Chamber and committees

You mentioned that you do not want to talk about trade wars, and you were critical of ministers in Ireland for using such language. However, can you understand why they and others might be fearful about that very situation, if the UK is prepared to step away from what is an international agreement in the form of the Northern Ireland protocol?

Good morning, secretary of state. When it comes to the inclusion of agriculture and fisheries in the UK’s new subsidy framework, as we have heard already, NFU Scotland has told some committees of this Parliament that the proposed measures risk reducing the agency of the Scottish Parliament to make its own policy on agriculture in some areas. The NFUS is not among the usual suspects that would make such a point. Do you think that the NFUS is just mistaken?

Do you agree that some of the language that the UK Government has used on all these issues has been rather less mild and proportionate than the language that you have used today? We have a Prime Minister who has described the existence of devolution as “a disaster”. Do you understand why some people might have concerns about power grabs being under way?

My next point is related to that, and I am going to shamelessly quote another example from my constituency because, like you, I represent a constituency that has a fishing industry. This case involves consignments that are probably much smaller than the ones that I was thinking of before, and the use of the postal service to export smoked salmon to niche markets. Posting anything to the European Union is significantly more difficult than it used to be. Uig Lodge in my constituency has raised with me the difficulties that led it in November to stop all exports to the EU because of the sheer complexity, cost and delay that now exist in getting its product to that market. Is the UK Government going to make it any simpler to get a parcel to the European Union?

Like Karen Adam’s amendments, my amendments seek to respond to a call from the committee for more scrutiny in specific areas. The bill, as introduced, contains a number of regulation-making powers, among which are powers for ministers to specify functions or descriptions of functions for Scottish ministers and relevant authorities, to specify additional authorities as relevant and to specify a timeframe within which a relevant authority must produce a good food nation plan. The bill also provides that any regulations that are made using those powers will be subject to the negative procedure in the Scottish Parliament. However, the committee has agreed that that offers insufficient opportunity to scrutinise the relevant secondary legislation.

In our stage 1 report, the committee requested that the first exercise of the power conferred by section 4 to specify functions for the Scottish ministers and any exercise of the power conferred by section 7(2)(c) to make a public authority a relevant authority should be subject to greater levels of parliamentary scrutiny. My amendments 60 and 68 provide for that extra scrutiny. They would also ensure that, if the Scottish ministers wished to make regulations making a public body a relevant authority that would be required to produce a good food nation plan, those regulations would be subject to the affirmative procedure.

I believe that to be the correct level of scrutiny for those regulations, and my amendments respond to the committee’s view on the issue. I urge the committee to support the amendments in my name.

Can you say any more about how many crofters have been helped through that route or through other routes, such as the croft house grant scheme? Is that on the increase?

I have a brief question on that point. Clearly, there is much more still to be done, cabinet secretary. However, given the work that you have described and the fact that broadband, or rather the internet, is reserved, will you give an indication of roughly the balance of support that has come from the UK and Scottish Governments towards achieving those things?

The cabinet secretary and the deputy convener have touched on the strategic objective of reducing fuel poverty and what the Scottish Government is doing around that. How does the work that the Scottish Government does on that relate to what is happening in the reserved sphere? It is difficult to talk about fuel poverty without talking about transmission charges. If we are talking about renewables as being part of the answer in the islands, it is difficult to overlook the fact that energy companies in Scotland have to pay £7.36 per megawatt hour to connect to the national grid, although projects in most other European countries pay virtually nothing.

Thank you.

You mentioned housing and the work that is happening in that area. A lot of money is going into social rented housing in the islands. What can the Government do to draw people together across different sectors to make that exercise work to the maximum? What more can be done to listen to the needs of business in all this? One of the themes that is coming through is that we need to plan such housing around the future needs of business and the future population, not just around the people who are on the housing waiting list just now. How do we work together across sectors to make sure that that kind of stuff happens?