Chamber and committees

I have a follow-up point to Edward Mountain’s comments that relates to amendments 138 and 139.

Methods for taking or killing wild birds are legal and already adhere to high standards of animal welfare. Amendments 130 to 139 risk sowing confusion and ambiguity for no discernible public benefit. Given the significant and immediate consequences of failing to comply with a statutory code of practice, the contents of the code must provide absolute legal certainty and leave no room for confusion. Trapping infrastructure employed on grouse moors is already compliant with the international agreement on humane trapping standards.

I want to go back to the issues around the enterprise bodies and economic growth. When you appeared before the committee in January, I asked you about the cuts to the budgets for Highlands and Islands Enterprise and South of Scotland Enterprise, and you suggested that they would focus their attention on key priorities. You also talked about key things that matter, key priorities for delivery, key interventions and key sectors for growth. Earlier, in response to the convener, you talked about the enterprise agencies prioritising funding and taking a careful and targeted approach.

However, we still do not know the detail of what you think their priorities and key focuses will be. Their budgets have been cut. What are you looking for them to deliver and what will they now be unable to deliver, given your statement about their important role in driving economic growth?

I would hope that they would be doing things to the best of their ability anyway.

I want to move on to the rural affairs budget and agriculture funding, and at this point, I remind members of my entry in the register of members’ interests in relation to agriculture.

You do not mention this issue in your response, because although we mentioned it in our report, we did not make a recommendation on it. Cuts have been made to the rural affairs budget, and the £33 million of ring-fenced agriculture funding that was identified as part of the Bew review has not been allocated back to the budget. Do you know yet when it will be?

I apologise for interrupting, but do you have a timescale for when that funding has to be returned by?

But you have reduced funding in the rural affairs budget. You argue that we cannot find a use for that money in the rural affairs budget, but you have cut that budget.

On the point that I was really asking about, why should a local authority that receives ring-fenced funding from the Scottish Government for certain parts of its public service delivery not say, “If the Scottish Government can use ring-fenced funding for what it wants to do, why shouldn’t we do the same, given the budget pressures that we are under?”?

Given what you have said today and previously, do you accept that our key enterprise bodies—Highlands and Islands Enterprise and South of Scotland Enterprise—will be less able to drive economic growth and support businesses than they have in previous years?

Taking on board what you have said about prioritising in areas where we have made cuts, I think that we accept that the enterprise agencies are going to be less effective and less efficient at driving economic growth. As the committee’s report highlights, the question is: how will you monitor the impact of the cuts on their ability to deliver economic growth?

When you set the budget again next year, you will have reduced expectations of what the agencies are going to be able to deliver. This is not the first cut: the enterprise bodies have faced cuts for a number of years. How will we not get into what is essentially a spiral of enterprise bodies setting targets with reduced budgets, delivering less—even if, as you might argue, they deliver it better—and their budgets continuing to be cut, because you are expecting them to deliver less?

All right. Thanks very much.

We all accept that economic growth is vital for jobs and our economy, but it is also vital for taxes. How do you respond to the comments that Sandy Begbie of Scottish Financial Enterprise made at the weekend when he said that the Scottish Government’s tax policy is making Scotland a “dangerous place” in which to create wealth?