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As Erica Clarkson said, we are still to undertake the evaluation of that project. However, this is where the funding of other elements that we have undertaken has been important. We have helped to fund the community resettlement officer positions as part of that work.

Funding for the addressing depopulation action plan does not come just from interventions from my portfolio; the social justice portfolio also contains funding for that. Again, that is all part of our considerations of what we are looking at as part of the addressing depopulation action plan.

Ultimately, what we are getting from the UK Government equates to a real-terms cut to our budget. The vast majority of our budget comes from what we used to get when we were members of the EU, so we are largely dependent on that, as it makes up the vast majority of our funding. Of course, that has a wider impact.

The issue comes back to what I said in my opening comments about where we were at the start in relation to settlements across the piece. We are facing very difficult budget choices, and difficult decisions must be made, but all of that is exacerbated by the fact that we have a lack of clarity and no certainty on what we will receive in the future, as well as the fact that we are receiving a flat settlement from the UK Government.

I would be happy to outline that. The pillar 1 funds are exactly as you have described. We have voluntary coupled support, with the beef scheme and the sheep scheme within that, and there is the fruit and vegetable aid scheme. I want to be absolutely clear that those budgets remain unchanged—they have not been cut. There is £48 million allocated to the voluntary coupled support, and £2.7 million relates to the fruit and vegetable aid scheme.

The element of that budget that has been reduced is the line that previously related to common market organisation. That budget line covered several things, including the school milk scheme and the public intervention and private storage aid scheme. To give you an example from one of those schemes, we transferred the school milk budget to education, and the scheme is now funded directly by education, with local authorities charged with delivering it. We have used the private storage aid scheme only once, in relation to pig meat during Covid.

It is up against the forecast spend, and I believe that that still allows us to increase uptake from where we are at the moment. Last year, when I was before the committee, we were looking at very low figures for the number of people undertaking carbon audits and soil tests. That figure jumped up towards the end of the claim period at the end of last February, and we have seen an increase in uptake, too.

We have ensured that what we have in the budget can meet the current levels that we are seeing, but there is also capacity for uptake of those schemes. I just want to reiterate that that support is still there and I very much encourage farmers and crofters to take it up.

I think that George Burgess wants to come in on that.

I want to be clear about this—I know that this will have been updated since the committee saw the budget papers. When I talked about the £15 million that we have agreed with the Deputy First Minister will be switched from resource to capital, this is an example of the funding that we have been able to move in that way. The allocation is still £3 million, but it is now capital rather than resource funding. After all, that is where the greatest need is. It shows why the agreement to switch that funding has been so important.

As for what has happened with the agricultural transformation fund over the past couple of years, when it was first used, over the course of 2022-23, it was £5 million. At the time, the money came through the sustainable capital agricultural grant scheme. It was used for more efficient slurry-spreading equipment and, indeed, for prioritising that spending on slurry, given the water environment regulations that had been introduced and the requirements that farmers were being expected to meet. In the light of all of that, we felt that it should be prioritised.

However, despite its being a £5 million fund and even though £4.6 million of it had been committed, the actual spend in the end was around £3 million. Over the course of last year, we made another pot of £5 million available to the fund. It was channelled through the agri-environment climate scheme, with the focus on slurry storage, and I think that just over £2 million was spent. Although this is a reduction, it should be seen against what we think that we can spend and what the actual spend has been over the past couple of years.

I am sorry—I said that that was why we needed it as capital spending. If we wanted to fund items similar to those that we had funded in previous years, we would need that funding to be capital rather than resource.

I am defining what falls within that overall budget line, so that we can be clear on where there has been any movement.

The common market organisation line had £9 million against it. That fund was unspent apart from those specific examples that I have talked about. It was felt that, rather than having a budget line against funding that had not been utilised, it was better to reallocate that resource to other areas where the funding could be spent. That is why it looks as though there has been a reduction in the pillar 1 other payments line.

As I said in a previous response, part of the issue in relation to the funding that we get from the UK Government is that it does not come through as a mix of resource and capital, as it used to. Therefore, we have had a fall in capital allocation over that time.

Together with all my colleagues, of course, my job in Cabinet and within the Scottish Government is to represent the needs of the farmers, crofters and land managers of rural Scotland and to ensure that we get the best possible support and prioritise it as best we can. I believe that, with the package that we have had, the capital settlement has been difficult, and difficult decisions have been made not only in this portfolio but in other areas.

You have highlighted some of the portfolios in Government where there has been an increase, but that is not the case right across Government, and there have been very significant cuts to capital budgets in other areas. In my portfolio in particular, the situation has been very difficult; for example, we have seen quite a significant shortfall in the capital required to deliver on the woodland grant schemes. It is a very disappointing settlement as a whole, but it is my job to do what I can with the funding allocations that we have and to ultimately fight that corner.

We have made really difficult decisions, but I believe that, with this budget and the fact that we have been able to secure that resource-to-capital switch, which has enabled us to do that bit more with capital funding in what were previously unfunded priorities in the portfolio, we are delivering as best we can within the settlement that we have.

It is really difficult going forward, as this is the last year in which we will have any clarity on a settlement and what that will look like. In other words, we do not know what the settlement will look like from 2025-26 onwards. We have tried to engage in those discussions with the UK Government, but that has proven very difficult. We have raised the issue on numerous occasions with the various secretaries of state and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the basis that there had been a commitment to discuss the intra-UK allocations of funding support. As yet, however, the offer to have those discussions has not been taken up.

I have been in touch with the new secretary of state, Steve Barclay, on a number of occasions, but we have yet to receive a response to the correspondence that we issued and in which we tried, essentially, to reset the relationship so that we can have a positive discussion about this. That discussion has still to take place.