I am just struggling in my brain, cabinet secretary, with the fact that it was over four years ago—I think that it was 16 August 2019—that the Government nationalised Ferguson Marine, since when you have been in charge of it. What I do not understand is how we are in the situation such that, just before the ferry is to be ready for handover to CalMac for sea trials, we suddenly come up with a list of other faults that no one knew about. I guess that, if I had been running a business for four years and I were in that position, somebody would ask me to consider whether I were in the right position.

I pose that to you, and I look forward to your answers. This is very serious, and we need to question who knew what, because I do not believe that those faults came out of the blue. I therefore look forward to your answers, and I look forward to getting the update from David Tydeman at the end of September, with all the costs and delivery times being laid out for the committee in great detail, I guess, after today’s meeting. Thank you. Are there any other questions?

We have come to the end of our questions, cabinet secretary. On behalf of the committee, I thank you and your team for attending today and answering our questions. We look forward to receiving the correspondence that you have offered to send to the committee after today’s meeting. That concludes our public meeting; we now move into private session.

We now move on to the next questions, which are from Jackie Dunbar.

Cabinet secretary, just before we leave that issue, last year, the committee looked at the budget lines that the Scottish Government had given to provide advice and support during last year’s cost of living and energy crisis. What did you learn from that, will you repeat the support this year and is there a budget for it?

Agenda item 2 is an evidence session with the Cabinet Secretary for Wellbeing Economy, Fair Work and Energy on the Scottish Government’s priorities that are relevant to the committee’s remit. This is a wide-ranging session to help the committee to understand what the recently appointed cabinet secretary’s priorities will be in the coming months and over the remainder of this parliamentary session. Our discussion will focus on commitments that were made in the recently announced programme for government and on energy policy and government investment, which are two main areas where the cabinet secretary’s responsibility intersects with the committee’s remit.

I am pleased to welcome Neil Gray, the Cabinet Secretary for Wellbeing Economy, Fair Work and Energy; Kersti Berge, director of energy and climate change; Vikki Halliday, head of governance and assurance unit for strategic commercial assets; and Nick Young, head of industrial decarbonisation and carbon capture, use and storage. Thank you for attending this morning. Cabinet secretary, I believe that you want to make a brief opening statement.

I welcome your call for honesty from the industry about the true demands of what we need to get to for net zero.

The MCA, when it looked at the ferry, said that the requirements for the safety stairwells for crew exit were not sufficient. I am sure that you will have asked, as I would have done, what ruling or what regulation the MCA was basing that comment on. Do you know what regulation it was and what year it came into effect?

I remind members of my entry in the register of members’ interests. I am a member of a family farming partnership that produces food—sadly, not drink—for the people of Scotland. It produces drink indirectly, through barley, but it does not produce drink. I also have an interest in a salmon fishery, which provides no food to the economy.

We often have these interesting debates in the Parliament. We talk about how wonderful the Government is in what it does and how everyone else is to blame for the failures, but that is the wrong way to do it. We should be talking about the challenges that the industry faces and how the Government will address those.

Agriculture has risen to the challenges of the past few years, and—by goodness!—it has had them. Beatrice Wishart mentioned that prices have gone through the roof. Fertilisers went from £265 a tonne to more than £1,200 a tonne, dropping back to £600 a tonne this year, and those prices have been reflected in seed, spray, fuel and labour costs, all of which have gone up. That has been a real challenge for farmers, who have been hanging on by their fingernails to the businesses that they work in.

The problem is that the extra costs are not being met by farm-gate prices. We have not seen the increases that we should have seen. Perhaps that is a good thing for the consumer, because it has kept prices for food lower than they would have been if the increased prices had been passed on.

Beef prices have risen, but they are now falling, as are the numbers in the beef herd, a point that was made by my colleague. The question that was raised by Jim Walker, when he came to the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee, was whether that will be sustainable into the future. We need beef to be sustainable because we cannot eat trees. We need to consider that.

When it comes to working in the farming industry, we need to understand that the problem is not caused purely by Brexit. Finding labour has always been difficult. Working on the farm is not a four-day week but a full-time life. Who wants to be up at 2 o’clock in the morning trying to deliver a difficult cow and probably getting a kick for the privilege? Working a four-day week in another sector would be much easier. Those things put people off working in the farming industry, but they are what farming is all about. We need to encourage people to work in the farming sector by making it easier for new entrants. We have not done that. Instead, we have confused the marketplace by making it difficult through new tenancy legislation.

We should have had an agriculture bill last year. The chairman of the Climate Change Committee has said that, NFU Scotland said it and farmers have said it. The only one who believes that it is not required is the cabinet secretary.

Other industries have expanded. The whisky industry is a good example. It has really played its part. It has become bigger and is employing lots of people. However, it needs to protect its primary suppliers, who are wondering whether it is easier to produce rye to go into an anaerobic digestion system or to produce barley. If distilleries do not make it attractive for farmers to produce barley, they will not be able to source Scottish barley. I also believe that the Scottish whisky industry needs to address some of the net zero problems that it faces, not only with its cooling water but with the heat that it uses in its processes.

The industry that I find most disappointing is aquaculture. During my time in the Parliament, I have tried to be supportive of that industry. Its 205 farms across Scotland generate a huge income. It is, without a doubt, a big employer. When the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee considered all the things that it brought to the economy, we were clear that it has a significant place in the Scottish food industry.

However, since 2017, the number of deaths of salmon in salmon farms has increased substantially. We are now at a stage at which 36,000 tonnes of salmon are destroyed annually. That is not acceptable and we should not allow it to be acceptable. This year, in June alone—I think—8 per cent of all the fish in the Loch Linnhe farm died and 9.2 per cent of all the fish in the Loch Kishorn farm died. In fact, 25 per cent of all fish that go to sea die before they reach our tables. Even worse, some of them are dying when they are harvested and they still reach our tables.

The aquaculture industry has a lot to do to rise to the challenges. The REC Committee report made 65 recommendations asking the industry to rise to those challenges. We were told in evidence by people such as Ben Hadfield that they were humbled by the problems that they faced but that they would rise to the challenge. The only rise that we have seen in the past five years since he gave evidence is a 168 per cent increase in the use of antibiotics in salmon farms. That, to me, is unacceptable.

My time is short. In conclusion, there is much that we can do, but there is much that we need to do. Let us concentrate on some of the failings so that we can get things right and make Scotland’s food and drink industry the best in the world.

To ask the Scottish Government what additional resources will be made available to NHS Highland, in the light of reports of an estimated annual overspend of over £55 million. (S6O-02487)

I am not sure what additional support that answer laid out. The consequence of the position that we are in is the cancellation of elective surgery. Added to that, a lack of an interventional radiologist and now the lack of a cardiovascular surgeon means that a perfect storm is brewing. How is the Government really going to help NHS Highland tackle those problems?