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Especially for those small businesses, the scheme that we have open has some of the strictest criteria that exist for such a scheme, which is not fair. Again, that is why we are undertaking work to see what improvements we can make.

You are right in saying that there has been a £14 million increase in the budget for Marine Scotland. The committee is, no doubt, aware of the statement that was made yesterday by the Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero, Energy and Transport about the energy strategy in Scotland and our ambitions for offshore renewables. The extra funding will increase the capacity to deal with that through planning and consenting. We also have strong environmental ambitions in relation to the highly protected marine area network that we want to roll out. That will enable us to better deal with the offshore renewable element of that work as well as the environmental considerations.

I will bring in Erica Clarkson, who may wish to provide more detail, but the islands team and its work have been pivotal in efforts to overcome the problem of silo operations and ensure that we have coherent, joined-up thinking across Government. An example is that we are developing a remote and rural and islands housing action plan, and I know that islands officials have been engaged with housing teams. We want to make sure that we are working with communities so that we do not experience the type of problems that you mention. Erica Clarkson can expand on that.

If there was to be further funding for the energy efficiency of homes, it would probably not fall to my portfolio. However, I am happy to follow that up with my Government colleagues and ask them to write to you with further information.

We are looking at the strategic objectives in the islands plan and ensuring that the annual reports that we produce contain actions against each of them. We need to ensure that we are dealing with the issues that are of the greatest importance to our island communities and tackling the problems that they face. Looking at some of these issues will, no doubt, form part of that.

No. I would be happy to provide a further breakdown of those figures. I am not rolling one thing into another. We have the sustainable agricultural grant scheme. The amount that we have put forward for that capital fund for the coming financial year is £5 million. The budget for the current financial year is £5 million as well. Over the past year, the focus of that fund has been spend on slurry spreading equipment and slurry store covers.

We have budgeted £5 million for the coming financial year, but we will, of course, provide more details when the fund and the scheme launches.

We will continue to do that, both within my portfolio and across Government. As you can imagine, however, given some of the inflationary pressures that I talked about, there is pressure not only on my portfolio, but right across Government. It is as I said in my opening statement: we cannot do everything that we want to do at the pace at which we want to do it, because of the pressures that we are up against.

I need to point out that, as part of that, we are not getting the full replacement EU funds that we were promised by the UK Government. What we are getting in replacement funds from the UK Government comes through as resource, rather than resource and capital, which is what we received when we were part of the EU. That adds more pressure to an already stretched capital budget, which, again, is why we have not been able to do everything that we want to do. We have seen that funding fall by 1.7 per cent for the current financial year—I talked about that in my opening remarks—but it has fallen by 12.7 per cent since 2021.

In the discussions with the UK Government after leaving the EU, we were meant to discuss how future allocations would work. However, despite continually raising that with the UK Government, those conversations have never taken place.

Yes. I am sure that George Burgess can jump in to provide the overall figures for that scheme and for the croft house grant scheme.

That is vital funding. We want to see the continuing development of crofting and to do what we can in that area. We know that there are particular challenges with crofting in some of the more remote and rural parts of Scotland. That is why, through the various schemes that we have, we are funding things that will increase energy efficiency for example, and it is why we are looking at home improvements. We are really trying to do what we can to help crofters through those schemes.

I do not know whether there is anything that you want to add to that, George.

That is the thing. The situation is really difficult at the moment, and longer-term planning is not possible because we have annual budgets and allocations. That continues to be a particularly difficult issue, particularly for some of the schemes that we have run and funded.

The reason that we had the resource spending review and the capital spending review, even though they are not budgets in and of themselves, was to provide that overall envelope, although, of course, that can vary from year to year as we go through the annual budget-setting process. Within my portfolio, with regards to the islands funding in particular—I know that longer-term planning has been an issue and that there have been calls for us to look into multiyear allocations—we are trying to see how we can improve processes and give people as much warning as we can. Of course, that will, unfortunately, always depend on what the allocation is from year to year, but we are working to try to improve processes and to give clarity, where it is possible to do so.

Yes. As I outlined to the committee when I appeared previously, over £60 million worth of savings from the portfolio had gone forward at that time. The biggest part of that was the convergence funding. I outlined that in the letter that I sent to the committee about the budget as well. The £33 million was funding that we received unexpectedly, so we had not budgeted for that. That is part of the ring-fenced funding that we receive, so it has to come back to the portfolio in future years. It has not been returned for the 2023-24 financial year, but I will be discussing further with the Deputy First Minister when that money will be returned to the portfolio. It will be returned not for the coming financial year but in future years.

When you look at what we are doing in relation to agricultural transformation, you will see an increase in this year’s budget in comparison to last year’s. When you look at the overall climate change-related spend and what we are investing over this year, you will see that it is up £90 million on what we invested over the previous year. That covers the investment between our sustainable agricultural capital grant scheme and the agri-environment climate scheme.