Orkney MSP, Liam McArthur, has attacked Scottish Ministers’ backing for a proposal which would restrict access to the Crofting Counties Agricultural Grants Scheme, (CCAGS), to registered crofters, excluding small farmers in the crofting counties from the scheme. He has found that the move, if made, would hit Orkney particularly hard, as the scheme has been of benefit to a great many Orcadian small farmers.

Liam McArthur had taken the proposal up with Scottish Ministers, arguing that it would deny access to CCAGS for many small farmers in Orkney. But Michael Russell, the Minister for Environment, has insisted that the Government “would take forward proposals to re-orient support towards registered crofters”. The Minister also said that they would seek EU approval to extend the scheme to the whole of the HIE area and amend it to provide a 10% uplift in support of new entrants to crofting. The Minister’s only suggestion for small farmers, who would lose out, was that landowners in the crofting counties can apply to have their land registered as a croft.Liam McArthur MSP

Commenting on the response, Liam McArthur said, “The Minister’s reply was described by one Orkney crofter as ‘high handed and arrogant’, a view I suspect that will be shared by many of my constituents. If access to CCAGS is limited to registered crofters, many will lose out, and Orkney will be hardest hit. Crofters Commission figures for the eight years from 1998/99 to 2005/06 show that, of nearly 13 000 applications to CCAGS, just over 2 000 came from non-crofters - that’s just over 15% of applications. That is a significant percentage but the figures for Orkney are much more dramatic, and worrying. Over those eight years, 930 of the 1 400 applications to CCAGS from Orkney were from non-crofters. So in Orkney, two thirds of former applicants would be excluded by the Government’s proposed changes.

“Over the 8 years of the records, some £1.2 Million of CCAGS grants went to non-crofters in Orkney - a significant sum. If the Minister gets his way, access to this important source of funding will be lost to small farmers in Orkney and to those elsewhere in the Crofting Counties. Yet the scheme is not the Crofters Agricultural Grants Scheme it is the Crofting Counties Agricultural Grants Scheme, set up to help small scale agriculture in the Crofting Counties. If the small farmers are hit, the viability of the agricultural community is hit too, undermining not just the farmers but the crofters as well.

“Ministers have not come up with any good reason for denying small farmers access to these grants, because there isn’t one. The fear is that Ministers are planning to do away with CCAGS altogether. So this is not an issue of small farmers against crofters, but of both against Scottish Government cuts. In the face of such opposition, Ministers must respond positively and urgently.”