Seòmar agus comataidhean

As I said in my response to Rachael Hamilton, I am happy to write to the committee with more information on each scheme if you would find that helpful.

As I said in response to Rachael Hamilton’s questions, we know that there is strong demand, in particular, for capital items, which can make an impact. On what we want to transform, as we have outlined in our vision for agriculture, we want Scotland to be that global leader when it comes to sustainable and regenerative farming. We know that we need to do what we can to lower emissions and enhance biodiversity so, through that fund and through some of the other schemes that we have, including the agri-environment climate scheme, which I talked about, and various other funds, we are looking to encourage the uptake of various practices and to help fund the pieces of equipment that we know can have a big impact on emissions.

We will, of course, take all those factors into consideration as we develop the scheme and before we launch it. As I said, we will be happy to keep the committee updated with further information on that. That will be a big issue going forward. It would be great to have a bigger capital budget to allow us to invest more in that but, unfortunately, we are in the position that we are in with the capital allocations that we have received. In the current financial year, we have really tried to target funding where we think it would have the biggest impact on emissions reductions, and we will of course consider those factors as we develop the scheme.

No. I would be happy to provide a further breakdown of those figures. I am not rolling one thing into another. We have the sustainable agricultural grant scheme. The amount that we have put forward for that capital fund for the coming financial year is £5 million. The budget for the current financial year is £5 million as well. Over the past year, the focus of that fund has been spend on slurry spreading equipment and slurry store covers.

We have budgeted £5 million for the coming financial year, but we will, of course, provide more details when the fund and the scheme launches.

We will continue to do that, both within my portfolio and across Government. As you can imagine, however, given some of the inflationary pressures that I talked about, there is pressure not only on my portfolio, but right across Government. It is as I said in my opening statement: we cannot do everything that we want to do at the pace at which we want to do it, because of the pressures that we are up against.

I need to point out that, as part of that, we are not getting the full replacement EU funds that we were promised by the UK Government. What we are getting in replacement funds from the UK Government comes through as resource, rather than resource and capital, which is what we received when we were part of the EU. That adds more pressure to an already stretched capital budget, which, again, is why we have not been able to do everything that we want to do. We have seen that funding fall by 1.7 per cent for the current financial year—I talked about that in my opening remarks—but it has fallen by 12.7 per cent since 2021.

In the discussions with the UK Government after leaving the EU, we were meant to discuss how future allocations would work. However, despite continually raising that with the UK Government, those conversations have never taken place.

Yes. I am sure that George Burgess can jump in to provide the overall figures for that scheme and for the croft house grant scheme.

That is vital funding. We want to see the continuing development of crofting and to do what we can in that area. We know that there are particular challenges with crofting in some of the more remote and rural parts of Scotland. That is why, through the various schemes that we have, we are funding things that will increase energy efficiency for example, and it is why we are looking at home improvements. We are really trying to do what we can to help crofters through those schemes.

I do not know whether there is anything that you want to add to that, George.

That is the thing. The situation is really difficult at the moment, and longer-term planning is not possible because we have annual budgets and allocations. That continues to be a particularly difficult issue, particularly for some of the schemes that we have run and funded.

The reason that we had the resource spending review and the capital spending review, even though they are not budgets in and of themselves, was to provide that overall envelope, although, of course, that can vary from year to year as we go through the annual budget-setting process. Within my portfolio, with regards to the islands funding in particular—I know that longer-term planning has been an issue and that there have been calls for us to look into multiyear allocations—we are trying to see how we can improve processes and give people as much warning as we can. Of course, that will, unfortunately, always depend on what the allocation is from year to year, but we are working to try to improve processes and to give clarity, where it is possible to do so.

Yes. As I outlined to the committee when I appeared previously, over £60 million worth of savings from the portfolio had gone forward at that time. The biggest part of that was the convergence funding. I outlined that in the letter that I sent to the committee about the budget as well. The £33 million was funding that we received unexpectedly, so we had not budgeted for that. That is part of the ring-fenced funding that we receive, so it has to come back to the portfolio in future years. It has not been returned for the 2023-24 financial year, but I will be discussing further with the Deputy First Minister when that money will be returned to the portfolio. It will be returned not for the coming financial year but in future years.

Yes.

People will, of course, be disappointed if they are not able to apply to the scheme this year, but I am not able to quantify that, because I do not know how many people were successful in relation to the applications that we saw this year.

George Burgess might have the overall figures for the applications that we received for the fund, if those would be helpful.