Chamber and committees

As I outlined, we have a live survey that is looking at attitudes towards compliance and includes questions about penalties. The survey will be live until the end of the month. I will be able to provide further information after that.

I cannot project that at the moment. Some of the technology is in its early stages and we have not yet seen a wider roll-out. It is also still important to have marine protection vessels and research vessels, so there will still be a cost.

Procurement in that area—the types of vessels and so on—offers us new opportunities. I cannot say that there will be a saving, but we certainly want to utilise the opportunities that exist.

As I say, we will have that call for evidence potentially towards the end of this year, but we are very much working with stakeholders on that. As the timescales become a bit more definitive, I would be happy to provide you with that information.

On the realigning of budgets to other areas, have you examples of concerns that relate to the rural portfolio? I want to make it clear that the nature restoration funding is not funded by my portfolio.

Absolutely. First, I apologise to the committee. Last night I sent a letter to you that I hope sets out some information on that, which we had also provided earlier in the year and at previous sessions. I apologise for the lateness of that letter, but I wanted to set out exactly where we are in relation to that funding.

The committee will no doubt be aware—because we have discussed it at some length previously—of the £61 million in savings that had been offered in the course of the two previous financial years. Those were largely drawn from demand-led funds that had not been spent. I would say that, throughout the budget process, our priority has been to protect our investment in rural and island communities and in the payments that we make to farmers. Therefore there were no cuts from funds in that sense. I reiterate that they were largely from demand-led, unspent funds that were then offered as savings to meet the general pressures that every directorate was asked to meet, given the overall budget pressures that we faced in the course of previous financial years.

Again, it is not possible for me to say what savings will look like at any point in the future. We do not know what the budget will look like next year, so I cannot make that assessment.

Yes, it is.

First, if the committee has more follow-up questions to clarify the issue, I am more than happy to address them. The savings that were offered, which were outlined in the two emergency spending reviews that we have had, were from the ring-fenced element of the budget, which is why the sums will have to be returned to the portfolio—£15 million was returned this year and, of course, the remaining £46 million is still subject to discussions on future budget allocations that we will have with the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government.

We have tried for a number of years to address future funding allocations with the UK Government. The interministerial group with our Welsh and Northern Irish counterparts has met for the first time in about a year, and we have had initial discussions on the issue. We see that group as an important opportunity to reset our relationship with the UK Government on future allocations.

There are various asks about what the overall funding settlement for the Scottish Government should be. I am not going to get into any detail of the negotiations that I hope to have with the UK Government, but we have asked all along—and were promised from the start, since we left the EU—that funds would be fully replaced. That has not happened. We need multiyear allocations that allow us to plan, much in the same way as we previously did under the CAP. There are some basic points of principle that we would like to be delivered.

If we were to look back over the past few years, we would see that the overall budget that we had in 2022-23 was £1.15 billion, and the ring-fenced element of that in 2022-23 was £609 million. An element of savings was offered at that stage, which came from some unspent funds in the overall ring-fenced element, and the situation was the same in the following year, although the budget was slightly different. The overall quantum of budget that we had then was £1.17 billion, and the quantum of ring-fenced funding that we had in that was £620 million.

Overall within that—

It can be, yes.