Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at 5:35 pm on 10 December 2025.
Tim Eagle
Conservative
5:35,
10 December 2025
Members can sigh, but I will go on for a few minutes yet.
In actual fact, the Government has delivered a policy so wet that it is turning our farms into bureaucratic bogs. Before us stands a party that once said that it would make Scotland a global leader in sustainable agriculture and that it would support food production, fight climate change and back rural communities. Yes, that is the Scottish National Party—ever the deliverer of words; rarely, if ever, the deliverer of action.
When the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Act 2024 was passed, the SNP promised a five-year rural support plan—a genuine Scottish framework giving farmers, crofters and food producers real certainty about the future. Fast forward to December 2025, and what do we have? There is no rural support plan and we have a change to the Scottish suckler beef support scheme, as the Government failed to get it right the first time. That is now being amended in the SSI after we told the Government to do that.
We also have new greening rules before us—[ Interruption .]