Sarah Millar said very much what I would say in response to Mike Rumbles’ question on how the process is going. It has started, but there is still obviously a long way to go.
The more important reference points are in the Scottish Government’s “Stability and Simplicity” document, which clearly maps out the process from now to 2024, which Sarah just referred to. The programme for government announced a rural payments bill that will do the stabilisation bit, which basically means that, in terms of making payments, the wheels will not come off. We are still waiting for something that will enable the Scottish ministers to make Scottish decisions about Scottish agricultural policy thereafter, to implement the things that I hope Sarah Millar and the rest of the group will recommend.
Our biggest concern is about timescales. We are almost in 2020, and 2024 is four years down the line. The big date in my mind—you might think that I am crackers for saying this—is 2030. You might ask, “Why is he on about 2030?” There are two things—I am going to look at James Withers. The first reason is that the ambition 2030 strategy says that we are going to grow Scotland’s food and drink sector from £14.5 billion to £30 billion in that timeframe.
The other, which has not been mentioned at all today and is massively challenging for the agricultural sector, is climate change. We now have legislation passed by this Parliament that says that Scotland will meet climate change targets of net zero by 2045. It also says that it will have met a 70 per cent emissions reduction target by 2030, which is a decade away. If we were to look back over the last decade and ask how much Scottish agriculture has changed, I would say, “Not enough—in any direction.” We have a decade to make significant changes in everything that we do.
Those two things are equally challenging, and, arguably, they might be contradictory. They could pull us into a more productive and more driven area, or they might be pull us away from production and more into how we manage our land in the face of climate change.
The industry cannot achieve both those things operating under the current CAP regime. We need new tools in the toolbox, which is why we need the new policy group to come forward with a new approach for Scottish agriculture to deliver on the agenda it is being asked to undertake. I think that we can do it, but it will have to be about shifting payments away from an area-based system to an action-based system that drives productivity, innovation and resource efficiency, creates resilience and does all the other things that we have talked about.
If we sit on our hands until 2024, we will not give ourselves the chance to deliver what we want to deliver by 2030. The industry is ready and willing, but it must be given the tools to get on with the job. We cannot ask the industry to deliver what Scotland requires and then not give it the tools to do so.