³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

Again, I absolutely appreciate that point. I emphasise that we have tried to communicate as much as possible. I am sometimes concerned that people are not aware of the information that we have already published. More information is coming all the time. As I have said, we are due next month to publish the update to our route map, which will provide more information on the conditions that we set out last year, the whole-farm plan and the suckler beef support scheme, as well as other aspects. More of that clarity and direction is coming, and it will be coming in accordance with the timeline that we have published.

I come back to the point that I made to Rhoda Grant. Monitoring and evaluation will be vital, because we must ensure that we deliver against the outcomes, not least our emissions targets, but also in relation to nature restoration. We will undertake work to identify the best way of doing that.

Of course, it is a complex process, because we are dealing with things that are difficult to measure. For example, someone who undertakes measures on their farm or croft might not see the benefits—say, the biodiversity benefit—for another 10 or so years down the line. In addition, someone who has taken action to achieve a specific outcome might not get the results that they expected as a result of a weather event or some other incident. Ultimately, the issue is how we take all that into consideration. Measuring progress will be quite a complex process, but it will be fundamental to what we do as we go forward.

I do not know whether John Kerr has anything to add.

Andy Crawley, do you want to come in on that one?

In relation to your point about the draft allocation of funding, in particular, just in recent weeks—as you will be aware—we have provided an overall outline of what that budget split might look like, to provide some of that clarity.

What holds us back from allocating budgets and from budget certainty is that we do not have budget certainty going forward. It is not possible for me to set out what the envelopes might be against that when I do not have that information.

It is not possible for me to make a commitment on multi-annual funding when I have absolutely no clarity on our allocation from the United Kingdom Government beyond next year. It would be irresponsible of me to make commitments around that when I do not know what that quantum of funding will be. We have set out what the overall broad spectrum of the envelopes might look like across the tiers, but it is not possible for us to do that in detail.

We set that out more broadly because it covers what we currently fund by direct payments and how that is split across the future tiers of the framework. As we have set out, tiers 1 and 2—the base-level support and the enhanced tier—will be the direct element of that funding. When we introduce the enhanced tier in 2026, we will be able to drive a huge amount of the change that we want, including more measures on reducing emissions and enhancing nature.

We want to give our farmers clarity and certainty about what to expect, which is why we said that we have committed to maintaining direct payments now and into the future and to maintaining that base level of support. We want to continue to support food production, and we want to be able to use the quantum of funding that we have to do more through that enhanced tier.

That is the overall quantum of funding, not the figures. As I have said, that aligns with what we have in direct payments at the moment, so the direct payments would include that. NFU Scotland advocated for 80 per cent of the overall funding, including the less favoured area support scheme, which would not be part of pillar 1 support. We are considering what that support will look like.

If you are pressing me for figures, I do not know what funding there will be from 2025.

That is what I have tried to illustrate by talking about some of the definitions that we have put out there. You are absolutely right that the term can mean different things to different people. As I set out at the very start, it is a collection of different measures. I have also made the point that you just made, that every business is different and we need flexibility to be able to adapt to that.

The code is not something that we will conjure up ourselves, suddenly introduce and expect everyone to comply with. It is about working with people to develop a code of practice that works for everyone. It is not in our best interests to exclude, for example, the 18,000-odd businesses that are currently part of our agricultural payment system. We do not want to lock people out—it is a journey, and it is about taking people with us on that journey, which is why we have made the commitments that we have made. I want to be clear that it is certainly not the intention to lock people out.

I am happy to follow up with the committee on the work that we have already published in that regard, if that would be helpful.

Ideally, we would like more funding than we have at the moment. NFU Scotland has called for £1 billion-worth of funding from the UK Government, and I support that call. I listened to the NFU’s conference down south recently, and it is asking for £4.5 billion rather than the £2.4 billion that it has been given by the UK Government.

I think that we are entitled to more support than we currently receive. Considering the potential for what we can do for climate and nature, we should receive more funding than we currently do. That funding has remained static over the past few years, so we hope for and would welcome any increase to that.