Policy Memorandum to the Agriculture and Rural Communities Bill: EIR release

Information requested

Information regarding the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill.

Response

In response to Request 1, please find below the published screening report.
Screening Report

Please also find the recently published determination related to this SEA, which can be found here:
Strategic Environmental Assessment screening determination

In response to Request 2, please find below the links of the published correspondence from SEPA HES and NatureScot:
HES response
NatureScot response
SEPA response

Please note that the uploading of material onto the SEA database was interrupted for a period in 2023 due to technical issues. Officials have since been working to address the resultant backlog. Specifically in relation to the Agriculture Bill, the information which had not previously been uploaded to the database is: i) a screening request of 12th August 2022 and ii) the responses to the screening request subsequently received from the consultation authorities. Both uploads have now been successfully made to the SEAs Gateway platform as of 16 February 2024.

Please also find attached all correspondence to and from the consultation authorities.

In response to Request 3, please find attached a copy of the matrix and the analysis of the proposed and alternative options considered against each of the critical success factors.

Please note that the Scottish Government is using the HM Treasury Green Book model for the development of business cases. The options provided are from the Strategic Outline Case, which is the first of three phases of the business case development for the Agriculture Reform Programme, with the Outline Business Case and Full Business Case to follow, where the options will be analysed in greater detail.

In response to Request 4, The Scottish Government’s approach to appraising future policy proposals is guided by best practice, as set out in the HM Treasury Green Book and the Scottish Public Finance Manual (SPFM).

The purpose of analysing policy proposals in this way is to ensure that they deliver against Government objectives in a balanced and coherent way. The goal of analysis is to ensure that decisions are informed by, and based on, the best available evidence and in setting out our approach in this way we are being transparent about how we do that. The long-list of options sets out a wide range of ways in to assess against delivering the Vision for Agriculture. It results in a shortlist of viable alternatives and has been assessed in accordance with best practice. As set out in Figure 1 of (Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill – Supporting Evidence and Analysis (www.gov.scot), which distils the Vision for Agriculture into four clear objectives and outcomes, this includes the consideration of Climate Change mitigation.

The resulting short-list of options is being assessed as part of the next stage, the Outline Business Case, which will assess these options in greater detail.

In response to Request 5, In keeping with the procedure regards SEAs the Consultation Authorities; HES, SEPA and NatureScot, as those Public bodies required to review SEAs, were approached for their views. These bodies have helped informed the decision not to undertake out a full SEA at this stage in policy development.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

EIR 202400397317 - Information released - Attachments 1 - 4

File type

22 page PDF

File size

1.9 MB