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We know that a lot of work has already been undertaken. Unfortunately, we were unable to progress it in the previous session of Parliament. Although it is not in this year’s programme for government, we have made a commitment to modernise crofting law. We will look at all the work that has been done on it so far.

The committee will be aware that crofting legislation is complex. Future work on it will not be straightforward. The work that has been undertaken has highlighted difficulties in reaching consensus on key issues, some of which might seem to be simple. Building consensus on those issues will be key in driving the work forward. I assure the committee that the work that was previously undertaken by the crofting law group and the Law Society of Scotland will stand us in good stead when we commence work on crofting law reform. We are still looking for time for that in the legislative programme. Decisions about that will be taken by the Cabinet as it sets out the future legislative programme. I reiterate our commitment to modernising crofting law. We will take that forward.

I would be happy to come back to the member and the committee with more information on what stage that work has reached. Obviously, a lot of work is on-going across Government that is not necessarily detailed point by point in the programme for government.

There is space for all these things, and we certainly do not intend to pit one sector against another.

On support for organics, conversion and certification costs are met through our agri-environment scheme. Indeed, since 2015, we have spent between £19 million and £20 million, I think, on organic conversion. I know that there are specific costs related to that, and we need to do what we can to support those who are thinking of converting to organics. If we are looking to expand the amount of land that we farm organically, support will be critical. That said, all agricultural support will be considered by the implementation oversight board that we have established, and I am sure that there will be discussions about this and further proposals developed.

Absolutely. Soil Association Scotland is one of our key stakeholders, too. Indeed, I met that organisation over the summer and will continue to engage with it. An important part of my role is getting out and about and meeting different farmers across Scotland, and I fully intend to keep doing that.

The question of which committee will consider a bill is a matter for the Parliamentary Bureau, not for me.

We already know. As I have said, the bureau decides which committee will consider the various pieces of legislation.

In relation to your first point, there is no getting away from the fact that Brexit is the single biggest factor that is having an impact across the food and drink industry—it is having a huge impact. I am not focusing on Brexit in order to be political or difficult; we need only look at the industry letters that were sent to the UK Government. We cannot just gloss over and completely forget about the issue for the sake of some people’s political convenience.

You said that there are shortages elsewhere, but I do not think that other countries in Europe are seeing the visible shortages on supermarket shelves that we are starting to see here or experiencing the critical level of labour shortages that we have in Scotland. In the letter that was sent by industry to the UK Government, there were also asks of the Scottish Government, to which I responded last week. I have already outlined what we are doing in Scotland, but we do not have in our power all the levers to fix or control the impacts, so although it is my job to make sure that we work with industry here and mitigate the impacts as best we can, when we do not have all the levers of power or control over the situation, there is only so much that we can do. Unfortunately, a lot of those powers rest with the UK Government, which is not doing anything about it at the moment.

I will cover a few points and come back to the wider piece that you talked about in relation to getting people into the food and drink workforce. Trade deals might be good for the whisky industry, and we are not against them, but the whole point is that we should not support trade deals that come at the expense of one of our most critical sectors, which is agriculture. The Australian trade deal is expected to benefit our gross domestic product by only 0.02 per cent, and who will be the hardest hit in that situation? It will be Scottish agriculture and red meat producers. Again, we are not against trade deals, but we are not willing to sacrifice our most critical and important sectors in order to achieve them. We would really welcome it if the UK Government would take on board some of our concerns about that.

The precedent has already been set with the Australian trade deal, and we have similar concerns over proposals for the New Zealand trade deal, which is not set to increase our GDP at all; the last time I saw it, the figure was about 0 per cent. No impact assessments have been done, and the Trade and Agriculture Commission, which was meant to be set up to scrutinise and look at the impact of such deals, has not even been fully established to do that yet. Therefore, I do not think that it is fair to cherry pick the very few potentially positive examples from the trade deals and to ignore the massive negatives and the huge impact that Brexit will have on critical sectors of the Scottish economy, which will disproportionately affect us in comparison with other parts of the UK.

To come back to the work that the Scottish Government is undertaking to get people into the food and drink industry across the supply chain, we set up a commission to do a root-and-branch review of land-based learning, which goes from the early years right through. The commission has members from the education sector and industry, and it is looking at the skills that we need and what we can do to promote the food and drink industry as the destination of choice.

The commission is considering whether the industry is as open and accessible as it can be and whether we are training people in the right way. There is a great project in my constituency involving machinery rings. Ringlink Scotland has a pre-apprenticeship programme with local schools, through which it has been giving young people real-world experience of working on a farm. That has helped people to end up in positive destinations. We are taking a longer-term approach and seeing what we can do to improve the skills pipeline for our young people.

Ariane Burgess and the committee will be aware of the fact that, even though I have responsibility for islands, there are many issues that impact on our island communities that do not fall directly within my remit. The issue of housing in our rural areas and island communities falls within the remit of the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government, Shona Robison. However, there are obviously strong crossovers between her responsibilities and mine in that respect.

Like Ariane Burgess, I travelled round our islands in the summer. I visited Islay and Colonsay with Jenny Minto, and I went to Orkney and Shetland, too. On Colonsay, lack of affordable housing is a huge issue. We heard from someone whose family had been on the island for generations but they were living in a caravan because there was no housing there for them. There were job opportunities in the area, but there was no housing available to enable people to live on the island. More than 40 per cent of the homes on Colonsay are second homes or holiday homes. There are undoubtedly issues there.

A positive aspect of that visit was the fact that I was there to launch the rural and islands housing funds. By investing in those funds, together with Mowi, we are helping to deliver new housing for the community, which will have a hugely positive impact. On top of that, in the co-operation agreement, we talk about developing an action plan for rural and island housing, as well as committing £45 million for rural and island communities.

As I mentioned, the islands bond will not resolve many of the issues on its own, because there are a lot of issues that can affect people’s ability to live on islands and that might cause them to leave. Ariane Burgess is right to say that housing is a critical element. I hope that, through the funding that we are providing and by engaging with communities on the action plan, we can identify where the critical problems are and try to address those as best we can. I hope that that, alongside some of the other measures that I have outlined, will help.

You are absolutely right. Food is an integral part of our lives that affects many different elements. There was previously a ministerial working group on food, and the co-operation agreement sets out that we want to re-establish that. That would bring together colleagues from across Government to ensure that we address the issues as best we can. I was Minister for Public Health, Sport and Wellbeing at the start of the year, and obviously the issue has huge impact in that area because of dietary-related disease. The issue also impacts on poverty and many other areas.

It is therefore critical that we work across Government to address some of the issues. That will be key when we look to develop and introduce the good food nation bill. We will work across Government and right across wider society in Scotland to ensure that everybody has access to good food.