Chamber and committees

Part of my thinking is that we have arable production in Scotland that is incredibly important not only to specific parts of the country but for exports of Scotch whisky, for example, given our significant grain production. As you touched on, there will be a difficulty in that regard. Some of that land could be used for producing vegetables or whatever, but if we do not have the tax take from that, there will be a significant impact on the budget to deliver on other priorities. It is quite difficult.

Lisa Hislop-Smith, do you want to come in?

I certainly think that we need to put all this into context: it has taken two decades from this being first mentioned to our getting the first local public body plan, so it has been a long time in the making. As you have said, though, the last stages might have been slightly rushed. Certainly from the committee’s point of view, it is unfortunate that the plan’s parliamentary scrutiny was not set out in legislation, because it means that the committee has no official role in dealing with it. In fact, there is no legislative necessity for the Parliament to oversee the plan at all.

I will bring in Lisa Hislop-Smith and then Vicki Swales.

On the back of that response, the process does not appear to have addressed the fact that previous attempts at integrating food policy have failed. Do you have confidence that the 2022 act will change that? Has it resulted in any new approaches to the integration of food policy?

That brings us to the end of the session. I appreciate that we have probably run a bit over time. You are all very busy people, and, Dennis Overton, I am sure that you have a massive workload ahead of you as the 2022 act comes into force.

Thank you all very much for your evidence and your contributions this morning. That has been hugely helpful in the short time that we have had, as a committee, to review the plan.

I want to be clear on this point. We have discussed the removal from the TCA of annual negotiations. Jimmy Buchan has suggested that we have environmental challenges as a result of climate change or whatever. Does the removal of annual negotiations put the industry at risk? Is the ability to be flexible and to address issues such as the one that Jimmy described being taken away under the new deal? We now have a multiyear deal. Will that come at a cost to the industry?

I am not aware of the cost. However, given that we received no responses and nothing was highlighted in relation to its being an extraordinary cost, I would assume that it is line with those in other countries. It is certainly something that we can find out.

Item 3 is an evidence session with industry stakeholders to discuss the recent EU-UK co-operation agreement.

We welcome to the meeting this morning Jimmy Buchan from the Scottish Seafood Association, Jonnie Hall from NFU Scotland, Jennifer Howie from Food Standards Scotland, Patrick Hughes from the Scottish Agricultural Organisation Society, Stephen Kenyon from the Agricultural Industries Confederation Scotland, Elspeth Macdonald from the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation, James Park from Salmon Scotland, David Thomson from the Food and Drink Federation Scotland, Scott Walker from the Scottish Association of Meat Wholesalers and GB Potatoes, and Adam Wing from Seafood Scotland.

We have allocated about two hours for the discussion. We have quite a few questions to get through, so I ask everyone to be succinct in their questions and answers. Please indicate to me or the clerks if you wish to participate at any point. There is no expectation that you will comment on every question. If your point has already been made, you can simply indicate that that is the case. You also do not need to operate your microphones, as we have a gentleman here who will do that for you.

We will kick off with a nice, simple question, which is a general one about the situation that we are in at the moment. Given the issues that arose on the back of Brexit, how might this new EU-UK agreement affect the ability to export agriproducts and seafood products to the EU market, particularly considering the cost element?

Welcome to the 21st meeting in 2025 of the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee. I ask everybody to ensure that their electronic devices are switched to silent. We have received apologies from Rhoda Grant.

Before we move to our first item of business, I note that members might have seen the Parliamentary Bureau motion lodged yesterday relating to Elena Whitham leaving the committee. I take this opportunity to thank Elena for her much-valued work on the committee in the time she has been here and to wish her luck on the committees that she will take her place on.

Our first agenda item is to agree to take item 4 at today’s meeting in private and to agree to consider our stage 1 report on the Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill in private at item 5 and in future meetings.

Members indicated agreement.

No, but we could certainly try to find that out for you.

The first hour of the meeting will probably be focused on the SPS agreement, and the second half will be on fisheries—I just wanted to make that clear.

The figures suggest that exports were down by about 21 per cent. Do you have any idea what the 21 per cent was attributed to? Was it generally small businesses that had concerns about batching loads? Are those businesses looking forward to resuming some of those exports? How much will we get back?