 The next item of business is consideration of business motion number 15541, in the name of Joffith's Patrick on behalf of the parliamentary bureau, setting a revision to the business program for this week. Any member who wishes to speak against the motion should press a request to speak button now. I call on Joffith's Patrick to move motion number 15541. The family moved. Thank you. No member has asked to speak against the motion. Therefore, I now put the question The question is that motion number 15541 in the name of Joe Fitzpatrick be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is there for agreed to. The next item of business is consideration of business motion number 15537 in the name of Joe Fitzpatrick on behalf of the parliamentary bureau setting at a timetable for the stage 3 consideration of the Education of Scotland Bill. Any member who wishes to speak against the motion should press a request speak button now and I call on Joe Fitzpatrick to move motion number 15537. Thank you. No member has asked to speak against the motion therefore I now put the question to the chamber. The question is that motion number 15537 in the name of Joe Fitzpatrick be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is there for agreed to. Next item of business is topical questions. Question number one, Jeane R. Curt. Thank you to ask the Scottish Government what percentage of single farm payment applications in the Highlands and Islands and in the rest of Scotland has been paid as of the end of January. One moment Mr Curt. Can we just check Mr Curt's microphone because I for one am having great difficulty hearing what she said and I see from nods around the chamber everybody else is the same but given Mr Curt that the question is on the order sheet I'm just going right to the minister for an answer to that but can we make sure that Mr Curt's microphone is okay for our next question cabinet secretary. I can confirm that the percentage of first installment payments made in the Highlands and Islands is broadly similar to Scotland as a whole. At the end of January, 28 per cent of farmers and crofters in the Highlands and Islands had received payment and as I announced on Friday the equivalent percentage for Scotland was almost 30 per cent equating to around 5,000 applicants. Since then I can confirm that around a further 1,000 payments have been authorised bringing the total for Scotland over 6,000 payments around 34 per cent. I will of course keep Parliament involved informed of the payments and will write to the rural affairs and climate change committee every Friday updating them in Parliament. Let's try again Mr Curt. Thank you. I thank the cabinet secretary for his reply. You will know that many crofters in the Highlands and Islands region are having a very difficult time. Late payments combined with winter feeding and poor weather, poor low prices for beasts, are not helping and there is still deep resentment with regard to the 230,000 euros that the coalition Government did not forward to Scotland as it was intended. The NFU are claiming that although 30 per cent of payments have been paid, this is only 15 per cent of the budget. Can you tell me if the percentage of payments in the Highlands and Islands that have been paid in cash terms and what percentage that is of the budget? And finally, when can the many crofters facing hardship expect to be paid? Thank you. I just start by saying to Jeane Urquhart and other members that I do of course appreciate the very real pressures facing many farming and crofting businesses throughout Scotland and not only if they had the recent storms and flooding and wet weather over many months to contend with but also the low commodity prices and other issues facing the market, not just in the UK and Europe but throughout the world as well. Of course, at the same time, we have got the biggest ever radical reforms to the common agricultural policy and how that is implemented in Scotland. Not only are we moving to area payments for the first time, we are also introducing greening elements as well. Here in Scotland, we took an additional set of decisions to add more complexity for good reasons because that was trying to tailor a European policy to Scottish circumstances. I am happy to ensure that the amount of money that has been issued to the Highlands and Islands is calculated. I will forward that to Jeane Urquhart as soon as I can. In the meantime, I should point out that the reforms will lead to more payments going to the crofting counties between now and 2019. We are doing our utmost to make sure that the payments go to as many crofters and farmers as possible before the end of March. The first instalment was to be at a minimum of 70 per cent of the payment to farmers and crofters. We have actually issued 80 per cent in terms of the first instalment to farmers and crofters so far, and I will do my best to keep Jeane Urquhart and other members updated. Would the cabinet secretary be prepared to indicate to Parliament how many crofters in Shetland will receive their payments by the end of March, given that half have yet to do so? Will he clarify how much he will get? As he knows from the response to his letter of the 17 December, most crofters and indeed farmers across the country do not yet know how much they are going to get. Will he consider reissuing a letter, as he did on the 17 December, clarifying that, given that that would provide some assistance to banks and to others who are seeking to help crofters who are very hard pressed at this time? I reiterate that crofters in Shetland are facing a number of pressures at the moment. I am certainly keeping the banks updated and hope to meet them personally this week as well. I am aware that the banks are saying to the Government that they are maintaining credit and working with the industry through the coming months, and I hope that they do keep that up. However, it is really important that any MSP in the chamber who is aware of hardship cases urges its constituents to either use the helpline that is available or to call into their local regional office, where local staff will do their utmost to prioritise those cases where there is a case of genuine hardship. I know that that is happening already. Clearly, the complexity of each case will determine the pace at which it is paid. That is why I am unable to give precise figures to Tavish Scott or others, because now we are moving to an area-based system, and until we know what the payments are, the accurate payments to most crofters, we do not know what the payments will be to all crofters or farmers, because if there are errors with some applications and payment rates, that can influence the overall pot. What other farmers and crofters receive is why there is a two-part payment, because we need as much information as possible to make sure that there is accuracy with the final payments. This is a transition year. It is the first time that we have done it and it is the first time that we have paid out on an area basis. Dave Thompson The cabinet secretary will be aware that there are many crofters and farmers in my constituency who are suffering at the moment, and he has alluded to that already. I thank him for his comments in relation to the helplines and the fact that people who are suffering hardship will be able to phone those helplines and phone their local officers and make the case to the local officials and hopefully get a bit of help, because it is those who have a cash flow problem that are really going to struggle. Can he let us know what is being done to ensure that lessons are being learned from this and that the payments at the end of this year will be handled in a better way? I will say to Dave Thompson that he raises a number of pertent points. Firstly, many of the tasks that have been undertaken with the IT system are one-off tasks, because this is the first year that we have had to go through a radical reform, not only of pillar 1, which is direct payments in the common agricultural policy, but of pillar 2, which is a rural development programme. That requires 20 separate schemes to be launched in 2015 alone. Within the direct payments, we have had six schemes alone, many of which have regional variations because of the industry requirement to ensure regional targeting, which was supported by the Scottish Government. At the same time, we also decided that area payments should be at three different levels of payments depending on the kind of land because we wanted to ensure that we targeted resources to the most active farmers and crofters in Scotland. Again, that was supported by the industry and this Parliament. Many of those tasks are one-off tasks, and we will continue to improve the IT system and indeed learn lessons, as Dave Thompson said, which we shall certainly do as we move forward. The chamber will also be familiar with the fact that, in 2005, south of the border, it had to also move to area payments and encountered major difficulties at that point in time, and only a couple of per cent of farmers received payments in February 2005. We are much higher than that in Scotland, albeit we face similar challenges. I point out to the cabinet secretary that the Scottish Crofting Foundation is saying that only one per cent of their members had received payments in mid-January, so maybe he could contact them to see where that discrepancy comes up. He is also aware that this is the time of year that crofters are feeding animals, and it is a very expensive time of year for them. I know that he has spoken to banks and suppliers about providing feed stuff, because, if not, there could be real animal welfare issues because of the lack of feeding stuff available and the lack of ability to pay for it. Yes, I will pay attention to the issues outlined by Rhoda Grant. We are ensuring and will ensure this week that as many sectors within agriculture as possible are aware of the payments and the arrangements being made to expedite payments, and the fact that we are confident payments will continue each and every week, hopefully, between now and the end of March, and we will get as many payments out before the end of March in terms of the first instalments as possible. The system is paying out, as I said earlier on, and we are now at around 34 to 35 per cent of payments in the system, with over 30 per cent or around 30 per cent of recipients having received their payments last Friday, so we will expedite those payments as much as we can in the coming weeks and months. Alex Sergus. Thank you, Presiding Officer. The cabinet secretary is often adept at deflecting attention away from the shambles of the £180 million IT system that his reformed CAP has reliant on. Indeed, following time for reflection, I am tempted to suggest that it might be better to have used a pencil. However, can I ask what assurances the cabinet secretary can give that the problems of the IT system, which are acknowledged, will all be addressed by the time the next basic payment scheme application window opens in May, only three months away? Firstly, there is a separate team working on the IT for next year's payments, and we hope to launch that as planned in terms of the window for applications for next year's payments. I can assure Alex Ferguson that that is the case. I can also just use this opportunity to commend Alex Ferguson on how he also manages to successfully deflect from the fact that the Conservative Government's policy is actually to scrap pillar 1 payments and not have any pillar 1 payments and direct payments in Scotland. Therefore, some of us who are quite reasonable may think that there is some hypocrisy in coming to the chamber and complaining about the timetable for direct payments when his party's policies have no direct payments for Scottish farm and Scottish agriculture. I was contacted by a constituent earlier this week, who has yet to receive a letter detailing her entitlement. The Government's online record does not even show an acknowledgement of the farm that she and her husband are renting. After phoning the Government's helpline referred to by the cabinet secretary, she states that staff are not even allowed to look up people's payments. We now seem to have fallen into the hole in the department where no one knows anything about our application. What reassurance can the cabinet secretary give me that having failed to meet the January deadline, the measures that he has now announced will allow my constituent and many like her to get the information and indeed the payments that they are looking for? As I reiterate, the applications have to be processed before any payment can be made under European regulations. Yes, we would much rather be further forward than we are at the moment and have payments going out more quickly. However, because of the reasons that I explained earlier on, we are giving a timetable that will get as many payments out as possible between now and the end of March, with the balance being paid in April. Each case very much depends on that case's complexity as to the timetable, as to when it will be paid. If Liam McArthur has a specific case, I would be pleased to hear about it and I will certainly investigate it in terms of what that particular crofter or farmer has been told. For completeness, I tell the cabinet secretary that only this week I was approached by farmers in Ersha that certain tensions have raised the matter of the payments at the next NFU meeting. The farmers left me in no doubt that there are great financial difficulties, not only in relation to the delay in the payments but also the cost of supplying milk at the current levels. Will he pay attention also to the south of Scotland and the difficulties that are faced there? I will write to him with the details of the farmers' concern. Can I tell Graham Pearson that I have agreed to meet a group of dairy farmers later this week, but I will be firming up to my diary today, no doubt about that. I very much recognise the financial pressures and market situation facing dairy farmers in Scotland, Ersha, South West Scotland and elsewhere. That is one reason why we are throwing as much effort and resources as possible at getting the payments out between now and the coming months, because we recognise that they need that support for their cash flow. However, a whole range of coinciding factors are now facing Scottish agriculture. We have seen the weather, the storms, the flooding and the market conditions, particularly in the dairy sector. That is coinciding with the transition year into the new common agricultural policy, which is the most complex ever and has had the most reforms happening ever at the one time. Thank you for any topical questions.