Chamber and committees

I have said that we will publish the bill this year. I hope that you appreciate that, under the ministerial code, it is not possible for me to give a definitive date until it has all been agreed by Cabinet and discussed with the Parliament. I cannot give a definitive date for the introduction of the bill, but we intend to do that as soon as we can.

That conditionality will not be in the bill. As I outlined in my response to Alasdair Allan, that is where we need the transitional provision, using the powers within the current act, to allow for conditionality and continuity so that we can deliver what we set out in the route map.

There will be an opportunity for scrutiny as the bill goes through. We need a piece of framework legislation, which is what we will introduce, to give us an adaptive framework for the future. That is what we set out in our proposals, and we will introduce that as part of the bill.

We have been working through our consultation responses so I cannot say definitively what will be in the bill at the moment, but the aim is for the secondary legislation to contain that detail.

I understand the calls for clarity, more detail and more information. We set out in the route map when that information will become available. There will, of course, be the opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny as part of the process.

That is what we have set out in our vision. I hope that, during the debates that we have had in the Parliament in the past few weeks, we have emphasised the importance of producing our own food. Our vision for agriculture sets out that we want to produce more and meet our food needs more sustainably.

Yes.

That is an important point. The need for recognition was raised a number of times in the debate last week. I certainly hear that when I am out and about visiting different farmers and hearing about the actions that they have already undertaken. We know that we have a lot of work to do. Initially, we want to incentivise those people who have not undertaken the actions to do so and to get the baseline information. That we recognise and reward the work that has already been done is fundamental to our thinking and planning going forward.

We need to provide an update to our climate change plan and set out our policies for meeting targets. Work on that is on-going, and I believe that the plan is due to be published later this year.

It is really challenging to meet the emissions envelope that we have set out. There is no getting around that. We have really stretching targets to meet.

We need to reduce our emissions by 2.4 megatonnes of CO₂ by 2032. The work that the farmer-led groups undertook on that tells us that combining all the measures takes us to a 1 megatonne reduction, so we still have a gap to fill. The challenge exists. We are trying to see how we can work through it together and fill the gap. We are considering what further work we can do on policies that we can introduce to enable us to do that.

Yes, we have. We have raised it repeatedly with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and various secretaries of state that we have had throughout the time, but, as yet, there has been no response.

I will hand over to George Burgess, who can explain more of the detail of that.