Seòmar agus comataidhean

Yes. As I outlined to the committee when I appeared previously, over £60 million worth of savings from the portfolio had gone forward at that time. The biggest part of that was the convergence funding. I outlined that in the letter that I sent to the committee about the budget as well. The £33 million was funding that we received unexpectedly, so we had not budgeted for that. That is part of the ring-fenced funding that we receive, so it has to come back to the portfolio in future years. It has not been returned for the 2023-24 financial year, but I will be discussing further with the Deputy First Minister when that money will be returned to the portfolio. It will be returned not for the coming financial year but in future years.

When you look at what we are doing in relation to agricultural transformation, you will see an increase in this year’s budget in comparison to last year’s. When you look at the overall climate change-related spend and what we are investing over this year, you will see that it is up £90 million on what we invested over the previous year. That covers the investment between our sustainable agricultural capital grant scheme and the agri-environment climate scheme.

I absolutely agree with you. We want to make it as easy as possible for people to take part and to be part of that transformation.

You touched on—other members might want to come in on this—carbon audits and the low uptake. We are really disappointed by the low uptake of the scheme so far, but that is why the work that we have been undertaking with the agriculture reform implementation oversight board—ARIOB—has been important in helping us to design schemes that are easy to access and offer the right incentives. I believe that we have provided that through the scheme, even though the uptake through it has not been what we would want to see.

This is the first year of the scheme’s operation. The committee might have suggestions as to how we can better communicate things. We have done our best to work with the various organisations and stakeholders to get the message out as far as possible to explain what help and support is available. I am happy to take any suggestions on how that could be improved.

Ultimately, the co-development and co-design process that we are working through for future policy is to help us get over some of the hurdles. We do not want to put up barriers and we do not want to make the transformation and some of the changes that we need to see difficult for our farmers and crofters. We want to make it as easy as possible, and that is what we are trying to do through the schemes.

As I said in my response to Rachael Hamilton, I am happy to write to the committee with more information on each scheme if you would find that helpful.

As I said in response to Rachael Hamilton’s questions, we know that there is strong demand, in particular, for capital items, which can make an impact. On what we want to transform, as we have outlined in our vision for agriculture, we want Scotland to be that global leader when it comes to sustainable and regenerative farming. We know that we need to do what we can to lower emissions and enhance biodiversity so, through that fund and through some of the other schemes that we have, including the agri-environment climate scheme, which I talked about, and various other funds, we are looking to encourage the uptake of various practices and to help fund the pieces of equipment that we know can have a big impact on emissions.

We will, of course, take all those factors into consideration as we develop the scheme and before we launch it. As I said, we will be happy to keep the committee updated with further information on that. That will be a big issue going forward. It would be great to have a bigger capital budget to allow us to invest more in that but, unfortunately, we are in the position that we are in with the capital allocations that we have received. In the current financial year, we have really tried to target funding where we think it would have the biggest impact on emissions reductions, and we will of course consider those factors as we develop the scheme.

Yes.

People will, of course, be disappointed if they are not able to apply to the scheme this year, but I am not able to quantify that, because I do not know how many people were successful in relation to the applications that we saw this year.

George Burgess might have the overall figures for the applications that we received for the fund, if those would be helpful.

Yes. No problem.

I am happy to elaborate on that as well.

The £50 million of financial transactions has been removed this year because that was the loan scheme that we operated. The committee will be aware that we moved to a system of advance payments for farmers this year, instead of operating a loan scheme, which is far more efficient than what we operated previously. We have also brought forward the payments in that scheme through the Scottish statutory instrument that was introduced in September. We do not have the financial transactions there because we do not need to utilise them.