Seòmar agus comataidhean

Not at the moment, but I will in a second.

We cannot just throw in problems, such as a blunderous Brexit, and then stand by mocking the people who are trying to clean up that mess.

Does the member agree that she is cherry picking what has been said in the committee and that she is not explaining in a well-rounded way what was said? NFU Scotland president and agricultural reform implementation oversight board chair Martin Kennedy told the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee that, in relation to coming out of the EU and no longer having long-term certainty of funding,

“we need to be able to look five or six years ahead ... We got used to”

the framework

“that was delivered by Europe, which covered a seven-year period, so people knew what was going to be available. We do not have such a framework at present, which is really concerning.”—[Official Report, Rural Affairs and Islands Committee, 8 March 2023; c 20.]

I thought that I would intervene just to give balance to the argument.

Do you think that Brexit has helped the agricultural sector in Scotland?

I say through the chair that the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill was passed a few months ago.

The farmers in our constituencies—and the whole agriculture sector—talk to us, bend our ears and tell us about the issues and the problems that they are having, and they expect us to come up with solutions and to help them; they do not expect us to use their problems as ammunition in a one-sided debate.

Not just now, but in a second.

We have to be solution focused and go forward working together and doing our best for our agriculture industry. That is what our farmers deserve, and nothing less. They might not have kept the receipts of Brexit, but we have because we are picking up the tab.

Sustainable and regenerative farming is at the heart of the Scottish Government’s vision for agriculture, and rightly so. The twin biodiversity and climate crises are existential, and they will present challenges and opportunities for Scotland’s farmers and crofters. If we are to ensure that there are fewer of the former and more of the latter in the years and decades to come, it is vital that we act with our climate change targets and net zero ambitions in mind.

In my constituency of Banffshire and Buchan Coast, we have already seen the alarming impacts of those crises. We have been hit hard by storms, rising tides and coastal erosion. Acres of forestry has been lost across the constituency as a result of never-seen-before gales. The migration of cod and urban gulls has had a notable impact on the lives and livelihoods of those in my constituency.

While many recognise that we have a climate emergency, not all of us know that we also face a nature emergency. Professor Des Thompson, principal adviser on biodiversity and science at NatureScot told us this morning at the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee that, although there is growing realisation of the nature emergency, we have a long way to go. He said that what has happened with gulls is a catastrophe but it is because of what has happened at sea that the food base for gulls has declined. Gulls are therefore moving inland into towns and cities that are not adapted to breeding, and they are very good at tracking schoolchildren, unfortunately, so that they know where to find food.

What we are seeing with the gulls is just a symptom of climate change. The broader realisation that climate change is contributing to the nature crisis and therefore to the problems that we have right on our doorstep cannot be overstated and our farmers get it more than anyone else. They are witnessing those changes in real time and they understand the challenges that they are facing.

I welcome the Scottish Government’s emphasis on our vision for agriculture and the agricultural reform route map. The emphasis on our net zero ambitions and emissions reductions are in line with our climate targets. We all need to do better at expressing and mitigating the gravity of the twin climate and nature crises, and I praise the minister for her commitment to encouraging co-operative approaches on these issues, and to optimising collaboration with knowledge exchange.

Food security is an area of vital importance. In recent years, we have witnessed many disruptions to the global food supply chains, most recently through Russia’s abhorrent war in Ukraine. The Covid-19 pandemic also posed some difficult challenges to the global food system. Although its impacts are not unique to Scotland, those caused and imposed on Scotland by the hard Brexit were entirely avoidable. The UK Government has done immense and irreversible damage to our world-class food and drink industry and to rural and coastal communities such as the one that I represent, and I commend the minister for her continuing and tireless engagement in combating post-Brexit skills shortages in agriculture and for calling on the UK Government to fulfil its outstanding commitment to fully replacing EU funds.

I thank the member for bringing that issue up because it is a real problem and we are facing a lot of complex problems like that. If we are to look into those problems, we must remember that Scotland 16 years ago is not reflective of the society that we are in right now and that Brexit did not help because it damaged it even more.

We must ask ourselves what the future of food farming looks like. Scottish enterprises such as Intelligent Growth Solutions are taking innovations such as vertical farming to new heights. Home-grown enterprises such as IGS are redefining the future landscape of farming and food. Year-round, reliable, high-quality crops that are scalable and produced in controlled environments without pesticides and with a shorter transit from farm to plate will play a vital role in reducing the carbon footprint of our agriculture industry.

As we heard today, there is also a place for our livestock. The words that were used today were “sweet spot”. It is vital to get the balance right for a sustainable food and drink industry, for the future of our planet and for a health and wellbeing economy.

I must say that I am quite disappointed by the tone of the debate—but that is not coming from those on the SNP benches. All we hear are descriptions of problems, but being descriptive does not offer any solutions. We are willing to work cross-party to come up with solutions to a lot of the issues.

Jim Stephenson talked about women’s participation in legal services and them dropping out. We recently had a gender-sensitive audit of the Parliament. Maggie Chapman and I were members of the board for that, and we looked into the barriers to women’s participation in politics as a whole. We know that the better the representation of women in Parliament, the better women are served across Scotland. Would a gender-sensitive audit of legal services be considered? A lot of the issues that we are hearing about this morning affect women disproportionately.

Thank you. I am sure that Fulton MacGregor will be able to come in with his other hat on as member of the Criminal Justice Committee.

Since I became an MSP, a few constituents have approached me with concerns that the court system was being used to abuse them further with regard to abusive relationships, whether that abuse be physical domestic violence or coercive and controlling behaviour. The issues range from one partner receiving legal aid and then financially draining the other to—and I have looked into and read a bit more about this—ex-partners being able to cross-examine partners whom they have abused and who might even have taken out a restraining order against them. These things have been allowed to happen in the court system, and it seems that women have been disproportionately affected. Are you aware of and attuned to such matters, and what can be done about them?

I see Jen Ang nodding, so I will pick on her first.

Good morning to the witnesses, and thank you for your testimony so far, which has been enlightening.

I am curious about your expectations of the proposed agriculture bill. Have they changed from when you first came into the process? If so, in what way? Perhaps Vicki Swales can start.