The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.
All Official Reports of meetings in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.
All Official Reports of public meetings of committees.
Displaying 1892 contributions
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 9 October 2024
Jim Fairlie
Yes.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 9 October 2024
Jim Fairlie
There is none beyond 2027, I think. In the route map up to 2027, we have the launch of elective complementary schemes and the refreshing of the basic payment scheme for the base payments. Then we go up to 2030, when there are various targets for peatland restoration and so on.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 9 October 2024
Jim Fairlie
Not at the moment, no.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 9 October 2024
Jim Fairlie
How has LFASS addressed declining stock numbers?
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 9 October 2024
Jim Fairlie
It has not. There have definitely been calls for changes to be made, and we are wide open to hearing them.
I come back to the point that I have just made, which is that those conversations are happening now. I would be far happier spending time talking to stakeholders and discussing how we are going to make the system work. I give the same commitment that I gave at the start of this process: nobody is more committed than I am to making sure that we have a farming system that keeps people in the countryside and our livestock sector at the sort of critical mass that will allow us to continue to have the world-beating sector that we currently have. I want to do everything that I can to protect it.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 9 October 2024
Jim Fairlie
I refute that. I am more than happy to continue the conversations with the people who have responded to the call for views. I have a very good working relationship with the vast majority of them, and I have offered to meet most of them. What you have described is not the position that we are in. We want to get this done to give us a backstop so that we can get on with making the regulations that are required for the industry. That is what the industry is looking for.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 25 September 2024
Jim Fairlie
That is for future iterations rather than this—
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 25 September 2024
Jim Fairlie
I do not know how else to put this. You are not being asked today to support the policy that will be developed through ARIOB. All that you are being asked to support today is the mechanism to allow the payments to be made as and when that policy is developed. If, at a later date, we propose a policy that the committee does not like, it will be able to say no to it. For whatever is proposed, the committee will be able to say no, yes or whatever the decision is.
The SSI purely provides the mechanism to allow payments to be made: that is it.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 25 September 2024
Jim Fairlie
No, I am not. I am genuinely trying to keep the focus on what it is that we are looking at right now.
Rural Affairs and Islands Committee
Meeting date: 25 September 2024
Jim Fairlie
As James Muldoon pointed out, the 2030 date is to give us plenty of flexibility so that we do not take up any more time than is absolutely necessary. This bit of the instrument is nothing more than a mechanism.