Chamber and committees

I cannot comment on that now. I accept where you are coming from, especially based on the evidence that Professor Alexandra Johnstone gave.

When we were gathering evidence, I recognised that it was important to get feedback from areas where people live with higher deprivation. We had two round-table discussions with the Poverty Alliance to understand how it felt that the policy could impact such areas.

It comes back to what I said earlier about the whole environment that people are shopping in, and we need to look at how we reduce the poorer health outcomes of those in poverty. We did an equality impact assessment, alongside a fairer Scotland duty assessment, to ensure that we were bringing in recommendations and regulations that did not impact too negatively on people’s available budgets; I have spoken about that.

We heard evidence that buy one, get one free offers resulted in people making unplanned purchases, which is why we wanted to review that area and bring in regulations to cover that.

We have also got to recognise that the Scottish Government does a lot outwith the food regulations to address inequalities. We have provided £3 billion to tackle poverty, 1,140 hours of free childcare and free school meals as well as investing in community food networks to ensure that people have access to high-quality, healthy food.

As I touched on earlier, what I saw yesterday, and what I have also seen in a number of food pantries, is the ability to educate people on how to cook healthier meals. There is a whole-system approach.

I have just given you an example of where that sort of thing is happening across Argyll and Bute, and where we are working to ensure that children get the right education, which I think is part of this.

I have been clear that this has always been the first step in relation to all the food environment regulations. As I said, we are considering the matter, taking evidence on it and exploring it under the population health framework.

Enforcement is one of the areas that we have to get right, which is why we have pulled together a group to consider it. We work very closely with COSLA and local authorities to ensure that they have the right support to do the enforcement.

I have said on a number of occasions that I find this to be one of the most difficult areas of my portfolio, because I love food, and I was lucky to have an upbringing in which the education side of things was explained to me. Indeed, that is why I am passionate about looking at this from a whole-environment perspective and ensuring that when families go to the shops, they see healthy food first and that, when they pay for their shopping, they are not seeing the treats that might push them into a less healthy environment.

You have just taken evidence on the pressure to spend more money on high in fat, salt and sugar items because of buy one, get one free offers. What we want to do with the regulations—they are a nudge in that direction—is ensure that people use their available budgets in the best way possible, so that they get the healthier meals and the healthier food environment that will, hopefully, allow them to be healthier.

As for getting sport on the agenda, I think that last week’s result against Denmark has really put sport front and centre. I would also mention the curling that is going on in my constituency just now, the world stone skimming championships and so on. There is a lot of sport going on that the Scottish Government is supporting, as required.

When we were gathering evidence for the regulations, I hosted a number of round-table events to support the decisions that I finally made. Those events included people from third sector organisations—NCD Alliance Scotland, for example—and business and health stakeholders, such as Food Standards Scotland and Public Health Scotland. I was very clear at the start of those events that this had to be a whole-system approach. We cannot have a healthy Scotland without healthy people or healthy businesses, and we need healthy people to operate healthy businesses. A circular requirement exists for everything to be ensured.

We have to be clear and understand the resource that COSLA believes that it needs.

I recognise the work that you do on ultra-processed food. You are right that, initially, the Scottish Government thought that the measures would have to be introduced through primary legislation. However, work that has been done across the years has shown that regulations are the best way to introduce such provisions. Regulations will allow the changes to take place more quickly and, to take a phrase from Ewan MacDonald-Russell and David McColgan on the previous panel, we need to see it done. That is why we are implementing the measures through regulations.

That will be absolutely key. The committee has just heard some evidence about the importance of the work that the University of Leeds has done on the implementation of regulations in England. We have asked Public Health Scotland to ensure that it is doing the right evaluation and to look at how the regulation ties into our population health framework.