1 INTRODUCTION
Background to the consultation
Policy context: background to the Less Favoured Areas Support Scheme ( LFASS)
1.1 Aid to farmers in Less Favoured Areas ( LFAs) within the European Union ( EU) is a long-standing measure of the Common Agricultural Policy ( CAP). Since 1975 it has provided a fairly broad mechanism for maintaining the countryside in areas facing disadvantages for agricultural production. Within Scotland, the LFASS is a significant component of the Scotland Rural Development Programme ( SRDP), 2007-13. The LFASS is designed to sustain active farming and crofting in these areas, and aims to improve the environment and the countryside. It is also important for the vitality of local communities and for food production, with Scotland's livestock finishing and processing industry depending heavily on animals from the LFA.
1.2 Land management in Scotland's LFA faces particularly difficult physical and climatic conditions and, to compensate for these natural challenges, LFASS provides around £61 million each year to over 12,500 farmers and crofters.
1.3 The first interim LFASS (2007-09) was intended to bridge the gap between the submission of the SRDP to Brussels in summer 2007, and the expected adoption of changes to the European regulations on LFASS on 1st January 2010. If the discussions on these changes are successfully concluded, then this could have significant implications for the classification of the LFA and for the basis for payments. These changes will require EU-wide agreement and current indications are that implementation is unlikely before 2014, meaning that the interim LFASS needs to be extended or replaced for the years 2010-13.
Aim of the consultation exercise
1.4 The purpose of the consultation paper was to seek views on the part that LFASS can play in helping to sustain farming and crofting, and associated livestock activity, in Scotland's LFA. The consultation was initiated because organisations represented on the Scottish Government's LFASS Stakeholder Group (which are listed in Annex 1 of the consultation document) had asked that the interim scheme be reviewed, and the SRDP 2007-13 included a commitment to monitor and review the interim scheme.
1.5 The consultation document was distributed in hard-copy and online in September 2008, and the consultation remained open until 19th December 2008.
1.6 The findings from the consultation will feed into decisions as to what will replace the current interim scheme. As it is part of the SRDP, any changes will require to be notified to the EU. Implementation of a new scheme will require a new Statutory Instrument.
Aim of the analysis report
1.7 The aim of this report is to present the findings from a transparent, rigorous and systematic analysis of the written responses to the consultation document, in an accessible manner.
1.8 To achieve this aim, the objectives of the analysis were to:
- Organise and summarise all written responses received to the consultation
- Produce a database of responses to facilitate analysis by question, theme and respondent type as appropriate
- Analyse the responses, ensuring that the full range and nature of views submitted was considered and presented in a balanced way
- Identify types of respondent to the consultation document and allocate them to respondent categories
- Interpret and report the findings from the consultation, drawing out themes, commonalities or contrasts in the views of particular sectors.
Method
Design of the consultation study
1.9 The consultation document contained ten open questions, asking for respondents' written views on a range of alternative courses of action for the second interim scheme. The questions are listed in full in Appendix 1.
1.10 The document was distributed in hard-copy to members of the LFASS Stakeholder Group, and other interested parties known to the Scottish Government. There was also an open call on the internet, with the aim of attracting broad participation.
1.11 A consequence of this open call is self-selection of respondents, meaning that some interest groups are more strongly represented than others, and so the responses reported are not necessarily representative of the population as a whole.
Analysis of responses
1.12 The responses were grouped into respondent categories, to help structure the analysis. These categories are listed in Table 1.
1.13 The groupings for respondent categories were intended to reflect the main stakeholder interests, differentiating between public sector bodies and industry bodies, and acknowledging the strong environmental and crofting interests in the LFA. The number and distribution of responses received affected the design of these categories, as it was important to avoid having a large number of categories with small numbers of respondents in each, to ensure a meaningful analysis.
1.14 A frequency count of the responses gave the number per question, and number per respondent category.
1.15 The Framework approach (Ritchie and Spencer, 1994) was used to analyse the responses to the open questions. This is a structured approach to identifying concepts, ranges of views, and associations between respondents and categories. This involved entering all of the responses into an Excel spreadsheet, in which each consultation question was given its own column and each respondent their own row, to ensure completeness and to aid comparison. Because the consultation asked open questions, the responses were of varying lengths and so were summarised before entry. Additional columns were added, for example to indicate respondent category, or to allow for the insertion of additional themes emerging in the responses. This openness to change throughout the analytical process is a key strength of this approach, yet its systematic nature ensures the comprehensive and uniform treatment of all data.
1.16 The aim of the reporting was to present the whole diversity of views, in addition to identifying any areas of consensus and proposing possible reasons for any commonality or divergence. Because the data analysed were not necessarily representative of the population, this paper reports responses as absolute numbers, and as percentages of responses to a given question; they have not been weighted to adjust for the proportion of each response composed of each category.
1.17 Quotations have been selected to illustrate common views held by a number of respondents, and not to highlight exceptional cases. These quotations have been selected only from those respondents who stated that they were willing for their response to be made public, but have not been attributed to individual respondents to protect their confidentiality.
Document structure
1.18 The next section of this document presents the respondent categories used in the analysis, and the number of responses received for each question and respondent category. The subsequent sections present the findings for each question in turn, including a brief summary at the end of each section. The concluding sections identify additional themes raised by respondents, a review of generalised responses by category, and a summary of the areas of consensus.
1.19 This document concludes with appendices containing the consultation questions, a list of the respondent organisations and individuals, and a reference for abbreviations used.