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I am glad to hear that there will be some assessment, because the policing of those changes is a matter for Police Scotland. On account of the concerns that many constituents, especially elderly constituents, have raised that many drivers, cyclists and pedestrians are not properly adhering to the new code, what can be done to raise awareness of the changes and to ensure that those who are flouting the new regulations are properly dealt with?

I thank the minister for the early sight of his statement.

In the first paragraph of his statement, he rightly mentions that the higher education sector is one of the key sectors when it comes to improving a range of economic factors. He is absolutely right about that. However, Universities Scotland has commented that Scotland is not sufficiently competitive when it comes to economic growth, and that was one of the unanimous conclusions of the Parliament’s Finance and Public Administration Committee.

I will read a short section of the Universities Scotland comment on that. It says:

“The research excellence grant has declined 18.2% in real terms since 2014/15”.

It continues:

“Over the same time period, Scotland’s universities have won a progressively smaller percentage share of UKRI resources, from a 15.4% share to a 12.9% share.”

What does the minister think is the reason for Scotland not winning so many of those research grant projects, and what is being done to address that?

Secondly, the minister talked about improving the trade environment for Scotland’s businesses. He will know that one of the big asks of the business community—and, indeed, of the Scottish Funding Council—is that much more needs to be done to upskill and reskill our workforce, and to provide a much greater focus on digital skills, data science and leadership and management skills, by making far more resources available through the national transition training fund. Is that going to happen?

I am grateful to the cabinet secretary for her acknowledgement that there is a problem, because I have recently been contacted by several younger constituents across Mid Scotland and Fife who are struggling to get into the farming sector. That issue has been highlighted at some local NFU Scotland meetings. Recent Scottish Government statistics show that, since 2016, the Scottish Government’s opportunities for new entrants programme has helped only 76 young entrants to get into farming. Does the cabinet secretary agree that that is a disappointingly low number and that a new strategy is required to address that?

To ask the Scottish Government what measures it is putting in place to attract younger people into the farming sector. (S6O-00915)

I thank the minister for early sight of the statement and welcome the collaborative approach. The minister knows as well as the rest of us that, towards the end of last year, businesses and industry were saying that the Scottish Government had not consulted them enough. Therefore, it is good to hear that there is a change in direction to address their concerns.

I have three areas of questioning. First, on a short-term basis, businesses are obviously desperate to receive support as quickly as possible. However, what analysis has been taking place of some of the successful schemes? For example, the high street scheme in Northern Ireland has generally proved to be successful. In addition, what analysis has been undertaken on the business improvement district schemes in Scottish towns? I am aware of some in Mid Scotland and Fife that have been particularly successful, but there are, sadly, others that have not been successful. It would be interesting to know why some have worked and some have not, so I would be interested to hear what the minister has to say about that.

Secondly, what commitment has the Scottish Government made to look at transportation issues? People will not come to some of our town centres unless good-quality transport is available. I would be interested to know what discussions the minister is having with his colleagues in the transport portfolio.

Finally, in the long term, there obviously has to be a commitment to addressing some of the rising costs that businesses are facing, which are their main concern. Does the Scottish Government have a firm plan to look at reform and modernisation of the business rates system, which many businesses find extremely complex?

The whole ferries fiasco comes hard on the heels of plenty of other examples of SNP mismanagement of taxpayers’ money—the cases of Burntisland Fabrications, Prestwick airport and Rangers administrators, to name just three—and of Audit Scotland’s concerns that there is insufficient transparency from Scottish Government ministers about public spending. Will the Scottish Government commit to Scottish Conservative plans that ministers should open the books regularly and that we should have a formal finance bill procedure in Parliament so that we can have effective scrutiny of what the Government is spending taxpayers’ money on, in order that such a fiasco never happens again?

I absolutely do and I am coming to that point, going back again to some suggestions that Mr Fairlie has made in the past. Mr Allan is quite right, but it is not just about accessing the food but about knowing what to do when it comes to making the soup. That is an important point as well. The education that is involved is crucial. I do not often agree with Mr Fairlie in the chamber, as everybody knows, but he has made a very strong point in the past about young people in schools needing to know what they have to do. That is a very important part of the curriculum for educating our young people, as, indeed, is knowing how to avoid waste.

I am obviously not a farmer in any sense, but I live in the farming communities in Perthshire and I am in awe of what they manage to do, often against the elements and in very difficult circumstances. It is true that they have had their difficulties with Brexit and Covid and have not had their troubles to seek, but they also have some big asks of us.

Top of the list for farmers, quite rightly, is that they want us to buy local. That includes local authorities and other institutions doing their bit when it comes to procurement. As Rachael Hamilton said, the Scottish Conservatives have been calling for that for a very long time. That procurement is vital, not just to harness the best of our local areas but to support jobs and the related rural industries. If the bill is to be effective, facilitating that local procurement is a key component.

Another important issue is the culture that surrounds the preparation of the food. Far too often these days, mealtimes are squeezed, and there are two problems in that. It often means that poorer-quality food is being served—Karen Adam made that very sensible point—and it certainly means that quality family time around the dinner table is reduced. Personally, I think that the French have a lot to teach us in trying to address that issue, because in France food is very much seen as a national treasure. We need to do an awful lot more to imbue exactly the same culture across Scotland.

Therefore, quite a bit of creating a good food nation is about attitudinal changes and we in the chamber know from various other policy initiatives that changing attitudes and behaviour is not easy. However, I do not think that we should sit back and say that we will not try, because the committee has come up with some very interesting suggestions about what the basket of indicators has to be, as opposed to the targets. That is a very important part of the recommendations in the committee’s report.

I will finish by saying that Beatrice Wishart, speaking on behalf of the committee, raised some very interesting points about the procedures that the committee will have to recommend to Parliament to ensure that we go about the legislation in absolutely the right way to deliver what the intention is, rather than getting wound up in some legislation that will not be very effective.

There are numerous reasons why it is a privilege to live in Scotland, but there are three worth mentioning in the context of this debate: the unique splendour of our landscapes, in particular on days like today when it is not raining; the abundance of our natural resources; and our capacity to produce world-class food. Colin Smyth made some interesting points about the potential that we have in that regard.

Good food is a very large part of being able to live well. It should go without saying, therefore, that we must harness everything in our power to ensure that it is accessible to all. Without good food, there is no access to good health, a strong economy or a strong sense of wellbeing.

Members know only too well that, over the years, I have, in general, been pretty hostile towards national plans of any sort, because past experience with plans in this place has not been encouraging. Too many national plans have been overlaid with too much bureaucracy and too many burdens on stakeholder groups, and with artificial targets, and we have ended up in situations in which people are told by the state what to do rather than taking responsibility themselves.

Before I comment on this particular plan, I will concentrate on three themes in the bill that I believe can be the focus for the desired aim: namely, to ensure that Scotland is a world leader when it comes to good food. These three themes are the availability of food, its production and its preparation.

First, the question of availability is not just about the supply of food but about how pricing affects consumer demand and the related elasticities within that demand. All too often, people tell us that good food will always be more expensive, but that is a myth—it is simply not true. Indeed, some of the best and most wholesome food is actually the cheapest.

Take homemade soup, for example, on which I have heard Mr Fairlie speak during the election campaign and in the chamber since. That is made with quality vegetables that we have in our local shops and on our farms. Willie Coffey made a point about the traditional Scottish dish of mince and tatties. That dish can be as good as any when it comes to quality food and it is a lot cheaper than a fish supper or a pizza carry-out. So, too, with a myriad of straightforward recipes.

In recent years, I have sat through quite a number of debates relating to internal market legislation. Like many across the chamber, I never wanted Brexit to happen, but I supported the need for legislation, and that is largely because the common frameworks designed to navigate the UK’s post-Brexit pathways did not provide the legal instruments that would provide the necessary legislative safeguards for open trade across the UK, complemented by provision for regulatory divergence and more effective parliamentary scrutiny.

I note from the committee’s report that there is cross-party agreement on the benefits of the UK internal market with Scotland, and rightly so, for exactly the reasons that Mr Rennie cited. Open trade across the UK is absolutely essential. Scotland trades one and a half times as much with the rest of the UK as it does with the whole of the EU and the rest of the world put together. That trade with the UK is worth four times as much to Scotland as what the EU single market provided. For those reasons, it is absolutely essential that the post-Brexit era poses no new barriers to trade across the UK, and that is very much an agreed conclusion of the committee report.

From previous debates in the chamber, members will know that I harboured some concerns about the initial United Kingdom Internal Market Bill, on the basis of concerns from stakeholders about the potential impact on devolution, which were similar to the concerns that the cabinet secretary spoke about in his speech. I could understand that, if we were not careful with the legislation, there was scope for the UK Government to undermine the devolution settlement, and that was certainly not acceptable. To avoid that—and it absolutely has to be avoided—it was essential that the legislation protected the right of the devolved Administrations to have their own genuine policy differences, such as minimum unit pricing for alcohol. Those policy differences, which reflect different national and regional circumstances, are absolutely what devolution should be about. Should the UK Internal Market Act 2020 curtail any of that, it would undermine those differences, and that would be a very serious issue.

At the time, my former colleague Adam Tomkins said that the important doctrine of proportionality, with its roots in common law, has relevance here. He was right, because not only does that doctrine govern the legislation, but it puts in place the opportunity to ensure that it is fair and independent and there is trusted adjudication of whether it is delivering on its stated objectives. Those objectives, in relation to the internal market, are agreed across Scotland and the UK, and it is in everyone’s interests to aspire to economic growth, better investment, a greener economy, job opportunities and the development of innovation and enterprise. Anything that disrupts the UK internal market would be contrary to the interests of both Scotland and the UK—a point that was very well made by Bruce Crawford when he was convener of the previous Finance and Constitution Committee.

That brings me to the current situation and, later this afternoon, we will debate the shared prosperity funds and how the EU funds absolutely have to be replaced.

There are other issues, such as the concern over the Scottish economy and the difficulties that it faces when it comes to ensuring that it has all the advantages that we would expect it to have, whether it had remained in the EU or as part of the United Kingdom. I will finish on that point, because the reason that the internal market is so important is to help Scotland to flourish in the way that we all want to see.

I begin by reiterating the belief on the Conservative benches that, in the post-Brexit era, the UK Government must make every effort to ensure that there is absolutely no loss to the devolved nations of funding that is equivalent to the money that we would have had, had we still been part of the EU. Whether it is via the community renewal fund, the levelling up fund or the shared prosperity fund, it is vital that there is at least equivalent funding for the loss of the EU structural funds. In other words, and to adopt one of the principles of the Smith commission, there must be no detriment.

For me, three things matter in this whole debate: first, that the absolute best interests of Scotland, most especially in terms of improving our economic performance, are met; secondly, that our local authorities and communities—which, for such a long time, have asked for more autonomy—feel more empowered; and thirdly, that there is a joined-up approach between Westminster, the Scottish Government and local authorities.

Last week, the Finance and Public Administration Committee took evidence from the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Michael Gove, and that was an important session, during which members could address their understandable concerns about the details of replacement funding. Earlier this afternoon, during the debate on the internal market, we had an opportunity to debate more of those issues.

We know that the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 confers a right on Westminster to spend money in the aspects of the UK for which it does not have devolved competence—for example, on infrastructure projects such as roads or railways. The aim is to provide additional investment, but there are some—and I hear them on the benches on my right—who feel that the 2020 act is an all-out attack on devolution, a power grab of unlimited proportion and something that Scotland can well do without.