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The budget for the Crofters Agricultural Grant Scheme is being reduced by £2 million - taking it down to £12 million.

Conservative Highlands and Islands MSP Donald Cameron slammed the reduced funding.

Mr Cameron said: “This news just adds insult to injury for crofters.

 

“First crofters are being told that they won’t be given proper representation on the SNP’s new team of rural advisors and now they are being told that a scheme set up to support crofting will be cut.

£2 million slashed from crofting grant scheme  

12 Sept 2017

“The SNP is taking rural Scotland for granted and it’s no wonder that voters across the Highlands are deserting a nationalist government who are more obsessed with delivering for the central belt rather than supporting the interests of rural Scotland.”

 

But Rural Economy Secretary Fergus Ewing blamed the Tories.

 

He said under UK Government plans Scotland’s overall discretionary budget is expected to be 9.2% lower in real terms in 2019-20 compared to 2010-11.

 

Mr Ewing said the UK Government failed to transfer £160 million convergence funding which “rightly belongs” to Scottish farmers.

 

Neither will it provide certainty about the future of the Scottish Rural Development Programme while the Scottish Government continues to seek guarantees over the Less Favoured Area Support Scheme.

 

Mr Ewing said the crofters’ grants scheme has spent less expected so the budgets is being adjusted accordingly.