Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you. I had a very busy visit to Shetland, and, of course, I met fishers and people from the seafood industry when I was there. It will not be my last visit there; I fully intend to keep that engagement going and to visit again when I can.

I understand that there might be concerns about electronic monitoring, but I think that it is a positive measure. It helps us to build a picture, and, when it comes to monitoring and enforcement, it fills in those data gaps, so I think that it will work to the benefit of fishers. Right now, people can be accused of entering into or undertaking activity in marine protected areas when they have not done so. Electronic monitoring will help to protect the industry from such accusations.

Monitoring also helps us to build data and evidence. As I said, we have outlined our plans to develop a suite of highly protected marine areas, as well as introducing management measures for marine protected areas and protecting priority marine features. The ability to look at where vessel activity is taking place will be vital in that regard, so I see monitoring as a positive step.

I understand the concerns around that and I have received a fair bit of correspondence on the matter from various members. However, in response to freedom of information requests, we have published information that shows that that is not necessarily the case.

In addition, compliance on some of the other issues that we see is the responsibility of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. I requested a meeting with the MCA, which has been arranged for some time soon—I cannot remember the exact date—to discuss some of those issues and how we can prevent some of the conflicts from taking place.

The measures that we introduce in Scotland are not only for our vessels. We want to ensure that all vessels are part of the programme and that it is implemented in a fair and transparent way.

Yes. I am sure that the committee will be aware that we appointed Professor Russel Griggs to lead on that work. I would be happy to send the committee the terms of reference if you do not have it already.

We are expecting a report by the end of the year. The first few months are about fact finding, and at that stage we expect recommendations from Professor Griggs on which areas we need to look at for reform and other pieces of work. In the next few months, we expect to see the initial outcome from the first phase of the review, before we go on to look at further actions.

We have licences relating to a number of species in Scotland. We have talked about licensing for grouse moors and we have licences in relation to beavers. Some of that work has been set out in the co-operation agreement with the Scottish Green Party. It is about ensuring that our licensing scheme works in the way that we hope it does and that it is effective.

I heard your speech yesterday, in the debate on the programme for government, in which you discussed the renewable energy potential in your constituency and mentioned some of the developments and opportunities there.

It was interesting to go around the islands, because you are absolutely right that no island is the same as another; each has different challenges and opportunities. We are still at the early stages of our carbon neutral islands proposal, so we will of course be engaging with island communities and local authorities to see how we can take that forward. It is interesting to hear what you say about the different developments, such as the one on Tiree. In that regard, I would mention the tidal developments in Orkney. A lot is going on, and there is an opportunity for our islands to lead the way on tackling our carbon emissions and harnessing our ability to reach our net zero target. Again, we are in the initial stages of that work and I will keep the committee up to date on it as it progresses.

On the infrastructure fund, the islands programme has set out £30 million of funding over the course of the next five years. That work is split into three separate programmes for this coming year, on which £9.5 million is being spent. The islands infrastructure fund has £6.2 million to spend this year. Two projects have been allocated funding from that so far, and the rest of that will be distributed across the islands authorities. The islands communities fund, which is a £2 million fund, opened earlier, and we will announce the projects that have made successful applications to that soon. Further, over the course of the summer, I launched the healthy islands fund, which is a fund of £1.3 million.

Those funds recognise that island communities have had specific challenges throughout the course of the pandemic. The healthy islands fund will address an outcome in the national islands plan about improving the health and mental wellbeing of people on our islands. Through the communities fund and the infrastructure fund, we are looking for projects that will hopefully have an impact as we look to make the transition to becoming a green economy and that will create and help to retain jobs in island communities.

A lot of work is currently under way. Again, that will be a five-year programme of spend. Those are the allocations that have been made this year, but more will be coming down the line. We will, I hope, start to see those funds and those projects making positive impacts soon.

I will work closely with colleagues across Cabinet as well as with junior ministerial colleagues. There are a lot of areas of overlap in the marine environment and terrestrial environment policy areas, including on land use and biodiversity, and I already work closely with ministers and other Cabinet colleagues on those overlapping issues.

In previous roles that I have had in Government, I worked between two cabinet secretaries and there was a lot of overlap there. That relationship worked and it makes sense for us all to work together to meet the historic and demanding targets on emissions reductions and climate change that we have. That close working has been going on and will continue.

The fox control bill will be led by the Minister for Environment, Biodiversity and Land Reform, Màiri McAllan. The good food nation bill was in the programme for government and we will introduce that shortly.

Do you mean in relation to the committee consideration of the bill?

On the new agriculture bill and what we hope to achieve with it, ultimately we support active farming and will support the continuation of direct payments. It is critical that we continue to support food production. We have committed in our manifesto to shifting half of all funding for farming and crofting to conditional support by 2025. Farmers and crofters will be rewarded for their role in delivering wider biodiversity and environmental benefits.

The farmer-led groups considered conditionality and what that might look like for each of the different sectors, and what is clear from that work—although there were different suggestions about what it would look like—is that conditionality will mean reducing greenhouse gas emissions to the lowest possible level for every business and restoring and protecting biodiversity for our farmed landscapes. Those two objectives go hand in hand.

A critical element of developing our proposals for the bill is making sure that they are co-developed and co-produced. We want to make sure that we bring farmers and industry along with us throughout the process, which is why we established the agricultural reform implementation and oversight board, so that we can test proposals and ensure that we are working hand in hand when developing new policy. We hope that, by our doing that, new policy will be successful.

Absolutely. As I have said, we have to be very careful and keep a close eye on how things develop in relation to the internal market act and what is being proposed in relation to subsidy control. We continue to try to engage with the UK Government on those issues to ensure that our interests are represented and that we have the ability to create our own policy, but that can be very difficult when we are not provided with all the information that we need.