Seòmar agus comataidhean

I declare my interest as a small farmer. I should have said that earlier.

I might not be explaining myself right. Under the 2024 act, you have to deliver a rural support plan. That is law and that is right. It has not been delivered. A draft came out, but it was nothing more than a template. The rural support plan will give us the entire strategy for moving forward.

Are you saying that the route map is the rural support plan? Is that the level of detail that we are talking about and is it the only thing that we will get? Is that what will be in the rural support plan? That seems to be what is being suggested.

Thank you.

Minister, I was going to say at the end of our last discussion that I have no doubt that I, you and everybody in this room want the best for the agriculture industry; the thing is how we get there.

I just want to pick up on the convener’s point. This is a five-year plan that will run from 2027 to 2032—or, effectively, into 2031. As a result, tiers 1 to 4 will be in place until then, because that is what the law sets out, is it not? It sets out a five-year plan, as the CAP used to do. Of course, the CAP was set for seven years initially—was it not?—although I think that the last one was set for five years.

Are you saying that there will be no plans in that period to take away or change tiers 1 and 2, and that there will be direct and enhanced payments that whole time? Is what we are talking about a potential future direction, which would come in post-2031?

There have been some excellent questions about small farmers. We had a similar discussion about the Scottish suckler beef support scheme, when I asked you what that meant for small farmers. I cannot remember your exact words, but you said something like, “I hear you.” I emphasise again that we have been asked to put SSIs in place before we have a real understanding of what they will mean for smaller farmers and crofters.

The point about price is a wider one. The worry with any requirement, particularly if you cannot always do it yourself, is that the cost then gets bigger and bigger. There is a big difference between a 500-acre farm and a guy—or a woman, or anybody else—who has 20 acres and five sheep. There is no point in me asking the same questions, but I want to push that.

I want to ask about the story of how we have come to be here. Where did the idea of the whole farm plan start for you? I buy some of what you are saying; a QMS or Scottish Quality Crops farm assurance member will have been doing some of this for years now—although again, a lot of smaller farmers are not in farm assurance schemes. So, as you are talking about co-design, what is the story, from your perspective, of how we have got to the point where you feel that this is the right decision for us?

On the technical side, my understanding is that there will be no penalty in 2025 if plans are not in place and that there will just be a warning letter. Just to make sure, is that absolutely right?

You said that the document is currently thousands of words long, so you hope to condense it for it to be useful—otherwise it will be a nice bedtime read, will it not? That is important. The letter that the minister sent says of the code that

“it will be fundamental to the activity required to access support”,

so it is an important document. The 2024 act says that the law can require

“regard to be had by particular persons to the guidance”,

that is, the code of practice for sustainable farming. So, the code is an important document because future payments could hinge on it. To go back to your argument about carrot and stick, do you envisage that as a carrot approach that incentivises the use of the document, rather than saying, “Do the document or a penalty will come”? You said that there would be no penalties through the code.

I almost want to talk about this issue very quietly, because I do not want other countries to pick up on it. In Europe, there has been a big discussion and quite a few press releases about the changes to the common agricultural policy and what is happening in England and Wales. I have read some of the stuff that has come out of Europe in the past few days.

Of course, it is up to individual countries to choose what they want to do, and you are absolutely right to say that we want to get it right for Scotland, but I would like some clarity on that. I am slightly worried, because we sell into that market. It is a very important market for us with regard to the export of sheep, cattle, grain, pigs—I could go on for ever.

Have you had discussions about that? Have you been down to London or Wales or even across to Europe to have such discussions to make sure that you have the comfort of knowing that anything that we do here will not be detrimental to future trade?

I have to be honest that I am still not very clear, but maybe I am not picking this up right. Your route map goes up to 2027, which is two years away. You are right that the hope is that there will be no surprises in that, but I am still not clear.

Will you tell me again what will be in the rural support plan? It will be laid in winter 2025 and will start in 2027. It sets the direction, but we already know the direction. It will be about tiers 1 to 4; tier 1 is about direct payments, with a greening something in tier 2 that we are not clear about yet, and tiers 3 and 4 will come later, plus the less favoured area support scheme and the Scottish beef calf scheme. All of that will be in the plan. You said that it will be a collection of all the evidence and discussions that have happened. Tell me more about that.

I assumed that we would have known pretty much all of that by now. For absolute clarity, you are saying that the purpose of the rural support plan is about the future. The SSIs that we will consider in the autumn are about the transition from the legacy schemes into the new schemes. The rural support plan will give us the information, knowledge, strategy, direction and everything else that will take us, post that, through the next five years.

Minister, you said a second ago that you hope that things are clear to the committee. I want things to be clear to the committee, but one of the fundamental problems that we discussed during the legislative process for the 2024 act was the rural support plan, which will provide the real detail about what the future strategy for agriculture looks like. Here you are telling me that the Scottish statutory instruments will come in the autumn but that the rural support plan will not come until the winter, which could be only a couple of months before the new sections of the agri act kick in in 2026 and only a year before most of the major elements of your strategy come in in 2027. Why is it so late? Surely we should already have that plan and we should be discussing it now.