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How has LFASS addressed declining stock numbers?

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.

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.

That is for future iterations rather than this—

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.

No, I am not. I am genuinely trying to keep the focus on what it is that we are looking at right now.

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.

Yes.

I thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to clarify the intended consequences of the instrument, taking into account the comments that were made by the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee, and by this committee at its meeting last week.

The primary aim of the instrument is to ensure full cost recovery for services relating to the surveillance and inspection of animals and animal products for residues of veterinary medicinal products relating to the national residues control programme, or NRCP, which is managed by the Veterinary Medicines Directorate, or VMD, across Great Britain.

On anticipated costs, the policy note accompanying the regulations states that the annual cost of delivering the NRCP currently costs around £5 million per year, which is forecast to reach around £8 million per year by 2028. The increase is due to a rise in the costs of procured services that are necessary to deliver the programme such as sampling, testing and consumables.

Without the proposed revisions to the current charges that NRCP participants pay, it is forecast that there will be an underrecovery of the costs of the programme by £1.2 million in the current financial year, and the deficit is expected to rise to £3 million per year by 2029.

It should be stressed that the increase in cost is the estimated cost across Great Britain, so Scotland will contribute less to the overall increase, given that there is a smaller concentration of participants here. Currently, more than 500 companies across the various sectors are included in the NRCP.

I want to pick up Rhoda Grant’s point at committee last week about whether an island impact assessment was considered. As this is not a new policy, strategy or service that is likely to have an impact on an island community that is significantly different from the effect on other communities, it was considered that, on balance, no assessment is required.

By way of conclusion, I reiterate that the NRCP is a statutory programme and is designed to help protect human health by identifying unsafe residues of banned substances, veterinary medicines and contaminants in products of animal origin before they enter the food chain. The NRCP helps to protect human health. It also provides assurances to the UK’s trading partners about the quality and safety of exported food products of animal origin. The programme helps to support international trade, which is worth around £12 billion to the UK economy per year.

I am happy to take any questions, with my officials.

The fundamental thing that we have to remember is that this is a statutory programme that we must carry out order to protect human health. The testing system is about making sure that no residues go into the human food chain.

I completely take on board all of your points about how difficult this is, and I have already agreed to meet other members to talk about what more we can do to help the more remote—again, I want to stop using that word—island communities with regard to slaughtering provision. However, I do not think that the increase in charges will be the clincher here. In any case, we have to carry out the programme to ensure that we are protecting human health, as much as anything else.