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To be honest, I would have liked to see an increase in several of the budget lines. However, given the capital envelope and the overall funding envelope, it is about how best to prioritise within that. We have tried to minimise any reductions in those areas as far as we possibly can.

It is important to highlight the overall research programme, which has had a broad envelope of about £50 million a year, but we support other schemes that encourage research and innovation, including in farmers directly. We have maintained the funding for the knowledge transfer and innovation fund in this budget. Again, we want to see the uptake of those funds and see that innovation, that research support and, of course, that peer-to-peer learning, which is important.

To go back to your first point, I agree about the importance of the FPMC scheme. I have visited several businesses that have received funding from that in the past, where investment would not otherwise have been possible, to upgrade facilities in several ways. Those businesses would not have been able to develop without the injection of funding that we provided. The scheme has been vital in that regard, so we will look for any available opportunity to restore that funding as a priority.

We have undertaken a great deal of work on the small farms grant scheme. George Burgess will correct me if I am wrong on this, but I think that it was one of the most difficult funds to access, which meant that it was largely underspent. I think that we had £1 million budgeted for it. In the past it was a means-tested fund and, although it was to support small farmers, it was one of the hardest-to-access funds.

We therefore did an extensive piece of work with a variety of stakeholders, and I announced during the Christmas recess that we will be launching a small producers pilot fund in place of that. The funding that had been used previously for the small farms grant scheme will now be used for the small producers pilot.

We have engaged with stakeholders on what would be the best support and the most useful in helping small producers. There are a couple of abattoir projects that will be funded within that. There have been calls for a website for small producers. We are also looking at specific packages that could be used in relation to skills and further development. There are several strands within that, but it is an exciting piece of work that will potentially allow us to better utilise the funding in the way that people would like to see.

In relation to science and enforcement, when I appeared before the committee previously, I spoke about our science and innovation strategy, which was launched just last week in Aberdeen. The strategy sets out six outcomes that we want to achieve by best focusing our resources on science and maximising the value of that resource. The marine directorate uses world-leading marine science, so we need to utilise that resource as best we can. A big part of that involves collaborating with others, including research institutions and academic institutions. We should look more widely within Scotland, as well as internationally, to see how we can work collaboratively.

With regard to the directorate’s overall funding for marine science, about £9 million relates to the science around fisheries. The vast majority of that funding—between £6 million and £6.5 million—is for the two research vessels that we use for our work.

Another critical part of the marine directorate’s work relates to compliance and enforcement. We have, I think, 18 coastal offices, two surveillance aeroplanes, three MPVs and two rigid inflatable boats that we can utilise as a resource. The overall budget for enforcement and compliance is about £30 million, of which just over £11 million is for our MPVs. That level of investment is broadly similar to what was provided over the previous financial year.

Like all vessels, MPVs have an overall lifespan, so we have to factor that in to our planning. Our research vessels are very specific—the Scotia is one of our key vessels—so we must ensure that we have such resources in the future. Those considerations, of course, form part of our future planning.

I ask Dave Signorini whether he has more information on that.

I would be happy to follow up with you specifically or to provide the committee with further information relating to that.

Absolutely. I have already outlined in quite a lot of detail the significant capital pressures that we are facing. That fund can vary highly from year to year, of course, depending on storms and weather events such as we have had. If you look at last year, you will see that we spent only £84,000 from within the overall envelope of £1 million of funding. The situation is also highly variable on the basis of where storms occur, as the ports and harbours on the east coast tend to be more exposed than those on the west coast.

We can, we hope, utilise the available funding, should there be other such events, but again I say that it can be a variable fund. It has been reduced due to the pressures that we are facing, but it had has been underspent over the course of the previous financial year. We will have to continue to monitor that closely.

In relation to our payment strategy for the coming year, we made changes to ensure that money reached bank accounts as soon as it possibly could. Industry had called for that, and it was also a response to the impact of the cost of living crisis over the past couple of years

I think that the UK Government brought forward its initial payment schedule last year. We have brought forward our own payment schedule, and we are paying farmers at the earliest ever stage. We have done the same with other schemes such as LFASS, knowing how important it is for farmers to have that money come through at the earliest possible stage.

The AECS funding is in place.

The abattoir piece of that work was quite substantial, and there had been surveys and other pieces of work undertaken. Certainly, when I go to events such as smallholder festivals, or when I visit farms across the country, abattoir provision is one of the foremost issues that comes out every single time. That was a key focus of the work to develop the small producers pilot fund, and it is why we have had that recommendation and why we are supporting that approach within the pilot fund. I am quite excited about the potential of the support and what it can do.