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A new environmental assurance scheme was recently proposed under the red tractor scheme, but farmers have raised concerns about the new standard incurring higher costs and supermarkets selling their products at a premium, but farmers not receiving a premium price. It is a similar situation with organics; such products have a market premium, but the Soil Association and others have proposed that more of that premium should find its way back to farmers. I understand that some supermarkets would pay farmers a higher price but they feel that they cannot do that while their competitors keep their prices down. Would your companies welcome regulation in this area, such that farmers who produce a premium product to a higher environmental and animal welfare standard would be guaranteed to receive a premium on the price from all the supermarket buyers?

Good morning, and welcome to the 26th meeting in 2023 of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee. I welcome Stephanie Callaghan to the committee. I remind all members and witnesses to ensure that their devices are on silent during the meeting.

The first item on our agenda is to decide whether to take item 6 in private. Are members agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Mark Griffin has a supplementary question.

When you talk about a cap, are you talking about the amount of money or the number of days? Last week, Paul Lawrence talked about a cap of seven days, which would involve paying the levy for the first seven days of accommodation, after which there would not be a charge.

Marc Crothall wants to come in.

Thank you. Time is rapidly running out for us. The responses have been tremendous, but I ask members who still have questions to keep them brief and witnesses to keep responses to the point. That would be fantastic. Everything that you have contributed has been tremendous, but I need to make sure that we do not go wildly over time.

With that, I bring in Mark Griffin.

The next item on the agenda is consideration of the Title Conditions (Scotland) Act 2003 (Conservation Bodies and Rural Housing Bodies) (Miscellaneous Amendment) Order 2023, which is a negative instrument. I should say that there is no requirement for the committee to make any recommendations on such instruments.

If members have no comments to make, does the committee agree that we do not wish to make any recommendations in relation to the instrument?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you for that. That concludes our questions. We very much appreciate you coming to join us this morning; it has been a very useful discussion. We are seeing even more of the picture and unpacking the complexities that were described at the beginning of the meeting. Thank you for joining us. I now suspend the meeting to allow for a changeover of witnesses.

On our second panel this morning, we are joined in the room by Julia Amour, who is the director of Festivals Edinburgh; Gary Curley, who is the executive chair of SkyeConnect; and Donald Emslie, who is the chair of the Edinburgh Tourism Action Group. We are joined online by Cathy Earnshaw, who is the destination strategy manager at Venture North Cooperative Limited; Sheila Gilmore, who is the chief executive of both VisitArran and the Arran Trust; and Sarah Maclean, who is the chief executive of Outer Hebrides Tourism.

I welcome our witnesses to the meeting. We will try to direct our questions to specific witnesses where possible but, if you would like to come in, please indicate to me or the clerks. For those of you online, please type an R in the chat box.

We are tight on time, and the panel is quite big, so only come in if there is a burning issue that we have not heard about from somebody else. We will also try to start with different people so that we are sharing the contributions and the conversation.

I have some general questions, initially. I would be interested to hear about the importance of tourism for your local economies, the challenges in ensuring that local services and infrastructure meet the needs of residents and visitors alike and how visitor numbers and spend this year compare with the pre-Covid period.

Despite what I have just said, we will probably end up hearing from all of you in this case. I will go to those online first, starting with Cathy Earnshaw.

I would like to clarify that. You mentioned pubs’ profitability being down by 36 per cent. Are those pubs directly connected to people who come to areas to spend or are they pubs in general?