Seòmar agus comataidhean

Okay—sorry about that, Christine. I was just being clear.

There has not been a consultation to allow stakeholders to give their views. The Government is leaving it to secondary legislation, which is being based on feedback from the ARIOB to which we are not party. It is important that people other than those in the NFUS are able to have a say in how the Government delivers the £65 million.

We also do not know whether the payments will continue to total £65.5 million in the 2025-26 budget. There needs to be consideration of whether the Scottish Government will continue with LFASS payments beyond 2030, because the EU has discontinued them and moved on to something entirely different, and the SNP Government’s policy is to align with Europe. The committee would like to know what the future holds, because it is not long until 2030. The minister is asking us to ensure that the payments continue, but how are we to know what farmers in general think about the current payments for active farmers?

For example, the LFASS rules say that active farmers would usually own stock, but we know that stock levels, including livestock, are contracting across Scotland, which is a concern. There are young people who want to get into farming, and there is a concern that those who are not necessarily actively farming livestock are unable to access LFASS. We should be supporting young people who are coming through the system to ensure that farming in Scotland has a successful and prosperous future.

I am sorry, minister, but that is incredibly rude.

No, it is rude.

The problem is that there are further questions about the Bew review moneys.

I note that the language in table 1 on page 1 of the letter implies that ring-fenced funds and Bew review moneys are two separate matters. However, the phrasing in the rest of the letter implies that both of those are merged into the total agri budget. It remains the case that the £46 million has been removed. That letter was even more confusing than I had thought the whole scenario was originally, which is a shame.

You did not answer my question about impact. Normally, in any scenario where policy is made, a business and regulatory impact assessment is undertaken on what happens on the ground, at the grass roots and in supply chains. Have you undertaken any assessment of the impact that your current payment strategy and budget prioritisation is having on rural communities?

Yes.

So you are saying that the two things are not connected. What about the soil testing scheme, for example, which had very low uptake six months ago? Has that improved? Uptake was very low when we were scrutinising the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill.

I just want to push this. Are you saying that the greening schemes—shall I call them that?—and other schemes that will possibly become conditional on receiving future payments are all being taken up and that the funding allocated to them has been used?

Good morning, cabinet secretary. Did you watch the round table that we had on fisheries a couple of weeks ago?

That is really not the picture that was painted. Professor Michel Kaiser, from the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland, said that, in the past,

“everybody would have liked to have worked in the marine lab in Aberdeen”,

but that

“To be ... frank, it is not somewhere that you would want to work these days, because, over three decades, it has been systematically hollowed out to a shell of what it was formerly.”—[Official Report, Rural Affairs and Islands Committee, 4 September 2024; c 6.]

Dr Robin Cook said that

“It is of real concern that we no longer have a marine institute in Scotland with the capacity to deliver for the future.”—[Official Report, Rural Affairs and Islands Committee, 4 September 2024; c 10.]

Those are just a couple of the comments, but, as you are well aware, cabinet secretary, the general trend is that, since 2009, the number of publications that have been produced in Scotland has declined dramatically compared with the output in fisheries research from countries such as Ireland, Denmark and France and, indeed, from the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science in the rest of the United Kingdom. The budget has also decreased. As Dr Robin Cook said, it will take a long time to get back to the position that we were in, pre-2009, when the science output was outstanding.

What is your response to that? What will the Scottish Government do to rectify the situation?

I want to follow up on the letter, cabinet secretary. You argued that the Bew funding was part of overall agricultural funding, which meant that it was brought in line with the budget and then applied to the ring-fenced funding. I know that we have been through this multiple times, with regard to £61 million being part of a saving. However, you also said that you are spending more. Do you mean the totals—£609.7 million, £620.7 million and a further £620.7 million—over the years?