Chamber and committees

As you will be aware, one of the tensions that exist around all legislation is that people want to know about the accompanying guidance before there is legislation to enable such guidance to exist; you cannot produce such guidance until the legislation is produced.

Nonetheless, there is a lot of legitimate interest in what the guidance might look like. Can you say any more about what you will be doing to try to give stakeholders a flavour of what shape the guidance is likely to take as the bill progresses, and how that will be managed?

I want to come at the final couple of questions from a different angle. Are you, in the SWOT analysis and the preparations that you are making as officials, scenario planning the threats that might be associated with divergence being frustrated in any way by the legislation that we are referring to? For instance, Jonnie Hall of the NFUS has told the Parliament:

“with the Subsidy Control Bill coming into place as well as the internal market act, I am convinced that it will not be long before certain agricultural producers in England who are more aligned to the type of agriculture that we have in Scotland—people in Northumberland and Cumbria, down the Pennines and in the west country ... —will see the support payment and the way in which Scottish Government is underpinning and deriving new outcomes from Scottish agriculture as being more advantageous than what they are being given from DEFRA.” —[Official Report, Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee, 16 December 2021; c 10.]

Do you have to plan around the possibility that these pieces of legislation might be used to frustrate the Scottish Government’s intentions in these areas?

My question is also about something that you will be familiar with and that we wrestle with regarding legislation in general. How much should a code of conduct be part of the bill and how much should be left to secondary legislation or for action by ministers? Did you consider that balance, and how did you decide what should appear in the bill?

You said that you cannot have a list of questions that is 40 pages long. I appreciate that, but did you consider other things and decide not to put them in that list? I am sure that you considered the issue of microchipping.

I take it that we are still in the realms of question 11. I did not want to give anything away by giving it a number.

What is your view on concerns raised by the minister that a registration scheme could provide false assurance to potential buyers? Do you refute that view, or do you share it?

I want to look briefly at the history of the bill.

I am sure that you were, Ms Grahame.

In a previous version of the bill, it was a requirement that there would be a registration scheme. Under the current version, it will be at the discretion of ministers. Will you explain the consideration that went into that? Are the powers in the bill necessary?

Legitimate though that question is, I cannot see how the minister can be responsible for an email going into someone else’s spam folder.

Good morning, Ms Grahame. Will you say a wee bit about why you chose to put the code of practice in the bill rather than use some other mechanism, such as giving ministers the power to regulate in the area?