By Abi Kay
THE SNP has been slammed for planning swingeing cuts to the rural affairs budget.
Between 2022-23 and 206-27, the budget will rise from 881m to 885m, but the Scottish Conservatives said in effect, this amounts to a real terms cut of just under 75m.
According to Scottish Conservative Shadow Rural Affairs Secretary Rachael Hamilton, the rural affairs and islands budget would reach almost 960m by 2026-27 if it rose in line with inflation.
Ms Hamilton also hit out at the Scottish Government for dramatically reducing funding for direct support, which she said would be subject to a real terms cut of over 17m between 2022-23 and 2023-24.
She claimed the funding package, set out following the SNPs spending review, showed the party was not interested in standing up for rural and island communities.
They are already being badly let down by the SNP-Green Government, yet staggering real-terms cuts to the rural and islands budget have been delivered over the next few years, she said.
Over 75m is about to be cut in real terms because SNP-Green Ministers are all too happy to pass on cuts to rural and remote communities.
The devastating cuts to agricultural support will have a significant impact on our farmers and the wider sector, who are in desperate need of further and sustainable support, yet now see less money will be available to them in such a crucial period over the next few years.
Rural Affairs Secretary Mairi Gougeon hit back at the claims, saying the challenging fiscal environment meant public spending needed to be realistic over the coming years, but that the Scottish Government was not rolling back on ambitions for change.
I have said that we will continue to support the rural economy with stability and simplicity until 2025 and we remain committed to supporting active farming and food production with direct payments, she added.
However, up to 2024-25, the UK Government is not providing sufficient funding to the devolved administrations to cover the EU funding lost to Scotland across rural economy, agriculture and fisheries. For example, between 2021-22 and 2024-25 Scotland is set to lose out on approximately 93 million for farm support.
The Resource Spending Review is not a Budget and final spending plans will be determined in respective annual Budgets. However, it is clear that in the coming years we must collectively redouble our focus on efficiency, structural change and collaboration.
