The uniform monitoring of prices across Europe could be a useful tool to help analyse how food affordability differs across countries and how these trends evolve through time. Any monitoring of prices, price transmission and contractual arrangements should, however, be considered against the cost of collecting and processing such data. Careful consideration would need to be given to the implementation arrangements in order to avoid unnecessary burdens on industry.

The Scotland Rural Development Programme under Rural Priorities offers farm businesses funding to diversify into alternative forms of agricultural production including energy crops, and a specific option to plant short rotation coppice crops for similar purpose.

This is to help them develop more sustainable businesses by responding to changing market demands and taking advantage of new market opportunities.

To attract support, a farmer has to show that the project will contribute towards agreed regional priorities established to aid delivery of key strategic outcomes, including adaptation to mitigate climate change and protection of biodiversity.

Entitlement to beef special premium payments for stock destined for bull fighting is a matter for the European Commission and those member states where such practices are permitted.

The promotional and marketing activity of bodies such as Quality Meat Scotland, which is part funded by the EU, ensures iconic brands such as Scotch beef retain their premium status and contribute to providing a sustainable future for livestock production in Scotland. The Scottish Government would not therefore be in favour of the complete withdrawal of such funding by the EU.

In a deregulated dairy industry producers are free to make their own business decisions, including the volume of milk produced.

The climate change delivery plan sets out four transformational outcomes which the Scottish Government is working towards. The first of these is a largely de-carbonised electricity generation sector by 2030, primarily using renewable sources for electricity generation with other electricity generation from fossil fuelled plants utilising carbon capture and storage. The development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) is one of our ten energy pledges and CCS and other low carbon technologies will play a vital role in meeting that challenge.

The Scottish Government have received a number of representations on an emissions performance standard in response to our consultation on thermal guidance. The development of an emissions performance standard is also considered in the UK consultation on clean coal and we are currently working with the UK Government closely on this issue. We will consider our position once the consultation process is fully complete.

The Scottish Government is awaiting the completion of the UK consultation process before finalising its own thermal generation guidance to ensure that the regulatory framework in broad terms is similar across the UK as a whole, with the overall objective of encouraging CCS deployment and the objective of decarbonisation of the electricity sector by 2030. The UK consultation invited respondents with a particular interest in Scottish Government policy to copy their responses to Scottish ministers.

All thermal power station applications over 50 megawatts in generating capacity will be considered by Scottish ministers under section 36 of the Electricity Act 1989. Following a request from Ayrshire Power Limited, Scottish Ministers provided a scoping opinion on 20 March 2009 on the Hunterston project, which included a wide range of consultee advice on the outline design. The developer is currently working in partnership with stakeholders to develop an application which addresses the relevant planning, community and legislative issues, and we have recommended to the developer that they take into account in any application our draft guidance and the answer to question S3W-24912 on 17 June 2009.

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

The Scottish Government considers that a carbon capture ready power station will demonstrate consideration of the following criteria:

demonstrate that there is sufficient space on or near the site to accommodate carbon capture equipment in the future;

undertake an assessment into the technical and economic feasibility of retrofitting carbon capture technology;

propose a suitable area of deep geological storage offshore for the storage of captured CO₂;

undertake an assessment into the technical and economic feasibility of transporting the captured CO₂ to their proposed storage area, and

if necessary, apply for and obtain Hazardous Substance Consent (HSC).

This position applies to all new gas, oil, biomass, waste-to-energy and also coal power station applications on or above 300MW. This approach is in line with that taken by the UK Government and reflects the wish for a broadly similar regulatory framework across the UK.