Chamber and committees

I have been trying to get to the crofting counties for the past six months. It is incredibly difficult—the diary demands are intense, to say the least, and such visits have to be fitted in around other engagements. It is not an easy process. However, I specifically demanded that I get to the crofting counties, because there are important things happening in those areas. In my submission, I said that we should not meet “the usual suspects”. I make that point clearly, because we are all guilty of hearing from the same people. When I was a member of this committee, we would see the same faces again and again, and we would have the same discussions over and over again.

Therefore, I wanted to get “behind the curtain”, as you put it, to speak to people who might not be engaged in such processes and might not know that there are organisations that are having discussions on their behalf, because they are not members of those organisations. Those are the people I was specifically targeting. I used the experience of my previous life as a farmer to approach individuals and say, “We want to have a discussion on these issues. Can you get some people together?” They then spoke to the officials, who pulled those meetings together.

I am more than happy to do that—in fact, I will insist that we do not only bring in the usual suspects, who can talk eloquently all day, but who might not have the same thoughts as people who work on farms from day to day.

That applies not only to crofters. I recently visited the Soil Association Exchange, which invited me to meet an ordinary farmer—an ordinary guy who is doing his job. The Soil Association Exchange had contacted him and asked him whether he would like to take part, and I went to meet him. He is exactly the kind of person we need to be talking to, because he is the kind of person who will make the decisions that will allow us to establish a baseline for where we want to get to and how we will build up to that. He is not engaged politically. He is not engaged in the NFU. He gets letters in the same way that I would when I used to farm. I used to say, “Yeah—I’ll get to that.”

It is really important that we get to people like that farmer, which is why I made a point of going to speak to him. That highlighted to me the language that ordinary farmers use—the language that they live by—and the need to engage those folk in order to take them with us on this journey.

I can only assume that there was an omission sometime in the dim and distant past, long before I, or any people that I know of, were involved. George Burgess may have more of an answer to that than I do.

Perhaps they are not IT experts either.

Nick Downes will speak to the technical aspects in a moment, but I can assure you that it is not the computer that decides policy, which was what was implied at last week’s meeting.

George has just made a really fundamental point. The roadshows that Jonnie and Martin did have been incredibly valuable for exactly that reason. If farmers hear a Government minister such as me sitting here, talking about policy, policy, policy and what that means for them, they go, “That’s just the Government,” but when their president and their—I do not actually know what Jonnie Hall does—

On that—

We are taking those concerns on board.

Good morning, and thank you for inviting me to introduce this draft Scottish statutory instrument. The draft instrument amends the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman Act 2002 by adding the Scottish pubs code adjudicator and Quality Meat Scotland to schedule 2, which lists bodies that may be investigated by an ombudsman. The instrument also removes five organisations that no longer exist. The Tied Pubs (Scotland) Act 2021 seeks to rebalance the relationship between pub-owning businesses and tied pub tenants. The act requires ministers to publish a Scottish pubs code and appoint a Scottish pubs code adjudicator who has responsibility for overseeing and enforcing the code.

The Scottish pubs code will come into effect on 31 March 2025, and the adjudicator has already been appointed. The adjudicator has published an internal complaints procedure. As it is another significant national body, ministers consider it appropriate for the adjudicator to be added to schedule 2 of the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman Act 2002, giving individuals and businesses a means of escalating complaints and giving the ombudsman the ability to investigate cases, if that is required.

It transpires that, at the time of its creation, in 2008, Quality Meat Scotland was not added to the list of organisations in schedule 2 of the 2002 act. We do not know the reason for the omission. Quality Meat Scotland has a complaints procedure, but we consider it appropriate for QMS to now be covered by the 2002 act, and we are looking to correct the omission through this instrument.

We are also taking the opportunity to tidy up the legislation further by removing the names of five organisations that are listed in schedule 2 but that no longer exist. I believe that the changes to the 2002 act are appropriate and proportionate and that they will contribute to the effective governance and oversight of public bodies in Scotland. There is no requirement to consult on the changes to schedule 2. However, we have liaised with the adjudicator and Quality Meat Scotland, and they are aware of our intentions. As is required by the 2002 act, if the instrument is approved, it will be signed by the Privy Council rather than by Scottish ministers. We understand that it has a meeting scheduled in early April.

I am happy to take any questions.

George Burgess will answer on the technical side of that.

FAST was established in 2022 and, since then, engagement has been on-going at various in-depth levels. The type of engagement depends on where we are at any given time.

As a minister, I am not an expert on every single thing that comes across my desk by any stretch of the imagination. I like to have policy teams on this side and stakeholders on that side and listen to the arguments of the different voices around the room, so that we can then say, “What does that actually look like if we are going to try to develop that into a policy?” That is the right way for me, because if I allow people to have arguments, I can pick out the bits that I do not understand or that I fundamentally disagree with, which forms the thinking around how we develop a policy going forward.

That process is not going to happen overnight. It will take us time, but, if we do it right, we will get the right results in the end.