Chamber and committees

Good morning, cabinet secretary. As you know, many organisations have been very critical of the timescale around the future farm policy introduction. There have been many consultations over the past six years. The agriculture reform implementation oversight board has been set up, but why has it taken you so long to get to this point? What has been going on behind the scenes? Do you believe that the ARIOB is effective?

On your comments with regard to being stretched, do you think that you will resource the department further, given the many pressures that you described and the fact that you are having to get the farm payments out as well? Would it be wise to ensure that the department is well resourced, so that we do not have any more delays?

My second point, to finish my questioning, is that there has been a lot of comment around the national test programme in terms of the farmers who are already doing the good things. I did not see much in the consultation on the areas where farmers have already made interventions, respectively. It is difficult for those farmers to understand how the future farm policy will support them, if you understand what I mean.

And the resource issue?

A criticism of some of the schemes is that farmers cannot afford the capital outlay. If you are trying to encourage people to get involved in those schemes, it is important to recognise that some people will not do so, because of the cash flow issue.

The islands bond policy was launched in last year’s programme for government, to tackle depopulation. However, it has been rejected by islanders. Can you tell us why?

Can you shed any light on why you believe that Martin Kennedy of NFU Scotland has been so critical of the amount of time that it has taken? Why did it take so long to get to this stage? Was it a resource issue? What was the reason—can you tell the committee?

I found that it was a case of putting the cart before the horse. If the Government had an islands team that was listening, it would have known that islanders thought that the policy would be a short-term fix, that the scheme would be open to abuse, that the amount of investment was too small and that it might have a divisive impact on communities, so it is disappointing that we now have to delay addressing depopulation.

Interestingly, Salmon Scotland has called for £10 million of revenue from Crown Estate Scotland to be invested in coastal communities in order to tackle depopulation. Is the Scottish Government considering that?

Could you let the committee know when the addressing depopulation action plan will be launched? Do you know that now?

Thank you.

I will not be doing that; I just wanted a bit more detail. It is fine. I can see the policy note; it just is not clear to me why we are doing this.