 Good morning, and a very warm welcome to the 27th meeting of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee in 2022. We have received apologies this morning from Morris Golden MSP. Our first item of business is a decision on taking agenda item in private. Can we take agenda item 3 in private? Yes. Thank you. Our next agenda item is our evidence session on the legislative consent memorandum for retained EU law revocation and reform bill. This morning, we are joined by Julie Hesketh-Laird, deputy CEO and director of strategy in corporate affairs at Food Standards Scotland, Donna Ffordice, chief executive of Seafood Scotland, Elsbeth MacDonald, chief executive of the Scottish Fisherman's Federation, Johnnie Hall, director of policy at the National Farmers Union Scotland, Sarah Miller, chief executive of quality meat Scotland, Ian Muirhead, policy manager at the Agricultural Industries Confederation Scotland and Dr Gatherth Haidley, junior vice president at the Scottish branch of the British Veterinary Association. A warm welcome to all of you this morning. We have a round table this morning, which hopefully will open itself to some free flowing discussion, but I could have roughly an hour and a half with three themes, so we're open to maybe stick to the themes for half an hour or so. Our first one is the regulatory environment, and I could ask the witnesses if they could, in turn, given over here the impact assessment of the bill on regulatory environment in which they operate, including the potential impact on trade and the impact on relevant standards and protections in devolved areas. If that's a brief starter for everyone and if I could go round the room and turn it, Ms Hesketh-Laird, if you could go first. I work for Food Standards Scotland with the independent regulator for food and feed in Scotland, so we're independent of the government and report directly to you, I guess, in the Parliament. Our main concern about the bill is in relation to consumer protection. It allows for EU laws to be amended, and powers to do that, to be frank, would not necessarily be a bad thing, although some powers already exist, but it's unlikely that if it did that we would have been invited here today, it's the sunsetting approach for us that's hugely problematic. It carries huge risk and unintended consequences for consumers and trade. Retained EU law protects consumers and it enables trade, and the bill undermines our ability to keep consumer protection in place. The risk to trade—my colleagues who are trading here will probably talk about that today—is absolutely no advantage in applying an arbitrary guideline to food and feed law, irrespective of the date that that's fixed, whether it's 2023 or 2026. Huge effort will be required by my colleagues in the Scottish Government and Food Standards Scotland simply just to ensure that the existing standards that are there to protect consumers continue to apply after the proposed sunset date. The critical purpose of food law is to prevent poor-quality food and unsafe food reaching consumers. Regulation should restrict poor and unsafe practices because the purpose of it is to provide public protection. So deregulation that removes consumer protection is not an improvement, and this bill offers a huge opportunity for deregulation in a way that could really undermine consumer safety. Good morning, everyone. I'm here from QualityMeat Scotland. We are the red meat non-departmental public body from the Scottish red meat supply chain. That's a supply chain worth about £2 billion and 50,000 jobs across the Scottish economy. Quite crucially, that economic activity is spread throughout both rural Scotland and urban Scotland. The key characteristics of our supply chain that could potentially be impacted by this in terms of the regulatory environment are that our supply chain infrastructure is spread across the UK. At primary producer level, the characteristics are that we have a lot of family farms supplying cattle, sheep and pigs into processors and other manufacturing sites. That manufacturing and processing side of the supply chain might involve retail packing sites south of the border, might involve retail packing sites and cutting plants over the Northern Ireland. So any friction in terms of divergence, either with EU or within the UK, could provide barriers to trade and crucially, at this moment in time, barriers to confidence in the supply chain, which is something that we are very, very conscious of seeing the rising input costs across the supply chain. For us, the key with this bill is to ensure that we do not allow regulatory divergence. We need that operating environment to be as cohesive as possible because of the structure of our supply chain, but we also need to ensure that it does not create any more confidence barriers to business when confidence levels across the supply chain are already as low as they are dealing with some of the economic challenges right now. I represent the British Veterinary Association, which represents vets who work in a whole range of sectors across the industry from practice. Those are vets who are doing farm work or small animal work, but also who provide a reserve to government agencies in support of TB control, for example, or for exotic disease emergencies. Official veterinarians work closely with colleagues from Food Standards Scotland and also within government. I am now retired, but my previous role was within APHA in disease surveillance. We have heard quite a lot about divergence, and I will add another peneth to that. The internal market is important because animal health and welfare is a devolved issue, as you know. One of the concerns is, for example, diverging welfare standards, so you could get to the situation if this sort of thing plays out, where transport regulations on one side of a border could be different from another, and that could have implications for how you move animals around. That can have direct implications on trade, so the internal market is hugely important, and divergence is a big issue. Likewise, in my world of disease surveillance, diseases do not regard boundaries, but if you have boundaries in place, you have to have to minimise the divergence in order to maximise the control that you have with these diseases. Vets have small businesses, small, medium businesses. Again, they are impacted directly by this sort of thing. I will give you one example of one of the concerns from the regulatory perspective. EU law does not stand still. EU law is evolving. One example of that is veterinary medicines. One of the 570 regulations that is being considered by DEFRA, which fits in DEFRA's mould, is veterinary medicines regulations. That has huge implications. It has resource implications, for example, for the BVA if we need to provide consultation responses. We want to do that. We want to engage, but there is another 569 to deal with from that perspective. Large concerns about this. I think that there is going to be a clear message coming from other colleagues who are going to give evidence that the sunset clause is an issue, and we would want it to be extended as long as possible, or kicked into touch if possible. I wonder if I could say clarity on just one thing that you said there, Dr Haight Leif, when you mentioned border. Did you mean the Northern Irish protocol border, or did you mean different regulatory areas? Both, really. Yes. Contextually, it is relevant in both situations. Okay, that's great. Thank you. Could you invite Mr Muirhead? Yes, thank you very much, convener. AIC represents the agri supply trade in Scotland. We cover sectors such as animal feed, fertilisers, crop protection products, grain trading and also seed production as well. From our point of view, we would obviously be in agreement with many of the points that have already been made. You will have noted that, from the written submissions, there is a lot of consensus across our representative organisations. Just to rewind back slightly, the broader context here from a business perspective is that, in general, regulatory uncertainty is not welcomed, and that is especially important in the current context when many of our members across the supply chain are experiencing real pressures in terms of inflationary costs, cost pressures for things like labour, fuel, electricity and, at the same time, things like supply chain disruptions related to the war in Ukraine, which is obviously leading to a lot of market volatility. From our perspective, the existence of EU retained law was put in place to provide maximum business continuity and certainty post-Brexit, which was at that time welcomed. Specifically, in relation to what is proposed, a good example would be if there was a failure due to the sort of sunsetting clauses and the timescales set out within the proposed legislation. If there was a failure to ensure minimum standards for food and feed safety, that would have major business and trade implications, particularly for our feed producing members. In a situation like that, what would probably happen is that the supply chain itself, through our various assurance schemes, would have to implement our own standards to essentially reciprocate EU legislation to ensure continuity of trade, especially where we have members who are exporting to the single market. If we are looking at the wider context here, it also has risks associated with gaps in food and feed safety law, especially where there is a lack of an effective border operating model in place at the moment, especially for imports. From a biosecurity point of view, for example, the risks from the importation of African swine fever, which would add increased pressure to our pig producers who are already under immense pressure, would be a very negative consequence of those proposals. Having said all of that, I would also make the point that, from our perspective, there are opportunities from the perspective of the ability to review EU legislation, and we can give specific examples of opportunities within that, but that is caveated by the reality that we recognise that the mechanisms proposed, and particularly the timescales proposed within that legislation, are not realistic, and we recognise the time and resource pressures that that would put upon all those involved. The final point to make in terms of divergencies, I guess, is that we have concern about that. Obviously, we have been supportive of the common frameworks and have given a detailed submission to this Parliament on the proposals that pertain to agriculture, and we would obviously continue to support that as the key way in which to ensure collaborative policy making across the UK to try and retain some form of commonality in terms of regulation in some of these specific areas, so that concludes my comments. We work with all of the industry to promote their products and try to get a premium price throughout the world, whether that is in Scotland or the UK, but mainly exports. Seafood is a highly exportable product, and it is also a highly perishable exportable product. We have seen when Brexit hit the severe impact that it actually had of us trying to get products into Europe. Europe is the biggest export market for Scottish seafood, so whilst we export around £1 billion of Scottish seafood, 70 per cent of that is going into Europe, so that is our main market. Previously, pre-Bex, it was just like selling to Glasgow and selling to France, and that was the simple process that we've had. It's been a real shock to the system for businesses to try and operate under the Brexit model and cost, time, etc. There's a real fear as well that if the deregulation and any standards that are lowered from our side would interrupt the trade again. I think that there would be additional checks made at the borders, and that's just about to start happening in January with 5 per cent. If they cannot guarantee that we're at the same standards, we could just envisage more and more checks, which would be more and more delays. The value of our product dwindles rapidly as it sits on a truck hour after hour, because even an hour means that you've missed the next day's trade, etc., so the impact of that with the companies is huge. The companies are also, as others have said around the table, really dealing with just such challenging markets at the moment. I think that we have to involve industry in all of the regulatory frameworks. We have to listen to the voice of industry. It has to be workable for the industry. They have to be involved, and at the moment they are so operational with such high costs of everything and labour issues and productivity issues, but it really has to be given the time that's needed to be able to make sure that they're all properly put from EU law into Scottish law and into the UK law as well, taking into account obviously the UK internal markets as well. We've seen what's happened, and we're feeling a bit of it when things are rushed, when the exit deal was rushed at the end, and so then all the fallout then starts to happen. Trade deals, we need trade deals, we get trade deals, and then it turns out that these trade deals aren't the best for us. That's a key thing as well. It has to be taking the time to make sure that it's the right thing for us and not just to get something over the line and that it's done. I'm probably going to echo an awful lot of what's already been said, no surprise. I represent NFU Scotland, which is the primary body representing agricultural interests in Scotland. As such, Scottish agriculture consists of about 17,500 individual businesses and employs directly about 65,000 people. In turn, it provides the raw materials, if you like, for Scotland's food and drink sector, which employs around 365,000 people. Very closely aligned to the likes of Quality Meat Scotland and Food Standard Scotland and, of course, AIC Scotland, who have already spoken. In some ways, Scottish agriculture is that linchpin in all these supply chains, both from the input point of view and in terms of providing the first link in the supply chain and ultimately to consumers of Scotland's food and drink here in Scotland and beyond. We have some significant concerns about this bill. We have done ever since it was introduced to the UK Parliament back in September, not least around the lack of clarity and certainty about the processes involved and the intentions involved. It's absolutely clear that regulation is required in order to underpin the integrity of what we all do in life. None of us particularly want regulation, but we all need regulation. No more so in agricultural production when you're talking about animal health and welfare issues, our responsibility around environmental management and as businesses. There's a whole raft of business legislation, employment law etc etc. So the list is endless and it's interesting to know that as a UK department, DEFRA is probably the department within the UK Government with the most to deal with in terms of the potential implications of this bill and so on. I think that the most important point to rather than repeat what has already been said is that my concerns really revolve around the intersection of this bill and the existing UK internal market act. As numbers of folk have already said, how do we respect sort of devolved divergence of regulatory approach and policy needs to reflect the needs of food production and agriculture here in Scotland, for example, whilst maintaining, if you like, a relatively level playing field within the UK and the internal market? I retain and we retain some significant concerns around the UK internal market act, particularly around those twin principles of non-discrimination and mutual recognition and how that will play out going forward is going to be a huge interest, if not concerned, and we obviously want to monitor that situation. Turning to the bill itself, I think certainly the conversations we've had with the UK Government and UK Government ministers around this is that it's very much a don't worry everything will be okay, but we are not accepting of that sort of general assurance. We want to see something far more certain and committed in terms of how things will be dealt with. It's often been described to me that it'll be all a matter of, well, there'll be three buckets we'll put some that we want to ditch into one bucket, some which we want to amend into another bucket and we'll keep some others. Well, that's not really that smart at the stage in the whole process, in my opinion, and who's going to determine what goes into each bucket. So I'll probably draw a line there, but come back in with other comments in due course. Thank you very much. Finally, Ms McDonald, thank you. Thank you. Good morning. I'm chief executive of the Scottish Fisherman's Federation, which is made up of eight constituent Fisherman's Associations around Scotland. So we have members from the very north of Scotland to the very south and both east and west coast. We have around 450 fishing vessels within membership, which is by no means all of Scotland's fishing vessels, but it does represent the majority of the catching effort in Scotland. And we have a very diverse membership in shore, offshore, large boats, small boats, shellfish, pelagic fish, demarsal fish. We've heard already some of the key statistics about Scotland's food industry, agrifood industry, and just in relation to fisheries, the value of Scotland's wild capture fisheries at first landing is around half a billion annually. And interestingly, about 60 per cent of the total of UK landings, both in terms of tonnage and value, is generated from Scotland. So Scotland is the biggest part of the UK when it comes to commercial fisheries. I think I probably have a slightly different perspective on this than folk have already spoken this morning. I think because we've heard about public health, animal health, trade, but of course much of what I'm focused on and what my organisation is focused on is around management of fisheries, which is quite different in terms of what it's seeking to achieve and what its function is. There isn't particularly a requirement for fisheries management to be harmonised. There are good reasons why you would want fisheries management to be quite different in different areas for practical reasons, for biological reasons, for environmental reasons, for example. So a good example of that is the common fisheries policy, which was a EU-wide policy for fisheries management. Much decried by those who were caught within it because it was often very much too prescriptive, too rigid and its regulations made much too far away from practical fisheries management. So the scope now for the to be regulatory divergence exists. Fisheries has a very detailed and actually prescriptive chapter in the trade and cooperation agreement itself that recognises that there will be divergence between the EU and the UK in fisheries management and there's lots of provisions around that in terms of how it can be done. We also now within the UK have the Fisheries Act, which again makes provision for and gives significant powers to this Parliament to develop the appropriate fisheries management regime for Scotland going forward. So there's a wish and a requirement for there to be a divergence from the EU in terms of fisheries management, but it's important that we get that right. For example, at the moment the Scottish Government have been in consultation with the industry and with other stakeholders on something called the future catching policy and that is to replace a part of the common fisheries policy around something called the landing obligation, which is completely unworkable and completely impractical. What the Scottish Government is trying to do is to work with stakeholders to find a practical effective solution, an alternative to that, that is appropriate to Scotland's needs. But of course to get that right will take time, thought, discussion, consultation, engagement. So there's very much something about taking the time to do this right where there is a need for and a sensible rationale for divergence, then we can have that divergence, but it's about getting it right and taking the time to get it right. I guess the concerns of this bill are that there will be a rush in terms of the timescale in which sensible decisions may need to be taken. Thank you very much. I'm going to open to questions from the committee. If you do want to come in and comment, please try and catch my eye or the clock's eye and we'll try and ensure that everybody gets an opportunity to take part in the discussions and I'm going to move to Ms Boyack. Thank you very much, convener. Can I start by thanking all the witnesses for their written evidence because it's really powerful? I want to open on the regulatory environment and the impact on standards and protections, trades being mentioned and then the issue of regulatory divergence both within the EU and the UK. First of all, I wanted to get people to tease out the impact potentially on consumer protection and animal health because I think just getting on the record is quite powerful. Donorford Dice, you talked about a cliff edge of the sunset clauses and Food Standards Scotland, Julie Hesketh-Laird. You gave us some powerful evidence in writing about the impact on consumer health and you gave a raw milk and butcher shop's example and what the wholesale sun setting of food law would do to completely remove consumer protection but also animal health. I think it was also mentioned by Sarah Miller of QMS. There's a really powerful quote you gave there from the Food Standards Agency as well and what struck me was it's both from the regulatory side in terms of protections but also from the trade sector and I think Ian Yourhead you gave a strong warning about impacting consumer protections so could you just spell that out to have on the record what that means in terms of both public health and animal health and if you have thoughts about how we'd prioritise preventing the potential impact of this legislation. So maybe Julie Hesketh-Laird, would you like to kick off? Yeah sure, thank you. We estimate that there's probably about 200 pieces of retained EU law which we either lead on or we share with other parts of government. I think this bill seems to confuse red tape and consumer protection. The rules that are in place are part of a complex and very necessary legal system that sit in place to protect consumers and to enable trade. The scope of the legislation affected by the bill is massive. It covers basic food hygiene standards, public health related import controls, requirements for the composition of animal feed. I could go on basically labelling requirements, monitoring shellfish and so on. All of those things are absolutely necessary for the safety of people eating food in Scotland and outside of Scotland to the places that we export. We heard in Westminster in some of the debates there that the aim of the bill would be to take us back to the days when British laws were dominant but actually if you repeal or remove all of the laws that I've just referred to, in many many cases it takes us back to nothing. There is no protection pre-EU law. It takes us back to a day when those laws either did not exist because lots of them have been superseded by EU law that's been put in place and as many of the witnesses have mentioned through proper process with risk assessments have been properly thought through they've taken their time to work through them and they exist for a reason not just to be red tape. Winding back to the days pre-EU law, actually just in many many cases removes all consumer protection and then that in turn has a huge impact on the confidence I think our trading partners would have in the food that's exported from Scotland. Thanks to other witnesses who want to come in. I think Donor for Dice you talked about a cliff edge with losing the sunset closes. Yeah it's just really you know with the companies then having their backs up against the wall you know of this you know how how do we try and diverse resources you know and probably a good example that is actually at Elspeth at the moment in SFF with a lot of the consultations that's happening over marine spatial planning and the bit of time and effort and actually that takes from a business focusing on their strategy in the way forward but actually having to to deal with with all of this and take time out of the business so you know I think there's that you know real issue of how much time if we rush it you know how much time are we asking of businesses so it's really having that time to properly implement things that aren't going to be such a burden on on the industry because they will be so keen to be involved and ensure their voices heard so it's a workable regulatory environment in a sensible one so we need to take into account you know just just how how much of an impact it will make on businesses if they're continually having to do consultations on a monthly basis and just how that would impact their businesses. Ian Newhead you also warned about the impact of the bill and consumer protections do you want to say a bit about that in terms of both your concerns about public health but also impact on the industry and animal health as well and as it feeds for animals as well it's right across the spectrum. Yes so obviously from a from an AIC perspective our main focus is on obviously livestock feeds which are very important here in Scotland where we're you know very much a livestock centric agriculture I think the main point I was trying to get across and I would concur strongly with the points made by Food Standards Scotland about well in reality this is going to create an additional resource burden upon FSS at a time when there's a squeeze on available resources and staffing resources as well and they obviously have a regulatory function within the feed industry in Scotland in terms of the delivery of official feed controls so that is sort of that's one side of the practicalities of this new work stream but at the same time because as we've discussed the arbitrary timescales and sunsetting clauses within this legislation that would obviously create up from our point of view an unnecessary and unacceptable risk of there being a you know essentially a hole in legislation if it was not replaced, revoked, reformed with something similar so that obviously is you know would then have a you know an impact upon the underpinning of animal health and welfare regulations and as I've stated if you take that into consideration from the point of view of a lack of a border operating mechanism as well that creates even more risks from a biosecurity point of view I would just pick up on the I suppose the wider piece which you touched upon about the regulatory divergence and the you know the concerns as regards that and obviously I think the issue is essentially that this bill runs the risks of exacerbating divergencies because of the timescales that are put in place and because of the reality of how do you balance the executive freedoms of this place of the United Kingdom government maintain a level playing field when there are vastly differing political priorities from the point of view of I assume a view of retaining as much EU law as possible from a Scottish perspective and possibly going down a differentiated route in the rest of the UK so that is you know that is a concern and maybe want to take back in terms of the timescales which might make that divergence risk higher thank you and Sarah Miller and Mr Hall and Dr Haley wanted to come in if you could just let them in fusion with the sheer range of legislative change but you also highlighted food safety as well I was wondering your comments on that yeah so I just want to dig in specifically on the animal health and welfare part and I supposed to to bring it to life and then the reality within the supply chain because what we're talking about here is supply chain function and because in red meat you're dealing with sentient beings you're dealing with animals if any part of that supply chain for any reason falls over the impacts on animal health and welfare can be quite profound in a way our strength is also our weakness so we have a strong red meat supply chain in Scotland because we maximise the environment and the resources available we take sheep and cattle and pigs from you know the highlands of Scotland and you know our less favoured areas move them on to better ground for further finishing and then we move them into other parts of supply chain from there so to maximise what we're able to do we need to have that movement of both livestock and product both across Scotland but also within the UK one of the big concerns going back to day one EU exit was around the ability to export some of the animal byproducts that go into specialist markets in Europe and are then exported to third countries after that and the consequence is something that sounded so insignificant because there are no other routes for those byproducts could have been that the processing sector would have had to have stopped processing animals until they'd managed to find a route for that and the impact of that you know if you stop that one link in the supply chain is that animals are potentially then in their own place you know if they're then not moving off some of the you know what I'll call the less favoured grounds where grass growth might be not be so strong you then start to have potential welfare implications on farm so that's why it's really critical for us as a supply chain to maintain that consistency in regulatory environment but also the you know the supply chain needs its ability to function and I think any kind of friction within that you know means businesses aren't confident so they're not committing to you know either future trade or looking at new markets or they're looking at you know their de-risking parts their business which then doesn't help us because again with quite a long term supply chain particularly in the cattle sector so any knock to confidence now would also have ramifications for you know three four years down the line so that they can be quite long term impacts and I'm trying to you know sort of bring this to life in terms of you know what happens at the business end because I'm conscious that regulation and legislation can be quite technical and I think it's important to reflect you know what would happen on the ground within that I just wanted to add something. Sarah Boyack's question quite rightly focused on issues around public health and animal health and welfare but I would also add into the mix that we and we mustn't take our eye off this is the whole issue about environmental protection as well which is clearly a significant of significant interest to to agriculture at the end of the day agricultural land management occupies about 70% of Scotland's land area and it's not just the land it's the the surface waters and all the the habitats and and environments within that landscape as well and you know just just to illustrate the point here obviously a significant amount of agricultural support which came through the common agricultural policy which is now being rolled over into scott's law through the agriculture EU retained law and data act 2020 so we've got a continuation of of those schemes and the rules around those and one of the key elements of that is something called cross compliance which talks about good agricultural environmental condition but also includes something called statutory management requirements and those statutory management requirements basically hang off an awful lot of EU law in terms of existing directives particularly things like the birds directive, the habitats directive, the water framework directive and nitrates directive and and quite a few others as well so it's complicated it's difficult but ultimately it filters down into what is expected in terms of basic standards of environmental stewardship and I think we need to be as others have already said we need to tread very very very carefully as to how we approach any sort of review revision and retention of those elements of what essentially underpins land management in scotland because at the end of the day we need to ensure that our environment is protected and that is the bedrock of what we then do in terms of delivering on all sorts of other aspirations that we have particularly coming from this place around things like tackling climate change and enhancing biodiversity and all those things as well so I urge that we also consider the environmental components as well as the public health and the animal health and welfare issues in fact at least it's pretty endless as well so I'm going to bring in Dr Heatley and then Ms Hesgoodlaid wants to come in as well so do it yeah thank you and don't worry about the doctor bit it's okay it's just a great start I don't know how that slipped in but it doesn't bother me I mean again just to follow on from what johnny was saying it's evolution day and biodiversity is very much in people's minds I've got a background in climate change as well so happy to sort of feed into that if that's if that's relevant but laying that aside for the moment I just wanted to follow on from what Sarah was saying about supply chain issues I mean we've seen in in across the UK issues with with pigs and I don't remember the co2 problem that we had earlier if you have one thing that goes wrong particularly in a in a carefully controlled supply chain pigs back up and when pigs back up you start getting animal health and welfare issues so if we have anything that adds to the pressure on the supply chain you you pretty quickly start to get serious problems in terms of animal health and welfare so it was just another example of of that the other thing I wanted to point out is that you know whatever our views about brexit we're now post brexit um one of the consequences of that is that we are now no longer in the club and from an animal disease surveillance perspective that has implications for that if you like the level of confidence that the EU our major trading partner has in terms of what we do in terms of control of endemic disease exotic disease and um the the bar has gone up and it's just to reflect that that's you know that that has a consequence in the way we you know the way we respond to that also in terms of our response to exotic disease surveillance I'll give an example of blue tongue disease you may remember in 2006 we had blue tongue we don't particularly want it again if we did get blue tongue it's really important that it's coming to this divergence thing and cross border that we across the piece we deal with the disease in a collective way because if we start imposing movement restrictions on animals that respect the if you like a country's boundary for example um that could have implications about for example where the abattoirs are so we need to work in in because this whole thing is so interlinked and it's so complex that if you start tinkering with one bit I think what I'm saying is it's almost like the law of unintended consequences so if you we need to be cognisant we need to have time to consider what the implications of you know making a change are going to be so it was really just to give some illustrations around that thank you and it must say so good thank you I wanted to go back to your your direct question to me actually was about um the consequences of you know some of the really difficult things that we're going to have to tackle um on the regulatory side of things um and some of the examples that were in our written evidence um I just wanted to touch on those just to bring to life um the complexity of of food law food law is a system um there's not lots of neat little bits of legislation that we can just you know put in a bucket to keep or or save they're all really um deeply interlinked and intertwined and they go back for many many years and the example um that we put in our written evidence on ecoli um kind of brings that to life and I I just want to go through the example because I think it is a really powerful one back in 2004 um uh old prescriptive sector guidance was replaced with um a risk based general requirement for most businesses to come um in line with a hazard analysis principle of food um hygiene and food safety um it was negotiated um in europe and the main aim um for the UK at the time was to achieve effective proportionate and risk based controls um the precise example that this really helped was where um raw meat that is contaminated potentially say with ecoli or um something similar but let's take the ecoli example if it comes into contact with ready to eat food um the consumers of the ready to eat food can become really seriously ill and that happened in 1996 it's a well known case in Lanarkshire um where there was a fatal cross-contamination incident um with ecoli with 490 cases of ecoli and 18 associated deaths um that led to the Pennington report the Pennington group report which among other things you know recommended a licensing scheme for butchers um which applied pending their training and the rolling out of the hazard based approach that european scheme then came in and replaced all of the um the UK kind of interim protocols um and that was you know um in came into place um when the EU rules came in in 2006 so rolling us back to a time you know pre-eu rules you know takes us back to no consumer protection in that area i mean the evidence is stark there but you know we would assume that you know if the bill goes through in Westminster um that measures would be taken to preserve those basic requirements but it seems really strange to us that you would want to sweep away um you know vast tranches of of european law that are there for a really good reason and then have to build them up from the start go through the you know the argumentation take up um food standard scotland and scotish government time to rewrite rules um you know in a in a slightly different but similar way to the EU ones to put the same process back into place it's a it's not a good use of my time my team's time the scotish government time and parliamentary time um sure there are places that we can make um we can speed processes up or make amendments to to regulations that would improve things but this is absolutely not the way to do it the time and the resource and the effort that would be taken um i think in new head mentioned the you know at a time when the civil service is pushed um you know greatly for resource and and people um there is no good time to do this but now would be the worst okay bring in miss mental please thank you convener um i'd like to explore what julie heskis leard has just just talked about um and i think donna you touched on it as well in in your evidence about how businesses had to change and as a result what didn't happen because you were having to look at the new ways of doing things and i suppose what in food standard scotland what what you wouldn't be able to do if you were having to spend the time on this donna yeah um so you know the impact obviously when when briggs it happened and you know and it came to actually a halt for a you know for a couple of weeks because the system broke down that was in place and so they couldn't do it but the impact was even just before brexit you know so for two years before brexit was implemented the amount of working groups the amount of committees that people were responding to you know it was a real real focus for for the business leadership teams who were continually at meetings on a weekly basis trying to prepare for for for brexit so then when brexit happened and it wasn't a case of that's brexit this is it you know we're here and then has to be implementing all of that so definitely the focus has been huge and the impact of it as well you know that consequential impact is that um we don't have enough staff so whilst we're out there promoting the fantastic products that scotland has to offer the reality is we can't process it because we don't have enough staff so um so last year last christmas the retailers were delighted to only get 70 percent of the product lines that they would usually get because they were worried they would be less you know companies are contracting they cannot take up any of the opportunities well there are a lot of the opportunities out there or they're swapping out rather than being able to grow you know it's a massive issue that that is had but the time and resource of just operationally trying to prepare for brexit and then actually dealing with with the fall and it's still happening you know it's just continuing so sampling is about to start commodity codes issues last week as well so we couldn't get products over because of the issue of commodity codes etc so it is just continual because things change constantly that EU changes things and we're not told about it so then you try to find out you know how that impacts us and so it just takes a lot of time we've had to bring in brexit specialists actually be there and help support companies and they're still there they're still helping companies and supporting them to get through a lot of the regulations that have changed in a post brexit landscape so you know it's costing money to have these specialist help support and you know it's still taking the time so I just think that whole consultation process going through it all everybody wants it to be right and to be able to do that it takes a lot of time and you know and a lot of resource and especially during this time and you know saying a number of us have touched on it you know it's unprecedented times is what we've heard you know from all of the companies during this you know is a crisis not helped by the Ukraine situation etc but it really is really unprecedented times so it's worrying that the amount of time that the companies if it's rushed would have to put into it whereas if it's spread over a longer time it could be managed more sensibly just to pick up on Donna's final point um we'd be nervous too actually it's that rush it's that um you know would there be any inadvertent unintended consequences of not getting this right I think um is a real um would be a real challenge uh if we were working through all those sort of 700 sorry 200 pieces of um retained EU law um for us when brexit happened it meant that we had it's it's it has driven huge change within you know food standard Scotland in the regulatory environment we're now having to I suppose replicate some of the work that the European Food Safety Authority did when we were in the club we've now had to create teams in Scotland and to be fair to the FSA in in England Wales and Northern Ireland they've had to replicate that too so we work really closely with them but there are people in in my organisation doing work that was previously done through a much bigger organisation with much better resource that's already difficult for us to resource we're already having conversations with um the Scottish Government and ministers around how we can um provide that service going forward um the the resource review from the Scottish Government that came out um earlier on in the year back in May I think um has indicated that we're going to have a flat budget for the next five years so um that's already difficult for for us to you know begin to take these things forward um I can't answer the question right now as to what wouldn't we do if it is a bit crystal because there's so many regulations we don't know what buckets they're going to end up in even if I say you could even put them in buckets um but we are working through a process at the moment and I can't pre-empt this board paper going to food standard Scotland on the 7th of um December that begins to unpick um for us um if we had to shift resources off things what would those things be um but I don't think it would be any secret if I said now that things like you know managing incidents and food crime and inspecting um meat plants are all absolutely top priorities and you know we would um really find it difficult to take any resource off those things at all but there's you know lots of other work where we'd need to divert whole teams um you know of people on to our EUL um and I think probably I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said if we put our whole team on to this um you know the sort of single bill um it probably wouldn't touch the edges of what we needed to do so that will be difficult conversations I guess with the Scottish Government as to how much they would want to resource this going forward because that that decision sits with ministers and not us. Thank you. Other contributions for uh can I bring in this McDonald first? I just wanted to um perhaps illustrate some of this from the perspective of a trade organisation. I think uh Julie and Johnny have both spoken about putting things in buckets um and it's of course it's not as simple as that because you can't just look at one regulation and say that one goes in keep bucket that one goes in ditch bucket that one goes in we'll think about it bucket because um as I'm sure won't be the case in in all the commodity areas certainly in fisheries what what we have already been doing is of course drilling through every piece of EU law and saying that particular clause could go that particular clause might still be useful if amended so it's you know it's a huge task in terms of say it's not a keep then straightforward exercise it's much more you know line by line what pieces are no longer relevant what pieces would you want to get rid of what pieces would you change what pieces would you keep so it's a huge it's a huge task um I think thinking about the perspective of me you know what what we wouldn't do if if um this task were to be accelerated um I think it's more a question of what also government wouldn't be able to do because we are aware certainly in fisheries that there are many there's an ambitious programme of of domestic policy and domestic legislation on fisheries some of that comes from the bute house agreement some of it comes from the future fisheries management strategy that the government published a year or so ago setting out its vision for for scottish fisheries for the next decade or so and there's much to do in all of that and the government resources will be stretched to do a very extensive programme of regulatory form as well as the domestic the domestic policy development but when you then translate that onto a relatively small trade organization like ourselves and you think about the resource implications of that it's very significant and you know we are already under very significant pressure from things like the expansion of offshore wind in scottish waters and the implications for fisheries so there's just there's a great deal to think about in terms of how resources could be best deployed to to the appropriate priorities and I say I think it's it will impact both upon government and on industry bodies okay I've got three indications from our visitors and then I'm going to move to a question from mr Cameron so if you could try and be succinct we are sort of running over on this this area already and we could bring in Sarah Miller followed by Gareth Hailey yeah I just wanted to pick up on actually the question that went to Donna as well about the impact on of EU exit really on the business environment and for us you know that that Glasgow Paris analogy is absolutely perfect you used to be able to put a you know a pallet on a lorry and it could drop off on Glasgow to go to Paris and it was the same regulatory regime so it was easy for businesses to access high value markets and the level of risk to that business in terms of diverging away from core business perhaps into domestic retail markets was low what we've now seen is is added risk put into export so whilst businesses now have found a way to to do it it has added additional risk so their appetite for export we have seen has definitely reduced although I would say that has that is starting to come back and I guess from my point of view having sort of been through the roller coaster that was EU exit in you know January 2021 we're now in a better place now my fear would be that if we if we start to increase that risk burden again you know that is significant economic opportunity that we are losing for Scotland and trade in terms of to EU exit was down 36 percent in Q1 2021 we've you know took us a whole year to get back and there's still some businesses who were previously exporting who are not so I think that that for me is the key thing to remember in all this it's economic activity that it's stifling yeah quickly from me I just to follow on from what Julie's said and pointing back to Sarah Boyack's original question about public health and animal health I just want to contextualise that a bit and say you know from a veterinary perspective we're really talking about one health here it's in the round it's not you you there's a lot of interactions so for example in in my world of disease surveillance probably between two thirds and three quarters something of that sort of order of new and emerging diseases have what we call a zoonotic potential that means a disease that can pass from animals to man we've had an example of E. coli 0157 that's clear I'm just pointing out that the law of unintended consequences means that something will probably happen and we need to make sure that the regulatory environment doesn't stifle our ability to detect disease earlier the last point I'd like to make is that again going on to what Julie was saying about resource don't forget that in 2001 and I remember it well because I was there it was an abattoir vet who first detected foot and mouth so if you're taking resource away from those areas you put other areas at risk thank you and mr hope yeah very quickly just to really echo the commentary of julie and elspeth and then the point that gareth just made as well about the timing of this first of all and the almost the just the political urgency to be seen to be doing something at a time when we probably need it least in terms of that review process and then probably coming to a conclusion actually we still need an awful lot of this to continue it it serves a purpose it serves a very important function and that then takes you into the questions around resource and capacity right now Scottish Government is consulting on a new agriculture bill which will come into the Scottish Parliament in 2023 along with other pieces of legislation and that in itself is a huge task for Scottish Government officials it's the first time Scottish Government has had to really do this given that for decades we it was basically about adapting the common agricultural policy to Scotland's circumstances and working within those rules and those objectives this is very very different and it's already stretching the capacity of Scottish Government officials and if they would have been taken off that plus the on-going processes around existing schemes their inspection their compliance issues the monitoring all the APHA work etc etc it's just not feasible it is absolutely unfeasible so at some point to use a cliché the wheels will come off if we do that and I think that would be extremely dangerous for all sorts of interests thank you mr Cameron thank you thank you convener and I should refer to my a register of interests in and agriculture within that I'd like to return to the questions of staff and timing and resources in the third section can I ask about two issues firstly about deregulation the bill itself gives the both the UK Government and the Scottish Government the ability to restate EU law a retain EU law and replace replace it in its entirety and I should I don't speak to the UK government but I think it is only fair to put their position on deregulation they have consistently said that they do not want lower lower standards and in fact have said in some instances they want higher standards would the panel accept that whilst there is plainly a risk of deregulation there is equally the potential to either mirror EU standards or indeed enhance protections and that ability applies to the UK government perhaps more pertinently to the Scottish government in terms of what they can do and I think Julie could I ask propose that question to you as you mentioned deregulation I suppose yes the bill could give the opportunity to do it but why use valuable time and resource to go through that process when we have very strong rules that are put in place and have been negotiated based on evidence risk assessed there have been proper impact assessments done there's been consultation there's been legislative due legislative process taken place why would we sweep all of that aside and start again and have to unpick as elsford says you know the food law is not a it's not neatbuck it's a system it just seems odd to want at any time to unpick a whole system to rebuild something almost entirely identical from scratch it just does not seem like a good way of spending taxpayers money but arguably the bill would simply allow the Scottish government just to flip whatever whatever retained EU law exists into into a new form of law you know without any without any of that well yes i suppose it it does but i'm i suppose we're not confident that through the process of the bill that everything that we would want to be retained will be retained and why not start with the premise that you retain everything rather than sweep away everything you know that to me is the wrong way around could i move on to my my second point i think this is principally directed to elspeth and johnny which is around divergence i think today elspeth you spoke about the stakeholders you represent and and please correct me if i'm wrong but but actually i wish to move away from EU law that perhaps enshrines the common fisheries policy and johnny in previous evidence this committee you've also spoke about the common agricultural policy and and the needs and moving moving away from that in terms of the needs of scotland's farmers and crofters it is of course Scottish government policy to align with EU law and i suppose my question is looking at this bill do you have any observations on the the policy behind this bill in allowing your sectors to to move away from existing EU law elspeth as i said in my first remarks there is already there's a recognition between the UK and the EU that there will be divergence on fisheries management and that's reflected in the trade incorporation agreement we also now have the UK fisheries act which again creates a framework for secondary legislation across the UK in a devolved context on fisheries management so so i am not a lawyer but i would think that there is already that provision to start that divergence of fisheries management regulation from the common fisheries policy i'm not sure how much this bill adds or detracts from that that would need some sort of careful legal analysis but i think there is an existing framework there i think as i said there is certainly much scope to develop better fisheries management measures that are more appropriate to scotland that are not EU wide ones that you're then trying to fit into your scotland circumstances johnny is absolutely right in his comments he said we may not always like regulation but it's important to have it we have to make sure that our fisheries have been managed appropriately and i think the way that the fisheries act is set up again recognises that there will be different ways in which you might want to do that even across the UK and there's provision there for a really quite an innovative approach of using fisheries management plans to determine the right types of fisheries management for different fisheries in different areas so i think our industry certainly welcomes that opportunity for divergence in terms of how we do fisheries management but we also recognise that much of our product is exported and it is important that consumers both at home and wherever our export markets are have confidence in the product so we recognise that the points others are making so i think yes there's definitely scope to do things better in fisheries management terms from the EU law i think we've already got a pretty hefty body of legislation in the UK to allow us to do that through the fisheries act which i think this parliament gave its legislative consent for so i say i'm not i don't have a as yet a clearer understanding of what this bill will perhaps add or subtract from that johnny yes could i could first of all go back to your first point and and i agree that there is the potential to uh if you like do things better i think you said but i don't think that potential can ever be realised if we're looking at a sunset clause or as i prefer to call it a guillotine 13 months down the track so that that's the problem i i agreed that you know if times on your side and resources are on your side then there is an opportunity through this to look at things and improve if that's the conclusion but i don't think the the the time pressures that the UK government are trying to put onto this arguably to to shake up certain government departments to get to do this sooner on and later i don't think that helps at all as we've previously discussed in terms of aligning with EU policy there's always that little caveat at the end of that aligning with EU policy where practical and that's that's been stated by Scottish Government on a number of occasions i think in terms of the common agricultural policy as you've heard me say before it doesn't work particularly well in Scotland's interests it doesn't work for Scottish agriculture particularly well and all the responsibility Scottish agriculture carries around food climate biodiversity rural development and so on so the the opportunity to diverge or move away from the common agricultural policy i think is a very important opportunity for for Scotland to take but the overriding objectives in terms of those things i've just mentioned high quality free production climate biodiversity wider rural development issues they're not diverging from europe's own objectives it's just that there's an opportunity to shape and do things in a way far better suited to Scotland's profile and needs and it was always a bad fit the common agricultural policy for scotland and it it was clunky and it was difficult and it made it far more challenging so i think there is an opportunity to still deliver the same out intended outcomes as as europe is trying to achieve on a number of things but to do it in a much more bespoke way for scotland's needs donna for dyson the in your head want to come in so donna could you go first yeah thanks i was just want to pick up on the enhanced protections actually and i think we have to be careful as well that we're just not gold plating some of the regulations because we want to have more enhancement now it may be for food security consumer protection that we may want to do that but we have to make sure we're not creating more red tape for businesses you know that we're not giving an additional burden in scotland that wouldn't be applied across the the UK putting us at a disadvantage you know just because we're maybe gold plating more of the regulations as far as trades concerned we won't get a premium for it so it's not as if if we enhance things we'll get more money for it we'll still get the same money for the goods that we were doing you know but again there may be areas of weakness that we feel that we want to enhance but it's making sure we don't do additional burden on the businesses and for for no additional benefit and really just being put at a disadvantage okay that's my head yep thanks very much convener i just wanted to pick up on a couple of points and i think it was a really good question to bring up donald as regards the proposals i think from our perspective as we've as i had stated in our sort of opening remarks we do welcome the opportunity to review existing EU legislation notwithstanding our concerns about you know obviously the proposals as they stand and it would be interesting i guess to understand a bit more about what you referred to as the flipping process for retained EU law and how that would you know in terms of the resources that would be required to do that and the timescales for that but if we're talking about what what we could do with the existing resources well probably a more targeted approach to review of EU law so you know we've got a number of specific examples where we can see real benefits that would be accrued from specific targeted approaches so i'll give you two examples one is at the moment there is an issue with a differentiation between the gm approvals process within scotland and the united kingdom and between the EU and that has been exacerbated by obviously the war in ukraine and supply chain disruptions meaning that our members have had to source commodities from other places out with europe and therefore because they are trans shipped through the european union it creates a real issue where there is a differentiation between what is approved within the EU and what is approved within the UK and therefore there's a real pressing need to have a reformed review system within scotland and the UK for that and that's an example of where fss resources could be deployed but may not be because of proposals within this and another example for example would be the retained EU law around feed additive authorisations and there's an opportunity there to look at and bring in additives which can help with methane mitigation within livestock which would have real environmental benefits for both the scotland and UK livestock industry and help to meet emissions reductions targets but because of some of the specific barriers within the retained EU law that's quite a difficult thing to do at the moment so that's just two examples of where there are opportunities within the process but I think just to finish there I think in reality when it comes back to the issues around EU alignment and the UK approach really the UK frameworks and the common frameworks approach only really works if there is that political commitment which I understand was contained within the common frameworks to work in a consensus and to reach compromise where possible to have that you know degree of commonality across the UK Johnnie articulated very clearly how you can have similar objectives but different ways to achieve them and I just wanted to put on record all that that I think is what the fisheries act aims to achieve it says there are a number of overarching objectives that the fisheries act is there to achieve but recognising that there are different ways of how you get there from from the current model of EU law and just on that point from Mr Cameron about Scottish Government's approach to divergence I think what we are seeing in fisheries management is that they are willing to look at divergence from EU law I think we see that through the consultation and the work to develop a new catching policy for Scotland and it's not about increasing or decreasing standards it's about trying to achieve the same overall objectives but having a more practical and a more fit for purpose way of doing it for Scotland a more Scottish determined policy and legislative way to do that the devil will be in the detail of course and I think that's why important that these things are given sufficient time and focus to make sure that we get them right and we don't end up with just a slightly different set of laws but still ones that that don't work particularly well thank you I know miss Hesketh Laird wants to come back in but if you could pick up your point and answering questions from the committee I'm going to move to a question from Dr Alan. Thank you Ken Reiner. Julie Hesketh Laird mentioned I think you said that the situation around the reserved EU law bill was strange I think was our word and I can assure you that many of us here find the idea of now 4,000 or so laws and the one are pretty mystifying as well but the area I want it to open up is more around how those laws might be replaced before they looked at how commercial process that might be but one of the issues that our committee has been considering is also the idea that UK ministers might amend laws and devolved would have the power in many areas to devolve to amend laws and devolve areas now and if yes has raised issues around the kind of restrictions that UK internal market act would place on Scotland's agency to act I wonder can people say open up a discussion about what people feel about what it implies for parliamentary oversight for the involvement of interested parties if it's UK ministers that are potentially amending laws and devolved areas. I don't have a strong answer to that because I sit outside of government not in government and those are issues really for the government to a pine on I suppose but I guess I just go back to my previous comments around you know scrutiny at the place where the rules are applied by the people to whom they apply from the experts in the jurisdiction where they will apply I think is really important so yeah there's the obvious constitutional issue and just to touch on the previous point there about deregulation I would agree with Ian Muirhead actually that there are some areas that we could improve and you know regulated products for feed is one of those areas I think we could genuinely speed up the system by just removing some of the clunkiness and the process that happens whether you know you'd get your authorization for methane enhancers I don't know because it still needs to go through the same kind of scrutiny which you know as Alistair Allen's implying is really really important that it's done and I think it I think it is important that in Scotland that's done by you know people who govern Scotland for the benefit of consumers in Scotland yeah I made just to come in there as well the if you look at the bill in a very simplistic way and that's kind of what I do with most things in life the intention is basically by the 31st of december 2023 to wipe off the statute books and use that sort of language existing EU law or retained EU law unless you either provide an extension or you exclude it from that process in very very simple terms but my reading of the bill is that the issues around extension in particular are within the gift of UK ministers because it is a UK bill but nevertheless they're as clear as as Dr Allen has expressed issues around what is a reserve matter and what is a devolved matter and that's where we get into this very complex and political arena and I think that's that's going to make it even more difficult if that's if that's the easy way to put it from our point of view and I guess maybe from others around the table here today it's the practicalities and the pragmatism around some of those issues that is really going to matter and as I said earlier in response to another question it's about who who's going to decide what sort of process are we actually to go to go through to say actually yeah this piece of law is removed or we extend it or we exclude it and and that I think is the cause for concern because at every point I've asked UK government or UK government departments getting that clarification has been extremely difficult in fact there is no clarification Miller I just want to do I think one phrase really brings this together and it's that unintended consequences because I think there is something in there when you're changing so much legislation in that regulatory environment so quickly you do miss some of those sort of consequential links that will then impact our environment our businesses here in Scotland and I think that that is a danger that we're in in terms of slipping into how you how you fix that you know is the question mark because you know we know that following the EU exit we have to reform that regulatory background and that has to be done but it's the timescale that has been you know it's an arbitrary timescale that that we have put in place we don't need to do this to ourselves and we could do this in a much more phased approach that would lessen the impact on business but would also you know we spoke earlier about the common agricultural policy you know would also enable us to build some of these key foundational pieces that that we need post EU exit to again to go back what I was speaking about earlier to make sure we can capitalise on the economic opportunities we have in Scotland there's no point in reframing that regulatory environment if it's just going to cause additional cost on businesses which then in terms of Scotland could mean that we lose economic activity here to other parts of the UK which is then detrimental to jobs it's detrimental to the environment it's detrimental to us so I think you know it's that unintended consequences we need to be very very aware of okay and respect on it thank you when the fisheries bill was going through the UK parliament and as I say this this parliament gave its legislative consent for that for that bill which I think was probably one of maybe one maybe one of the only Brexit bills to which this parliament gave consent one of the reasons that we were broadly supportive of that bill and indeed of that act is because it is a framework and it doesn't prescribe a great deal of detail at that primary level what it does is it gives quite significant wide ranging powers and responsibilities to the Scottish Government and to Scottish ministers to make legislation in Scotland and as I say one of our biggest criticisms of the common fisheries policy was that it was made too far away from those who were both knowledgeable about the areas that were being regulated and also impacted by it so I think as a as a principle it would seem that if UK ministers are making changes in in devolved areas then that should be with the with the consent of Scottish ministers who are who are closest to these areas and I think if I think if change starts to happen in that sort of uncoordinated way that I think Sarah has just described then the risk of reels of confusion and unintended consequences is very large so I think there's a real lack of clarity about how all of these different moving parts are going to work together to ensure that we have a sensible functioning statute book for our various areas of responsibility so I think there's a lot of unanswered questions but I think there are a lot of there's a lot of scope for confusion and unintended consequences that we have to be careful to avoid. Thank you. Dr Allan, did you want to come back? No, I'm content just to let others come in as they wish. Ms Boyack, did you want to come in from this area, Ms Minto? I think we've straight into covering our three themes in some of the areas that we were earlier on. I wonder if I could just ask a question about the Scottish Government's levelling up. Oh, sorry, that's a rough call. My apologies, Mark. Yes, I should just declare an interest in relation to British Veterinary Association. I'm an associate member although not a doctor. I wonder if I could just pick up actually on that third theme convener which is about practical considerations and I think we've covered some of that already in the answers but just drilling down then into the next 13 months because it is only 13 months to that guillotine as it's been described, that cut-off point. Can you get some reflection on what this actually means for your organisations and how you anticipate working directly with government departments, particularly DEFRA who are having to review 570 laws. I mean we've had some sort of general concerns about resources, staff implications but how are you actually practically trying to work with that challenge in terms of engaging with your members, engaging with government departments, setting up working groups? I mean what does that stakeholder engagement look like for you because these decisions are very real if that sunset timescale remains at 13 months rather than a phased approach or a much longer deadline. Yes, Gareth? Yes, if I could just come in there. I mean the BVA is a member organisation. As a consequence, it's responsible to its members. It's got those members provide the funding for this sort of thing. The BVA engages at both devolved level and at UK level but it's got limited resource. The simple answer to your question is that if a lot of effort has to go to reviewing retained EU law, those resources can't be spent on other things that are important to do with both animal health and welfare and also human health and welfare and by that I mean the health of vets. I can't give you an exact figure but it will have a profound impact. That's a useful reflection on impact. I'm interested also in practically what measures you're putting in place because the clock's really ticking on this. Donna, did you want to come in? Yeah, I'm just going to come in and say at the moment I don't have any engagement with Deffrit on any of this but just reflecting on what we did with the Brexit was really pushed by industry. Deffrit held continually meetings with industry trying to really do their best. I mean they did step up to the plate after Prosbex that came in of trying to get it all resolved but they don't have the manpower. Again, it's talking about the resource issue. They change constantly in Deffrit as well. The people change so then it's an education again. It just seems to be continual of that education piece with staff within Deffrit as well unfortunately but it is. They don't have the resource and to have 570 pieces of legislation. Everything else will be set aside and it's a bit like what Julie said. What do you focus on? What is going to be the key parts because we've still got a lot of other issues to be dealing with and so to have that volume would be a real struggle and so I think they would be really struggling to engage with industry and see all of that as well and I think they might end up with a bit of frustration and just not come across that yet but I do think that there was a lot of effort and time put into Brexit and they will step up but I just think that it will overwhelm them and if we give them such time frames it will won't be what we want. I'm getting the sense that there isn't a plan, no-one's given you a plan to say right but these are the dates where you need to respond. Sarah, do you want to come? Yeah, just focused on that one. You know this for us is meant developing a whole new work stream, you know QMS part of our core role is to market, you know run consumer marketing campaigns, scon scotch beef scotch lamb and especially selected pork but because of the challenges that this bill could potentially bring in and actually getting product to market we are having to invest more time and levy payers money and ensuring that we have the bits of pieces of legislation in place that enable us to trade which then you know at a never decreasing pot it means we've got less money to spend on that core marketing work which is a very very stark choice that we're having to make to keep the wheels on and we do have a limited resource at QMS but even bigger than that I'm going to use an example on another piece of legislation that's going through the parliaments at the moment in the welfare of animals during transport and so that was a UK government manifesto commitment what we found during that process is that the stakeholder engagement was very very disjointed particularly when it came to the devolved nations and we came in late today we weren't even invited to some of the discussions that really impacted our sector we had to push to you know I constantly feel like I'm having to remind people that we exist in Scotland and I think that's really important I think I think we need to we need to make sure that the inert challenges that Scotland faces are reflected as stakeholder engagement takes place for each of the different provisions that will be reviewed in terms of that legislation but that is a huge amount of work you know just just for one bill it's taken up a considerable amount of our time but it's important because of like I say how product and animals move within the UK so we can't not do it but it's what it means you know we can't do okay any wanting to minnows well mark and i'll come back to you in response to your question about what engagement is there as yet specifically around the implications of this bill I think really none either with the Scottish government or with with the relevant parts of defra obviously it's touched upon in terms of it's this is here and it's going to be a big deal but there has not yet been as yet any detailed specific discussion with either government about how and when to do things and as I think I've alluded to earlier there is already some emerging domestic policy in some of these areas anyway certainly in Scotland but that that had started previously and was not in in response to this the introduction of this bill and I think the what was published yesterday actually was a joint fishery statement which was a joint statement across the UK the four policy fishery policy administration setting out how they intend to achieve the objectives of the fisheries act and I think again that shows a I think a good cross UK relationship in terms of how the administration's work on fisheries they do work quite well together although they'll have different ways of achieving things but we do recognise that we know that in Scotland marine Scotland is under very significant resource pressures they've got huge commitments from the the expansion of offshore wind that are also putting enormous resource pressures on my organisation and also from things like the the commitment to introduce a huge swath of highly protected marine areas by by 2026 so so there's going to be a real clash of domestic policy ambition with achieving what this bill sets out to do and as I say at this stage there has been no specific discussion about the implications of this bill with either government. Just to add we've been in London for the past couple of days and in those couple of days we've met with ministers from DEFRA ministers from Scotland office and ministers from DIT and I guess it wasn't so much about committing our resources to that because we just haven't got the resource to do that as others have already expressed but it was about seeking that clarification piece that transparency and that openness about what's happening and also being able to then for want of better expression be some sort of sense check as I think other organisations could be around some of the potential implications the unintended consequences we've already touched upon and I think that's going to be really really important but whether we get the opportunity to do that or not in that timeframe remains to be seen. In terms of the UK context, obviously we are NFU Scotland but we work very closely with our colleagues NFU England and Wales and also the Ulster Farmers Union in Northern Ireland and collectively we're all in the same place on this so we'll be working very closely together to try and bring to bear our influence on the processes in Westminster. Having said all you know called out DEFRA Scotland office and DIT my understanding is that the lead department on all this is Bays and getting some inroads into Bays is proving quite difficult at the moment. Okay if there's time for another question I'm just going to seek some clarity just on on your preferred sunset clause if you prefer a sunset clause at all and I think Gareth you'd said you want to see the laws in place for as long as possible Johnny I think NFUS you'd said 2026 which itself we've had evidence to suggest that's quite an arbitrary date because 10 years since Brexit but I'm just wondering if you've got any specific thoughts on a when a sunset clause if any sunset clause should be should be implemented or if this phased approach is the best way forward and it's hard to kind of pick a natural date. Yeah if I may well firstly I'll ask the question if I may and we can provide a written response on the current plans within BVA to answer the need I think what we're if I may reflect on what what other witnesses are saying and they're most to come back on this is that a lot of this you could almost call it a business uncertainty because we don't know we're unsighted just because of the sheer volume of stuff what the consequences are going to be you know and so it's very difficult to plan at this stage I can give an indication of where our planning has got to but just to reflect that within DEFRA itself about 80% is relates to EU law and about 80% is devolved so it tells you instantly there's a lot of legislation to to get through so that just gives the frame that it's you know it's it's a big ask and and therefore the length of time I think will depend partly on the on the priority that both UK government and and and the devolved administrations also put to particular issues and until we have you know some dialogue on and site on that it makes it very difficult to then you know put resource into an issue that may relate to our particular sector so it's I think it's the uncertainty of it really that's preventing us to answering them more detailed yeah just to add that I think it would be very dangerous to put any kind of deadline on this because we've already you know shown we don't know what's coming around the corner Covid came and disrupted absolutely everything and particularly that preparation for EU exit so I think with the current uncertainty in that wider congeal political landscape we want to make sure we get this right rather than rushing into something with with the level of unintended consequence I think everybody's views have probably been aired so unless anyone's got anything more to add on that I'm going to have a question from mr Cameron thank you convener I've got two questions and they're basically variations on Mark's questions which is I think the date that once he's speculated in the media if there is to be an extension is 2026 and I just wondered you know that's four years from now standing what's just been said is that date you know would most people be in favour of that date or be I accept they're something that don't want any dates or don't you know fundamental issues with the bill itself but that's my first question my second question is engagement with the Scottish Government we spoke elsewhere spoke a little bit about this but has there been any contact engagement with the Scottish Government given that Scottish Government under this bill has the ability to restate retained EU law and obviously there are devolved competencies involved so I'm just interested in understanding the Scottish Government's policy to align with EU law wondering if there's been any engagement with the Scottish Government and and or its agencies don't know if anyone wants to come back on that very quickly Donald you certainly at an official level I've had some initial discussions with Scottish Government on this and probably shared some concerns around to go back to your first question around the implications of a of that sunset clause and the possibility of an extension on in some respects but I do feel that dates are kind of arbitrary and they become something of a hostage to fortune a bit like government targets really but yeah so in terms of engagement with Scottish Government that is that is underway and I think it will be critical bring in Julie and then Elspeth thanks yeah thank you like Johnny we we don't support a sunset clause at all it's arbitrary and how do you choose 23 26 29 30 I'd rather start from the beginning and you know work through good rules than have arbitrary guilloteens over perfectly good rules that that already exist in terms of engagement with Scottish Government we're in we're a non-ministerial departments we work quite closely with the government we are talking to them all the time about these issues they're setting up some internal governance and we're beginning now to get involved in some of their work we're involved in we have our legal advisers working with their legal advisers looking at the the raft of legislation that could be impacted affected or you know sunsetted by this some by this bill we are involved in in their governance arrangements we're taking a paper to our board next week to consider how we advise the government on which bills should fit in which buckets and which one is the most difficult to to unpick the decisions on which ones they go with sit with the government that they're for ministers to decide but our advice will be based on some principles that we're beginning to now develop as to you know how how would we help them choose that the right ones to keep or sunset so consumer protection obviously is one of the you know the core tenets of that paper that we'll be taking to our board next week we're also in touch very closely with Food Standards Agency because of course they're in the same boat as us on all of this they'll be talking to their government departments down south but like us they're in in the same position already running very fast to manage some of the implications of EU exit that we're still you know having to catch up with and replicate systems from from the EU so like us they're really short of resource to to manage this we've a number of people internally looking at this at FSS but nowhere near the kinds of you know capacity that I would like us to have and again you know if we were to need more resource we'd have to have a difficult conversation with ministers as to could they fund us you know better to do this work or actually if not what would they like us to drop and stop doing in future if we wanted to work this through to whatever arbitrary deadline the bill takes Mr Muherhead say that did you want that can as well yep thanks convener I think we would concur with everybody's view that the idea of an arbitrary deadline you know would be very suboptimal to put it politely and I think I'd just go back to our opening comments about the context that we find ourselves in we as a trade association are under a lot of resource pressure and our members are under a lot of pressure because of the you know the past few years have been really difficult when you think about Covid on-going EU exit issues and now you know what I'd term the cost of production crisis for our members on every day throughout the supply chain so you know industry is is dealing with a lot at the moment and added business uncertainty and you know increased resources required in this area would be wouldn't be welcomed and as I've said previously I think we want to look at a more sort of I don't want to use the word ad hoc process but review of EU retained legislation on an on-going basis and try and prioritise you know what needs to be looked at first by industry and take that approach so yeah and I think realistically just going back to the question that Mark posed about stakeholder engagement I think it's pretty obvious that it's not possible to have meaningful stakeholder engagement with the current 13 month deadline you know many of us have been involved with the agriculture bill consultation and the previous iterations of that and that's been stakeholder engagement over at least a four-year period which gives you a bit of a sort of context on that one so okay else but then then I'll bring Sarah in for a question thanks yeah I think dates are arbitrary and I think what's more important is careful policy analysis and working out the priorities in terms of of where we want to need to change and certainly within our organisation we've we've been doing some of that we've been doing it for some time before the introduction of this bill in terms of needing to see what parts of the of the EU body of fisheries management law that we would like to see changed I think what we need to see from government is that commitment to move away from this common fisheries policy and to see that continue and I didn't want to give the impression that we hadn't had any discussion with with government about those issues we have we've spoken with both DEFRA and UK government other parts of UK government such as Scotland office and also with Scottish government about the fact that this bill is now making its way through Parliament and there will be implications of it but what we haven't done is have detailed discussions yet in terms of what that entails. I would echo the point that Johnny Hall made about base I think I sometimes pick up a frustration in other parts of UK government that maybe there needs to be more joined up government thinking around the consequences of of these bills and I think it's really important that there's greater engagement with base in terms of the implications of this and the scope for there being unintended consequences if this isn't done right. Reading your evidence and listening to you today clearly 2023 is a massive cliff edge 2026 is still a cliff edge because it's not that long off. What do witnesses think about taking the opposite approach which I think one of you mentioned which was instead of dumping everything then you actually think what do we keep everything and then decide what you want to get rid of in terms of flexibility and that would be a much more prioritised much less risky approach which would give you the opportunity to seek opportunities rather than take the risk of putting environmental human health or animal health the risk and the huge uncertainty. Julie has already expressed that. Does anyone else want to? Yeah unanimously around the room everyone supports a reversal of the business. I think we just have to be mindful of sort of not getting sort of into inertia and then sort of domestic policies in other areas or sort of taking effort away from ever actually from giving this the attention that it needs. As I say that there's there's good reason certainly in my area from why we need that divergence but we have to make sure that we get it right and it's more important to get it right than get it fast so it has to be done properly but you know we just need to I think be mindful of the fact that if you sort of push these things into the long grass then other things come along and get in the way so I would just make that caveat. I think that that's a very important caveat and just reflecting on the evidence about the sheer scale of the number of pieces of legislation to review it would let stakeholders and advisors actually prioritise where you want to take the opportunity rather than the panic that's clearly going to be in place very shortly for people. So I'm looking for further committee members if they want to come in. I think everyone's exhausted their questions this morning can I thank everyone again it's been a really interesting and really engaging session this morning and echo the thanks for all the written contributions that you gave of the evidence prior to today's meeting. We'll now move into private session of the committee.