Chamber and committees

Okay.

We move on to compliance and enforcement.

Thank you, Ms Grahame.

We move to theme 5, which is collaboration and co-management, with a question from Ariane Burgess.

Before we move on to overarching rural issues, we will pause for a comfort break.

That is still a bit confusing. The Bew review was a process to identify whether the ring-fenced money was appropriate. It reflected on the nature of agriculture in Scotland, and it suggested that that money was not appropriate. We had an uplift of £25.7 million per year after that review. The ring-fenced money was not adequate but, as a result of the review, it has been increased by £25.7 million, very loosely—in general. My difficulty is that the cabinet secretary’s letter says that

“savings totalling £61.1 million were given up from within this ring-fenced budget.”

The budget is either ring fenced or not ring fenced—that is the difficulty. The £61.1 million does not relate to the £25.7 million. When is the Scottish Government allowed to dip into the ring-fenced budget that is allocated from the UK Treasury for agriculture?

Ultimately, all agriculture funding is ring fenced; it is not like any other part of the Scottish settlement, which is subject to the Barnett formula. Agriculture funding in Scotland is not subject to the Barnett formula, so is it not the case that the funding is, in effect, ring fenced for agriculture?

It would certainly be helpful for the committee to understand the general direction of travel and whether you are looking for a settlement to be based on your rural development plan and your future plan for delivering support for rural areas or to be based on a formula—I hesitate to suggest that that could be similar to the funding formula that we have for the rest of the Scottish budget. It would be good to understand the situation and whether you are looking for the Scottish Government’s ambitions to be funded or whether some sort of formula will be in place for funding in future years.

I will stop you if it is not—

Thank you very much. I just want to make members aware that we are very short of time. It is such a huge portfolio and I understand that we could take evidence for quite some time. I ask members to try to keep their questions as brief as possible, which is not easy, particularly when we have to cover forestry and woodland. On that note, I bring in Ariane Burgess.

We move on to questions on agricultural support, from Emma Harper.