Meeting of the Parliament 05 March 2026 [Draft]
I could not agree more. Sadly, however, very little policy has come before the Parliament other than legislation that ensures continuity of the common agricultural policy. We believe that that creates a huge amount of uncertainty around how the farming sector will deliver the plan’s aims.
The delay to the support plan has hampered the committee’s ability to scrutinise the draft CCP, which meant that we could not come to a view on the emissions reduction pathway proposed in the agriculture chapter of the draft plan, because we simply did not have all the information that we needed. The only option open to us was to recommend that our successor committee in the next session of Parliament should examine the linkages between the rural support plan, the final CCP and the wider agricultural reform programme to ensure that they show sufficient leadership and ambition for the agriculture sector.
The committee also considered the Scottish Government’s decision not to reduce livestock numbers in order to reduce agricultural emissions, and we heard a range of views on that. Those who were in support pointed to the economic cost of a declining livestock sector in Scotland and to the potential for that to lead to the offshoring of livestock emissions to other countries to meet domestic demand. However, given that almost half of Scotland’s agricultural emissions come from livestock production, some stakeholders questioned whether the Scottish Government could deliver its climate ambitions without dealing with the sector’s highest emitter. Having weighed up both arguments, the committee believes that it is important to ensure that any shortfalls in emissions reductions caused by not reducing livestock numbers are being compensated for through deeper reductions in other sectors. We tasked the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee with exploring that as part of its wider consideration of the draft plan.
I turn to the land use chapter of the draft CCP. The Scottish Government’s main policy commitment was to reduce emissions by introducing new targets to restore more than 400,000 hectares of degraded peatland by 2040 and to increase annual tree planting to 18,000 hectares by 2030. The committee heard strong support for those new targets on the ground that they demonstrate a clear commitment by the Government to develop those sectors in the long term. Although some stakeholders questioned whether those targets are achievable, those involved in delivering peatland restoration and forest projects made it clear that they are ready to scale up their operations to meet the ambitions set out in the draft CCP. However, they also told us that the Government must play its part in providing certainty about public funding to give businesses the confidence to invest in the workforce and equipment that will be needed to ramp up capacity.
The committee believes that the final CCP will provide an opportunity for the Scottish Government to set out clearly how it will finance tree planting and peatland restoration in the longer term, thereby giving the private sector much-needed clarity. The committee also recommended that the final CCP should include details of how peatland restoration and tree-planting activities will be prioritised. That follows evidence that we heard from academics, who emphasised that the Scottish Government must ensure that both of those prioritised aspects take account of the individual characteristics of sites, and so ensure that the right tree goes in the right place and that the most highly degraded peatlands are tackled, as opposed to activities being focused on less-degraded or more easily restored sites.
In conclusion, it is fair to say that the draft climate change plan has left the committee with more questions than answers. We expect to see the Scottish Government make improvements to both chapters in the final CCP to provide further clarity about how emissions reduction pathways for agriculture and land use will be delivered in practice. I therefore hope that the Scottish Government will engage constructively with the findings of the report, which seeks to identify some of the gaps so that they can be addressed.