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We are already discussing it. We are talking about the whole farm plan this morning. We are introducing secondary legislation in stages; the discussions to put the whole farm plan through the SSI—which we will get on to later—have already started. We have already started to bring in things such as the good agricultural and environmental conditions requirements and the Scottish suckler beef support scheme requirements. Things are already starting to change.

That goes back to the point that I made at the start about a just transition. There has been a demand from industry to move more quickly but, at the same time, when we bring things forward, it is almost as though everybody is surprised.

I would like to get to a position in which we are having constructive conversations and people know what is coming. I think that we have set out clearly in the route map when people can expect changes to happen. I gave the commitment that I would come back to the committee and talk to you, hear what the concerns are, take them away and work on them, and we have been doing that.

I do not think that anything is happening that is not what the industry would have expected. We have been discussing it as we have been going along, and there are things that we have put in place. We are here today to discuss the whole farm plan and get the SSI through. I do not know that the characterisation that you put to me is fair.

The rural support plan is for the next five years and we will lay the SSI for it in the autumn. The changes in 2025 relate to the legacy systems that I just spoke about with the convener. We will develop the plans from there.

I think that you are asking what detail will be in the rural support plan. That will be developed as we go along. Just now, we are dealing with the legacy stuff and getting through that piece by piece.

The rural support plan was always going to come from the route map. That was stated from the start. The rural support plan will be the final point, once we have dealt with the transition and everything else that we will go through from the legacy schemes.

I am possibly wrong in framing it in that way. The rural support plan will be what used to be the CAP. We had the CAP and we are getting to the point where we are coming out of it. We are trying not to create cliff edges; we are trying to give certainty to the farming community that it will continue to get support. We have consulted widely across the industry and with this committee. The end product of that will be the rural support plan.

As things develop, the rural support plan will likely change, in the same way that the CAP did when we were in the EU. It is not putting the cart before the horse; rather, it is ensuring that the cart is filled with all the things that need to be in it in the first place, because the cart will be the programme by which agricultural support is delivered. Does that make sense?

I understand your point. It feels like the wrong way round. A lot of work has been done on this, and, as I said to Tim Eagle, we have come out of a hugely complicated CAP process, and we are trying to develop a farming policy that works for the people of Scotland and the farming community in Scotland. I accept that it has taken a long time, but I would prefer it to take a long time and for us to get it as right as possible, rather than for us to get what we have seen in other parts of the UK.

The alternative was for the Government to go ahead and make the decision, saying, “That is now your policy,” only to come back two years later, saying, “Well, it’s not going to work, so we’re going to have to try again.” That was the purpose of having the route map and the consultations, setting up the agriculture reform implementation oversight board—ARIOB—and doing all these things that have frustrated people. I understand that the approach has frustrated people, but it has got us to a position where I think everybody is fairly settled that we understand not only what agriculture is going to be given but what it is expected to deliver on the back of the public funds that it gets.

The changes are not legacy—the whole-farm plan is not legacy. There will be a mix of measures under the 2020 and 2024 acts.

We have consulted widely, and all those considerations will be fed into how we deliver our rural support plan. However, I think that you have something more specific in mind, but I am not sure what it is.

What I have is an absolute determination to make sure that farming continues to function in Scotland, producing food and delivering the outcomes that the Government wants. That is my primary focus. Do I have a plan for it? Yes, we have a plan for it. Do we have a vision for it? Absolutely. However, there is no way that I can sit here today and say, “This is the plan, this is how it is going to work, this is what it will deliver and it is all going to work sweetly.” As we have been reiterating throughout this committee session, there are a number of different voices with different objectives and different perspectives on how this will work for them. Therefore, we have to put in the basis—what we have at the moment, which I think is a pretty good system—and then let it develop. That will help us to deliver the final rural support plan.

The 70:30 split allows us to guarantee direct payments while asking for more from the farming community through the greening requirement, so that we have the promise that we will deliver direct support and demand more. The 70:30 split allows us to say to those in the farming community that we will continue to support them but that we need them to work with us to deliver more for those public funds. That is kind of where we are. I hope that that answers your question.

The basic payment has been an essential base for the farming community, because they knew that it was coming. Is it a blunt instrument? Yes. Is it likely to change? Probably. Do I think that it was the right way to go from the traditional CAP? Probably not, because it did not achieve the objectives that it set out to achieve.

What we have here is an opportunity to work with the industry in order to get everyone in. I absolutely understand that people do not like changes—everybody is running at 100mph, and they are very busy—and I do know that the basic payment is a blunt instrument. However, it is an essential blunt instrument that allows us to give certainty to the farming community that we are going to continue to support them while, at the same time, saying, “We need more for that blunt instrument.”

They are under construction—I will put it that way. James Muldoon or Amanda Callaghan may have more information on where we are with that process.