Chamber and committees

Yes, I would be happy to. As I touched on in my response to Jim Fairlie’s question about business development support, the remainder of that budget is for the crofting agricultural grant scheme. We are also continuing with the croft house grants, which I believe fall under the crofting assistance budget line. I know how important those budgets are for some of the most rural parts of Scotland, particularly our island communities, and that is why we have made it a priority within the budget to maintain that support.

The crofting agricultural grant scheme is a demand-led project. We have about 900 applications to that every year, so, of course, ensuring that we are continuing that support going forward was critical. Alongside that, we have the funding for the Crofting Commission, which we have been able to maintain to a similar level as in the previous financial year. Again, maintaining that funding has been critical so that we see continued improvement. When it comes to the Crofting Commission and the work that it is enabling here and taking forward, that support in its entirety is vital for our island communities.

First, I completely understand your point about the importance of the rural land-use partnerships. You will be aware that we have a number already established across Scotland and have been looking at how the development of them has been going. That falls under a different line in the budget as it is presented and it falls under the land reform element of that as well. We provided funding of up to around £400,000 a year for the RLUPs themselves, so they are continuing on at the moment, but we, of course, want to carefully evaluate how they have been performing so far to determine how we take that work forward.

You have mentioned community-led local development and the funding that we have available for that. Again, I will provide the committee with the breakdown of the £15 million and where that has been allocated. Some of it has been allocated to community-led local development to ensure that we have a capital element of funding in there. That has funded vital work across the country and, of course, is the legacy to the LEADER scheme that we had previously. It is about development in our rural and island areas. The local action groups across Scotland are the delivery bodies for that.

In my constituency, we have the Angus Rural Partnership. It has become a charity to enable it to drive forward work with the funding that it receives. I know how critical that is for our local areas and rural communities in particular, which again is why we have prioritised that in the budget and have ensured that there is funding there going forward.

The marine directorate’s income streams come from commercial science—which brings in, I think, more than £3 million—and marine licensing fees. I think that there is another income stream that I am missing. I will hand over to Dave Signorini, who will be able to give a bit more detail on the level of funding that we receive through those streams and how some of those areas will grow in the future as a result of offshore wind developments.

I would disagree with you to a certain extent. I do not think that there is much about putting a positive spin on things. The fact is that we have had one of the worst settlements that we have seen since devolution. While we were members of the EU, we would receive a mixture of resource and capital funding. Now we are getting replacement funding only as resource, so our capital resource has been falling. As a whole, we are seeing our capital resource fall by around 10 per cent. What we have seen in the overall settlement to the Scottish Government is a real-terms cut to the budget of 1.2 per cent.

I do not think that you will find any cabinet secretary appearing in front of a committee giving evidence on their budget and ultimately being happy about the settlement that they have. It is a very difficult settlement for the Scottish Government as a whole. We have all had to take difficult decisions and make very difficult choices within that, which is why I am here to address the committee and answer your questions.

One thing that I am pleased that we have been able to do is protect funding where it is needed most. When you look direct payments—the funding that goes directly to our farmers, our crofters and our land managers—you see that we have been able to protect those levels of funding. I know that that cash injection is vital for our rural communities.

If you look at our wider investments across the piece, you see that, in some areas, that funding has increased. The funding that we are providing in our food and drink industry, in community-led local development and in all the different areas where we have kept and maintained vital funding streams shows where our priorities have been. We continue to invest in our rural, coastal and island communities and maintain important funds, such as the marine fund Scotland, as I mentioned in my opening remarks.

We have to make sure that we get the addressing depopulation action plan right, that it is in as strong a place as it can be and that we have the right actions within it. I am happy to write to update the committee on the timeframes for when it will be published. Again, I hope that it will be published shortly.

Because we have working on the budget and looking at what we are able to fund in relation to capital, we are still to have those discussions and to finalise how that resource funding could best be utilised. In previous financial years, the islands cost crisis emergency fund contributed to that. However, we will have those discussions with local authority partners to see how best we can utilise the revenue funding going forward.

No, we have not had the same level of funding for the past five years. The funding is the same as the previous year’s, but I believe that it was less in the year before that. I do not know whether Karen Morley has further information on that.

It would be less for us. You are correct in that the UK Government has provided the same level of funding in the past financial year and this financial year.

The total for the coming financial year for agricultural support and related services is £705 million. On top of that is the rural services budget, which is £59 million. If you are looking just at the rural affairs and islands element of the portfolio, the total budget is £864.6 million, and that is for resource and capital.

I am sorry—I know that, with the way in which it has been set out, and given the announcements that we are making today, the picture seems quite confusing. The agricultural transformation fund had been capital for the past few financial years; it was part of the resource spend this year, because of the significant constraints on the capital budget, but with the £15 million being returned and with the agreement to switch that money to capital funding, we have moved the fund from the resource line to the capital budget.