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The final item on the agenda is a letter that we have received from the Food Standards Agency Scotland. Members will recall that representatives of the FSAS gave evidence to the committee and that one of the issues discussed was that the FSAS staff needed more training and development. Much of the letter is about the progress of that and how helpful the office of the solicitor to the Scottish Executive has been in helping the FSAS to move forward. Are there any comments on the letter?
The FSAS has certainly addressed some of our points. I was concerned about comments made during the evidence that we received; a lot of that discussion was about whether people were being properly and adequately trained, and whether they were aware of the differences between Westminster and Holyrood timetables. The letter addresses many of those points and I thank the FSAS for detailing its efforts in training. Although several other matters were raised during the evidence session, if any of them arise again, we should tackle them at that point. We have had a fairly detailed response on the training.
The letter particularly mentions training in UK and European legislation, which was a big issue.
I have a point that goes back to what we were saying when we were talking about the remit for our inquiry. The training is all focused internally, as it should be, because it is focused on the technical regulations that surround the work of the FSAS. There is very little focus on the consumers of the regulations, if you like. We might want to flag up the impact of the work that is done on those who have to live by it.
That might also be a point that we should feed into our inquiry.
That is my point exactly.
We all agree that that is a big issue, do we not?
Yes.
As there are no other points, I close the meeting.
Meeting closed at 10:56.