Seòmar agus comataidhean

Before I come back to Ariane Burgess, I will bring in Mercedes Villalba for a supplementary.

I am sorry, Pete—I am going to have to stop you there. We are tight for time, but I am sure that some of the topics that you were going to cover will be brought up in questions. I will move to Colin Smith for a brief opening statement, then we will get on to questions.

I have a question for Pete Cheema or John Lee from the Scottish Grocers Federation. What impact do the environmental challenges have on your businesses? That might be about reducing packaging or sell-by or use-by dates. Do you see issues that you will have to tackle as a result of strengthening environmental policies?

Last, but not least, is Mercedes Villalba. I hope that I have not pronounced your surname wrongly.

I declare an interest in a farming and letting business, and I am a member of NFU Scotland.

Thank you very much. I appreciate your kind words, and I am absolutely delighted and honoured to take on the role as committee convener. I note that the committee’s acronym is, unfortunately, RAINE, which is not quite as nice as the acronym of the predecessor committee that I sat on, which sounded like “éclair”.

I am quite sure that this committee will be a fascinating one. It will have a huge amount of work to do in an area that I know all the members have a particular interest, and I look forward to working with all of you, the clerks and the Scottish Parliament information centre over the next few months.

Absolutely—I could not agree more. Our work on that could be built around work on the wider issue of succession planning when it comes to farming businesses. As someone who was involved in young farmers groups for many years, I know that that was an issue way back then—it must be 30 or 40 years ago now. Succession planning was an issue, but we did not look specifically at women in agriculture, which was a failing.

There is quite a bit of work to be done in that area. We must ensure that we bring through future generations of farmers. Entrepreneurial behaviour in farming tends to be exhibited by the young people. That is not always the case—I do not want to be ageist—but we certainly need to pay due regard to how agriculture will develop in the short and the long term.

Item 4 is a provisional discussion of the legacy papers produced at the end of session 5 by the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee and the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee. The papers summarise the committees’ recommendations on ways of working, based on the experience of the session, and highlight work that this committee might wish to focus on.

I invite members to highlight any aspects of the legacy papers that they consider to be particularly important for our work programme. I will not call members alphabetically to comment; instead, I will begin with those who had experience of the previous committees, starting with Liam McArthur.

Absolutely. I think that the members on the previous committees, certainly on the ECCLR Committee, worked very well together to come to the best solutions. That involved compromise on each side, but we had very few divisions and our committee reports were consensual. I would like to think that, going forward, we will gather evidence from stakeholders and work in a joined-up manner to try to get the best policies, laws and solutions for everybody. That will involve compromise in some cases, but I am sure that we will be able to reach the best solutions.

We could probably talk for the next week about our remit and set out what we think we will need to achieve over the next few years, but unfortunately we only have until 10.15 today. If members agree, we will programme an informal business planning event towards the end of the summer recess. My preference would be for committee members to meet physically in Parliament, rather than virtually.

Unfortunately, because of the Covid restrictions and where we are at present, we will be unable to have an away day. An away day is always a fantastic team building opportunity because it allows us to speak to one another both formally and informally and to get to know one another a little better, but we will not be able to do that before the Parliament reconvenes in September. However, I hope that we can have a face-to-face business planning meeting at some time towards the end of August.

If everyone agrees, the committee clerks will be in touch with members regarding the arrangements for that informal planning session, which will be organised in a way that takes due regard of the restrictions that are in place at the time.

As there are no other comments from members, I thank you all very much and say once again that I am absolutely looking forward to working with you all on what I believe will be the best committee in the Parliament. Not only do I have the best constituency, but I now have the best committee. I am delighted to go into the recess on that basis. I look forward to the committee’s hard work and to getting to know you all better when we have our next meeting.

Thank you. I should have said at the outset that we recognise that there will be outstanding questions about where our remit falls, and whether there is crossover with the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee. After this session, I propose to write to the Scottish Government to ask for clarity in advance of our business planning meeting. However, I ask that members do not hesitate to raise topics that they think fall within the remit of this committee, and we can then clarify the position before we move forward.