Seòmar agus comataidhean

We want to work with industry to see how we can better improve scientific efforts—on monkfish, in particular. That is exactly what we are looking to do.

I will certainly try to. The bill has been a bit of a moving feast as it has progressed through the UK Parliament, so I might ask George Burgess if he can give you some more specific details on that.

We started in a position whereby all retained EU law was intended to be sunsetted at the end of this year. Thankfully, the UK Government has changed course from that. Unfortunately, a lot of work had already been undertaken to prepare for it, because it was going to be a very significant challenge. Instead, the UK Government has published a schedule of about 587 instruments that it is looking to sunset towards the end of the year.

We had an interministerial group meeting on Monday 22 May, at which I asked the then DEFRA secretary of state whether there would be any further changes to the schedule and what the process would be if there was a disagreement in relation to what was on it. There has been continuing movement, particularly over the past week, in how that work has developed.

I have made commitments about that. As I said in connection with the agriculture bill, I cannot give a definitive timescale as to when any legislation will be introduced.

It is important to highlight the work that is already under way. I think that this issue is really important and I want to assure the committee that I hear what you are saying. We have increased the Crofting Commission’s budget and have been working with the commission to see how we can start to address some of the issues that it is up against, which I hope will start to improve things.

We re-established the crofting bill group last year. It has met 10 times so far, more meetings are planned and all the relevant stakeholders are being considered. The bill group has considered some of the issues that were raised by the previous rural committee in its report on crofting. In his contribution to the agriculture policy debate last week, Alasdair Allan raised something that I did not have an opportunity to touch on in my summing up, which is that there has been a degree of consensus on tackling some of the issues.

Good progress is being made. I assure you that work is progressing well and that it is still our intention to introduce crofting reform. I will be happy to keep the committee updated.

Some of those issues are being picked up and discussed by the crofting bill group. We are keen to make progress if there are areas where we can do so without requiring legislation. I appreciate the points that you have raised today and during last week’s debate, and I assure you that those points are very much in the minds of members of the bill group as they do that work.

I can give a very quick response in response to that last point. I wrote to the committee—I think that that was in January—with a broad outline for the timetables for when we would introduce the good food nation plan and the commission. We are still working to those timescales; nothing has changed and nothing has slipped in relation to that. We hope that we will be looking to consult on a draft good food nation plan over the coming months.

Thank you, convener. I am happy to appear before the committee to discuss legislation that will introduce changes to the fees structure of the Animal and Plant Health Agency to uplift the fees for some statutory services that are delivered by that organisation on behalf of Scottish ministers and to deliver the Government policy of full cost recovery for those specified schemes.

The schemes covered by the instrument that the committee is considering cover animal by-products, salmonella control programmes, artificial breeding controls, checks on live animals at border control posts and the poultry health scheme for work carried out to allow producers to trade domestically and/or internationally.

Charges for those services also apply across the English and Welsh Administrations. The Welsh Government and the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs also have full cost recovery policies and also intend to introduce legislation to uplift fees for those statutory services.

The Animal Health (Miscellaneous Fees) (Amendment and Revocation) (Scotland) Order 2023 amends the Poultry Compartments (Fees) (Scotland) Order 2010 by revoking provisions that currently allow value added tax to be added to fees charged. His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has indicated that statutory fees that can be performed only by the Animal and Plant Health Agency are out of scope for VAT and that no VAT is therefore due upon them.

No business and regulatory impact assessment has been prepared on this occasion, because the Animal and Plant Health Agency has already carried out engagement with the affected sectors to understand the impact of the planned changes to fees. The affected industry sectors are fully aware that the APHA has been moving to full cost recovery for most such charges and that no significant impact on business is anticipated.

I end my comments there and I am happy to answer questions from the committee.

As I said in my initial response, we will introduce the agriculture bill this year. Earlier this year, we published our route map for reform, in which we are looking to introduce conditions in 2025 and then to phase the transition to the new framework over the years from 2025 onwards. We therefore need to introduce legislation to extend the provisions in the 2020 act. I cannot give a definitive timescale for that at the moment, but we need that transitionary piece of legislation to allow us to continue with the various schemes that we have at the moment so that we can ultimately implement the route map that we have set out. I will, of course, keep the committee informed as we look to introduce that.

Our route map sets out information about when we are looking to publish information on conditionality, which we hope to be in a position to do very soon. It also sets out some of the areas in which we could apply conditionality in the basic payment scheme, whether that be on greening, the good agricultural and environmental conditions requirements, cross-compliance or potentially elements of a whole-farm plan. That was all listed in the information that we published. We also mentioned potential conditions for voluntary coupled support. We will announce the detail around what we published in the route map shortly.

I will go back to your question relating to NFU Scotland’s calls and the budget splits. The discussions are on-going. I know that that is the NFUS’s position, but other bodies have different views on that. We have committed to a policy of co-development in relation to how we develop our agriculture policy, so we will continue to have those discussions with the agriculture reform implementation oversight board, the NFUS and other stakeholders before setting out a position.

Horticulture is a vital sector to Scotland in respect of the fruit and vegetables that we produce. We know that a number of issues affect the sector at the moment, but we want and encourage people to become involved in horticulture.

We also have various schemes. There are various projects, including a few in my constituency, that look at community-supported agriculture, and we have supported various schemes through those that are really important, because all of that is about strengthening and shortening our local supply chains. That, of course, also meets the objectives that we want to set out in the good food nation plans that we will produce.

We would have the requirements for tier 2 in the new legislation. The measures to be included in that would be set out in secondary legislation. Ultimately, that allows for flexibility in the future so that we do not have to go back and amend primary legislation every time. That also means that we can adapt, add to or change those measures if there are innovations in agriculture, for example. That provides us with the flexibility and the adaptive framework that we will need for the future, so that we have more flexibility than we have through the current schemes.