Chamber and committees

Absolutely. I go back to what we set out in our vision for agriculture, in which we focus on food production. It is about lowering emissions to their lowest possible level and doing what we can to enhance nature. I think that the three issues are intertwined.

Given all the challenges that we now have, food security has jumped right up the agenda. That is why we undertook the work with the task force and why we have committed to maintaining direct payments. We know that food production is vital. Ultimately, the £51 million is to support the transition to net zero and to support people going along that journey. Many farmers and crofters are already undertaking the types of practices that we want to see. We want to ensure that everybody comes along on the journey, which is where the work of the ARIOB has been really important. It is helping to shape incentives that will, we hope, work for industry; developing claims processes that are simple and straightforward for people; and ensuring that we offer the correct incentives. That development work has been really important.

I cannot give an answer on the direction that the UK Government is taking or where its policy is heading at the moment. I have still to meet with my UK Government counterpart to discuss the issues that we have talked about today in more detail. We have concerns about future funding, and I know that the committee has taken evidence in relation to the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, and the impacts of the Subsidy Control Act 2022. We still have concerns about that, but I cannot give a categorical answer at the moment.

I think that the director wants to come in.

The consultation on the agriculture bill is important in ensuring that we have future flexibility. We know that there will be a lot of learning as we go, so we need that flexibility and that ability to adapt to all the changes in technology and innovation that there could be within that time. We also need to recognise the various crises that we have faced—no doubt, there will be more in the future, as well as more challenges, so it is about ensuring that we have the flexibility to deal with those and adapt.

Yes, it is an iterative process, so we will need the ARIOB and that co-development process as we continue.

I come back to what I said in response to Jim Fairlie’s questions on food policy and food production: it is a key priority. That is why we identified it as one of the key pillars of support going forward and why we committed to maintaining direct payments.

I know that there is that call for more clarity, and, of course, we are developing that policy and working with industry because, ultimately, we want to deliver a policy that will work for people.

We are consulting on the bill right now, and it is vital that we get the feedback before we develop it further, because we want to make sure that the proposals that we have set out for a future framework in relation to modernising agricultural tenancies and a number of measures within that are the correct ones and that we are using the correct enabling powers to address some of the challenges that we have. We are looking to add some powers through the bill that are not open to us at the moment in relation to the action that we can take.

We want as many people as possible to take part in that consultation, because it is vital that we get that feedback and that we introduce a bill to Parliament that will work and deliver on everything that we need it to deliver on.

It is an enabling bill that will introduce those powers. We have to have a consultation, because we need to get that feedback in the development stage. Again, that is where the work with the ARIOB has been really important. I talked about some of the initiatives that we have introduced as part of the national test programme. We are shaping and delivering schemes and systems that we know will work, based on that, and we are trying to deliver either the incentives or the mechanisms to make it as simple and as easy as possible for farmers to take part and get on board.

We have tried to provide as much clarity as we can at this time. We have committed to maintaining direct payments. We have talked about the conditionality, and there will be more detail on that in due course. I engage with the industry regularly and I take that feedback, but I would come back to the point that it is really important that we get that feedback on the bill before we introduce it.

It has only been a few months since the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill was passed, so we are still in the early stages of developing the plan. We will look to produce a draft plan on the timescales that are set out in the legislation.

Again, we will probably look to develop that. From our initial discussions during the committee’s scrutiny of the bill that became the 2022 act, I know that there are a lot of outcomes, whether in relation to food poverty or health, that we can look to address in the plans. The way in which we will monitor our delivery against some of those outcomes will, I think, be included in the plans. Given the range of evidence that the committee heard and received, you will know just how many areas food policy touches. It is important that the good food nation plans bring all that together in a coherent way and ensure that we deliver those outcomes. How we monitor that will be really important, and there will be more detail on that in the plans.

Do you mean in relation to the recommendations about the food security and supply task force and the food security unit?

George Burgess can give a bit more information on that.