Seòmar agus comataidhean

I thank the committee for inviting me back to discuss agricultural reform following last Wednesday’s evidence session with key stakeholders.

Our message to Scotland’s agricultural businesses and to the wider industry is very simple: the Scottish Government is fully committed to supporting the sector. Agricultural businesses are the bedrock of our rural communities—they underpin thriving rural communities. As we confront the twin challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss, we stand united with our farmers and crofters in striving to ensure that the sector has a prosperous and sustainable future.

We have seen from the experience in England what happens when decisions on future support are poorly thought through and rushed. Therefore, we are taking our time to make the right decisions, making progress now and engaging with communities and stakeholders on our future direction.

Change is never easy, and I am determined that we get it right for Scotland. Active farming and sustainable food production remain at the core of our agenda. That is underpinned by our commitment to maintaining direct payments, which offer stability in an increasingly volatile world and enable our farmers to produce food sustainably. In return for public investment, we are asking farmers and crofters to join us in doing more for the climate and nature.

As I outlined in February, our approach focuses on delivering five key outcomes and delivering reforms that balance those requirements. Those outcomes are high-quality food production, thriving agricultural businesses, climate change mitigation and adaptation, nature restoration and support for a just transition, and they will ensure that we move towards a sustainable and greener economy in a way that protects the industry, supports communities and, just as important, leaves no one behind.

We are dedicated to modernising the way that we work by driving efficiency and creating an intuitive, seamless information technology experience for farmers and crofters. They need a modern, user-friendly service that allows them to focus on what they do best: farming in a way that protects our environment, boosts our efficiency and helps their businesses to thrive.

By working with the sector, we will use this opportunity to deliver a truly bespoke solution that is tailored to the unique needs of Scotland’s agricultural community. Achieving that vision will require a comprehensive organisational redesign and a revamping of systems, processes and capabilities to build a future-ready framework. In the immediate term, we are using the tools that are currently at our disposal. We are simultaneously deeply engaged in co-developing the future operating model and transition plan with stakeholders.

That collaborative approach has been undertaken in all our proposals. For example—to name just a few—it has been undertaken in the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill, the enhanced greening scheme and the code of practice. Just this week, my officials met with the food and agriculture stakeholder task force group. As part of that process, we have planned follow-up meetings in May and a list of other stakeholder engagements.

Each time we have those conversations, they lead to a refinement of policy proposals, additional detail and analysis, which all feeds into the advice that I receive and the decisions that the cabinet secretary and I then take.

Let me be clear: profitability and sustainable farming do not have to be opposing forces. With the right support at the right time, and while safeguarding our planet, we can get this right for the sector, the planet and the resilience of our food supply.

Those five outcomes are interconnected and require a delicate balance, but I know that success relies on farmers and crofters being economically viable to deliver the vision for agriculture. I will continue to work as hard as I can, and I will ensure that there is regular engagement not only at the official level but at the ministerial level as well. We will continue to develop our thinking, which will provide practical solutions to all the challenges that we face.

We will not get everything right, and folk will not get everything that they want. However, I will stretch every sinew to get it as right as I can for as many people as I can. I hope that the industry continues to engage and becomes even more engaged to help us to fulfil the ambitions that we have set out for ourselves.

A number of different schemes that are going to be or have been absolutely catastrophic have been brought in because people have just not bothered to get involved. I am giving the committee an example of how we are trying to co-produce a policy system that will allow every farmer in the country to engage. I am also giving an example of what happens when that is not done in a way that absolutely takes on board the views of the industry. We are absolutely committed to making sure that we avoid making the mistakes that are being made down south, so I make no apology for making that comparison.

The farmer-led groups were not completely ignored—that is absolute nonsense. The farmer led-groups gave their views on what was right for their sectors—that is what they were looking at.

For example, the beef sector looked at the beef sector. I think that I am right in saying that Jim Walker said, “This is what we do for the beef sector,” and he probably presented a brilliantly comprehensive programme of work for the beef sector, because he is an incredibly clever guy who knows exactly what he is doing and how that will benefit his business. However, he added, “But you’ll need to pick up another policy of some kind and give that to the crofters.” Well, we are not in the business of making crofters an afterthought. Crofters are part of our agricultural and community set-up just as much as beef farmers are.

It is not that the farmer-led groups were ignored; the information that was taken from those farmer-led groups has fed into ARIOB, into our engagement with other stakeholders and into my thinking about going and speaking to the crofters in Lewis, Harris, and Skye. However, I will go back to my point that you are not gonnae get everything you want; you are gonnae get a balanced policy that will fit within the policy objectives that we, as a Government, and this Parliament have agreed to and within the budget that this Government has available to it.

I would challenge that. When Jonnie Hall and Martin Kennedy of the NFUS did their roadshows, they were doing what Neil Wilson spoke about last week. They were gathering voices, concerns and information as they went along, and they told us that, by and large, people were buying into this and thinking,“Okay—I can get behind this. It feels okay and we’re comfortable with what’s coming down the road.” That is part of the co-design. If they had done 15 roadshows and come back and said, “Look, this is an absolute disaster. We cannae get people tae buy intae this,” we would have had to stop and think, “Okay. What do we do now?”

Let me clarify. There is a whole team of people who feed into that. I do not just sit on my bed thinking, “That’s what we’re gonnae do.”

What happens is that I will say, “How about if we do this?” and the army of people behind me will say, “You could do that, minister, but these will be the consequences.” Then I have to say, “All right, okay, I’ll need to have a rethink.” There is a whole army of people looking at this, but, ultimately, it will be up to me and the cabinet secretary to say where we are going to go.

George Burgess knows the history of that.

George Burgess has been itching to come in for a minute or two, so I will let him come in, but I will come back to your specific points.

You would need to ask them why they think that. I genuinely cannot understand Jonnie Hall’s position. When we were initially talking about the suckler beef support scheme, I had conversations with my officials over concerns that information on it had not been disseminated widely enough and on what the NFUS and the Scottish Beef Association had done. I asked, “Have we written to every single farmer?” and the answer was, “No, not at this stage, minister.” I asked why not, and they answered that they were working through a process of getting stuff out. I said, “From here on in, we will write to every single farmer if a change will be relevant to them.” That costs money, but it means that we are not disavowing ourselves of the responsibility of getting the information out. We will continue to do that.

The rationale behind that thinking was this: when I was farming, if I got a letter from the NFUS, the National Sheep Association, the National Beef Association or anybody else, I would put it on the rainy day pile and get to it eventually, because I was too busy working. However, if a Scottish Government letter came through my letterbox, I stopped what I was doing in order to find out what it wanted me to know or what it was telling me was going to happen. Therefore, writing to every farmer is what we committed to do. It is simply not the case that there has been no communication, and I am disappointed that Jonnie Hall made that statement.

Rural payments and inspections division officials have been at roadshows and shows, where we know where farmers are going to be, right around the country. Farmers have been given very clear and simple leaflets about what is coming. As George Burgess said, we have been at numerous committee sessions and engaged widely. My officials are speaking to FAST, which represents a huge number of people, so constant engagement is on-going, and that will continue to be the case.

I am going to ask Mandy Callaghan when communication started, but my understanding is that it has been on-going since the start of the process.

I have been trying to get to the crofting counties for the past six months. It is incredibly difficult—the diary demands are intense, to say the least, and such visits have to be fitted in around other engagements. It is not an easy process. However, I specifically demanded that I get to the crofting counties, because there are important things happening in those areas. In my submission, I said that we should not meet “the usual suspects”. I make that point clearly, because we are all guilty of hearing from the same people. When I was a member of this committee, we would see the same faces again and again, and we would have the same discussions over and over again.

Therefore, I wanted to get “behind the curtain”, as you put it, to speak to people who might not be engaged in such processes and might not know that there are organisations that are having discussions on their behalf, because they are not members of those organisations. Those are the people I was specifically targeting. I used the experience of my previous life as a farmer to approach individuals and say, “We want to have a discussion on these issues. Can you get some people together?” They then spoke to the officials, who pulled those meetings together.

I am more than happy to do that—in fact, I will insist that we do not only bring in the usual suspects, who can talk eloquently all day, but who might not have the same thoughts as people who work on farms from day to day.

That applies not only to crofters. I recently visited the Soil Association Exchange, which invited me to meet an ordinary farmer—an ordinary guy who is doing his job. The Soil Association Exchange had contacted him and asked him whether he would like to take part, and I went to meet him. He is exactly the kind of person we need to be talking to, because he is the kind of person who will make the decisions that will allow us to establish a baseline for where we want to get to and how we will build up to that. He is not engaged politically. He is not engaged in the NFU. He gets letters in the same way that I would when I used to farm. I used to say, “Yeah—I’ll get to that.”

It is really important that we get to people like that farmer, which is why I made a point of going to speak to him. That highlighted to me the language that ordinary farmers use—the language that they live by—and the need to engage those folk in order to take them with us on this journey.

I can only assume that there was an omission sometime in the dim and distant past, long before I, or any people that I know of, were involved. George Burgess may have more of an answer to that than I do.

Perhaps they are not IT experts either.