Meeting of the Parliament 07 November 2024
I love the passion that is being shown about farming, and I will always love that. I guess that I find it a little hard to take criticism that comes from a party that wants to split up the United Kingdom, when 60 per cent of Scotland’s trade goes to the rest of the United Kingdom; yet here they are attacking me about Brexit. It is some cheek, is it not? John Swinney likes to talk about a brass neck—well, I am afraid that you are titanium.
The simple fact is that the decisions that are taken by the Scottish Government—and sometimes the lack of them—have had a profound impact on rural and island communities. The Government’s record on paying farmers and crofters support payments is hardly perfect. The minister and cabinet secretary must know how difficult this year has been. Just this week, I was in Stornoway, where hay is as much as £75 a bale and harvest yields are down. In all seriousness, I urge the cabinet secretary to do all that she can to get the remaining payments out as quickly as possible. I am worried, because there are rumours that the Scottish Government’s rural payments information technology system is, yet again, buckling under pressure. I hope that that is not true.
The sector also has the uncertainty of having to wait until autumn 2025 before the Scottish Government publishes its rural support plan, with no planned parliamentary scrutiny and no commitment yet from the Scottish Government to multiyear funding. Farming requires long-term planning. The rural support plan should have been out months ago, when we debated the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Act 2024.