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Again, I do not know whether the committee has any particular comments or suggestions to make on that. I believe that the matters to be considered, which we have set out in section 3, cover what we need that to do, but, again, I ask the committee whether its members have any particular suggestions to make or whether they feel that anything is missing from the list that should be considered but has not been.

I want to address your first point about the list of matters to be considered and highlight and emphasise the fact that all the areas that you have mentioned are hugely important. More policies and legislation are coming down the line that are closely interlinked with agriculture and the future framework that we will have. I want to reassure the committee that we are considering all the policies that you have outlined, some of which are mentioned in the policy memorandum. The fact is that we must adhere to legislation that is already in place, and our rural support plan proposals are not being developed in isolation, without any consideration being given to those areas, given that, as I have mentioned, so many of them are integral to what we are doing.

I am sorry—what was the second matter that you raised?

It is important to have it for exactly for that reason. It is about ensuring that we are looking at those matters and that they feature as part of the rural support plan.

If we look at the matters that are set out, we see that we have our objectives, the climate change plan, agriculture, forestry and rural land use. From the evidence that you have taken and from some of the discussion that we have had today, we know that there are very specific things that people would like to be included in there. Of course, we take a lot of those matters into consideration—and we have to, where that is legally binding and where we are working across other areas of policy. However, it is important for us to at least set out the matters that we would be looking to include as part of the plan rather than not do that.

You are right that the status quo exists until such time as we make transitions through the route map, as we have set out. We do not want any cliff edges in relation to support. We are not intending to surprise anybody with anything that comes forward. What is important is that we have the powers under the framework to enable us to consider such issues.

I do not know whether John Kerr wants to say anything else on that.

I understand the committee’s concern about that. That is why we are taking an overall framework approach to the powers that we are taking. Ultimately, we need to have those powers, otherwise we would automatically rule out being able to do, discuss or take forward a lot of things. That speaks to the changes that we are looking to introduce. We have talked a lot about the route map and setting out some of the information.

I hope that I have been able to emphasise and illustrate throughout the meeting the importance of co-development—working with our farmers and crofters—in developing all of this. It is not in our interests or in the interests of the wider industry for there to be any surprises or cliff edges. We are categorically committed to not providing that for our farmers and crofters. Ultimately, as I have set out, we want to design the system with them and to see what mechanism will work best.

We will take seriously any recommendations that the committee makes in that regard, but we have also had correspondence with the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee about the powers that we are taking and the instruments that we are looking to use in relation to them. We have touched on a couple of areas in which that committee had recommendations, including moving from the negative to the affirmative procedure or reconsidering one of the other instruments, but the committee was broadly content with the responses that we gave in relation to the powers there. As it stands, I am content with where we are on the basis of what the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee has expressed to us.

However, the particular power that you have referred to involves a specific power for a very specific purpose. We responded to the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee on that issue. In fact, the power is similar to another power that was taken in, I think, the Environmental Protection Act 1990; Andy Crawley might have more information on that. We thought that, because the proposed power was broadly similar to the power in the 1990 act that is also subject to the negative procedure, it could be done in the same way. The proposed power in the bill is not as broad as the power in the 1990 act and is for a very particular purpose.

There is a lot in that, so forgive me if I miss anything.

You can correct me if I get anything wrong. Are you asking about the later parts of the bill, where we talk about the continuation of the various schemes?

We have set out in the route map what our transition will be and for how long we expect current schemes to stay in place. The powers in the bill will ultimately enable us to do that.

You touched on the sunset clause. It is felt that it is unusual for an enabling power to have a sunset clause attached to it, so that is why we want to repeal the sunset clause. It is just not all that helpful. It would be better for us to repeal it and ensure that we have the time through the transition than for us to set a firm end date for when we should have used it by. Again, it is about providing flexibility and enabling the transition that we have set out in the route map.