 I welcome to the second meeting of the Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee in 2022. Before we begin, I remind those committee members using electronic devices to switch them to silent. Our first item of business today is an evidence session on the Good Food Nations Scotland Bill. I welcome to the meeting Professor Mary Brennan, the chair of the Scottish Food Coalition, Jeff Ogle, the chief executive of Food Standards Scotland and Robin Gurley, the former adviser and lead for public sector food and drink policy of the Scottish Government and Scotland Food and Drink. To start off, I invite Professor Brennan to make an opening statement, followed by Professor Bregar Pardon, Robin Gurley and then Jeff Ogle. It's my absolute pleasure to be with you all and happy new year to everyone. As chair of the Scottish Food Coalition, I'm here to represent our coalition of civil society organisations over 40 who represent small-scale farmers and growers, academics, worker unions, charities who are focused on environment, health, poverty and welfare. As a coalition, we are acutely aware of the challenges that are facing our food system and are deeply connected to and working with communities and organisations who are trying to achieve systemic change to drive a healthier, fairer and more sustainable food system for Scotland. We are undoubtedly, as a nation, at a key junction with Covid-19 and the on-going uncertainty and complexity around Brexit and, of course, the greater awareness and acceptance of the climate and nature emergencies that we are now facing. From this, we have learned to be more alert to the harms caused by our food system and its inherent fragility. Of course, we have also learned such positives through the last turbulent years about the many positive deliverables that the food system can offer. I'm looking forward to discussing with you all today how, through strong and courageous leadership and effective governance, we can transform the system to make it fairer, healthier and sustainable for all. We can deliver on our environmental goals. We can reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We can reverse our biodiversity loss and, in fact, enhance it. We can drive better educational attainment and food education and skills. We can make our workforces and our population at large healthier and more productive. Finally, we can also drive and help to support our urban, island and rural communities in rejuvenating and embracing a strong food culture. The Good Food Nation Bill is a crucial first step in Scotland's transition. It won't be the only step, but it is a crucial first step. It is there to provide us with the enabling framework to inform future food policy, to provide a foundational set of legislations, to help us to ensure and join up our policy activities and to ensure that they are as impactful as possible. We, at the Scottish Food Coalition, and this is detailed in our written evidence, are of the belief that it is imperative that the framework is underpinned by an independent Scottish Food Commission that would provide advice and scrutiny critical to that just transition. We believe that it should be a standalone body with a remit that reads across all food-related issues, which can help national and local government to make more effective and efficient use of public and private resources. It is imperative that the Good Food Nation Bill has a clear purpose. We believe that the purpose of the bill should be to take deliberate and targeted steps towards ensuring that everyone in Scotland can fully realise their right to food. The bill has been described by the apologies. We also believe that the bill should set out a small number of high-level targets to drive immediate action and to keep our focus on the journey ahead and on the direction of travel. It must lay the foundation for future legislation and help to reorientate our actions and our resources towards delivering social or social environmental economic and health goals. Our food system offers huge potential to be unlocked. The governance of the system must be organised and reflect not only the gravity of the challenges but the scale of the positive outcomes that we can achieve. That, in our view, is a legacy that we can all be proud of and all be part of delivery. Thank you for this opportunity. My name is Robin Gurley. I am now semi-retired, although I work pro bono for a European NGO. I was head of service at East Ayrshire Council when I managed the ranger services, including catering for schools and social services. I was a member of the Scottish Food and Drink Leadership Forum, which developed Scotland's first national food and drink policy recipe for success. That was a successful policy. I was then a member of the Scottish Food Commission, which looked at the good food nation bill and made recommendations. I also worked with Scotland Food and Drink, and I would say that my specialism is public food, so food in schools, hospitals, prisons, universities and elsewhere. I believe that this bill is very important. Food has emerged as a key area of public policy from the status of being taken for granted in the past, but it has such an impact on Scotland's economy. The largest manufacturing sector is food and drink, environment and climate change, and social policy related to health and other aspects. The bill can seek to address some of the conflicts that are apparent between industry economy, health and environment, and to align the different objectives of each sector. Lastly, the good food nation bill sounds to me like a strapped line, and it should be something like food in society. A good food nation bill underplays the importance that food has to Scotland, so I would have said something like food in society. Good morning to the committee. As the already existing independent food body in Scotland is directly accountable to the Scottish Parliament, Food Standards Scotland has a significant interest in both the subject matter and the progress of the bill through the Scottish Parliament. We provide advice related to food throughout the food chain, from production to consumption, with statutory objectives set out in the Food Scotland Act 2015, including a remit to improve the extent to which members of the public have diets that are conducive to good health and to protect the other interests of consumers in relation to food. That means that our scoping law is broad when it comes to consumer interests and the act doesn't limit what those interests are. We have fulfilled our role through the provision of independent evidence-based advice to the public ministers and to the Scottish Parliament. We are the regulator in terms of food safety and standards, whereas on diet and nutrition, our role is largely advisory. In terms of the bill, to truly become a good food nation, health improvement must be at the heart of the bill and, in our view, the trajectory for diet and nutrition in Scotland cannot be allowed to continue. The pandemic has also underlined the urgency in addressing high levels of overweight and obesity in Scotland. To reflect that in the bill, the Scottish dietary goals must be given more prominence. Those are long-standing and well-established goals but not yet in statute, and making them mandatory would give the targets and the plans teeth. The bill could also unlock changes in the food system and environments to make it easier for people to access healthy food. Given the private sector's influence, it is also important that food businesses are involved in a meaningful way. As the Scotland independent food regulator with statutory objectives across the entirety of the food chain, FSS has a key role to play in terms of independent challenge provided the bill places a required focus on dietary health. We will now move on to questions from members, and we have around 90 minutes to do that. I start by asking what the witnesses' understanding of the main food-related issues are in Scotland. If you bear in mind that, back in December 2018, there was a consultation on the legislative proposals that were published in December 2019. A lot of the feedback was that we needed policy coherence, we needed to address environmental impacts, food insecurity, public health, we needed to support and incentivise business to play a part. I am looking at the bill as before us. The moment seems pretty empty, and there is not a lot on the face of the bill. I ask what your impression is of the good food nation bill as before us, and whether it will really help to address some of Scotland's food-related issues and build on the successes that we have seen in the past. It is really interesting and a great place to start. We are undoubtedly, I myself and the Scottish Food Coalition are disappointed by the content of the bill and the ambition in the bill and the lack of scrutiny and coherence in it. At the heart of it is what is the core purpose of what we are trying to do. That is to an extent there and has come through the various stages in making food accessible to all, ensuring that people are able to access nutritious and afford food that is produced in as environmentally sustainable way as possible, that there is strong welfare and wellbeing of our land, water and sea. I think that we understand the principles, we understand the primary direction of travel that we wish to go in. The bill provides the framework or the bones for that. What it is lacking is the clarity of purpose and the clarity of scrutiny and accountability in terms of explicit targets, in particular, and not only to what Devon just said about the Scottish dietary goals. I think that we have to be brave, we have to be bold in terms of saying that the status quo is unacceptable, we have to take direct action and we have to shift the needle so that we are improving the health environment, social and economic conditions that people are living in, that businesses are operating in and that Government is governing in. I think that that is at the heart of it. The core to that is more efficient and effective use of public resources, whether they are subsidies, whether that is the money spent on public food, but that is central to that policy coherence argument and the ways of working, co-creating, collaborating and innovating. In terms of the first part of your question around the challenges, there are a few. Diet and nutrition is clearly a core challenge for Scotland. At the moment, the projection is that, by 2030, obesity levels will be about 40 per cent in adults, so that trajectory needs to be turned around. I think that the other two points that I would make around the food environment and the way in which we have food production, high-fat salt and sugar, that certainly needs to be a big challenge. Obviously, there are challenges around sustainability and indeed food culture. In terms of turning to the bill, our view would be for it to have impact when the national plan needs to have substance. It is worth noting that we have not had a plan before and that this bill is enabling and is an opportunity that has not existed before. We believe that it must have some meaningful targets in independent assessment and critique as to whether they have been met and that needs to be there. In order for there to be policy cohesion at national and local level, there needs to be a clear link in the collectively agreed target set at a national level that are then required to be reflected in local plans. As I have already said, in terms of outcomes, there needs to be some clear focus. Our view is through the Scottish Dietary Goals being front and centre, because they would give the clear focus and clarity in terms of direction and outcomes. Before you address the previous questions, is the bill that has been laid in front of us fit for purpose? Does it go anywhere close to what the stakeholders out there actually wanted? We have heard about accountability, reporting, targets, whatever. None of those are included in the bill. Is it a bit premature? Should we have waited until there was a bill that covered the topics that the stakeholders were actually looking for? The responses to the consultation came out strongly with an interest in public food. Food in schools, hospitals and elsewhere. People want better-resourced food in schools, hospitals and so on. Public food is a key issue. Health and diet-related issues, obesity and so on, are another key issue. As was local, there is pride. Sometimes there is a consensus and a team effort around Scottish food. There is pride in Scottish food. If you look at the work of Scotland food and drink and other industry bodies, there are colleagues in health, colleagues working in climate. There is a consensus to do something better to do with food. I would pick up on Professor Brennan's point about policy coherence. The bill can bring policy coherence to those areas. In the bill, there is a proposal to have a national food plan and local food plans involving health boards and local authorities and so on. I do not think that we should underestimate the value of that. Personally, that is a game changer. If I could use the example of local authorities, food has emerged as a key, important area of public policy. Ten years ago, that was not the case. The recent COP in Glasgow showed that, in terms of climate change, food is an absolutely critical issue. We looked at local authorities and their responsibilities. If a local authority had a food plan that was of the same status or esteam as health and safety or a financial plan or a community plan or a disability discrimination plan, if each local authority had that plan, each department within that local authority would have to look at how they addressed food. So, functions and local authorities, economic development, planning, licensing, education, social work—every one of those departments, if there was a corporate food plan, would have to write into their service plan what they were doing to produce a better food landscape in Scotland. If we took economic development as one example, at the moment or planning, in the early days, we probably struggled to find the word food mentioned. Yet, if we want to grow the food sector through economic development, that should be a really key issue. If we want to look at the number of food businesses that are within an area or the amount of land that was given over to agricultural production, that should be a key part of planning for any local authority area. If I was to ask the man in the street what functions do local authorities have and how we could produce a better food system through that, they might struggle to say that. From our perspective, putting a statutory duty onto local authorities and health boards to identify food as a key area of policy and to translate that into service plans is potentially a game changer. If I wanted to see one thing in the bill, it would be that. It would be a way of not only elevating and promoting food and its importance, but it would be a way of addressing the conflicts that exist between social, economic and environmental priorities. That would be something that would affect a local authority food plan and a health board food plan, which would produce a better society in Scotland and tangibly affect the lives of people. Before we move on to other questions, Professor Brennan, we would like to come in on a short point. On the question that you asked, Robin, I have been reflecting on this for the last few days. We have to be careful that bad legislation is probably worse than no legislation, but I do not think that the bill, as it is drafted, is falling quite into that category. I think that there are issues that we need to address around scrutiny and interconnection and policy coherence. However, I agree with Robin that the national local food plans, especially if they are talking to each other and working in a common direction, are a game changing set of actions that we can work with. It is that fine line between can we work with the existing draft and develop it so that it is stronger and more robust and more accountable? It also outlives all of us around the table so that it can progress over time. The other final point that I want to make is that we talk a lot about the economic value of the food and drink sector to Scotland. The data that we use is fabulous. I have been reading the most recent OSHA data, but it is only related to the food manufacturing sector. It does not account for the huge value and contribution of businesses beyond food manufacturing, including food service and beverage, which offers as many businesses nearly and more employment than production and manufacturing. I think that one of the really valuable things that are going forward is that we need to more explicitly appreciate the real value and strength and contribution that the whole of the food and drink sector, right through from primary production to food service, delivers communities and regions across this country. I will now move on to questions from Rachel Hamilton. It is really interesting to listen to what you have been saying. It is something that I have been considering as to how we meet policy outcomes on all the issues such as the environment and health and other targets that are set to apparently be achieved through the good food nation bill. One interesting example would have been the islands act, which is framework legislation, but then moves on and sets out plans that improve lives for islanders in communities. It is one area that this committee will certainly be looking at. I really wanted to hone down on what you think that a good food nation means. What does it mean to you? Can I start with Mary? No problem. Thank you very much, Rachel. I have written it down, as you may have imagined. From the perspective of the Scottish Food Coalition, a good food nation is a nation that ensures that food is accessible to all, no matter where they are living, whether that is on an island community or in the centre of Glasgow, whether they are able to access nutritious food that is culturally appropriate, whether they are able to afford that food without undue worry and concern about whether they are able to eat how many of them they will be able to eat. A good food nation is a nation that produces food that does as little harm as possible to the environment. A good food nation is a nation that produces and consumes food that has been produced to the highest welfare and wellbeing standards. We are looking after those natural resources, animals, fish, watercourses and marine environments that are so central to our existence. I think that, really importantly, a good food nation is one that has vibrant and sustainable food and drink businesses from the smallest micro-businesses through to our large multinationals. They are at the heart of and all across the chain, as I said earlier. It is trying to balance. It is also one that brings people pride in their food and enjoyment in their food through all of what we are talking about. That, to me, is what a good food nation is. Therefore, the targets that we would set around accessible, nutritious, affordable, healthy, environmental, safe and food are central to the delivery of that. That is why the explicit targets are so important to that direction of travel and showing that we are moving the needle in the right direction. I will let others come in on that point just now. Do you believe that Scottish ministers will have the ability to set that plan with the policy outcomes that will be able to take that forward in section 7, which then passes that buck to local authorities? Do you think that those policy outcomes that we are shaping are going to be clear enough within the framework legislation to be able to deliver what you have just outlined? I have my concerns based on the current draft, but that is where we need strong co-creation and collaboration between the development of the national and local plans and the collective agreement on the high-level targets. I have real faith in our local authorities. There is great innovation, passion and commitment. There is immense tacit knowledge of what is needed in their communities. There is great commitment to moving the needle forward, improving our health outcomes, improving our social outcomes, improving our economic outcomes and playing our part in improving our environmental outcomes. I believe that, with careful management, collaboration and co-creation between the national and local level and the public bodies, with the clarity of purpose and the direction of travel, that it is possible. That said, the caveat, of course, is that the progress would not necessarily happen quickly. That is something that we need to commit for the long term. What is being asked of you as a committee is to be the committee who starts this journey and sets that direction of travel and resources and enabled and empowers both national and local and public bodies to work together and align themselves to the principles of a good food nation. I ask Jeff Ogle a similar question. If you cannot remember what it was, what does a good food nation look like to you? What does it mean to you? Again, whether those policy outcomes are going to be delivered? Mary has given a very detailed answer to that, so I will try to be a little bit brief. At a strategic level, there is a lot of content in Mary's response that I agree with, but I suppose that there are two key points that I would make for a good food nation. The first is that we have a positive food environment and that is underpinned by a lot of things around sustainability and all the other things that Mary has been talking about. I suppose that the other point that I would make around a good food nation is that the population's interaction with food is an informed one. People understand not just what they are eating, but they understand the issues around production and how to cook. There is a whole plethora of what that means, but if you are talking about a good food nation, it is a population that is informed and at ease with its diet and comfortable in understanding what we are consuming, why we are consuming it and, most importantly, the impact it has. In terms of what the bill does, it is important that I do not think that the purpose of this bill can be to solve all the issues that are associated with food, food poverty, etc. It is a framework bill that joins up areas that need to be joined up. Clearly, the content of any national planner and local plans are going to be important. There are issues around accountability, monitoring and visibility and transparency. From my perspective, we need to be slightly cautious about the purpose of the bill in terms of its achievement, because otherwise the risk is that it is piling in effectively the Scottish Government's job. We need to be thoughtful about scopers how I would put it. Thank you, Geoff. I do not know if I have time to quickly ask Robin if he has any comments on those questions. I would echo what has been said. Food education is very important. The idea that Geoff has put forward is about people being informed and comfortable with their food environment. I think that we produce in Scotland some of the best food in the world, but across society there are poor expectations around what food is consumed. To produce a better food environment where people are comfortable with food and value food is something that would not be achieved overnight, but that is the journey that we are on. I want to see an industry that has a high reputation for producing good food, and I would like to see that reflected in hospitality and tourism and attract people to Scotland because of the great food that we produce. Roundabout climate, I would like to see a sustainable production that may include organic food. Scotland produces very small amounts of organic food, yet in terms of climate change, arguably there are benefits. The Government will be looking at how the new cap will be introduced and whether there is some flexibility in there to fund some of the work that is needed towards building a better food nation. I think that we should not get too hung up on targets. I think that this is a long-term thing. The bill is not going to be a silver bullet, but it can lay the foundation and the groundwork for the better food society that we want to see in Scotland. The first national food and drink policy was very successful. It grew the industry enormously and it focused colleagues in health around the role of food and society and so on. That was great, but we need the bill because if we do not have it, the bill will remain a civil service policy. Food touches every part and every person in Scotland. It affects the environment, the economy and health. It can remain a civil service policy in hope that civil servants drive it in the right way. It has to be much better connected and better founded in Scotland, and the bill is one way of achieving that. I want to make the point that George Burgess, in evidence to the committee back in November, had said that the bill focuses on the public sector. There are limitations to the extent that Parliament can impose duties on private sectors. It is something that the committee should be looking at if some of the witnesses are suggesting that the bill should cover the private sector. I want to note that you all touched upon targets and noted Robin that you said that we should not get too hung up on them. I was wondering how effective targets are, particularly at an early stage. Often targets can drive a narrative, whereas outcomes are more organic. We can see more often unintended consequences that may be missed or not noted if they do not sit within targets. I wonder whether, being such a vast, high-level overview, would targets really be a help or a hindrance when we are looking to change a whole culture? Noting that everyone has their own view of what the priority targets should be, how could we prioritise those targets? For example, each witness today has their own direction of travel that you really want to be focusing on. My question is whether rigid targets would not take away the essence of what the whole bill is supposed to be about, which is more of a guided, natural, holistic culture change. I will open that up to the whole panel, if anyone wants to answer first. I have a good question. Obviously, there is complexity around targets, KPIs and all those sorts of things, and there is the point that you deliver what is measured. From our perspective, if you take the Scottish dietary goals as outcome targets, what they do is give a framework in terms of a clear ambition and direction of travel. However, do not subsequently tie the national or local level around how those targets are to be met. We have nine Scottish dietary goals, but I will focus on three, sugar, fat and fibre. Reductions in terms of sugar and fat increase in fibre. None of those have been where we need them to be, and they have not been for 20 years. There has to be something that signals the purpose and intent, but at the same time, you cannot have a bill that has sections and sections of targets on it. There needs to be some capability and ability through the planning to set directions of travel at a local level. The difficulty that always exists with the balance between primary legislation, secondary legislation and non-statutory elements is the flexibility that it might have in terms of meeting requirements. Primary legislation is obviously hard to change in secondary legislation. However, in terms of the point that I would make, I go back to my point about obesity earlier on. Obesity and all the issues that come with overweight are a health crisis now. If you look at the proportion of money being spent on treatment for diet-related issues rather than prevention, that is a significant proportion of health spend, which in a way is not good health spend because it is treating the causes of a problem rather than what we need to do and what dietary goals we would do would shift the focus towards prevention. That becomes not just a health issue, but an economic one. If you have 40 per cent of the population that is overweight or obese, you will have issues around productivity. For me, the issue is about what are the key outcomes that we need to change? For me, because of all the points that I have made, there has to be a healthier nation that is changing the direction of travel that we currently have when it comes to the health and fitness of the population. You cannot have too many targets on the face of the bill, but for me, you definitely need some. For us, that would be those points. It makes my point in a way because you are speaking about obesity and the correlation with food, but we also know that one of the biggest factors in obesity is stress. That could be social injustices and living in poverty. That is why I am asking this question, really, because there again we have that obesity targets what are focused on food when actual stress comes into play as well. I suppose that in terms of the bill, I think that it is section 4 of the bill, what we do not have at the moment, which this bill provides an opportunity for, is that in other areas of interconnected policy, there can be a requirement to consider the impact on areas like that. That has a potential advance to get other areas of policy to be thinking about the consequences of policy initiatives in the context of any particular—I think that Robin talked about planning earlier on. If you take planning as an example, we produce a report called Beyond the School Gate. However, if you have a planning and you are reviewing a planning policy framework, one of the things that might be required to think about is what does that mean in terms of the significance of particular types of food businesses and their proximity to schools? You can draw a correlation, but I suppose that what I would go back to my earlier point is that you cannot pile all of the Scottish Government responsibilities into this bill and say that this bill is responsible for fixing all the interconnected issues that are related to food. What you can do is make other areas of policy cognisant and recognise the consequences of their policy initiatives and what they might have on here. If you have something like Scottish Diary of Goals on the face of the bill or, indeed, potentially other targets, I suppose, understand the consequences of particular policy initiatives and what they might have in terms of the consequences for the outcomes that the bill is trying to achieve is a positive advance from where we are now. I take the point that I think that targets would be helpful, but that is not what the bill is about. In my view, we are talking about seeking things that are going to drive change in the food system rather than hit individual targets. It is a framework bill. It is looking at the long term, it is looking at coherence and resolving conflict between the economy, environment, health interests and so on. I think that the point that I tried to make earlier about the local authority food plans is that you could have individual targets for economic development, the number of new businesses, food businesses that are created, or you could, picking up on Jess's point, have targets about the density of fast-food outlets within a geographic area. You could look at licensing food businesses. There are a range of targets that you could come up with, but to me it is about seeking the levers and the drivers for change, not hitting individual targets. I am strongly in favour of targets, because they are a relatively small basket of targets that communicate the essence of what we are trying to achieve and provide a focus for that direction of travel, as Jess was saying, and require the level of policy coherence and reflection that we need so that policies that are not directly related to food are not working against. That is the argument around aligning issues around planning, local procurement or procurement policy, issues around poverty, alleviation and inequalities. I believe that the combination of the dietary emissions targets, the greenhouse gas emissions targets and possibly procurement targets for local food and the relationship around living wage and biodiversity are central to communicating the essence of what we are all trying to achieve. I understand the reticence about hard targets. We must remember that many of what we are talking about in terms of whether, for example, greenhouse gas emissions and food waste targets are already targets within existing action plans. They are already central to the national performance framework indicators. What I find quite baffling is the lack of connection to the national performance framework and how, through the bill, we can really contribute so much to improving and driving forward progress against the indicators, whether they are healthy life expectancy, healthy weight, food insecurity, etc. We are now going to move on to our next theme and questions from Jenny Minto. Thank you, panel. That has been a very interesting set of answers to those questions. I was really struck by Robin Gurley's suggestion that perhaps it should be called food in society. I am interested to hear from the panel their thoughts on why public participation is important in preparing food plans. That might be from people with specific characteristics or groups whose voices are very seldom heard. If we can start with Professor Brennan, if that is okay. Excellent. I will get the appropriate mind map. Thank you very much. At the core of it, we can learn so much from our publics, whether they are the general public, organisations or groups who are representing communities with particular characteristics, whether they are lived experiences of different types households, families and organisations. We can learn so much about the realities, challenges, opportunities and innovations that are already happening and part of the world. That is why, at the first principles, consultation, participation and providing space for the public voice is so central, because it makes what we do better. It informs us and inspires us and it challenges our maybe at times contained mindsets. It is absolutely essential that there is really strong stakeholder engagement. Again, if we take the nature of the food and drink sector, we are varying from very small businesses up to large businesses. We need to understand their lived experiences and to understand the challenges that both the business owners and the workers are facing. We need to have a real breadth of stakeholder engagement. We need to understand where the gaps are, where the infrastructural failures are and where market failures might be occurring. We have to be able to build capacity for connecting stakeholders, in particular for public procurement. Who are the real interconnecting nodes that can help to drive local innovation and local development? For example, some of our great independent wholesalers are central to that in terms of providing that. It is all around being open and accepting that there is just great knowledge and experience and so much to learn from those public and stakeholder voices that we in our ivory towers, whichever they are, can only benefit from being exposed to. Jeff Oggall, can you give your thoughts on the importance of public participation, please? Yes. As an organisation that consults on pretty much everything that we do, I would say that it is critical. I would go back to the point that I made to Rachel, which is about the definition of a good food. If you are talking about a philosophy or a definition where the interaction with food is informed, for the public to be informed, they have to participate. That makes consultation and communication absolutely critical. I suppose that, in that sense, you have to be able to take the public with you. If you are going to drive change, you need to take the public with you. What we know from our own experience, particularly around some of the change and some of the challenges with food, is that, as the analogy is with smoking, if you talk to people about the dangers of smoking, it is pretty much understood. If you talk about the challenges with diet and some of the health consequences, which are much longer in terms of timescale, some of that connection is harder. What people are eating now does not translate to potential health consequences in 10 to 15 years. The importance of communication and engagement is crucial. The other thing that we are trying to move away from is the point of telling people what they should and should not do. There has to be an engagement process that enables people to make informed decisions and reach conclusions themselves. You cannot just say, do not eat lettuce of sugar, because it is really bad for you, because it does not resonate and it does not land. I think that the criticality around that engagement is going to be crucial to that. Thank you. I am interested that you highlighted sugar. In your evidence that you submitted, you talked about consulting the private sector as well. Having read some of Henry Dimbleby's work, he proposed a couple of recommendations that taxing salt and sugar for commercial purchasers of those. That follows on a bit from Rachael Hamilton's question as well. I am interested to know your thoughts on what the UK Internal Market Act, how that might impact on that type of decision that Scotland might want to make. In terms of the plan itself, it does not necessarily bump up against the Internal Market Act, but what the Internal Market Act would do is that any specific policies or proposals that were going to be implemented in Scotland would potentially have to be looked at—well, I mean, pretty much everything that we do now has to be looked at in the context of the Internal Market Act. For example, if ministers wanted to set new conditions, restrictions or prohibitions or to maintain existing ones, you could do that in certain circumstances, but what you cannot necessarily do is stop foods produced in other areas that do not meet the requirements, you cannot prevent them being sold in Scotland. The Internal Market Act potentially has some consequences, not just in this area across a range of public health measures, but in terms of the national plan itself, I do not think that the Internal Market Act has that problem. It is the specifics around it, but from our perspective, certainly in terms of food and feed, we also have the frameworks where we work with the FSA, in particular, in andefron DHSC, with the UK frameworks process as well, which allows for divergence where there is a basically agreement for it or you can make the case for it. It is a combination of the Internal Market Act on the one hand that aligns with what the UK framework potentially is on the other and having to work through that. Thank you for that. That was very helpful. Robin, on public participation, I know that you have been very involved in this, so I would like to get some of your thoughts and examples on how public participation benefits plans. Again, I think that food education is key, so maybe for all people like me, my time has passed to eat a healthier diet, but I think that food education is absolutely critical and the Scottish Government has put a huge amount of investment into improving food education. We have to take the public with us, so that is why food education is so important. If there was a body to supervise the implementation of the Good Food Nation Bill, although that was an independent food commission or part of FSA or whatever, then a key issue for them or a key requirement of that body would be to engage with the public through the media and in other ways. In France, for example, I forgot the exact name of the group, but they set up a huge number of consultation groups all over France to produce their Good Food Nation Bill, Raffer-Anne, I think that it was called. At the end of the day, what you buy is a commercial act, and you purchase as an individual. My answer is that food education is key. Getting into schools and starting young is very important. Professor Brenner, I would like to come in with a short additional point. Yes, just one additional point. I think that I am picking up to an extent on what both Robin and Jeff have said. One of the things that I have learned from my experience, and by training a social marketer, is that we learn about the really good reasons why people do not necessarily follow best practice or why they do not necessarily eat as healthily as they can do or why they do not follow the recommendations. Through strong engagement, whether that is in the form of robust mechanisms such as citizens assembly, as has been built into the climate change act or various different mechanisms, we can really learn about the really good reasons why it can be difficult to do what we are asking people to do. That, again, can help us to become stronger and more nuanced in terms of how we understand the reality of people's lived experiences, the reality of the resources that they have available to them, the reality of the strains and stresses that they might be under, as was mentioned earlier on, the interaction with stress and lifestyle-related decisions. It is around learning from and learning with and collaborating and co-creating that is so central to where we are at and how we will actually do what we want to do, which is to transform the food culture, transform the practices in every household, in every business and in every school and organisation around the country. We are limited in time, so if we could ask members and the panel to try and keep their questions and responses as concise as possible. Karen Adam, please. Thank you, convener. I will be quick and cut this down, but I note that the Scottish Food Coalition developed with Norrish Scotland the kitchen table talks, and it was really interesting to read on that and to hear how well they actually worked. People came together and talked about those things that Mary just touched upon. Are there any other activities that could be used to motivate and enthuse people to get them involved in the evolution of food policy? Direct that to Mary, please. Karen, there is a plethora of methodologies, but very often there is nothing better than, as you said, getting into communities, sitting down with people, whether that is individually or collectively, and actually getting them to tell their stories, getting them to explore what food means to them and how they are incorporated and how it fits into their everyday lives. There are different mechanisms for what is often referred to as participatory democracy or deliberative democracy, some of which, in the written evidence coming from Sue Davis, they have extensive experience of how they can do that both qualitatively and quantitatively in short-term or long-term and doing long-term engagements. That is where the real power of models such as citizens' assemblies play in. I think that it is having that diversity of voices. I have learned so much through sharing the coalition about the different issues, challenges and barriers. You have to get out, get into communities, open your ears and go into the places. That might be abattoirs, farms, community kitchens or schools, and we learn so much from that. I am not sure that there is much to add to Mary's answer. I suppose that my point would be that good decision-making practice in our act is defined as consulting people who may be affected by decisions before taking them. The point is that you do not come up with one means of engagement. You use as many means of engagement as you can, whether that is through quantitative and qualitative surveys, focus groups, citizens' panels or whatever it may be. I think that the important thing is that you do not constrain yourself in terms of the type of engagement and the opportunity for people to contribute would be what I would add to what Mary said. Part of your response suggested that an inclusive approach to the consultation is anticipated, but it could be bolstered if the bill required to have the names of all consulted to be published. Is that an amendment that you would like to see come forward? Sorry, convenie. Can you just highlight the paragraph that you are talking about? In your response, the very final paragraph 40, we know that the consultative obligations contain the bill and would anticipate an inclusive approach to the consultation process. That could be bolstered if the bill required to have the names of all consulted to be published with the results of the consultation. The point is that, if you are making policy decisions and delivering on policy outcomes, I suppose that how you have reached those policy outcomes and the decision making in the consultation process and having transparency around all that is important. As a general point, I would say that there is an opportunity with the plans and, I suppose, conceptually with the bill around the importance of transparency around what we are trying to achieve with this in terms of any national and local food plan. Without the transparency, it is going to be difficult to get the change. The levels of participation and showing how you have done that and who has been involved in that is going to be important. Robyn, do you have any comment on Karen Adam's question? Not really, other than what has been said, I would just say that the different food groups in schools are a super wave engagement and that has been very impactful for the exist. I have to declare an interest here. I have had a long-term working relationship. Can I just ask the panel your views on the overall approach to accountability in the bill? Does the bill require a new and existing body with oversight and reporting against the good food nations plans, or can an existing body be tasked with the same job? What that remit should be, the expertise and resources, do they have all those things? I would also like to say that there is no food standards role in oversight of the Scottish Government's food policies more generally. I will start off with—I have forgotten your name, I apologise—my apologies, Jeff. In terms of a body, I suppose that it will not be a surprise to say that we do not support the establishment of an independent food commission under the banner of the bill. It does not seem like good value for Scotland to set up yet another independent body with all the associated overhead costs with it. We already exist as an independent food regulator. We have statutory objectives that cover the entirety of the food chain. We are not accountable to ministers, we are directly accountable to the Scottish Parliament. I suppose that the question that I would ask is what value is there in yet another body. In my understanding, ministers have not yet decided how that is going to be delivered, but from our perspective in terms of resourcing, the current level of resourcing that we have would need to be both of them if we were to take on this as an added responsibility as well. Certainly, in terms of issues around research, evidence and anything else, we are well versed in that we are an evidence-based organisation. We have a lot of scientific and expertise ranging from, for example, including social science, diet, nutrition and so on. What would be key to it, whoever is the body, and this is probably where I would agree with the Scottish Food Coalition and Mary, is that the process of engagement and the levels of expertise that you pull in, whichever organisation is doing, is going to be key. However, as I said, I am not sure that you need a new body to do it. Jeff, can I quickly come back to you then? What would be the cost of setting up a new independent body? Do you have an idea of what the cost of that would be? To some extent, it depends on the scale and remit setting up. If we are going to go on the plans, the scale and remit is going to be substantial, so, therefore, what would be the set-up cost and the running cost of an audience? The set-up cost for FSS was £15 million back in 2015, but that is a broad remit. Although, again, it depends on the scale and remit of what is being asked to be done, but, certainly, if you look at recent other bodies that have been set out in the Scottish Forestry Scotland or whatever, you are talking about millions of pounds that have a new body. It is not something that can be done cheaply. Mary, I know that you have a different view, so could you come in on that point just now, please? From the perspective of the Scottish Food Coalition, I think that there are strong concerns about whether—well, at the heart of it, the position is non-negotiable. There does need to be an independent oversight. The strong preference is that that will be a new independent and Scottish Food Commission, because I think that there are strong and really well articulated concerns about how the work that is required of this would fit into and align with the existing remit and role of Food Standards Scotland. It is clearly not resource neutral, so there would be resources required to further support Food Standards Scotland in taking on the role if they were able to do it. From our perspective, it is seeing a slightly smaller, more agile body similar, though not necessarily identical to the Land Commission, which, if my memory serves me correctly and I do not think that I have the figures right at hand, costs about £1.2 million or £1.3 million to set up. Is there to help to co-ordinate and facilitate and monitor the Good Food Nation Bill and the associated plans? They need to be formally required within their remit to work with other commissions and existing agencies and bodies, including Food Standards Scotland, and they could co-report and co-develop the reporting and monitoring in scrutiny. The types of skills, the breadth of expertise and the need to go beyond dietary and properly embrace environmental and food and security-related issues. From our perspective, it means that a new independent commission will be a better model, notwithstanding that I appreciate some of the concerns around the financial implications of that. We also have to think about that in the long term. Jeff mentioned the move from curative to preventative. That is about investing in the direction of travel and investing in the positive deliverables that we are trying to achieve from that. Ensuring that there is capacity, expertise and critical mass of organisations and individuals who are collaborating and co-hearing with each other in terms of the different areas. What that sounds to me is that what you are going to do as you are going to get a smaller body who is going to duplicate what everybody else is already doing, because there is a lot of good stuff already there with me, there is a lot of stuff already happening right across the food sector. I am going to go back to the point that Robin Gurley—I used to say earlier on that we are at the start of this journey. We are at the start of this journey. This journey, where Scotland has changed its food culture, started decades ago. We are right at the start of that process. There is a huge amount of work that has already been done. There is a huge amount of organisations already in play. Would it not be better to find a way of using those bodies that are currently there and getting them to do the work? I want to take it across the broad range of everything that needs to be done and the cultural change that we are looking to do. You were talking about targets. How do you set targets to get people to change their cultural way of eating? We would have to be prescriptive in what we were doing. The Government would have to say on Monday that we will eat cheese, on Tuesday we will eat fish and on Wednesday we will eat beef if we are going to get that cultural change driven by targets. That is going to be a cultural educational change, surely. I think that that is part of it. I think that you can use the architecture in place to make it more likely for people to eat cheese on Monday and beef on Tuesday as well without necessarily complete cultural change. I think that you can utilise different systems, procurement and different environments to make certain behaviours more likely over others or to make them easier or more convenient over others. I agree with you that there are a lot of players out there. There is a lot of extremely good work happening, much of which has been initiated through the work that the Scottish Government and in particular the likes of Robin have been championing over the years. However, what we do not have is an organisation that is drawing together the different strands. It is not about replicating, but it is about being able to take that systemic look that this field is proposing and to be able to draw the data, draw the insights, track the progress across multiple agencies and multiple policy areas. We have talked a lot about targets. Obviously, there is an evolution in terms of indicators of progress from a food culture perspective or from a food education perspective or from a food skills. I really like what Jeff Scott said about the ease that we have in our diet. There is an evolution that will evolve and it might be that we generate additional indicators. We refine existing indicators as we go through. However, as it stands in the policy arena and in the food and drink sector arena, there is not the coherency and there is not the collaboration at a systemic level that this type of commission would offer and needs to be at the heart of its remit. I specifically argue on the collaboration. Jim, sorry, I will have to stop you there. We are fast on and out of time. Jeff Scott has indicated that he would like to respond to that before we move on to questions from Alasdair. Just a very quick point. In terms of Mary's organisation's response around the activities of a food commission and what it does, I have just a couple of points. A lot of those things that we are already doing—we produce anew report, we undertake research, we do the citizen engagement and all those things—we also look at sustainability. I think that the point that I would say is that you do not need a new organisation to do what is being done here. You can actually organise it through another organisation. As an example, I mean that sounds a little bit pitch-for-epicess, but it is illustrative rather than that. We have something called the Scottish Food Enforcement Liaison Committee, where we bring 32 local authorities together to talk about a range of issues around food enforcement. There is no reason why you cannot have a similar kind of underpinning committee structure in whatever organisation that ends up that does many of the things that Mary is advocating. It does not have to be a new body to do that. You have to have confidence in the body that is decided upon in the end, but it does not have to be a new body as long as you are clear around what the functions are that you want to be delivered. You know my feelings about the role of local authorities and health boards in delivering that. I would see the Food Commission or within the FSA, as Mary said, providing expertise and facilitation and some monitoring, rather than setting up a body that is going to be a panacea and that is going to be the responsibility for driving all changes. I think that it is a facilitation body, and the delivery would mainly be through local authorities and health boards. I would have some concern about the FSA's role as a science-based organisation and an enforcement organisation. I think that it could sit within the FSA, but it would have to be a different sort of animal than the FSA is presently. We have talked about the kind of things that can be done to ensure that we make our aspirations in this area a reality, but monitoring is obviously important and monitoring policies takes on an importance as the bill develops. Is it true or do you feel that this is perhaps a question for Mr Gurley? Do you feel that we need to see what is in the plans in a sense? What is in the plan is as important as what is on the face of the bill. Do we need to see systems of monitoring that are attuned to what is in the plan and learned from what is in the plan? I would say that it is the facilitation role that is bringing expertise and facilitation and momentum. Monitoring not so much targets but monitoring good practice that is being developed through local authorities, health boards, industry organisations and so on, giving that some impetus and catalyzing that type of activity. I am less sure about targets. Yes, I could think of targets about supermarkets and the amount of local Scottish food that they offer or climate targets or sustainable production, obesity, food education. I could think of targets, but I think that I am more interested in driving good practice and monitoring that than monitoring targets. Thank you. Perhaps finally a question for both Mr Ogill and Mr Gurley. This has been touched on already, I realise, but over and above the existing bodies that exist when it comes to monitoring the success of policies, I do not want to overestimate the abilities of us as parliamentarians here or underestimate the abilities of experts, but over and above existing bodies is there a question about whether the monitoring or the scrutiny issue that we say about your partner on the monitoring should be done by elected or unelected bodies? Do you want me to have a go at that? Just a couple of things. Analysis, monitoring and evaluation, whoever is doing it, is really going to be critical for this. As an evidence-based organisation it is essential that you come from an evidence perspective. It is quite clear that certain functions or requirements you could farm them out to, for example academia. There is no reason why that cannot be done. The other thing that I would say is that we are not the FSA and we have a broader remit than the FSA and we are not just a regulator either. The point that I would make is that analysis and monitoring is essential to being able to evaluate the progress that you are making and to inform the decisions that you need to make going forward. You need to have that capability somewhere. Whether it is in the organisation that has oversight or that organisation has the ability to commission it, it is something that you can debate and decide on. Elected or unelected bodies, yes, there needs to be scrutiny and there needs to be evidence based. However, I would say that the main purpose of the body is establishing good practice and encouraging good practice, rather than being stuck on targets. I am sorry that I was just waiting for the sound to come on there, and thanks panellists have been really interesting discussions so far. I would like to ask a bit more about the right to food. What do you think about including the right to food in the good food nation bill as opposed to a human rights bill? Would you consider that to be mutually exclusive or are there particular strengths in having the right to food in one compared to the other? Following on from that, if the right to food is not formally incorporated through the bill, should it be strengthened to be more supportive of the right to food? If so, how? I realise that there is quite a lot in there, but I am conscious of time. Very briefly, I think that you have asked huge questions there, Beatrice. I would say that the right to food, I view that the same as a basic human right. Government has a responsibility and a role in providing clean water and clean air. Food is so basic that I think that the human right to food is essential. Whether it should be in a good food nation bill or in a human rights bill, I am not sure, but it certainly should be writ large in the good food nation bill. Children's human right to food is very important to me. I think that it is a basic principle in an equitable society, but any child should be able to make known that they are starving or in a state of poor nutrition or whatever. That just seems to me absolutely basic. I would want to see in a caring Scotland or a caring Scottish society that no person, certainly no child, should be in food poverty. As a basic human right, there should be other hands up and say that I need help. At the core of the issue is that we cannot deliver a good food nation without a commitment to the right to food and eliminating food poverty in Scotland. We will not have achieved a good food nation if those issues remain. That said, it has been exercising me and the wider coalition and many others as to whether the incorporation of the right to food should go into this bill or as is currently proposed into the human rights bill. They are not mutually exclusive, but if the human rights bill is considered to be the better legislative route, we have to be very explicit and take real care to ensure, as Robin is saying, that the commitment to and the effect to delivering the right of food is explicit within the bill. It must be the guiding principle and the core purpose that we nourish people in the country healthily and in a way that supports them so that they can give as much as they can socially and economically back to their communities and their households and the country at large. I am torn, because it is such a basic right that it needs to be incorporated as quickly as possible, but I understand the legislative motivations around the broader human rights bill. My concern is that there will be this gap and that the credibility of the good food nation bill will be damaged if it is not very explicitly positioned that the bill is about delivering the right to food. We can also use much stronger human rights-based language and indicators when we are working through it. The other area is about workers in the food and drink sector, many of whom are food insecure and recognise that the incompatibility between our workers in the food and drink sector from primary production through to food service is not being food secure. We cannot live with that in terms of then expecting to deliver a good food nation. Jeff, do you have any comments? Yes, just very briefly. From our perspective, the bill already pays attention to the right to food through the existing international law. The current draft requires ministers to have regard to those international instruments when creating their national food plan. As members will be aware, the Government has identified an alternative route through its programme for government. Ultimately, Parliament will decide where the right vehicle is. I will go back to my earlier point about not trying to do the whole of the Scottish Government job through the bill. Thank you, panel. Yes, it has been a brilliant discussion and clarity on some of the things that I have been mystified by. I have a few questions. I will give them to you all. I will direct them to a direction of who might pick them up. My first question is whether the Government should require public bodies to procure a minimum percentage of their food from suppliers based in Scotland and also to procure a minimum of a percentage of their food from organic farms. That is my first question. I will do a preamble. The response from Scottish Land and Estates to the committee's consultation notes that consumers will need an understanding of what constitutes good food, and we have touched on that already. That will require clear labelling and a greater understanding of the provenance of Scottish produce. I would like to ask you for your views on the importance and practicalities of enhanced food labelling, which could include the products carbon footprint, the method of production for livestock products and whether the food is ultra-processed and potentially other categories. My final question refers to the Scottish Food Coalition. Mary, you may expand on that, but I would love to hear from others. In your response to our committee's consultation, the Scottish Food Coalition stressed the importance of aligning Government business and trade policy with the good food nation goals, so that business incentives never encourage movement away from the good food nation goals. If you agree with the recommendation, that would be Robin, Jeff and Mary, if you can expand on it. If you have suggestions for how that could be achieved in practice. Three questions, and maybe Mary will start with you and you could pick up on those. Procuring from Scotland food labelling and then business incentives that encourage good food nation goals. Before you start, I apologise. I have to do this. We are very, very tight for time. Please keep your responses as concise as possible. I much appreciate it. I would say yes on local and yes on principle on organic, but I think that you have to take some caution. I think that it is more around sustainable production than necessarily specifically organic, as some other countries have had experiences where they set organic targets and then it leads to a lot of importing of organic. I think that it has to be the focus on sustainable production food from sustainable systems, but absolutely yes on local. I think that we have to be careful on labelling. Labelling is essential, plays a very important role in delivering key statutory information, but it is not a panacea and it is not what will drive food cultural change. I think that you can use what I mentioned choice architecture to ensure that in public food the food that you are serving is in line with your principles and your objectives. I will say on that. I think that we have to be careful around fair trade in that context. Finally, I absolutely believe that we need to align the levers, those that are going from a public sector as well as those that might be supporting the private sector in terms of subsidies, business support, public food contracts to deliver the objectives of the good food nation, so that they are aligning and pulling together. I think that about 50 per cent of the food that is provided in hospitals and schools and so on is Scottish and local. I think that there should be a reasonable target of, say, 60 per cent or more, 65 per cent. If that encounters legislative difficulties for some reason, I think that the good food nation bill could still set that out as an aspirational aid, but I think that it probably could be a legal target of 60 per cent or more. I will defer to Mary on that. I do not have anything to add to her answer. In terms of food and trade policies, it is absolutely vital that we engage industry. Also, if I may say so, supermarkets, maybe some sort of target for supplying Scottish food, would not be unreasonable for them either. I would just finalise by saying that public food, food served in schools and hospitals, should be an exemplar for a good food nation. However, in terms of it being a game changer or driving change, the grocery bill for Scotland is something like £13 billion. The public sector expenditure on food is £150 million, so it is infinitesimal compared to what supermarkets are purchasing. However, that does not excuse public food. It should always be the exemplar of a good food nation. I am procurement, not much more to add. You need to understand the kind of legal framework. I think that there are two points on that. One is capacity at a local level and also structurally. For example, at the local authority level, the demographics, the logistics and urbanisation are different. You have to be quite cautious around how you set minimum objectives. In theory, there is no reason not to be subject to meeting legal requirements. Labeling is a complete minefield. The research that we have done suggests that most people spend about six seconds looking at the label, and the first thing that they look at is price. However, there is certainly opportunity going back to my earlier points about education around enhanced food labelling and how we use that to inform consumers. In terms of aligning business, that is one of the reasons why the private sector is escaping the role of the private sector. Even if you increase local supply, there is still a massive reliance on retail, manufacturing and so on. There has to be part of the engagement, and there has to be involved in that. To be fair, there is evidence—good evidence, for example—in things such as salt reduction, where the private sector can and has made a difference. I do not think that it is wishful thing to say that alignment should be something that we should look to achieve. The bill makes no reference to businesses. George Burgess said in previous evidence that there were other routes through which we can look at private companies and their reporting. The first question is, how do we ensure that there is a role and responsibility for the private sector and that we support and develop Scotland's food production sectors in the framework? What do you think that George Burgess meant by other routes? Thank you, Rachael. There has clearly been a decision made in the drafting of the bill to not explicitly place requirements on private business. I am not completely sure as to the reasoning behind that, but we have to remember that the private sector is the suppliers of public food. They will be impacted by the bill and by what we are trying to achieve. We absolutely need them and we must collaborate with them in building on lots of innovations that they are driving but also challenging them in terms of reformulation, package size, labelling and packaging itself. I mentioned the role of wholesalers and the role of the connecting organisations that can help to reduce the barriers of entry for small and medium-sized businesses into the public procurement sphere. In terms of what he means by other legislative mechanisms, George Burgess is probably best to explain that himself, but I think that there are issues around whether there might be mandatory reporting in terms of what companies are selling, what is contained or what they are selling and the relationship to dietary goals, etc. I will defer to Geoff and possibly back to George Burgess on that, but I think that we need to bring them with us and they are an essential stakeholder and are delivering some really great positive innovations but are at times some of them reluctant to drive forward. I thank you, Mary. Just to Geoff specifically with your role and your FSS hat on, do our food budgets analysed by yourselves or is that a possibility? It is how they are spent so we know that obviously food procurement is dominated by larger suppliers. Do you have the ability to gather that data from local authorities to work out where that money is being spent and how tax payers' money is being spent? Do you mean that the areas where local authorities are spending their money? Yes. Even if a larger supplier is being awarded a tender, is that being analysed? For example, East Ayrshire awarded the tender for milk to Mosgiel. We know that, but is the overall spend on food for school meals analysed? Is that an ability that you have over the local authorities or do local authorities do that specifically? In terms of potential, yes, I suppose that it could be done. I am not aware that it is. Certainly local authorities have the same rules and levels of accountability in terms of procurement and everything else, so any decisions that they make on public expenditure, particularly through procurement, are always open to challenge from anybody tendering for it. I am not aware of breakdowns of the level that you are suggesting about how local authorities spend their money. The advantage of having plans at a local level is that that is one of the things that the plans could drive in terms of transparency of where the expenditure is going. Going back to the points that were made earlier on, for example, about expenditure at a local level, for example, I suppose that there is the potential there, but I am not aware that it happens. It does not mean that it does not, but I am just not aware of it. Robin Dill, I will make you come in the back of that, Rachel. Thanks, Rachel. I have spent much of my life dealing with the issues that you raised there. I would say that Scotland has no contract caterers, so you hear horror stories from abroad about large contracts and food coming from all strange places, but that is not the case in Scotland. The procurement reforms allowed us to break down contracts into smaller geographic lots. For example, the butchery contract is split into 70 lots to make space for local butchers and food businesses to tender for those contracts. I created the initiative in East Ayrshire, and it is specifically targeted at local employers. That approach in East Ayrshire is purist, but it has an impact across Scotland. All local authorities almost look at how they can tender with local suppliers, but local doesn't necessarily mean Lanarkshire, it probably means Scotland, but it is focused on transacting business with local suppliers. The biggest supplier would be Breaks, the frozen food. The supply of all sorts of food is not only frozen food, but it is because they are the distributor of the food. Quite often, they are dealing with local Scottish suppliers who supply into Breaks, who then supply onto the schools. Schools are in a pretty good place in terms of trying to work with Scottish suppliers. I could give a huge answer to that, but it is just in synopsis that that would be it. I will come in and say that this is an excellent example that you raised, Rachel, in terms of there is amazing work that is going on happening in Scotland and other local authorities, but there is no synthesis of what that means in terms of where the money is being spent in terms of staffing as well as in terms of procurement. Remember that the money that they get from the public press goes in a mixture of ways. A more systemic analysis of that across, within local authorities and across local authorities, would allow us to get a much greater understanding of the local economic multipliers and the local social multipliers that the investment in public food would make. Scotland Excel and the Centre for Procurement Expertise that manage a lot of those public food contracts have some of that information, I am sure, but it is not being drawn out and being synthesised at a national level. Without doubt, for me and my interests in school food as well, it is one of the perfect examples of how you can understand what is happening and why. I really wanted to reiterate that. Breaks have played a really important role in drawing in new local suppliers. It is not just the headline contract owner, but it is who is supplying the food into those headline contract owners, in particular in terms of the ambience and frozen food, the big food contracts within that. It is a really perfect case to be an example of why we need to do what we are arguing. Just before we go on to a brief supplementary from Jim, the FSS response suggested that there was an argument for national guidance on requirements around health boards and local authorities, but if that is to increase local procurement, there may well be increased costs because of a loss of scale and so on. Where should that additional funding come to pay for that more localised procurement that national guidance might deliver? Robin, where should that funding come from? Should it lay directly at the door of local authorities or should the national Government look to pump the system? A large part of the funding comes from the Government to pay for school meals. The expenditure on the food expenditure for schools is about £75 million, and a lot of that comes direct from the Government. There possibly is an opportunity when we look at the cap to perhaps allocate some funding to local authorities. If you want the actual picture for what happens on the ground, local Scottish food does cost a bit more, but the skill of the caterer is in designing the menus to even out that cost. Instead of having sirloin steak on the menu, you only have mints on the menu, so you balance out the menu cost over the week. More funding for better food leading to better health in schools would be great, but it is not a deal breaker. You can rely on the skill of the caterer to ameliorate that, I would say. The question for me is about being clear around the areas in which you might be more directive, because, as I said earlier, each local authority is structurally different, its population is different, the urbanisation is different, the social demographics are different, the needs are different. We are saying that there needs to be some coherence in some areas, but you also have to give local authorities the scope to make decisions that meet local circumstances, otherwise the risk is through the bill that we are trying to run the local authorities as well. There has to be a thread from local to national, but you need to be clear where that thread is, and it cannot be everywhere. You cannot be too dictatorial at a local level because they will want to make sure that they are meeting their local needs. Clearly, on things like local sourcing, capacity is always going to be an issue, so capacity, cost etc. are always balancing acts. We need to be cautious around the balance between national and local. I have a brief supplementary from Jim before we move on to the next and final theme. Thank you very much, convener. I am going to direct this one specifically to Robin Gurley himself. Robin Gurley talked about how you thread the plan through all areas of local authority, so you have planning, dev, health, education, all of those things. I think that that is exactly the way that those plans should be planned out. It is something that we really need to go in more depth. I hope that we can come back to that. You are talking about the public sector and the private sector. You said something earlier on about the cost spend from public sector is about £150 million to £16 million for supermarkets. How, if we were going to be prescriptive to supermarkets to bring forward more locally sourcing in Scotland, would that not pump up against the UK Internal Market Act? Jim, I am sorry, but I do not know the answer to that question in terms of the Internal Market Act. No problem. I will move on in the interests of our time. I move to the questions from Jenny Minto. Just in response to Jim, it is difficult to know precisely whether it will pump up against the Internal Market Act. There is the possibility that it would, because of the issues around discrimination that exist in the Internal Market Act. It cannot be defended to say that it definitely would. What you could say is that it might do. Jenny Minto, I would like to broaden that out. Scotland's food issues are not unique and other countries are looking at policies around food. I am interested to know if the panel has any examples that we could use to look at with regard to accountability or oversight with regard to food legislation. I do not know whether we will start with Mary. Thank you. Jenny, that is a really interesting question. I think that there is a lot for us to learn from international examples and also some internal examples potentially as well. I think that the heart of it is around countries such as Denmark, for example, and I suppose that Italy, in a broader sense in terms of really strong regional procurement commitments, is around a long-term commitment and an investment in local and regional food. Denmark has taken a very particular stance in terms of driving organic consumption within procurement, but it is more around the framework, the integrated and collaborative working, the investment in infrastructure, the investment in science and the investment in innovation that has been made in order to drive that change. It has not happened overnight, so it is expecting that this is a long-term investment. There are some examples of independent agencies that are emerging out. Whether any of those models are perfect is another debate, but many of them are in their early stages. Some of them are from countries that have either enshrined or have a stronger commitment to the right to food, for example, but it is relatively early days in terms of how they are engaging and what they are engaging. Going back to some of our points, it is around what we believe is the essence and principles on which we want to build this nation policy and what are the mechanisms and participatory processes that we want to involve. We can learn from stronger governance and stronger commitment, and I will go back to the point that Jim Fairlie has just made. There is likely to be more resources required, but it is not about it being a cost, it is about being an investment and, in particular, when you consider the local multiplier effect. It is reframing what we are putting into public food in particular and seeing how we can generate the multiple benefits from that. I will spend a bit more time—there was another panel member due to be here—as an awful lot more experience on that, but I will get some more international examples to you all to help with that. Thank you very much for that, Mary. Robin, is there anything that you would like to add? There are examples internationally, such as Sweden, France, Brazil and Denmark, but, truthfully, my experience is that Scotland is leading. It is always mentioned, and the approach in Scotland has been slightly different. In Denmark, for example, as Mary said, it was essentially about organic food and training. In other areas, it might be about tourism, in other places, it might be about addressing food poverty. Scotland has taken this holistic joined-up approach, which has been successful. We have a very successful Scottish Organization Scotland food and drink, a successful industry. Health is well connected across the piece and so on. We are kind of joined up. What the bill needs is to bring that coherence and momentum forward. Truthfully, when I work in international forums, Scotland is held up as somewhere that is probably more advanced in its thinking and its application than in other countries. I think that I've asked all the questions that I wanted to ask, but I can certainly come in with more. That's quite all right. I'll move to Alasdor Allan. Thank you, convener. Again, briefly, as time allows, perhaps for both Mr Gurley and Mary Brennan, you've touched on international examples. You've said that there are some success stories in Scotland, but other examples of countries that have managed to turn around a culture around food. There are lots of questions that people raise in Scotland about the need to teach people to cook, a criticism from which I don't exempt myself, and also big questions about whether children and young people, whether a culture is developing, dissuades them from going outside and seeing the environment round about them and exercising, and certainly doing so unsupervised. Again, are there other countries that can teach us something about those things? The same answer, really. The good food nation bill is at the cutting edge of things. I think also that we have had some political stability, which has been important. You find terrific examples in places in Italy, for example, and then there's political change, and it all falls apart. That seems to be a pattern where Scotland has had this national food and drink policy since about 2009-2010. People have coalesced around that, and it's been sustained over the past 11 years, and that's been quite a big advantage. You can see interesting examples in Sweden, Finland, France and Denmark, but they tend to be niche and addressing one particular aspect. It might be more organic food or better procurement. Scotland has taken a broader approach, and maybe we should be speaking more about that. I want to give you an answer saying that we should all go to Finland and see what's happened there, but there are not many countries that have taken this broader view, which has been successful, and it underlines the reason why we need a good food nation bill and not to leave it as a civil service type Government policy. It will run out of steam if it's left in that environment. It has to have a statutory basis and a proper organisation to drive it forward. I think that there are two things that you need to separate out, and you need to understand both to then say, does that translate to what we're trying to achieve? You have two things, which are structure and approach. Mary talked about Italy, for example, and it's a region, but it's a kind of decentralised. Structurally, you look at New Zealand or Canada and there's a clear separation between food and health, so you have to look at the structure in the countries and the approaches that they're then taking and understand how structure either helps, enables or disables the approach. In terms of looking at what other countries do, there's always lots to be learned internationally. I don't disagree with Robin in terms of where he says that we are in Scotland, but in applying the lessons from abroad, you have to understand context, because you have to then be able to translate around how that might be used or applied in our specific circumstances. It depends on what you're looking at. If you look at South America, for example, or in Chile or Peru, and look at what they did around labelling on sugar, they've done some world-class stuff there as well. I think that the other issue is just to think about what it is that you want to look at and then actually find which countries to go for. Certainly, the Nordics are very strong, but you can also learn lessons beyond the Nordics. Be clear about what it is that you want to look at and then identify the countries that might best help. Just a little devil's advocate, because I do agree wholeheartedly with what both Jeff and Robin said. While we are leading in terms of our willingness and our taking this systems approach, we are also failing from a dietary health perspective. We have great issues around food insecurity and environmental impact of food. They are shared with countries around the world, but dietary outcomes are some of the worst outcomes in the developed world. We have good intentions and good approaches. Yes, there are a lot of really interesting local innovations, but what we need is what we are proposing and hoping that the bill will deliver is the national collective collaboration and alignment so that we can all travel in the right direction and start to move towards improving those outcomes. We can learn from other places that Jeff is absolutely right. You have to make sense of it in the Scottish context, both at the national and local level. Thank you very much. We have a 10-second supplementary from Rachel Hamilton. I will go for Robin. On the figure that you quoted regarding the procurement, 50 per cent is being procured in Scotland, does that include imported and reconstituted rebadged processed food that is done in Scotland? I am not sure what is behind your question whether it is meat that came from Ireland that ends up in a Scotch pie or whether you are thinking about pasta put into packets and on to school. The 50 per cent figure that I quoted, if the invoice address is in Scotland, so the supplier is based in Scotland and that is where the invoice comes from, that is considered to be Scottish. That is the way that procurement people look at that figure. I have another definition that goes like landed at the Scottish port or produced on land in Scotland and so on. To go back to your earlier question about really having granular information, I had information up until about 2013, but there has been no study since that time about where local authorities and schools are buying. Thank you. Sorry, I could go on here but I realise you are very tight for time. Thank you very much. I would very much like to thank you all, Mary, Jeff and Robin, for extending your period with us this morning. I know that we have run considerably over time but we very much appreciate that information that you have given us. It will be most helpful as we move forward and consider this bill in more detail. Thank you very much for your attendance. The members will be aware that a number of submissions that are received in response to the Good Faith Nation bill calls for the committee to write to the local government housing and planning committee and the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee seeking their views on the bill. I propose to write to those committees to draw their attention to those suggestions and set out this committee's stage 1 inquiry timetable. Are members satisfied that I do that? Yes, thank you. We now move on to agenda item 2. It is the second item of our business day, which is a consideration of the official controls, temporary measures, coronavirus, amendment number 3, regulations 2021, and I refer members to paper 3. Do any members have any questions or comments to make? If so, could you please put an R in the chat function? Do members agree with the Scottish Government's decision to consent the provision set out in the notification being included in the UK rather than the Scottish subordinate legislation? Please type N in the chat box if you do not agree. Otherwise, I will presume all members agree that we are in agreement. Members will note that the temporary measures expire on 1 July 2022. Given the short timescale involved in relation to the current package of subordinate legislation on this issue, I propose to write to the Scottish Government to ask for further information about when the policy is next intended to be reviewed. I would also seek assurances that the Scottish Government will allow sufficient time for the Scottish Parliament to consider any further notifications. Are members content with that suggestion? If not, we would type N into the chat function. If not, I presume that members agree. That concludes our business in public. We will now close our business on blue jeans and meeting private session in 10 minutes' time. That will be 11.10.