If 20 of them join and that suddenly creates a demand for £50 million, I think I am right in saying that we cannot change that legally. Because we cannot change the scheme, because George Eustice decided to make it a reserved function, we would be obliged to pay that £50 million. Any number of producer organisations in England whose schemes have been scrapped and taken out from under them could decide to join POs up here and there is not a thing that we could do about it. Whatever the budget was, it would have to come out of our agricultural budget. There is nothing that we could do about that.

No, you are not. I have already said in a number of answers to you, Ariane Burgess and other members of the committee that we are actively considering how we give more support to small producers throughout the country.

The purpose of the SSI is to support a group of food producers who are doing an incredible amount of fantastic work in their areas. They are innovating, driving the market and doing all the things that we require them to do with a fund of money that is in danger of being increased beyond our control by other producer organisations joining from other parts of the UK. We would not be able to control that. That is the only purpose for the SSI. It has nothing to do with the Government’s intention for helping to support small producers.

You and I have had such conversations in the committee before and you asked me to change something because there was an issue. When there was an issue, I went away and looked at it and we came up with a solution for it. I hope that that gives you some comfort that I am not sitting here trying to blindside you or pull the wool over your eyes. I am doing everything that I can to ensure that we have a resilient industry for the whole of Scotland that has the Government’s backing and the funding that it needs in so far as we can provide it given the restraints that are on our budgets. I have done that time and again.

The SSI is entirely about protecting one system that works, which it does—I will argue that all day long. The people who produce the food tell me that it works and I am taking their word for it.

I do not know what you are looking to force my hand on. I do not know where you think you will push me to get something that you think that I am not prepared to do. I do not understand what you are asking of me. I have given commitments throughout the meeting about what I am trying to do to protect agriculture in Scotland, from small-scale producers to big ones.

It is business as usual for the group of growers that the SSI relates to.

In relation to the contracts that producer organisations have, it is up to supermarkets to decide where they will put those products. I find it absolutely scandalous that we can be in Perthshire and yet the berries that I am buying are still from Kent, but we cannot change that. What we can do is make sure that there is resilience in the producer organisations that are currently producing food here in Scotland—whether or not it gets exported, they are still producing food in Scotland—and give them the protection over the next three years that they have told us that they want.

You are right that there are two different strands here. I repeat again: my commitment is to supporting that small producer cohort, which will give us the biodiversity, environmental, local food resilience and local economy benefits. All those people are very much in my mind. I cannot give you a timescale for doing something about the issue, but we are actively looking at it right now.

The small producers pilot fund is not for fun. We are not doing it because it is a wheeze. The asks that came to us previously from small producers were about slaughtering and how to get slaughtering facility—that is what we did previously. This SSI is about making sure that those very professional businesses, which do a hell of a lot of good work here in Scotland, get the support that they need and deserve, so that they will continue to be able to produce food. Whether it gets exported to England or any other place is an issue for the market, not for the Government.

My apologies. I misspoke. Yes, there would be funding, but we would also be funding other organisations that would come up from down south.

It would be a huge burden on the Scottish Government to fund producers from other parts of the UK, which would then require us to consider whether we could continue with the scheme. So, yes.

I do not know how many times I have said it this morning: we have the small producers pilot fund, and I am actively looking at how we can create more resilience and ensure that we give small producers the comfort of knowing that the that the Government will back them.

No, not right now.

Yes. The industry is incredibly labour intensive. The increase in national insurance contributions has put massive pressure on producers’ funds. As a result, they are increasingly finding themselves struggling to make it work.

Yes.