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I am interested in your thoughts on how the market is changing, in particular for livestock. I talk to farmers and estate owners who are actively selling on to natural capital companies, pension funds and others who have ambitions for woodland creation, commercial forestry, peatland restoration and renewables.

I am not sure whether you will want to comment on this, but the Government probably has a political difficulty in providing a target for livestock reduction. To what extent is it implicit in the way that the market is going that there will be a livestock reduction anyway because, although it is still early days for them, the market in woodland creation and natural capital is clearly going to grow over time? Is there a bit of smoke and mirrors involved in the Government saying, “We are not going to reduce livestock numbers”, while the reduction is implicit in everything else—it will happen anyway? It feels a bit like what you said about diet. Nobody wants to call it and say, “We are going to be eating less meat”, because that might sound extreme, but it is happening anyway.

I just wonder about transparency and how the role of markets and the trends relate to livestock. Are we afraid of calling something that is happening anyway?

But surely, if you have a scrappage scheme in place next year, you will be able to move faster than if you wait, say, up to 15 years for the natural life of a boiler to come to its end.

Do you think that scrappage schemes more broadly have a role to play here, within both the public sector and the private sector?

But is that not the fundamental problem with the balanced pathway? It assumes the status quo and that we have a way of working within our society. We have a structural dependence on car use; car use is much cheaper than public transport use; and there is nothing that fundamentally alters that balance. At the end of the day, the question is: what will actually convince people to leave the car keys at home and to get on a bus or a train? The policy on peak fares and all the other measures are fantastic—indeed, my party has been pushing for them in this Parliament—but where is the fundamental shift that is needed? When I look at the balanced pathway, I do not really see much hope of getting big reductions in carbon emissions from different sectors, unless that fundamental change happens. It just feels as though we are managing some carbon reductions within the status quo, instead of thinking outside the box and saying, “Well, these are the really big options for change that have to be fair, but which could ultimately benefit people.”

Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?

I again offer apologies on behalf of Ariane Burgess, who is convening this morning’s meeting of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee.

As the cabinet secretary mentioned, amendment 286 is related to the other amendments in the group that clarify whether the improvements that are currently set out in part 4 of schedule 5 will be moved to parts 1, 2 or 3. Amendment 286 seeks to move two kinds of improvements to part 3, which will mean that a tenant will not need to seek the landlord’s consent or to notify them in order to carry out such improvements.

The improvements in question are

“creating species-rich pasture”

and

“converting the holding (or a significant part of it) to a standard of organic farming that is capable of being accredited by a recognised accreditation organisation”.

It is important that our tenant farmers are able to make such improvements to enable them to undertake more sustainable and regenerative agricultural practices. Those improvements will help to support biodiversity through increasing the amount of species-rich pasture available for insects and vertebrates, while providing more species-rich grazing for livestock. The change in approach will assist tenant farmers in their conversion to organic farming.

I note that the success of the Government’s organic action plan, the increase that we are now seeing in organic conversion across different land classes and the subsequent growth in the market for organic produce are very positive.

I encourage members to support amendment 286.

I appreciate that, given that this has been a long stage 2.

Throughout the morning, we have discussed a range of amendments from the STFA and other stakeholders. I feel that a lot of the discussion could have taken place earlier in the development of the bill. Issues often come up during the passage of bills that require further reflection, and we have the summer to do that with this bill. However, I wonder what the process of engagement with stakeholders now looks like from the Government’s point of view. I am sure that stakeholders had concerns way back when the bill was being developed, but those concerns do not seem to have been fully incorporated into the drafting of the bill. What I am looking for is a resolution to those issues and some clear examples from members and the Government of how that can be done before we sit in the chamber at stage 3 and ask, “How do we make sense of this?”

That was £127,000.

In relation to your budget request for next year, do you have certainty on the development of your properties and on potential rates?

You expect to see that stability coming through in next year’s figures. In effect, those decisions have already been made.