Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 26 August 2020
The cabinet secretary’s approach seems to be no answers and no ambition. That complacency does not reflect this decade’s countdown to 2030, by which time we must have reduced our emissions by 75 per cent, along with making many other serious shifts that are needed in the agriculture and land use sector. This is the decade for heavy lifting. The Government needs to show us that the time between now and 2024, when the new support system is promised, is being well spent.
More detail must be given on the pilot schemes. What are their overarching aims? What will be their scope? How will they prepare farmers for the upcoming changes? When will those details be shared? We ask so many questions, but there are so few answers about that, let alone about a vision for the long-term CAP replacement scheme.
Labour shares the consensus that the system should work for the environment and climate and to bolster the productivity of the sector. Farmers, land managers and, importantly, agricultural workers are at the forefront of the challenge of climate change; they are tasked with mitigating the sector’s heavy emissions, while adapting practices and businesses to a new future. I see that as a positive shift, but it will take Government intervention, support and direction, for which we wait and wait. In the view of Scottish Labour, the bill is a missed opportunity.
I commend my colleague Colin Smyth for his amendments throughout the bill’s proceedings. I share his frustration at the Scottish Government’s lack of engagement on many of the issues, once the Lib Dems came on side. The Labour amendments found support from other parties in the chamber and from many stakeholders, because the simultaneous transitions for the sector of Brexit and moving to net zero are significant and require conscientious yet transformative strategies. Colin Smyth’s amendment 21 would have created a pathway of markers on equity and environmentalism for any future scheme.
Although leaving the EU is very worrisome, the opportunity to create purposes that are fit for climate and environmental emergencies and for Scottish farmers should have been seized. Colin Smyth’s list of objectives describes an agriculture that I and many people in the chamber and beyond need to see—many Scottish citizens would agree. The list describes a resilient, inclusive, productive, fair, safe and local farming sector that stewards our environment and respects biodiversity and animal welfare.
Many of the cabinet secretary’s concerns about the amendments are a puzzle to me, because those objectives should underpin any future developments in the agricultural and land use sectors.
Similarly, amendment 24, which laid the groundwork for a national food plan, would have been invaluable, and the stakeholder backing from Scottish Environment LINK, Scottish Land & Estates and, importantly, the Scottish Food Coalition, indicates that.
It can be said that food is a mixture of need, emotion and science. Of course, we respect the fact that there has been Covid, but as a reason for delaying the good food nation bill it seems implausible. Again, this has gone on for far too long; Government should have supported it, and we need to get it right, because the issue has such an impact on the day-to-day lives of people in this country. Given the loss of the good food nation bill, amendment 24 would have gone some way towards addressing those issues, as will my colleague Elaine Smith’s member’s bill on enshrining a right to food for us all.
To sum up, along with my Scottish Labour colleagues, I will support the bill, due to its necessity in our sad disentanglement from the EU. I urge the Scottish Government to listen today to the calls for ambition and vision and to give Scottish crofters and farmers, on whom we depend, the certainty, security and future opportunity that they need; it will not come from this bill.