Seòmar agus comataidhean

That is an important point. The need for recognition was raised a number of times in the debate last week. I certainly hear that when I am out and about visiting different farmers and hearing about the actions that they have already undertaken. We know that we have a lot of work to do. Initially, we want to incentivise those people who have not undertaken the actions to do so and to get the baseline information. That we recognise and reward the work that has already been done is fundamental to our thinking and planning going forward.

We need to provide an update to our climate change plan and set out our policies for meeting targets. Work on that is on-going, and I believe that the plan is due to be published later this year.

It is really challenging to meet the emissions envelope that we have set out. There is no getting around that. We have really stretching targets to meet.

We need to reduce our emissions by 2.4 megatonnes of CO₂ by 2032. The work that the farmer-led groups undertook on that tells us that combining all the measures takes us to a 1 megatonne reduction, so we still have a gap to fill. The challenge exists. We are trying to see how we can work through it together and fill the gap. We are considering what further work we can do on policies that we can introduce to enable us to do that.

Yes, we have. We have raised it repeatedly with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and various secretaries of state that we have had throughout the time, but, as yet, there has been no response.

I will hand over to George Burgess, who can explain more of the detail of that.

On all the points that you are talking about, the position is not as straightforward as going and asking for £X million in funding. As I said, we expect at least the previous promises to be fulfilled and the shortfall to be addressed, but the whole point is that we need to have the discussion on allocations and go through the detail.

We need to discuss the situation with the UK Government.

Again, we need to have that conversation. Ultimately, we want to be able to design and fund a system that will work for us, in Scotland, and not have those constraints from the UK Government.

I disagree with that, because £33 million will be returned to the portfolio and must be spent within it, whereas we do not know what funding will be allocated to the portfolio. We do not know how much we will get or when it will come.

I assumed the responsibilities in relation to peatland, forestry and land reform that previously sat with the Minister for Environment and Land Reform.