Chamber and committees

I am happy to give you the information that you need.

Thank you for your indulgence. I want to set out some of the things in the programme for government and our priorities. We are focused on ensuring that our rural and island communities thrive by supporting sustainable growth, tackling climate change and nature loss and creating opportunities for future generations across Scotland. That is demonstrated through our delivery of the 100-year programme—sorry, the 100-day programme. Well, people were asking for certainty.

It is doing a lot of good work. It is doing very good work.

I will be honest with the committee: I have not yet come to a decision on Scottish Forestry. In the programme for government, we committed to bringing together NatureScot, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and Zero Waste Scotland into an overarching body. The word “environmental” does not preclude all those agencies and organisations from doing the other work that they do. For example, there is a huge commercial and economic growth aspect to the work of Zero Waste Scotland, and none of that will be diluted. In fact, I hope that that work will be enhanced, because the savings on back-room functions as a result of bringing together the organisations could be diverted to improving outcomes, with funding released for the core functions of all three bodies. I hope that they will be able to do more and collaborate more closely.

You referred to Natural Resources Wales. We will not follow a blueprint that has not been as successful as was hoped. Why would we not learn the lessons from that?

I reiterate that I have not made up my mind on Scottish Forestry, because that particular body is operating very well. Through its work, it is crowding in a lot of private investment—in the same way that Zero Waste Scotland does—in woodland creation.

I am looking at how Scottish Forestry operates. I am becoming a bit predictable in setting out three tests for me, my officials and those with whom I am working on public sector reform. First, will the change improve the bodies’ operations and deliver better outcomes? That covers the retention of skills, because that is part and parcel of the first outcome. The tests are all equally important, but if the answer to whether the change will improve outcomes is no, we have a problem.

The second test is whether the change will reduce duplication of effort or enable back-room functions to be shared, resulting in money being saved to be spent on the first objective. I am asking my officials and those from whom I am taking advice to answer that question.

The third test is public facing. Will the change make it simpler for clients, members of the public and those outwith those organisations to access their services? One of the criticisms of the public body landscape—this applies not only to my portfolio but across the Government—is that there are too many public bodies and that members of the public are confused about where to go. If they are confused, that is inefficient, because more effort is required to find the right place—the one front door.

I am applying all those tests. I did not feel ready to commit in the programme for government to anything regarding Scottish Forestry, because I have not been able to satisfy myself on those three points.

That is a point that I made repeatedly in my previous role. Within everything that is associated with the UK and Scotland reaching our net zero targets, there are certain areas in which Scotland is shouldering a lot of the burden and taking a lot of the action. Peatland restoration is one such area, and woodland creation is another. I think that Scotland has about 80 per cent of applications relating to the woodland carbon code—my officials will tell me if I am wrong about that. Scotland accounts for 54 per cent of the whole of the UK’s tree planting. I have made the argument to successive counterparts in the UK Government that it is a good idea for the UK Government to give us more money, because we could use it to do even more, which would make a difference to the UK’s ability to achieve its net zero targets.

It is a symbiotic relationship. If the UK does not act on certain areas with regard to emissions reduction, particularly around the cost of electricity, Scotland is in difficulty. If Scotland can do more peatland restoration and woodland creation, and can get additional resources into that, with a model that is really working and could help to create a huge area of economic growth, that will help the UK meet its net zero targets, as well as sequestering carbon and stemming biodiversity loss. It will also create a tremendous amount of rural jobs.

That particular line in the programme for government goes well beyond my portfolio. It is not only about climate action and rural affairs bodies. The wording is:

“involved in the management of public land assets.”

My officials will correct me if I have misquoted that. That includes local authorities, the national health service and some of the bodies that fall within my portfolio. NatureScot and Forestry and Land Scotland both manage a lot of land. We also have bodies in other portfolios that provide support and advice on land management but do not own or manage any land.

I am not trying to pass this on and move the matter off of my desk, but responsibility sits with Ivan McKee because it cuts across sectors. I cannot give you any more information than that. That question on public sector reform is really for him, more generally. I cannot give you the detail that you are asking for.

Yes. I do not know what to say, other than that Ivan McKee has responsibility for public sector reform as a whole. He is overseeing this, and there are negotiations and discussions involving every member of the Government and Mr McKee, and the Cabinet as a whole. Ministers will represent the sectors and the bodies that sit within all our portfolios as part of that process, but he has ultimate responsibility for managing things that cut across portfolios.

I have some of the numbers. In 2024-25, there were 8,470 hectares of woodland creation in Scotland, and of that, there were 5,300 hectares of new native woodlands, which surpassed the commitment of 4,000 hectares. We surpassed that target. Scottish Forestry is currently working on a pipeline of 35,800 hectares of new woodland, with 14,200 hectares already approved, of which 5,900 hectares are for planting in 2026-27.

You may be alluding to when there was a dip a few years ago. The money has come back into the portfolio, and the planting target has been surpassed in the past year, which is very encouraging. I can only see that going up.

I come back to the point that we were told very clearly by industry representatives that there is an awful lot of interest in more woodland planting by the private sector, carefully managed by our agencies. We want native woodland to be planted as well. We want economic growth in the commercial sector, but alongside that we want there to be trees for decades—hundreds of years—starting now, and there for generations of the future. That will be critical for all the outcomes that we have mentioned, whether it is stemming biodiversity loss or providing shelter.

I know that this is the Rural Affairs Committee, but we also want urban tree cover. We have an ambition in the manifesto on urban tree cover. We saw over the summer the importance of trees in keeping temperatures down in urban areas, so we are looking at that area of work as well.

The convener will not like me saying this, but I will be negotiating the budget in the coming weeks. However, the 2026-27 budget committed record funding of £5 billion to activities that have a positive impact on the delivery of our climate change plan, including those that deliver woodland planting. This year, we have allocated £58.7 million to woodland creation, which breaks down into, I think, about £36.7 million for capital—I am looking at Sean Neill, who has the numbers—and £22 million for resource.

However, the forestry grant scheme is not the only lever that is associated with woodland creation. The woodland creation ambitions and targets are an interesting area of work in which public money will provide a sort of seed funding—I do not want to be punning away—that crowds in additional private investment as a result. Our ambitions on woodland planting cannot be achieved with public money alone, but it is an important prompt for crowding in private investment.

We talked about Scottish Forestry, which has been excellent at bringing in private resource. You have given me the opportunity to talk about the work that has been done in Scotland on the public finance that goes into woodland creation and how that crowds in or brings in private finance. The woodland carbon code has been internationally recognised—at last year’s conference of the parties in Brazil, it won an award for the good work that it is doing, particularly because it provides a model for other countries to show how, if you put in public money at the right level, that can bring in private finance to help achieve woodland creation. The same is true with regard to nature restoration. There is only a certain amount of public money that we can commit to putting into those objectives, but that funding can leverage in quite impressive amounts of private finance.

We are reviewing the grant scheme that you talked about—I am looking at the minister responsible for forestry to confirm that. Some £282 million has been allocated to Scottish Forestry over the next three years to maintain and expand the woodland grants programme, but the issue is much bigger than just Government money. We are always talking about the fact that certainty is required for long-term projects, such as growing trees, and I am giving certainty that, in the next three years, £282 million will be allocated to Scottish Forestry to maintain and build on the woodland grants programme. However, we are also using the expertise of Scottish Forestry, Forestry and Land Scotland and others to crowd more money into that. For example, Forestry and Land Scotland can do things commercially that will bring in additional money to help it achieve its planting targets as well.

There is a picture that goes beyond the woodland grants scheme, and there is a lot of activity happening across the whole of Scotland, which means that we can be really ambitious in that area.

I have a couple of reflections on that, and the minister is keen to come in on it as well. We rightly talk an awful lot about diversification of income streams for land managers, farmers and crofters. However, I keep coming back to what the minister said: we want active farming and we want food production, which is important, because we want to reduce the amount of food that is imported for the public to eat. Local food production is a good thing, and we want more of it for reasons of food security and economic security.

I have been to many farms during my time in Parliament—in my constituency and as part of my role in the Government—where there is already diversification and livestock grazing in woodland areas. I have seen it with cattle and pigs, and it has been very successful. Where such things are already happening, we need to unlock the potential for more of it.

Of course there will be land use change, but it will be positive, because we will see a mix in what is on our farms and our other land. We want native woodland creation, and not only for commercial purposes; the planting back of indigenous species is also very important. All those things in the mix will sustain our economy, improve our water, build flood resilience—and that is a pressure—mitigate the impact of wildfires and provide jobs. Land use has to change to allow us to adapt to climate change, first of all, and it will allow us to adapt to some of the pressures that we have on our food at the same time, which is critical.