Chamber and committees

Procurement is hugely important, and we touch on that in the good food nation plan. I believe that we have the potential through public procurement to make an impact in the wider food system and food environment that we have just talked about.

Ultimately, the population health framework will have to deliver on the outcomes that we want to see. Even if there are no specific references to procurement in the population health framework, the overall health system will no doubt have to deliver on that as well, because that is what we have set out in the good food nation plan, if that makes sense.

I am grateful to the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee for undertaking the evidence session and some of the scrutiny of the good food nation plan, which touches on so many different areas of policy. That is evident in the evidence that the committee has received and the number of contributions that have been made to the committee. We also saw that during the parliamentary scrutiny of the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Act 2022. The number of organisations that were involved in that process shows how many areas food policy touches. I am keen that we continue on that good food nation journey now.

On the time that it has taken us to get here, I note that we passed the act in 2022. We are talking about a fundamental shift in how we work across Government, so it has taken time to make sure that we get the proposed plan, as it has been presented, in as strong a shape as possible to enable us to build on that shift.

We have ambitious outcomes that I hope we will achieve, and the proposed plan sets us on a strong footing going forward. Does it address all the issues that we know we have right now? No, it does not; we know that there is more work to do. We identify that in the proposed plan, because we know that we have data gaps and that more work needs to be done in certain areas. Again, it is the first plan, and we will build on it for the future.

We also undertook extensive consultation on the plan. Nourish Scotland undertook workshops across Scotland to find out what people wanted to see in the plan. We wanted to engage with children and young people, which was a theme that came out strongly through the scrutiny of the bill when it was being discussed at stage 2. We had more than 1,000 responses from children and young people.

Of course, all that takes time to analyse and get right. We published the consultation results in September last year. Since then, it has been about drafting the proposed plan.

This period of scrutiny is important, because we want to make sure that we hear people’s views on the proposed plan and whether there are any improvements that we can look to make before we introduce the final plan. I am certainly ambitious for the future. It will take a lot of work across Government to deliver on it, but it is a strong step in the right direction.

Absolutely. There are five people in the good food nation team. Because the plan is so broad and it covers so many other policy areas, it could never be up to the good food nation team alone to deliver on it. As you can see, I have colleagues from across Government here with me today. That is in recognition that it will also be up to other portfolio areas and ministers to deliver on the outcomes that we have set out in the plan. There are official-level working groups looking at that and, as I mentioned, the team itself has five members. We also have the ministerial working group on food to ensure that we engage in those discussions across Government.

We embarked on our work on the good food nation quite a number of years ago, so it is quite well advanced. There was not much collaboration with the UK Government, but, of course, it has been developing its own strategies. It is important that the devolved responsibilities are respected within that, but there are areas that are reserved to the UK Government that impact on the policies and the outcomes that we are looking to deliver here, and, of course, we engage in discussions with our UK counterparts in that regard.

I certainly hope that they will improve the food environment, because, as I have touched on already, many different areas of policy are relevant to the work that we are taking forward here, and I think that the population health framework builds on and complements the work that we are looking to take forward through the good food nation plan.

Of course, there are close links between policy officials in health and the good food nation team to make sure that we are delivering on the ambitions, because, ultimately, it is only by delivering on the ambitions that are set out in the population health framework that we will achieve the good food nation outcomes that are set out in the proposed plan.

Jules Goodlet-Rowley might want to add something, particularly in relation to the population health framework.

That is hugely important because you are absolutely right that culture does not change overnight. We must bring people with us on the journey. We have undertaken extensive engagement and I like to think that it is helping.

I certainly hope that the policies that are being implemented through the wider population health framework and the diet and healthy weight implementation plan that is also coming through will set us on the trajectory to meet that target. Again, that will be clear in a couple of years when we have to report on the policies and how they are delivering the outcomes that we want.

If the policies are not working, we will have to look at what else we need to do and consider to meet that ambitious target. I hope that the policies will send us in the right direction. We have ambitious outcomes and targets to achieve and the initial indicator monitoring framework will help us monitor that so that we can set ourselves on the trajectory to achieve it.

It is about how the plan is considered in the development of policy in those areas and how it will help us to reach the outcomes. I do not know whether you think that there is a specific indicator that could be helpful in that regard. In the plan, we recognise that there are data gaps and that we do not have some information that would allow us to build a clear enough picture of how we can improve. We hope to fill some of those gaps, certainly in time for the next iteration of the plan.

I can take that away and consider it, if there is a particular point that you would like to see in relation to that.

I think that it will help us to get there. To go back to the comments that I made at the beginning, will it fix the problems that exist at the moment? In and of itself, it will not do that, but it sets the foundations for us to be able to do that. The work that is being done in policy areas is all about us pushing in the same direction to achieve the better health outcomes that we have set out.

You talked about what happens in other countries. We are looking at other places that have a completely different food culture to our own, but it is particularly difficult to change a food culture. When we look at the time that people have, we can see how that severely constrains how we eat together, for example. There are many shifts that need to happen, but we are in a strong position with the legislation that we have and the plan that we are proposing, which lay the right foundations for us to build on so that we can improve in the future and will help us to reach the ambitious outcomes that we all want.

I go back to the example that Elena Whitham used of what is happening in secondary schools, where we know that we have specific issues. Some of the work that FSS has done shows that the health of children who are at primary school is better than that of those who are at secondary school. How do we take those good examples that we have, build on them, share good practice and ensure that it is more widespread than just a one-off example? That is what this is all about.

You are absolutely right about food waste, which is an important issue—the levels of food waste are huge. The issue was raised during the passage of the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Act 2024. Again, that highlights the importance of the work that is being done across the Government on the circular economy. I know that, in some areas, hospitals have centralised their units and removed kitchens but, in other areas, they are doing the complete opposite. It is about building on that good practice.

Ultimately, it will to be up to health boards and local authorities to set out how they will implement, monitor and achieve the outcomes to match the principles that have been set out clearly in the legislation. They will have a strong role in implementing that, consulting on it and ensuring that there is that wider buy-in to the approach that we have taken.

What you have outlined is, ideally, not what we want to see. We would prefer to see kitchens on site, whether in hospitals or in schools, and fresh produce using short, local supply chains. We probably have a shared vision of where we would like to be in that regard and, for me, it is about how we can deliver on those ambitions. I believe that the proposed plan and future iterations of it, as well as the plans of health boards and local authorities, will help us to deliver that.

A number of different areas touch on that issue both directly and indirectly. You touched on the internal market act. Initial concerns with that act were about the potential for it to constrain how we could develop policy, given the different nature of our landscape and our farming systems in Scotland and the potential impacts, which we could well see, of the direction of travel that was being taken in England.

Obviously, we do not have responsibility for trade, which impacts the flow of food in and out. Some of the trade deals that we have been signed up to could have an adverse impact on our agricultural sector and our producers. However, the plan touches on so many different areas of policy where the matter is also relevant, such as the cost of living crisis and the amount of money that people have, and we know about the links between deprivation and poor health outcomes—we do not have all the levers in relation to that. Obviously, we bring forward initiatives to try to act within the powers and the budgets that we do have but, of course, without all those levers, we will not be able to say absolutely that we can fix all those problems. It is important to set that out.