Meeting of the Parliament 06 January 2016
I very much appreciate the challenges that face crofters and people in the rest of the agriculture sector at the moment, but I know that Parliament is familiar with the complexity of the new common agricultural policy and with how we have, for good reasons, chosen to implement it in Scotland.
I said that we would begin to make payments to crofters and farmers in Scotland before the end of last year, and we have fulfilled that commitment. I accept that a fair number of farmers and crofters are still to receive their payments.
The £178 million business case that was cited by Tavish Scott relates to the whole futures programme. Most of it is for the information technology system that is designed to serve the common agricultural policy, which will deliver a huge amount of investment to the sector in the coming years and equates to 4 per cent of the payments that will go out the door to Scotland’s agricultural and rural sectors. The investment is necessary in order to get those payments out the door.
I am paying close attention to the impact on other payments. We have said all along that there might be an impact on other payments—they might be delayed for a few weeks—and that we would seek to minimise that as far as possible. With regard to the voluntary coupled support payments to beef and sheep farmers, we are aiming for roughly the same timescale as last year.