Skip to main content
Loading…

Seòmar agus comataidhean

Official Report: search what was said in Parliament

The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.  

Criathragan Hide all filters

Dates of parliamentary sessions
  1. Session 1: 12 May 1999 to 31 March 2003
  2. Session 2: 7 May 2003 to 2 April 2007
  3. Session 3: 9 May 2007 to 22 March 2011
  4. Session 4: 11 May 2011 to 23 March 2016
  5. Session 5: 12 May 2016 to 4 May 2021
  6. Current session: 13 May 2021 to 15 February 2026
Select which types of business to include


Select level of detail in results

Displaying 2423 contributions

|

Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]

Draft Climate Change Plan

Meeting date: 28 January 2026

Mairi Gougeon

Having that mix in our forestry is critically important, not least for the resilience of the woodland that we are creating. I do not know whether there is anything further that you would want to add in relation to that, Brendan.

Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]

Draft Climate Change Plan

Meeting date: 28 January 2026

Mairi Gougeon

That has been one of the challenges in peatland restoration. Fundamentally, we have had to build a new industry and ensure that we are investing in and building capacity for the sector in order to meet not just the targets that we have now but our ambitious targets to 2040, which we have already talked about.

Tim, do you have anything more to add in relation to the skills element, in particular, and some of the work that has been happening there?

Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]

Draft Climate Change Plan

Meeting date: 28 January 2026

Mairi Gougeon

We have been looking at and considering that. At the moment, peatland restoration is 100 per cent funded through the Scottish Government, and we need to look at other models of finance such as private finance, because I do not think that we can rely solely on public funding to do everything that we need to do, whether it be in relation to peatland or other areas. In our modelling, we have been looking at Government funding covering about 90 per cent of the costs, and the other 10 per cent coming from private finance.

There is also our peatland code to take into account, because we want to ensure that, if we do get private finance, that sort of investment is done with integrity, in a responsible way and in accordance with the natural capital market framework that we published towards the tail end of 2024.

Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]

Draft Climate Change Plan

Meeting date: 28 January 2026

Mairi Gougeon

I will touch on some of the points that I made earlier. Our approach is not only to encourage restoration; it is about how we protect some of our peatlands. We considered that when applying some of the conditions to agricultural support.

We need to involve everyone in the agricultural reform programme to ensure that we are linked. I give the assurance that, as we develop future support, we are not working in silos, and we are considering how we can provide support in an integrated and coherent way. Officials are involved in the agricultural reform programme and very much having such discussions at the moment.

Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]

Draft Climate Change Plan

Meeting date: 28 January 2026

Mairi Gougeon

That is why a project that I have touched on in previous responses will be critical, because the Flow Country Partnership looks at those exact issues. Tim Ellis might be able to say a bit more about that.

Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]

Draft Climate Change Plan

Meeting date: 28 January 2026

Mairi Gougeon

Where we can make the system easier, we absolutely will, and we constantly look at that through the forestry grant scheme. Encouraging more small-scale planting and integrating it on farms is also why we increased the grant rates for such work, in recognition that we wanted to incentivise that as well. Brendan Callaghan might want to add more on that particular point.

Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]

Draft Climate Change Plan

Meeting date: 28 January 2026

Mairi Gougeon

I acknowledge the frustrations that have been expressed by some stakeholders, and I appreciate that there is always an ambition to go further and to do more. However, it is important to remember the overall context and the position that we have been in since the last plan came out and to consider everything that has happened in that time.

For a start, we left the European Union and we committed to having a period of stability and simplicity for our agriculture sector, which I think was the right thing to do. We needed to bring forward legislation at that point so that we could, through retained EU law, continue the basis for making payments to the sector. Of course, we then had to design a new framework for what support would look like, carry out a consultation on that, and introduce legislation to give us the powers to implement that framework, which we will need for the future.

That work has taken a bit of time, but I believe that, between that and the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Act 2024, we have been building those foundations, particularly with the policies and proposals in the plan relating to our tenant farmers’ ability to play a part in addressing climate and nature issues, as well as the support schemes that we have. We have also been building that foundation through the land reform legislation that was recently passed by the Parliament.

We have been using the time to build those strong foundations, to undertake engagement with the industry and to work with other stakeholders. After all, when we design future policy, we want to ensure that it works for our farmers on the ground.

There is another reason why I would not say that things have stalled. As the committee will, no doubt, be aware—I know that the Minister for Agriculture and Connectivity has appeared before you to talk about these things—there are other changes that have been implemented or that will be coming into effect. We have seen the whole farm plan conditions, ecological focus areas will be coming into play, and there are the conditions in the Scottish suckler beef support scheme.

We are seeing more action being taken, and we have also published as much information as possible on schemes that are changing and on some of the measures that we might look to introduce in the future through our agricultural reform route map. This is all about building strong foundations in the coming years, so that we can ramp up progress in the next period of the plan.

Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]

Draft Climate Change Plan

Meeting date: 28 January 2026

Mairi Gougeon

We are now 13 per cent down from the overall baseline of emissions in 1990.

Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]

Draft Climate Change Plan

Meeting date: 28 January 2026

Mairi Gougeon

That is potentially down on what the projections were from the point of the plan in 2020, if that makes sense.

Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]

Draft Climate Change Plan

Meeting date: 28 January 2026

Mairi Gougeon

We can send the information to the committee, if that would be helpful.