Chamber and committees

I have what might be a wee bit of a left-field question for Helen McLachlan. Helen, you were talking to Rachael Hamilton about the effort that has to be made to look at all the data coming in from cameras. Has anyone used artificial intelligence to, say, pick up different species and process that information a lot faster?

Would it be helpful, then, if the Government were to specify what system can be used, so that technicians or, indeed, replacement parts could be made available at ports? That would allow fishers to slot in something else when they have to send the system away to be fixed. It seems to me that there is an opportunity for the Government, a co-op or an association such as yours to say to fishers that technicians and parts will be guaranteed if everyone uses the same REM system. Is that a solution?

Helen McLachlan, you talked about the process providing those benefits elsewhere. Can you explain how that works in other countries where the system is in place, what benefits come from it and in what way?

Can the minister give more detail on what the exemptions are? I am puzzled as to how, for instance, one would vent a portable stove. Can he also say how one would apply for an exemption, especially with regard to woodland croft houses—crofts that are created specifically for their renewable heat potential? How do the changes impact on solid-fuel stoves that are used for both cooking and heating and thus make the best use of the resource? Will he publish the island impact assessment including those changes?

When land is owned through a company and the controlling interest of the company changes, is the register updated automatically? Can triggers be fitted to the system, given that the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill might require that in the future?

I thank the clerks and staff of the committee and all those who gave evidence during stage 1 consideration of the bill.

This is rightly an enabling bill, because it needs to adapt to future circumstances. However, because it is an enabling bill, most of the meaningful legislation will be secondary legislation. That is why we need to see a draft rural support plan before the bill is finalised and we need scrutiny of that secondary legislation—an affirmative process with consultation to ensure that the rural support plan is right.

We should have had the bill a long time ago, and we should have had the rural support plan before now. As the clock runs down, there is the excuse not to make change, because we cannot have cliff edges. We do not have a clear direction of travel and that cannot be done with farming, which is a long-term industry. Farmers need time to adapt, and introducing legislation this late in the parliamentary session shows that there is no clear vision for agriculture. That is stalling innovation in the sector, because people do not want to move until they have a clear indication of which direction they should be going in.

Finlay Carson talked about the principles of the bill and I think that everybody agreed with them, but many witnesses who gave evidence suggested that there should be further principles, such as food security, local production, fair work practices in both terms and conditions and housing for migrant workers, protection of income for farmers and crofters, animal welfare and so on. A number of other things along those lines should be principles within the bill, and funding the sector should depend on those.

As I said earlier, the rural support plan is where the detail will be, and that detail can make or break farmers and crofters. It needs to be co-designed, and changes in direction must give the industry time to adapt. We had evidence saying that the outcomes of the rural support plan need to be highlighted, and that they should be clear and measurable. At the moment, there is nothing in the bill about that.

The bill allows capping. There is a need to manage that and to show a clear direction of travel, because people need to know when the capping powers will be used, which I hope that they will be. At the moment, 50 per cent of the entire agriculture budget goes to the top 7 per cent of recipients, based on the size of their enterprise. That cannot be right.

Crofters and other small producers are contributing to public goods. Indeed, at the round-table meeting, we heard that many are already sequestering carbon and providing local food, but they are not paid for any of those public goods. They are often unable to access environmental grants, because their small areas of land cannot have as many features as the larger areas that sweep up all those grants, even if proportionately they do more.

Funding is not currently given to those who work on 3 hectares or less; they are excluded. There is a small producers pilot fund, which distributes £1 million of funding to small producers, but that equates to an average of £143 per year to the registered producers who have less than 30 hectares. However, if we compare that with region 1 funding, where every hectare receives £223 per year just for fulfilling the minimum requirements of active farming, it shows the disproportionate influence that some of our larger farms have compared with smaller producers.

Indeed. If we are looking at local production, we need to look at how to provide abattoirs and the other services that allow people to farm, produce and put the end product into the market, because that is where the funding is.

We also need to ensure that the legislation is in keeping with other legislation. For example, the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill seeks to deal with our pattern of land ownership and make it more diverse. However, the payments that we give out for agriculture encourage larger holdings and that simply is not right. We need to make sure that we create a level playing field.

Concern was also expressed about unsupported forms of agriculture, such as market gardening, and co-operatives such as grazings committees in the crofting counties. Grazings committees have a history of working together, but such committees cannot claim agricultural funding for themselves as well as for individual crofters who might wish to apply for it. That ability is missing from the bill, and I hope that it will go into the bill at a later stage.

I will try to be as quick as possible.

The member surely realises that those with larger areas of land are pushing smaller land managers out of getting any funding at all for environmental benefit, because they have more features than the smaller land managers.

Yes, I do, because they are a public good, not least in the work that they do in providing healthy, good-quality food to their local community.

There are a number of anomalies with the bill, one of which relates to sustainable and regenerative agriculture. Everyone agrees that that should be defined in the code rather than in the bill, because we must change as the science changes. However, in her response to the committee’s report, the cabinet secretary said that, as the code would not be mandatory, there was no need for a lot of scrutiny of the code. She also suggested that the provision of support would be dependent on adherence to the code, which suggests that the code will be mandatory for people who wish to receive funding.

Concerns were expressed about continuing professional development. Everyone agrees that that is a good thing, but it must be proportionate and it must be delivered locally, given that farmers and crofters are tied to the land.

In addition, the bill needs to be joined up with other legislation. We need to make sure that the bill ties in with the good food nation plan, the climate change plan and all our statutory duties under EU law and policy and the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009, rather than cluttering up the landscape any further.

Finally, it is right that farming funding should not be devolved through the Barnett formula. Currently, we get 17 per cent of the funding, plus convergence funding. That needs to be retained, if not increased.

Scottish Labour will support the bill. We look forward to working with the cabinet secretary and to the bill being improved through consensus working, rather than the Government using its built-in majority to force it through.

Will the member take an intervention?