 goodness morning, and welcome to the third meeting of the health, social care and sport committee in 2023. I received apologies for today's meeting from Tess White. Before we commence this morning's meeting, we've also got a change of membership to inform everyone about what Weilmuckin has left the committee and will be replaced by Paul Sw swallow, I want to thank Weilmuckin for all the work that he's done on the committee in the past couple of years and wish her all the best Yn oeddaeth nesgrifwyddiolaw, nôr yn gweithio poliwyr hwnnw, os ydw i'r canyddol i'r cynllun ar gyfer IMSP? IMSP-Kwme. Mae hyn i'r canyddol, nesgrifwyr hwnnw. Mor i gyd, iess i'r canyddol i'r cynllun ar gyfer IMSP-Kwmp, olygu chi yn gwbod. Eryddu'r canyddoi. IMSP-Kwm yn goled hyd yn cynghwilio i'r canyddol i'r cynllun ar gyfer IMSP-Kwmp, a chydw i'r cyfnig o'r gwyrdd. I want to do as a membership of the GMB and Unite trade unions. Thank you very much. The second item on our agenda is to decide whether to take items 5 and 6 in private. Members agreed? We agreed. The next item on our agenda is an oral evidence session with Cricket Scotland and Sports Scotland. This is an opportunity to receive an update on the organisation's progress towards implementing the recommendations of the independent review into racism in Scottish Cricket. It is the second such meeting that we have had. I think that the last one was around about October last year. I also want to welcome Co-Cab Stewart, who is not a committee member. She is attending for this item and hopefully will be able to give Co-Cab the opportunity to ask some questions after members have asked questions of the panel. I welcome to the committee Gordon Arthur, chief executive officer in Anjan Lutra, the chair of Cricket Scotland. We have got Forbes Dunlop, the chief executive officer of Sports Scotland with us. Welcome to you all and thank you for making the time to come back. I believe that Gordon Arthur has a brief opening statement to make. Anjan is going to make an apology over to you. Thank you to the committee for providing me with this opportunity to present today. As you may know, I was appointed the chair of Cricket Scotland in October of last year. A major motivation for me to join the organisation was the opportunity to entirely rebuild it, starting with the focus on how they approach anti-racism and EDNI. I was really angry and upset when I read the report. What happened should never have happened and is our responsibility and commitment to make sure that we tackle racism and discrimination and build a brighter future. So what have we done so far? First, in addition to my appointment, we have appointed two new independent board members. We have met a number of times over the past few months. In addition to that, we have delivered three key documents that are foundational and will drive a lot of the upcoming work in the coming months. Those include number one, the governance review, number two, the anti-racism and EDNI strategy, and number three, the review into the handling of the discipline issues at the WDCU. In addition to that, we have also put together an anti-racism and EDNI advisory group to provide us with on-going consultation over the coming months. We also recognise that we cannot tackle racism if we do not invest in HR. That is why we have contracted a specialist third party provider to provide us with a full service of high quality HR services. To follow on from that appointment, a review of all the job descriptions, contracts and performance plans is on-going and will be completed by the end of February. In addition to that, we have also launched two initiatives with the SAMH, the Scottish Mental Health Charity. That is to provide support to our employees, but also to the individuals going through the referral process. We also recognise that we need to be a lot more transparent at Cricket Scotland and one of the key areas that was identified was around our selection processes. That is why we have undergone a review of all of our selection processes and women's international teams. That new policy has been implemented and will continue to be refined over the coming months. In addition to that, we have also partnered with the SACA, which is an amazing initiative supporting South Asian cricketers in Scotland. In addition to everything that I have mentioned there, we also decided to take the groundbreaking decision to professionalise the women's game for the first time ever in Cricket Scotland's history. We now have paid women cricketers, which is something that we are extremely proud of. With regards to the referrals process, the initial review has been completed. The most significant cases, once fully investigated, will be passed on to a series of committees, and they will judicate on the findings. We understand that this is urgent, but we also understand that due care and process and attention needs to be given to these highly complex cases. Overall, we have made a lot of progress over the past few months, but there is a ton more work to go. We are moving as fast as we possibly can, and it is my commitment that we are going to continue to move as quickly as we can and work tirelessly until we make Cricket the most inclusive sport in the country. Thank you again. Thank you, Mr Luther. I now hand over to Forbes Dunlop, who has also got a statement. Thank you for the opportunity to come back to committee today to update. It is important that we do not lose sight of why we are here. I remind her that the independent review found over 440 cases of racism, discrimination and inequalities in Scottish cricket. More than half of those cases were to do with the policies and procedures within cricket, and more than 200 were individual concerns raised around racism, discrimination and inequalities. It is our responsibility in Sport Scotland working closely with Cricket Scotland to address the findings in the review and to make sure that every person who had the courage to come forward and share their experiences are listened to, investigated and action taken. I previously talked to the committee about doing things in the correct order with the correct process so that long-term change is implemented. That started with the board appointment. It continues with the governance review, and I think that most importantly the change will be captured through the anti-racism and EDI workstream that Anjan has talked about. The complexity and the challenges around the process cannot be an excuse for slow pace. It is something that I talked to Gordon about on a weekly basis, and I know that Cricket Scotland and Sport Scotland agree that we need to, now that foundations are in place, increase that pace of the work. We have supported Cricket Scotland over the last year with £465,000 of investment. That goes into helping Cricket Scotland deliver the change. Since the publication of the review, we have provided other significant additional resources to help with the referrals process, to help with the HR processes again that Anjan has touched on. Now that the foundations are in place, we are in discussions about further investment to accelerate the anti-racism and EDI strategy, and to look at the appointment of an EDI manager within Cricket Scotland. It is important to recognise that the work that we are doing is not just focused on Cricket, and we know that there is more to do to support the wider sporting sector and other sporting bodies in Scotland with issues of racism, discrimination and inequalities. That is why I was pleased last week to announce a new partnership with the UK-wide anti-racism and discrimination charity, Sporting Equals. The partnership will help us to build trust and capability within the sector and help to tackle racism, inequality and champion anti-racist behaviours. As a national agency for sport, it is our job and our role to help Cricket Scotland but also to hold Cricket Scotland to account for the progress that they need to make. The foundations are in place and it is now important to work with Cricket Scotland to invest further to allow that pace of change to happen. Thank you very much. I have a couple of questions. I note that your action plan was published yesterday afternoon. My first question was going to be when is your action plan going to be published, but you released that yesterday afternoon. Members are catching up with that in real time. Mr Luther, you have talked about this a little bit, but the efforts that have been made to engage with stakeholders, that is everyone in Cricket across Scotland, about the action plan, what your programme is going to be, to disseminate the information that is in that action plan. I specifically want to ask about the recommendations relating to the western district where quite a lot of the complaints came from. I wonder if you can address that wider, how you are going to disseminate that action plan, but what specific measures are you taking in western district? Yes, absolutely. To your first point about stakeholder engagement, a lot of the time that I have spent over the past few months speaking to as many people as possible in the Scottish cricket community, but also in the global community, is absolutely fundamental to understand what is going on in the ground at first instance in order to put anything forward around an action plan or strategy. The first eight to nine weeks of my post, all I did was speak to everyone on the ground to understand what was going on and made myself very visible with everyone in the community. That work is going to continue. At the moment, we are putting together, with our new head of communications, a road map for us to be on the road. A very detailed plan to be out there every week, every month engaging with the community over the medium to long term to make sure that the initiative that we started is not just forgotten about and it's something that we're going to continue to do for a long period of time that's fundamental to change. I will be part of that and I will be very visible in the cricket community going forward. In regards to the WDCU, I believe that Gordon is a lot closer to the detail as the chief executive and will be able to provide you with exact specifics around the very next steps there. From my multiple discussions with Gordon over the past couple of weeks and months, he's held a number of engagement sessions and he's working closely with the WDCU to make sure that everything is driven appropriately, but I'm sure Gordon can provide you with the exact detail around that if that's okay. I'll hand over to Gordon then. Thank you, convener. We've been working closely with the WDCU in particular but all the regional chairs and representatives over the last three or four months. The action plan was only published publicly yesterday, but the work in the action plan has all been on-going and been in dialogue with the appropriate people for different bits of the action plan as we've gone through. We've completed the review into how disciplinary issues have been handled in the WDCU. That report has been fed into the overall governance review for the sport. We've communicated with the WDCU about that, shared the report with them and got feedback from them on the report, so they've been involved in that. At the start of September, an almost completely new committee was elected in the WDCU, the previous committee having resigned a month or so earlier than that. We have a new chair in Kizza Alley, who I'm working very closely with. I'm speaking to her every week probably about a whole range of issues. We've completed that review into the way disciplinary processes have been handled. That's been fed into the overall governance review. Out of that governance review in the coming weeks will come a proposed new approach to how discipline is handled across cricket, across the whole of Scotland. In the past, there's been broad processes and policies in place, but the five different regions have had quite a high degree of latitude as to how they've interpreted those and put them into practice. That's one of the reasons why we've had such inconsistent outcomes in the area of discipline, is because the different regions have been doing things in a different way. That needs to change, it's been unhelpful and needs to be tightened up. The new process will bring a much more coherent national approach to the way discipline issues are handled. That's one of the big issues we need to go out what sooner in the next week or two we should have the proposed framework for that. We then need to go out and discuss that with the regions and have that put in place by the start of the season, which is only 12 weeks away. There's a lot of work to do prior to that. I'm looking at your timetable for things and it says that you develop and implement a new disciplinary framework and you've got a timetable for that to be in place by the 30th of April. The recruitment of the independent disciplinary panel says on-going. Surely you want this panel to be in place for the start of the season? Absolutely, the panel is practically in place now. We've got a couple of disciplinary cases from the end of last season, which have been escalated. That's why we needed to start recruiting the conduct and sport panel. That advert went out in, I think, if I remember late November. We've got 12 applicants for it and I think about another 10 or 12. We've been talking to a lot of different people, encouraging through running out racism and other organisations to get people to come forward for that panel. The panel will be the pool. Each committee will be three people. That's kind of in place and ready to go for two things. One, to deal with the cases that come out of the referrals process. They will come to Cricket Scotland and the more significant ones will go to the conduct and sport committees. Secondly, that will be then in place for any on-going disciplinary issues from the start of next season. By the start of the season, that conduct and sport panel will be up and running and be ready to pick up any disciplinary issues that occur in the early part of the season. I think the first games of the season are something like the 26th of April. I'll hand over to Sandesh Gohani. Sandesh. Thank you. We've had a meeting before and I was very impressed with the drive and the change that you've made in your personal business and you're bringing to this. That's very important. What barriers do you think that you're facing right now? Thank you for the question and the kind words. Lots of barriers. Number one, lack of hours in the day. We are working 12, 15 hours every day to make sure that we stay on top of this as quickly as we can. Secondly, resources. The way that I've always thought about capital throughout my last 10 years in business is capital equal speed. There's a lot of things that we could be doing right now in parallel rather than step by step but we have to do it step by step because we do not have unlimited funds so we have to take our time and we have to do things as well as balancing a budget. That's the biggest two barriers right now. I also think that a big barrier is the ability to add a massive new ambitious strategy, vision, mindset and change to the organisation that has been for so long ran in a different manner. I'm trying to bring energy alongside a very big ambitious global strategy that takes Cricket Scotland to heights never been seen before and we started with the professionalisation of the women's game which has never been done before. We did it within two months of being appointed and we made it a priority to do that. I think just getting everyone to adapt to this new big ambitious strategy is something that will take a bit of time and that we're wary of and we need to take people on the journey and we don't want to scare anyone and we need to make sure that we're consulting with all the various stakeholders in Cricket Scotland and take them on this journey with us but certainly the ambition is very, very big now. You spoke about budget and we heard from Forbes that £460,000 is being given to Cricket Scotland. Is this enough and what is the realistic cost of change that you want? Overall we get roughly about $2 million for the next 12 months from various parties including Sport Scotland who obviously support us very well. We have been able to put forward a very good balanced budget that builds the firm holistically and across all verticals. There has been an overspend on specific areas at Cricket Scotland over the last five, ten years and it's neglected many areas. When I first arrived at the organisation there was no marketing function, there was no women's contracts, there was barely an operations function and a lot of things didn't exist and that was because a lot of the money was invested in one area so with the money that we've got now it's absolutely enough to one, make sure that we're spending our money effectively and wisely and we've done a cost optimization exercise which has saved us a lot of money but two, to also run the sport. Of course we need more capital to do certain projects that's been outlined in the changing of the boundaries report and as Forb has mentioned we're working closely with Sport Scotland to unlock that funding over time so we absolutely need more capital but we're going to earn that and we're going to work for it and one of the things that I was very pleased to hear was this appointment of an HR team that you've gone out and Tess White at our previous meeting was very clear about the importance of HR and I was very disappointed with the answers we got back about it so that's a very pleasing step that you've taken Gordon, I want to ask you about something that you said which is where you've got different districts doing things differently it doesn't matter how you break it down what happens totally unacceptable It was completely unacceptable and I'm only breaking it down in the context of trying to understand what's led us to that point so that we can try and fix it it's quite clear that the discipline system has not worked and has led to some of the problems that we're now dealing with so I only say it in that context and this is a leader question what is the ethnic diversity mix of your players at differing age groups so at this stage we don't have the data so one of the things we need to do through this programme is build a data gathering system so that we have a baseline that we can then measure our progress against over time anecdotally we have somewhere about 6,000 or 7,000 people playing organised cricket in Scotland but we have a lot more people particularly getting down into the juniors and grassroots level and as you get further down the age groups the ethnic mix is much much higher in the club scene there's been less over time coming through across the whole country the change in some of the clubs drum and trinity at Edinburgh would be a good example four or five years ago they were struggling to put out two teams and the club was almost all white people now they're putting out about five teams a week and something like 1990-95% of the people playing cricket and drum and trinity cricket club are from diverse backgrounds so there has been a huge shift but at this point in time we haven't got the data getting that data so we can baseline it and then measure it and see the impact and outcomes of the work that we're doing will be really crucial just to add to that point echo exactly what Gordon says there is not having the data as criminal we cannot specifically answer your question there because we do not have the systems to provide us with those numbers so as Gordon said it's all anecdotal right now whereas the priorities to make sure we design and implement and roll out a system that allows every player in Scotland to on board and become a member of Cricket Scotland and that data flows through all the clubs up to Cricket Scotland and we can sit here and tell you we have X amount of cricketers of this age group this ethnicity this sex everything and that's where we want to get to but we need to do that work in addition to everything that we're doing we want to do it as soon as possible we're in our 100 day plan and we are working on putting together a system to design that and roll out but that's a big project when? TBD can't commit to that right now don't know the dates because the changing the boundaries report takes priority right now and there's a lot going on at the moment but as soon as possible for me this is vital how could you possibly look at racism look at what's going on in the drop out rate if you don't know that's absolutely vital I've got one final question if I may Anjan what has your commitment roll out been with other sports around Scotland and with that also I'd like to know what barriers you think other sports have I'm not an expert in other sports across Scotland but I did play tennis for Scotland when I was younger and I have had conversations with individuals at Tennis Scotland as well as the LT in England to learn about how other sports are tackling the issues that they face and really a lot of the conversations I've had with multiple sports is around that is learning how are you guys tackling this what resources are you putting what policies have you got in place and I think we need to constantly up skill ourselves and constantly learn and understand what bigger organisations are doing because that's what we want to get to we want to strive for the best and I've spent a lot of time also with the ECB to learn about how they're tackling the issues and also global cricket boards as well around the world to understand what they're doing I think in regards to Scottish sport I don't know what the impact is across the sports I wouldn't be surprised if there's issues in other sports but I'm sure that everyone is watching us closely and is hopefully learning from the steps that we're putting into place because our ambition is to make sure that we become best in class and we really are committed to do that and I'm happy to help other sports as well if they need that Evelyn Tweed, do you have a question that you want to pick up on something that was said? Can you say more about the HR approach and how that's going to work with the rest of the organisation? Again, I think that Gordon can give you a bit more of the detail around it but at a very high level we've appointed a third party full service company with on-going monthly support to cover pretty much everything in the HR hemisphere this is a very quick immediate solution it's quicker than hiring an internal team it's cost effective and it also allows us to get access to a range of experts covering the most complicated HR matters they're a well-renowned firm we did a pretty comprehensive RFP process for this, we went to market and we didn't just appoint the first person that we saw we benchmarked it against a number of people and we believe that they were a good firm if I'm not misspoken I believe that they're a Scottish firm and we're going to be relying on them for everything to do with HR and we believe that they're a strong team and they're going to help us to achieve that but Gordon can maybe add any more detail that I may have missed out Andrews covered the main parts we have all the different HR services under one roof so we can go to them and get advice on a whole range of different things and they've got experts who can help us with that one of the reasons we were keen to do this was if we'd employed an HR manager they would likely be skilled in maybe one maybe two areas but unable to help us across the whole piece so we have access to that but also importantly through that we get an HR system so that there's never been any HR in place in Cricket Scotland really so that HR system will allow us to do everything from properly log people's holidays through to having job descriptions proper performance indicators in place learning and development plans in place to support appraisal processes so a very simple and easy to use HR system that will back up all the services that are provided for us has them when we need them Mr Arthur how can you ensure that there's going to be an open and accessible relationship with HR when it's external well we have a a pointed relationship person who will be in the office every month they're going to run sessions with us on a very regular basis over the course of the coming months to understand the services which are available there is a helpline that staff can go to direct if they have issues and want to raise them direct so I think it's all about the way we work with them and how closely we work with them in this kind of post Covid world where so many people are working remotely often people aren't in the office anyway so I think the external provision will not be that different from having a member of staff who's working remotely because we have as much access as we need through the agreement not only for the senior leadership team but for the staff as well Stephanie Callaghan Thank you very much just to pick up on what you've said already and him your passion for the role is very clear to us all and very much appreciated but you mentioned the fact that right now you're working to well to 15 hour days which is something that's not going to be sustainable without burnout and I remember Gordon at the last committee meeting you said something similar there as well so I'm a wee but I'm slightly concerned about if people are putting in so much hours and they're working seven days a week it becomes easy for mistakes to be made regardless of how committed you are to it so I'm wondering about what's the sustainability of that and when do you expect to be in a position where it's a more normal working environment Thank you for the question I think firstly I fully agree with you it's not sustainable it's not something that I advocate for and it's not something that I would expect anyone else to do I think if it is sustained for a long period of time it will lead to burnout unfortunately the situation that we're in right now is of a crisis and sometimes during a crisis you need to go above and beyond to make sure things move in the right direction at the right pace but as you very correctly say over the long term it will fundamentally normalise especially as we add more headcount to the organisation which is on-going we add a head of communications very high quality individual joint joining the firm and he will be taking significant workload away from Gordon over the coming weeks there's multiple more contractors and individuals joining us so I do believe it will normalise over time but yes it's a difficult period but that is something Gordon and I have committed to do to make sure that we get the job done as quickly as possible A question either for yourself or Gordon when does he expect this crisis the crisis period to be over in four things to settle down I think I mean from my perspective the first six months I've been in post has been about about laying foundation sustainable foundations because there weren't really decent foundations when I came in we've had to do a huge amount to put Cricut Scotland on a proper footing as well as deliver the rest of the Cricut season and start a huge programme of work much of which needs to be in place by the start of next season so the answer to an extent to your question I think lies in two things firstly we're putting ourselves under a huge amount of pressure to get some things done by the end of April because we have a new Cricut season coming and we believe it's crucial that those things are in place by the start of April and secondly we've talked already about the HR situation we've talked about the head of communications we've got another four jobs due to be advertised in the next week or so and the core team in Cricut Scotland is 10 or 11 people so four more people is going to make a huge difference to our ability to spread the workload and find ourselves in a sustainable position so some of the pressure we're putting ourselves under will drop a bit when we get into May and June and also by then we will have hopefully new people into the into the organisation to help spread the workload Gordon, that's quite reassuring 50% increase will certainly make a difference then hopefully we all start getting more sleep and more leisure time can I just ask you what implications do you steam with your Gordon on the related development and approval of the action plans in terms of the overall timetable for addressing the recommendations of the independent review? Sorry, I dismissed the staff. What implications does the delay to the development and approval of the action plan having in terms of the overall timetable for addressing the recommendations of the independent review? I'm not sure what delay you're referring to the action plan that's come out of changing the boundaries so we published that yesterday but that's been in place since since August and we've been working on it since August and working with Sport Scotland on delivering it since August so the plan was published until yesterday but we've been working to the deadlines either in the plan or that we set ourselves for the work that needs to be done and the action plan that was published yesterday is our latest view with some quite aggressive timelines in it but our latest view of when the work will be done and that's been developing over time because we've had to work out what needs to be done and how we need to do it and then we can start putting dates on it so where I think up to where we would hope to be at this point in time but we do have a huge amount of work to deliver over the next three months does that answer your question? That's fine, that's a bit clearer and a question for yourself Forbes can I ask how likely is it that Cricket Scotland will need to remain in special measures beyond October 2023? It's certainly our intention and I know Gordon and Ann Jan's intention that by the end of the period outlined within the action plans that all recommendations will be put in place and that we will have the confidence to take Cricket Scotland out of special measures but of course we'll keep a very close eye on that and we'll make a judgement at that time the focus, as Gordon and Ann Jan have outlined is absolutely on delivering those recommendations and importantly keeping up the pace with the referrals and the investigation process around those referrals we're very mindful that there's people at the centre of this and those people's concerns need to be heard need to be investigated and need to be managed so our focus is on making sure each of the strands continues at a pace and if we achieve that our ambition is absolutely to have Cricket Scotland out of special measures by October to ensure that effective oversight at this point in time We have a range of regular meetings as you would imagine but there's a fortnightly meeting that myself and Gordon have with our respective teams and the focus of that meeting is absolutely on where are we in terms of progress where are the blockages which are slowing things up and how do we sort those I also have a regular call with Ann Jan to check in on the board as we progress and develop a very new board being put in place so how they're starting to work together and the progress they're making and also importantly we have a monthly meeting between Cricket Scotland, Sport Scotland and running out racism and again that's to make sure that we are listening very closely to the feedback from running out racism and listening to concerns that they have about pace, progress particular actions that we are live with running out racism to get their feedback so there's a range of measures and staff team at Sport Scotland are speaking to Gordon and his staff team on a daily basis but a number of other measures in place to monitor that progress and remove barriers to the progress Ota Emma Harper You want to come back in everyone with a quick question? Mr Dunlop, you said that your job was to hold Cricket Scotland to account and you've talked about the special measures and what you're doing just now how are you going to do it long term? We have a number of different reviews or tools that we have in place many of which we've been reviewing as part of this process but also as part of our EDI strategy which we published in 2021 so there are a number of existing tools independent reviews that we do with sports to check in the progress across a whole range of areas we've reviewed that in light of what's happened within Cricket and so it's a range of these tools that we use to monitor the progress of sports our annual investment process with all sports has checks and balances built into that and again we've had to review that to see where the gaps have been and to see how we strengthen that so there's an annual review process and a conversation that we have with each sport and we're continually looking to improve and enhance how we overview sports performance Thank you convener good morning to everybody thanks for coming today Forbes Dunlop you mentioned that there are people behind all of the issues that we're hearing about today and I know that there are folk that are very brave for coming forward I'm interested in hearing about what's been made towards the complaints that were under formal investigation and I think you said that there's a couple of disciplinary cases from the end of last season that are still under review can you tell us anything or any progress that is being made towards those reviews and at the very bottom of the action the action plan it does talk about a review of referrals and that plan came out yesterday so I'm just reading that right now but just an update on the complaints investigations would be helpful The referrals process has been one part of the recommendations that we were very mindful to set up in an appropriate manner in a very robust manner so that those referrals are investigated and any action that needs to come out of those referrals can't be challenged so it needed to be set up and so we brought in an independent team to manage the referrals led by Harper Macleod sporting equals part of that team and running out racism very involved in the referrals process as well so a team of independent people are looking at all the referrals everyone who has come forward has been communicated with and they're in the middle of live investigations with a number of the referrals clearly it's inappropriate to get into any specific detail on those as they're live investigations but it's one of the areas where we are very mindful of the pace and so the conversation with that referrals team is this needs to speed up and certainly by late spring early summer we expect the investigations phase to be completed for all referrals for those reports then to be passed to Cricket Scotland the committee that Gordon talked about early who will then decide on the forward action from there How are people being communicated with is it a face to face thing? How has it been done? There's part of it which is down to the individual but there's certainly written communication then there's follow up phone communication and then the number of face to face meetings but it's down to the individual who's come forward as to how they want the investigation phase to be progressed I suppose just in addition obviously Sport Scotland is supporting Cricket Scotland in order to take the investigation forward and I've seen the action plan it talks about there's lots of actions about developing and delivering and anti-racism equality diversity and inclusion and cultural awareness education programme and then there's other issues around implementing different actions that will obviously be an on-going process in order to help prevent the need for any further complaints investigation in the future I see everybody's nodding Absolutely there's two strands if you like to this we need to strengthen the systems and processes where there are complaints coming forward and so there's a number of actions that we are taking across sports so that when a complaint does come forward the correct policy procedure and culture within the organisation is in place to hear those complaints and manage them, investigate them and for action to be taken place and we need a confidence in that across sports and the other strand of this is to continue the work which is in particular where our new partnership with Sporting Equals adds value to help support the education process the awareness process to check and challenge and support all sports before issues occur to prevent those cases coming forward in the future dealing with when things do happen and we need to do more to prevent cases coming forward Just a final question You mentioned Sporting Equals What does that mean? What's the role that Sporting Equals has in this whole process? Sporting Equals have helped us on a number of fronts they're a well established UK-wide race discrimination charity and they have a range of expertise and have supported a number of bodies with this type of work but we have signed a new partnership Sporting Equals and the types of things that that will do will provide expert support to sports across Scotland help those sports better understand how you build trust how you build capability capacity how we better engage work with diverse ethnic communities increase awareness or understanding so that sport becomes more inclusive so Sporting Equals is not much working with us on that proactive piece but we also engaged them at the start of their atheros process because they bring some real expertise in the investigation phase as well so they've been working for the last three or four months as part of their atheros process and we've supported them to do that because we recognise the need for expertise as part of that process so again, helping to deal with the complaints, the investigations in the system but also helping us in the atherom education process that's required Gillian Mackay How are you ensuring that any learning from any of these complaints is influencing changes that are made and that those changes are effectively being communicated to those who have made complaints to see that there is some resolution and some impact beyond just the resolution of their complaint I would say everything that we are doing just now is about learning lessons from what's happened so why did this happen why was it not picked up earlier why were things not addressed at the time and why have we got to the situation we're in so there's learning through the atheros the individual cases there's learning through the governance review there's learning through the review we are doing about our independent assessments of sports and where they are and all that continues to build in going forward with sports so there's multiple different strands and we're taking as many lessons as we possibly can from each of those strands and building it into our work going forward To answer your question maybe give you an example of something so we're not just waiting for the referrals to complete where we can learn as we're going from the information that's coming out we're doing so so we've done a huge amount of work over the last couple of months looking at the pathway for younger players coming through to junior international and then full international level it's been an area where many people have asked questions in fact when I was here last time quite a few of the questions related to the pathway the coaches who work across the country on the pathway have generally been in place for quite a long time it's the same group of people they had been appointed in the past and there wasn't really any turnover of those coaching people and new people didn't really have an opportunity to get into the system, new coaches so we put all of those jobs out for recruitment this autumn it's been a massive piece of work 45 to 50 people have all been interviewed to try and freshen up the regional coaching approach and bring new people in and bring better diversity into the mix but the other thing we've done is we've appointed regional talent spotters effectively so historically it's generally been the role of the coaches to spot talent and bring them through and they just can't cover a huge geographic area with maybe 20, 30, 40 clubs in it on a proper and consistent basis so now outside the coaching team we've appointed talent spotters to work across the regions so people who live in more remote communities who don't play matches in Edinburgh and get seen more regularly or Glasgow for example in the central belt to try and improve the information coming into the selection processes for the under 15s and under 17s and under 19s teams so that we can identify a better and more diverse pool of talent and give more people opportunities and then in addition to that we've set up a system, a software system whereby players families, coaches, club coaches can post videos of young players so that the talent spotters can see people who are being put forward by their clubs or parents or others and then go and see them actually in match conditions and follow that up so there will be a lot more we can do in that space but we've already completely shaken up the way we run that bottom end of the pathway to try and improve the opportunity for more diversity coming through in the playing pool Thank you How far progressed is Cricket Scotland in establishing a longer term complete handling process to what you think we'd be confident that this process fully addresses the issues identified by the plan for sport review including lack of confidentiality and clarity in the reporting process and the lack of a complaints process for members of the wider cricketing community have been put in place in terms of support for those who do come forward with a complaint in terms of mental health and their wellbeing as well as through their sport Thank you Thank you for that The plan for sport helpline has remained open and is still open today for anyone involved in Cricket to come forward and make a complaint We're in discussions with Sport Scotland about Cricket Scotland taking on that responsibility because I think it's really important we own it It's a crucial part of this whole process that Cricket Scotland steps forward and owns that properly and there are two parts to this there's a kind of discipline process about Cricket and the way that's managed in a match situation and around a match situation and the behaviour of people in and around Cricket and then on top of that there's a complaints process that needs to give people confidence that they can come forward and that their complaints will be listened and actioned and I think a crucial part of the last 12 months has been that plan for sport process it's given people confidence to come forward and I hope it's given people confidence that their issues will be will be taken seriously and we need to build a process into Cricket Scotland to enable that going forward and as I say we're in discussions at the moment with Sport Scotland about how we take responsibility for that and as I mentioned earlier we're also planning to completely rebuild the disciplinary process it's going to be called the conduct in sport which illustrates it's a much wider process that we're going to be undertaking going forward to have a national consistent system and then we will go out to all the clubs to talk to them about the new system and educate them about expectations and to try and accelerate the process of changing behaviour in and around the sport and then as Anjan mentioned in his opening comments we have started two partnerships with SAMH over the latter part of last year one of those is to support complainants but also to support witnesses and maybe people who've had complaints made against them to make sure that anybody involved in the referrals at the moment and going forward has got mental health support completely independent and effectively provided through a partnership between Cricket Scotland and SAMH very briefly one more what needs to be done specifically to support young players to be able to raise issues when they see them I've no doubt that some of the complaints we've heard are the tip of the iceberg and there's probably young players who have heard things and not raised them because of various factors so what's being done to ensure that young players can have their voices heard and be able to make complaints probably against adults when they hear things that are inappropriate so it's been on the definition of young where that kind of kicks in because obviously we've got boys and girls from age 5 upwards involved in Cricket there are a number of different ways they get involved in Cricket sometimes it's through their clubs sometimes it's through the programs community programs we run in partnership with maybe the Lords Taverners for example the Wickets program that we do in Edinburgh and Glasgow and sometimes it's through the schools so there are a number of different routes for example if something happens at the schools the schools generally have very well developed support mechanisms for that some of the clubs have better support mechanisms than others so we're going to have to look into how we try and improve that in areas where it needs needs improved and it will be part of the process going forward we're not really quite at that stage yet as I say we're still leaning on the plan for sport process at the moment and that will be a key consideration as we move forward in finalising the arrangements Do you have any reflections on that as well? Absolutely to build on what Gordon said development of young people generally is of paramount importance and a lot of the conversations out with the changing the boundaries reports that I've been having with stakeholders around the world has been around how to absolutely amplify the investment to the development of cricketers in Scotland starting at a grassroots level it is the fundamental bedrock of cricket in Scotland and we need to get more cricket bats into young people of all genders all ethnicities all abilities and there are many people out there that want to support us in those programmes there are some amazing charities one of which we already have a small programme with that has desire has expressed desire and ambition that we have a programme massively and try to hit every school in Scotland and they will also provide us with significant level of funding for that but we do not have the governance or the infrastructure in place to deliver that programme right now so we need to make sure that we work on that so that we can take up these offers and work with partners to really develop young kids and I see sport at a young level not about sport when I would play cricket as a young kid my reflections of playing sport at the time it is about sport as a young kid all you want to do is when to play sport but actually when you reflect on it in later life you learn valuable life lessons such as communication, not giving up discipline, hard work integrating with society when you are young so if we have any barriers and we are not maximising the development of young people then that is criminal and we absolutely need to do that and that is very far up the agenda of what we want to do and the absolute fundamental priorities to make sure that we do everything in changing the boundaries report Thank you Thank you very much and good morning to the panel I am interested in cultural change and change across the whole organisation and I wonder if we can maybe start just with how you feel Gordon that institutional racism has been tackled or is beginning to be tackled in our previous exchange we discussed items and you talked about perceptions very often I obviously pushed back slightly in that but clearly what running out racism have said is that they are concerned that there is still not a grasping of the wider issue here that there is an institutional racism issue within Cricket Scotland so I suppose I just wonder how you would respond to that does Cricket Scotland recognise that this is an institutional issue that actually goes beyond just people's perceptions but actually has to be looked at in a systemic way I think we have already started addressing it in a systemic way so I absolutely recognise that and recognise the findings in changing the boundaries changing the boundaries report and we are working really hard to change the culture within the organisation and I think there are two aspects to this is the organisation and the wider sport but your question is specifically focused on the organisation and we are working very hard to encourage a culture of openness and transparency we are trying to ensure that the staff within Cricket Scotland feel confident that they can speak up and raise issues which they haven't always been able to do in the past we are involving people in the organisation in a way they've not been involved in the past they've generally just been told what to do and not been given responsibility and not been given accountability so there's a huge amount of work going on within the organisation to improve the culture within Cricket Scotland when we roll out the training and education programme clearly everybody involved in Cricket Scotland will be right at the front of that programme being rolled out and we've also been addressing initially some of the systemic issues that exist in terms of the way the organisation is run and has run Cricket so we've talked a minute ago about the pathways and the way we've been completely reinventing the pathways work to try and remove barriers and we've also taken a very strong approach to the way selections done for example for our international teams to bring openness and transparency to the process to bring a more diverse set of views into the selection committee meetings and to widen the pool of players being considered for selection regardless which particular team we're looking at so there's a lot of work going on to address that last week I got out the change in the boundaries report actually and the 29 of the 31 indicators that plan for sport said that we were we were failing on I think we have work underway to address all the organisational issues within that report actively underway there are some issues in there which are more pertinent to the wider sport and I think over the coming months we need to get out and do a huge amount of engagement with the clubs around the new expectations around the new code of conduct and disciplinary processes and the culture that cricket is played in particularly competitively at club level to try and improve that and remove some of the microaggressions and bad behaviours that have been accepted as banter in common place in the past we just need people to understand that they are not acceptable and will not be acceptable going forward so you would recognise that there is a wider issue here in the sport there is an institutional racism within the sport that has proved challenging because of those sorts of things that you mentioned in your last sentences there it wouldn't have been my intention to leave you with any other opinion last time we were here on 4 October and I never meant to do that when I talked about perceptions last time it was in relation particular to barriers in the selection process and it's important that we address all the barriers in that process and understand whether they are real or not so that we can actually fix the things that are real and need fixing and sometimes change people's understanding if there's an issue around something that they're not comfortable with we need to understand what that is and change it but it was never my intention to leave you in doubt that I completely accept the findings of changing the boundaries in this regard and we are full on trying to tackle the detail of that OK can I just say I think we're talking you mentioned barriers there and trying to assess where these barriers are and how they can be tackled in our previous exchange we spoke about the barriers that young people experience we picked up in some of those issues last time we had a discussion you spoke about young people leaving the sport because of the pressure that they experience from their family to do well and to get qualifications and to go to university and become a doctor or a lawyer I think I'm quoting that directly now there's a perception that there's quite a stereotypical view of many Asian families in particular who might engage in sport I mean would you accept that that could have been perceived as being quite stereotypical in itself and what work has Cricket Scotland done to understand are these barriers are these barriers that would be universally experienced by young people very often so what work has been done to speak to young people because I think you were saying anecdotally that's what you had heard I understand if those are significant issues regardless of who these young people are and where they come from I had many conversations with running out racism after the session last time about those words and what my intentions had been and I was accused of casual racism from the words I said which was not my intention at the time in fact it was two days before Angiom was appointed and his story was the story I had in mind when I said that because he will tell you H19 was pretty much told to pack in cricket and go and get a job and it was that story that was in my mind when I was saying that at the committee last time it wasn't intended to be a generalisation that was what was in the back of my mind so I explained that to Paul Reddish and quite a number of other people in running out racism and I hope they have understood that wasn't my intention and those words didn't come out quite the way I had intended them to come out and we need to make sure that as many people as possible come through the age groups in cricket and get an equal opportunity should they wish to to progress we need to encourage people we need to develop people much of what Angiom said a minute ago about learning life skills as much as critting skills is part of that process and I see it as our job to make sure that we have an opportunity that's available for everyone regardless where they're from and to get as far through the sport as they possibly can and that's what we're seeking to do so we have done already one session actually with Paul who's helping facilitate a session for us looking at the whole selection pathway and looking at all the different barriers in that pathway and trying to identify all the barriers in there and putting in place work to dismantle them where they need dismantling that's going to take time but it's back to the point about approaching this in a systematic way if we don't do that then the problems will just recur in a year or two's time so it will take time but I'm confident that the work's under way to address a lot of these issues Thank you I'm sure committee members will feel that clarity has been helpful I wonder if I can just finally training we know is going to be crucial here across the board awareness understanding those microaggressions that you spoke about people recognising those calling out racism casual racism particularly when it's present what are the timescales in getting this training rolled out and how do you feel progress is going in terms of developing that programme Okay so I think there's two elements to that and the timescale I think is the same broadly for both that the new discipline and conduct approach for the sport needs to be launched and communicated and educated through the system before the end of April the broader training and education around anti-racism and EDI I very much hope that we will have the first sport-wide cycle of that concluded before the start of the season now that's a massive ask to do that and I believe it's achievable numerous conversations I keep saying to him at some point early in 2023 we're going to come to you with a really important ask and that is to bring in external resources to help us run an EDI training and education process for the sport in the kind of February, March, April period in the lead up to the new season I don't want that to be done online I want that to be done face to face I think it's crucial I think we need to get every club in Scotland deeply involved in that process and I don't see it as being a means to its end I see it as the start of something which is going to take years to properly put in place and follow through the scale of cultural change that we're talking about here is very significant so we need to start we need to start with a really big push in the first quarter of this year that training will go on clearly through next season and it will go on in the longer term but I think it's really really important before the first ball of the season is bold that we've got we've got a programme which we need to put in place quickly and get out there and deliver it very great for good for them thank you, I suppose what's really important is everyone here on this committee is invested in how much we despise racism but also the fact that all of us want to see the best players playing for Scotland and for Scotland to be as successful as it possibly can be and I think that's really important to say and on the back of Paul's questions I was personally quite upset with some of those words that you made at the last committee hearing that we had because whilst that is ancient story that we don't know if that's the story for everyone because you don't have the data you don't have anything which is why I think it's so important that you go and get it as a matter of priority because if you don't know why people are leaving then surely you can't dismantle the barriers but on to my questions can I, Forbes, turn to you first and can I ask if you feel that there is institutional racism in other sports it's probably a question that I don't feel as though I can give you a direct answer to and I'm definitely not trying to duck the question I absolutely accept there is instances of racism in other sports but what I think Louise and Plan for Sport did was a full deep rooted review of cricket so a six months piece of work which allowed her then to conclude and her team to conclude institutional racism and without doing a piece of work like that then I think it's hard for me to say yes or no to that question but I absolutely accept that racism does occur in sport and I accept there's enough more work to do I think it's important to mention to the committee that back in April 2021 so pre the piece of work in cricket to the sportscotland board had signed off the EDI strategy and within that there was a central pillar about race and ethnicity and it was in our strategy following a piece of research that we did where the sporting sector told us we need to do more work in this space so we had started a number of strands of work prior to cricket because we recognised there's more work to be done there is racism in sport whether that translates to institutional racism in different organisations but I'm not sure I could answer directly I wouldn't really expect you to be able to answer that question because I think individual instances of racism is something that can be stopped in just education it doesn't take much to move away institutional racism on the other hand does take a lot so do you feel that that's a piece of work that you should be undertaking? Again I've discussed this quite extensively with Louise and the Plan for Sport team about how we assess user learnings from use some of the methodology within the Plan for Sport report to work with other sports to recognise where the gaps are and where progress needs to be made and we're building those conversations and the learning from that into the work that we're doing going forward we've just completed the quality standard review it's a piece of work that all sports go through it looks at their policies, procedures how they their action plans, how they progress and so that review is being influenced by the Plan for Sport piece of work and it's another tool another independent tool that we have where sports will work with a team of experts who will sit down with them and look at policies, procedures how they handle instances of racism but other inequalities that happen within their sport and how they action plan against that the tools that we have that's been in place for a period of time it's been reviewed I could just ask what's that timescale the quality standard review for sport, that review was completed in the autumn, we're just waiting that will be launched in the spring time the updated plan so we're taking the lessons learned from this, the work that Louise and her team have done and building that into that quality standard going forward I was asking Cricket Scotland about the data that they've got for ethnicity do you have that data for other sports? We have some good data but it's not complete and it's not whole and it's not in the way that we would all like to see it so there is again work to do in that space and that's a big part of that quality standards review is the data that we hold it's also a big part of our conversations with Sporting Equals team will do with Government bodies and with other sports they'll look at their data they'll look at what they do hold they'll look at how that's recorded and what that's then telling them My final question I asked Anjan about whether he was in contact with other people and other sports around Scotland do you feel it would be helpful at chair level for regular meetings because if Cricket Scotland is going through full process which is detailed and the work that they're doing and they're having to innovate on a lot of things surely that's the type of thing that should be going throughout all sport in Scotland and UK wide Of course and we do we hold regular meetings with the chairs of all Government bodies we invite them together on topic based agendas and the Cricket Scotland review and report has been discussed as have a number of other pieces of work and in good time and recognising the pressure on Anjan then Anjan's contribution and experience and expertise in that forum will be really important so we do that on a regular basis and these types of issues and discussions are absolutely brought in with the chairs of all Government bodies that's part of a discussion the discussion is led by our chair, Mel Young David Towns How could Scottish Government support sport Scotland in embedding a culture of anti-racism and EDI in Scottish sport? I think that there's a number of members of the committee and other MSPs that are working with us very closely behind the scenes I guess but having conversations with us about that very thing how can we support you, how can we help more and the fact that there is rightly so such an interest and a focus is important because we need to continue to raise the profile and raise the importance of dealing with matters such as racism and the importance of anti-racism so continuing to work with the various members of the committee and other MSPs to discuss both their experiences but also their expertise to help us shape the work that we're doing is important Thank you very much, convener and I just say thank you very much to the committee as well for allowing me this opportunity to come along as you know I have an interest in this area A lot of the points that I was going to raise have fortunately been raised already but I'd like to ask on two levels one about your communications with the Scottish Government and the other section will be about so the first one would probably be with Forbes and yourself can you give us a wee outline on what support and scrutiny you've been getting from the Scottish Government because obviously there were commitments that were made on the back of the motion that I raised for debate in the chamber Of course we have a regular meeting with Minister Murray Todd who works directly with us so we meet with the minister once a month and the Cricket Scotland review has been on that agenda at every meeting that we've had Cabinet Secretary also joins that meeting on a regular basis and asks for an update so him so yourself also joins our calls and has shown interest and also given us very clear direction as to his expectations that this piece of work has progressed in a timely manner we have those direct and regular engagements for those ministers and as I mentioned a range of other MSPs who are in direct contact with us including yourself and rightly so holding us to account for the progress and the pace of change moving on to that holding to account obviously in the light of the report trust was at an all-time low so a lot of this process was about not only rebuilding that trust but actually enhancing it so that we can have truly transformational change because none of us want to be here in 5, 10 years time thinking that we did all this work all these resources and then nothing changed so from that point of view do you think that and Cricket Scotland but also all sporting bodies so I'd be interested to hear from yourself Forbes I think that sporting bodies could have or do have or will have robust enough and effective enough safeguarding procedures that are put in place which means that a situation that's happened in Cricket Scotland will not repeat itself again and we won't lose another generation of sporting ambitious young people I'm happy to go first I think it's absolutely critical that the checks and challenges in the system are robust and root out where there are issues before we get to the situation that we're in we're just about to launch sorry a new investigative service for governing bodies to help governing bodies with the most complex investigations we recognise the challenges and this has happened across a number of sports Scotland and across the UK where investigations have not been sufficient to deal with problems that have been raised on issues and that investigations haven't been done with the right empathy and compassion and understanding of the issues that are at the heart of them so we have a new service which we're about to launch which will help with those complex or more complex investigations that alongside that on-going piece of education support awareness raising that we'll do with sporting equals and I should say with a range of other organisations who are very keen to work with us and help us in this space so again that package of measures about dealing with issues when they do happen because unfortunately as we want to minimise we recognise there will always be complaints in sport and we need to make sure robust policies procedures and the correct culture is in place in sporting bodies to deal with those problems very complex and governing bodies don't have the capacity of the expertise to do it most importantly our effort and energy needs to go into the education the upskilling so as we reduce and hopefully eliminate the need for complaints anybody wants to add to that feel free just a tiny little bit more just about sporting equals since you mentioned it and I appreciate their expertise and really value that what work have they done to understand the Scottish context and to build trust within that process It's really important that there are UK-based charities as I said but part of our conversation with them ahead of signing on this partnership agreement has been the need for them to completely understand Scotland, the communities and the people of Scotland so that the expertise they provide is tailored and it's specific It's not a generic piece of a programme that they bring with us I think over the autumn period where they've been closely involved with the referos process it's helped to build our confidence in them that they are doing that and they will do that and so the work that they do proactively going forward with sport Scotland, with the sector and with other sports bodies in the sector will be targeted, be specific and so on Thank you very much Emma, you had a question you wanted to ask It's just a final question probably directed to Gordon Dumfries Cricket Club base at Nunham have adopted a one club ethos as part of their strategy to grow the club and on their website it basically says we are open and inclusive Cricket Club, we welcome everyone of any age sexual orientation, ability or ethnicity and they also talk about the one club ethos as being critical as part of their development Is that something that Cricket Scotland will monitor on the ground and is it something that as part of the western district Cricket Union you could then adopt and deliver and basically say that this is something that we want to engage across all Cricket Clubs Thank you for the question I think that is one example of many that are out there of clubs which are doing fantastic work and it's really important for all those volunteers out there who run clubs which are doing fantastic work that they get the recognition for what they are doing clearly there's been a lot of inconsistency across the sport and what we need to do is bring everybody up to that level The work we're going to do in the months ahead to start talking to clubs about the relationship between Cricket Scotland the regions and the clubs needs to completely change the relationship Cricket Scotland has tended to be looking away at the international setup hasn't really taken enough interest in the way clubs are run we need to modernise the clubs we need to professionalise the clubs we also need to understand that they are all run by volunteers and we need to encourage people to come up to a level of the kind of example you've given from Dumfries where all clubs are pushing those opportunities for everybody to be involved it's a big cultural change in some clubs as I say some clubs are in a great space already and safeguarding, child protection are all a crucial part of that whole process Cricket Scotland's had all the necessary things in place the clubs have had the necessary things in place in the past have we done enough to support them have we done enough to monitor it have we done enough to upscale it I'm not sure and we will be putting more resources into that in the months ahead to really try and lift the club scene on all of these issues and the best way to do that is to highlight good practice that's already going on in clubs in their regions to give people a clear view of what good looks like so that they can change and develop their own approach to all of these issues and we will be getting right into that so the next four to six weeks I don't know if you want to add anything if I may communicate or just add one point to your question there the best way to think about Cricket in Scotland is you've basically got Cricket Scotland and then you've got hundreds of very fragmented clubs that are unbelievably well supported by volunteers on the ground they're doing their utmost best to run Cricket in Scotland but really that should be Cricket Scotland's responsibility and we need to centralise everything and make sure that all the policies and all the support and infrastructure and the guidance and education training is delivered downstream in collaboration with them so as part of the governance review which is an absolutely massive piece of work and is a 50 page document this will be front of mind there and it's about resetting that relationship and making sure that the structure of Cricket Scotland and all the stakeholders around the country allow for that flow of support to be provided and really we want people to look at Cricket Scotland as a great governing body that does provide that support and education and knowledge that they desperately need and want so that needs to change and the governance review is fundamental to that to happen Thank you I want to thank the three panellists for coming along this morning and for giving us that update to see our second update on the work that you're doing to suspend this meeting I have a short break to allow a change in the panel but I want to thank and John Luthra, Gordon Artham for his time this morning Welcome back Our fourth item on our agenda is Never Than Session with Food Standards Scotland and I want to welcome Heather Kellman the chair of Food Standards Scotland and Geoff Ogle, chief executive Heather, I believe that you've got an opening statement you want to make Yes, just a very short one Thank you Geoff and I welcome this opportunity to represent Food Standards Scotland for the first time in this process of hopefully regular parliamentary scrutiny FSS is Scotland's independent public sector food body collaborating closely with Scottish Government FSA, DEFRA and the UK Health Security Agency to represent Scotland's interests in food related issues at UK level Our purpose is public health protection We have an annual budget of about 22.9 million and employ around 300 staff about half of which are in the field Our annual report and accounts laid before Parliament last autumn summarised our performance for 2021-22 a period of significant restructuring as we created the capacity and capability to deal with the consequences of the EU exit The report also highlighted publication of our second strategy building on the achievements of the previous six years it addresses challenges arising from EU exit Covid-19 and climate change Our priority for the board is to strengthen our influence over policies to improve Scotland's diet which is one of the nation's most significant public health challenges This committee is very aware of the impact obesity has on individuals and the growing unsustainable demand placed on the NHS, other public services and the economy Last year we also published our first joint report on Food Standards, our Food 2021 Developed collaboratively with the Food Standards Agency this is a data and evidence based report tracking the safety and standards of food in the UK aiming to ensure that consumers and parliamentarians remain cited on the changes and threats to our food system There are key challenges affecting Food Standards Scotland, like most public sector bodies where financially constrained For us the consequences of exiting the EU are not short term instead they are expanding and shall continue to do so Despite this, the resource spending review indicates a flatline budget going forward It is responded by undertaking a prioritisation exercise aiming to ensure that our top priorities are delivered and staff wellbeing is maintained Those financial constraints will impact on the delivery of our strategy and involve a number of actions being paused or delivered over a longer time period The capacity and resilience of the food law enforcement regime is also compromised inability to fill vacancies, budget shortfalls and an increasing workload has placed local authority environmental health teams in a precarious position We have developed a programme of work to increase efficiency and improve the capacity and capability of these vital teams It will be delivered in partnership with local authority partners and has the support of the Society of Chief Officers of Environmental Health and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives Requiring the introduction of a new centralised database to facilitate an intelligence driven system this programme will take several years to fully implement Given that tomorrow is Robbie Burnstay who will also borrow his words The best laid schemes of my cement gang after glade The retained EU law bill revocation and reform bill if enacted in its present form will divert us from our strategy and core purpose I make no apologies for stating this so bluntly as Burnstay ended and forward though I cannot see I guess in fear Thank you very much for that Heather and certainly EU exit is something that a lot of our members will be talking about in detail about how that is impacting on the standards of our food and access to food but I want to take us to other events of the last I suppose getting on for a year now there's been some significant events globally obviously Ukraine major supplier of food to Europe UK and beyond obviously in the conflict and also the cost of living has increased dramatically and inflation is 9% was 10% I think maybe slightly not that you would know that from the prices of food in supermarkets so in terms of the difficulties that families are finding themselves in with accessing good quality food how is the supply chain issue that I've mentioned through Ukraine etc and EU exit but also the cost of living how are you prioritising your work around those issues what impacts are happening and how are you responding to it I totally agree that this has been a challenging year especially coming straight off the back of Covid I'll maybe let Geoff talk about some of the work that arose out of the Ukraine situation and the impact it had on the availability of products like oil and food it has also contributed to the inflation especially on food and I suppose my greatest fear of that is that that inflation has got several drivers the cost of energy, the cost of fuel the cost of fertiliser but when you look at that inflation it's not 9% for food it's far greater for food and it's not equally distributed across all food groups the discretionary foods as we would call them biscuits, cakes crisps etc they are experiencing far less food inflation price inflation than fresh food such as fresh food and vegetables and the worst hit are dairy products now for us that has a significant consequence for health inequalities our role in tackling inflation is obviously about providing evidence of the impact on that but we have very little control over those drivers of energy cost fuel cost and I think from my point of view I would love to see more effort being made by Westminster to try and especially drive down energy cost because when you think of dairy products they are so energy dependent with the refrigeration requirements etc so I think there's more could be done I'm not seeing a reduction yet in food price inflation I think that's continuing at a very high level to work through the system and actually see prices will they drop or will they just stay where they are that's really interesting what you're saying about the effect of the high sugar content high fat content high salt content foods aren't been impacted as much as fresh food and it doesn't take a genius to work out that effectively with a family that's got a very very limited budget trying to just keep their kids from being hungry that choices are having to be made I mean the long term impact of that is could be quite significant in terms of health inequalities and the impact on children's health yes I mean the impact on children's health and elderly people as well because the requirement for energy balance to nutrient balance changes as we get older again and I think that for children especially people on fixed or limited incomes you have to get the calories in but then that has the impact that the protein that's required for growth and development is not necessarily represented in the same amount nor is the vitamins and minerals that are essential so I think there is a risk that we will see an increasing health inequality which then has the potential to go on and affect things like educational attainment, growth and development so it's not a small problem we have been providing additional, we set up last year a database Eatwell your way and we've been adding information on to that that it's to guide people how to make healthier choices and there's been more information put on there about trying to do tips to keep the balance right between health I also spoke to all the retailers over the summer last year and spoke to them about trying to make sure that promotions perhaps were focused on the healthier products not so much on the high-fat, high-sugar products mixed response I mean I'm asking we don't yet have the legislation to drive that but we've had good responses initially from the people we spoke to and we're still carrying on with those conversations and we're hoping to invite all the retailers to come and present to the board over the next 12 months or so on the basis of trying to encourage them to continue to work towards our goals of a healthier food environment I was going to ask because the big retailers have a big part to play in this and I was going to say we've run in the risk with this cost of living crisis and this energy cost and the issues that you've mentioned or maybe seeing some health conditions come back that we thought were banished to the past I'm not sure we haven't done we haven't got any evidence yet on that but it's early days we've looked at we've done a survey on consumers trends and how they're changing as a consequence we are seeing people trying to use things that are past sell-by-dates or trying to extend the life of products in that way and have less food waste but there's more research to be done as we go through so I think that there's there's definitely a risk but whether that risk will be realised it's too early to see in the actual evidence who will be able to know that what's happened you don't have to do your microphone just a couple of quick points so one of the things we do every six months we do a consumer tracker survey way 15 which was July last year so we're just going through the results of the latest one but in terms of consumer concerns around food supply shortages that increase from 65% to 70% and concerns about price the price of food went from 64% to 75% so three quarters of consumers are concerned about food prices I think the other point that is worth emphasising in terms of cost of living is proportionately the lowest socioeconomic groups spend far more of their income on food and basics and therefore particularly on issues like food inflation it's not an even impact across the socioeconomic groups it's disproportionately impacting and obviously if you've got low income the chances are you'll want your money to go further and high fat someone's sugar foods have high energy and all those sorts of things so when it comes to difficult choices it's potentially forces you down a particular choice you wouldn't necessarily want to go and of course a lot of those things won't be cooked as well if you can't afford to put your gas or your electric on My colleagues come in Heather said that you had some I mentioned Ukraine as well and the impact that that's happened so can I come to you on that? I've worked with the retail sector quite a lot both for preparations for EU exit and also in Covid and I suppose one of the things that happened with Ukraine is the industry had a fair amount of resilience running experience in terms of Ukraine in terms of the impact it was primarily around sunflower production where I think Ukraine is about 80% of the world production but while there was an initial hit in terms of concern the market generally has adapted pretty well both in terms of alternative sources of supply and alternatives of itself so I suppose where we are now I mean there are there are some impacts around that have come through the war but certainly in terms of food supply I would say that generally the market has adapted the issues more around the input costs around things like energy which are having much more impact I think the other thing I would say from a consumer perspective particularly with food inflation Martin, one of these money experts said that prices tend to rise like a rocket and fall like a feather and obviously if the prices don't fall quickly and inflation stays food prices stay high even though prices are coming down then obviously the pressures on consumers will last for longer that's another thing because you've seen that to a certain extent with energy prices of the trading around energy prices are coming down a bit but that's not been passed on to the consumer the same you've got an increase in food costs and I guess there might be some reluctance to actually bring them down in line with any of the kind of inputs some of that is easier to do than others particularly a lot of the large organisations hedge their costs so they're kind of fixed in so if they're fixed in at the wrong point they'll maintain that high cost I suppose we would say though in areas where prices are coming down they should be passed on so consumers feel the benefits I think the potential risk or temptation is given the pressures right across the food industries and temptation to keep the prices high because of the impacts of Brexit and Covid and what that had in terms of profit margins and everything else yet I'm going to talk about Covid supermarkets were recording record profits is that still the case I mean it's still seen the major supermarkets with the same kind of profits and yet the food prices are coming up for the ordinary families and I've had some discussion with retailers it's an interesting thing part of the explanation and I'm not here to defend retailers I just want to get that on the record part of it is explained in a sense particularly with Covid the whole of the hospitality sector shut down basically so the only place to go for food was the retail sector so you had a natural distortion of the market which is part of the explanation for that so that is part of the issue but when I've talked to retailers they're saying they're getting large requests from their suppliers for increasing costs as well as pressure to keep costs down so some consumers aren't hit too much what they've consistently said is there's a level at which they will not be able to absorb costs and that would have to be passed on in terms of where the markets end up in terms of profits and everything else that's an issue for somebody else is pay grade but it would be a question that would need to be asked in terms of understanding the market dynamics that's a fundamental question I'm going to pass one to my colleagues I think I've hogged the mic long enough David Torrance Good morning What impact has Brexit had on your work on risk management and oversight functions? I'm going to give that one to James Thanks EU exit has had a major impact on us if you look at the legal base the extent of food law derived EU law is significant so in the context of rule retained EU law we've got around 200 statutory instruments that are affected by that so it's a pretty complex system we have basically lost access to things like the European food standards food safety authority so all of the risk assessment that used to be done by them has been lost and we now have to do that with the FSA we've lost access to the rapid alert system for food safety issues so we've had to do alternatives for that on things like food crime where we Scotland and the UK had a major influence in terms of developing food crime capability and intelligence after horse meet we've got no longer access to that so we've lost our ability to influence on critical issues like that as well in organisational terms it's had a massive impact for us we did get some increase in resourcing for EU in reality the live experience of leaving the EU has shown that the resourcing we've got isn't enough so by comparison in terms of for example our science capability we've increased by 9 the FSA increased by 90 so there's a real disparity in terms of our ability so in terms of things like risk assessment basically any any product that would need a risk assessment we would now have to do it ourselves we will still use international data and research as part of that so it would be quite reasonable for us to take into account any kind of FSA opinions on science as we could in terms of any other administration actually but yeah we're pretty much having to go alone so we're replicating effectively pretty much the whole of the EU institutions around food safety thank you very much for that what benefits have emerged from collaboration between the FSA and the Food Standards Agency as set out in the 2020 of understanding and how well is this collaboration currently working as compared to previous working arrangements prior to the UK's exit from the European Union yeah I think our relationship with the FSA is a pretty good and solid one because effectively before Food Standards Scotland came into being with the Food Standards Agency Scotland so we basically moved from the FSA so we have regular liaison with FSA at all levels so I have usually a weekly catch-up with the chief executive Heather can talk about her regular catch-ups with the chair under the memorandum of understanding we have six monthly joint chair and chief executive meetings so I would say generally the relationships with the FSA are pretty solid and good that's not to say there's not the occasional difference of opinion in a different view we have taken approach generally that we wouldn't be different for the sake of being different but we would be different where it's in Scotland's interest to be so much maintained in the light of evidence, as of December 2022 only one of the 32 common frameworks had been finalised what risks are there to Scottish food supplies safety and production if common frameworks failings within the remit of FSA are not finalised yeah so some of the the kind of mechanics of the formal agreements of the frameworks because of the situation in Northern Ireland with the situation in Northern Ireland so they can't be formalised I think the issue with the common frameworks, they were set up as a means of the clues in the name really, a common framework but they allowed for divergence where an administration could make a case for that divergence according to particular needs for example maybe a health issue or whatever what we found though is that the internal market act in particular because the frameworks have got no legal basis the internal market act does pretty much potentially undermine the process and purpose of a framework because an administration can decide what it wants to do and then under the internal market act the good produced in one country can be sold in another against the terms in which it was produced in the country it was produced in so what you can have is you will have goods on the shelves in Scotland potentially that could be made in England, Wales or Northern Ireland when you're actually looking at that good for example from an enforcement perspective you can't apply Scottish law you have to understand the law that applied in the country in which the good was produced and only then if it doesn't meet so an EHO in Scotland has to actually understand the legal basis of that good being produced in England to be able to decide whether it meets the legal requirements or not so I think that to be honest the frameworks weren't given time to be tested before the internal market act was introduced is the honest answer I think to that question thank you very much as a follow-up to that last question from David Torrance does that in essence mean there is no way to enforce divergence for the different nations of the United Kingdom if actually goods made in another country can be sold in Scotland for example against decisions that have been made here for public health if we want to introduce particular particular terms in Scotland so for example a health initiative then in as a matter of practicality it's the kind of objective justification argument if you can objectively justify the reason why you want to do something you can do it and it can be sold and it could be sold in Scotland and it could be sold elsewhere as I understand it though part of the issue is I'll make sure I do a note on this just to absolutely confirm it but part of the issue is actually the discrimination sections in the act in terms of whether there's then some risk that for example Scottish producers would say well it's more expensive to produce the same good in Scotland as it is in somewhere else and that's therefore discriminatory I'd need to confirm that definitely but I think what we've not really got yet is any kind of hard evidence of how the internal market act is impacting it is actually a bit too early to say and we've not come across any particular issues where we've really hit a buffer or a barrier with the internal market act Is there a danger that the system is actually more complicated now with the internal markets act, the common frameworks other pieces of legislation than it was when we were in the EU and under these other frameworks? I would say it is far more complicated and then we've also got from our particular perspective we've also got the continuity act to consider as well so we've got all of these all these different pieces and you're going forward with the retained EU law the board has reached a view that our position is that all law should be preserved but if other administrations do something differently then obviously that will potentially impact as well because you will have potential divergence so in some ways there's more risk of divergence now than there was before I was just to come in on a point that you raised and Geoff responded to on the profits of supermarkets at this time I read a really interesting article about in the business pages of the Sunday Times recently and it suggested that the profits had to be considered because it still felt that they were too high even in the present circumstances of Brexit Ukraine etc what can we do you said earlier that you were speaking to various retailers etc what more can we do as politicians to get into this so again I'm not here to defend the retailers I think there's a few points that I'd make though I think actually in terms of what's happened in retail certainly discussions I've had with them I think there has been an argument that actually prices in the UK have been too low so what you've actually seen is a market adjustment in terms of prices I agree with that I'm just saying that's a point that's been made there are a number of mechanisms that already exist so there's the competition markets authority and there's also the grossest judicator that are partly there to ensure that the market works appropriately but I suppose so the grossest judicator for example will particularly look at the way in which retailers deal with their suppliers for example and the CMA obviously deals with the general rules around competition and all that sort of thing I'm not sure I know what the answer is to when is profit too high or what I don't think that's for me to make a judgment I think the issue for us from our perspective as an organisation is to keep pointing out where there are impacts on consumers and there are adverse impacts on consumers we've got limited levers on what we can do but what we can do is certainly point to issues which we think are not in the interests of consumers and I think that's what we would continue to do so I'm not sure I've entirely answered your question I think from a poor perspective our feeling is that the evidence gathering is really important and getting that publicised and actually because we don't have any legal constraints on them that actually just raising that corporate social responsibility argument about the disbenefits of additional profits on the price of food for consumers so we just need to keep representing the consumer's interest and trying to keep publishing as much as we can and trying to influence shareholders or chief execs and to carry on this round of meetings that we've got going with the retail industry I don't think there's much else we can actually do on that front Do you want to come back in, Evelyn? I was just going to say if you can keep highlighting to us what the issues are that would be very helpful I think that whole idea of corporate social responsibility is really important because particularly what you're saying about this sort of the price rise has been lower for certain foods and hires for others which almost seems counterintuitive given the processes that there might be for those sort of like high fat high sugar items and I get there's no fresh food doesn't last long in the shelves etc etc but that is having an impact on consumers and it's particularly as you see going to have an impact on more vulnerable groups like children, like older people like people in socially deprived areas as well so thank you for highlighting that Emma, I'm going to bring you in and then Stephanie wants to come in as well It's just a quick question for Jeff Ogle about the Internal Market Act I know that the UK Government have introduced the genetic technology precision breeding Bill Does that mean that Scottish farmers will be impacted in Scotland through a policy that we don't have control over the UK because the UK Government have the Internal Market Act Does that mean that Scottish farmers will have to accept genetically edited products and is that something that culture has devolved to Scotland but the issue that I'm concerned about is the Internal Market Act and then this genetic technology procession breeding bill will impact Scottish farmers I'm not so sure it would impact Scottish farmers what it would do in terms of my understanding is anything that is produced in England using gene edited techniques could then be sold in Scotland and some research we did so over three quarters 70% of respondents across the UK wanted to have information informing them that foods had been precision bred in Scotland this figure was 75% when we had a board discussion on this issue last March the board's view was if these goods were going to be sold in Scotland then there was an issue around transparency for consumers and being clear to consumers what that product was precision bred effectively looking at the labelling of products so that is really where it is at the moment I think the other thing that is interesting from our perspective there is certainly a case to look at the science GMO vs gene editing are quite different things I think the other thing that we do know is that consumer understanding is pretty low I think consumers are generally more satisfied once they understand it more but equally they also want the transparency that goes with it and the transparency is really important so it sounds like everyone needs to tread very carefully and obviously be very evidence based orientated and we need to make sure that the public are really engaged with if this bill is to be taken forward I suppose yes and I think certainly in the discussions I've had with Scottish Government ministers about this issue Minister McCallan is part of her brief and I've had a couple of meetings with her and certainly in the discussions that I've had the key point has been actually it needs to be done on an informed basis and people need to understand what it means and what its implications are you know and again that transparency is really key Thank you Thanks very much It's actually going back to what you were saying there Heather about influence and I'm wondering see when you've got suppliers and big organisations actually paying to promote their products paying for where it sits on the shelf I'm wondering really doing leading loss makers and things as well there I'm wondering realistically how much influence can you really have on that and as in improving improving healthy foods and are there any recommendations that you would suggest this committee could make to the Scottish Government that they could actually improve that level of influence that you've got I'm just going to get my names right because I'll never remember the names of bills I'm hopeless The Public Health Restriction of Promotions Bill which is going being progressed at the moment that actually covers that area We're learning from the English version So some of the issues that we've witnessed down south has been that where they've not been allowed to use the end of aisles to promote their space they are going for mid-ail promotions Now we can actually have a discussion and try and put that in our definitions of location promotion So there's two aspects there's price promotion and location promotion and I think that that work going on at the moment trying to be really clear about what we need to legislate for will make it an awful lot easier Interestingly, the retailers aren't against that what they want is a level playing field The discussions I've had with them they're not against it Some of them have been doing voluntary schemes for a while but this way they think if it's legislated for there's clarity, there's equality and we hope that they can then push that back to the manufacturers because some of those promotions that are being witnessed down in England are actually coming from the manufacturers edge-of-shelf labelling mid-ail big displays So we've just to be aware of what the loopholes are I suppose what I'm asking the industry to do is to actually go back to that corporate social responsibility not to try and find loopholes around what we're trying to achieve but to be focused on that public health responsibility that is an issue that we should all share responsibility to look for wellbeing I think that by continuing with that message that we are looking for responsible businesses not for people to look for loopholes to continue to promote foods that are quite clearly damaging for health That's helpful Can I just add to that I think that a couple of points to make around the whole issue around diet and high fat, salt and sugar foods I think the first is that and you see this a lot in the media the narrative that the answer to this problem is that people need to exercise more eat healthier eat less calories and the problem solved I think that's a complete mistake to think that that is the answer to this Two out of three adults in Scotland are living with overweight and obesity The annual cost of treating conditions associated with that ranges from £363 million to £600 million The total cost for the Scottish economy including labour markets is estimated to be between £4.6 billion Now, if we don't think that the dietary situation in Scotland isn't an economic crisis as well as a health one then I think we are not going to solve this problem So, things like ok, we'll move end to end of violence stick it in the middle instead and that gets around the legislation Fundamentally misses the point around what the public health challenge is that needs to be addressed and I think that that is the fundamental so the stuff about the food environment 25% of calories are consumed out of home You know, a quarter of what we consume is out of home and most of that is high fat salt sugar very little in nutritional value So again, if we don't think tackling the food environment is the answer to this question then I would say well what is because if you think it comes down to individuals then we are never going to solve it It's not that we are completely ignoring the personal responsibility but Public Health Scotland have the expertise in that area and we are working in partnership with Public Health Scotland so that they take the lead on that but we take the lead on the food environment Just before I hand over to Sandesh we recommended as a committee in our deliberations over the national planning framework that local councillors have the ability to turn down planning applications on the basis of health Is that something that you would support? It was something that we did support, yes There was a study that we did outside the school gate and it clearly shows when you look at the environment around particular locations like schools there is an issue around the source of food that's available and I think, yeah, planning is a key part of the solution I mean the thing is, there's no easy answer to this It's the kind of the cycling thing it's the sum of the parts it's the individual little bits that make the difference so planning is a planning in there, absolutely Thank you, that's helpful Can I hand over to Sandesh? Gohani Thank you, Geoff I am a little bit flabbergasted at the idea that we will never solve anything if we don't ensure individuals eat less and exercise more I mean, as a GP one of the things I tell my patients is ways to improve their diet and ways to exercise not everyone's able to do the same thing surely you recognise that individuals need to be better educated, need to be going and learning on how to do things rather than saying it's never going to make any difference No, no, I didn't say that we can only solve this problem by personal responsibility it's not the right answer, it's a mistake to think the only way you can solve this is by focusing on individual behaviours Do we support the need to eat healthier exercise more? Absolutely Look at our website and we've got all sorts of things around healthier diets and advice to consumers around how they can improve their lifestyle but if we don't tackle the food environment we're actually also making it harder for individuals as well Heather can talk much more about this than me in terms of the case and all that sort of stuff but you as a GP will know it yourself so I'm not saying personal responsibility is out of the equation what I'm saying is it is a mistake to think it's the only solution Absolutely, it's not the only solution and we do need to do a lot more but certainly it is important and it's something that we do need to spend time educating people Just looking at Scotland's diet we in Scotland are one of the fathos nations in the world I can't really talk because I am overweight and I am working very hard now to lose that weight and the loss of weight is not because I want to look better it's actually for health reasons to make sure that I don't progress on to type 2 diabetes for example and it's very important that it isn't a look thing but it's a health thing to frame this conversation around so a few questions can you as an organisation look at things like meal deals for example where and I don't know anyone that would choose a banana over a bag of crisps or a chocolate bar just the cost of these things doesn't seem to make sense to me is there anything that you could do to maybe say you get free fruit with a meal deal along those lines? First of all I'd like to sort of say I'm a former dietitian so I totally support your view about treating obesity as being vitally important our role isn't much in the treatment of obesity but in making sure that people have the opportunity to eat a healthy diet and to try and address that problem long term and sustainably sustainably so in relation to meal deals they are part of the promotions issue that we are looking at so where you get buy one get one free is part of that promotions bill meal deals come into that as well and I think that how we word that so that the healthy option can be included but the unhealthy option can't be I think is a really important thing I did talk to some of the retailers about how they do their reward schemes so things like the points that you collect and one of the retailers has just recently reintroduced that for additional points for fruit and vegetables so I think that there are ways that we can guide them to consider promotions that guide people towards the healthier choices but I go back to my initial point it's actually very difficult for people who are on restricted incomes to be able to make that choice because as you'll be aware from your patients some of those options for eating a healthy diet are actually quite a bit more expensive than some of the lower cost options so it's really important that we tackle the food environment alongside that but yes we are really trying to push for this idea that you don't have to stop promotions but you should be looking at promotions that encourage and enable people to choose to eat a nutrient rich calorie appropriate diet On the choice one of the reasons I often hear is people saying they are struggling they struggle to actually know what to buy and they struggle to cook it we've seen lots of companies I don't really want to promote companies but companies like Hello Fresh and Gusto and other ones that create a food box to send to you and you get everything you need with a step-by-step instruction of how to do it they are very expensive Would it be useful for a supermarket to be able to create easy to pick up things so you don't have to go and get your onions from over here across the supermarket to get something which they would then be able to give you in a card to say it's all in one easy place with the cards of how to cook the soup or the casserole or whatever it is that you're looking to get Some are doing that whether or not they're on the low cost options at the moment would be questionable I think there's a variety but they do do these some have the recipe cards on the shelves but then you've still to a certain extent to go and find the ingredients some have moved towards having the ingredients closer I think there is an opportunity for that to replace some of the end-of-isle promotions that are high fat, high salt, high sugar but to have that combination of foods where possible because obviously some things have to be refrigerated some can't but for the main retailers they have these assessed layouts where they have done quite a bit of research on how to maximise sales and make the customer go around the aisles in a particular way it would be quite a big step for them to we can only ask and try to encourage from that corporate social responsibility angle it's the only angle we have at the moment on this is to try and raise awareness of the damage being done and to encourage them to look at their responsibility I think the other thing I'd add though is again it goes back to the point that I made about the multiplicity of answers because one of the critical things is reformulation so if you look at the sugar levy that was introduced on soft drinks we thought that was a very good idea and supported it but it didn't go far enough so if you for example sell at our Mecca Bolognese you buy lean 5% fat beef you then buy a jar of pasta sauce actually the sugar content is really high then you're trying to make the effort but the product itself unless you're actually aware of looking at the sugar content it's almost like it defeats the purpose of what you're trying to achieve so I think all those things that you can do to help consumers help themselves is absolutely vitally important but then it comes back to this reformulation the food environment is absolutely critical to that as well so I suppose the other thing I would say is there is a if you have a more educated consumers I suppose and understanding there is the power of consumer purchasing that potentially has the ability to influence because if consumers are aware of labels and stop buying sugars with the red label with luxuries that have got loads of sugar market sales fall then the industry will adapt but again I think we've still got a kind of broader point of understanding I think that we still need to work on and so my last question I'm glad you brought that up because it is about education we do need people to be more aware of the food that is consumed and the types of food that's consumed and that does include looking at labels but actually there's only so often that I can stand at an aisle and start staring at the packet and going through it and saying how does that work so what would you say we can do to really not only speed that process up but make it easier for people to make the right decision again there's a load if you actually look at what's available in IT terms and I know this not from personal experience but from my wife's experience in terms of things like calorie counting there's lots of technology that helps and is there but some of it is actually understanding your own body and your own lifestyle if you're a high performing athlete 2,000 calories, 2,500 calories a day as a man is not sufficient it's okay to assume 6,000 calories if you're burning 6,000 calories so it's actually understanding I suppose the lifestyle your calorific consumption versus your your energy output all those sorts of things come into it but I think the answer is we do need to really kind of think how we actually can I think there's also probably a generational thing as well in terms of levels of awareness I think certainly some of the evidence we've got is that you know the called millennials are much more switched on to diet and lifestyle and all those sorts of things as well so I think there's there are opportunities I think around particularly how you use technology I would say Mackay As a millennial I think we may be in this line of questioning in danger of an oversimplification that teach everyone how to cook pasta and it will all be fine I think there are multiple factors involved here some of them in terms of income in terms of background in terms of disability, health condition all these sorts of other things as someone who has PCOS I know there's I have an insulin resistance and therefore there's an entirely different diet that I need to have a look at compared to someone else of my of my age and socioeconomic background so how do in your work address those multiple factors to make sure that everybody has the information that is relevant to them obviously on social media and things we do see that vast array of advice and information some of which is not particularly useful for an awful lot of people and make sure that these are coming from reputable sources that are backed up by science and experts We developed deep willier wave which is a web based access point containing dietary guidance and unlike a lot of public health education things it's not a black and white it's a step wise guy so it asks questions about yourself your own habits how you shop, do you shop at the corner do you shop at the supermarket ask about the size of your family and then there's various it covers from shopping, cooking to eating and the idea is find the bit that applies to you that you believe you can do and actually make that health choice improvement now that's been in place I think for about a year now maybe slightly longer September 2021 it was launched and we have advertised it there's been reasonable update we're going to continue to try and promote that the use of it we believe that it's got potential to be developed further and to help us with more of those issues going forward but I think that's the first step I was on a webinar with aim dieticians across the UK and it was quite interesting because they were unaware of this and it was exactly what they were calling for so when it was mentioned that Scotland already had it there was a great interest from dieticians across the UK because it was exactly what they were looking for the eat well guide the plate is well and good but it doesn't cover with ethnic diversity it doesn't cover age diversity and it separates that into eating choices is really vital and important so it's one of the things that I would like to see us continue to develop and build on potentially eventually maybe even have a phone app version but I think at the moment we're starting to small and growing that's great, thanks Camilla Jillian, am I you have a question yep so it's kind of just to pick up on Jillian Black eyes point I've been a type 1 diabetic since I was 12 years old so I've been counting carbs since I was a wane basically there's now apps available that can be used in order to look at that so and again it isn't just about salt and sugar and it's high glucose index versus low glucose in its carbs it is, it's really complicated so would food standard Scotland or do you have or consider looking at these kind of digital support directly on your website to support downloading of apps for instance so that folk like Jillian and I and other folk could actually maybe use what we use in like diabetes dose adjustment for normal eating so which helps all type 1s count carbs for instance that would be useful for other people is that something that food standards Scotland could look at and help maybe deliver that way digitally I would need to go back to the team to just double check exactly which websites link in I do know that there are links promoted through the FSS website to alternative resources that people can access but I think it's a really good suggestion and I will go back and speak to the nutrition team and find out where else we could go with developing that linkage that promotion of those aids to helping people to choose the right diet for their personal type OK, thanks Evelyn Yes, you've got a great website I love it there's a lot of good information here about diet eating healthily looking after your health it's all great how do you know your message is getting out how do you measure success Our cons team are very good at tracking and one of our performance indicators that we've just introduced as a board is to look at the uptake the contacts into that website if it's one of the areas that we're building our new strategy on we need to be monitoring the access to that so this year's a baseline year and next year we intend to set some targets that we try to improve that uptake and improve that access we try and promote it wherever possible we've done quite a few things with schools and other groups like that and we do promote it when we're down at the Royal Highland Show and things like that but we need to get that even better managed so the board's view was let's make it one of our strategic performance indicators let's set a baseline and set some targets for increasing the uptake so that's what we're trying to do at the board at the moment Have you got another one? You should use us to help you with that messaging so when you have your targets in place tell us what they are and then we can also share because now that I've seen what a great website it is an information on it I'll certainly be sharing it and telling people or asking people to use it the other one thing that I wanted to ask was about vitamin D you've said that you're promoting using vitamin D from October to sort of April time again great what would you say to people just now when money's tight they may not see this as an essential I think that's very interesting because given that we know the evidence behind vitamin D is vital especially at the dark months in Scotland I already had raised the issue that for me it's not very fair for health inequalities people can get free vitamin D when they're pregnant, breastfeeding or children under the age of three but I think there is a question for Parliament about whether or not we should be looking a little bit broader at free vitamin D for people that will struggle to afford it because the levels especially at this time of year are very low in the Scottish population when I was training to be a young dietitian it was all about bone strength and now we know so much more about the role in the body that it is really important for just our general health and our ability to fight infection and support our immune system so yes we will continue to try and promote it we've done some very good advertising campaigns programmes we've had to reel back on that a little bit because of our budget and we wonder whether or not that is our top priority going forward to be promoting free vitamin D rather than continuing to promote the overall healthy eating in terms of costs there are you get a range of varieties and I think that some more work might need to be done about looking at some non-branded versions and trying to make them more available again not within our daily work but something that I think is vital but we did raise this as an issue I think about a year ago somebody in the health and social care department about this issue of cost it's quite expensive if you're buying it especially for the elderly who are encouraged to take it all year round she wants to pick up on the vitamin D issue it's important to say that if you're darker skin you should be taking vitamin D in Scotland all year round apologies I did mean to mention for ethnic groups that is our advice as well Stephanie Thank you just to follow up on the vitamin part of it as well I would like to say that they talk earlier on about personal responsibility that Sandesh raised I think sometimes we'll get families where every single bit of their time and their energy goes into making it through the day and putting food in their children's belly to stop them feeling hungry is the priority it's not about nutrition bearing that in mind actually ran a health food store for several years used to talk to my children about protein gives you big muscles show me their muscles after they're eating stuff or carbohydrates give you energy show me all your energy once you've eaten that up there's certainly stuff education wise that we can do but when we were struggling for money feeding your kids spaghetti hoops out of a tin with some toast for three days in a row that really doesn't help it's actually quite a pressure as well knowing that the nutritional value of that is really quite low so I know that we've got certain vitamin and mineral supplements for pregnant women you've already mentioned for young children as well too but I'm wondering if that's been considered at a wider level at all having that kind of top-up dose that helps prevent deficiency diseases from occurring because the convener did mention earlier on as well the fact that we've seen some of those things coming back to a certain degree so I was just wondering where that was just now and then as well I'm interested in is there anything happening around breastfeeding as well because obviously that has a really long-term impact I'm not aware that we're looking at anything on the multi-vitamin mineral supplementation because really our prime aim is to try to make sure that all members of the public have access to a healthy balanced diet and so our strategy at the moment is focusing on that but we're not in a position just now where that's what's happening and say that you've raised an issue that is highlighting a particular point in time and we would need to look at the evidence around that Now we move on to talk about the Good Food Nation Act and questions from Paul Cain Thank you very much and good morning to the panel Obviously the Good Food Nation Act was passed by this Parliament last year we've not had an action of the provisions of the act yet but I'm keen if we can perhaps just revisit some of that or look forward to how some of that might be implemented My first question would be there's reference in the act and reference in the evidence that was given about the changes in the food system and environment that are required in order to help people access healthy food more easily so I wonder if I can start with what do you feel needs to change in terms of food system and environment in order to achieve that goal Some of that we've already talked about this morning so there are certainly issues for example around the out-of-home offering in terms of calorie content there are issues around reformulation for example needs to be on there are issues around consumer information around labelling In terms of the Good Food Nation Act as I recall it is primarily focused if you like on the public sector and a lot of what we've been talking about this morning is the private sector I think from that perspective I suppose the public sector plans have to be exemplar plans in terms of leading the way is what I'd say so I think there are also all sorts of issues around the kind of what's offered when it's offered, where it's bought from all those sorts of things there's a lot of discussion around local economies, local food economies when the act was going through the parliamentary debate in our evidence we said that there should actually be some clear objectives we've been monitoring the Scottish Dietary Goals and there's been a bit of a nudge on a couple of the criteria but by and large we still know we're near hitting the Scottish Dietary Goals so I think we would still say there needs to be some clear objectives around what you can measure progress against and the local plans have to have some linkage to the national plan if you have 32 local authorities and 14 health boards all doing different things and at least not some measure of consistency it's hard to see how you can actually get a kind of national progress and improvement it doesn't mean that every plan has to be the same I think I said this in evidence to the rain committee because you look at the circumstance of where people live they're not the same across 32 local authorities so you have to have the flexibility in the plans but there also needs to be some consistency I think going forward but for us we were quite clear we thought the Scottish Dietary Goals should be in their at least feature as an objective to aim towards and our view is that that is still our view I would just add that I think that at a national level we've got some good statistics on national targets and things that we should be aiming for but I think all of these plans should be needs assessed first of all what is the local challenge what is the local issue in that area I think that if I was allowed to have a wish I'd like to see them start with young people go through the age groups what can we do to improve school nutrition is that about getting more children to eat within the school rather than going across the road to the local fast food joint areas about being very clear about what the challenges are in each area or across the country and then having that the plan respond to those challenges the challenges as Geoff said will not be the same across each country the starting point therefore should not be the same across the country there might be quicker gains to be got in some regions than in others about food affordability, access and if you think of some of the very remote and rural areas access to fresh fruit and veg might be a challenge the solution to that might be to encourage things like vertical farming or under glass farming to grow so I think there's a real opportunity at a Scottish level to start to look at our agriculture policy our rural environment etc and think how do we shape those policies to try and help on the food availability that accessibility I think Orkney's looking at a vertical farm at the moment which gives them real opportunities to look at fresh lettuces etc so they can't currently get very affordable so I think there's a real opportunity through these plans I look forward to trying to work with the commissioners when they're in place to push our agenda about improving access to healthy affordable food interesting to do your last point there about working to advance the agenda of Food Standard Scotland and I wonder we didn't take evidence obviously on the bill but were you disappointed that you weren't specifically referred you know you don't appear in the legislation is that something that was of concern to you? Yes I wrote to the chair of the rain committee to sort of express a degree of disappointment and to request that there is some additional work done to clarify the responsibilities of both public bodies and to make sure that there's clarity of governance arrangements between us so who's accountable for what and then when they come in place my approach has always been to collaborate so I'm making an approach to them and try and develop what we're calling a strategic partnership a strategic delivery partnership is what we're aiming for with partners and other stakeholders that we're trying to influence I assume there's discussions at an early stage but use your sense that there's a willingness to find that that better understanding of the roles and perhaps look at how that might be enacted Should we ask Geoff how blunt I'm allowed to be I'm sort of still hoping for those conversations to start Okay, I think that's useful for us perhaps as a point of follow-up because I think it's important that we have those connections I wonder if I can just touch on something availability of food accessibility to food obviously in the debate there were a number of amendments and being able to access that as a right I think that's a debate that will continue because obviously it wasn't concluded if you like in this legislation I mean is your view that that's something that we should continue to look at how we create that right and that better access I believe the board's view was that the Human Rights Act was the right place for that to sit I think it shouldn't sit separate to other rights it should be in the main act that rights of access is one of the fundamental requirements of life is food so I think it got the right balance in the act I think but we need to make sure that's not forgotten or overlooked as we go forward Okay, thank you Stephanie, do you have a question on the Good Food Nation Act or my nope, my wrong answer No, you don't have anything Emma You wanted to talk about Scottish Food Commission Scottish Food Commission? Yes I think so I think I've got a couple other ones first actually If that's okay I'm just reading some statistics about what Scotland produces in terms of agricultural output it's 3.6 billion the gross value added to the economy and that's according to the Food and Drink Federation 2021 information and we know that in agriculture in Scotland there's really good animal welfare we know that there are direct links with our health our climate and then food production what is Food Standards Scotland's role in promoting healthy diet and climate change and food production in Scotland so that we can balance it and support our agricultural producers in Scotland We've just written a sustainability plan for Food Standards Scotland which I'm sure we'd be able to share with you if that was of interest to you and in that it shows that if people were eating closer to the eat well guide the national guide lines there's something like 30% of the carbon emissions related to food would be reduced anyway so it's very much aligned to our overall aim in terms of agriculture it's not our policy area but we do feel very strongly about making sure the evidence is factually correct so making sure that people are aware of the role that meat dairy products, cereals et cetera, local grown food plays in our diet important part of our diet and we make sure that the evidence that we give is good evidence that we're not, we're trying to correct some of the mis-evidence that's out there because it could be very easy to be swept along with some of the the more emotional side of eat green rather than being really attuned into the facts about what is eating green is a sustainable diet and I think Scotland's agricultural sector plays very well into that we've got a very strong agricultural sector in terms of producing high quality food food that's safe to eat and food that is produced in a very sustainable way compared to some other parts of the world the welfare standards are good so I think we'll just keep going with our key theme of healthy sustainable affordable food and give us much support as we can without going out with our role as regulator of the meat industry or the food and animal feed role that we have we've got to be careful not to stray into other people's territory Jeff, do you want to add anything? Okay, thanks talking about evidence and stuff like that last week I was at an event in the Scottish Parliament it was a quality meat Scotland event sponsored by Jim Furley MSP and Professor Alice Stanton did a presentation about red meat essentially and the red meat supply chain generates over 2 billion annually to the Scottish economy and Professor Stanton who is a cardiovascular pharmacologist from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland did a presentation and she basically presented information to counter what has been published in the Lancet about how much red meat should be what your red meat intake should be in a day for instance and it's 70mg which is two slices of roast meat or two sausages in a day but she said that the information that was produced in the Lancet didn't meet actual criteria for proper scrutiny regarding the preferred reporting items for systematic review so they call that Prisma and that is related to the global burden of disease and so she was suggesting that what has been used as a standard and repeated by everybody as far as 70mg of meat she said that that wasn't really researched adequately does Food Standards Scotland are you aware of that information that came out from Professor Alice Stanton and does it mean that we need to be looking at a revision in what has been recommended as far as red meat consumption I need to go back and check but my understanding was that the Lancet was suggesting that we reduce from the 70mg per day the average of red meat and red meat products consumption so they were advocating a more vegetarian vegan style diet and speaking to our nutrition team our advice on the 70g of red meat per day is still evidence based in terms of there is still a very slight risk attached to a colorectal cancer but some of the other claims made in that paper were not substantiated the evidence was not strong enough to differentiate some of the claims so I believe that the 70g per day and I did speak to Alice I had a brief meeting with her before the session and we shared opinions and we felt that the eat well guide with the on average 70g of red meat is sustainable and good evidence based advice we also talked about our priority and it's something I've talked about with Quality Meat Scotland is on the red meat products is a high nutritional standard as we go forward and we don't have to be so concerned about reducing them in the diet but I think that's where the science is at the moment but we can double check and get back to you on that I suppose the issue of processed meat is different than non processed meat so the healthier lean cuts of beef or lamb for instance is different than processed meat which again contains higher salt and other issues as well is that what we need to be good at communicating with people I think that the difficulty is that red meat production actually requires us to use the maximum amount of meat in the animal to be sustainable and I think that we've got to find a healthier way of using the maximum amount of meat in animal products so at the moment they've got more fat content they've got as you say higher salt content there are other additives in there that are not proven to be absolutely beneficial for health so to try and improve that formulation of those products will help but at the moment it's 70g of red meat and meat products per day is what is advocated but again if we were to go straight to sort of saying don't eat the processed meat the highly processed meat we're back to that issue of cost because the straightforward steak or roast or joint is a lot more expensive than the sausages et cetera so there's a balance to be had that public health comes first in our discussions and the nutrition team keep abreast of all the science and evidence I'll quickly add in terms of where we are the eat well guide or the eat well plate went through a pretty rigorous process including the views of the scientific advisory committee on nutrition so we would have to be satisfied in terms of any science proposition we would have to go we would want to go through a pretty rigorous process if it was trying to say actually the eat well plate is not where you need to be so I think this is one of the other issues with diet courses there's lots and lots of views around what a good diet is and what isn't a good diet so we kind of use that as a cornerstone of our advice the composition of food is a slightly different question but certainly in terms of what we think the balance diet is it's that eat well plate and I do have a memory of what I was going to ask about the food commission my final question we have the food standard Scotland and a food commission what's the difference I do need both and is there overlap in work and tell us what's the difference please there is a difference in our roles very broad we work from farm to plate so we have the regulatory responsibilities and the advice on policy on food and food safety and food hygiene so I think there is a difference in our roles much broader I think there's overlap between the work of our nutrition team and the new food commission we would not have been able to undertake the work of the emerging food commission without additional resource that focus on supporting the development of these the national plan and the 32 local authority plans and 15 health board plans and the quality output as I said before we've asked to have discussions about clarifying of governance and areas of responsibility and we hope that that will be followed up on quite soon but until we have those conversations it's difficult to be absolutely clear about exactly where we meet and where we overlap and where there's a gap I would just add from our perspective that this has made the decision in terms of the food commission I think our arguments before did actually question certainly from an accountable officer perspective the kind of value for money of having two bodies two independent food bodies I think our request in the letter that Heather wrote was if Parliament decided to go for two bodies it needs to be very clear around what the different accountabilities are of those two bodies we were independent we have got a remit that says we can represent the broader interests of consumers and as Heather said in the letter to Finlay Carson we thought we could actually undertake the functions that were required in the Good Food Nation Act Parliament reaches conclusion our now focus now is engaging as we need to making sure we don't duplicate but also actually delivering in terms of the Parliamentary intent of the Good Food Nation Act Can I just ask one final question Yes It's very small because I've got two members wanting to come in for a further session Apologies, you've talked about different local authorities and how they engage I know there's some local authorities that are looking to sign up to the plant-based treaty and talking about taking meat away from schools away from care homes is that something that you're aware of and would you endorse that or not I mean because we've just talked about red meat and how evidence-based should require people to have that as part of a balanced diet so is that something that you would be concerned about this plant-based treaty Would be concerned that people comply with the nutritional standards for school meals and for feeding older people I'm not aware that any of actually said that they're going to come out and sign up to the plant-based treaty but we would need to follow through on that the evidence would need to be provided that they're going to give the alternatives because you can follow a nutritionally signed vegan diet or a plant-based diet it is possible but it takes far more knowledge and understanding about the mix of proteins to get the quality of protein you require for good body function there's different kinds of amino acids you need them in different proportions to get that quality and I would just want to seek assurance in any way Thank you Sandesh, you have some questions on food safety just a note to members we've got 15 minutes left and I've got Sandesh on food safety and then Stephanie wants to come in on the Public Health Restriction Promotions Bill which has already been mentioned but if there's any more we might be struggling to bring another member in she hinted Sandesh, I just want to ask a question on the back Heather Yes, it is more expensive to buy a higher quality cut of meat but I feel that we might eat too much meat and actually having a majority of your diet being vegetarian with fish as well and a reduction in that meat would allow that higher quality to be purchased and look everyone has different levels of where they are going to be able to afford but to buy red meat maybe once a week and the best one that you can afford would surely be better than having the processed food I agree with everything you've said in terms of there isn't a huge amount of requirement at the moment nationally we're already below that 70 grams on average across Scotland of red meat per day it's at 60 I believe in the last tracker I need to check the actual number that we're already reducing there are still some people that eat a very meat dependent diet at the extremes but on average for the population we're within that target of 70 grams per day in terms of quality of meat in choice, yes having fish there are some parts of Scotland that do struggle to get access to fish regularly and freshly but I think and again fish is not the cheap food because when I was a child it's quite pricey, sometimes more pricey than meat I think if we could continue to work with the meat industry to ensure that all of the animal is produced in a way that maximises the health qualities so that we can offer people that choice and range there are some groups of the population that have a far greater taste towards European sausages etc and things like that so I think we've got to try and not constrain choice to make sure that the choices that are available are healthy, nutritious and don't do damage on what we were talking about meat but I think if we look at food logistics it's incredibly complicated to get from the farm to our tables so what is it that Food Standards Scotland does to ensure that the safety and ensure that standards are maintained is a step of this very incredibly complicated journey I'll give that one to Geoff so in terms of the legal requirement actually is that the producer of the food is responsible for making sure it's safe that is the process so there's a whole variety of mechanisms that we will use so that will include some direct oversight that we have in terms of abattoir production it includes local authority in terms of inspections of food businesses it includes food businesses doing their own sampling and surveillance it includes us doing sampling and surveillance through the local authorities so there's a kind of system of verification and check every food business is required to produce a food safety management plan and the local authorities will inspect that food safety management plan when they do an inspection so the system is pretty robust more recently again post horse meat there is the food industry integrity network which was set up post horse meat which is a collaboration around sharing intelligence and information around food safety issues then obviously there's issues around import controls and checks at import level so depending on where you pick at the point in the supply chain there is a mechanism for verification and checking the safety of it but primarily the responsibility is for the retailers and of course the other thing aside from the official regulators you've also got third party assurance schemes like the BRC IFS and a few others who are also accreditation schemes and independent audit systems as well and we also audit local authorities in terms of ensuring that local authorities are actually undertaking their functions as a competent authority so it's a fairly complex network of how food safety is assured I think as we said and the report we produced with the FSA there is very little evidence to suggest that there are any kind of significant threats or risk to our food safety system so going to the Royal Highland show some of the producers were telling me how they could actually tell you exactly what was in the beef the mince they could tell you exactly where that's come from through their work which is quite incredible my last question I'm not sure if you're able to answer this but I want to ask it with food safety I think food security is very important with the war in the Ukraine I am incredibly concerned with possible future conflicts on the horizon whether we are able to ensure that in the United Kingdom whether in Scotland we have food security is this something, an area that you're working on or is this something you can certainly try to ensure that we have there's a couple of things I think it's under the UK Government's Agriculture Act the Secretary of State is required to produce food security report I think every five years so we fed into that for the first year in response to the Ukraine Marie Goudre on the cabinet secretary set up the Ukraine task force and one of the recommendations that came out of that was to set up a food security unit within the Scottish Government which we kind of feed into and work with and I think there's a general certainly in some of the discussions for example I've had with New Zealand I think there is a general raising of awareness around the importance of food security across most nations actually so I think it has gone up the agenda quite significantly I think obviously food security is one of those things around it means different things to different people and actually the challenge around food security are different depending on where you live if you take Scotland's natural geography and you're going to invent or be able to suddenly increase your wheat production for example so I think the food security challenges are different for each country and I think there is a general view around we do need to make sure that we're on it and yeah so the food security unit in Scottish Government has the lead and we feed into it I'd just like to add it's not just potential conflict climate change affecting different parts of the world could also impact on our food supply if you think of Mediterranean countries with very high temperatures this last summer a lot of our fresh fruit and vegetables comes from those countries so it's a multitude of issues that need to be considered and I think that's one of the opportunities that the Food Commission have about looking at local to promote more local food across Scotland I suppose the other risk alongside all that is actually the increased risk for potential food crime if the risk of substitution and adulteration to maintain profit against pressure in the system so you use an alternative cheaper ingredient and claim it's the original ingredient and charge the same price so again we've not seen any evidence of that we are looking for it but we've not seen any evidence of it but again it's one of those understand the consequences of the horizon and making sure we're alive to that and I think we did when we had the session with Paul we did actually we've offered it to this committee and the rain committee to actually do it for obvious reasons a private session around what we're doing around food crime and intelligence so again we can pick that up and do that separately but obviously that would have to be a food health research programme so that we're looking at research and working with the Savari institutes across Scotland to look at emerging sources of new proteins et cetera so there's quite a breadth of activities going on around a future food okay thank you so as promised on to our last theme and questions from Steffi Calhann on the public health restriction of promotions bill thank you I do have a couple of questions my first one I know we've spoken about obesity already and about the complexities around it, the links to poverty to energy prices et cetera too so just for clarity and I'm conscious of times the short answer would be quite good if possible to what extent do you expect the bill to help to address obesity levels and protect public health could I ask that to you Jen or Heather you'd prefer again I'd say the bill is an important bill in helping to shift and change the food environment this bill alone is not going to be the only solution to it but I think it's an important one the importance of promotions in terms of say it will require some kind of deep analysis of the business models that are currently being used and I think that's the right thing that's what it should be doing but going back to the points I made about out of home and the general issues around how fat cell and sugar this is an important bill that will help make a difference thank you very much and the focus of the bill clearly is on influencing individuals behaviour a restricting access but there is that need to address things at a wider level as well so one example that I know certainly one of my local councils looked at was community access to school kitchens and even in times which provides cooking skills provides hot food nutritious food and also helps with isolation and things as well so that was just an example and oh there's obviously complexities around it but that doesn't mean we shouldn't attempt to do these things so I'm wondering thinking in the very broadest terms what other legislation or policy initiatives might be helpful in improving people's food choices and protecting public health and I'm not sure who wants to answer that I'll answer it cos I've got a little bit of an answer and then I'll let Heather pick up the only ideas I think that example you've given for example things like the discussion we had around the good food nation earlier on around local plans there's no restriction on innovation at a strategic level in terms of what can be done so I think as well there is a pretty good local authority network you've got COSLA you've got the society of local authority chief executives in place so there are mechanisms where local authorities at a strategic level can share their ideas and their innovations so I would say things like good food nation plan means there's nothing off the table what the local opportunity might be I think the challenge is making sure you've got that balance between what you might want to do at a macro level versus what you might need to do at a local level and making sure that we get that balance in terms of opportunity in terms of other ideas I'll pass that to Heather I think Geoff mentioned earlier about our disappointment that the sugar levy only applied to soft drinks so I'd personally quite like to see that revisited and to consider whether or not some of our leveys could be allocated across other food groups because I think that that had a degree of success not just in affecting the price of higher sugar drinks but also in bringing down the average level of sugar content in soft drinks and I'd like to see that rolled out because when we speak to some of the big retailers that own branded products the non-branded store products, they've already brought down some of the high fat, high salt, high sugar but they're not seeing that same process happening in the branded products so something that perhaps nudged that reformulation agenda a little bit further along would be very helpful I think that the bringing together of our initiatives on community development that whole approach that community empowerment community development's good for wellbeing to see that reach across into the healthy eating and increasing the cooking skills, the shopping skills of people I think that's a good one and I think that cross-agenda approach that we don't just look at food as food but we look across as I mentioned earlier about agricultural policy about what we do in schools but also what we do under community development and bring that together this is the biggest public health problem Scotland's facing at the moment on life expectancy treatment of disease economic success, people being absent from work, it's hugely important that we address this and I think it's not a single item agenda, I think it goes across food availability food education and the whole breadth of things and I'd like to see all aspects of Scottish policy have a think about it might not be completely relevant but if they think about it if there's an opportunity to move things towards improving the food environment I'd be very grateful Can I just pick up on the point that you said there as well about supermarket branded products saying that they're not following suit but we also have a situation as well where you've got for example the cheapest stone brand serials aren't fortified with nutrients in the same way as some of your leading brands are the more expensive own brand products are is that something that's come up at all I'm just wondering if that's arisen I would need to check my fats on that I think that some of those fortifications are going to be re-looped at because of the folate acid supplementation that's coming through so if you don't mind I would like to talk to the nutrition team about that I thought that most serials were fortified but be grateful if you could come back to them My understanding, we will check it my understanding is that the compositional changes have mainly been around the salt and sugar content Thank you for everything that you've told us today it certainly feeds into a lot of our health and the quality of the work that we're already undertaking so thank you very much for that that concludes the public part of our meeting today our next meeting will begin stage 1 scrutiny of the patient safety commissioner for Scotland bill and we'll take evidence from Barnas Cumberlage but that's us for today, thank you