Chamber and committees

I am interested in what Polly Jones said about the causes of hunger and the connection with incomes. There is obviously a great deal that the bill can do and it will be interesting to see what is in the plan. Can you say any more, given your experience of running food banks, about the impact on nutrition and on incomes of measures such as universal credit?

My only other question is for Claire White. Like Claire, I live on an island, and I am very interested in what she had to say about supply chains and the market for food locally.

What more do you think can be done—I do not say to reverse the trend—to promote places in islands where food that is produced locally can reach an even wider market locally? In many places, as you have touched on, as in the rest of Scotland, supermarkets have a very large market share of the sale of food, and whether supermarkets choose to stock much local produce at all is variable. What options does Scotland have to ensure that island communities such as yours see more locally produced food on island shelves?

I suppose that it is just a comment. Given what we have just heard today about the ingenuity that has been used and is used by many families who are struggling to pay for food, I wonder whether Ms Hamilton would reconsider the phrase that she used about families who are hungry possibly being “less ... educated” in how to cook.

Welcome back to the committee, cabinet secretary. In the past, the committee has taken an interest in and has spoken to you about the issue of mainstreaming cultural spend. Will you say more about what you have done to interest other parts of Government and the public sector in the importance of culture? For example, I am thinking about the national health service and town planning. Have you been able to advance the argument that, in the longer term, spending on culture saves in many other areas?

You mentioned that one of the challenges that you face has been to establish the UK Government’s intentions on consequentials in the area. Will you say a bit more about that and how it is affecting what you are doing?

You mentioned the challenges that the culture sector has faced throughout Covid. Have those challenges changed? At an earlier stage, the committee would have been hearing about how to shift much of the culture sector online and do things differently. Now, perhaps, the demand is about how to move things back offline and get people back to events and live performances. Does the budget have to be agile enough to cope with the situation and, if so, how does it manage the changing priorities around culture as we come through Covid?

My question is perhaps for Robin Gourlay and Mary Brennan.

We have touched on international examples and you have said that there are some success stories in Scotland. There are examples of countries that have managed to turn around their food culture. In Scotland, people raise lots of questions about the need to teach people to cook—I do not exempt myself from that criticism. There are big questions about whether a culture is developing that dissuades children and young people from going outside, seeing the environment around them and exercising, or certainly doing so unsupervised. Are there countries that can teach us about such things?

We have talked a bit about the kind of things that can be done to make sure that our aspirations in the area become a reality. As the bill develops, the monitoring of policies takes on an importance. Given that what is in the plan is as important as what is in the bill, do we need to see what is in the plan? Do we need systems of monitoring that are attuned to what is in the plan and to learn from what is in it? That question is perhaps for Mr Gourlay.

I have a final question for Mr Ogle and Mr Gourlay. The issue has been touched on already, and I do not want to overestimate the abilities of parliamentarians or underestimate the abilities of experts but, over and above existing bodies, is there a question about whether the scrutiny—rather than the monitoring—of the success of policies should be done by elected or unelected bodies?

I congratulate Stuart McMillan on bringing this important debate to the chamber.

There are many arguments for teaching more Scottish history in our schools—as we have heard, its potential to empower young people is chief among them. However, I come at the debate from a particular angle. At the outset, I should say that things are certainly getting better, and give teachers credit for that. However, until very recently, Scots have often learned so little about their own country’s history that the situation could be—and has been—described as profoundly abnormal.

I remember a survey from a few years ago which found that only around half of Scots had, to take one example, ever heard of the declaration of Arbroath. That is not normal. It is not readily possible to imagine a Norway where no one had heard of the Eidsvoll constitution, or a France in which not a soul had heard of the Bastille. Kenneth Gibson’s account of what was not taught in secondary school history, neither to his generation nor to mine, explains a lot.

Why is Scotland such an outlier? Until very recently, the teaching of Scottish history, Scottish literature or Scottish geography has relied almost entirely on the enthusiasm of individual teachers. There was, in the past, simply no official expectation that children and young people in Scotland would need learn anything very much about Scotland.

Perhaps some of the blame for that lies in the way that we have ceased to think of history—both the bits that we like and the bits that make us shudder at ourselves—as a story, yet there is no shortage of stories of either kind in Scotland, from the ancient houses at Skara Brae to the art of the Picts, from the statutes of Iona to the battle of Largs, from James II of Scotland blowing himself up with his own cannon in Roxburgh to the growth of a school in every parish, or in most parishes, to the sorry and financially interlinked stories of the slave trade and the Highland clearances.

Ultimately, we should teach this stuff, not just because it might promote the development of any particular skill or create any particular economic benefit, but because it is interesting and it makes people think. The evidence from schools around Scotland is that young people find it interesting, too, and that it inspires them in all sorts of other areas of the curriculum. We should teach it because, without some of this information, young Scots will find it impossible to locate themselves in Scotland’s story.

I must counter Mr Whitfield. None of that is a case for teaching less world history, so I hope that we will have no more complaints to that effect in the Parliament, condemning school trips to Bannockburn.

Let us get past the anxiety that some people seem to have that teaching young Scots about their country is a political act. It isn’t. However, not teaching them about it—many of us were barely taught about it in secondary school—most certainly is a political act.

In 2011, I faced perhaps the most hostile crowd that I have ever faced in this place when I proposed—successfully—that young Scots doing higher English should have to learn about at least one Scottish writer. That was an idea that a number of members seemed to regard as a sign that the barbarians were not so much at the gates as melting the gates down and making them into weapons of mass destruction.

I believe—I certainly hope that this is the case—that we are getting beyond all the anxiety about teaching about Scotland in schools. It is entirely reasonable for any country to know its history, good and bad, and not to be afraid to do so.

I support the motion.