Rural economy secretary, Fergus Ewing has set out the means by which he believes Scotland could have a more equal say in future UK agricultural policy. In a letter to Defra secretary Michael Gove on Wednesday, Ewing proposed a series of amendments to the draft UK agriculture bill, which would “provide the devolved administrations with an appropriate role” when decisions are made on geographical indicators (such as Scotch Beef and Lamb), World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreements, producer organisations and fairness in the supply chain after the UK leaves the EU.

The draft bill currently contains provisions for Northern Ireland and Wales, but not for Scotland, following disagreement between the UK and Scottish governments about how and where powers should be repatriated to the UK and its devolved administrations after Brexit. In his letter, Ewing said that UK-wide clauses within the bill would “clearly impinge on the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament”.

With regard to the bill’s WTO clause, which states that final decisions on how support schemes are distributed within the UK would lie with the UK secretary of state, Ewing said: “Any threat to the schemes which Scotland has designed to meet our specific needs, such as LFASS and our headage payments, would be a very serious concern.”

Ewing also said that the bill should “honour promises” made during the campaign on the EU referendum “that all lost [CAP] funding would be at least replaced”.

NFU Scotland policy director, Jonathan Hall said that the proposal to give the UK secretary of state sole power to make decisions during WTO negotiations was of “great concern” to NFUS as it would – in theory – limit all the devolved administrations’ capacity to spend money to fulfil their own policy objectives. Giving evidence to the Scottish Parliament’s finance and constitution committee, Hall added that Wales and Northern Ireland were equally concerned.

Hall said that NFUS was interested in the idea of an independent secretariat or council of ministers with representatives from the devolved administrations and England, which could agree common frameworks on matters such as the UK internal market.