Chamber and committees

Registers of Scotland maintains the Land Register, which, together with the older Sasines Register, record who owns land and property in Scotland. The Land Register is map-based and includes the statutory cadastral map. Further information on the cadastral map is available on the Registers of Scotland Knowledge Base.

Scotland’s Land Information Service (ScotLIS), maintained by Registers of Scotland, provides online public access to information on land and property in an accessible map-based format combining information from the Land, Sasines, Crofting and Judicial Registers.

The Scottish Government has not announced any policy to change the Land Register or introduce a different land information system.

International trade is reserved to the UK Government. The Scottish Government regularly engages with the UK Government on trade negotiations and has consistently emphasised that agri-food trade agreements should uphold Scotland’s high animal welfare and food standards.

We have also highlighted the importance of trade to Scotland’s food security. The Scottish Government welcomed the outline UK-EU SPS and Veterinary Agreement announced on 19 May 2025 and will continue to press for Scotland’s interests, including high agri-food standards, to be reflected in future trade negotiations.

The Scottish Government is committed to supporting small producers, empowering them to play a key role in delivering our Vision for Agriculture through the Small Producers Pilot Fund. Market gardens are no exception to that, and providing they meet our small producer criteria, can access funding through the £1,500,000 the Scottish Government has provided in capital funding for 2026-2027.

Further to this, the Scottish Government recognises the unique market conditions and the wider benefits of our small edible horticultural producers. The Scottish Government has therefore, commissioned research to fully understand this industry and the challenges that they face. This is expected to be completed in the beginning of 2027.

The Scottish Government has held two previous consultations, in 2007 and 2015. We had also asked the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission to consider the matter, leading to the establishment of the SAWC Dog Training Working Group in March 2021 and this has led to a number of discussions between SAWC, animal welfare charities, and scientists, facilitated by Scottish Government.

Scotland has a growing marine restoration sector which places a significant focus on native oysters and seagrass. The Scottish Government is supporting restoration projects through policy delivery and financial support. In December 2025 we published Scotland's first Marine and Coastal Restoration Plan which includes actions to further support and accelerate active restoration of species and habitats in our waters. Scottish Government officials are now implementing actions from the plan. This work will support the achievement of our goals set out in the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy.

Scottish Government has provided financial support to the Scottish Marine Environmental Enhancement Fund (SMEEF) since it launched in 2022, increasing our donations for 2026-27 to £116,000. Since launching in 2022, SMEEF has raised and distributed nearly £8m from public and private sources to support marine restoration and enhancement projects across Scotland. This includes a number of projects supporting native oyster and seagrass restoration. In 2025 SMEEF launched an ambitious new seagrass planting programme that will see £2.4 million distributed to projects, with an aim to plant 14 hectares of seagrass by 2028.

The Scottish Government recognises how vital childcare and family support services are in rural and island areas, both in relation to giving children the best start in life and supporting families to work. We also understand that childcare and wider wraparound provision can look different in rural and island communities, where geography, population density and travel distances can create particular delivery challenges.

The Scottish Government worked with key partners to convene a roundtable event on 25 March 2026, that sought to gather learning from across communities, sectors, regulators and government to identify practical actions to help increase the accessibility and sustainability of childcare provision across rural areas. This roundtable event helped enhance the learning we continue to gather through our Early Adopter Communities, Access to Childcare Fund projects, and Extra Time Programme on identifying models of delivery that support access to childcare in our rural and island communities.

Recently, the Scottish Government has also committed to introducing a universally accessible breakfast club offer in primary schools across Scotland by August 2027, and announced investment of a further £2.5 million to expand free after-school activity clubs. This funding will help us understand how activities and regulated childcare services can work together to improve access to after-school childcare, including in rural and island areas.

The Scottish Government has committed to expanding childcare support to children from nine months through to the end of primary school over the course of this Parliament. As this work progresses, we will take into account the needs of families across Scotland, and decisions will be informed by learning gathered through the delivery of our projects and programmes, and direct engagement with rural and island stakeholders.

Scottish Ministers remain fully committed to transparency regarding which (a) individuals, (b) organisations and (c) other entities receive public subsidies for (i) forestry, (ii) farming, (iii) nature restoration and (iv) other land use and the quality of the outputs generated by these subsidies.

The management, collection, evaluation, monitoring and publication of data has already been identified as a critical and vital element of the current Agricultural Reform Programme that will implement the Vision of Agriculture and ensure that successful outcomes are achieved all in terms of the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Act 2024 ( the ARC Act) as approved and passed by Parliament.

The ARC Act does provide discretionary powers for Scottish Ministers to address transparency. For example, where there are complex ownership structures such as holding companies or trusts or where a person has significant control over a beneficiary of support under the ARC Act, Scottish Ministers may be able to publish the details of any person who owns or controls the recipient of that support. But that would need consultation with the Information Commissioner, satisfactory conclusion of data protection and other impact assessment work and such consultation as is required in terms of the ARC Act.

The ARC Act powers will enable Scottish Ministers to consider those improvements that should be addressed to provide new improved schemes under the ARC Act.

Scottish Ministers remain fully committed to transparency regarding who receives public subsidies for (a) forestry, (b) farming, (c) nature restoration and (d) other land use in the current parliamentary session.

In particular, further to our recent introduction of the required regulations and their approval by Parliament – following imminent planned closure of the UK website by Defra –steps have now been taken for the Scottish Government to implement the regulations and continue to publish data relating to Scotland for beneficiaries of CAP legacy schemes.

The first publication was made on the 30th June 2026 for the data relating to all CAP legacy schemes subsidy payments made to beneficiaries in Scotland during the EU financial year from 16 October 2024 to 15 October 2025 and this data will remain available for two years, until June 2028.

This publication will include the names of all beneficiaries apart from those who received less than the equivalent of 1,250 in total subsidy during the year that are not shown in the spreadsheet. In these cases, payment amounts are included, but beneficiary names have been removed. For the purposes of this publication , 1,250 has been converted to a sterling equivalent of £1,114.

Similar publications will be made on the 30th June in subsequent years throughout the current parliamentary session.

We are committed to maintaining direct payments, to supporting active farming and food production in Scotland, and to ensuring there are no cliff edges for producers.

We are already delivering increased conditions on direct payments; this is better incentivising sustainable and regenerative practice, on-farm nature restoration and climate mitigation and adaptation efforts, while investing in our producers to produce high-quality food.

The Rural Support Plan, laid in Parliament, has set clearly how over the course of this session, budgets will change across the Tiers of the support Framework. At least 70% of funding will be allocated to the Direct Payment model of Tiers 1 and 2 and we will apply a funding split of 7:3 between Tiers 1 and 2. We will continue to work with farmers and crofters to make sure that our support is informed by their needs and experience whilst delivering on our Vision for Agriculture.