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Yes, it is an iterative process, so we will need the ARIOB and that co-development process as we continue.

I come back to what I said in response to Jim Fairlie’s questions on food policy and food production: it is a key priority. That is why we identified it as one of the key pillars of support going forward and why we committed to maintaining direct payments.

I know that there is that call for more clarity, and, of course, we are developing that policy and working with industry because, ultimately, we want to deliver a policy that will work for people.

We are consulting on the bill right now, and it is vital that we get the feedback before we develop it further, because we want to make sure that the proposals that we have set out for a future framework in relation to modernising agricultural tenancies and a number of measures within that are the correct ones and that we are using the correct enabling powers to address some of the challenges that we have. We are looking to add some powers through the bill that are not open to us at the moment in relation to the action that we can take.

We want as many people as possible to take part in that consultation, because it is vital that we get that feedback and that we introduce a bill to Parliament that will work and deliver on everything that we need it to deliver on.

It is an enabling bill that will introduce those powers. We have to have a consultation, because we need to get that feedback in the development stage. Again, that is where the work with the ARIOB has been really important. I talked about some of the initiatives that we have introduced as part of the national test programme. We are shaping and delivering schemes and systems that we know will work, based on that, and we are trying to deliver either the incentives or the mechanisms to make it as simple and as easy as possible for farmers to take part and get on board.

We have tried to provide as much clarity as we can at this time. We have committed to maintaining direct payments. We have talked about the conditionality, and there will be more detail on that in due course. I engage with the industry regularly and I take that feedback, but I would come back to the point that it is really important that we get that feedback on the bill before we introduce it.

It has only been a few months since the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill was passed, so we are still in the early stages of developing the plan. We will look to produce a draft plan on the timescales that are set out in the legislation.

Again, we will probably look to develop that. From our initial discussions during the committee’s scrutiny of the bill that became the 2022 act, I know that there are a lot of outcomes, whether in relation to food poverty or health, that we can look to address in the plans. The way in which we will monitor our delivery against some of those outcomes will, I think, be included in the plans. Given the range of evidence that the committee heard and received, you will know just how many areas food policy touches. It is important that the good food nation plans bring all that together in a coherent way and ensure that we deliver those outcomes. How we monitor that will be really important, and there will be more detail on that in the plans.

Do you mean in relation to the recommendations about the food security and supply task force and the food security unit?

George Burgess can give a bit more information on that.

I am not ruling out future allocations, but I come back to my point about the CSR, the RSR and the broad funding envelopes. They are not budgets in and of themselves, so more detail will come forward on that.

The islands plan, in essence, brings together all the other pieces of work across Government. Obviously, islands is not a policy area on its own; there are many areas and interests across Government, including housing, that impact on our islands. I hope that that came across in my evidence session with the committee on the national islands plan, which, I think, was in June. The reason why we have an islands team, and why my role in Government exists, is to ensure that we consider any potential impacts on our islands and rural communities across all policy areas.

We need to ensure that all the objectives that we have identified are still relevant, and a lot of them are. There is one on population—you touched on housing and transport—and one on fuel poverty. All those things are vitally important.

I attended the meeting of the convention of the Highlands and Islands in Oban at the start of this week, and we talked about a lot of those issues. When I am out on visits, housing is often identified as one of the key issues, if not the key issue, that people face at the moment. It was also identified as such at the convention’s meeting. I visited Orkney in the summer and heard exactly the same thing. We do not necessarily see a jobs shortage in rural and island areas, but there is a lack of affordable housing for people to stay in our communities.

That is where our objectives are still relevant. It is also not up to the islands programme in and of itself to fund those interventions; that is where the work that has been taken forward on housing is critical. We are developing the remote, rural and islands housing action plan and I am happy to follow up with colleagues if the committee wants more information on that. We know that there are particular challenges in our rural and island areas that we need to address, and our objectives are relevant, but the other interventions that we are making across Government are also important. It is not just about the islands programme.

You are right in relation to the NFUS’s co-convening role. The ARIOB exists because we want to work with industry and with our farmers and crofters to develop future policy. That is critical to me, because I want to make sure that we get it right and that we deliver a policy that we can implement and that will deliver everything that we hope it will in relation to emissions reductions, food security and enhancing nature.

Everyone in the group is an individual, and they will have different perspectives and views. There are things that we will have to do as a Government that not everybody will necessarily agree with, whether that is because of legislative constraints or budgetary constraints. However, that co-development is really important in ensuring that they feed into that process.