 Good morning and welcome to the 30th meeting of 2017 of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee. Before we move to the first item in the agenda, can I remind everyone present to switch off mobile phones and other electronic devices as these may affect the broadcasting system? The first item on the agenda is for the committee to consider whether to take item 4 and any future consideration of evidence on the draft budget in private. Are we all agreed? We are agreed. The second item of business today is to hear evidence from two panels in relation to the committee's scrutiny of the Scottish Government's draft budget 2018-19. Firstly, we will hear from Maureen Scotland. I welcome Graham Black, Mike Palmer and Michael McLeod. Members, as you can imagine, have a series of questions to put to you gentlemen, so we will kick that off with John Scott. Good morning. Thank you, convener. Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for coming to talk to us today. In a general sense, my first question is why has Maureen Scotland moved to a simplified operating model in comparison to the 2013-16 strategic framework and what consultation was undertaken to inform this move? I cannot recall exactly what consultation took place. We are part of core Scottish Government in Maureen Scotland. We are not an agency, so we would normally be expecting to fall into line with the normal operating practice of Scottish Government departments. We intend to be as open and transparent as we can about what our plans are, and we will be discussing those with all interested parties and stakeholders in due course, but it is not necessarily following that particular pattern again in the future, but I do not think that it will take away from the openness of our planning going forward. That takes me nicely to the language that you use. I am just interested to know what a focused multi-channel stakeholder engagement means, as well as real partnership with delivery partners, and what is different from what you are doing before in that regard? It sounds a little bit civil service-y language. What does it mean? It means that we are going to be engaging with a wide range of stakeholders, both within Government, but also beyond Government. We have a number of forums. We have a marine strategic forum. We have set up a separate stakeholder engagement group on Brexit, for example, because of the particular issues around Brexit, but it is just about how widespread our engagement with stakeholders is going to be. We are not closing off any avenues. We are trying to engage with everyone, both in terms of the Scottish environment and the UK and EU environment. I am afraid that you are right. It is slightly unspecific in terms of what it means going forward. I think that it is more about our general direction of travel, which is to be as open and engaging with stakeholders as we can. What programme, a more detailed set of practical objectives, is published? When will your next annual review be published? Our plan for next year is now already under way, so we anticipate being able to publish that sometime in the new year, probably March or April. As you can imagine, there is quite a lot of planning going on around next year in view of the added complexities that Brexit is bringing to us in terms of where we are going forward. We have quite a lot of strategic thinking that we are currently doing about the longer-term future of Marine Scotland and how we are going to address the issues that concern us. Do you want to tell us just a little about any specific concerns? Is that in a Brexit context or more generally? We will interact with each other, but whatever suits you best to tell us. I think that we all recognise, for example, that there are budgetary pressures and there will continue to be budgetary pressures going forward in all areas of government, but we have been looking and intending to look more closely at what our charging policy is. What is it Marine Scotland charges for? What is it charged? What use do we put that money? We will be looking at options and talking to ministers about what options there might be around charging for some of activity going forward. If we did charge what that would be and how we would use the money, for example, in terms of science research or other compliance activities, for example, that is one of the central areas that we are looking at. We might have been mentioned before in front of the committee that we are looking at what our overall performance measures are. Our national performance measure is very much couched in terms of fishing policy and we need perhaps to have a wider range of performance measures around fishing, the environment and the healthy seas. We are trying to re-establish what our core aims are on a broader area so that we can be measured against those. Those are two of the areas. I know that I will come back to some of the others. Let's look at the funding that you have at the moment and not what you might generate in the future. After statutory duties and legally committed funds are allocated, we are told that you allocate your budget on a priority basis that is determined through a series of planning events. Can you, in percentage terms, outline for the committee how much of your budget is left once you have gone through that initial process? Who attends those planning events and what the current priorities are? The planning events that we have introduced this year have been primarily internal in terms of the actual discussion but, obviously, all of the people bringing to that meeting their knowledge of what stakeholders are actually looking for as well. Primarily, we bring all of its primary marine Scotland together. We ask each of the areas to identify where their priorities are and what their pressure points are. Then we have a marine Scotland discussion around where those priorities lie, vis-à-vis other things that are on the table and what actually has to be at the top of the priority table and, therefore, inevitably what has to be either delayed or de-prioritised going forward. To take an example, we had a discussion last week with senior leaders across marine Scotland. Clearly, in 1819, Brexit-related issues are going to be very much at the top of our priority list because of their menace and the significance across the whole marine area. The question is there. Therefore, what do we need in order to make sure that we can have the greatest degree of influence on what happens around that? What does that mean for the rest of our core business? In terms of the percentage of the budget that is left after that initial process? If you can imagine a budget process, it is rather like most budget processes. Most of the bids add up to more than the money that we are going to have in the first place. Primarily, we are trying to match what we know the funding is going to be to what our priorities are so that we make conscious and rational decisions about what we can do and what we can't do rather than just trying to do everything and see which plate falls off when we are spinning it. Is that a roundabout way of saying that once you have assessed your priorities, there is nothing left? There is nothing left. I suppose that there are lots of things that we would always like to do in the marine environment, so there are always plenty of things that we would like to spend money on. Are you satisfied that this kind of internal conversation is the best way to figure out a way forward in budget terms? Do you not think that reaching out to external stakeholders in a more obvious way might generate some fresh thinking that would be useful to the organisation? I think that we do. I think that each of the areas of Marine Scotland and myself talk regularly about a very wide range of stakeholders about what their priorities are, what they feel is top of the agenda at the moment. It is just a question of balancing all those things across Marine Scotland. It would be nice to be able to give every stakeholder what they want, but we know in fact that in the real world we are going to have to balance those priorities and decide what we can achieve and what we can't. Particularly with next year being a bit of an unusual year, we had to make sure that we were able to deliver the very top-level priorities. Let's take forward the issue of prioritisation. In written evidence to the committee, you said that Marine Scotland is currently reviewing a number of key areas of activity to determine whether best value is being derived and the way resources are currently being allocated. That suggests to me that some areas of activity, perhaps by necessity, will be reduced. If that is the case, how will you determine what areas will be reduced and how prioritisation is taken forward? Some of it might be about reducing, some of it may about doing things in different ways. If I can take our compliance activity, for example, heavily reliant on what we have in terms of our ships, our aircraft and our network of very professional staff that are spread around the coast of Scotland. The question is, could we do things in different ways? Could we use technology in order to perhaps ensure compliance in a slightly different way? In that way, we will be looking to see whether our compliance work can be done in not just next year but in five, 10, 15 years. Will we be wanting to do it in exactly the same way, or will there be different methods? We are probably all aware of cameras on some of the fishing boats that we have been experimenting with. Is that a way ahead or not? We have not reached any conclusions on that, but that is the sort of technology that is available now that is perhaps not available before. It is encouraging to hear that you are looking to more effective ways of working, but in the immediate term, the budget that you anticipate having for the forthcoming year, is it adequate to do what you have to do in the here and now? Like any director, I suppose I would always like more money to spend on more things that I would like to have, but we recognise that there are national priorities and we have to live within a budget that applies to all things across Scottish Government. I think that we have enough to do what we need to do. We had a very good planning meeting at which we decided where our priorities lay. It may mean that other things are perhaps slower than we would like them. It may mean that we have to move things at the margins in terms of where we use our resources, but there was nothing fundamental about what Marine Scotland wants to do or intended to do next year that we felt we would be unable to deliver. Can you budget for spend to save? For example, you need to discuss technology. I know that certain GPS is something that has come down greatly in price. When you look at the budget that is spent on the marine protection vessel of between £2.5 million and £3 million, can you, within your budget, spend to save and look at maybe installing GPS devices and boats at the moment that they do not need to carry them to reduce the workload? We can try to do that, but we have a very sophisticated satellite monitoring system that enables us to track vessels anywhere in the world, but certainly within our waters we have a very good system for doing that. At the end of the day, it is one thing to track vessels, but somebody has to be there to take action if we have to take action. The vessels are expensive, but we have three major protection vessels as well as some of the smaller ribs. However, if we did not have those, once we had tracked that a vessel was needed action, how would we actually take the action? Not all of these are necessarily Scottish vessels that will be coming into Scottish ports, where we can deal with them at that stage. We still have to have something—I was going to say boots on the ground, but it is not really quite appropriate in this case, but we have to have something that is physically able to intervene as well. We use our aircraft, for example, very much in that monitoring area, and that helps us to direct the ships to the most effective places that they can have some good contribution to our compliance. Do you feel that you could invest in technology now that you would save in the future? I think that we would certainly be looking to do that. All the responses from ministers are that they are always looking for exactly that sort of idea. If new technology is available and we think that for some investment now it will have payback, then we have always had very positive responses to that. Angus MacDonald Good morning, gentlemen. On staffing levels, we have seen a drop in permanent staff from 765 when Marine Scotland was formed to 628, which is the most recent figure that the committee has. I am just curious as to whether the staffing levels are anticipated to remain static or change over the next five years, and whether that would impact on Marine Scotland's activities. Staffing levels, as of this precise moment, are about 635, so there has probably been a period where staffing levels were reduced because of budgetary pressures. It is probably more of a flat at the moment. It is a bit difficult to look five years ahead at the moment for two reasons. First of all, our budget is obviously not covering that entire period. Some of the fundamental reviews that we are doing of what we do around compliance and science have not reached fruition yet. At the moment, I would like to say that all that work is in progress. I know that it is a bit frustrating in order not to be able to give you a clear answer, but we do have to do some big thinking around this. We have to have discussions with stakeholders about what the implications are of doing some of those things. I would hope that that will become clearer as it goes on. We are not looking at it at the moment saying that we have to cut staff by X, Y or Z. I would anticipate us being broadly flat at the moment in terms of where our staffing is, but that covers the fact that we have those longer-term pressures. We know, for example, that Brexit is likely to bring pressures in terms of long-term staffing as well, so until we have a clearer idea of what those are, it is difficult for us to give a longer-term answer on that. Sorry, it is a bit big, but there are so many uncertainties around some of those areas at the moment. Indeed. Your answer is appreciated. I am looking specifically at the issue of the cruise on the marine protection vessels, the fishery protection vessels. Prior to the summer recess, the committee was following closely the dispute between the cruise and Marine Scotland. I am pleased to see that the issue has been resolved. Can you perhaps give the committee an update on the dispute and whether you expect further challenges in this regard? I am certainly very happy to update you. Just to recap a little bit, a few years ago we were having great difficulty in recruiting and retaining people on the boats. There was a lot of competition, there was a lot of activity, there were a lot of places that people were moving from Marine Scotland to other jobs. We introduced, on a temporary basis, retention allowance, initially of £5,000 for a limited period, because it would seem to be an necessity in order to maintain our ability to operate the boats. As you can imagine, with the vessels, unless you have all of the relevant trained crew, you just cannot take them to sea at all. It is a sort of all-or-nothing element in terms of the crew. A £5,000 retention allowance was introduced at that stage, on a temporary basis. That was due to come to an end. It was recognised that that was going to be quite a big cliff edge for a lot of the staff moving from 5,000 retention allowance to nothing. It was extended for a period of 2,000, but again that was on a temporary basis. We got to the stage where we were having serious disputes, you were saying. It is certainly hard conversations with the trade unions and the staff about what the position would be going forward. Fair to say that the unions thought that the £5,000 retention allowance should be maintained at that level. We also had to balance that with the impact that it would have on the Marine Scotland budget, because if we were spending that money on that, we were not spending it on something else. We had lots of discussions with the trade unions and their representatives. Eventually, we came to a reasonable compromise position, whereby the allowance has been maintained at just over £3,000. It will certainly be there for three years or so, assuming that outside conditions do not change. The market changes sometimes, but we will also be looking to see whether we can get a longer-term answer to the payment issue around the crew. I have to say that it demonstrates the limitations of some of those short-term retention allowances, because once people are used to having that amount of money every month, to then suddenly come along and say that they are taking it away, most people live more or less at their income levels and their expenditure levels are similar. It is quite difficult for people when they suddenly come along and say that that money will no longer be there. It demonstrates that sometimes the short-term answers can create some longer-term problems. We are in a good place now. We are in a good relationship with the trade unions. We want to do more not just about pay but about things such as training, about making sure that we have the proper career opportunities for people on the ships as well. I recognise that it is not giving everyone everything that they want. I accept that, but I think that we are in a much better place now. For the record, the saving of £2,000 per person that you have indicated, what is that worth in broad terms to the Marine Scotland budget? We must be about £300,000, but I might have to check on the gag number. Donald Cameron. Can I associate myself with the comments of Angus MacDonald representing the Highlands and Islands that was obviously a very acute issue in the summer? Can I ask some questions that are linked to that? Firstly, do you see recruitment and retention being an on-going problem in the next five years? Secondly, given that Marine Scotland will be doing more—we are sure to come on and talk about the network of NPAs and so on—do you think that you will need to employ more staff in the next five years? In terms of employing more staff, I would probably say that I do not know at the moment. I would like to be able to say yes or no. I think that some of the challenges would be forcing us in that direction. Other aspects such as new technology might be going in the opposite direction. Sorry, the first question was— Sorry, just in terms of that, is recruitment and retention an on-going issue? The reason we introduced the recruitment and retention award for staff at a time when we were losing people heavily—that position has changed. We still have a fair turn of staff across the boats, but not in anything like the same degree. It is not getting in the way of operational delivery. We are certainly able to recruit. It is probably true to say that retention is still more of an issue at some of the higher officer grades because there are, obviously, quite a lot of opportunities and options for people who are trained in the way that we train the senior staff in the boats. At the moment, it is not an issue that is causing us major concerns, but we will constantly keep an eye on it. Can I just lastly ask—you mentioned Brexit—do you have, within the Marine Scotland workforce, many non-UK EU nationals working? Yes, we do, both on the ships and in the science area. I think about 16 per cent or so of our staff at the science. I have to say that they make a huge contribution. We get some excellent people into the organisation from the EU, so I am trying to ensure that they are clearly very uncomfortable when Brexit first came up and the uncertainty around their own position. I still think that some of that lingers on. It is one of our aims to make sure that we still have access to the very best people because, in areas such as science, there is not an option to having really good people in doing the job. As we have strayed into EU matters, David Stewart, do you want to come in on that? Can I continue the theme that Donald Cameron raved about Brexit, not least because the committee has just returned, as we know from Brussels. We are fresh with all things European. In your submission, you talk about the important role of data exchange in collaboration with other EU countries. What assessment have you made about future collaboration once the UK exits the EU? It is quite difficult at the moment to know what access we will have to other data and the degree to which we will get cooperation from other European countries following Brexit. Can I perhaps ask Mike to give us an update on where we are on that? Yes, certainly. We are assessing at the moment the various different scenarios that we might be in. It is a very uncertain time and there is no certainty about which scenarios we find ourselves in. There is one area of data exchange that lies outside the EU framework, if you like, in terms of Marine Scotland's interests. For example, in relation to fish stock assessments, that kind of data goes through the ICS apparatus, which is external to the EU. We would expect to continue to be playing into that and for Brexit to leave that relatively unaffected. In terms of marine environment data, many of the fora into which we play are also external to the EU. Again, we would expect that kind of apparatus to continue. We are assessing through the Brexit process how we can maintain and ensure that there is as frictionless a transition, if you like, through Brexit on data sharing in all matters that relate to EU data sharing. For example, in relation to compliance, it is vitally important that we can maintain the kind of data sharing that we currently have between the UK and other member states around fisheries enforcement, for example. That is very much one of the objectives that we would have in the work that we do around Brexit. We have not yet got to those kinds of technical discussions on exactly how that would happen, but that is certainly something that we have assessed as important. Does Marine Scotland access Horizon 2020 at all? Clearly, that is another aspect. Obviously, I am conscious that there are some countries outwith the EU that access Horizon 2020. Obviously, we have met some of the FTA countries just yesterday, in fact, about that. It is probably too early for you to have an assessment, but clearly Horizon 2020 is vitally important for academic research. What would the effect of not having access to that programme be for your operation? We have certainly had a look at all of the EU source funding streams that include Horizon 2020. We also have the EMFF, which is a very important EU source funding stream. The impact would be material—certainly material—and, in some cases, quite significant for us. That is definitely in and among our priorities and objectives to ensure that we have a continuity of funding going forward as we go through EU exit and ensure that we have, as frictionless, a transition. We do not yet have clarity, clearly, through the EU exit process on what the future funding arrangements would be. Donald Cameron touched on the general issue of recruitment. I know how vitally important getting top-level international scientists are to Marine Scotland. Clearly, mobility of labour is a key issue in the current negotiations. How damaging would it be if you lost access to current EU top-level scientists in terms of recruitment? I think that it would be very damaging. We also get quite a lot of early scientists who have promised to develop working in Marine Scotland. It would be very damaging. In the long run, we would have to consider how we grew more home-grown talent. In terms of the scientific area, you are looking for the best people from wherever they are. The funding issue is one that we are still concerned about because there is a significant amount of European funding that supports both what we do in terms of data collection and what we do generally across Marine Scotland. It is certainly one of our major concerns and one of the areas where we would like more clarity as soon as we can. Richard Llyw going to explore the EMFF funding issue. Before that, Claudia Beamish has a supplementary question. Good morning to you all. Mike Palmer highlighted the other fora that Marine Scotland and the Scottish Government are involved with, in parallel with the EU. I wonder if, for the record, you could say what those are and something briefly about how that helps us to work together to do the whole range of issues that are related to the marine environment and our way forward for development. I mentioned ICs, which is the international forum for coordinating data collection and analysis and sampling for fish stocks. That is vital across the north-east Atlantic in terms of managing sustainable fisheries. Our scientists play an active role in the ICs working groups. There is also OSPA, which is a marine environment forum, which we are very actively engaged in. Michael might want to say a few more words about that. I would guess that that would be the main marine environment for the international forum that we would play into. A good example at OSPA is that, in 2017, there was an intermediate assessment of the status of the north-east Atlantic. That process involved all the contracting parties pooling both their monitoring data together and pooling their expertise in scientists working together to come up with indicators to measure the state of environment. Then pooling it all together into an assessment that simply would not be possible without that collaboration and pooling knowledge, expertise and data all together in one sort of forum. In the science area, international cooperation is just fundamental fish, no boundaries and we need to have that international cooperation. Scotland has traditionally punched above its weight in terms of our contribution towards all of that, and we would certainly be intending that that continues to be the case, but certainly access to good quality scientists is key to that. Richard Lyle. Mr Black, you touched partly on the question that I was going to ask, but we all know that the UK voted to leave the EU, but Scotland voted to stay. We are now seeing the cost of that decision in particular. European maritime and fisheries fund EMFF provides Scotland with 107.7 million euros, as well as the contribution that the EU funding makes to the maritime sector, coastal communities and Scotland. It also accounts for £30 million of marine Scotland's expenditure on science data and compliance. Since you will lose the EU funding, this important funding, have you had any assurances that £30 million of marine Scotland's expenditure on science data compliance that comes from the EMFF will be replaced by domestic funding? Richard Lyle. I might want to add something like this, but no assurances beyond where we are at the moment that there is a commitment to meet anything that we have committed for under EMFF even after we have gone out of Brexit. That is only a short term issue, so I think it is something that we have been pressing for. We do want assurance about where we are going to be longer term because we do need to be planning long term and I think our stakeholders rely on it. I will write that EMFF has a very widespread impact both within Marine Scotland, which I have got concern, but more widely around coastal communities and industries concerned with marine masters across Scotland. It is a very big issue for us, as yet no certainty around the long term replacement of that funding from anywhere. You said earlier that you would be charging or thinking about charging. That always interests me. Who are you going to charge and how much? That is a very good question. That is exactly what we are looking at now. I have not put any constraints on what we are looking at. I am looking at all of what we are doing across Marine Scotland. That goes from the fishing industry, it goes to aquaculture, it goes to marine licensing, all of our activities that people will be used to dealing with. We are not saying that we are going to do it. What we want to do is put the options in front of ministers and discuss with stakeholders. It is not simply a question of charging from my viewpoint. It is what the offer would be. In other words, if we were charging, what would we be saying would be different, would be better, would be quicker, would be more effective? It cannot be just a question of, we want money off you. I think that it has to be part of an understanding so that industry understands, if it is being charged more for something, what it can expect to get in return. That seems not an unreasonable position to be in, but we have to do a bit of thinking around that. Sorry, I cannot give you clear answers, but there is no area for which it is being ruled out at the moment. We need to have good discussions with ministers to look at what the pros and cons of all those options are. That has to involve, I want to be as open with stakeholders as possible so that we have views from all sectors of the community and industry on what they think about this. You might think automatically that people will be completely against charging. The discussions that I have already had with a number of stakeholders say that they are not saying that anyone is looking as a positive in some senses, but they do see some positives if they can understand that we can manage to support what they are doing in a better way. They can perhaps have some sort of say in how that might operate. Other countries quite often do that. I do not think that we are trying to learn from other countries as well as come up with things ourselves. Last question. Without this funding, what activities would you have to stop or possibly stop? I think that we would have to look at all our activities first of all to see what we would depriorotise. Stopping things would be quite difficult in our area. You cannot stop doing compliance, but you could perhaps decide to do it in a different way or to risk assess in a different way. You cannot stop doing science, but you might decide that you have to prioritise one particular area and accept the fact that some of the scientific development might have to come from elsewhere, either in the Scottish scientific community or elsewhere. You cannot stop doing policy work because ministers still need all of that. Unfortunately, there are no cut and dry answers, but it would certainly put us under considerable pressure to do what we think we need to do. From our viewpoint, the marine environment is really important from a Scottish perspective. It has a big impact on the Scottish economy. It has a really big impact on a number of quite fragile communities around Scotland, so we see this as really quite important. Ministers recognise all of that. The importance given to the environment by Ms Cunningham has been very clear. The importance given to the economy by Minister Ewing is very clear. I think that people understand where the marine environment lies in the future of Scotland. Perhaps it might be useful to the committee if you were to write back to us detailing exactly what you get in my way of EU-related funding and specifically what it is spent on. That would give us a good hand-on on what is at stake here if you could do that in the next couple of weeks. On the EMFF, we have made quite good progress in Scotland over the decades on conservation measures, selective gear. How significant has the EMFF been in funding that type of work? You are absolutely right. We have done a lot of good work about being more selective in our fishing, which has a huge impact on our fishing activities and on the fish stocks that we have. At the moment, we are in a very good position generally. Fish stocks go up and go down, but overall the position is much better than it has been in the past. That is partly down to the fact that we have been able to improve techniques and gear. The EMFF has been quite central to our ability to spread that out across the industry and to innovate and try out new things. If the EMFF goes, where do you drive that innovation? Is it about working with after-states? Is it about Scotland working in the UK context? I think that we would do that in any event. If the EMFF funding was not there, I think that it would just slow down development and perhaps stuff was being at the cutting edge, which I think is where we are at the moment. We are normally seen as very advanced in terms of our techniques and abilities, and that is not really given a choice. I think that we would rather be right at the forefront of the technology and the development. Working with others is already part of what we do. We are already trying to steal anything from anyone else if we think that it works. Is that lead recognised in a UK context? I think that it is, but it is probably true to say that fishing and marine issues are proportionately more significant than Scotland. It is true to say that it is proportionately more important to Scotland in a UK context. It is easier for us to get attention and to be able to see where the impact of all this is perhaps more marginal at a UK level. It is a difference of priorities perhaps, to far as this is very high priority. What is this on to look at MPAs and protected marine features at the micro school again? There are a couple of questions here. We could start with the network. It has been three years since SNH recommended expanding the MPA network and prove its ecological coherence adding in another four MPAs. Where are we with that? Where are we with the timescale for completion? What are the implications in terms of budget? There are four MPAs that were recommended by the Scottish National Heritage, as you point out. We are currently working principally focused on MPA management measures. I am sure that members of the committee will remember the start of last year, in the last parliamentary term, when we were taking forward some MPA management measures, which caused quite a lot of public interest. We are currently working through measures for offshore sites, which we are trying to deliver through the common fisheries policy. We also have to take forward some further measures for inshore sites. I am sure that we will have discussions about that next year. We consider delivering the management measures for those existing sites to be of greater environmental importance than delivering further MPAs at this time. We have already been caught up, I suppose, by the resources issue, and we have had to make some hard choices in terms of what we do first. We have chosen the management measures for existing sites. In terms of timescales for those four sites, the current thinking is that we will take them forward in 2019, because we do not see us having the resources to do it in the next financial year, so it will be financial year 2020. If you were to roll out the management measures for the existing network and expand the network, what would be the resource requirements of you doing both at the same time? I would need more staff in my team, and I would imagine that the coastal and marine team at SNH would need additional staff. It is simply down to having people to do the bureaucracy that goes with these processes. How much? How much? How many? I do not know. I would need at least one, possibly two. I think that all this has to be in the context of the fact that we have quite a large MPA network already, and about 20 per cent of our seas are covered. We have moved forward very fast on it. We need to make sure that we are successfully operating in that environment, as well as trying to move forward in other areas that have been identified. In the best of all possible worlds, we have moved forward on everything as quickly as possible, but at the moment, as we said earlier on, there has to be some measure of prioritisation. We are very keen that we continue to identify areas where MPAs are appropriate, and we move forward on them as quickly as we can. It would require other team members of staff to do that? Can we write to you separately on that? We have had a full think through the implications of that. Can I move on to monitoring? You are talking in your written submission about there being a diminishing resource for monitoring. That is the context for how you approach this. Can you talk about what integrated MPA monitoring involves? Where is the appropriate role for fishers and ENGOs and stakeholders and communities within that? I will ask Michael to add to that. The diminishing resource is, if you like, part of the plan. It was always envisaged that we would require fewer resources to monitor as we go on, because it becomes business as usual. We have a lot of vessels and monitoring that goes on anyway, so it becomes part of our business as usual. It also relies on a good deal of partnership with other people involved in the marine environment to make sure that we understand what is happening and see if there is anything going wrong. Michael, do you want to add anything to that? We designed the MPA monitoring strategy, the diminishing resource. We operated when we were developing the strategy on the basis that we were not going to see a budget increase, probably. That was our pessimistic view of things. Costs of ship time and so on are going to go up, so your actual amount of days of monitoring resource is probably going to stagnate, possibly go down, certainly unlikely to increase. We designed the strategy around that bleak view of the coming years. In terms of involving others, we have the EMFF programme, which was successfully funded by EMFF, which will run for the next two to three years. The aim of that is to involve fishermen in those processes. In terms of the wider stakeholder community, we have specifically put in a type of monitoring strategy, which is term type zero monitoring, but it is effectively the type of monitoring that divers such as those from sea search do. We go down to look and enjoy beautiful locations in our coastal area, but that information, what they see, if they see something that has changed or did even just seeing that it is still the same as the last time we were there, that is important information because it helps us plan where we actually go and put our more detailed monitoring effort into the marine environment. I think the comments when the Loch Karen conservation order came to this committee was that Marine Scotland had got lucky because it had some how to dive us out and they had seen the destruction of the flame shell reefs. Is that part of the strategy luck? How much of the monitoring can... In an ideal world, you want to monitor these features and these NPAs, what kind of resource would you put in place? Would it be the kind of structures you have already with partnerships and collaborations between fishers and amateur divers, or would you want something a bit more substantial in terms of monitoring the state? I think we could always use more resources to ensure compliance. At the moment, yes, the Loch Karen incident was very unfortunate. I don't know if it was luck. I think we have a lot of people out there. It is always going to be partly to do with what Marine Scotland can do, but partly what others around who are working and living in the coastal communities actually see and know about as well. We are not seeing many incidents like that, but it is something that we have to keep under review. If it appears to us that there are a lot of problems that are emerging, we might want to revisit what our direct compliance activity might be and what our direct monitoring activity might be. At the moment, it is fair to say that most of those involved in the marine environment see what we are trying to do with NPAs. They agree with it. There may be local issues around what happens in a particular site, but overall it has been a very positive response in that sense. We are not seeing lots of examples. We need to use the best risk analysis that we have to use our resources to the best effect. Some of that risk analysis comes from the observations that people around the coast will give us. That is a good thing, because NPAs are all owning it. It is not just Marine Scotland. You recognise the local issues, but I wonder if you could expand on how you will be monitoring the social and economic impacts of NPAs on local communities alongside environmental monitoring. There was a report that was published at the start of this year, which was undertaken by my colleagues who are both social researchers and economists. It was quite early on because it was less than a year after the implementation of the first management measures. However, I think that its conclusion was that there had not certainly been any negative effects at that point. I understand that they have agreed to do another report in 2018 to see how things are progressing. That may also start to show benefits of the management measures. We will share that report when it is released. Corrie Beamish. Can I ask a further question to you, Michael, about stakeholder engagement? I see the quote that was highlighted earlier in our discussions this morning about the focus multi-channel stakeholder engagement, which you have acknowledged. Perhaps it was able to speak. Michael, you have already highlighted the public interest that there was, which is a neutral phrase in the initial NPAs. It has also been highlighted by yourself, Graham, that there might still be some local issues in relation to NPAs. We did visit an NPA in the summer recess as a committee. I am very interested to know a bit more detail about what your stakeholder engagement arrangements are and how those are conducted. There were complaints—valid or not, I do not know—about some sectors felt that they were not included appropriately previously for the NPA developments. I am not making a value judgment about that. I am simply saying what came to us. I am interested to know how they are organised, how they are advertised and what sort of feedback is given. Obviously, I have not been as active in coastal waters over the past year. Our focus has been in offshore waters, which is principally engaging with the offshore fishing industry. The NGOs have been involved, but also the other EU member states. Next year we will be doing some more work in coastal waters. We have not exactly detailed what our stakeholder engagement plan is for that, but going back to the previous period between the start of 2013 and early 2015, me and my team attended over 100 events around the coast. If anything, we were guilty of over-engaging and over-consulting 100 coastal events plus bilaterals with some sectoral interests. I feel that we probably overdid it in some respects. That is something that we are reflecting on to try and work out how best to engage this time around as we go through 2018. One of the things that I have noticed over the past six months is the degree to which it is quite difficult to have an answer that applies across Scotland. There are local issues that make it very different. It is not possible to always come up with a single Scottish answer that is going to be appropriate to all the different communities around the coast. I think that whatever we have has got to recognise the fact that there will be local stakeholder involvement. Unfortunately, some of those things will mean that some of those local stakeholders will not get what they want because we have to make decisions sometimes and some people will feel that it is not to their advantage. As long as we are being open about that, we have to accept that that will be the case. It is absolutely important that we continue to have very localised discussions with people so that we understand exactly what the implications are. I have been amazed and fascinated by the degree of difference around Scotland in terms of what the communities do and what challenges they face in each area. I have certainly moved away from the idea that we can come up with an answer that is going to apply across the board. I think that why I asked the question about feedback was particularly in relation to whether there is conflict, that if perhaps people understand why what they have asked for is not going to be just given to them all of what people want, then I think that it is helpful. I do agree. It is one thing saying what the decision is, but we should always be able to say why with a right of decision. That might not satisfy everyone, but at least they should know why. I just move briefly to the priority marine features, which I have asked Cabinet Secretary Cunningham about earlier this year. I understand from her response that public consultation is likely to happen around the end of 2017, which we are now at. I was wondering if, in view of the fact that some features are extremely important, to highlight the issue around the enhancement of the marine environment as well as the protection of it, whether you can give us any further information on developments. Certainly. Clearly, that is quite a challenging task. It sounds relatively simple to review and improve the protection given to these priority marine features out with the NPA network. It is actually quite a challenging task. We are in the process at the moment of trying to commission some external help to do a sustainability appraisal to underpin that work. That will take care of the strategic environmental assessment requirements, but it will also do a socio-economic assessment and bring the two together into a holistic appraisal, which we hope will make stakeholder understanding and engagement easier. I hope that I will learn from our previous processes that I will help to bring some clarity and help. I think that one of the challenges before was weighing up the environmental benefits against what may be socio-economic costs. That is always going to be a challenge because they are not like for like. I hope that doing it this way will make that easier. In terms of timescales, clearly we are trying to get that commissioned right now. We would envisage having a scoping report ready for consultation around about April. The reason for consulting on the scoping report is to make sure that we are considering the right approaches and that we are using the right data to underpin the assessments. The business assessment is taking place over the summer. Would that be a public consultation on the scoping report? Yes, we will make it publicly available. Normally, a scoping report for strategic environmental assessments is a closed process, but we will make it an open process. If it is bringing in the socio-economic as well, then obviously it is important to get use of it. At that stage, the assessment will not have been done. It will just be setting out the methodologies to be used. We will do the assessment over the summer, which stakeholders will have opportunities to see and comment on and be involved. That will lead us into a second consultation sometime in the autumn. That will be where we are focused in on exactly what we are proposing measures to be and what the assessment has said about that. I hope that I will give us a clear, transparent process that people can be involved in and hopefully see why we have reached the decision that has been reached. Thank you. That is helpful. Thank you. Kate Forbes will be followed by Stuart Stevens. I have just a question about compliance. You have already touched on monitoring, but in terms of policing, how do you promote a culture of compliance? In particular, I am thinking of some of the issues that have been raised with me by fishermen along the west coast to do with the boundaries of MPAs and how clear it is for fishermen to identify where the MPA is and to stay outside of it, which can prove challenging. I think that we recognise that issue. This is another area where technology, we hope, will enable us to be able to refine things more effectively and enable fishermen to understand exactly where things begin and end. As part of the wider review of what Marine Scotland is doing overall, aside from things like charging in our targeting system, we are also looking at what we do around compliance. Most people in the marine area want to comply, so what are we doing to help them comply? There is one side of compliance, which is about identifying people who are rogues or doing things wrong and making sure that we catch them and deal with them, but the other side of that is that when people want to comply, we have to be making it as easy for them to comply as possible. That is exactly the sort of area where I think we need to be more active. It is not just about risk assessment and going after the bad guys, it is helping the people who are trying to actually obey the rules that they know are there. We will continue to do anything that we possibly can to get the technology that will make that easier. It will also make it easier to more accurately refine where we have to actually protect, which in turn has advantages for the fishermen as well by making sure that we are not closing off areas unnecessarily. On that note, the main aim of an NPA is to protect species. I think that a number of fishermen would recognise that they want to protect the seas for future generations. How much consultation is there? Maybe consultation is the wrong word, but how much discussion is there with fishermen in terms of helping to make sure that the boundary lines are geographically sensible? For example, I know that some people get frustrated that it is unnecessarily large in places or unnecessarily small in places and it does not fit with obvious geographical landmarks, which makes it easier for them to comply. How much discussion is there in advance with those who are using the seas most? I imagine that Michael will know more detail, but we have introduced NPAs. We have done a really good job, but that does not mean that we have got everything absolutely right or that we cannot improve the process going forward. That sort of discussion is exactly what we do need. There might well be very compelling scientific reasons why we have to do it in a particular way, but if there aren't then we need to be flexible. Do you have anything to add to that? If we are talking about fishing, the thing that matters to fishermen is what the fisheries management measures are. We will put the NPA boundary aside. In terms of the management measures, we have gone through processes in which we try to engage with fishermen who work in the area to try to understand how they use the area. You have to cooble what they might see as being their optimal fishing grounds or fishing grounds that they might just use occasionally against what you are trying to achieve in terms of protecting the ecology of the area. At some point, you have to draw a line somewhere, literally. Sometimes that works well for everyone because there is a natural division between the activity and the habitat or species that you are trying to protect. In other times, there is conflict because the activity is going too close or what have you, and you need to have some margin so that you can be certain that the protection is going to work. However, we try our best to get that balance right. For most of the NPA so far, we have done a fairly good job of striking that balance between the industry's needs and the needs of the environment. Seneword, you are content with compliance at the moment. I think that we are generally content, but that does not mean that an individual of circumstances will always be the room for us to look again at what we have actually done. I would not say that there are individual areas where I am sure that that is exactly what you have been hearing. However, in the context of the overall NPA network, and we have a large NPA network, it seems to be more marginal, but it is a complex area, so there are bound to be areas where we can improve things. We are always happy to look at that. My apologies for later. I shall read the evidence that I was not present to hear with great care. I have just heard you, Mr Black, say that you look to improve the process. Specifically, in the context of Brexit, does that create particular opportunities for us to refine both process and definition, so that it might more closely align with Scotland's particular needs? I am looking for a general question, not for Gatable at this stage. I think that the general position is that the Government has been very clear that post-Brexit we are looking to enhance our environmental protection rather than see any diminution of it. Exactly how that might take place, we have international obligations that we need to fit with as well. However, the direction of travel is to make sure that we are even better at that. Just to be clear, I was not suggesting a move in either direction in case it was to be misunderstood. Thank you. Let us move on to Claudia Beamish. I would like to focus our minds on blue carbon for a short while. For the record, there is an SNH report, as the panel will know, which was published earlier this year assessing blue carbon resources, which was a welcome step forward. That report suggested that there should be more research. It was, however, very disappointing for those of us who had worked in the previous session on ensuring that blue carbon was part of the climate change plan, which was the previous one, including Minister Paul Wheelhouse, who was then involved with that, myself and a significant number of other people. It was very disappointing when it was not in the present draft, although Cabinet Secretary Cunningham, as he will know, has put on the record in a question to myself that there will be focus on it in the final plan, which is most welcome. Can you tell us in that context about how much money is set aside for research or if you can write to us about that, if you cannot tell us today? The research plans are to build on the SNH report and the wider international report so that we can get into a place in which we have developed significantly in Scotland on peatlands, developing through to actual action and saving the situation rather than simply being at the research stage. Michael, I agree with you that we have to move quite quickly on that. I am often speaking to my colleagues and Scottish Government about what we can do around climate change generally. This is an area where we have to be doing research, but I also think that we have to be moving that forward to thinking about what the actions are around that as quickly as we can as well. Michael, you know more about the detail of the research. We have been developing a new research programme. It is a commitment in the programme for government to develop a programme. We are at the final stages of agreeing grants with a number of universities in Scotland. In total, we will have one postdoctoral researcher and five PhDs going to be getting up and running in the next few months. We are looking at a range of topics. Often, blue carbons are associated with habitats such as kelp, merrow beds and so on. Things such as mud have massive stores, so there was a publication last year by St Andrew's University, which estimated that Los Unert on the west coast of Scotland has about 27 million tonnes of mud in it, and pound for pound it is storing five times as much per square kilometre as what peatland does. That resource is a fairly massive store, so to ensure that we can keep those stores and perhaps enhance them is definitely important in the context of climate change. The research programme is trying to understand better quantify sediment storage across the marine environment. There is one looking specifically at merrow beds. One will be looking at what happens to kelp. Kelp grows a bit like trees on land, but then it dies. How does that dead kelp get assimilated into the seabed and how does that process work? I am also starting to look at how does our human activity affect the ability of habitats to store carbon. In terms of value, that package gives or takes £300,000, and it is very much a starting point. You have to start somewhere. We have a very initial body of evidence, and now it is taking that next step. Once you have taken that next step, you can then decide whether you need to take a broader look at other research areas or carry on in depth on the themes that you are already studying. I think that we have a good package to start with. Could we be hopeful that, not in this final plan of course, that is helpful what you have outlined and encouraging, but for the next climate change plan, whether it be at the end of this Parliament or at the beginning of the next, there will be something in the way of a progression towards action like there was with Peatlands? I hope so. Obviously, we do not know where the research will take us, but the ambition is to get to a place where we are far more confident about the value of the marine environment in terms of climate change and carbon sequestration and so on. Possibly what necessary protections there might have to be? I think that there is no doubt about how important that is. We talked earlier about prioritisation, and it is high priority, but we need to do some of the building blocks before we can turn it into practical action. I would like to see us doing that very quickly. I am sure that there is a subject that we will return to in the future. Can I just ask for a point of clarification? What is it that you should do or shouldn't do to mud to encourage it to retain carbon or capture it, or is that too complex a question at this stage? That is something that we do not know. I would imagine that the reason why sea locks are like locks and are so muddy is that they will be leaves that are coming off the trees. It is an exchange from carbon sequestration on land and then being stored in the sea. We do not know exactly—we know what happens, but we do not know exactly how it happens or whether we are affecting it or not. That is what we would like to try and find out. That is all part of the geological process. Deposits of mud are the beginnings of silts, greywax and sedimentary rocks. How far along that process do you look at carbon storage in that regard? I appreciate it. It is absolutely fascinating. Where will you stop? If you are starting to look at sedimentary deposits of mud, do you start looking at the deposits of calciferous rocks and things like that, which are obviously great storage? I probably could not answer that question today, but I think that the key for me as a policy practitioner, the answer I really want is how much sequestration is going on and what effect are we having on that potential. In practical terms, the real answer is rather what happened a million years ago or before. It is more about the here and now, but that is a very narrow policy in the practical view of the world. My scientific colleagues would tell me that they need to know the past as well. I welcome the fact that you carried out a high level of consultation and, Mr Black, you suggested that it would be very difficult to have a Scotland-wide rule, so local decisions are important. Can I ask you about the national marine plan, which seeks to engage with local stakeholders? Can I ask if the funding for implementation of those plans is still being maintained at the 2016-17 levels? As far as I am aware, I am proudly proud of it, considering that I have nothing to do with it until it has been introduced. It is a fantastic piece of work. Currently, it is being reviewed, we will be reviewing it and then opening up consultation on what people think was perhaps missing or what we could improve on going forward. That is certainly going to be going ahead over the next few months. We will be looking to see what the next iteration of the national marine plan will look like. The result will be there to do it. How quickly we can do it depends on how much. It is not so much a question of money, it is a question of the time of the individuals involved. It requires a huge amount of consultation in much the same way that Michael was talking about earlier on. It takes time, so there is no point in rushing it if we want to get it right. It is definitely on our plans and you will be seeing consultation about what people see as the good points and the bad points of the marine plan over the next few months. Can you give us any indication of timescales for the marine regions to be implemented? We have two marine planning partnerships currently. They are Shetland and Clyde. Cabinet Secretary has already said that Orkney will be the next planning partnership. There are discussions on going between Marine Scotland, Orkney Islands Council and other potential partnership members. Other areas are starting to show an interest, but I guess that Marine Scotland is not the only part of the public sector that is challenged resource-wise, so local authorities are becoming keener to do it, but they are similarly stretched in terms of resources. It is quite an involved process to develop a regional plan. It really depends on having willing partners for the partnership and resources to then take forward the planning processes. In the marine strategy framework directive, there was an aim of achieving good environmental status by 2020. Putting aside the councils and the engagement that you have, is the staffing levels within Marine Scotland sufficient to achieve that aim? Good environmental status under the marine strategy framework directive, we are taking that forward at a UK level. In 2012 we set out what the vision for good environmental status was. We have put in place the monitoring and assessment to measure that and a programme of measures, which built on a mixture of existing measures and new ones that were coming on stream. We are due to consult on the UK assessment in spring next year in terms of where we feel we are in terms of achieving good environmental status, with a view to that being submitted to the European Commission in October next year. Are you comfortable that you have the resources and the staffing levels to do that? I think that because it is a UK wide effort, I think that there is a pool of resources, as it is like when we mentioned the OSPAR process, which is international. A lot of the OSPAR intermediate assessment was about the countries that are also members of the EU working together to develop assessment methods that they can then apply nationally. A sizable chunk of the work was done through that process. The rest of the UK is being done in a UK version of that, with the four Administrations working together to pool resources in the effort to come up with the assessments that are required to measure good environmental status. By entirely understanding your point, I do not think that we have any indication at the moment that we are running into trouble, but I suppose that what we can give you a commitment is that if that changes or if there is anything that seems to put that at risk, then we will certainly let you know and we can have a further discussion at that time. Claudia Beamish A lot of that already, so it would be helpful if you could briefly outline what you are doing now and what you hope to do as we roll out to the nine other areas. We are certainly doing quite a lot of support and you are right, it is quite intensive in terms of the amount of time and energy that has to go into it. It also depends on the number of stakeholders and where their starting point is because some are already very well advanced and have a lot of knowledge that you are just building on at the margins. I would say that that is one of the advantages to us of having this phased roll-out and being able to learn what we can from the early couple of partnerships to see how they go and what is required. At the moment, I would like to see it going a bit quicker, but there is a bit of me that says, let's learn from the first couple before we start doing things much more widely than that. There is a lot of training involved. There are some very interesting training environments. I do not know whether any of you have seen some of the big training plans and games that we actually go through in order to try to get people up to speed because it is a very complex area. I think that one of the great advantages of what we are doing is that as stakeholders get involved in all this, they fully realise the complexity of the picture. They may well be coming to it from a good knowledge of their particular areas of expertise, but then it suddenly widens out that once you introduce everything from pipelines and shipping lanes and environmental impacts, it is a much more complex picture, which I think actually helps the discussions going forward. I would say that we are probably on track, but it may appear slower than ideally you would like, but there are some advantages in taking it in a sensible pace. I want to touch on offshore renewables. We just emerged from a protracted issue around a legal challenge to the consenting of four offshore wind farms in the first fourth intake. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the action that was taken by an NGO, there were concerns raised about the consenting process or aspects of it. I am just wondering which, if any, of those concerns you took on board and what, if any, changes you have made to the consenting process, learning the lessons of that? I am pleased that the outcome of the judicial review was the right one. I think that our consenting processes are very good. They involve a lot of stakeholders and they give plenty of time for people to have input. What we need to make sure is that we have enough scientific support in our Marine Scotland science in order to be able to deal with some of the issues. Sometimes scientists are going to disagree. All I can do is make sure that we have enough support in the Marine Scotland science to deal with ornithological issues as well as any other issues that actually come up. My main concern is to make sure that we have enough resources in the science and in the consenting process team. We are looking to expand that team and to put some more resources into the science team to make sure that they are able to respond. We do see this next year as being quite an intensive year. There is a lot of activity going on. We need to gear up on what we are doing. Mr Vilehouse, Ms Cunningham, are absolutely keen that we are in place to deal with that. We are making sure that we are in, even in this time of, stretched resource. We are going to increase the resources that we have in this area because it is a key area and a key time coming up ahead. I do not think that we have any plans in place to fundamentally change the consenting process. In the longer run, we may want to do that. I think that it is a question of our resources at the moment in terms of looking at that in detail. Given the large sums of money that are concerned in offshore renewables, is that one of the areas that you have been looking at your charging regime? That would seem to make sense, yes. Talking to industry, the feedback that I have is that you are talking about huge amounts of money. Time is just a vital component to the economic validity of their plans. If there are things that we can make sure that things go smoothly and quickly, that is fine. At the same time, there is a limit to that because we have a lot of stakeholders who are going to be interested and they have to have time to look at what is being planned as well and make sure that they have got their responses, whether it is RSPB or any other stakeholder. There is a limitation as to how quickly we can go. It has to be as quick as we can do it and make sure that there is no bureaucratic internal delays from our viewpoint that we deal with things quickly. Part of that process has to be making sure that everyone has a chance to have their say. Mark Ruskell wants to come in briefly on that. In terms of building that collaborative approach that you have with other sectors, is there enough data sharing, for example, with the offshore wind industry, you as the consenting body and NGOs? I think that we have a very good relationship with the NGO. I know that we had the JR, but if you take a step back, you will see that most of the NGOs have been very firmly behind what we have been doing. They recognise the longer-term benefits. I understand why RSPB had particular issues that we felt that we had dealt with, but we have a really good relationship with the industry and the NGOs. Getting them all round the table is easier in this area than it is in some other areas that we deal with. I think that there is quite a lot of collaboration. Data sharing. I have not heard any requests to change the position at the moment. We just need data as quickly as we can and as early as we can, and we need to be able to share that so that people can understand what the impacts are. If you have heard of concerns, you will be very interested to hear about it. I had a meeting in Aberdeen where we had representatives from all the industry there, and it certainly did not come out at that stage, nor has it in any of my discussions with the NGOs in Biolathros. Thank you for your time this morning. I think that that has been useful. You have undertaken to come back to us with a variety of pieces of information. We would appreciate that as quickly as it is humanly possible. I want to raise the fact that Marine litter is one of the areas where you have seen it in the programme for government, and we are keen that we move forward in that quickly. We have gone to the stage now where everyone knows that it is bad and is now getting down to the practicalities of how we might deal with that. Some of those are simply marine issues, some of them are wider, but in terms of our priorities, that again is one of the projects that had not come up in the conversation today, but I just thought that I should let you know that that is very high on our agenda. Again, feel free in future to write to us and update us as that moves forward. Thank you very much for your time. I am going to suspend briefly for the changeover of the witness panel. Welcome back to the committee meeting. We will now continue the scrutiny of the Scottish Government's draft budget 2018-19 with evidence from Scotland's rural college. I welcome Wayne Powell, the principal and chief executive, Gavin McGregor, Jamie Neubold and Mike Winberg. Can I kick this off, gentlemen, by looking at the Scottish Government's research budget and the fact that it has fallen over recent years? I am wondering how your funding for education research and advisory and consultancy work has changed in recent years and how that reflects the workload that has sat alongside it. One of the key unique selling points about the Scotland's rural college is the fact that we have an integrated model, so we incorporate both our research, our education and our consultancy business with one operation. In some ways, that gives a degree of resilience in terms of our funding, however, it also does put a lot of pressure on us in being able to deliver. If we take the main subject of today's focus, and that is the resource budget, in the last year we received a £200,000 reduction, which impacted particularly our rural policy centre under work with long-term biological programmes, the Longhill dairy herd. In some ways, the reduction in the budgets impact our research, but it is really important when we consider any future funding profile that we look at this strategically and holistically across the spectrum of our research activities. I am not sure if Mike wants to come in specifically on consulting with Jamie to add more to the education budget. I could perhaps just mention that we provide veterinary services, the disease surveillance programme for Scotland, and that in that area we took, it's going back now three or four years, we took quite a big hit on our budget there. There's about a 10 per cent cut in real terms, and that has led us to have to reconsider our activities, how we structure them etc, and that did lead then to the consultation, which perhaps people are aware of in 2015. We reviewed our services and how we went about doing those, and we've since come to quite different conclusions in how we take those forward. I'm sure that we'll return to those in due course. Can I ask about the way in which you're funded by the Scottish Government? I'm thinking about single-year budgets, what difficulties, if any, that creates, and where it leaves you in general as an organisation in terms of sustainable financial footing? Our total funding from the Scottish Government is £41.4 million against total income of approximately £76 million, and we received £7.4 million from the resource budget, and that represents 42 per cent of our total research budget. Those are the overall proportions of funding that we receive from the Scottish Government. In terms of where that leaves you or where you are currently in regard to sustainable financial footing, how does it look? Currently, we are financially sustainable. This year, we'll make a modest surplus of about £1.3 million, which represents 1.3 per cent. We'll generate a modest surplus of around £900,000, which is about 1.3 per cent of our total income. The key question is future sustainability and long-term sustainability, and doing nothing is not an option. Really, this is why we put in place a fairly ambitious and robust strategy to be able to ensure that we are sustainable and also to meet the future needs of Scotland during a period of major change. I want to emphasise the significance of this change and the impact of that change is significant. We are not complacent. We have certainly put in place a robust strategy, and we are working now to deliver that strategy, including our infrastructure plans and our business planning to support that. On the subject of change, David Stewart has some questions about the impact of Brexit. Clearly, your EU networks are crucial for knowledge exchange. What assessment have you made about whether those networks will continue post-Brexit? Brexit has a significant impact at a number of different levels, and they are interrelated and interconnected. The first consequence of Brexit is our ability to attract and retain talent. The second is our ability to access research funding and the networks that you referred to. The third is students. Those three areas are of paramount importance and will impact our capacity to deliver excellence on a reputation. Those are really big, big issues. In terms of the broader picture, Brexit has got major implications for agriculture and livestock in particular, which is one of our co-unique selling points. There is major concern around those areas. In terms of mitigating those challenges, we are putting in place a number of steps. One of them is doubling our effort in terms of collaboration and partnership and also maintaining our strong relationships globally and within Europe. Jamie was recently at a University Scotland event, and you may want to expand in terms of the further feedback from that. In terms of the quantification, the total funding is about £350,000 through Horizon 2020 per year for us. Clearly, if we lose that, that will be significant. There are opportunities and we are driving them forward in terms of the global challenges research for our opportunities to create networks outside Europe using the experience that we have gained of European networks. That is something that we will actively drive forward. We are also working with partners to ensure that the knowledge transfer information into Europe will continue. With some of the agri tech centres that we are engaged with, we are now looking to engage with some of the major European networks in a new mechanism that will allow us to continue to access and influence that even after Brexit. What percentage of your staff are currently from EU citizens, not from the UK? We have 192 staff, which are from mainland Europe, and Gavin is a proportion that you may want to expand on that. We have 151 that are EU non-UK, and we have 41 further afield. It is predominantly research-based, so there is a heavy weighting of those staff because of the nature of the work that they do that are international. I think that we are all struggling to find out the detail about Brexit. As you have deferred from the earlier session, we have just returned from Brussels into some discussions with other countries around this issue. Have you effectively got a risk committee that looks at the possible effect of Brexit and then feeds into what your future strategy will be? More certainly, we have a paper that goes to the board for each session, which outlines the various scenarios with respect to Brexit. We have an internal working group that looks at Brexit. Our colleagues have contributed to a recent A, H, D, B horizon scanning and the impact of Brexit on Scotland and Scotland farming in particular. We take it very seriously. We are proactive in managing that risk with our board and are working diligently to be able to influence many of the issues at both the University of Scotland and with our various external roles as well. My final question is, in general terms, have you picked up anxiety from your non-UK EU citizens that you employ? Of course, before taking up this role, I was living in Montpellier in France. I think that there was a degree of shock. The other part around this is that there is the issue of culture and the relationships that you develop in research. Those have been developed over our generation and more. Therefore, a fracture of those relationships will cause a chilling, which I think is potentially problematic. Mark Ruskell. Can I just pick up briefly on that last point? What actual programmes have you lost collaborations with other European partners as a result of Brexit? I can just remember going to your stall at the Royal Hand Show last year, the day after the referendum. There was already concern at that point that some potential projects were now not possible. It would be interesting to know exactly practically what those projects are. If you can submit more details on the issue, I would like to point out that we are relatively new into this role. I have been in post-16 months, and Jamie has been in post-3 months. Jamie, do you want to expand on that point to give examples, and if we can't, we will come back to you? What initially happened was that we saw resistance from colleagues, particularly when we were going to coordinate activities. I think that some of the announcements about the continuation of funding for bids that have entered in have been very useful, and that has dropped off. Where the challenge now is, as the next framework builds, is how we engage in those discussions going forward with the degree of uncertainty about our engagement. To that extent, we are engaging with the University of Scotland group on Brexit that we met with Lord Duncan earlier last week. We are trying to get clarity on whether we will be able to engage in the next framework going forward. It is probably on that side our biggest challenge. Can I just move on to the practical benefits that your projects and research delivers in communities across Scotland and what the benefits are for the economy and the environment? Can you flesh out in more detail what the practical benefits have been of your research programme? I will give a few examples of the kind of things. We have been working in the area of antimicrobial resistance—helmentic resistance, which is a major problem. The joint work that we have been doing up in Kirkton with the Mordden on developing more refined methods of antimicrobial-intake worm treatment of sheep have both made enormous economic benefits because less labour and less cost is going in, but significant environmental benefits in terms of lowering the resistance. On a more forward-looking, my colleagues are working on TB, which, as you know, is a major and upcoming challenge to the dairy sector. They have been able to identify regions of the genome that give resistance to TB. Actually, for the first time this year, they have introduced breeding values into the dairy industry for TB resistant cattle. Those would be two examples among many. If it is useful, I can send in some documentation. We have fairly comprehensive information on the economic impact of our contribution to Scotland and the UK economy. As Jamie has just outlined, the emphasis on livestock is very impressive. The Langhill dairy herd, which is based in Dumfries and Galloway, contributes something like £408 million to the economy. We have other examples, too, where our work is contributing not only economically but socially. We have the economic metrics of performance, but we also have, through our research excellence framework in 2014, 10 case studies that appeared reviewed and demonstrated the impact and social impact of our work within Scotland and beyond. Can I just pick up two particular funds and areas of collaboration? You mentioned in your written submission about the Knowledge Transfer and Innovation Fund, but I notice that there has only been one project that has come through that. Are there issues there in terms of changing budget for CATIF? How does that relate to the voluntary model? We have a voluntary model in Scotland, working with farmers, collaboration, knowledge transfer is obviously important. Just related to that, another collaboration that is involved in the Innovation Support Service, which I gather is a collaboration with the Soul Association. Again, that is about work on flood management, catchment scale work, but there is only money there for research and development, not for capital funding. I don't know if you have thoughts on either of those particular funding streams. I will turn to Mike Weinberg specifically on this point, but I think that the Innovation Fund is being led by the Soul Association and we are subcontractors. Both examples that you quoted are actually very new. The LiveLams project has only just been kicked off. It is early days with that. It is a good example of a collaborative project with benefits up and down, both from the farmer right up through the processing sector. It is a real supply chain project. You have that on the one hand. The Innovation Support Service, again, has only just kicked off. The lead on that is the Soul Association. We will be supporting that, but that is all about taking the innovation that has come through our research programmes, and others, because we are working in collaboration with a range of other partners, including others from Safari, to take those to the call-face. It is too early to be able to give you any concrete examples of where we have done that. I think that this has kicked off in September. Is the budget adequate for these types of collaborative funds and workings? I think that what I would say is that we have grabbed the opportunities that have been there. Those are two specific examples that you are asking about, amongst a whole range of collaborative projects that we have on the go. Probably our approach is to look across the spectrum of opportunities that there are not just specifically at these ones. We have submitted more applications to Cato, for example, some of which have not been approved, but that is the one that you have quoted as the one that has been. I just had £408 million as the value of the Langham hat. Is that over the 45 years of the herd, or is that every year currently? I suspect the former. It is. It is correct. It is the former. Over the period that has been initiated, which is a 40-year period, however, as we look forward, the long-term data that is embedded in that study, particularly with respect to the opportunities from big data and some of the disruptive technologies, we anticipate that to be of even greater significance, but you are quite correct. That is not on an annual basis, it is on an accumulative basis. Nonetheless, it is something that if you do not have it today, you cannot buy it because you cannot go back four to five years. Therefore, the prospective value going forward of the Langham herd is almost impossible to quantify because that is going to be presumably where you are going to be able to test future medicines and so on and so forth against the genomes and the evolution of the genomes that come from the Langham herd. Therefore, that is probably one of your greatest assets. Am I overregging the pudding, or am I getting it wrong? No, not at all. I think it's actually very helpful. Let me use a couple of terms to help flesh this out. I think it's what some people would call part of a national capability. I think it's more like a crown jewel. I think it's a really important resource. As we move forward, the capacity to interrogate that information will be, not only it will be a distinctive element of a future research strategy but particularly important when we have to balance both the productivity agenda with the resilience and the environmental sustainability. It's a really, really important resource. Moving on, Richard Lyle. To my questions, can I say something about your financial statement and report for 31 March 2016? Am I right? Correct, and then you had a loss on disposal of fixed assets and also that you had a loss in regard to pension schemes in 2015 by an actual gain in 2016. Would you like to pick that up, Gary? Picking up the pension when you are right, there has been a significant adverse swing in the last year. I think it's updated when we get valuations updated. Last year there was a pension deficit charge against the council just under £12 million, so you're correct. £12 million? £11.8 million, yeah. Okay. So, where are we now with pension now? Are we secured? It's a concern for people who go on to pensions and how much the pension pot has been diluted. So, where are we now? Well, we do have a number of risks as an organisation. We have seven pension funds. What we've agreed to do is a strategic review of the whole pension risk. A number of pension schemes at the end of this year give their updated triennial valuation. So, on the back of that, we will look at our whole pension's profile and risk. But it is a legacy issue from, obviously, dating back to the merger. We've got a complex pension position. What you can see in the accounts is significant financial swings that arise from that. So, some companies have changed how their pension finishes up. How is yours? Just if the convener will allow me to ask that question. Cos I think it's quite interesting. £12 million loss? Well, it's a valuation swing which is represented in the accounts. But £11.8 million last year was a significant swing, yeah. Yeah, okay. I'll leave that one for another day, I suppose. Scottish Government funds research under a number of headings, centres for expertise, innovation funds, support service, underpinning, capacity, safari, contract research funding. Overall, there seems to be a need to review the direction of research and balance of funding on an on-going basis. In your view, is the current combination of types of research funding the most efficient way to meet the Scottish Government's objectives? I think that I'll make a start on this and I'll turn to some of my colleagues. I think it's really important to appreciate and understand that what we have currently is a distribution of funding which was designed a couple of years ago. What we will now face going forward is a profound set of challenges. And I think as we look forward, I think it's going to be really important that we understand future needs. That's because the nature of the research and that is because also of the long-term nature of what we do. Therefore, if we look at the balance of funding going forward, I think we need to focus on a couple of areas. One is that we really need to understand the future needs of the Scottish Government and really need to understand that in the light of Brexit and the light of different drivers. Second, I think we need to be focusing within each of our institutions on those areas of strength and those areas of excellence that can really make a significant contribution at pace. Third, we need to be looking at our levels and types of collaboration and having much more intensive and sophisticated levels of collaboration in order to be able to move these areas forward. The answer to your question is that we need to be reviewing that balance of funding and balance of investment in the light of the new strategic drivers going forward. In our case, I think it's going to be particularly important that we consider the future role of hill farming and the role of ruminant agriculture in the future. Those are going to be really important areas that we need to consider. Therefore, the future strategic direction that this research programme takes is going to be of critical importance. How do you view the balance between policy relevant and strategic research funding provided by the Scottish Government? I think that the policy relevance of the programme is absolutely critical and I think that the design of those programmes and the co-design of those programmes is critical because I think that the Scottish Government is going to require the best scientific evidence in order to implement policy. The relationship between evidence and policy is critical. Clearly, as we look forward, some of those policy imperatives are likely to change and that is where we now need to be focusing our attention. Sorry, just to finish off, Mr McGregor, you skipped over and didn't answer my question in regard to the loss on disposal of fixed assets. Why was that and what was it? Sorry, I don't have the details for that but we could supply that for you. Thank you. I think that those two colleagues want to come in here. Stuart Stevenson followed by Donald Cameron. I just wanted a wee clarification from Mr McGregor on pensions. The £12 million, is that a reduction in the cash value of the investments in the fund or is it a change in the actuarial estimate of the future liabilities? My understanding is that it does relate to the liabilities so it is in line with the FRS accounting standards that is an accounting adjustment on that basis. Therefore, the effects are at some point in the future, albeit given the long-term nature of pension funds, they need to be considered now. The current pay-outs to pensioners and immediate ones in prospect are not affected by that in any way. That's correct, yeah. I'm sorry to press the point of Richard Liles but on the loss and disposal of fixed assets we are seeing a change from 2015 from a loss of £250,000 to £3 million of the course of year. That is a huge chunk out of your surplus with respect and I'm surprised that no one here can speak to that loss. Do you have any? I don't know the specific details of the breakdown from the council. Obviously, since the merger point in 2012 there have been about 10.5 million of property sales over that period but there's also been flux and there's been about just under 8 million invested. In terms of your question about the accounts and the change of the financial value, I would need to get the details for that specific. I would want to see those details in writing. I'm sure that it goes with you promptly. Okay, thank you, Mr Powell. Moving on, Claudia Beamish. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the panel. I want to turn our minds to SRUC and the national performance framework. Mr Powell, you've already highlighted the importance of policy being evidence-based. As you'll all know, Scotland performs measures and reports on the progress of government in Scotland and Scotland can be judged against a wide range of indicators as set out in the national performance framework. There are the national outcomes and the national indicators as you may well know, but for the record these are being reviewed at present and I'm involved with that review. Could I ask how the research that you carry out can help to deliver against the Scottish Government's national outcomes and national indicators in the national performance framework and what involvement you or others within the organisation have had? The first point is that the strategic research programme is framed and designed to deliver against the Scottish Government's economic strategy on the national performance framework. We have excellent evidence of a turn on this investment. Currently, if we look at our involvement in the SRP, we deliver against six of those national outcomes and they include, for example, our work on bovine viral disease, which contributes to Scotland's economic potential, which is national indicator number two. We also contribute to number six, healthier lives, where human health may be affected by animal diseases, including E. coli and the Camp Hallobacter. We contribute to at least six of those national outcomes as described in the performance framework. I just draw your attention to comment by the Food Agency Scotland, which considers the research programme to make a valuable contribution to the delivery of national outcomes and Scotland's reputation for research and innovation. They do comment and I quote, there is a need to properly align the work of those strategic policy relating to food protection and public health. It is also of the view that the SNS and the SRP should place greater focus on applied research, which is able to demonstrate clear policy application and is sufficiently flexible to adapt to changing priorities. Now, we've already had a discussion about this this morning and you have highlighted some points. This is the view of one of the statutory bodies, but I wonder if you have any comment on that particular aspect of it. Certainly, I think that the need to be agile and flexible is an issue. I think that greater agility and flexibility in terms of what we are able to do in the support of these changing policy frameworks is going to be really important. I also think that the connectivity between agriculture and the consumer and food safety is an important area and will grow in significance as we go forward. I think that we do contribute to the national performance framework, but we also need to be agile in terms of being able to address future priorities as they emerge, and you've just illustrated one of them. Right, thank you. Could you identify any other ways in which you might be able to increase your contribution to the Scottish Government's national objectives in the framework? I think that there are major opportunities for us to contribute to economic growth and I think that contributing to economic growth through greater commercial income and also through the development of spin-out companies, and this is something that we are currently working on with the Royal Bank, ESPARC, entrepreneurial programme, where we certainly want to be encouraging our students and staff to be generating spin-outs. Also, the opportunities for generating intellectual property. I think that these are areas where I think that we can make a contribution. The other area where I think that in our forward strategy is that we want to grow a regional presence and view a regional presence in terms of being an anchor institution to support local economies. Right, thank you. I very much hope that it's sustainable economic growth that you're referring to, rather than economic growth, just to highlight that. I would be arguing for sustainable development, but that's just a personal view. Nobody knows what it means, it appears anyway. Finlay Carson. What discussions have you had with the Scottish Government with regards to a future agricultural support system that will have to come into place after Brexit within the UK framework? Mike, would you like to take that up? The discussions that we've had thus far have none of really been formal discussions. We've had informal discussions with a variety of Government officials about their ideas on how things may be taken forward. I think it's fair to say that every time the word Brexit comes up and the changing landscape, everybody talks about the lack of clarity, et cetera, et cetera, and so to some extent, the discussions that we then end up, we take that as a given and we all have views then about what the challenges in reality will be, and I think even on that basis find quite a lot of common ground in terms of the really practical things that are going to need to be tackled. But as far as detail and formal discussions, really nothing. I think that where we've had considerable input is through a rural policy centre and the rural policy centre provides the secretariat for a cross-party group focusing on the rural economy, and that is an area where I think we have our extensive conversations, discussions, a number of position papers are being drafted which really presents perhaps the horizon scanning and options, and certainly this is an area through our agricultural economists and policy group where we have been having conversations and I think we have an important role to play. Okay, thank you, Angus MacDonald. Thanks, convener, of the morning to the panel. If I could turn to future research challenges, you've said in your written submission that you face what you call the perfect storm of demographics, food security, climate change, non-renewable resource exhaustion, malnutrition reduced by diversity, et cetera. So, in essence, the challenges are large, long-term, complex but central to continued social and economic progress. So, as a result of those challenges, does the way the Scottish Government fund research need to change in order to deal with the research challenges that lie ahead? And if so, how? So, the Scottish Government funding to date has been important because it's allowed two or three things to happen, which are relevant to your question. The first is that it's supported into disciplinary research. And the complex challenges we face at the moment will not be addressed by a simple reductionist approach. So I think the work, the funding that the Scottish Government has provided in supporting that into disciplinary research is really important. The second is that it's supported into institutional work, which again is an important element. I think the third area that it's supported is the capacity to develop teams of individuals to work together to be able to tackle these long-term, often called wicked challenges. And the last point is the importance and significance of supporting long-term mission-driven research together with biological resources and long-term datasets, which are going to be critical as we go forward. In addition to that, I think the interface of life sciences and social sciences are going to be really important. All of those elements that are funded to the Scottish Government are really, really important. If we look forward, I think we are going to have to intensify the extent and way in which we collaborate. And that is a really, really important area that we are focusing on at the moment. We've recently announced a strategic alliance with the modern institute, and that is designed to address these complex questions that you refer to, certainly by co-locating facilities, looking at shared facilities, maximising the use of resources and really taking a much more joined-up approach to be able to tackle these areas going forward. I suppose the other area that is going to be critical as we tackle these areas going forward is the area of innovation. An SIUC is very well-placed given the connection between research and translation and overcoming this valley of death that is often referred to. So those are areas that there is strength. However, there's also areas where we need to be looking to intensify the nature of the collaboration and also create the headspace for innovation. Okay, thanks. In your submission, you also state that there will be the requirement for longer-term research, which you've mentioned in your previous answer. In what areas do you think that longer-term research is needed? You mentioned earlier the challenges that we face with hill-farming significant challenges. Would that be one of them? Can you give examples of any others? First of all, my plea would be to ensure that we're strategic about this, and we look across the whole programme. We are doing this within SIUC. From an SIUC perspective, one of the area of focus for the future is going to be on integration of pastoral and ruminant agriculture, potentially with agroforestry. So this is an area that is going to be really critical to address some of the challenges we'll face in the post-Brexit world. I think that over 50 per cent of Scotland's agriculture is dependent on livestock. Much of our livestock is managed on land which is environmentally fragile, and therefore this whole focus on this area I think is going to be of critical importance in the future. We would certainly wish to shift some of our emphasis into that area in order to be able to address that going forward. Would you like to add to that, Jamie? I think that that additional area of course climate change is with us. There are going to be very real challenges in terms of biosecurity. Again, as Wayne mentioned, that's part of the driver through the collaboration with the Morden to bring together our expertise in terms of biosecurity both for animals and for plants because that will be a challenge. So these are areas that I think we would like to focus on. The whole pasture-based system and the whole area of biosecurity. Again then, how do you bring the disruptive technologies in? We're going to have to boost the productivity of that grassland dramatically. But there are real developments in smart agriculture, smart fencing, et cetera, real developments in terms of genetics that can do this. The time is right to take these challenges scientifically but also because that's where the needs are. On the subject of the collaboration with the Morden, John Scott. Thank you, convener. Good morning, gentlemen, and welcome to this committee. I have to declare an interest as an honorary fellow of the Morden, but how much I welcome this collaborative venture between you and the Morden because I believe that working together, the total will indeed be greater than the sum of the parts. Can you tell us of the benefits of this likely collaboration, the type of work this new collaboration will enable or enhance and how will it be funded, please? So I think the collaboration between SIUC and Morden is specifically designed to bring a step change in our approach to supporting livestock and livestock farming in Scotland during a period when there was going to be pressure on many areas, including disease. So one area of immediate action is that we plan to relocate our central laboratory from its current location onto the Morden site so that we will be sharing facilities and infrastructure and equipment, and therefore creating the synergies and interactions between researchers and scientists in that specific area. I'll leave Mike coming in and elaborate a little bit more on the finances around that. So that's one immediate step which we intend to action in 2018. The second is that we plan as well to look at the establishment of interdisciplinary research centres, which includes areas that Jamie referred to, that is biosecurity. How can we look at an approach to biosecurity that brings the expertise, including some of the new digital technology that's available to create 21st century surveillance methodology? Finally, I think there are strong opportunities for us to be looking at the way in which we engage with knowledge exchange and knowledge transfer by bringing together the expertise that we have across both organisations in a synergistic manner. So those are the high level indicators. In terms of funding that's going forward, I will leave Mike to comment, but for a board meeting in December, we'll be putting forward a proposal that will involve support, capital investment to support this initiative. Okay. So I'll just comment then on, so firstly just to say that from the point of view of all of our veterinary operations, I related earlier to the consultation that we had in 2015 and then a significant review of really everything that we're doing. The plan then is that our central laboratory operations at the Bush estate has actually been a constraint to the way that we do business in that the facilities are old dated and to the point that we've actually had to close part of them and lease at additional cost premises from the University of Edinburgh. So the fact that we've now got a facility that we can move into which will provide sufficient space, we actually see as a growth opportunity effectively for that part of the business, we'll concentrate equipment, expertise and so on into that facility. And so to significant extent, the funding for that, there's a small capital requirement. A lot of the facilities are actually right up to the mark right now. They'll need to be adapted for what we put in there. There's a small capital cost associated with that for about a million pounds. And the rest of it will be funded from operations as we go forward. We see that there's significant growth opportunities as we go forward in this type of work. And the other thing that we'll be doing is working with the Morden to share some of the operations that we don't have to duplicate. So if there are particular functions where we can share, we'll be looking to do exactly that. Thank you very much. I know from speaking to Professor Julie Fitzpatrick that she's optimistic about healthier animals being able to provide carbon reduction, which is something that we're very interested in as a committee. Would you like to expand on that a little? Yeah, there are real options. I think there are figures that if we can get the worst 25% of farmers to farmers as well as the average will reduce carbon emissions by about a quarter. So getting animal health under control is important. But there's also real progression in terms of breeding for low-carbon animals. Real insights coming through from some of the research programme that suggests that it is actually a breedable trait. We can breed for low-carbon animals. Simultaneously, as we move towards a more pasture-based system, we can also work on the grass genome in terms of grass breeding. I think that there are real opportunities to significantly reduce the emissions from a ruminant agriculture such that the carbon sequestration that we also know happens in the soil can balance it. Could I quickly ask about the soil? Absolutely. I have a brief follow-up to that question from my colleague John Scott and ask you about soil in relation to carbon. What research is on going or what you're hoping to do in the future on that? We have a carbon management centre within SIUC where my colleague Bob Rhys works with others on that. We have an active programme of soil carbon measurement. We're also trying to understand how different production systems and different cropping systems can increase carbon mass and try to get a holistic view to the emissions. There are clearly emissions from the livestock but there are opportunities for significant sequestration in the soil. It remains and will remain a very active role for us. That's very reassuring as it's one of the agriculture and land uses we know are one of the heaviest emitters. If I can follow up if I may. To take a development approach, the whole area of intercropping is really important. Moving away from monoculture and the role of legumes in agriculture is an area where Scotland needs to take a fresh look. Those are areas where we're active and we would like to focus more on the future in terms of carbon sequestration and balancing and mitigating against some of the previous gas emissions. OK. Just a quickie. Are you also doing research in the bacteria in the gut which plays a key role in the conversion of food to nutrition for the animal but more fundamentally than this for the atmosphere? Well, this is Jamie Noble's area of expertise in terms of room and metagenomics so I'll turn to Jamie. I'll try not to bore on it. Two major approaches, one based around the animal genetics so we now understand that the host controls the bacteria in the gut and that's how the methane emissions occur but also real progression on additives that can reduce. There are now additives that are available that will reduce emissions from cattle by 50%. There are real possibilities of making major emissions. I think the challenge now is to come back to what Chloe has mentioned. These need to be brought within a holistic system so we can balance them through it. So the reduction of studies are done. I think it's the systems level studies. It's the barriers to the economic uptake with these by-farmers so it comes back to what Wayne was saying. That need for transdisciplinary research to make sure that technical solutions become practical. Thank you. Finlay Carson. All that stuff is good to hear. Many people have voiced concerns that two sectors in particular when it comes to the draft climate change don't go far enough and that's transport and agriculture. Can you give us an idea why you think that the Government hasn't been more ambitious with regards to reducing emissions from agriculture? Is that because you haven't fed into that process to look at the possibilities? Because there's many people who think that agriculture should be more ambitious in reducing their emissions. Having come in recently, I would say that the major challenge has been giving farmers to accept and integrate technologies and understanding as a researcher what is practical within farms. I think again coming back to the point that transdisciplinary research where we work to the farmers through my committee's consultants gives us a real opportunity to make a difference. As I said, there are technical solutions and understanding and pulling the policy levers to make sure that those things happen. I think that it's that lack of connection of the technical solution with the farmer base that has been the issue. One of the reasons I've come here is because I believe that SRUC has the mechanisms to do that. I think that a real difference can and actually should be made. I think that the other part of that may well be quantifying many of these areas. The quantification of that is difficult and access to new data approaches and some of the transparency around that is also going to be a major shift going forward. Mark Ruskell. In terms of delivery, there's always fantastic research going on. You mentioned earlier about agroforestry and role of rural agriculture linking with agroforestry systems. There's only been one application for the agroforestry grant scheme in the last year. There's always great research happening but where do you see the gap being in terms of how you deliver practical initiatives that farmers can actually take up? Jamie. Is this holistic approach to being able to quantify it as Wayne says over the whole system and being able to reward the farmer for it? The carbon reductions have to make some money for somebody to be paid for but it is mostly about being able to take a holistic view to look at the whole system. What does that mean for farmers? It means that they need to manage their system to reduce carbon emissions and policy needs to be able to reward them for that. I think another factor actually is another factor is one which is going to be really important looking forward is skills on the next generation of farmers and education around some of these key issues. I think that's going to be a major factor as well in terms of changing this agenda so I think that's another important, Jamie. Is that your role or is that other organisation's role? In terms of budget, should you be giving SRDP funding to do this? It's a significant role in terms of developing the national land based strategy and delivering it. I think it's an important element of what we do and I think going forward I think we'll need to grow in importance given the expectations of both climate change increasing productivity and also some of the challenges that are facing us in terms of Brexit and new policies. So yes, we have an important role in that area. Mike Wainberg briefly. A practical one perhaps. I think to answer the question farmers like all of us are the same and the question will be what's in it for me and we have a carbon measurement tool, Agri-Calc, which has now been incorporated into the work we've just undertaken or started on the beef efficiency scheme which will provide a measure of carbon emissions on a particular beef unit and then on the basis of what's taken from that be able to put that against improvements that we set out in conjunction with them over the next three years. So that is then bringing those two things together bringing together actually the carbon measurement on the one hand, but actually the demonstration for the farmer in a very practical sense about financial benefits that come out of making his operation more efficient. I think that's quite a challenge for us at a consulting level to really make that demonstrable to the farmer so that he can see the value in his business. Brings it home to him personally. John Scott. What you've talked about is the future generations and the need to understand the problems. My colleague and I have been having a brief conversation here, Claudia Beamish now, about exactly now that we're needing to start with this knowledge transfer or improve that knowledge transfer and the current generation of farmers such as myself and others. Do you see the Morden Institute's roadshow programme giving you and perhaps other ways that you might wish to outline an opportunity to deliver now this more effective knowledge transfer than perhaps has been in the past? Certainly, I think that our alliance with the Morden will open up a number of opportunities and you've just touched on one of them and I think that already there are some plans to initiate the approaches you've just described but certainly by using the network of farmers across both organisations there's a tremendous opportunity to engage with farmers on many of these issues and I think that direct conduit into the farming community here and now is a major focus and a major plus of this alliance with Morden. Thanks. Okay, moving on. Donald Cameron. First of my register of interests and crofting and farming therein. I'd like to come on to the new strategy in a moment but just in respect of one answer you gave relating to Brexit and the absence of formal talks with the Scottish Government regarding the future of rural support. Given that it's been a year and a half since the Brexit vote does that surprise you? Perhaps having considered my answer if I just flesh out a little more fully, I think the discussions there have been discussions as Wayne said a little bit earlier at a formal level between our rural policy centre people and that would have been to a large extent of providing an evidence base for decision making to Scottish Government officials. The other thing that I think is relevant is that the four champions which have been set up by the Cabinet Secretary and the work I think they reported back last week and I attended that and actually the overlap in thinking that's coming out of those groups with where we are and what we see our input being to taking forward taking Scotland forward with the challenges that are faced with Brexit are excellent. There's a good overlap in thinking about the direction of travel and what the challenges will be and what we can be doing about them. I think if I can just emphasise the fact that there has been engagement and there's been engagement through a rural policy centre at a number of different levels to both officials within Scottish Government and to ministers. But I also think it's important that we recognise that SIUC has a major role to play because of its independence so I think this is an area that I think we have made a contribution to and would welcome the opportunity to continue making that contribution. I move on to your new strategy by which you seek to create a much simplified structure and your college of agriculture and rural economy. I'm a great fan of simplification. But could you expand upon the benefits of this new proposed structure and how far down the road you have travelled in terms of its cost its impact on staff and when will you publish your final vision for this? I'll make a start on that if I may and then I'll turn to Jamie and to Gavin to expand. I think the rationale for the creation of this entity and let's not get wound up on what we call it, this entity is the fact that we firmly believe that the integration of a search and education is really critical. So exposing our students to the most up-to-date research and inspiring them is really critical. The second element that is important is that we connect our higher education and further education programmes in ways that will support widening access and the learner journey. Those are two areas that we think of critical importance. And third, I think by creating this entity we will create greater visibility and make SIUC more attractive to future students and indeed would be more kin to what we see around the rest of the world. What I should add as well is that the model that exists within SIUC is one which is in many ways being replicated around the rest of the world. So there is a strong foundation on which to build and what we are doing is really looking at integrating our education research provision and Jamie would you like to expand on that? Yeah, look a combination of research and learning into one beast seemed like a no-brainer to me. It clearly benefits the learning experience but actually benefits the research and I think that it overcomes some of the problems that we were discussing earlier about getting research into practice because there is a close interaction there that will help that to go through. I think as we have worked through this it has become obvious that we need to build even stronger links to our veterinary services and our consultancy and certainly as we have been planning that that is part of the beast. In terms of where we are in this process we currently closed last day so adverts for deans so our principle is to have a regional presence with a faculty in the north of the country the centre of the country and the south of the country. Those deans adverts closed in the last few days we are in the process of interviewing in the run-up to Christmas with the view that will produce strong regional deans that will then help us drive forward through January the implementation of this new strategy and this integration of our teaching and research activity. Sorry, quick question. How many students do you have nationally? What's your student number? It's about in total approximately 7,000 so we've got about 3,000 higher education and slightly more further education some of who are on part-time courses and so forth. Can I ask about SAC consulting because I visited the SAC office in Obern earlier on in the year and it was an excellent office and its staff were very dedicated and it struck me that it formed a role that slightly goes beyond particularly in a very rural area it goes beyond simply an agricultural consultant there are lifeline in many respects to travel out to the islands etc to many of the farmers and crofters out there the new vision, the new strategy how will that change will it make it easier will it make it harder? Well I'm very pleased to hear your comments and I agree entirely with that particular office there's a good dynamic there I think where we've been institutionally and of all my colleagues I'm the longest standing of our leadership team having been here for two and a half years so what I could comment is that we have been in a place where a lot of staff not just in consulting but across the organisation have been in a place where they've been wondering about what our strategic vision is where we're going institutionally etc etc albeit that many of them provide a dedicated service in the particular area of the business that they're in I think the one thing that is going to come as there's a hunger for and which I think we are in the process of now starting to to deal with is more clarity about institutionally where we go how we fit together what the vision is for the longer term and what role people can play in a longer term and broader agenda so I think to that extent the changes that are going through now and which we expect to become more visible in the first and second quarters of next year I think we'll have an empowering effect to most staff I think that what we want to do is that we want to maximise the utilisation of all the resources we have in SRUC and certainly with respect to our consulting staff we see opportunities for student engagement and indeed engagement with research already I think Mike there's a graduate scheme that's been implemented this year to start developing the next generation and so we don't see our consultants being considered in isolation in addition to that we have approximately 24 vets within SRUC and I want to see those vets as well participating in the overall goals and commission of SRUC in a much much more integrated way and we want to break down some of the barriers that have existed in the past Can I just ask where Elmwood College sits in all of this? Elmwood College is a vital plank in our future in our future development it has a number of key strengths which we want to retain and indeed grow I think the areas of golf and tourism are absolutely critical the areas around hospitality are also of significance to us so we see this as being an important aspect of our future development it also represents a key community institution which engages with people across in Coopern across Fife so we actively engage at the moment in terms of developing an infrastructure plan of the Scottish funding council which will include Elmwood campus on its future development and that's a marked change from where we were a few years ago Correct David Stewart Can I raise a couple of questions there's really two points the first is some years ago I was involved before 75% of you were involved in post where there was quite serious staff unrest about the changes so A is to ask how the staff feel about these changes and secondly the Inverness campus model does look exciting and I want to ask some questions around your thoughts on how you see it grow, innovate and share best practice on the islands for example so it's really two questions We have bold and ambitious plans for Inverness and we're engaging both with UHI and islands and islands enterprise in terms of developing that campus there are major opportunities to develop and expand our competency and epidemiology we have some excellent researchers there we also see that there are opportunities for us to be partnering with UHI for example both agriculture and more broadly and finally I think there are opportunities for us as well to be looking at ways in which we can engage more broadly with the two vet schools in Scotland to offer perhaps some training for rural vets in addition there are plans in place to start relocating some of our vet facilities and perhaps Mike you'd like to pick that up and Jamie you may wish to expand on what I've said Yes so from the dark days of 2015 and a lot of difficulties with people struggling to understand what the impact for them locally was going to be both internal and external I would say the stakeholders that is I think things have changed significantly they're probably gaining momentum really of the last six months starting to get more momentum on the basis that the changes that are proposed are seen within a strategic framework what people can see going forward is that we're not just trying to find small scale local solutions but actually it fits into a broader picture so the engagement of staff has been fairly intense so the last certainly three months or so so that actually as we look to designing new facilities and so on they've got an engagement in that as say in all of that I think it will all be significantly better now Thank you for that Davidson Back to Brexit I understand relatively informally that the UK Government is developing perhaps two, three or perhaps four alternative sets of secondary legislation to cover what might happen in post Brexit to cover different outcomes that they foresee may be the result of the negotiations I understand that thus far not made these available to the Scottish Government thus making it difficult for the Scottish Government to plan for a post-Brexit scenario Have you seen them or have you got any informal knowledge of the options that the UK Government are pursuing and playing very close to the gesture I'm not aware of unfortunately I can't really comment in detail I'm on the Science Advisory Council for DEFRA being involved in scrutinising the 25 year environment plan but beyond that I have no direct contact in terms of those areas of legislation you refer to maybe my colleagues do but I don't I don't think we've got any particular insights into the legislation they be proposing but certainly we have had contact with officials in London and we'll have a good idea of some of their thoughts in taking things forward and we think that there's value in making sure that the differences that are relevant to Scotland as opposed to the from a topographical point of view and a farming point of view it's really important that those points are well understood in London Moving on, John Scott Thank you very much just a brief question around the opportunities that again offer itself as driver of change there is and are likely to change the agri support systems post Brexit Do you see an opportunity again for SRUC to go back to how it was once regarded as leaders in rural Scotland in that regard I do in declaring an interest I suppose but would you want to expand on that just a little because I think active farming and innovation is going to be what will be the necessary order of the day I think that certainly I think that SRUC is pivotal not only in terms of delivering on some of the areas we've discussed but I also think it's critical in terms of agenda setting and being able to set future agendas and a rise in scanning going forward and therefore I think that SRUC is actually playing an important role perhaps we've not been selling that as good as we can I think we've got to perhaps be a little bit more better at selling much of what we do I think the areas that for example the development of the AHDB horizon post Brexit is an example of where I think SRUC is at a major role in terms of shaping that in addition going back to what is happening with things such as the industrial strategy where there is an element in terms of future transformation of food I think SRUC is playing an important role in terms of shaping some of the agenda in those areas the third example would be of involvement with the agri tech centres we are founding partners in three agri tech centres one of them is in livestock improvement the second is in agri metrics and big data and the third is in terms of agri epi and which is precision farming so we are playing a significant role in terms of that innovation agenda with those three agri tech centres and finally going beyond Scotland into the work that we are doing with the Gates founded programme on livestock improvement we are founding partners with Edinburgh University on the Gates programme for livestock improvement with the international livestock research institute in Nairobi those are examples of where we are setting the agenda in terms of moving forward I think there is certainly more to be done but creating the confidence and ambition within our staff to take this forward is an important area that we have been working on in the last 14-15 months right and now to revert the question I was meant to ask members, colleagues will be pleased I want to talk about the veterinary investigation units and their operation and staff numbers and the future of them and the new strategy in 2015 can you fill us in and where all of that is going and are these centres their future secure I'll turn to Mike I alluded earlier to the fact that in 2015 we had a consultation we got a lot of pushback from that we went back to rethink what was proposed we concluded that most importantly we needed to be in a position where local stakeholders had a destination to which they could take their dead cow in my example but at a local level we then provide a service in that manner, in a practical sense but we also retained local expertise so the staff at any one of our eight centres understand the bigger picture in terms of surveillance but actually have an understanding of what's going on at a regional level on a week to week basis from a disease point of view so that's an important asset so everything is around maintaining and we're thinking in all our thinking we're trying to maintain that infrastructure but at the same time we are faced with the challenges that I referred to earlier from a budget point of view and is thinking about how we mould these things into a smarter way of working so bringing new technologies to the fore using the benefits of logistics all of those things need to be incorporated into our way of doing things going forward and I've related to the central lab and how we want to concentrate expertise into that facility and investment of equipment we'll find a better way of doing things together with a new partner that we can partner up with in Edinburgh and so essentially what that'll then be is any duplicated services that they are that we reduce the duplication of investment in smarter equipment which can actually bring us a better quality of service, a more efficient cost in providing that in quicker turnaround times so that's the direction of travel that we're moving in OK, thanks very much OK, moving on in these difficult financial times not just government, every organisation has to look at how it spends in the most appropriate and justifiable way the Racky Committee in 2015 took an interest in the remunerations received by the then existing senior executive team and directors. Can I ask Wayne Powell recognising you weren't involved at that stage whether there have been any changes in that regard and to be clear I'm not asking for individual remuneration details or packages I just mean collectively, is that something SRUC has sought to address? Yes We've taken the views of the Racky Committee very seriously in terms of what you see in front of you now is a new leadership team that represents in part the full executive team One thing I should say in relation to the earlier question we are in the process of appointing a new finance director and we're hoping to complete that last week and we've not been able to finalise that and therefore that is perhaps an omission in terms of our composition today So yes, in terms of the executive leadership team we have scrutinised salaries we've made appointments and we have now a leadership team in place that is capable of delivering on the strategy we seek to make one further appointment in terms of a finance director in terms of the specific remuneration in terms of that and the detail of that As Wayne says there is a non-executive oversight of executive pay so ultimately that's decided through our appointments and remuneration committee and they use sectoral benchmarking as part of that so there is an appropriate governance mechanism for that but in general in response to your question there's been significant leadership change over the last year in 2016 that the executive management team had 7 people on it and now we have 6 people on it so we're obviously wary and conscious of that And has that been matched by a reduction in the overall spend in that area? Yes, there's a significant reduction in the overall spend on the executive leadership team Would you be in a position to provide us with detail on that and give you another detail? The light for like of the executive team last year to this year is 178,000 less Okay, right That's useful Kate Forbes On a similar theme there was a report on the gender pay gap between 2013 and 2015 which identified approximately £4 worth of difference per hour between the women's average hourly rate and the men's average hourly rate Has anything been done or has anything been done to address the gender pay gap? Do you like to see that? Well, we've obviously published our gender analysis and I think we've got a relatively low gap but in terms of development what we're doing is we have a wide involvement of staff across the organisation in our equality and diversity group and we're consciously aware of the 50-50 by 2020 ambition as well so that's guiding some of our work with the board We're looking at areas such as the executive leadership development because we believe we have some really good internal women leaders so that's an area that we're investing in as well Professor Powell's is on the Women and Agriculture Board as well so it's an issue that we're alive to I think relatively we have a specific gap but we are consciously monitoring that and looking particularly at internal development it's one of the ways that we can shift that pay gap What about the gender balance issue? How would you characterise the performance of progressive S-IUC over the last two, three years in this regard? I think in terms of gender balance on our board I think we have I think it's five members women on that board which represents approximately a 40 per cent balance so we're heading towards getting towards the goal I think within within S-IUC it depends on the various levels within the organisation One thing that we clear on is that we need to move forward with our Athena Swan submission this is a major charter for universities and institutes we're in the process currently of recruiting a person to support our next submission so we're working diligently in terms of driving forward a culture which is compatible with gender balance and many of the issues you've touched on I think we obviously take every opportunity to create committees and groups that are appropriately balanced and we'll continue to do that and work diligently to try and achieve those goals that have been set out by the First Minister Richard Lyle and Claudia Beamish Looking at your accounts Mr Powell in regard to staff costs can you give the committee what percentage of pay rise you may be considering to give staff within the next financial round We can certainly do that alternative to Gavin I think the current figure that we're considering is 1.7% We actually just had the joint meeting with the trade unions last week so we're waiting to conform that in the next week or two but that's the base of the discussions we had What's inflation running out just now Claudia Beamish Thank you convener just to continue the line of development of questioning it's encouraging to hear that there's 40% women on the board I wonder if there's any comment beyond the support for development of people, women who are already in your organisations in relation to the lack of women as I would perceive it in the organisation at present Would you like to pick that up? Well I think one thing we have tried to do particularly with recent executive appointments is make extensive efforts to not just possibly recruit but go out and research so we've worked with head hunters on a research basis so we've tried to widen the applicant pool for recent appointments but in some circumstances with the nature of these roles it's not been particularly successful in that regard but we have made an effort to try and encourage candidates, women candidates for recent appointments So do you have future strategies if that hasn't been successful as to how you might take those issues forward? Well I think we will have to review how we recruit as well specifically for the finance director that was a key remit of our brief but we will have to reflect on that and review how we do it Mike Weinberg do you want to come in there? Very briefly to that in the consulting division we've got 70% women so just perhaps to lay down on the market that it's not entirely that and certainly if you look at the age profile of the younger cohort we have a significant number of women which clearly there are all sorts of things that will happen over time as they move towards senior levels in the organisation but by virtue of numbers alone there's a significant change I'd say. What's the gender balance of the students? It varies enormously between courses so veterinary nursing largely female pure agriculture more male it balances out about 50-50 over the piece but it's not equal in each course So it has historically proved difficult to get women in particular into STEM subjects that's something with which you're familiar and having to grapple as well because of course the people who graduate from your education system are a natural pool for those who become part of your staff. I think there are things we can do so one of the things we're looking at is how we design our courses to give progression so we see very good engagement at the FE level one of the things as we go through the strategy one of the reasons for integrating teaching research is to provide more aspirational so that the future leaders can come through so you know not why we designed it but one of the benefits will be exactly what you've said I think that one example I was teaching last week to a masters programme with about 30 students of which more than 25 26 were female I think really to address some of the issues that we're referring to though we also have to look at our provision in schools and that's an area that we're certainly proactive in terms of developing the real skills agenda within schools and I think that is important to be able to have a long term strategic view of how we're going to be addressing some of the issues you're quite rightly raising Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time this morning I think that it's been extremely useful there's a couple of things that you're going to write back to us on most notably the loss and disposal of fixed assets we would appreciate that in the next couple of weeks if you can We'll get that back to you promptly and thank you very much for your time We look forward to engaging you going forward we now moved to agenda item 3 which is subordinate legislation The third item on our agenda today is consideration of the following negative instrument the water environment, miscellaneous Scotland regulations 2017 SSI 2017 slash 389 Can I ask members if they have any comment to make Claudia Beamish? Just simply to highlight how important this negative instrument is in relation to improving clarity of the present regulation so I simply want to record that I welcome it on that basis I'm not seeing any other comments being sought to be made can I take it then that the committee has agreed it does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to this instrument OK, at the next meeting of the committee on the 5th of December it will take evidence from the Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform and the Minister for Transport and the Islands as part of its inquiry into air quality in Scotland As agreed earlier we will now move into private session and I ask that the public gallery be cleared as the public part of the meeting is closed