Chamber and committees

I am interested in any legislation on feed additives that is introduced, and I will continue to be so because I think that it is really important that we know what we are consuming. We hear about novel foods and what is happening in other countries in relation to trade, and I know from my research that there are issues around hormones and other chemicals that are being added to products that might end up in our food supply chain. We also had an informal discussion with Food Standards Scotland last week. I just want to put on the record that this is an important issue and we should pay attention to it.

As a former clinical educator, I like the national pathways model of skills development and the ability to look at how we measure the quality of care that is delivered so that we can ensure that it is the same whether the person is in Stranraer or Stornoway. I am interested in your thoughts on establishing recognised national career pathways so that we can focus on recruitment and retention and ensure that the career development process helps us to focus on valuing the staff and the care that they are providing. Can you give us your thoughts on that?

It is interesting to listen to everyone. It is my understanding that this is a framework bill to create a more integrated service. It includes fair work, human rights and improvements in the quality and equity of services. I have the recommendations of the Feeley report in front of me. The report lays out the case for the creation of a national care service. Recommendation 20 is:

“The National Care Service’s driving focus should be improvements in the consistency, quality and equity of care and support experienced by service users, their families and carers, and improvements in the conditions of employment, training and development of the workforce.”

There is a lot even in that single recommendation. It is my understanding that this is about people with lived experience and about people who need care in order to prevent hospital admission. It is not just about dealing with delayed discharge; it is not a delayed-discharge bill. I am trying to get my head around how we support co-production, co-creation and innovation.

The framework bill is supposed to set out what further statutory instruments will come afterwards. Those will come from people—whether they are service users, service providers, NHS leads or others—working together. I would be interested to hear comments about Derek Feeley’s recommendation number 20 on the case for the national care service. Nick Morris has his hand up.

I have a quick question about the national care service charter that is part of the bill. Sections 11 and 12 mention the creation of a national care service charter that is “publicly available” and they state that the charter should be monitored and reviewed after five years.

I am interested in your thoughts about inclusion of the charter, specifically as it relates to the human rights-based approach and to supporting people—especially people who receive care. This is about embedding support for people with lived experience, as I understand it. Can you please tell us your thoughts on that?

Will the cabinet secretary clarify that we are discussing the development of enabling legislation that will give the industry the scope to respond to potential future challenges? NFU Scotland’s director of policy, Jonnie Hall, previously said:

“Put simply, the Bill is not policy and it does not, and will not, set policy.”

Will the cabinet secretary set out some of the advantages and flexibilities that the Scottish Government’s approach allows for, to better support our hard-working food-producing farmers?

How would the member recommend that we capture the vitamin C from those vitamin-enriched potatoes? Vitamin C is destroyed by heat and light and dissolves in water, so I am wondering how we would capture it. Would we need to drink a whole tattie-pot of water?

Wow—I wish that I had more than four minutes for this speech.

We need to be more canny about how we proceed with the science and technology. I am passionate about evidence and about progress. Stephen Kerr is obviously passionate about what he speaks about as well. I welcome that.

The use of genetic technologies is a complex and emotive subject. It is abundantly clear that there are issues that need to be addressed if genetic modification, gene editing or clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats—CRISPR—are to be used in our food system.

The United Kingdom Government has introduced its controversial Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill, which aims to enable the expansion of gene-edited crops and livestock across the UK. Although the bill might be intended as England-only legislation, the documentation is clear that it will have a significant impact on areas that are devolved to the Scottish Parliament. It will allow gene-edited products into Scotland for sale, aided by the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020.

The bill makes it clear that the UK Government is intent on diverging from the UK-wide GM regulatory regimes through the various relevant common frameworks. Any shared Government discussions of that nature should have taken place prior to the bill’s introduction to enable consideration of potential policy divergence. However, that was not the case. Indeed, the UK Government invited the Scottish Government to join discussions on the bill only the day before—aye, the day before—it was introduced to the UK Parliament, despite numerous requests from the Minister for Environment and Land Reform and the Welsh Government to see a draft of the bill and discuss it.

We know the proposed benefits of gene-editing technology: increased crop yields, increased disease resistance, increased nutritional qualities and adapting to the increased temperature as climate change continues. The views of stakeholders in Scotland will be central to decision making on that devolved area of responsibility. They encompass views and evidence from the scientific community, views from across the spectrum of industry interests and, crucially, the views of consumers and the public as a whole.

I would support any ways in which we can innovate and move forward. We need a canny approach—we need to ensure that the research is evidence based. That is how we should take things forward.

I will, in one wee second.

The UK Government’s own impact assessment on the bill makes it clear that the market for precision-bred products

“ultimately depends on prevailing consumer attitudes to products which contain genetically engineered material”

and that the

“public’s acceptance of GE and similar products remains an area of uncertainty.”

I will take a wee briefie intervention from Edward Mountain.

Oh dear.