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We are already discussing it. We are talking about the whole farm plan this morning. We are introducing secondary legislation in stages; the discussions to put the whole farm plan through the SSI—which we will get on to later—have already started. We have already started to bring in things such as the good agricultural and environmental conditions requirements and the Scottish suckler beef support scheme requirements. Things are already starting to change.

That goes back to the point that I made at the start about a just transition. There has been a demand from industry to move more quickly but, at the same time, when we bring things forward, it is almost as though everybody is surprised.

I would like to get to a position in which we are having constructive conversations and people know what is coming. I think that we have set out clearly in the route map when people can expect changes to happen. I gave the commitment that I would come back to the committee and talk to you, hear what the concerns are, take them away and work on them, and we have been doing that.

I do not think that anything is happening that is not what the industry would have expected. We have been discussing it as we have been going along, and there are things that we have put in place. We are here today to discuss the whole farm plan and get the SSI through. I do not know that the characterisation that you put to me is fair.

The rural support plan is for the next five years and we will lay the SSI for it in the autumn. The changes in 2025 relate to the legacy systems that I just spoke about with the convener. We will develop the plans from there.

I think that you are asking what detail will be in the rural support plan. That will be developed as we go along. Just now, we are dealing with the legacy stuff and getting through that piece by piece.

I disagree, convener. As I said, there was a crofter on the whole farm plan steering group and there was a discussion about having exemptions based on size, but that idea was rejected by that group, on which the crofting community was represented. Conversations are being had and I am more than happy to continue having them, but I can assure you that it is definitely not a one-way street. I sit on ARIOB, and points of view are put across.

Rhoda Grant said to me that it is a one-size-fits-all policy, but it is not. The whole point of the plans is that they create an opportunity for people to get involved at any level, and they do not necessarily have to pay to get the points that they need in order to be part of that scheme—I do not mean points as in points 1, 2 and 3; I mean the bits that they are required to do. It is certainly not a one-way street and it is certainly not one size fits all.

What I have is an absolute determination to make sure that farming continues to function in Scotland, producing food and delivering the outcomes that the Government wants. That is my primary focus. Do I have a plan for it? Yes, we have a plan for it. Do we have a vision for it? Absolutely. However, there is no way that I can sit here today and say, “This is the plan, this is how it is going to work, this is what it will deliver and it is all going to work sweetly.” As we have been reiterating throughout this committee session, there are a number of different voices with different objectives and different perspectives on how this will work for them. Therefore, we have to put in the basis—what we have at the moment, which I think is a pretty good system—and then let it develop. That will help us to deliver the final rural support plan.

It is, yes. We are getting the payments out—the payments are being delivered. We are adapting that as we go along. We do not want to get into a position where it cannot deliver, so the system is being developed as we go along. It has gone through a real technical upgrade.

I will quickly read you the first paragraph of my notes, if that is helpful. Between 2022 and 2024, there was the largest technical upgrade to the payment service platform since its inception in 2014, and that was done via the middleware project. Upgrading the middleware, a layer of software that enables interaction and transmission of information between applications and services, has significantly enhanced the efficiency and security of the digital services.

It is technical stuff, but we know that it is working at the moment and it is allowing us to get payments out on time, which is what we will continue to do.

I am not going to put an exact date on it, but we will look to have the code of practice out long before the end of the year.

The code is not legislation that has to be complied with. It provides guidance and it will help the farming community to understand what we are trying to deliver. Farmers will not be penalised for not following the code to the exact letter, but whether they have looked at the code will be taken into consideration. People will get things wrong because they have made a mistake, but other people may just say, “Pfft, I am not going to bother.” When farmers decide that they are going to get on board with the programme, whatever stage they are at, the code will be guidance to allow them to get as much information as they can, but it will not result in a penalty.

To achieve the aspirations—no.

No. I am going to look at why people are not coming back to us with their concerns sooner, when they have told us previously that they are content to do something. That concerns me. When an organisation that has said, “We have had the conversation, we have listened to the evidence, we know what you are trying to do and we are comfortable with that” and then sends me a letter, two or three weeks before the start of an initiative, that says, “We are not comfortable with any of that,” I want to understand what is going on, and I will pursue that. However, I absolutely push back on the suggestion that we have not co-designed things.

We have spent an inordinate amount of time—rightly—speaking to all the stakeholders that are involved in trying to get Scotland to be a world leader in regenerative agriculture, which allows us to produce food and do all the things that all of us in this room have agreed that we want to do. I will pursue why the situation that I described is happening at those stages, because that is not where I want to be and it is not conducive to having the right kind of conversations here.

The 70:30 split allows us to guarantee direct payments while asking for more from the farming community through the greening requirement, so that we have the promise that we will deliver direct support and demand more. The 70:30 split allows us to say to those in the farming community that we will continue to support them but that we need them to work with us to deliver more for those public funds. That is kind of where we are. I hope that that answers your question.