Chamber and committees

I understand the point that you are trying to get to, but I hope that you understand why I would be uncomfortable about saying anything in that regard, given the action that is currently on-going. Once that action is complete, I will be happy to write to the committee with full information.

Yes, absolutely. As I said in response to Alasdair Allan’s point, housing is, without a doubt, one of the key issues that I hear about whenever I visit islands. There are job opportunities—sometimes plenty of them—on islands, but the lack of infrastructure to allow people to live there is what holds people back. It is a huge issue that we must address.

I do not want to pre-empt what will come through the remote, rural and islands housing action plan, but it will give a real focus to that work. I want to ensure that, across our public bodies, we are making the most of our estate.

I think that I have spoken in the committee before about the visit that I undertook to Colonsay, which had a partnership with the company Mowi, which was looking to invest in housing there. I think that the idea was to build six houses, which is huge for the island and really important. I spoke to people there who work in the aquaculture industry, which is based in some of the most remote and rural parts of Scotland and which can have a big economic impact in those areas. It is really important that, where we see those emerging industries, we continue to work in partnership with them to see what more we can provide.

We also should not underestimate the power and potential of initiatives that are undertaken by the community, and a number of projects are under way to enhance that work. For example, going back to land reform and community ownership, the work that has been undertaken through the community ownership of Ulva has had an impact—its population has doubled. All of that is community driven, and we should not underestimate such huge opportunities.

I am not responsible for SDS, but it is important that we work together across Government to address such challenges. In my previous response, I did not mention our establishment of the commission for the land-based learning review. Other reviews have taken place around the skills landscape, including the Withers review. I will work with my colleagues to consider the outcome and recommendations of each of those reviews to see how we can address those issues as a whole. It is not as if portfolios will work in isolation, because we know that we need to address particular gaps in our islands and rural areas. We want more people to come into the sectors that are important for those areas.

Absolutely.

Sorry—do you mean in relation to the future framework, once it is fully in place?

Absolutely. I stress that work on that is going on all the time. The islands team engages with other portfolios across Government all the time, on different aspects of the work.

We are still in line with the commitment and we still intend to publish the action plan this year.

As I said, we have been looking at the on-going commitments that we already have, and we have resourced those through the islands programme resource funding, community settlement officers and various other projects and pilots. I am not going to pre-empt what will come out of that, but we will also work jointly with the population team.

There have been various calls from different organisations on what should be more heavily weighted, but the fact is that we have committed to a process of co-development with our farmers and crofters. I will not pre-empt the discussions that we will have on that, but we do not have any certainty on our future budgets in that regard.

You will, no doubt, be aware of the other commitments on maintaining direct payments. We know how important it is to continue that support for our farmers and for food production, which we have previously stated. We have not yet come to a decision on an overall budget split, because it is an important part of the co-development process.

You can see from the published budget how our spending for agricultural funding is used. George Burgess may have information about the specific £60 million.

That is the point that George Burgess is making. The way in which that money is returned to the portfolio would be subject to my discussions with the Deputy First Minister. We are yet to discuss that. The £33 million that you refer to came up in a previous discussion. We are still to agree on how that will be returned to the portfolio. Because ring-fenced funding is ring fenced, it must be returned to the portfolio.