Chamber and committees

Can I ask one more quick question?

Just for the record—I think that you nodded—will you confirm that there will definitely be no penalty in 2025 and that there would just be a warning letter.

Excellent.

Okay. I just wanted to make sure.

There have been some excellent questions about small farmers. We had a similar discussion about the Scottish suckler beef support scheme, when I asked you what that meant for small farmers. I cannot remember your exact words, but you said something like, “I hear you.” I emphasise again that we have been asked to put SSIs in place before we have a real understanding of what they will mean for smaller farmers and crofters.

The point about price is a wider one. The worry with any requirement, particularly if you cannot always do it yourself, is that the cost then gets bigger and bigger. There is a big difference between a 500-acre farm and a guy—or a woman, or anybody else—who has 20 acres and five sheep. There is no point in me asking the same questions, but I want to push that.

I want to ask about the story of how we have come to be here. Where did the idea of the whole farm plan start for you? I buy some of what you are saying; a QMS or Scottish Quality Crops farm assurance member will have been doing some of this for years now—although again, a lot of smaller farmers are not in farm assurance schemes. So, as you are talking about co-design, what is the story, from your perspective, of how we have got to the point where you feel that this is the right decision for us?

On the technical side, my understanding is that there will be no penalty in 2025 if plans are not in place and that there will just be a warning letter. Just to make sure, is that absolutely right?

I declare my interest as a small farmer. I should have said that earlier.

I might not be explaining myself right. Under the 2024 act, you have to deliver a rural support plan. That is law and that is right. It has not been delivered. A draft came out, but it was nothing more than a template. The rural support plan will give us the entire strategy for moving forward.

Are you saying that the route map is the rural support plan? Is that the level of detail that we are talking about and is it the only thing that we will get? Is that what will be in the rural support plan? That seems to be what is being suggested.

I am sorry to have to come back in, but this is an important point. I am glad that you said that the arrangements are messy; I think that they are a bit messy, too.

Tiers 1 to 4 are the future. When we talk about legacy schemes, we are talking about the basic payment scheme, but we are actually transitioning that to the future, which tiers 1 to 4 model. I am assuming that tiers 1 to 4 are not just there until 2028 but that that is the model that we will run forward with until 2032. The SSIs that will be considered in the autumn are actually about the future.

I want to return to why the matter is crucially important. Let us take a practical example. You are bringing out a £20 million scheme this year using the Bew moneys, which you have replaced. John Swinney seemed to suggest that that would be about sustainable and regenerative farming, but you have not produced anything that tells us what farmers might think is the right thing to apply for under that scheme.

The Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Act 2024 says that the rural support plan must set out

“any measures that are intended to benefit small producers, tenant farmers and crofters”.

However, I have organisations telling me that they do not really know how the Scottish suckler beef support scheme fits them as small producers or how the whole-farm plan is going to work for a smaller-than-usual producer.

What about capping and front loading? Those questions came up during discussion of the agriculture legislation, but we still have not answered them. ARIOB is a group that you are quite proud of, but I worry about ARIOB because I do not want it to be a clique; I want it to be an expansive group that really works for the whole industry rather than for the few people who are on that group. ARIOB has been in place since 2021, so I could ask what it has been doing for almost four years. We should surely have the detail by now so that we are clear, and so that farmers across the industry are clear, about what comes next.

Finally, you suggested that you think that farmers, crofters and smallholders are clear. I think that some feel that they are clear, but the impression that I get when I go out is that that is certainly not what is thought across the industry.

It was surely your original vision that the rural support plan would have come out by now, in order for us to have all of these things ready before we start talking about the proper transition from 2026.

You said that the document is currently thousands of words long, so you hope to condense it for it to be useful—otherwise it will be a nice bedtime read, will it not? That is important. The letter that the minister sent says of the code that

“it will be fundamental to the activity required to access support”,

so it is an important document. The 2024 act says that the law can require

“regard to be had by particular persons to the guidance”,

that is, the code of practice for sustainable farming. So, the code is an important document because future payments could hinge on it. To go back to your argument about carrot and stick, do you envisage that as a carrot approach that incentivises the use of the document, rather than saying, “Do the document or a penalty will come”? You said that there would be no penalties through the code.

Thank you.