Chamber and committees

I hear what you are saying, cabinet secretary. Basically, you are throwing a grenade at all the amendments in this group. All of us have worked in good faith with the Government bill team to shed light on the clarity, scrutiny, evaluation, impact and monitoring of the rural support plan—a lot of which we would like to be in the bill. Do you believe that a lot of that detail should be in the bill when we come to stage 3, or will you and the Government team continue with the proposal to put it in secondary legislation?

At the moment, I am minded not to support amendment 5. Unless you are just about to come to it, what do you mean by “fair work principles”? What are they? Some of those fair work principles are set by the Scottish Agricultural Wages Board—the board sets farm wages. What is the difference between what operates now and those fair work principles?

Amendment 132 would require ministers to publish a timetable for regulations—including information on what regulations are planned for the following two years, when any draft regulations will be published, whether any regulations are to be introduced as a package, and any other relevant information. This important amendment is designed to improve parliamentary scrutiny by ensuring that the Parliament is aware of, and given the opportunity to scrutinise effectively, upcoming suites of secondary legislation. In its stage 1 report, the committee called on the Scottish Government

“to keep it updated on the number of instruments, policy detail and timetable for the secondary legislation over the course of 2024 and 2025.”

Amendments 139, 168, 172 and 184, which were lodged by Tim Eagle, amendment 156, which was lodged by Beatrice Wishart, and amendments 77, 87 and 90, which were lodged by Rhoda Grant, seek to strengthen the Parliament’s ability to scrutinise the bill by confirming that regulations in the bill will fall under the affirmative procedure.

I move amendment 132.

Just to summarise, I am again disappointed that the Government is not willing to give Parliament the opportunity to scrutinise effectively the upcoming suites of secondary legislation, particularly in relation to my amendment. I appreciate the cabinet secretary’s comment that she wants to co-develop any future schemes, but we have waited more than six years for this bill to come to fruition. Farmers have been waiting, but movement has been snail paced and glacial. If we do not struggle, we will not make any progress.

We have come forward with these amendments after listening to evidence from people wanting us to consider the affirmative rather than the negative procedure. We have listened to people. I am just very disappointed, and I will continue to support all the amendments in the group.

I press amendment 132.

The Scottish Government believes that we should put our trust in it to address all the issues that everybody is concerned about. We have heard from farmers, stakeholders, those in the supply chain, those who are concerned about climate change and those who have pointed out that local people do not have enough affordable local housing to allow them to stay in the areas where they work and live, do not have access to connectivity and do not have access to, say, bus transport to let them get to work and other places. We have heard that this Government has been letting them down. This amendment explicitly sets out that, as part of this agriculture and rural communities bill, a fund should be set up to deal with those issues where rural and island communities have been let down.

I press amendment 133.

I have a supplementary question. You have twice made the point that the retailers want this. In its submission, the Scottish Pelagic Fishermen’s Association said that, in its regular meetings with suppliers, the latter had never raised the issue of REM. Is REM something that Marine Scotland is discussing with retailers, rather than the fishermen who are supplying them? How will the legislation convince those fishermen that REM is needed if their suppliers are not mentioning it?

Any supermarket will speak to its suppliers about what criteria it wants, to ensure that what goes on the supermarket shelves is what the consumer wants. I want to put on record the concern that those conversations have not been had with the people who are going out on the pelagic boats to fish. It is more about international quotas, rather than REM. One stakeholder said that REM had never, ever been mentioned in SPFA meetings.

Does the SSI technical specification say that there has to be a certain type of winch sensor rather than a simplified winch sensor? Could the technical specification allow for a sensor that fishers themselves could repair?

For a pelagic vessel, the fishing season is very limited. Is it the fault of the fishers if they put in the wrong type of sensor? Will they be non-compliant if they put in a simplified sensor that they can fix themselves?

Yes, I know, but that was my question. Could a fisherman fix a sensor that is in the technical specification? We heard that they could not unless it was a simplified sensor.