Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you very much for that opening statement. I am sure that we will have a number of questions to go a little bit deeper.

I will start with policy objective 1B, which is on centres. During the pandemic, great work was done on spaces for people. The idea was to move towards a more European approach, with outdoor spaces to create interaction between people and outdoor activity. The measure is commendable in that sense, but we have a number of concerns. You will be aware of the concerns that have been raised by the Royal National Institute of Blind People and by Living Streets around how, if there is a problem, those communities find a way to have changes made. I know that you laid it out but, if there were a problem, how would it work in effect? If somebody who is blind finds it difficult to move around the street furniture and needs something to be changed, how would they go about that?

Thanks for that. I will briefly suspend the meeting.

That is helpful; thank you. If something that is taking place in a green port or any port—in a town or village, even—starts to encroach on public interest and it sits within the PDR offered by this Scottish statutory instrument, what recourse is there for the community of place? How does it have a voice?

Thank you very much; that is very helpful.

I was glad you started to answer that, because I was going to ask you to unpack what you meant by “food”. In your response to my questions earlier, I felt that horticulture was getting pushed out of the picture. I want to understand what you mean by food in Scotland.

Let us just say that I did not say “moving faster mode”. It is clear that we need to move to diversification—how do we get there?

That is a very helpful response. Thank you.

There is a lot in there. We have talked about the just transition, and I think that there is an awareness that work needs to be done to make sure that there are no cliff edges. However, I would be interested in hearing more about what I think you were touching on when you talked about how the payments at the moment are based on area and how there is a need for conditionality. Would we move towards outcome-based payments rather than payments per area?

We have heard from the Climate Change Committee, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the UN Environment Programme that there needs to be a reduction in meat and dairy consumption and production in order to meet our climate targets. I know from folks we have had here and others I have talked to that many livestock farmers and crofters are not happy about that. I know that some have taken it to heart and are willing to try diversifying, reducing their herd sizes and supplementing with horticulture, tree planting, peat restoration and other measures. You may not have this figure, but I would be interested in hearing roughly what percentage of your members—you may have a sense of it from the survey—would be willing to explore the diversification that we need. How do we support them to do that in the moving faster mode?

It is interesting that you said that it has not been supported. We had a lack of vegetables on our shelves recently, and I understand that, through glasshouses, we could move towards a lot more production of Mediterranean-type foods. If that was supported, we could increase the size of that sector.