Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 26 August 2020
It is unhelpful on any occasion to talk about unholy alliances, particularly when people in different parties are trying to agree on what is valuable. Mike Rumbles made a significant contribution to the early part of the wider debate about future policy. It is right that, once we have set up a group of experts and advisers from different parts of society, we allow them to do their work, rather than try to second-guess them before they publish their work. That work will make a valuable contribution, and I thank Mike Rumbles for persuading the cabinet secretary to set up that group.
I also thank Oliver Mundell, Colin Smyth and Peter Chapman for their stage 3 amendments today. Although we did not support them, they helped to shape the debate in the chamber to allow for future discussion on creating a more rounded policy. I want a good food nation bill, and I want support for farmers to be protected; in fact, I want to see whether that support could also be enhanced. Most important, I want food and farming policy to be considered in the round and a mature policy to be developed. The amendments helped to focus minds, and I thank those members for that.
The bill is technical and it aims to make sure that farmers will continue to be paid in the interim. It should not have been necessary in the first place. We were told that leaving the European Union was going to make life easier. I do not think that this debate has been easy; it has plunged us into a great degree of uncertainty. The process was supposed to be less bureaucratic, yet we are just about to agree to another law and more regulations, and we will bring in negative and affirmative instruments as we progress. That will not make life easier. The claim that Brexit was to be good for our farmers and our future has fallen at the first stage.
I also thank the clerks and the members of the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee for all their hard work on the bill.
It has been a testy afternoon. We have managed to explore many of the issues that are important to the future of our countryside, because the first and most important thing is to make sure that the food and farming sector, which makes a huge financial contribution to our country, is supported in every way possible. We should not lose sight of that as we debate technical matters.