulls. That could either be Scottish Government ministers, local authorities or a totally different body that Scottish ministers come up with. Whichever the Parliament chooses will be better than the status quo.

The minister says that he does not trust NatureScot to make those decisions. I absolutely do not, either. It has been a complete and utter failure. Time after time, NatureScot has come up with ludicrous reasons for refusing licences. I use the word “ludicrous”, in particular, because that is the minister’s assessment—the minister has said on the record that NatureScot’s determination of some licences has been “ludicrous”.

If the Scottish Government, including the minister in charge—who, as he said, has the ability to revoke that power—thinks that NatureScot is coming up with ludicrous decisions, it should be stripped of that power. It is as clear as day that there is a conflict of interest when NatureScot is, on the one hand, in charge of conserving bird numbers and, on the other hand, the authority that determines whether or not someone gets a licence to control the bird numbers.

I will not go through all the issues that we have previously articulated in the chamber and at committee, but when an organisation is telling people to hire a cherry picker to go up on a roof in order to take a picture of a nest where seagulls have laid their eggs, and to take a photograph with that day’s newspaper to confirm that that is when the nest and the eggs were there, that is ludicrous. When, at a summit hosted at its headquarters, NatureScot is advising people to walk down the street waving their arms—I will not do the actions; I will keep my hands in—or to draw googly eyes on pizza boxes to deter the gulls, that body no longer deserves trust and respect or to enforce and apply those licences.

I know that time is moving on, but I believe that it is important that NatureScot is finally stripped of its power to issue the licences. It is coming up with ludicrous solutions to an important issue, and it does not deserve that power. If we agree to any of amendments 149 to 151, it will be stripped of that power and others will be encouraged to do a far better job.

I move amendment 60A.