THE SCOTTISH Government have announced the creation of a new stakeholder group, to look at designing a future system of support for Scottish agriculture.

The idea, which was put forward by Mike Rumbles of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, was then supported in a motion by cabinet secretary Fergus Ewing and passed by majority in the Scottish parliament.

“I am happy to include a proposal from Mr Rumbles and the Scottish Liberal Democrats in our motion; that we convene a group consisting of producer, consumer and environmental organisations; to inform and recommend a new bespoke policy on farming and food production for Scotland,” stated Mr Ewing. “We think it is right to involve stakeholders in policy making and not to impose top down approaches from these benches."

The Scottish Conservatives responded by accusing the Scottish Government of 'taskforce fatigue' and demonstrating a lack of leadership: “I believe Fergus Ewing is still putting politics before farmers and soundbites before the rural economy,” claimed Edward Mountain MSP. “He has shown a lack of commitment to prepare rural businesses for the future and is hiding behind taskforces and consultations and showing a lack of vision and leadership.”

His fellow Tory, Donald Cameron MSP, added: “We welcome the opportunity to include producer groups, consumer groups and environmental groups in assisting with the formulation of a bespoke system but like many others are wary of the creation of yet another expert group. We have taskforce fatigue, over the last two-and-a-half years since the Brexit vote, we have had countless councils, committees, taskforces, groups of advisors, reports all well intentioned, but another Scottish government committee or grouping is the last thing we need especially in the absence of any detailed policy from the government,” he concluded.

Mr Rumbles called for cross party support on the motion to convene a new group and in a surprise twist of events, encouraged the members to put party differences aside and support Mr Ewing: “It is essential that for future prosperity of our rural economy that we all make our best efforts to reach agreement across the chamber in designing the best bespoke system of rural support that meets the unique needs of Scotland’s rural economy,” he urged.

“Fergus Ewing has an enormously difficult job to do here and I want to see him succeed in his task. We should not put up false barriers to approaching a commonly agreed framework but it must be an agreed framework within the competencies of both our parliaments and operated in the spirit of cooperation by both our governments,” he concluded.