Chamber and committees

I call Pam Gosal, who joins us online.

I want to bring in Morag Ferguson to see what is going on on brownfield sites in her part of Scotland.

Claire Daly, did you indicate that you wanted to come in?

Thanks very much. I will bring in Miles Briggs with a couple of questions.

Does the committee otherwise agree that we do not wish to make any recommendation on the amendment order?

Members indicated agreement.

Can I just come in? You are saying that on policy 1 there is uncertainty about how to respond to the nature requirements. Why is that so important? I think that people understand the climate emergency, but what is going on in nature that makes it so important and puts it at a high level and makes it the first thing that we come to when we read NPF4?

Thanks for your useful points. The challenge is that where the wind blows in Scotland there is a lot of peat.

I will bring in Gordon MacDonald with a couple of questions.

I would like to comment on Colin Smyth’s two amendments in this group. Amendment 109 would place a duty on ministers to produce

“Indicators and targets ... for measuring progress”

against the bill’s objectives. Measuring progress is crucial, which is why I am in conversation with the Scottish Government about requiring the rural support plan to set out, among other things, how the monitoring and evaluation of support will be implemented. I believe that that is a better solution than putting targets into legislation.

The Government has made strong calls for the ability to adjust trajectories and alter plans and policies, given the fast-changing nature of the climate and nature emergencies and the volatile global food system. Colin Smyth’s amendment 150 would require the Scottish Government to “publish a statement” with detail on the distributional impact of each support scheme. I fully support the intention to encourage the Scottish Government to consider social justice and a just transition when it is designing farm support schemes, which is why I have lodged amendments on redistribution and the front loading of payments.

However, amendment 150 would not require ministers to enact the redistribution. It requires them to only publish a statement about the redistribution of support schemes after the fact. In order to ensure that schemes are designed to achieve policy objectives, including thriving rural communities and a just transition to sustainable and regenerative agriculture, I am exploring an amendment for stage 3 that could require an external body to conduct an assessment of the public value that the support schemes would deliver. I believe that it would be preferable for the assessment to be done by an external body rather than by the Scottish Government. Looking at agricultural support with fresh eyes may produce a more objective assessment.

Supporting small producers will support the bill’s four objectives. However, many small producers who are doing great work do not receive any support. That is particularly true of small-scale horticulturalists—market gardeners. The amendment should open the door to the development of a dedicated support scheme for them. That would help to ensure that Scottish farming involves more greenhouses and less greenhouse gas. I would appreciate reassurance from the cabinet secretary that the Government will explore the creation of a support scheme for small-scale growers.

Finally, in order to support a diverse sector, the Scottish Government should remove the requirement that recipients of support in payment regions 2 and 3 must maintain a certain density of livestock. That excludes many farmers, crofters and growers who do not stock livestock, and it locks others into maintaining their herd at a certain level when they might prefer to diversify into other forms of farming. That condition runs counter to Scotland’s climate objectives, and to its nature objectives in many cases, so it should not be part of future support.

I will turn to other amendments in this group. The cabinet secretary’s amendment 5 adds another matter to be considered by the rural support plan:

“the desirability of the agricultural sector operating with fair work principles.”

As I noted previously, fair work is critically important and is a key concern for the Scottish Greens, so I am grateful to the cabinet secretary for taking on board my concerns and lodging the amendment. I will also continue discussions with the cabinet secretary about how to effectively safeguard seasonal farm workers from unfair dismissals, unfair pay and unsafe accommodation.

On Rhoda Grant’s amendment 43 and Brian Whittle’s amendment 44, I fully support the principle of joining up agricultural policy with food systems policy in the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Act 2022 and associated plans. I heard the cabinet secretary’s assurance that that is unnecessary because the 2022 act already requires that, but, in that case, I do not see the harm in explicitly stating that in the legislation that we are considering today, as a reminder to policy makers and officials in the agriculture directorate.

I support Emma Harper’s amendment 47, which highlights the need for sustainable food systems and supply chains in delivering food security. Those factors are essential ingredients of true food security.

I also support Colin Smyth’s amendment 49, which would require ministers to consult with relevant bodies, including the Climate Change Committee and NatureScot, when developing the rural support plan. I heard the cabinet secretary’s comments on that and on the request to work together.

My amendment 23 would add an agricultural policy objective to

“enable generational renewal through support for new entrants, young farmers and crofters.”

Currently, almost zero support is available to help people who are starting out in the sector. With the average age of farmers in Scotland now over 65, it is imperative that we attract and support new entrants into those critical jobs on the land if we are to achieve the other objectives in the bill, such as

“the production of high-quality food, ... on-farm nature restoration,”

climate action and the thriving of rural communities.

The European Union’s common agricultural policy includes the objective “to support generational renewal” and, in most countries in Europe, new entrant support is considerably higher—for example, in France, it includes €100,000 grants over the first four years of business, priority when purchasing land and income support while the business is set up.

We are working with more limited resources, but adding the objective around the importance of new entrants would ensure that they are given due consideration in the rural support plan. This is a probing amendment, and I will be interested in hearing what the Scottish Government thinks about how that important policy objective could best be achieved.

My amendments 24 and 25 would strengthen the bill’s section 1(c) objective on climate and nature. Currently, that objective unhelpfully restricts the focus of climate and nature considerations in agricultural policy to only what can be achieved “on-farm”. However, as Stop Climate Chaos Scotland wrote,

“many of the measures likely to be implemented under this Bill, will have implications ... for nature, for emissions, and for adaptation that do not arise ‘on-farm’ but elsewhere.”

For example, why should agricultural policy facilitate the restoration of on-farm curlew habitats but not off-farm rivers that are being polluted by agricultural run-off, adding pressure on our endangered wild salmon?

If removing the on-farm restriction completely is a step too far, my amendment 25 is a compromise. It simply adds “between-farm” as another sphere to be considered. That recognises the importance of ecological connectivity between farms to encourage landscape-scale land management, which the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee report highlighted as missing from the bill. It would also align with the aims of the recently extended regional land use partnerships to maximise the contribution that our land can make to addressing the twin climate and biodiversity crises.

I support Colin Smyth’s amendments 99 and 100, which would also have the effect of removing the blinders of the on-farm restriction. I also support his amendments 104 and 105, which provide a way of assessing whether the climate and nature objectives are being met.

I support the principle of Colin Smyth’s amendment 92 of assuring that

“support is in the public interest.”

However, the purpose clause that the amendment would add considers only agricultural support, while the bill deals with wider support for rural communities, so I cannot support the amendment as drafted.

Colin Smyth’s amendment 95 and Beatrice Wishart’s amendment 96 would take the focus off food production by widening out the section 1(b) objective to include other agricultural production as well. I do not support that. Other agricultural production, such as animal feed, biomass and ingredients for whisky and beer, will likely continue to receive public funding.

However, the point of the objectives section is to focus our minds on what the aims of agricultural policy and support should be—on what will provide the most public good. For me, it is clear that a key public good is food for people here, in Scotland, and I believe that that should be supported more than commodities to be traded in an increasingly uncertain and exploitative global market.

For similar reasons, I do not support Rhoda Grant’s amendment 20 to add the phrase “food security”. That phrase is often used as a justification for unfair trade deals and prioritising imports over local home-grown food from our own farmers. I would support it if the term used was “food sovereignty”.

I turn to Rachael Hamilton’s amendment 94, to remove the aim of “high-quality” food production. I appreciated her clarification as to why she wished to remove those words, and there is something interesting there regarding the need for definition, but I cannot support amendment 94. “High-quality” can mean food produced to higher environmental and animal-welfare standards or food that is fresher because it is locally produced. Given that Scotland is not a huge country, we cannot compete on the quantity of food produced, but we can aim for quality.