Chamber and committees

I presume that you will bring us up to date if there is any progress on any of those issues.

You gave a broad outline of what the new agriculture bill that will be introduced is about. What do you hope to achieve and what is its purpose, specifically in relation to food production? In addition, what will the conditionality on support look like in relation to the balance between environmental benefits and food production? What do you hope to achieve with the new agricultural subsidy system?

You have said that there will be a 50:50 balance regarding environmental benefits and food production. My understanding is that that approach differs radically from that in the UK Agriculture Act 2020. If we have a different agricultural policy in Scotland, does that put us on a collision course with the UK Government and the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020?

I am aware that I am taking up a lot of time, but I have two more brief questions for the cabinet secretary.

First, the NFU has written to Kevin Foster to ask for a 12-month Covid recovery visa. Do you know whether it has received a response? Have you had any communication with the UK Government in order to get that visa put in place?

I have only just learned about the second thing that I want to ask you about. There is something in the new programme for government about the living wage for agricultural workers. The Agricultural Wages (Scotland) Order (No 68) 2021 takes agricultural wages well above the minimum wage. I do not know where the balance is. Will the order be scrapped, or is there something else that we do not know about at this stage?

I am sorry to keep coming back to you, cabinet secretary, but, given the size of Scotland’s food and drink industry, it is vital that we look at that area in detail. This might not be the right meeting in which to do that, but there are a couple of issues that I want to raise.

Where is the food and drink recovery plan going? What will have to be done in that respect? I know that 60 food and drink businesses have signed up to the business development academy and that every major industry body has signed up to delivering it, but I want to ask about the proposed sustainably Scottish brand. What does it mean? What will it deliver? Where does it fit in? How will our current brands fit in with it? How will we define “sustainably Scottish”?

I know that that is a packed question, but it would be helpful if you could give us a broad overview of your thinking on some of those issues.

The NFU wrote to Kevin Foster, who is the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Minister for Future Borders and Immigration), to ask for a 12-month Covid visa in order to get over the short-term supply chain workforce issues in the agricultural sector. Do you know whether that visa has been granted? Have you had any communication with the UK Government about that?

Okay. When people are young, they think that they are invincible. We need to get over that mental block in the first place.

On the requirement for vaccine passports, is there likely to be any extension to the areas that we are talking about?

My next question is perhaps more directed to Mr Leitch. We know that the virus is in the community and, as Mr Swinney has said, we are trying to suppress it with the range of measures that we have in place. Is it accepted that the disease will continue to be with us? Are we trying to create community immunity while we manage the disease to the next stage?

I thank the panel very much for attending this morning. I have two or three questions that I would like to cover. They might be a wee bit jumbled up, but please bear with me.

I absolutely agree with what Mr Rowley said about compliance. More than half of the people in my hotel dining room this morning were not wearing face masks. There is possibly an issue about the fact that although we still have face mask control in Scotland, it is not in place in other parts of the country. People coming in really need to know what the regulations are in this country.

When we had a panel of young people here last week, we asked them, “Do you feel that the restrictions have been done to you or are you complying with them because you are part of the process?” They very much came back with the belief that it was being done to them, and the vaccine passports will again feel like something that is being done to people. That goes back to the messaging that Mr Swinney spoke about. While we are putting the Covid vaccine passports in place, could there be something far more visible and vibrant and stronger in the messaging that we put out about how important it is to get the vaccine to that specific demographic?

I have a final quick question, which relates to constituent requests overnight. I think that every committee member has talked about the flood of emails that we all had last night. I can almost answer this myself, but will the passport be time limited?

Will they be time limited? If we accept that we have an endemic disease in our community, will the passports be required forever? That is the terminology that is being used in the emails that I am getting.