Chamber and committees

It might be helpful for the committee to understand how much ministerial time and resource has been put into developing the rural delivery plan, so that we can understand what significant investment in resource has been put into it in order to achieve the output that is expected from the key performance indicators and all the things that you have talked about. It is important to get value for money.

I wish to move on to discuss some of the previous funding. In total, £100 million was cut from rural affairs: £32 million from the forestry grant scheme, £5 million from the nature restoration fund, £33 million from the support funding for the Bew review and £28 million from further rural affairs funding. That amounts to £100 million in cuts. How can the Scottish Government expect food producers, land managers and farmers to deliver on the environmental objectives and produce food at the same time as it is cutting the budget?

To whom does the group report and how often?

The inshore fisheries groups.

Who do the inshore fisheries groups report to?

Yes, and the number of peer-reviewed scientific papers that have been produced. Is that having a detrimental impact on our reputation in Scotland?

There are many incredible academic voices in the room today, but I presume that, if research is not being resourced properly, that will be to the detriment of the long-term respect for scientists from Scotland and our international reputation.

We visited the marine directorate on Monday and we did, to be fair, have a fantastic visit. We could see what it was doing with the resources that it had. The staff were a very jolly bunch, but they were doing specific work, some of which was industry led. How is our international reputation being seen at the moment, given the reduction in the output of scientific papers? Internally, is the Government seeing an industry or sector match-funded approach being taken if the budget is being squeezed?

Earlier, you talked about the monitoring that is done through the app when fish escape. Out of interest, does that have any status? For example, if your members wanted to make a point about certain applications, could they use that as evidence?

Okay, and—

Because of the fairness of the whole situation—the Government wants to see the doubling of salmon farms by 2030 and we also want wild fish to be protected—do you think that the lack of transparency in the data on the website, which you spoke about earlier, has a detrimental impact on adopting the precautionary principle in relation to the evidence that you gather before you rubber stamp a site?

Good morning, Dr Wells. First, is your organisation happy that SEPA is the lead agency?