Chamber and committees

As part of their normal duties, civil servants provide support on relevant aspects of the Scottish Government’s work. Staff contribute to constitutional policy development from within their own subject areas as and when required.

The amount of time staff spend contributing to the workstreams varies widely from week to week, and we do not routinely record this information, as we have no business need for it. The most recent published information on this subject is in the form of a response to an FOI request available at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/constitution/About/Workstreams.

As part of their normal duties, civil servants provide support on relevant aspects of the Scottish Government’s work. Staff contribute to constitutional policy development from within their own subject areas as and when required.

Support for small farmers and crofters under Pillar 2 of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) will be a feature of the Scotland Rural Development Programme 2014-2020. Consultation on the detail of the Programme is expected to commence in spring 2014, and the agricultural and crofting sectors will have the opportunity to present their views.

We will consider whether to use the Pillar 1 Small Farmer Scheme once the final outcome of the CAP negotiations is known. As the proposals stand the maximum payment under this scheme would be 1,000 per year.

It is expected that the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) regulations, once they have been finalised, will grant a substantial degree of discretion over the speed and trajectory of the transition from the current Direct Payments system to an area based system. The Scottish Government has consistently stated that its ultimate decision on the speed of transition will depend on how well those who are disadvantaged by the current system, for example new entrants to farming, are catered for in the final CAP deal.

The Scottish Government believes coupled payments are an important way to try and address the continuing decline in livestock numbers and risk of land abandonment in Scotland. We continue to argue for the ability to use up to 15% of our direct payments ceiling for coupled payments.

Our decision on the detailed design of coupled support schemes will be taken after the new Common Agricultural Policy regulations have been finalised and following stakeholder consultation.

Many key aspects of the CAP reforms are still very unclear.

We do not know the size of our CAP budget and the main regulations will not be agreed before the end of June 2013.

Those key issues must be addressed before we can take decisions on what the final CAP will look like in Scotland.

We will take these decisions in consultation with the industry once the final budget and wider CAP framework is known.

Building on the work they did for the Brian Pack Inquiry, we have commissioned the James Hutton Institute to model a wide range of scenarios for payment regions in Scotland. They are due to present their findings to a Stakeholder conference in April 2013.

There are many criteria that can be used to define payment regions and those currently being considered include land quality and land classification criteria.

At this stage the EU has not published details of Member States’ budget allocations under the Common Agricultural Policy and we have no firm indication yet of the timescale for finalising Scotland’s share of the UK allocation once it is known. We therefore do not yet know what our Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 budget allocations will be, and so it is not possible to make any decision on the transfer of funds between the two pillars at this stage. The same goes for decisions on co-financing any funds transferred, a young farmers scheme and Areas of Natural Constraint payments in Pillar 1.

Information on the number of meetings between Scottish Government ministers and officials and government officials of (i) Argentina, (ii) Brazil, (iii) China, (iv) Iceland, (v) Ireland, (vi) Qatar or (vii) Spain in the last two years could only be obtained at disproportionate cost. This is due to the high number of potential meetings across Scottish Government.

Information on the number of communications between Scottish Government ministers and officials and government officials of (i) Argentina, (ii) Brazil, (iii) China, (iv) Iceland, (v) Ireland, (vi) Qatar or (vii) Spain in the last two years could only be obtained at disproportionate cost. This is due to the high number of potential communications across Scottish Government.