I recall, during the General Election campaign that one of the strongest messages coming from Orkney’s farmers was the need for greater certainty around their funding settlement.

Orkney’s farmers have made clear for a long time the need for multi-year funding, which needs action at a UK level.

This kind of funding model is something that the SNP at Holyrood has always been sympathetic to. We all know that Orkney’s farmers, as with their industry colleagues across Scotland, have suffered massively due to Brexit, with loss of access to the single market, higher supply chain costs, and the loss of Common Agricultural Policy funding.

The UK Labour government’s decision, without consultation with farmers, to move to an inadequate annual funding settlement shows just how little the Chancellor understands Scotland’s rural and island communities, how complex the food production chain is, and how many people depend on it for their livelihood.

It is something of a wrecking ball moment and has been done with no opportunity for Scotland’s Parliament, Government, or farming leaders to feed into the decision-making process. It is unfathomable that the UK Government has taken decisions that impact on Scotland in particular without speaking to the SNP Government, to farmers, crofters or anybody else here first.

There was an opportunity for constructive discussion, which Ministers have confirmed the Scottish Government would willingly have been part of. But Labour apparently didn’t want to talk.

It has to be recognised that, while Scotland was in the EU, we enjoyed the benefit of a seven-year multi-annual framework with Scotland receiving nearly a £1 billion in funding every year to support farming, food production and other rural priorities.

Since Brexit, Scotland’s funding allocation had already become annual – and was shrinking. One of the biggest post-Brexit fears was that this would become a fixed position. And with Labour’s misguided move we now see it become reality, with the removal of ring fencing and Barnettising of the funding.

Scotland has traditionally and rightly seen a bigger-than-population share of funding for agriculture when it was allocated from the EU, for reasons we all understand.

The Labour Government move could effectively see a massive cut in the funding for agriculture from Westminster, but it will be hidden from view by the fact that is has now been rolled into the block grant – so they can claim our overall budget’s higher.

There is no point being coy about this. If we were still in the EU then Scotland would not only have certainty about funding but would have it for a seven-year period, so farmers in Orkney would be able to have longer term assurance.

Being devolved, agriculture really should be unhindered by these kinds of threats, giving the Scottish Government a fair funding settlement so that it could create a multi-annual framework.

We would, of course, get all of that if Scotland was independent and back in the EU.

Orkney’s farmers deserve the greater certainty independence can provide.

This is a regular column by SNP MSP Emma Roddick. All Highlands and Islands MSPs have been offered the space space in The Orkney News to share their personal views.