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Thank you for that, convener. Apologies for the confusion.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. As some of you know, I have been involved in food production and the hospitality sector for many years. I am hugely excited by what we can potentially do. There are undoubtedly some major challenges ahead of us—in Brexit, Covid and supply shortages—which we must face. However, ultimately, the Scottish food and drink industry is a massive bonus to Scotland’s economy, people and culture.

What role do panel members see for the good food nation bill, and what expectations do they have for what it can deliver?

I have a specific question for David Thomson on something that he mentioned right at the start of the session. David, you talked about the health connections with food and the potential clash between English and Scottish regulations through the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020. Will you expand on that, please?

I also want to talk about the food processing, marketing and co-operation grant scheme, which has just opened for applications. We need to ask the Scottish Government why there is such a short timeframe for businesses to get an application from conception through to completion before they can ask for the money. Pete Cheema and Colin Smith talked about the go local fund, which is a great initiative. I will leave it at that just now, because I know that we are running out of time.

Good morning, committee members and anybody who is watching. I am delighted to be on the committee, and I have no registrable interests in respect of it.

I nominate Siobhian Brown.

Siobhian Brown was chosen as convener.

I go back to what Alex Rowley said. What has happened has had a specific and detrimental effect on certain sectors. I think that it would be very useful to do something that committees have done in the past. Forgive me if I am being a naive newbie, but it would be very useful to get people who are directly affected, whether they are people who run the airports, hospitality events, such as big festivals, restaurants or hotels. We want to hear from them so that we know exactly what they need in order to recover.

The point that the convener made right at the start was about recovery. How do we recover from the pandemic? We need to know from industry bodies what it is that they need to recover.

I do not know whether we will touch on the long Covid issue, but I know that around 80,000 people now live with long Covid. The question of how people recover from it will probably come up in the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, but do we need to include it in our remit? Getting real-life experience is vital in taking the committee forward.

I put an R in the chat bar but, in all honesty, we are probably saying the same things. We must definitely consider where the crossovers are. Before we started the conversation, I was thinking about sectors of the economy such as hospitality and travel and about health. What aspects of those areas will come under our remit? With that in mind, we should look for regular updates from the clerks and the relevant ministers. To echo what John Mason said, the committee should be available to meet at any time if anything happens. I would like us to focus on aspects of the sectors that I mentioned, if they turn out to be in our remit.

Something crossed my mind earlier when I talked about forestry. We heard about the perception that the rural community is left behind by a central belt Scottish Government. I disagree with that, but I note the conflicts that we have. I absolutely get that we need to tackle the climate emergency, and planting trees is definitely recognised as being part of that, but I think that getting 18,000 hectares a year of the right kind of trees in the right places is more important than getting specific numbers.

It is important to note the conflicts that we have and bring people together so that we can talk about things in a balanced way and find the right solutions or results—things that everybody is happy with. We can continue to keep the rural population where they are and working, and we can also continue to hit our climate change targets. There does not have to be a conflict there. I would like us to focus on how we can bring those issues together so that we can find proper solutions, rather than making them into political footballs.

I am a member of NFU Scotland. I have no other registrable interests.

Thank you, Finlay, and congratulations on becoming convener. It is great to meet the rest of the committee in this setting.

One issue that I would like us to pursue is how the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 will affect farm funding. I would also like us to consider the implications of Brexit for devolution and the rural economy. Another issue is what future rural policy will look like. I absolutely agree that the farming community need a degree of certainty. As you and I know, convener, farming is not about tomorrow or the day after; it is about a generation ahead, so we need to get some certainty about what the policy will look like.

I would certainly like us to look again at a good food nation bill. I am interested in not only farming but in food, the environment and rural depopulation, which Ariane Burgess talked about. All of those things are utterly connected.

The issue of women in agriculture was looked at in the previous session, and we should pursue it further. We have made okay progress on that, but we could make a hell of a lot more progress by encouraging more women to get involved in agriculture and to actually run businesses, because they are more than capable of doing that, as we have witnessed on numerous occasions over the past two or three years.

Inshore fisheries are vital. They are a jewel in the crown, and we really need to protect them.

We all know about the problems with digital connectivity, even in urban areas, let alone in rural constituencies.

I would like us to investigate how we bring together two disparate groups. Rachael Hamilton talked about how people in the rural population feel as though they are not represented in the Parliament, yet I have written something in support of the gamekeeping fraternity on Twitter and been immediately bombarded from the other side. I say “the other side” because we currently have two sides of an argument, and I would like to find a way of bringing them together, because the two cannot and should not be mutually exclusive. There has to be a way of making those two separate groups come together and work out the best way to protect raptors and our environment, but not at the expense of losing rural jobs, which are vital in order to stop rural depopulation. There are a whole lot of interlinked issues there that I am keen to have a look at.

I live in Perthshire, but we have transport problems even there, so it must be an absolute tortuous journey to come to Parliament for those who live in the deep Borders or up in the Highlands and Islands.

Even in Perthshire, we have rural housing problems. We need to look at that issue across the board.

If that is not enough to be going on with, I am pretty sure that we can find more.