I will start with the positive one, which is amendment 40. The reason why I lodged it is that, where a grant or subsidy has been reclaimed, it is entirely right and equitable that the person who has had their grant or subsidy reclaimed can appeal to the Scottish ministers on the decision. It would then be up to the Scottish ministers to hear the appeal and dismiss it or to review it—that is the whole point of the amendment. It seems perfectly equitable to me that, if a decision is made, there should be a right of appeal.

I turn to the other amendments in the group. Amendment 37 is quite subjective and not objective in the way that it comes across. Because of that subjectivity, I am afraid that I cannot support it, and I urge members not to support it.

On amendment 38, I totally accept Ariane Burgess’s dislike of grouse shooting, but grouse shooting still happens to be a legal activity in Scotland. Therefore, it is wrong to say that, because the “primary activity”—I want to dwell on what that means—on the land is grouse shooting, the landowner should not be able to get a subsidy.

Ariane Burgess has failed to define what “primary activity” is. How do you define “primary activity”? Is it the number of people who are employed, the income that comes in or the expenditure that goes out? Is it based on the number of sheep and cattle on the holding or on the number of grouse? It is too vague. If the member had really meant to do this, she ought to have been a lot clearer about what she meant. Because she has not been clear, and because grouse shooting remains legal in Scotland, it would be entirely wrong to do this. Grouse shooting can improve habitats on hills, especially where moorland management is carried out to protect and manage all species, not just one. I think that she is wrong.

Regarding amendment 39, the cabinet secretary has incredible powers when it comes to cross-compliance. If farmers or landowners who are claiming subsidies clearly fail to abide by the cross-compliance conditions, the cabinet secretary can stop their grant anyway. That is the whole point, so amendment 39, although well meaning, is not required.

I look forward to hearing the cabinet secretary’s answers to those questions and hope that she thinks that amendment 40 is fair and in line with natural justice.

Amendment 48?

I have nothing to add to the words of the cabinet secretary, which are incredibly wise in this situation.

Amendment 50 agreed to.

Section 27—Continuing professional development

It is always dangerous to request to speak after Mr Ewing has eloquently made your case for you. However, three or four years ago, when Mr Ewing was in charge of forestry, we heard of the dire shortfalls that there were going to be in our forestry sector. In fact, by 2036, there was going to be no way that it would have enough timber to keep the industry in Scotland going.

I am concerned that amendment 29 would put on the backburner across the Highlands and across Scotland the industry that produces timber that we can use in our houses.

I am further concerned that amendment 29 would undermine the Mackinnon review and the work that is being done to try to speed up some forestry and the appropriate planting of appropriate trees in the appropriate places to ensure that our industry across Scotland is able to keep going without massive job losses. I therefore ask members not to support amendment 29.

I will speak only to my amendment, rather than to the other amendments in the group, because it is important.

In a previous life, I had to fill in numerous single-farm payment sheets. During the worst year, I think I had to fill in 15. It was probably the most traumatising period of my life. If just looking at them did not cause me to have grey hairs, I had them by the time I got to the end of the sheets.

The reason for that is that the complexities are such that it is very easy to make an unintentional mistake. There was no aim to be dishonest, but it is easy to make a mistake. For example, one could argue that, if someone has grazing on the foreshore for at least 12 hours of the day, they have grazing right the way down to the low-water mark, but it could be argued that, on high tide, they only have it to the high tide mark, or it could be somewhere in between. If someone tried to claim for that reasonably and made a mistake, under the old system they could lose their entire claim. One of the major problems that farmers had is that if they genuinely made a mistake they got absolutely hammered by the European Union, which demanded huge quantities of money back.

Amendment 48 is to say that, in the first instance, if someone genuinely makes a mistake, they should obviously pay back all of the money that they made a mistake in claiming, but the fine on top of that should be limited to 10 per cent. If, after that, a person makes another error, in another year, they would lose that money, as a proviso.

That approach is a genuine attempt not to have farmers spending half the night filling in their forms, as I often used to do. I am sure that everyone who is involved in agriculture will have heard farmers say, “If we make a genuine mistake, treat it as such. If we have made a mistake, we will accept it.”

I hear what the cabinet secretary says on that particular point. Given that some of that provision will be carried forward in regulation, will she undertake to discuss those regulations to ensure proportionality—so that the fines meet the crimes—because that might help me to decide not to move the amendment?

Sorry—give me two seconds, Presiding Officer. Yes, I will move it. Sorry, but, on amendment 40, we have—

I rise to speak in support of Beatrice Wishart’s excellent amendment 3, which I recognise from the amendment that I lodged at stage 2—unfortunately, it did not get through. The reason why I was keen for peer-to-peer learning is that that is where farmers come into their own. Not only do they learn from farmers in their locality what is going on but they learn some of the tricks that they have to get around the problems that are encountered. For example, they can feed cows more iodine in their mineral licks to enable easier calving, which is something that you learn from experience on the ground. That was certainly brought out by the groups that were run by the Scottish Agricultural College, such as the suckler cow groups across Moray, which I found particularly useful.

There is another reason why peer-to-peer learning is so important. It allows you to see your neighbour at very busy times, when they might be struggling with some of the problems that they are having to face. For example, unless you have actually done it, no one knows what it is like to have a tricky calving or lambing, where you lose a substantial number of calves or lambs, despite all your hard work. Therefore, having a period to reflect on that with your peers in a peer-to-peer learning group is incredibly important. Not only does it teach you things but it gives you a chance to assess your neighbour’s mental health, if they are struggling, which does happen.

I like Beatrice Wishart’s amendments 4 and 52 about co-design and the number of employees. Obviously, Rachael Hamilton’s amendment 51 about making sure that CPD is affordable is absolutely critical. Monitoring such schemes is really important, especially if peer-to-peer learning is funded not only by the private sector but by the Government. The Government will want to ensure that its money is well spent.

I hope that members will agree to Beatrice Wishart’s amendment 3 on peer-to-peer learning, which I whole-heartedly support, having raised the issue in the first place.

Mr Halcro Johnston knows as well as I do that the people of the Highlands feel that that is the forgotten part of Scotland and that the central belt gets the investment. An exceptional amount of money was invested in the railway line between Glasgow and Edinburgh, resulting in journey times being cut by 20 minutes. In the time that it took to do that, journey times from Perth to Inverness increased by 20 minutes, which is a disgrace.

I think that I might be out of time. Our health and education services are not the only critical services; there must also be services for people to get around Scotland. This Government has badly let people down in that regard.

I start by apologising to the Parliament. With the Presiding Officer’s approval, I am being allowed to leave the debate 15 minutes early to attend an event that I would rather not be attending—but I have to.

I am pleased to be speaking in this afternoon’s debate about the provision of services, because the provision of services is not just the provision of things that we need so much such as education or healthcare from the national health service; it also includes the provision of other really important services across Scotland, such as transport services, which is another pet subject of mine.

Very sadly, we have heard today that somebody died on the A9 last night. I am sad to report that there has been another accident just this afternoon, at approximately 12.30 at Dalwhinnie. I have not heard whether that has resulted in a fatality, but I pray that it has not.

We would not be in this situation if the A9 had been dualled when it was said that it would be dualled. I am sure that I do not need to remind the Government that, on 6 December 2011, it announced that it would dual the roads between all of Scotland’s major cities, including the A9 and the A96. I think that Alex Neil was put on the bridge at Luncarty on 6 June 2012 to reannounce that. He did what many Governments do—he reannounced good news. The trouble is that the good news stopped there.

We have not got to the stage of the A9 being dualled. In fact, we found out only this year that it would not be dualled by 2025, which is when we were promised it would be dualled by. It was quite clear from the evidence that a previous First Minister—Nicola Sturgeon—knew in 2017 that that delivery was never going to happen. It is sad that it did not happen at that stage for the simple reason that money was available. That was before Covid and before any austerity, which the cabinet secretary believes she can blame for her failures. I do not believe that that is the case. If we had done that in 2017, none of those things would have been issues.

It is also sad that, when I quizzed Nicola Sturgeon about why that had not been done and whether she understood what Alex Salmond had said when he was First Minister, she commented that she was not sure whether he and she were in the same Cabinet. If they had been in the same team, which they claimed to be, I am sure that the A9 and the A96 would have been dualled.

That has had a knock-on effect on all the other transport services across Scotland. We can consider the buses—do not forget that we are spending nearly £300 million on concessionary bus travel across Scotland. Where does that actually get us? A person can get a bus from Thurso to Inverness and a bus back from Inverness to Thurso on the same day, but they can spend only three hours in Inverness—that is all the time that they can spend there. That is all that that allows a person to do. All the money that we are spending on concessionary bus travel is not really helpful for young people or older people coming to Inverness, because they will not have time to do anything when they get there. The question is: is the bus concessionary travel scheme working just for the central belt, or does it need to be expanded to ensure that there are sufficient buses across the Highlands so that everyone can benefit?

Let us consider the trains. We are spending approximately £1.3 billion a year on a train service that we have nationalised, and we have seen the services reduced. If I do not leave the Parliament before decision time to ensure that I get a train back to Aberdeen at 5.30—that is not why I am leaving tonight—there is a fair chance that, unless the train is delayed by 10 minutes, I will not get home until tomorrow. That is a strange position to be in.

If a person was travelling from Inverness to Edinburgh, for example, they could leave at 5 o’clock in the morning and get here for 9.30, but that would not really be in time to start work at the Parliament—I know that most MSPs start before then—and they would have to leave much earlier in the evening, before work had finished, to get back to Inverness.

I was amazed to find that, if a person wanted to go from Wick to Inverness, they would have about three hours to spend in Inverness before they had to get the next bus back. Things get more complicated than that. If a person wanted to get a train back to Wick, they would not even have time to go to a show in the evening. They would have to rely on getting a train across to Wick to go to the cinema, because all the services in Inverness do not work.

Are the trains working? Is that £1.3 billion working in the Highlands? I question that.

I have to come to the ferries. They are probably the biggest white elephant that I have ever seen in my life. We agreed to pay £97 million for them. So far, we have spent £300 million. I do not think that the Government is prepared to guarantee that the Glen Sannox will be finished and released from the shipyard at the end of next month—or maybe it is. I do not think that it can do so, because I do not think that the Glen Sannox will be ready. I think that another delay is coming down the track. Four ferries from the CalMac Ferries fleet are not servicing the islands. That is a critical loss to them.