Chamber and committees

I have a supplementary on ultra-high-processed food. I am thinking about the work of Henry Dimbleby, in which he talks about reformulation of the foods that we are buying—that is, reducing the salt, the fat and the sugar. I am thinking also about Pekka Puska’s work in Finland to add mushrooms to sausages as a population health strategy, which was done by working with the processors.

The whole system is complicated, and there are things that can be done. Is reformulation part of the plan to support there being less fat, sugar and salt in food?

Loads of questions are going through my head, but I will just stick with what you said about local authorities and health boards. Each local authority and health board has to come up with a plan, which should reflect the Government’s proposals in its good food nation plan. Might there be conflict between a local authority’s land use strategy—we have been looking at issues such as building houses on greenfield sites—and a health board’s plan, which might be focused more on health than on land use? We are trying to support changes to our food system locally, but how will we avoid such conflict? I will stick with local instead of global.

I know that Carlos Monteiro in Brazil has come up with the Nova classification, although it has had criticism and is not quite right. We talked earlier about sausages and heard that even putting a stock cube in soup makes it processed but might reduce the salt intake, for instance. I know that we need to work on the definitions.

I want to ask about the links to poverty and to imposed austerity, which has led to poverty. How is that covered in the plan to support better consumption and maybe reduction of foods that are high in fat, sugar and salt and ultra-processed foods?

Good morning, cabinet secretary, to you and your officials.

Before I ask my questions about ultra-processed food, I am interested in the language in the foreword of the national plan. At the very bottom of page 2, it says:

“without the full powers of independence we do not have the complete control of all the levers of food policy.”

I am interested to hear about the powers that we do not have. Is it related to the impact of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 and our ability to lever supermarkets or cross-border trading? What do we need in order to have all the levers to deliver a plan?

Thanks for that clarification.

I am interested in ultra-processed foods and the emerging research that says that they are not good for you. In the national population health framework, health-harming products are listed as tobacco, vapes, alcohol and gambling, but ultra-processed foods are not listed. Is that because we are too early in the research to pin UPFs as a problem and as a health-harming product?

I am also interested in the tension between localised food availability, food processing and the role of major supermarket chains, and in what role the national plan plays in addressing some of the tension between the big, global producers and the whole supply chain. How will the national food plan help to address some of the tensions that we see?

I thank Mr Rowley for lodging the motion to allow us to debate the matter. As I represent a rural region that is affected possibly more than most areas in respect of access to NHS dentistry, I sympathise with his constituents.

I agree with Mr Rowley that the decisions by privately owned dental practices to withdraw care and increase charges are hugely concerning and need exposed. In the south of Scotland, we have seen many of the same challenges affecting patients’ access to dentists, which in some cases has been hugely restricted or withdrawn completely.

Over the past two years, nearly 25,000 people in Dumfries and Galloway have been deregistered from NHS dental practices. That includes 2,500 in Lochthorn, 4,000 in the DADDS practice and 1,000 people in Stranraer. Over the past couple of years, I have engaged in a lot of casework on the issue.

I am grateful for the Scottish Government’s roll-out of the Scottish dental access initiative, which is delivering opportunities for investment in rural dentistry and rural practices.

As I said, there are still issues that need to be addressed, and I will come on to discuss potential solutions.

I urge any practice in rural Dumfries and Galloway, in the Borders and in parts of South Ayrshire to get in touch with the Scottish dental access initiative to see what they can do to boost and expand their services and the number of patients they serve.

In the time that I have, I highlight that I believe that we can go further where needed—for example, by introducing mobile dental services to go directly to communities where dental coverage is reduced and bring care to the doorstep until a longer-term solution can be found. Deploying mobile units would allow the NHS and dental professionals to react quickly to closures or the withdrawal of services and to ensure that locals who are affected continue to receive NHS dental care. I am keen to hear from the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health whether mobile dental services could be pursued in Galloway as an action to assist.

Across Scotland, we have seen a revolution in preventative care that is aimed at ensuring that patients do not need treatment in the first place. For the past decade and a half, the Scottish National Party Scottish Government has delivered the Childsmile programme to every child under 12, with a focus on those who are under five.

Over that period, the proportion of those in primary 1 with no tooth decay has improved. Children from the most economically deprived households saw the biggest benefit, and the health inequality gap between those children and those in the wealthiest households is closing. The commitment to engaging in the early years to prevent issues from arising later in life, when they increase the pressures on care services, also drives the Scottish Government’s policy on funding dental treatment for all those aged under 26 in our country, which was introduced four years ago and is putting money back in the pockets of hard-pressed households during Westminster’s cost of living crisis.

There is a lot more that can be done in dentistry, just as there is always much that can be done for our health and care sector. However, I know that our Scottish Government is committing to do all that it can to provide the best possible treatment for our citizens, regardless of where they live. The areas of Scotland that face the fewest problems are those that have less trouble maintaining their populations and have a younger demographic.

Attracting dentists to our communities is as hard as attracting people in any other profession, as there are clearly challenges in pulling newly qualified professionals away from the urban cities. Fixing the challenges of rural dentistry also means tackling the much bigger—and, to be frank, more complex—issues around the demography of regions such as Dumfries and Galloway, and our NHS can play a part in that. I will stop there.

Give me one wee second.

In Moffat in my region, for example, Moffat Dental Practice took on 2,000 new patients after securing grant funding from the dental access initiative. That funding helped to provide an additional NHS dentist in the practice and supported local training efforts.

Does the cabinet secretary agree that home detention curfews should be used as a tool to reintegrate offenders to their communities, manage the release of individuals from short custodial sentences, and reduce the prison population and reoffending?