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Official Report: search what was said in Parliament

The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.  

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Dates of parliamentary sessions
  1. Session 1: 12 May 1999 to 31 March 2003
  2. Session 2: 7 May 2003 to 2 April 2007
  3. Session 3: 9 May 2007 to 22 March 2011
  4. Session 4: 11 May 2011 to 23 March 2016
  5. Session 5: 12 May 2016 to 5 May 2021
  6. Current session: 12 May 2021 to 19 December 2024
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Displaying 1892 contributions

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Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee

Scottish Government Priorities

Meeting date: 8 September 2021

Jim Fairlie

The NFU wrote to Kevin Foster, who is the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Minister for Future Borders and Immigration), to ask for a 12-month Covid visa in order to get over the short-term supply chain workforce issues in the agricultural sector. Do you know whether that visa has been granted? Have you had any communication with the UK Government about that?

Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee

Scottish Government Priorities

Meeting date: 8 September 2021

Jim Fairlie

I would like us to come back to the sustainably Scottish brand at some point, because we have brands that sit within the Scotch brand. Where will they fit in? Are we going to absorb them into the sustainably Scottish brand? We need to drill into that, and I would appreciate our being able to come back to that in the future.

Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee

Scottish Government Priorities

Meeting date: 8 September 2021

Jim Fairlie

It is clear from that that we need to keep a very close eye on where divergences are going to be and where we could be brought into conflict with the UK Government as the policies develop. Is it fair to say that?

Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee

Scottish Government Priorities

Meeting date: 8 September 2021

Jim Fairlie

I presume that you will bring us up to date if there is any progress on any of those issues.

Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee

Scottish Government Priorities

Meeting date: 8 September 2021

Jim Fairlie

I am sorry to Ariane Burgess for interrupting her questioning, but I am keen to bore down into this matter a wee bit. Having been a hard-nosed farmer, I know that finances are usually the driver for making anyone do anything as far as having a sustainable business is concerned. Have you allocated an amount of money to persuade people to go organic, and have you done a cost benefit analysis of how much you are going to have to put in to do that?

Moreover, have you looked at the issue of organic farming versus regenerative agriculture? I do not want to set one against the other, but I have to tell Ariane that they are definitely not the same thing. Has the Government looked at regenerative as opposed to organic farming, or does it, like Ariane, consider them to be the same? How serious are you about pushing that area of farming in Scotland?

COVID-19 Recovery Committee

Scotland’s Strategic Framework

Meeting date: 2 September 2021

Jim Fairlie

Okay. When people are young, they think that they are invincible. We need to get over that mental block in the first place.

On the requirement for vaccine passports, is there likely to be any extension to the areas that we are talking about?

My next question is perhaps more directed to Mr Leitch. We know that the virus is in the community and, as Mr Swinney has said, we are trying to suppress it with the range of measures that we have in place. Is it accepted that the disease will continue to be with us? Are we trying to create community immunity while we manage the disease to the next stage?

COVID-19 Recovery Committee

Scotland’s Strategic Framework

Meeting date: 2 September 2021

Jim Fairlie

I have a final quick question, which relates to constituent requests overnight. I think that every committee member has talked about the flood of emails that we all had last night. I can almost answer this myself, but will the passport be time limited?

COVID-19 Recovery Committee

Scotland’s Strategic Framework

Meeting date: 2 September 2021

Jim Fairlie

Will they be time limited? If we accept that we have an endemic disease in our community, will the passports be required forever? That is the terminology that is being used in the emails that I am getting.

COVID-19 Recovery Committee

Scotland’s Strategic Framework

Meeting date: 2 September 2021

Jim Fairlie

I thank the panel very much for attending this morning. I have two or three questions that I would like to cover. They might be a wee bit jumbled up, but please bear with me.

I absolutely agree with what Mr Rowley said about compliance. More than half of the people in my hotel dining room this morning were not wearing face masks. There is possibly an issue about the fact that although we still have face mask control in Scotland, it is not in place in other parts of the country. People coming in really need to know what the regulations are in this country.

When we had a panel of young people here last week, we asked them, “Do you feel that the restrictions have been done to you or are you complying with them because you are part of the process?” They very much came back with the belief that it was being done to them, and the vaccine passports will again feel like something that is being done to people. That goes back to the messaging that Mr Swinney spoke about. While we are putting the Covid vaccine passports in place, could there be something far more visible and vibrant and stronger in the messaging that we put out about how important it is to get the vaccine to that specific demographic?

Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee

Food and Drink Supply Chain

Meeting date: 1 September 2021

Jim Fairlie

I would like to clarify a point that you made. The Scottish Government introduced minimum unit pricing for alcohol. Is that the kind of area where we might run into difficulty?