Meeting of the Parliament 19 November 2024
I have been clear in my comments that, of course, we welcome the fact that we can take decisions on that funding, but that does not take away from the fact that we have had a completely inadequate settlement—which I will come on to, if the member will listen to my further comments. That settlement is based on a figure from 2018 that does not even take into account the impacts of inflation or the size and importance of our agricultural and marine sectors in Scotland.
Other Governments across the UK take different approaches. If there were to be a reduction in support for agriculture in England, the consequences of that choice would, in turn, filter into the Barnett formula mechanism for the block grant.
To emphasise my point, I will say that although it is right that funding allocations are to be a choice of the Scottish Government, and I welcome that, we must be clear that the announcement comes with some very big catches. We now have annual uncertainty, a total that is impacted by choices on policy that have been made elsewhere, and no multi-annual budget window. That is the replacement for the certainty of a multi-annual budget settlement that came from European Union membership. It is the cost of a Brexit that Scotland did not vote for but which has, regardless, been imposed on us.
Unlike other farming nations, we no longer have long-term funding certainty. Some might say that we can ring fence our own budget over multiple years ahead, but that utterly fails to understand the EU approach of a total budget that can be profiled according to need over multiple years—an approach that is most effective for supporting the cycles that our producers work through.
I will add the stark truth that, right now, we have no line of sight of the Scottish budget beyond 31 March 2026. In the spring, we are told, there is to be a UK spending review, which will perhaps give us three years of funding certainty, but only in the context of annual budgets under the wider Barnett formula considerations, rather than the multi-annual package that we would have received from the EU.