Chamber and committees

Thanks for giving that detail.

You have cued me up nicely to go into a bit more detail.

Several stakeholders whom I am working with who have seen the rural support plan proposals say that they fall far short of previous commitments on transforming how farmers are supported. They are concerned that tier 2—my favourite topic—will not move beyond the greening status quo. To support more farmers to adopt sustainable regenerative agro-ecological approaches, tier 2 needs to have stronger conditions and more budget, at least within a couple of years.

I have a couple of questions on that. First, what work is the Scottish Government doing to explore how it can strengthen tier 2 over time to support more farmers on more farmland to implement more measures?

Okay. Maybe there is some misunderstanding. Earlier, you mentioned communication between Scottish Forestry and RSE during the passage of that bill. However, I understand from RSE that meetings are not being taken up, so could you encourage that to happen? If there has been a miscommunication and a misunderstanding, it would be great if there could be more communication between those organisations. I think that the RSE report has a lot of very good ideas for the future of Scottish forestry and how we can do it better, but we need that communication.

Can you say a bit more about how the FOI requests are managed? It is helpful that you have said that the issue is not necessarily the volume of requests but their complexity. Can you tell us how the processes are managed, or is it better for you to write to the committee on that?

Do you proactively keep the person who has made the FOI request informed of progress, or does the process disappear into the dark, with the result that people do not hear anything for a long time?

I have a number of questions on this topic, and then I will circle back to some of what my colleague Emma Harper brought up.

At the moment, we import a lot of timber into Scotland. I have been trying to get to the bottom of something that is a bit technical. We could be using more Scottish timber to build housing, for example. The engineering specifications would need to be for C16 timber, but current specifications are for C24 timber, which is European or Scandinavian-grown timber. Making that change could unlock an incredible amount of potential for the sector. We are already doing a great job of using timber-framed housing in Scotland, but that is not done south of the border, and that could be an incredible opportunity for forestry in Scotland. Somebody needs to push a bit further, to understand why that is not happening and why C16 timber is not being specified. I would appreciate it if you could do something about that.

I have a couple of questions. Cabinet secretary, you touched on the good food nation plan. Will you tell us a little bit about the Scottish food commission and how the process is going for that?

I have a follow-on question. I know that you said that you are not fully leading on the natural environment bill, but the programme for government states that the bill will

“provide powers to update environmental impact assessments and habitats legislation to support the delivery of our net zero and biodiversity goals.”

Do you foresee that those powers could be used to extend requirements for EIAs across all sectors, or is it the intention to streamline the EIA process or do something else?

The climate change plan has been delayed. I am interested in hearing how that will impact on the development of rural policy and, in particular, on ensuring that the forthcoming rural support plan and other aspects of agricultural reform align with the new five-year carbon budgets.

I have a couple more questions. Regardless of when the next climate change plan is published, section 35 of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 states that the climate change plan must set out ministers’ proposals and policies in relation to

“the reduction of Scottish whole farm greenhouse gas emissions”

through the use of many tools and approaches, including nutrient resource budgeting, organic farming and agro-ecology. Is the Scottish Government on track to set out such policies, and will there be sufficient money in tiers 2 through to 4 to support the majority of farmers to adopt those approaches?