Chamber and committees

That concerns me, because if you want us to approve the SSI today, surely you should have done work on what the duplication is and should have that information to hand.

What are the duplications?

You make a good point there. It depends on how puritanical we get over procurement. For example, something could be imported into the country and then rebadged or reprocessed and a Scottish label put on it, and then designated as sourced in Scotland. If we change that through the bill, that could drive costs substantially. I am really just commenting on the back of what you said.

You mentioned the regional land use partnerships. My colleagues will speak more about those, but there are only two mentions of them in this enormous draft NPF4, which is disappointing.

The committee held an engagement event with 100 rural stakeholders on Monday. Some of the comments that were made were very interesting and I urge you to look at them. On 20-minute neighbourhoods, as well as raising the housing issue, people said that lack of transport between rural communities has made areas inaccessible, that local amenities have moved away, and that the draft NPF4 does not translate to rural settings and there is no appreciation of rural areas in it. Will you expand on how the concept of 20-minute neighbourhoods can translate to rural areas?

I want to follow up on that, because there is method behind my madness. In the past, the Scottish Government has considered grants and loans in terms of public investment and there is a relatively poor return on that public investment when funding, say, a fishing business’s operational statutory cost. I am very interested in Emma Phillips’s response to the committee on the specific issue about return on investment and how the instrument changes that.

That goes to the heart of my question. The UK seafood fund covers innovation, infrastructure, training and skills. I know that you have not yet established the detailed criteria for your fund, but will you seek to cover what the seafood fund does not cover in the activities that you have suggested that the SSI before us will cover?

Does that mean that you are not ready to put forward the SSI?

Why have you not done that prior to this point?

A couple of weeks ago, Jayne Jones and I participated in the cross-party group on food, which was excellent. My colleague Jim Fairlie was there as well.

Do you have any views on the unintended consequences of a target-led approach? We have discussed that already. There was mention at the CPG that meeting targets could actually put a burden on food producers and increase prices. George Burgess said that cost should not be the only measure. How do we bring all that together, given the pressures on budgets?