Rural Affairs and Islands Committee 03 September 2025
We have arrived at a really important stage. The question about the availability of resources to move things forward is an important and interesting one, as we can see in the responses to the consultations by the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee and the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee.
You raised the question of possible conflict between outcomes, which ties in with resourcing. The conflict between farming, food production and nature recovery has been a long-standing feature of the debate in Scotland. Over the past nine months or so, since I came into this post, it has been really interesting to watch the way in which NatureScot has stepped up and has developed a cross-group round table that involves people who would not normally sit down together. We are beginning to see the squaring of the circle between outcomes 2 and 4 and the question of how to have a prosperous industry while also seeing both nature recovery and carbon reduction. Those two things need not be in eternal conflict. I have seen a resource that was not obvious to me nine months ago now becoming evident as that agency has taken the lead. We should expect to see more of Scotland’s fixed infrastructure—particularly, but not only, in the public sector—working towards delivery of the ambition, and that could help in places where there might at first seem to be conflicts.
I have one final point to make about the outcomes themselves. It was interesting to look at the results of the 2024 consultation on the first draft of the plan. There was a large number of responses, including from about 700 or 800 schoolchildren, but there was no serious challenge to the plan. There was no suggested objective 7 and no big missing part became apparent, which was helpful in confirming what we now have today. There will be some revisions, but the six outcomes stood the test of that consultation.