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I welcome the minister again. He is accompanied for this quiz regarding the Scottish Government’s draft budget 2015-16, on the themes of forestry and Scotland rural development programme climate issues, by Jo O’Hara, who is deputy director of the Forestry Commission Scotland; John Ireland, who is deputy director in the low carbon economy division of the Scottish Government; and Neil Ritchie, who is branch head in the natural assets and flooding office of the Scottish Government. Good morning, everybody.
I refer members to the papers and I shall kick off with the first question, which is about the delay in publishing the document that shows how the budget supports measures to reduce Scotland’s climate emissions. Since the delay in its publication hinders effective scrutiny, can the minister commit to publishing it alongside the draft budget next year?
Having been a member of the Finance Committee in the past, I recognise that there is great interest in having that information simultaneously with the budget. However, I shall explain for the committee’s benefit the process that is involved. Although there is no statutory requirement to produce the information and no statutory specification as to when it should be produced, we have made every effort to produce it as near as we can to publication of the budget. I believe that last year it took five weeks to produce the information, and this year it took three weeks.
We had an unusual situation with the referendum, and during the summer we had a delay in the budget process, which is happening slightly later than it would otherwise, so the team has done a good job of collating the level 4 information and producing it within three weeks. It is difficult; we have to wait until we have the finalised budget before the carbon assessment of the budget can be produced and the team can produce the information that you are now relying on to assess the carbon intensity of the Government’s spending programme.
The point that I am making is that there is a difficulty in producing the documents simultaneously, and we have made every effort to ensure that the gap is as small as possible. I apologise if that has presented a problem for committee this year, but the team has endeavoured to get the information to you as quickly as they possibly could.
The document looks as though it has been run off in a hurry. It should be presented similarly to the budget. I suggest that it should also be circulated to every MSP, since our view is that every department has a responsibility in terms of climate change. It might give the document higher status if that were so.
I certainly agree that it is important for every MSP to consider the information—especially given the need for every committee to scrutinise the low-carbon agenda. Indeed, all ministers are held accountable for their actions, and we are collectively responsible for delivering on the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009. We all take an interest in it, and it is especially relevant now that the Cabinet sub-committee on climate change has been created.
I accept the convener’s point entirely: we need to ensure that the carbon assessment has status and that people recognise it. We can always look at the formatting and presentation of the document, and I am happy to go away with that as an action point for next year. There is obviously a desire to ensure that information is produced as quickly as possible, which has perhaps meant that we sacrificed style in presenting the information.
It seems to us that it took longer than three weeks before the assessment was available to MSPs. It was more like five weeks.
My understanding was that it took about three weeks to prepare, but I ask John Ireland, who might be more familiar with the deadlines, to say when that happened.
I am just looking for a piece of paper on which I noted down the dates yesterday. The level 4 information was available on 23 October, and the assessment was published on 11 November, which is roughly three weeks. The five-week period that you mentioned was the time that it took last year.
It is probable that, although the level 4 information comes about a fortnight after the budget, the actual document came two or three weeks after that.
Yes. There is the difference between the level 4 information and the information in the document that is before you today: the level 4 information is produced and then we collate the information and provide the commentary on it, and we produce it as quickly as possible. You can get a sense of the timing issues if you look in detail at some of the items that are still not tied down at level 4. We are trying to make a trade-off between getting a useful commentary to the committee on the level 4 information as it is presented, which takes time, and publishing information that is as full as possible.
The timing also accounts for the formatting. We produce the document using Word, rather than sending it to the printers to be laid out properly, which would add another delay. We understand the committee’s frustrations, but we are trying to do it as quickly as possible. The convener is absolutely right to say that we should in the future circulate the assessment to all MSPs, but there is a trade-off required if we are to take the time to do the work and assemble the commentary. It cannot be done in seconds; it takes time.
It might be worth mentioning—the committee may be aware of this—that we are developing a macroeconomic model for the purposes of the third report on proposals and policies. I am not sure whether John Ireland and his team have had a chance to think through whether that will speed up the process next year, but we can always look to see in future years whether availability of that model will allow us to calculate more quickly from the level 4 figures in order to produce the assessment more rapidly. We will always try to shorten that gap.
I am aware of Parliament’s need to scrutinise the figures as soon as possible, but there are physical limitations on what we can do now. I am confident that the team has done everything that it can this year to get the figures to the committee as quickly as possible, but as I said previously, we will look at the formatting and at how we distribute the figures and will do what we can to improve the process for you.
Okay, thank you for that. Jim Hume has the next question.
Thanks, convener, and good morning everybody.
Scotland missed the annual climate change targets in 2010, 2011 and 2012. How does the minister account for that within the rural affairs and environment budget? What action has been taken in the budget to address future climate change targets?
On behalf of the Government—and, indeed, the Parliament—I put on record our disappointment that we in Scotland have missed our targets. I have dealt with the issue in a ministerial statement. If we want encouragement, the actual amount of greenhouse gases that we emitted has been below the target—so better than the target—for the past two years. Sadly, that was not the case in 2010, when we were off the mark. In 2011 and 2012, the amount of greenhouse gases that we emitted was below the targets that we set ourselves as a Parliament, but we recognise that, based on the net account, we failed.
Your second question was on what we are doing to tackle that. We have done a number of things. We have engaged with our stakeholders—as, I believe, have the Opposition parties—which include WWF, Stop Climate Chaos Scotland and Friends of the Earth, to look at the options for addressing our country’s underperformance. A package of measures was brought forward in June to try to address the requests that have been made. John Swinney, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth, has met stakeholders again to hear their concerns and to look at what measures could be taken in future years to get us back on track to achieve the tonnage targets that we have set ourselves, which mean that we probably need to achieve a reduction of just over 46 per cent by 2020. We recognise that the task is getting harder, although the baseline adjustments obviously played a huge part in the perceived—and actual, in terms of the statutory targets—missing of the targets.
As I said in response to the previous question, we are committed to developing a macroeconomic model that will allow us to understand much better the cost-effectiveness of Government spend in all areas on tackling low carbon. I hope that the model will be available in the late summer of next year for use in the autumn of next year to inform RPP3. It will also have a benefit in informing future budget rounds, so that we can advise colleagues in different portfolios how much carbon abatement they get for every £1 million that they spend on certain types of activity. Therefore, we will be in a much better position to examine our performance and to consider what steps are necessary to get us on stream.
Ute Collier gave the committee some examples in a previous evidence session of what it would take to save a megatonne, but that is not necessarily true. She referred to spending £5 billion in housing, but we might be able to save a megatonne elsewhere in the economy for a lower cost, so we need to have an understanding of what we can do.
I give the committee a commitment that we are looking seriously at how we can achieve the absolute tonnage targets that have been set in the annual statutory targets. Through the Cabinet sub-committee, we are working together as a team to identify how we can do that across Government, bearing in mind that we do not have sectoral targets—if we fail in one area, we need to make up the shortfall somewhere else in the economy and we are working as a team to do that.
Thanks for your answers, minister.
The figures in the draft budget indicate that rural enterprise looks to be being cut by 98.9 per cent, so it is almost completely done away with altogether. Various projects that I am aware of come out of that budget, such as the monitor farms project. One of the monitor farms has focused on climate change and carbon use, so it would be concerning if the budget for that went. There is also the Go Rural scheme, which our deputy convener helped to launch, and the rural leadership programme, which I recall that Jim Mather said was a vital attribute that will play a key role in achieving the rural business growth that we all want. It is really quite concerning that the rural enterprise budget seems to be getting chucked out the window. Will the minister comment on that and on where the projects might go in the future?
That is more a question for Mr Lochhead than for this minister.
I am happy to give an overview.
The monitor farm project relates to climate change and carbon use.
I am happy to address the question, although I think that the cabinet secretary could deal with the detail.
On the overall position that we have arrived at, it is worth stating that a number of stakeholders, including NFU Scotland—with which I believe Mr Hume may be familiar—were demanding that we had almost no transfer of funds from pillar 1 to pillar 2. Had they had their way, we would have had nothing in the agri-environment budget and nothing in the enterprise budget.
We have to be realistic, because we received a very poor settlement in both pillar 1 and pillar 2. I do not necessarily want to revisit the entire debate that we experienced over the summer but, as I think you know, we had a very poor level of funding for pillar 1 and little scope to transfer funding from pillar 1 to pillar 2. The pillar 2 settlement is the lowest in Europe—we have €12 per hectare, which is by any standard a meagre settlement—therefore we have very limited ability to fund agri-environment and other measures.
In the negotiations, the farming community for land managers wanted minimal transfer of funds from pillar 1 to pillar 2 and the environmental non-governmental organisations wanted to maximise the spend on agri-environment measures. The cabinet secretary faced a difficult challenge, but he tried to strike that balance, so that the maximum modulation has gone into pillar 2 aspects that cover agri-enviroment measures, which is what the stakeholders were asking for, and the farmers have effectively got what they wanted with minimal transfer through modulation to pillar 2 in relation to the other aspects of the SRDP. That is the position. Effectively, it is what stakeholders asked for. Neither group got exactly what they wanted, which is probably a good thing. The agri-environment budget is maintained—it is actually £10 million higher, but I appreciate that that is in cash terms not in real terms. We are also able to support the agri-environment projects that the environmental NGOs believed it was vital to support.
In a nutshell, we have arrived where we are because we have a very poor settlement on pillar 1 and pillar 2 and there was limited scope for modulation. The cabinet secretary has done the best that he can to achieve a balance of what the various stakeholders were asking for.
Good morning to you and your officials, minister. I want to take you back to question 1. You raised the issue of the new macroeconomic model, which I very much welcome, as I think it will be helpful. However, I am not clear how it will help with drilling down to level 4 figures during the budget process. I do not understand how it would speed that up. Can you clarify that for me? It would be helpful to understand the relationship between the two things.
To be clear, I did not say definitively that it will help. However, I am keen to consider whether we can use that model, given its ability to tell us about the cost-effectiveness of spend and its impact through the supply chain—if we put money into a particular area, what impact does it have on achieving our overall purpose of sustainable economic growth and what does it do for the low-carbon supply chain and developing the low-carbon economy? If we can use that additional modelling capability within Government to help to inform the budget process, it may well enable us to respond faster with a change in level 4 figures. At the last minute, we might be able to tweak the figures and come forward with a better assessment.
John Ireland is the expert on this issue and the model is very much his baby. We could see whether the model might give us additional functionality that we can use to speed up the process next year. I do not know whether he wants to comment on whether that is even feasible, given that I am bouncing it on him in the course of a committee meeting. However, it is a possibility that is worth exploring.
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It would not necessarily add to the speed of the process but I think that it would add to the utility. It could provide additional information, so we will look at that. The other area in which it could help enormously is with some of the issues around the carbon assessment of the budget, which is very helpful in terms of the carbon content of Government expenditure but is less helpful in terms of abatement potential—in fact, it says nothing about abatement potential.
I think that the new model will give us a lot of scope to provide the committee with additional information. We would need to think about the timing and sequencing of that. It might be more sensible to focus first on a commentary that we can provide quickly and then provide additional information later, because model runs take time. I think that what the minister is signalling is that there is scope to do a great deal of stuff that would be helpful for the committee’s scrutiny process. Once we have the model up and running, we should come back to that and also pick up on the concerns about timing and getting information to the committee as quickly as possible.
Thank you.
Nigel Don has another question on targets.
Good morning to you, minister, and your colleagues. I want to pursue this issue a bit further because models are, of course, always welcome but they are only as good as the original data and, indeed, the algorithms that people put into them. I am conscious, as the minister will be, that the portfolio that we are talking about is one of the highest producers of carbon for the money that we spend. I think that we probably understand that, but you might want to give some explanation of that, minister. In that context, should we put more effort into auditing? I ask that not because I want Government auditors running around the place but because I think that those who receive very substantial sums of money in our communities should perhaps be required to provide some kind of professional carbon audit for their businesses. Quite a large amount of carbon and of public money is involved.
Those are very reasonable points about the balance of expenditure. Looking forward quite a long time, we anticipate that by 2050 a very much larger proportion of Scotland’s total remaining emissions will be in the rural land use sector. So, all the organisations involved in that sector will have an interest in ensuring that they are carbon efficient—I am not sure whether that is a legitimate term.
It will do. We know what you mean.
It will do for the purposes of this conversation, I hope. Everybody would have that particular interest and, regardless of whether it was mandatory or voluntary, I would have thought that everybody would have an incentive to ensure that we try to maintain livestock production in Scotland, for example, in the face of the requirement to reduce our carbon emissions. It is in the sector’s interest to work with Government and stakeholders to deliver agriculture that can maintain productivity in a lower-carbon future.
I have previously given a response to the committee on our thoughts about where we might go on carbon audits in the farming sector. I entirely agree with Nigel Don that it would be a sensible area for us to have a dialogue with the industry about to see what, ideally, can be done voluntarily. We obviously have the farming for a better climate farms, which are trying to demonstrate to the sector what is possible. They do that through peer-to-peer influence to show that a good farmer, taking what we hope are relatively easily replicable steps, can deliver a 10 or 11 per cent improvement in their bottom line. That is a good thing to do as a business and it also has the benefit of lowering its carbon intensity.
We are trying different tactics to encourage people, but there is a lot of carrot rather than a lot of stick. Obviously, we need to work with the industry to come forward with as unbureaucratic a means as we can of recording information to allow us to understand what is happening and to monitor it through time to understand whether we are on the right trajectory in terms of the emissions profile of the agriculture sector and other rural sectors.
I entirely agree with Nigel Don that that is a good thing to do. Ultimately, if performance is less than expected, we might have to go down more of a stick route, with mandatory measures. However, at this stage, I am hopeful that we will not have to consider that.
I share your enthusiasm for those measures being carried out. Frankly, however, I do not share your optimism that it will happen. My observation of the world is that people do not change until you force them to. The opportunity to act voluntarily provides time to develop the methods, which would be useful. History suggests, however, that there must quickly come a point when people are just told, “You’re going to have to do this.” Otherwise, uptake will be too slow.
I agree with Nigel Don that there is a risk that people will not follow through. We have indicated, in relation to the announcement in June on the common agricultural policy package on permanent grassland and nutrient management plans, that we expect the emergence of a situation in which plans have to be produced.
We are working with the industry to develop the appropriate software and tools so that, during this period when it is not mandatory to produce plans, the process is as easy as possible for farmers to deploy. We do not want to create huge layers of bureaucracy for them, although we think that producing a plan is in their interests. That gives us time to demonstrate that those farms that are early adopters benefit from savings on nitrogen and fertiliser costs, as well as there being a reduction in the risk of diffuse pollution breaches at the farm. There are lots of reasons for farms to engage in the process, and we hope that we can demonstrate that it is in their interests to do so. However, we have already signalled that we are probably moving towards a position where there will be a requirement to produce a plan in due course.
I accept the point that Nigel Don is making: that there is a risk that some farmers may be less forthcoming than others. Bringing in a requirement is always a backstop, and there is a willingness to do that if we have to. However, I hope that farmers will heed the need to take action themselves in the longer-term interests of the industry, so that it is as viable and competitive as it can be in a way that is consistent with the low-carbon future that we all need to achieve.
Talking of sticks, we move on to planting targets and forestry.
Neat segue, convener.
Thank you, convener—I think.
If we could indeed move on to forestry, minister. Perhaps I should say “branch out” into forestry.
Members: Oh!
I am merely following the convener’s lead.
To be a little more serious, the draft budget restates the Government’s intention to plant 100,000 hectares by 2022. As we have discussed many times in the committee, the target started off at 10,000 hectares a year. It then became 100,000 hectares over 10 years—which still requires an average of 10,000 hectares a year. If we can cut through all the figures, the fact is that those targets are not being met.
Given that RPP2 attributes measurable emissions abatement figures to increased forestry planting, which is an integral part of RPP2, I wonder whether the minister can speculate or comment on the impact of continually failing to reach the targets that we need to reach if we are to attain the overall target of 100,000 hectares, given the climate change targets that the Government has set?
Forestry is extremely important to achieving our targets. I recognise that in Mr Fergusson’s question. I do not have a precise figure in front of me—we can come back with a correct one—but I believe that about 18 per cent of our emissions are offset by our woodlands. That is a huge sink. We are not like Latvia, however, which effectively has negative emissions annually, because its forests are so huge. That country is in the fortunate position of not contributing to global climate change, because of the size of its forests.
We indeed have an objective to plant 100,000 hectares between 2012 and 2022, and it is true that we have not achieved a rate of 10,000 hectares in the last three figures. However, it would be wrong to ignore the fact that there has been a significant increase in investment in woodland planting over those past three years. We have worked with the private sector, the national forest estate and NGOs to ensure improved performance, but we have not achieved a rate of 10,000 hectares a year.
There are a number of reasons for that. The key factor—looking forward, rather than looking back to what has happened over the past few years, when weather and other things have kicked in—is the availability of sites. We must reach a position where we have the right number of sites and the right places being proposed for sites. There are certain restrictions on what the Forestry Commission can do. We have all signed up to the woodland expansion advisory group process, which relates to concerns about forests being planted in the wrong places and concerns from the livestock sector about the loss of grazing land to forestry in places such as the Ettrick valley, which I know that Jim Hume is familiar with. That has meant that the process is slower now. There is a challenge around finding land that is available and which, after consultation with communities and local farming interests, we can plant on.
On the balance of funding between the national forest estate and the private sector, the issue is that, largely, we need to be able to plant trees on private land, and we need to have the right incentives for private landowners to allow us to do so. I recognise that it is important to get that balance right.
There will be a transitional period for European funding. That will lead to a slight drop-off in planting in the current year, while we move to the new SRDP. We have done everything that we can to minimise that drop-off. I am thankful to the Forestry Commission staff and to stakeholders for working with us to ensure that we can get a reasonable amount of planting done in this transitional year, unlike during the previous transition, when planting dropped like a stone.
There has been some movement on planting rates, but we need to catch up between now and 2022. In the next spending review, we will consider what support there is for forestry planting, and we will take into account our underperformance on planting to date. I cannot guarantee what the outcome of that will be, but during the spending review process I will make representations on the need to raise our investment in forestry if we are to achieve our target—that is, if I am still in this post after the weekend.
Is that likely?
Mr Hume may not think that it is likely, but I am an optimist.
All I can say is that I am sure that your slight nervousness is shared by many colleagues, minister. We wish you well over the weekend.
And beyond.
Indeed.
On the implications of the missed targets for the climate change targets, if we fail to catch up—that has to be a possibility—is the Government thinking about how it can mitigate the clearly detrimental impact that not meeting the targets will have? Is there a way in which you can compensate from other areas if we continue to fail to reach the targets?
We are looking at our portfolio in the context of the Cabinet sub-committee on climate change. Each portfolio is in effect looking at delivery to date against RPP2. Obviously, the climate change delivery board has done a warts-and-all analysis of our performance against the RPP targets. In the case of the rural affairs portfolio, woodland planting is a challenging area. It is our job to consider what we are doing and make suggestions to the Cabinet sub-committee about ways in which we can, from within our resources, make up the shortfall in emissions abatement. If we fail to plant a tree in 2012, there will be an impact around 2022, as the peak sequestration potential of a tree occurs around eight to 10 years after it is planted. We are already beginning to cause ourselves problems in the early 2020s by not matching the 10,000-hectare target in previous years.
We will consider what we can do to make up the shortfall from within our resources. We can look at what we can do in the national forest estate or on newly acquired land, but there are timelines involved there because of the WEAG process. We have a number of farms and areas of land that we have bought but not yet planted. We could make up 3,500 hectares of planting through that alone, but that could take two years to get through the system, and then there is the need to phase the work because of the capacity in our workforce.
As you can see, making up the shortfall is not the simplest matter. However, I assure you that the rural affairs portfolio will make that contribution to the Cabinet sub-committee process. If it is not possible to make up that abatement from within our portfolio, the Government will have to come up with another way of doing so, within the timescales that we set out in RPP2. We recognise that the need to abate emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases has not diminished. Therefore we need to make up the shortfall at some point between now and 2022, when the target was intended to have been delivered.
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Catching up on the planting targets that were set is obviously the best solution to the problem that we have been highlighting. At the Confor conference that you and I both attended a few months ago, you made it quite plain that much of the onus for new plantings would fall on the private sector. In evidence that we received a couple of weeks ago, Confor raised a concern that so much of the expectation seemed to be falling on the private sector. Confor’s submission stated that the money available is “wholly inadequate to deliver” what is being asked of it.
I realise that that point is coming from one particular group. However, at the same meeting, Jo O’Hara agreed that meeting the targets over the next SRDP period would be “really challenging”. I do not think that any of us would argue with that—this is not a criticism in any shape or form. However, can the minister respond to Confor’s concern? Does he feel that the funding that is in place under the SRDP is adequate, given the concerns that have been raised—particularly by the private sector, on which there is such an expectation?
I could be cheeky and say to Mr Farquhar from Confor that it is quite unusual to find the private sector saying that it wants Government to keep all the money and not give it to the private sector. For a number of reasons, we have a challenge in relation to stakeholders’ perceptions of our funding activity in the private sector. If the Forestry Commission were to use all that funding to expand dramatically the amount of land in the national forest estate rather than planting trees elsewhere, we would run into the problems that we have encountered in the Ettrick valley with the WEAG process. There is seemingly a great degree of resistance to the Forestry Commission buying up farmland. That is one challenge.
We could have an alternative model where the state invests in increasing the amount of tree planting and increasing the number of hectares under forest cover by buying land and then funding the planting, but that model seems to be largely resisted by the private sector, particularly farmers.
We have reflected on the concerns from Confor and others about the intervention rates that are available to support planting. I know that our position is not universally liked, but we have moved to a position where we are looking at more of a balance between the incentives for planting commercial species and those for planting native broadleaf species. That is not to take any money away from native broadleaf. Largely speaking, we have parity in funding now, so if native broadleaf species are appropriate for the scheme—it may be that a conservation outcome is being sought rather than a commercial outcome—it is clearly still going to be possible to fund that.
We have brought up the level of funding for commercial species, recognising the potential drop-off in commercial timber supplies in about 30 or 40 years, given the problem that we had in the 1990s and early 2000s with a fall-off in planting. We have recognised that there is a need to produce a consistent supply of timber for a number of uses—including for the construction sector, clearly—but without taking anything away from the need to continue to plant significant numbers of native broadleaf trees for environmental reasons.
We are trying to get the balance right with limited funds. Obviously, some stakeholders wanted us to abolish forestry planting funding in its entirety, such was the resistance to increased tree cover and loss of agricultural land. We have resisted that request. We are keeping the level of funding flat in cash terms in the budget, which I appreciate will come under pressure. That is why it is important to make the point, as I did in response to the earlier question about the forthcoming spending review, that we need to look seriously at whether the amount of resource is going to deliver the 10,000-hectare target over the long term.
I accept that there is a challenge to do with bringing forward land from the private sector quickly—Mr Farquhar was right about that. If we can get the incentives right, it will be possible.
This is a choice for Parliament and society. Do we give funding to the Forestry Commission to expand its ownership of land and expand the national forest estate on behalf of ministers, or do we work with the private sector to deliver planting?
A lot more could be done with farmers. Agroforestry is interesting, and we could work with farmers to come up with schemes that are maybe slightly bigger than the schemes in which they have been involved in the past, and which are appropriate for commercial-scale extraction. We could work with the farming industry to emulate what is done on the continent, where farmers regard forestry as a long-term equity investment, for harvest at some time in the future.
There are lots of different models that we can use, but I accept the point that there is a challenge. The overarching point that I want to make is that it is not a simple challenge to address.
Claudia Beamish has a question.
Thank you, convener, but my question was about agroforestry—or silvopasture, depending on one’s perspective—and the minister has highlighted the issue, for which I am grateful.
Minister, you touched on incentives for the private sector. In a time of financial constraint, how far can you think outside the box, to encourage production without straining the budget?
That is an enormous challenge. You are right; we have a constrained pillar 2 budget to play with, so we are not able to invest in everything in which we would like to invest. We have heard this debate, but if we had been able to emulate Ireland and other countries we could have had an extra €2.5 billion to spend up to 2020, which would have been of enormous benefit in enabling us to find additional funding not just for forestry but for all sorts of agri-environment schemes.
We are where we are and we have to work within the budget that is available to us. There was a lot of pressure on us from some stakeholders not to spend even as much as we have done on forestry. We must recognise that forestry is an extremely important sector in the rural economy, with potential in the context of carbon sequestration and an impact on woodland birds—the early stages of planting are enormously helpful to some of our woodland bird species. Therefore, for many reasons, we resisted pressure to lower the forestry budget. However, we do not have much scope to increase the budget in the current spending review period. We need to think about our priorities for the next spending review.
The figure of an average of 10,000 hectares, to which Mr Fergusson referred, is an important target for us and we can afford only a certain amount of slippage in that regard, for obvious reasons that relate to RPP2. We must ensure that there is momentum on tree planting, and if incentives are not delivering that we will need to look afresh at the situation. I assure Mr Campbell and Mr Fergusson that the matter will feature large in my consideration of the budget in future and my contributions to Mr Swinney’s deliberations.
You talked about working with industry to look at forestry as a potential additional crop or something that people can use to heat their homes. I think that about 1 hectare is needed—on a rota system—to harvest the biomass that is needed to heat one’s home.
About 50 per cent of land in the Scottish Borders is tenanted. There is a problem for tenant farmers who want to plant trees. They might be on short assured tenancies, with a 15-year lease, but it is 40 years before trees can be harvested. Have you or your officials considered the possibility of forestry being regarded as a crop, so that if tenants had to go, they might get waygo compensation for the crop’s value, even if it was only halfway to maturity?
That is an interesting area to look at. I can check with Jo O’Hara whether any work has been done on that. I have asked colleagues in the Forestry Commission to look at the wider agroforestry position that Claudia Beamish is interested in and to comment on what potential there could be there. I had a chance conversation with the James Hutton Institute about the issue; it is looking at the silvicultural position in Sweden and other countries, where that is very much the norm. Having a different land ownership model may play a part, but I have not looked at that specific aspect.
We can work with tenant farmers, NFU Scotland and Scottish Land & Estates to try to come up with some solution. I know that initiatives are being taken forward with wood lots, which a number of interests are supporting. Indeed, I believe that the first wood lot was deployed in Mr Fergusson’s constituency. That might allow a different model, in which the tenant leases woodland on the landowner’s estate for that reason, but I am happy to look at the idea of a tenant investing capital in forestry and then getting waygo compensation. It is a good point, and Jo O’Hara may wish to comment on whether she and her colleagues have looked at the issue already.
We have not started yet, although it came up when I was at the committee two weeks ago, so I have it on the list of things that we definitely need to look at. It seems to depend on the exact nature of the tenancy agreement, and that varies from one lease to another. It is something that we will look into.
Is it not the case that the tenancy review group will be looking at waygo generally and that woodland will be one aspect of that?
That is absolutely correct, convener. Even at this late stage, we can throw that into the mix as something that can be taken into consideration. I am not sure whether forestry investment has been looked at as a specific example, but we can ask whether it has been squared away in the review group’s work.
Last time she was before the committee, Jo O’Hara said that no applications for planting had been refused because of a lack of money in the woodland grant budget. Are additional incentives necessary to promote new woodland planting in the private sector if the funding levels have not been a constraint?
We need to keep an eye on whether the funding level itself is the problem. That is why we need to look at the next spending review to see whether there is an issue. If there is, we need to address it, because I am conscious that the amount of money that we have had available in recent years has stayed pretty flat in cash terms. However, as I understand it, the main barrier to achieving our targets at the moment is the availability of sites. Obviously, the two things are linked. I appreciate that incentives to bring forward land are essential.
There has also been a degree of uncertainty about CAP reform and about what would come thereafter and, generally speaking, what the package would be. I hope that we are getting through that, and we expect that the clarity that now exists about the regime will help to bring forward some projects that may have been held in abeyance while people waited to see what the future held for them.
I hope that that hiatus will work its way through, but we may still find ourselves in a position where we are not quite getting enough land coming forward to achieve our 10,000 hectares, so I certainly agree that we need to consider whether the incentives are sufficient to achieve the important targets in the longer term.
I would like to continue on that thread. Thanks to a note from the Forestry Commission following our evidence session a fortnight ago, we have been reminded that the woodland expansion advisory group wanted tough guidelines about the way in which the Forestry Commission goes about buying land. First of all, it is interesting to note for the record that 55 per cent of those purchases are on the open market and 45 per cent are off market. We know exactly what has happened with the 55 per cent but, because of commercial confidentiality, we do not know why certain people have sold their land to the Forestry Commission in negotiated sales. Can you expand on that for our benefit? It seems to me that that might help our planting targets.
I certainly recognise the phenomenon. I understand from previous conversations with Bob McIntosh, the director of the Forestry Commission, that there have been cases in which people do not want to air their issues in public but would rather find out privately whether there is the potential for a sale, as an easier route for them to dispose of their land than going through a public sale.
That is true of private house sales, which people sometimes pursue for that reason. I am not sure whether that applies to everyone who makes a private sale to the Forestry Commission. The important issue is that, once the land has been acquired, the same regulation applies to the commission in relation to what it does with that land. Even once land has been acquired, the same process has to be gone through of consulting local agricultural interests and the local communities on whether it is appropriate to plant on the land. From that point of view, the timescales are the same. The fact that land has not been acquired in a public sale does not facilitate faster planting. I might have misunderstood the point that you were making.
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I am going to go on to make another one. Certain farming interests have criticised the Forestry Commission for buying land in that fashion. Given that 55 per cent of the land that is acquired is purchased on the open market and 45 per cent of it is acquired in negotiated sales, it is important that we establish where the pressure points are. The fact that there is a willing seller might well be the trigger for the Forestry Commission to identify an opportunity, but it could be blamed by other parties because it has taken that opportunity to buy the land concerned.
I acknowledge the point that you make. There might be local concerns about such transactions taking place. The Forestry Commission and Forest Enterprise Scotland are in a difficult position if someone approaches them about a private sale, because if they were to consult local stakeholders on whether they were happy with the land being bought in that way, that would breach the commercial confidentiality of the agreement.
So no consultation takes place with the local community on such sales.
Since late 2012, Forest Enterprise has written to all neighbours following a land purchase. I appreciate that that is after the sale, but it is still the position whereby, before anything is done to take forward a change in use or to plant forestry on the land, consultation takes place. We have the safeguard that if planting forestry proved to be an absolute dealbreaker for the local community, the land could be used for agriculture or sold off.
I appreciate that that might not be the answer that you wanted to hear, but at least it is the case that, since late 2012, as part of the impact of WEAG, immediate consultation takes place with stakeholders once land is purchased to ensure that they are aware of what has happened and what the land might be used for, and they can put in their views.
But it is not just communities that are affected. There are individuals who might feel that they could have used the land that the Forestry Commission has, in a sense, outbid them to purchase. It is all very well talking about communities, but there might be neighbours who feel that they could have used the land. The way in which the Forestry Commission handles such situations is an issue that we will want to explore in the future, because we need to know more about why land can be sold privately without our knowing why.
It is worth pointing out that the Forestry Commission does not have any desire to subvert any processes that might involve the community. The commission has the challenge of looking for good sites on which to invest in forestry in the national interest. That is part of its job. Therefore, if it is finding sites that are being offered to it at a reasonable price, it would be unreasonable to suggest that it is not legitimate for it to proceed in those cases.
However, I take the point about community consultation. It is worth stating that, when FES purchases land, local community organisations become eligible to lease or purchase that land under the national forest land scheme. That does not address the point about a neighbouring farmer who wanted a bit of extra land. If the land was best kept as agricultural land, the WEAG process would reveal that. We have created a number of starter farms in recent times through that process. If there is someone who could lease the land—perhaps as an extension to their farm holding if it is not viable for use as a starter farm—they could explore that with the Forestry Commission. The commission is not in the business of farming, but it is in the business of creating opportunities for new entrants to farming.
It was helpful to discuss that just now, and I am sure that we will return to the issue.
I have a quick follow-up point on that very interesting discussion. Later this morning we will consider the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Bill and the community right to buy. It strikes me that there is a possible conflict of interest, or at least a dichotomy, regarding secret sales and how they will impact on community empowerment and the community right to buy. If communities do not know that something is being sold, they will not be able to exercise their rights. Perhaps the minister needs to think through that connection a bit more.
My small team will probably hate me for saying this, because they could be overworked, but I would genuinely encourage communities that have an interest in land to register it, because they then get a pre-emptive right to buy the land if it comes up for sale. It would be illegal for a landowner to sell a piece of land privately, to Forestry Commission Scotland or anyone else, if a community had registered an interest in it.
It would be in the community’s interests to register a piece of land that it might want, even if it was not certain that it could present a good case for why it would be in the community’s interest to own the land. I invite such communities to approach us for advice on how to register an interest in land to ensure that they are not left out of the process or any consultation on the future of a site.
I take the member’s point about the wider community empowerment agenda, which is very important. The Forestry Commission, Scottish Natural Heritage, the Scottish Government’s rural payments and inspections directorate and other Government agencies are looking at how best we can engage in that process and facilitate community ownership projects at local level. As I said, once we have acquired land it would then be available under the national forest land scheme. If the land is surplus to our requirements, the community would have the ability, under the national forest land scheme and with our support, to bid to buy the land.
I would hope that there are some safeguards, but I am always interested in suggestions about improvements that we could make. If the committee had any recommendations about how we could demonstrate best practice in the area, I would look at them seriously.
Thank you, minister. I accept what you say—we will discuss the issue later, so I will not labour the point now—but it raises the question whether there should be a need to register in the first place. If there was no need to register, that would put a different complexion on the whole thing. However, I will raise that point later.
We have been talking about land use strategy at a higher level, but we need to have much more detailed local land use strategies in order to anticipate potential uses for particular land, whoever owns it at present.
I agree. The two interesting pieces of work that we are doing on regional land use framework pilots in Aberdeenshire and the Scottish Borders are not intended to be the be-all and end-all. They are an exploratory exercise to understand how we can use grass-roots feedback for the land use planning process and how that ties in with local authorities’ development planning processes. We want to identify the communities’ aspirations for how the land in their areas can be used and have that reflected in local authorities’ development planning documentation. Obviously, that would then have an influence on projects that come forward and would ensure that opportunities that communities had identified were not missed, which they might have been in the past because of a top-down process for determining how land should be used.
I recognise that the grass-roots element is an important innovation and I hope that we will learn enough from the two pilots to come up with a model of involving communities in the land use process that can be rolled out across the country.
When will we hear the results of the pilots?
Maybe it is old age, but I forget our timescales; I will come back to the committee on that following this meeting.
Aye, being a minister leads to feelings of old age.
Sometimes it does.
We move on from community health to tree health.
Good morning, minister. Over the past couple of years, we have had serious tree health issues in Scotland, not least ash dieback and Phytophthora ramorum, to name but two. In evidence to the committee on the draft budget, RSPB Scotland highlighted the importance of the Forestry Commission’s monitoring and research work with regard to tree health. However, it also stated that
“the scale of these programmes needs to be enhanced.”
Other evidence stressed the importance of work on tree and plant health. Nigel Miller, the out-going president of NFUS, told the committee:
“Another basic issue is plant health and research, for which there is a flat budget. We seem to be facing a minor crisis as far as tree diseases go.”—[Official Report, Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee, 5 November 2014; c 42.]
Can you explain the full provision for tree health in the budget and reassure the committee and stakeholders that it will be sufficient to meet future challenges with regard to tree and plant diseases?
Thank you for that question. I will bring in Jo O’Hara on the detail of what we are spending in this area. I recognise Mr MacDonald’s point and the point that stakeholders made in previous weeks that tree health is an area of growing importance. The fact that we are encountering a bigger problem with tree diseases and pests than we have done in the past is obviously linked to climate change in some respects. It is a growing area of concern for us.
I visited Dumfries and Galloway and saw the horrendous damage caused by Phytophthora ramorum in the Galloway forest area, not only to the national forest estate assets but to the wider private sector-owned forests in Galloway. I am sure that Mr Fergusson, Mr Hume and Claudia Beamish will recognise that when people visit the region in the height of summer and see brown larch trees everywhere that have been killed very quickly by Phytophthora ramorum, it is immediately obvious that we have a real challenge. Add to that Dothistroma, or pine needle blight, and Chalara, or ash dieback, which you mentioned, and it is clear that we face a number of threats at the moment.
We have tried to increase the budget for plant and tree health. I will be honest and say that it is not as much as I would like to see invested in this area, but we are constrained in our budget at this time. I certainly want to reassure the committee that I recognise that this is an area of growing concern. Where I can, I will look to put additional resource into it.
We have an important relationship with Forest Research, which is currently funded largely by DEFRA, and we work closely with it. In the event of a different result in September, there might have been a different conclusion about the future funding of the likes of Forest Research. Some of the funded activity that is dealing with plant and tree health does not show up in our accounts because it is funded from elsewhere on our behalf. We recognise the scale of the challenge and the need to put resource in. I hand over to Jo O’Hara to talk about the detail of what is being spent.
As the minister said, DEFRA spends money on our behalf. I think that we are currently talking in the range of around £2.5 million for the whole issue of forest resilience and tree health within the research budget, but that is in the process of being worked up at the moment. There is also the money in the rural and environment science and analytical services division strategic research programme, which is also in the process of being worked up as it is a five-year programme. This subject comes under a number of other headings.
With regard to the Forestry Commission heading, we have £3 million of additional funding next year specifically highlighted for tree health. Of that, £1 million is with Forest Enterprise Scotland. It is primarily going on roading to get at the diseased larch in Galloway and the additional restocking. We have been working to harvest additional larch when it has been diseased so that we do not get all the inoculum spreading further from the outbreak in 2012.
When the new SRDP opens in March, £0.5 million will be in there to fund the private sector for replanting cleared infected sites. We have identified another £0.5 million that we will supplement that with for a similar scheme. That is not included in SRDP European Union funding; it is purely Scottish Government funding coming from the Forestry Commission budget.
On top of that, another £1.5 million is going on surveillance; we do extensive helicopter surveillance each year to see whether the disease has spread. This year, as a result of that, we noticed that luckily there was not the big expansion that had taken place in the previous year. We are in the process of recruiting three new staff to support folk in the field in the north and in the south. Some of the money is going on improved diagnostics, so that when the public see a diseased tree or have diseased trees on their land, we can work out whether it is Phytophthora. Is that the right level of detail for you?
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Convener, you—or, indeed, the official report—may not have caught all that. We can supply the detail in a supplementary letter, if that would be helpful.
That would be very helpful. Can you give us a total for the various areas?
I am afraid that I would have to rely on Jo O’Hara for that.
We are trying to establish what is in our budget and what is other additional money.
I can give you only the Forestry Commission figures. There is £3 million within our budget and £0.5 million within the SRDP funding for next year that is additional funding.
If it would be helpful, convener, we can pull together the totality of what is happening, including funding that is outwith the Scottish Government’s purview—such as DEFRA funding for forest research—so that you have a comprehensive picture of what is being spent on tree health.
That would be helpful.
In oral evidence to the committee on 5 November, Ms O’Hara referred to the role of large local nurseries and said that there were stricter plant controls and enforcement. Where does that feature in the budget?
I do not have the exact figure, but that featured in the budget for the previous two years, when we funded a transition plan for nurseries so that they could introduce better phytosanitary conditions in the bed, to try to reduce the contamination of trees in the bed before they were taken out to the nursery.
We have worked very closely with nursery representatives through the tree health advisory group. We have done a lot of on-the-ground advisory support and diagnostic work with them. On identifying additional grant funding for such work, I can come back to the committee on how much we have spent on getting nurseries to a position whereby they will be more resilient in dealing with plant health outbreaks when they occur. I do not have a ring-fenced budget for that.
Mr Campbell may not be aware that, under current conventions, we do not fund the recovery of losses on the part of nurseries. That explains why the actions that we have taken are about the sanitary aspects, if you like, of operations at the nurseries rather than about dealing with the cost of stock that is lost through disease outbreaks. An historic convention applies across the whole of the UK with regard to the actions that we take to support nurseries. We do that by improving their performance and their sanitary procedures rather than by dealing with the cost of losses.
Not all the stock that is planted in Scotland comes from Scotland or even the UK. It can come from very large nurseries elsewhere, hence diseases are making jumps of several hundred miles. Is any work being done in the budget or elsewhere on having smaller or more localised nurseries so that diseases do not make such large jumps?
I agree that that is a known risk that may have played a part in some disease outbreaks. Scientific officers who work for DEFRA have done work on behalf of all the UK Administrations that indicates that, in the case of Chalara, there may have been climatic or at least weather-related sources of the spread of the disease, but the situation was not helped when diseased material was perhaps brought in from elsewhere. Once the disease was in the UK, it was migrated around the UK by the planting of infected products from nurseries at other sites. That has been a dominant feature of the migration of the disease within the UK.
There is a challenge in that regard. We are working with DEFRA to tighten up the regulations on products that are imported to the UK, and we have had some success. I am grateful to DEFRA colleagues for taking on board our concern about pine products, which are particularly important to Scotland; additional measures have been taken to restrict imports in relation to pine and other conifer products. That is an example of work to try to eliminate potential vectors of disease in an important part of our forest estate in Scotland.
We think that the pine tree lappet moth did not come in naturally but was imported to the UK at some point. We have to be careful about beetles, larvae, moths and other invertebrates that come to the UK on products and then spread to our forests.
It is partly about money, and we can give detail of what we are spending in the area; it is also about regulation, which can play an important part in avoiding future costs. You will be aware of the whole agenda around non-native species, which is an area that we have to consider.
We move on from planting trees to removing them. What contribution will the funding of £10 million for peatland restoration schemes in 2015-16 make towards achieving the emission reductions that are set out in RPP2?
It is an important start. In RPP2 terms the expectation for investment is about £230 million between 2013 and 2027—I emphasise that RPP2 refers to whole-economy costs. The £5 million that we are spending in the current year and the £10 million for next year are an important start in the process.
It is important to recognise that the £10 million for next year is being delivered through the SRDP. We hope that it will attract and lever in private sector and third sector money, which will supplement the funding, so that we get peatland restoration projects that are worth more than £10 million in 2015-16.
Neil Ritchie might give more detail. We have made good progress as a result of the initial investment of £5 million, and more than 100 sites have been identified for investment. We are confident that we can deliver on the £5 million in this financial year.
The challenge is for next year. The issues are similar to those to do with bringing forward sites for forestry that we have just been talking about, given the scale and number of sites that are needed if we are to deliver projects worth £10 million-plus, as I hope that we will do. I hope that the development of Scotland’s national peatland plan and peatland code will bring in additional partners.
The most high-profile site is Forsinard, in the convener’s constituency. That is a partnership between RSPB and a private landowner, with Government support. We need a cocktail of partners to work together to find a landscape-scale solution and secure the quality of projects that we are looking for.
I do not think that I can add much to what the minister said or to what Alan Hampson, from Scottish Natural Heritage, said to the committee last week, about the £15 million in the spending review. SNH is making good progress in allocating the money and getting uptake and it looks likely that we will exceed the 6,000 hectare target that we set.
One of the biggest lessons that I take from our experience of allocating money over the past year is that it is about not just money but capacity building and providing awareness of approaches to and tools for restoration, as well as an understanding of the benefits. It is also about supporting innovative approaches such as the peatland code, which is aimed at developing a corporate social responsibility market. That will take time to develop, but the work is coming together and we are making progress that will stand us in good stead.
Next year we are retaining about £500,000 of the £10 million to support SNH’s work on promoting peatland restoration in the context of the SRDP and wider resources, as well as helping to maintain the capacity building approach, on which we have good feedback from key stakeholders.
I am sure that we could have a detailed discussion about that at some point. However, on this budget, you have provided a little bit of information about how the budget that is allocated to peatlands will be spent. Can you give us a bit more detail on that?
We will happily come back to the committee with a fuller exposition of what is being done and the approach that is being taken to deliver the initial £5 million. I hope that that will give the committee confidence that good work has been done, as Neil Ritchie indicated. I refer you to what Alan Hampson told the committee about roughly 6,000 hectares of peatland being restored. I will verify that figure and get back to you so that you can be confident that it is accurate.
Can you reassure the committee that the initiative will achieve the optimum results in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and multiple other benefits?
I can give you a commitment that we are trying to ensure that that is exactly what happens. From the point of view of inventory, we still do not have an accurate picture of what factors we can apply to peatland investment in terms of the impact on our abatement activities. We are working to develop as specific a set of figures as we can, which will fully reflect what we believe to be the genuinely positive impact of peatland investment. The figures that are available currently are too generic and they undersell the peatland investment and its impact on climate change. We are working on that element as part of the development of the greenhouse gas inventory, so we can get as accurate a figure as possible. Once we have got that, we will know exactly how effective our spend is.
The message that I give to the committee is that we are optimising the use of the money that is available to us at the moment. Obviously, we will learn from the initial tranche of projects what works and what does not, and we would hope to ensure that it is an iterative process and that we learn as we go along and further enhance the effectiveness of the spend as we develop our approach.
Once we have the inventory figures, we will be able to make better informed investment in peatland and ensure that we get the best bang for our buck.
I am sure that you will bear in mind the deep peat in places such as Forsinard and also the raised bogs in the lowlands, because the RSPB has highlighted the importance of on-going maintenance of peatland that is in a reasonable condition. Is the work on peatland maintenance quantifiable? Is it likely to fall foul of active management requirements in the SRDP?
I am aware of the active management concerns. We can come back to that point when we have considered the detail. However, we believe that we can work around the issue. In some cases, peatland can be well maintained by a low level of grazing. I have certainly seen that on the RSPB reserve at Loch Leven, in Fife, where low-intensity grazing by cattle and sheep keeps the condition of the wetland in good order.
We need to consider the balance, and we need to avoid creating a situation in which the CAP active management regulations have unintended consequences. We are aware of the issue and will come back to the committee with a more considered response.
That issue is quite important in relation to our thoughts about the budget’s effectiveness, so it would be useful to have that information soon.
We move on to equalities issues, including age.
For the record, I highlight the fact that there is a statutory obligation on us all to consider supporting the groups of people with protected characteristics. The committee deliberated on the matter and has decided that, without excluding other groups, we will consider the issue of age this time.
Last week, we received some interesting evidence from the forest policy group, and I will read from it so as to remind us all. There is a particular emphasis here on young people—but not exclusively. The forest policy group’s submission said:
“FPG supports the idea of Forestry Commission providing opportunities for new entrants to farming but encourages the Forestry Commission to develop parallel ideas on how to extend the tenure and management of forests to sectors of society who have effectively been excluded from involvement in forestry in the past. The focus for encouraging new entrants to forestry should not be solely on communities (though this is important), but should also include people of ordinary means, especially those living in rural areas. FPG considers that this is sufficiently important to warrant featuring in the aims of the budget alongside the mention of new entrants to farming.”
I wonder whether you could comment on that, minister. How might that be taken forward?
11:00
I certainly recognise the point. I referred earlier to wood lots, which represent just one potential measure that has been developed by the industry, working with landowners, for exploring how to get new entrants into forestry. We are working in parallel fields to get new entrants into crofting, too—not just farming. It is important that we work hard to encourage new entrants into all areas of rural land use.
There are opportunities for communities in forestry, as Claudia Beamish has said. That point has been well discussed, and the means by which communities can take over and manage forest assets are relatively transparent. Those means offer communities the opportunity to provide solutions themselves for getting new entrants into forestry locally. However, I take the point that there is perhaps more work that could be done by the Forestry Commission as regards bringing in new entrants.
There are opportunities for communities to lease forests but not necessarily for individuals to do so. I am sympathetic to points that have been made previously, including by woodland crofts organisations, about how we can create new woodland crofts. That is another way of entering forestry.
Unfortunately, there has not been an opportunity so far but, in relation to the repositioning programme and the disposal of sites, my officials will be aware that I have explored on a few occasions whether it would be possible to create some sites for woodland crofts in the process—or whether we can create them when we are acquiring forest.
I will give an undertaking to Claudia Beamish and to the committee on that subject, which I take a keen interest in. As I say, the opportunities have not yet arisen, but I continue to look for opportunities for creating more woodland crofts. We had a productive discussion with representatives of the Scottish Woodlot Association, when there was a members’ business debate, about what the association could do along with the Forestry Commission. I know that the Scottish Woodlot Association wishes to work more closely with the commission to see whether there are wood lot opportunities on the national forest estate. We can come back to the committee on that matter with a considered view.
I do not know to what extent work has already been done on the matter that since that meeting. Perhaps Jo O’Hara can comment on whether anything has been taken forward. I am keen to explore the matter.
As I mentioned to the committee last time I was here, we are working closely with the Scottish Woodlot Association. We have provided funding and advice, and we are working with the association to take the project further, as I think Claudia Beamish is aware.
I am struggling to find information on this in front of me, but we have done a lot of work on the matter. We have brought through and developed the skills of about 95 apprentices and trainees. Those individuals may develop further skills and may therefore provide a future source through which people could take on the management of assets themselves, rather than doing so through the Forestry Commission.
We have an important role to play in the industry in helping to train the workforce of the future—people with the appropriate skills to manage forests, as individuals or as communities. That is another important dimension of the work that we do under the rural affairs portfolio, specifically through the Forestry Commission in this case.
Bearing in mind the fact that that work is all about leasing—unless I am wrong—are there any opportunities for supporting the purchase of forest land from the Forestry Commission that relate to young and new entrants? If not, could that be considered?
I am happy to look at the issue. I am not aware of an equivalent to the new entrant schemes for new farmers, for example, to provide grant funding for people to set up their own woodland operation. We can look at what scope there is within existing support mechanisms for that to be facilitated. Claudia Beamish makes an interesting point. I am not aware of anything myself, but perhaps Jo O’Hara can add anything I have missed regarding grant schemes that would support the idea that she has raised.
The important thing about starter farms is that they are for tenant farmers, who use them to get themselves set up so that they can get some form of payment going forward. That probably relates to the tenancy role.
The other thing that I remind the committee of is the lotting of sales. When we put land up for sale, Forest Enterprise identifies much smaller pieces within it to market. Rather than marketing a large piece of land as one, we break it up so that a wider range of people might be able to bid.
I am conscious of a couple of high-profile instances that happened recently.
We looked at all sorts of opportunities for Roseisle forest. Because of the quality of the asset and the lack of infrastructure in the site, it was deemed that it would not lend itself to lotting into small areas. We specifically looked at creating little crofts there, and we thought that it might be neat to redress history’s damage to that community, if you like, by trying to bring people back to work in the countryside in the area. However, it was deemed to be the wrong opportunity for that due to the lack of infrastructure for small croft operations within a very large landholding.
Encouraging new entrants is something that we can look at, and lotting is another way of doing it, as Jo O’Hara has said. Whether the lots are the right size is an issue. I appreciate that, as it takes some capital to invest in a forestry operation, another question will be whether people have the capital.
I give a commitment to Claudia Beamish to have a look at what we could do on that front and whether it is possible to come up with a scheme similar to farming entrant schemes, recognising that a very long-term investment is required in forestry as opposed to farming, which is more immediate in terms of its impact.
It should be said that capacity building is even more of an issue in whether a community can take on such things in places with so few people. The issue relates to the area that Roseisle is in. The north coast is clearly an area that needs to have capacity built in order to have the confidence to take on such things.
Absolutely. I recognise that, and I am aware that in the Roseisle forest area the community is struggling to maintain even a retained fire service because of the age structure of the population. That was why we explored the opportunities to create smaller units and get some population in there to work the forest. However, it just did not happen in that case.
Good morning, minister. Looking at the equality statement that was published alongside the draft budget, I would like to ask what the improved data shows with regard to the use of the outdoors and green space, and how organisations such as Scottish Natural Heritage will take the data into account when making their spending plans.
Those are important issues. When I visit projects that either we, SNH or the Forestry Commission have invested in, I am conscious of how much additional work is going into making them accessible to all ages and all abilities. That is a very important part of what we are trying to do. It is an ethos that carries through the woods in and around towns initiative as well; the purpose of that project is to create opportunities for people, regardless of their abilities and age, to access the countryside and to get the benefits for both physical and mental health and wellbeing of using those assets.
SNH has certainly been improving the range and the quality of data that is available to us in that area. The latest survey included questions on frequency of use and ease of access to Scotland’s outdoors as well as satisfaction with the green space being used and the impact of green space on mental health.
The data indicates that 46 per cent of adults made one or more visits to the outdoors per week in 2013, compared with 42 per cent in 2012. It may be that the year of natural Scotland boosted the 2013 figures, and I hope that the investment in the year of natural Scotland had some impact there. The challenge is to maintain that increased level of activity in future years; I recognise that. Those figures compare with 44 per cent in 2006, which shows that the level goes up and down over time.
At the same time, we know that a quarter of the population never goes outdoors in the sense that we would regard as going outdoors and that participation is lower in certain social and economic groups. Poor health is the second most common reason for not participating. If people have physical capability issues, that is obviously a major limiting factor in their accessing the outdoors. That is why it is so important that we do the work that we do as best we can of putting in level paths and smooth surfaces so that people can use wheelchairs, Zimmer frames and other mobility devices to get around.
Increasing the participation of people in those groups is of course relevant across several Government departments and is not just a rural affairs issue. We have played our part in the health inequalities working group in trying to bring forward what we can do in terms of “green prescriptions”, as Harry Burns called them. He was very much of the mind that they were more effective than pharmacological prescriptions in many cases, particularly for stress-related conditions and mental health conditions. That challenge is also recognised in the 2020 biodiversity strategy as something that we need to do more on.
I hope that that answer gives a flavour at least of where we are at on the issue. We recognise that we need to keep doing more on it, particularly to help people who have physical infirmities and age-related conditions that prevent them from accessing the countryside.
Rod Campbell has a question arising from the equality statement.
Minister, can you update us on where we are with domestic climate justice, how much it has impacted on the budget and what the future holds for the issue?
Up to now, the climate justice agenda has largely focused on international climate justice efforts, but we have been looking increasingly at what we can do on the domestic front. For example, I commissioned research on the exposure of individuals to flood risk, looking particularly at the relationship between income and other inequalities and flood risk. That has been identified as a particular challenge for a number of communities across Scotland. Methodological issues have meant that there have been some changes in our assumptions about where such communities would be, and we are constantly reviewing that.
We have invested in the Crichton campus in Dumfries, and we are looking at establishing research excellence there that can be networked across Scotland. Taking advantage of the capabilities that we have across the country will enable us to focus more on how we can channel research to look at issues such as how Scotland adapts to climate change and deals with flood risk. We are working with groups and projects such as ClimateXChange, and we have centres of excellence in, for example, Dundee, Stirling and the University of Edinburgh.
Therefore, we are putting more effort into research on the issue, with the long-term objective of it informing our policy in areas such as flood risk management and wider climate change adaptation issues that go well beyond just flooding.
Thank you.
There are no further questions. I thank the minister and his team of officials for a good set of evidence. We look forward to responding to it in our remarks to the Finance Committee on the budget, which we will make as comprehensive as possible with the help of the supplementary evidence that the minister will provide.
11:13 Meeting suspended.