Chamber and committees

Working with HITRANS we have secured LEADER funding to support the development of the project. This will include the recruitment of a dedicated Project Manager to implement the proposal. We have supplemented this with £25,000 of Scottish Government funding.

The next steps will now involve appointing the Project Manager who will, through key stakeholder consultation, undertake appraisal of each element of the Passport proposal and develop detailed specifications for the project going forward.

Working with HITRANS we have secured LEADER funding to support the development of the project. This will include the recruitment of a dedicated Project Manager to implement the proposal. We have supplemented this with £25,000 of Scottish Government funding.

The next steps will now involve appointing the Project Manager who will, through key stakeholder consultation, undertake appraisal of each element of the Passport proposal and develop detailed specifications for the project going forward.

Marine Scotland has regular contact with the 8 Scottish Fisheries Local Action Groups (FLAGs) and is required to approve all project recommendations submitted by FLAGs. All FLAG projects are published here:

https://www2.gov.scot/Topics/marine/grants-subsidies/awards/Initiatives .

The Scottish Government has paid £1.3m since September 2018 towards the costs of emergency fisheries harbour works.

The volumes of marine fuel used by CalMac Ferries Ltd and Argyll Ferries Ltd over the last five years are shown in the following table in litres:

The Scottish Government Rural Payments and Services website offers extensive guidance on this scheme. https://www.ruralpayments.org/publicsite/futures/topics/all-schemes/

Information on this scheme can be found on the “Scottish Rural Network” website. https://www.ruralnetwork.scot/funding/scottish-rural-development-programme

Scotland’s Farm Advisory Service provides advice on this scheme https://www.fas.scot/

Up to date information on all rural matters can also be found on the Scottish Government RPID Twitter and Facebook accounts. https://twitter.com/RuralMattersSG

https://en-gb.facebook.com/RuralMattersScotland/

This scheme is also promoted regularly at external events and workshops .

This work is already happening under the current CAP scheme and through the development of the new mapping system (Land Parcel Identification System – LPIS) which enhances and simplifies the customer experience when applying for CAP support. The major enhancement the customer will notice is access to a new GIS (Geographical Information System) Viewer which will replace the current View Only Maps viewer in Rural Payment & Services (RP&S). This will also give the customer the ability to submit new land changes on-line. How best to use and deploy this system and other assets from the current CAP scheme will be considered as part of the development of future policy and rural support schemes.

These Groups were limited life working groups which have all published their final reports: the CAP Greening Group in February 2018, NCRA in October 2018 and Agricultural Champions in May 2018. The recommendations from these groups are now being considered by the Farming and Food Production Future Policy Group agreed by Parliament on January 2019 and which met for the first time on the 20 June at the RHS. This group will make recommendations on future farming and food production built around the six principles set out in the January debate: Sustainability; Simplicity; Profitability; Innovation, Inclusion, Productivity.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-23777 on 27 June 2019. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

The Simplification Task Force has published on-going records of minutes and progress of meetings on the Scottish Government website at https://www.gov.scot/publications/simplification-taskforce-minutes/. The full findings of the Taskforce will be published in due course.

The scheme went live in 2015, and no payments were made in this year.

2016 – 8 payments in total – 7 x Highlands & Islands, and 1 x South Scotland.

2017 – 18 payments in total – 11 x Highlands & Islands, 5 x South Scotland, and 2 x North East Scotland.

2018 – 5 payments in total – 3 x Highlands & Islands, 1 x Central Scotland, and 1 x North East Scotland.

2019 - 9 payments in total – 5 x Highlands & Islands, 2 x Mid Scotland & Fife, 1 x North East Scotland, and 1 x South Scotland.