WHEN I became Rural Economy Secretary, I promised Scotland’s farmers and crofters that I would keep pressing to get the £160 million of convergence funding repatriated to Scotland.
This was funding from the Common Agricultural Policy that the UK government failed to pass to Scottish farmers. In truth, few held out much hope that we might succeed.
But we did. And on Monday, funding started arriving in bank accounts.
This week, we are righting a historic wrong and ensuring that farmers and crofters all over Scotland get their rightful due, with more than £82 million in payments being made to over 17,400 farmers and crofters.
This is in stark contrast to Tories like Michael Gove and other leading figures in the Brexit campaign who made plenty of bold promises in 2016 and have yet to deliver on a single one. Far from boom time, now there are reports that a Treasury official and ally of the Prime Minister reckons that Scotland’s food sector isn’t “critically important” to our economy, and agriculture and fisheries “certainly isn’t.”
That might explain why newly appointed Rural Affairs Secretary George Eustice went to the NFU conference last week and told farmers he was cutting basic payments for the lowest income farmers by 5%.
What has been clear from the outset is that any form of Brexit poses a huge threat to Scotland’s rural economy. Now we know the scale of the danger. The Tories plan to stop vital migrant labour coming from the EU and elsewhere – affecting everything from fruit and veg farms to fish processors.They want to loosen our high environmental and plant and animal health standards and are not ruling out lower standards for imported foods and goods. That will harm not just businesses and producers here, but also potentially consumers.
Exporters of seafood and fish are being told to expect barriers to trading with the EU and to pay for the privilege of those.
The SNP has fought tooth and nail to ensure that our rural businesses and vital farming and fishing sectors can flourish despite the threat of Brexit, and that everyone working in the rural economy can be confident of a better, more secure future.
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Ultimately this comes down to a question of trust.
We said we would persuade the UK Government of the need to return this money to Scotland – and we did. We said that we would pay this money to farmers and crofters before the end of the year – and we are. We said those who need support the most would get priority – and they will.
The SNP can be trusted to stand up for rural Scotland, oppose any attempts to grab key powers from the Scottish Parliament that impact on farming and food production, and do all we can with all the powers we have to protect the interests of our farmers, crofters, and skippers.
The only thing we can trust the Tories to do is to sell out Scotland’s interests. Unfortunately, they’ve sold out Scottish fishing and farming before, and they won’t hesitate to do so again.
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Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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