Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 26 August 2020
I am delighted to present the Agriculture (Retained EU Law and Data) (Scotland) Bill to Parliament for its stage 3 debate. First, I will deal with an important formality.
As members know, it is a requirement of standing orders that I signify Crown consent to the bill, when that is needed. Therefore, for the purposes of rule 9.11 of the standing orders, I advise the Parliament that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Agriculture (Retained EU Law and Data) (Scotland) Bill, has consented to place her prerogative and interests, in so far as they are affected by the bill, at the disposal of the Parliament for the purposes of the bill.
I thank farmers and crofters for the work that they do for Scotland, especially during this Covid pandemic, when they are working so hard to ensure that there is food on the table. I want to make it clear that this Government is committed to continuing to support them in the production of high-quality food, as custodians of the countryside and as pillars of our rural and island communities. That is why it has been my determination to ensure that support payments are received by farmers and crofters as quickly as possible, so I confirm today that the first of our loan-payment runs this year has been completed. It will see 11,885 farmers receive £296 million on Tuesday 1 September.
Scotland was the first United Kingdom paying agency to make advance payments again this year, and those payments will reach the bank accounts of farmers in Scotland a full three months ahead of payments to farmers in England. That is very important, because it means that at a time of real financial pressure in the rural community, that money will be used and circulated to make payments to other leading businesses in rural Scotland.
My aim for the bill is set out in the “Stability and Simplicity: proposals for a rural funding transition period” consultation. It is that it should provide farmers, crofters and land managers with as much certainty as possible in the current climate, while we develop our longer-term rural policy, which will apply beyond 2024. It is a technical bill about mechanisms and process rather than about policy change. Indeed, at stage 1, I said that it was
“a tool in the box—a spanner that enables us to do a specific task”—[Official Report, 5 May 2020; c 77.]
We need the powers in part 1 of the bill to allow the common agricultural policy schemes to be rolled over into retained European Union law to continue beyond the end of this year. I can confirm that we will use the powers in the bill to ensure that the CAP schemes will continue in 2021.
However, the measures in part 1 will also enable us to modify existing CAP schemes and rules by making appropriate simplifications and improvements to meet our needs and interests. There are some simplifications and improvements that I want to introduce next year; regulations will need to be laid and passed before the end of this year to achieve that.
I have listened and have given undertakings to consult and engage stakeholders and Parliament, as I would always do and have always done, and I have accepted the compromise of the each-way procedure applying to the use of the key powers in sections 2, 5 and 6. I am grateful to Mr Rennie for moving the appropriate amendment, to Mr Rumbles for moving the amendment on the sunset clause, and to both for the constructive roles that they have played throughout the passage of the bill.
The provisions in part 2 are also technical in nature; they update existing powers for the collection of agricultural and agrifood supply-chain data, making those more transparent and clearly linked to the principles of the general data protection regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.
The bill was not intended to change or to formulate future substantive policy on farming and food production beyond 2024. That work is under way through a different process, as we have heard today, and I expect to receive, in the relatively near future, a report from the farming and food production future policy group.
However, we need this technical bill—
Members rose.