I want to return to some of the previous discussion. Minister, you mentioned earlier that some of this will be new to some farmers and crofters. What will you do to make the process as simple and as lacking in burden as possible, particularly for smaller farm units and crofts?

I am unclear what the Tories did for Scottish farmers when they were in government in the UK other than utterly fail to advocate for them. That is perhaps one of the many reasons why the Tories have not won an election in Scotland since 1955. Will the cabinet secretary—[Interruption.] Will the cabinet secretary outline how the Scottish Government is engaging with the UK Government for farmers, following the budget?

I note that the First Minister and the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care recently met Sir Chris Hoy and Sarra Hoy to discuss Sir Chris’s experience of prostate cancer. As Ms Hamilton mentioned, Sir Chris has been a great advocate in encouraging men to recognise the signs and symptoms of prostate cancer. What can the minister say about the outcome of that meeting? Following it, what work is on-going to encourage men to get checked if they recognise symptoms?

The amendment talks about consulting

“such persons as the Scottish Ministers consider may have an interest in, or otherwise be affected by, the regulations”.

Obviously, it would be up to the Government to interpret that, but I think that the scope is pretty broad. It would have to be somebody either interested in or “affected by” the matter in hand.

Do you want to intervene on me? [Laughter.]

I will speak to my amendments 113 and 114. New section 2F of the 2004 act, introduced by section 1(3) of the bill, sets out the process for setting or amending targets. I am aware that the committee has an interest in those targets, and its stage 1 report highlights recommendations for improvements to be made regarding the need

“to consult and have regard to expertise from specific sectors of the economy with a key role in delivering biodiversity targets.”

I thought that those points were important enough to address, and that it was crucial that the provisions in this section include a consultation requirement. Accordingly, my two amendments seek to address those issues.

My amendment 113 would add a requirement for the Scottish ministers to consult any persons interested in or impacted by the targets before laying regulations that set, amend or remove statutory targets. My amendment 114 would ensure that any pre-commencement consultation can count towards fulfilling that requirement. I believe that my amendments would strengthen transparency and stakeholder engagement in developing biodiversity targets. They reflect the need to consult sectors that are critical to biodiversity delivery, and to build on the expertise and independent advice that is being sought for biodiversity targets. For all those reasons, I will move the amendments.

As we are not in the chamber, this is not a rhetorical question but a genuine one. Could you explain a wee bit about how your amendments interact with things such as the Electricity Act 1989 and other reserved areas? Do they interact in any way?

I was asking—and it is not a rhetorical question—whether you could say a bit more about how or whether your amendments impact in any way on reserved areas such as the Electricity Act 1989.

I thank the member for intervening, because it gives me the opportunity to say this. I am surprised by the argument that Labour makes in its amendment, and I would hope that the Parliament would not attempt to justify cuts by the UK Government on this scale, although I note, with respect, the contortions that the Labour amendment goes through in an attempt to do exactly that.

To pick up on the member’s point, Labour’s position seems to be that the UK Government has withheld money in that way because the Scottish Government should somehow, using constitutional powers that it does not enjoy, have insisted in advance that it did not do it. I am afraid that that is a pretty feeble argument to put forward, and the fishing communities that are affected will not find it very convincing.

That £138 million has now been lost to projects in Scotland that would seek to modernise our fishing fleet, equip vessels with new technology, train new generations of fishers, boost the seafood sector and support the wider local economy of fishing communities. Those, among other things, are what will be missed.

It takes quite a brass neck to suggest—I think that the Labour amendment takes us down this road—that Scotland should now find that money from its own remaining resources, to make up for what the UK Government has denied us. It takes an even brassier neck—if I can use that phrase—to suggest that the UK Government should then be exonerated from all blame for the situation that has arisen. I hope that the Parliament will see through that argument this evening and act accordingly.

All the evidence tells us that the UK has never viewed Scotland’s fishing industry as important—not now, nor at any point since the 1970s, when it described the industry as “expendable”. The £138 million that the UK has now taken from Scotland’s fishing communities is but the latest example of that, and we should have no hesitation in calling it out or in standing up for the communities for which, by any reasonable person’s reckoning, it must surely be intended.

The member may not quite understand that interventions work on the opposite principle to the one that he thinks they do.

Will the member accept that the reason that some people on this side of the chamber look forward to Scotland being a member state of the European Union is that, for the first time, we would be represented in Europe by a Government that puts fishing priorities at the top and not at the bottom of our list of negotiating priorities?