Chamber and committees

Keeping it at the same level, though, is a real-terms cut.

First, I want to clarify that the funding for that does exist—we are continuing to fund the animal health and welfare plans, the carbon audits and the soil testing within the national test programme. Funding of £12 million has been allocated to that in the coming financial year.

It has been switched, yes.

Yes, you are absolutely right. I recognise how vital that support is, which is why we have maintained that funding during the current financial year.

No doubt, the committee will be aware of the information that we have published about the route map for future support. We continue to support LFA funding and will maintain our commitment to doing so until such time as we transition to new parts of the future framework.

I met the NFUS’s LFA committee just before the recess to hear its thoughts on future support. I understand from visiting farmers and crofters across the country the importance of LFASS and the support that we provide for that. Maintaining that funding has been a priority.

I am talking about pillar 1 other payments.

Absolutely.

The development support budget is for the whole modernisation programme within the agricultural reform programme. I think that that was the capital element of the funding that we had been looking at, which was sitting at around £10 million.

Initially, that budget line was for modernisation costs and potentially earmarking monies for information technology systems. As part of the agricultural reform programme, we are continuing to assess what those needs might be going forward, and we are still developing the case for that.

George Burgess might have further information to add to that.

When I appeared at the committee at this time last year, I said that we were extremely disappointed at that stage to not be able to run the FPMC scheme over the course of the 2023-24 financial year, because we know how valued it has been by the food and drink sector. However, we have used that time to undertake a review of the scheme, as you outlined. That work was undertaken by Scotland Food & Drink and is now completed. There were several recommendations in that. One of the key findings in the report was about how valued the scheme was by those who applied to it, as I have said. We can implement a few of the recommendations in the Scotland Food & Drink report quite readily, and there are a couple of recommendations that would take a bit more work, but we have taken all of that on board.

As you have outlined, the business development support line in the budget was the one through which we previously funded the FPMC grant scheme. The funding that is available in that budget line now is for the crofting agricultural grant scheme, so that is where the biggest reduction is. However, it would be our intention to reintroduce the FPMC grant scheme if we are able to do so at any point during the year. We would like to do that if the opportunity arises, but we cannot say today that we will definitely be able to fund that.

The target in the climate change plan was to increase woodland creation to 18,000 hectares of planting this year. To be perfectly frank with the committee, given our levels of funding, we will be unable to meet that target, which is particularly disappointing. I completely understand Stuart Goodall’s comments and how frustrating that is for the forestry sector, especially given that, because we did not meet our planting targets last year, we held a forestry summit towards the end of last year to look at the issues that were preventing us from reaching our targets and at the barriers and challenges that the sector was coming up against. We made a number of changes to the forestry grant scheme, and we increased rates to encourage more agroforestry and more trees to be planted on farms.

Obviously, I did not want us to be in a position in which we are looking at that level of cut to the forestry budget, and I know that that is certainly not what the forestry sector wanted. As I said, I understand Stuart Goodall’s comments in that regard.

What is important is the work that we do from here. The forestry summit that we held was valuable in many ways, so we need to look at what work we can do with the available budget, which should enable us to plant roughly the same amount as we planted last year or slightly more than that. We need to think about how we best utilise that funding.

However, when it comes to overall capital funding, if we were to provide more funding for forestry, what other capital budgets would we cut instead? Difficult decisions have had to be taken. As I said, I certainly did not want to be in this position when discussing the issue with the committee today.

It comes back to the point that, if we were to fully increase that budget, where would we take the capital funding from? As we have talked about today, each fund is vital in its own area.

I agree with the comments that you have just read out. The investment that we are making in the Atlantic rainforest—about £4.5 million this year—will help us to do exactly that work. It is about using our resources to manage our invasive species and best protect that resource.

We have done a power of work in relation to forestry. We can look at how the industry has grown—I think that we were still responsible for about 62 per cent of all planting in the UK last year. We want to ensure that we build confidence in the sector and a future for it, but there is no getting around the fact that there is a big cut to the capital budget for forestry. We have £27 million available for new planting this year, so we must utilise that as best we can to ensure that we get trees in the ground.