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David Finlay, the Ethical Dairy is often referred to in the Scottish Parliament and the work that you do is well quoted. How scalable is your project? It is good to hear that the business is now profitable and that you are looking to a positive future, but what is needed to mainstream your type of venture and what barriers stand in the way of that type of venture coming up quickly and addressing this emergency? We do not have 25 years to transform or become organic. What do we need to do to make your project a mainstream solution?

Do supermarkets actually respond to customer demand? In the UK, the really big players in the supermarket sector dictate what happens. It is the supermarkets that put products on the shelves. There is a lack of choice. Decisions on which food products appear on our shelves are not consumer driven—it is the other way round. Is there an issue in that regard?

I will leave that with you. Andrew Bauer would like to respond to Alasdair Allan’s points.

I will ask David Finlay the same question. I picked up on your point about baselining probably not being the way to go because the funding could go to people who have not done the right thing in the past, and those who have paid particular attention to the role that biodiversity plays in agriculture might not be recognised. How should we tackle the continuing—if on a very small scale—removal of dykes, hedges and so on? What should be our approach in the short term, given that we are in a biodiversity emergency?

Is the committee content to delegate authority to me to sign off our report on our deliberations on the affirmative SSI?

Members indicated agreement.

We will write to the minister on that.

Since there are no further questions, we will move to agenda item 2, which is formal consideration of motion S6M-02211. I invite Ms Slater to move the motion.

Motion moved,

That the Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee recommends that the Plant Health (EU Exit) (Scotland) (Amendment) (No 2) Regulations 2021 [draft] be approved.—[Lorna Slater]

Motion agreed to.

In a slight change to the agenda, we now move into private session and will resume in public with agenda item 4.

That completes consideration of the instrument. I thank the minister and her officials for attending.

We are back. We are not going to blame rural connectivity—I think that there was an issue in Holyrood. I thank everyone for their patience. We have taken the decision to postpone our evidence session with the marine panel, which was due to start at about 5 past 11. We now have more scope to ask questions of our terrestrial witnesses, which is a bonus.

David Finlay was in the middle of answering a question about funding.

We will move on to questions from Karen Adam.

We will certainty consider that invitation. It would be nice to get out and about again, as the committee intends to do.

We now have the opportunity to ask questions until about 11 o’clock. I will ask some very broad questions. How are your projects or schemes contributing to solutions that address the climate and nature emergencies that we face right now? How scalable are your projects or initiatives? What would be needed to mainstream your identified solutions? What barriers stand in the way?