Chamber and committees

Does the Deputy First Minister agree that the report shows that Scotland is the fastest growing start-up economy in the UK and one of the fastest growing in Europe, with investment growing by 120 per cent in just over four years? Does she agree that that remarkable progress has been achieved by forward-thinking Scottish Government policies, in the face of Brexit damaging trade and labour markets and successive UK Governments failing to deliver the investment that Scotland needs? That is especially the case in rural communities such as mine, where all and any opportunities and such positive growth are very much welcome.

Like my colleague George Adam, I am very concerned about the number of journalists who have been killed in Gaza.

When I graduated with a degree in journalism, I left the university building with an absolute knowledge in my heart that my job would be to go out into the world and bear witness and hold a mirror up to the world to show exactly what is happening.

What we are seeing in Gaza is not collateral damage but a pattern. Will the First Minister join me in emphatically condemning those killings? Will he make urgent representations to the UK Government and international bodies to demand action to stop the killing of journalists and to secure accountability from those responsible? After all, deliberate attacks against journalists during an armed conflict constitute a war crime.

Sticking with the issue of good nutrition in early years, Lindsay Jaacks spoke about the studies showing that two to four-year-olds are among the healthiest population groups at the moment. I want to think a little bit about the stage before that. We know that those who are eligible will get the best start grant, so they will be able to get nutritious food in their very early years.

Consider the food environment in those very early years, which takes parents away from thinking about what they could do in their household to give their youngest children nutrition from what they regularly eat. The food environment out there is all about pre-prepared, pre-packaged food that is sometimes not as nutritious as it is made out to be. How do we ensure that we are focused on early years nutrition—before the point when children access early years education—so that we are giving kids and the families who are supporting them the best opportunity?

I agree. We have anchor institutions such as local authorities doing all of that good work, and we would hope that, in the future, we would have, say, the health and social care partnership as an anchor institution in a particular area starting to look at how local food could be used in care home settings, or the NHS starting to do the same thing locally. When we see that sort of thing receding, it raises a slight concern. Is it your view that this plan, and then the local plans, should help drive all of that forward?

I am going to spend some time thinking about the food industry itself and will also come back to the issue of procurement.

The food and drink industry responded to our call for views and is clearly engaged in the creation of a good food nation. How can the plan ensure that industry involvement in the development of a good food nation is suitably balanced with public health policy objectives and with ensuring the prevention of ill health, malnutrition, alcohol-based harm and obesity? We talk a lot about the food and drink industry, so where in the good food nation plan is there space for the drink industry when we are thinking about harm prevention? How do we balance the strong and powerful voices of some of the big actors in this space with a public health approach?

On outcomes or indicators, if we think about school meals, should universal school meals or discounted school meals be a feature as an indicator or an outcome that is desirable in the plan? We know that that is a tricky environment for families.

When I was speaking to the previous panel, I mentioned that East Ayrshire Council has trialled half-price school meals for secondary school children. That £1.25 meal deal resulted in an increase, for the first time, in the uptake of school meals in the secondary setting, which is one of the trickiest things that we have been trying to grapple with. Should some of those aspects feature as an outcome or an indicator in the plan?

We heard from the earlier panel that best start food vouchers have clearly benefited young people in their earliest years, and that families are trying new things that they might not have tried before using those vouchers. Is there any way that the plan could have due regard to that when focusing on early years nutrition? We know that parents have a complicated landscape to negotiate. The big companies play a role in what the food environment looks like in relation to things such as pouches and jars for kids’ food, and a lot of people might not have an understanding of what they could cook at home themselves. How could the plan effect change early in young people’s lives?

I will focus a little bit on school meals and early years nutrition. My colleagues have already ventured into those areas, as usually happens in such discussions, but I am interested in the issue of breastfeeding, which the plan mentions briefly and only in relation to policies that we already have in place. Could the plan be a little bit more ambitious in that area by promoting the clear benefits of breastfeeding, where it is possible for mother and baby, as it helps prevent obesity, control infection and promote healthy gut bacteria?

I also wonder whether explicitly mentioning breastfeeding more in the plan might help local authorities and health and social care partnerships when they are developing their own plans, because they might have to fund breastfeeding co-ordinators and provide support on the ground for mothers at a time when it can be really difficult to do so.

Does anybody else want to come in?

It is a very difficult issue. Even if you explore how you can leverage in planning, it is really difficult to control the environment outside the school.