Chamber and committees

Have you done any work to look at the IFCA model in England? A lot of people seem to point to it as a really valuable, useful model.

Is that not a slippery slope? Open Seas won, and the case was about asking the Government to uphold the obligations that are in the legislation on our seas. Surely that should have been accepted and responded to in a positive and constructive way, rather than being appealed.

Thank you, convener—I have a number of questions in that area. We heard from the Scottish Agricultural Organisation Society that,

“Cuts to the Agricultural Transformation Fund ... and Agricultural Reform Programme ... have reduced the scope of Government to provide either capital or resource funding to help the farming sector to prepare for change and or derisk trialling new ventures and initiatives.”

I would be interested to hear from you, cabinet secretary, whether you believe that that is the case and what you are going to be doing in the upcoming budget round to encourage, rather than constrain, innovation.

It is great to hear that there has been such a tremendous uptake of the agricultural transformation fund, for example, and I hear your point about the ability to move funding from one budget line to another to cover those applications. I also hear your point about not knowing what your quantum is for next year’s budget. However, will you take the enthusiasm from the farmers and land managers who are applying for that funding and put that into your thinking for the upcoming budgets?

The level of detail in the budget lines has also been brought to the committee’s attention, in that there is not enough detail to allow for robust analysis. For example, RSPB Scotland stated that

“due to a lack of transparency it is difficult to judge what cuts to the Agriculture Transformation Fund and Agricultural Reform Programme will realistically mean, as there is simply not enough information on what exactly such budget lines are spent on. This is important information for external stakeholders who are looking for detail on what spending changes in these areas could mean for activities such as soil testing, slurry storage and carbon audits.”

You talked about carbon audits, cabinet secretary. Going beyond that, could we get a bit more detail? I think that we need level 4 data, and we need a bit more detail to be in the public domain in a user-friendly format.

Yes, indeed. How do we un-bury that? How do we unearth it, bring it to the surface and ensure that that information is really clear for people?

Good afternoon, minister. Thank you for joining us.

I want to clear something up on reporting. The policy note states that there will be a requirement for an annual implementation report on the old Scottish rural development programme schemes only in 2025 and that, thereafter, any reporting will be wrapped up in the rural support plan provisions that are set in the legislation.

My understanding is that we will not have a rural support plan until the autumn or winter of 2025, and that reporting on that will be required at the end of each five-year period. That means that we will not have that reporting until at least 2030. Is there no requirement for reporting on any scheme that will continue in the interim, such as LFASS or the agri-environment climate scheme? If so, why is that? Should there not be on-going reporting?

Thanks for that, but the reporting is connected to the rural support plan and we will not get that until the autumn or winter of 2025. The requirement is for reporting at the end of each five-year plan period. Does that not mean that we will have all the schemes but we will not see regular reporting?

I was about to ask whether we could be reassured that there was a budget line for the plan.

I appreciated Christine Grahame’s line of questioning, which I found very useful.

At the round table with stakeholders, which was very useful, the stakeholders spoke about the importance of investment in and resourcing of regional fisheries governance and co-management structures. We heard from a number of people, so I will use a couple of examples to give a flavour of that.

We heard from Alastair Hamilton, who is a representative of the regional inshore fisheries groups network. He said:

“More local control would get community buy-in and increase compliance, because what is happening would be known, as opposed to what we have at the moment with the remote service.”

Dr Cook said:

“In America, they ensure that the evidence on which the management is predicated is shared so that, instead of presenting people with an assessment of scientific evidence and saying, ‘We’re going to do this—what do you think?’, they go in at a lower level where the industry itself is involved in preparing the evidence on which the management decisions are made. As a result, they get much more buy-in to the whole process.”—[Official Report, Rural Affairs and Islands Committee, 4 September 2024; c 37, 50.]

I would be interested to hear what work is being done by the Scottish Government to review the existing regional networks, including by looking at co-management models in other jurisdictions to inform potential reform of regional fisheries management in Scotland. I add that we also heard about the fisheries management and conservation group and the sub-groups, and about the degree of frustration with the lack of movement in some of those sub-groups.

I am asking about co-management models and whether there is scope to increase investment and provide more local powers to support fisheries co-management. We have also been made aware of the models—I think that they are called inshore fisheries and conservation authorities—in England, which are based out of local authorities and have more of a focus on local control.