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It is.

I disagree with some of your assertions in relation to that. When Scotland was a member of the European Union, the vast majority of the funding that would have flowed through to my portfolio, whether for agricultural payments or for our marine sector, stemmed from the EU. When we left the EU, the UK Government made a commitment that we would see that funding maintained—that it would continue to come through—and that we would get our fair share. That has never happened—the funding has never materialised.

I also do not think that it is fair to say that other portfolios have had increases. There have been decreases across other portfolios in Government. It is also important to remember that we cannot look at the overall spend on rural and island areas only through the prism of the rural affairs portfolio, because there is so much wider spend across Government that also contributes to the sustainability of rural communities. We have made a commitment to maintain direct payments in order to maintain that stability, and we remain committed to that.

Ultimately, we want to provide stability for our farmers and crofters, so that they know what to expect. Through the budget that we have provided this year, and with the line of sight that we have through the spending review, I hope that we are able to provide some clarity. Through some of the commitments that we have made to maintaining direct support, which we know is critical for farmers and crofters—whether that is LFASS or voluntary coupled support, not to mention the funding that we provide through our crofting schemes, which I touched on in my opening comments, through the crofting agricultural grant scheme and croft housing grants—we want to make sure that we have a thriving rural Scotland.

We know that we need to maintain and increase populations across rural and island areas in Scotland. The funding that we are providing through the schemes in my portfolio, as well as more broadly across Government, whether that is for transport or housing, all helps and adds to that.

Across the piece, we always look to monitor how schemes or programmes are working on the ground and in practice.

Are you asking about some of the newer schemes?

I do not believe that that would be the case, because the budget is the budget. Obviously, there were a number of legal commitments relating to the overall support that we needed to publish in the rural support plan, but I do not think that it would have provided any more clarity, detail or information than members see in what we have published in the budget.

Part of the reason for the delay in the rural support plan, which the Minister for Agriculture and Connectivity wrote to the committee about, is that the budget process was delayed. We want to be able to provide as much clarity in the document as possible and to provide a line of sight about what funding is coming. However, when we published the draft rural support plan, it was largely based on what we had already published in the route map, through which we provided information about when we expected any big changes to schemes—well, not big changes, because we are engaging with the industry on all of that and trying to provide a line of sight. It was important that we received the information from the budget and spending review, so that we were able to populate the plan with that further line of sight. That will be helpful for the document.

May I come in on the point that you have made about the scheme being cumbersome?

We have made a commitment about the overall split of what funding should look like. There will be a 70:30 split, so that about 70 per cent of that funding is in tiers 1 and 2 and 30 per cent is in tiers 3 and 4. By its nature, tier 3 is envisaged as an elective scheme that people may apply to get into for landscape-scale restoration.

There are some other projects that we are considering and piloting, and NatureScot has been doing some work for us on the wider landscape-scale piece. There could well be other schemes that it may be possible to consider in the future. It is not necessarily a case of saying that the budget is going to remain static, because it could well change over time, including as we consider some of the other new schemes that could come into play.

It is not possible for me to speak in any detail about the new schemes. I come back to some of the points that I have made about the draft of the rural support plan that we will publish. It will be the first iteration of a plan. I can imagine, given the period of transition that we are in, that there could well be updates to the plan once we have more clarity and once some more work has been done.

We have already published a lot of the information in the agricultural reform route map, which sets out the overall direction for when we could expect schemes to change or transition.

Of course, the information in the rural support plan would build on that, and I hope that, with what is in the budget that we have published and the line of sight through the spending review, we have been able to provide a bit more information on that.

We have set aside £26 million of capital funding for that. Similar funding of £20 million was introduced last year. Some of that was used for the future farming investment scheme, and all the funding for that was fully utilised. We have not set out how we are going to utilise all of the £26 million yet, but we have made broad commitments in relation to it. As I mentioned previously, and as we said last year, through the capital grant scheme, we are equipping farmers and crofters to tackle climate and nature challenges, but we are also supporting our food production and food processing sector. That is the outline of what we are intending to use that funding for.

One recently launched element of that funding, which I announced at the agritourism conference in November last year, is the £1 million that is being used for the agritourism investment scheme. That scheme opened this week.