Health, Social Care and Sport Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, October 4, 2022

Official Report 668KB pdf

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European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018

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Food and Feed (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2022 [Draft]

The next item on our agenda is consideration of a notification from the Scottish ministers for consent to a statutory instrument. The notification concerns provisions made to amend retained direct European Union law in various areas of food and feed law, including legislation on novel foods, food additives, enzymes and flavourings, genetically modified food and feed, feed additives, food contact materials and the hygiene of foodstuffs.

Under the protocol between the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government, the consent notification has been categorised as type 1, which means that the Scottish Parliament’s agreement is sought before the Scottish Government gives consent to the United Kingdom Government making secondary legislation in an area of devolved competence.

Before I ask members for their views on the instrument, I want to point out how little time—indeed, it is no time—we have been given for scrutiny of it. The instrument was laid very late for the Scottish Government, which has written to us to recommend that we consent and to say that it has no issues with it. However, there are still outstanding issues.

Our consent is asked for, as a Parliament and a committee. However, we have not had any notice or been allowed any time for scrutiny—we might have had a minister in front of us today but we are not able to do that. Also, we have flagged up that there is an outstanding consultation on the issue that is not due to report until today, so there may be recommendations from or issues thrown up by that consultation of which we do not have sight.

We do not want to hold up anything that will fix some of the issues in the area that the instrument covers, but I put on record my severe dissatisfaction with the situation in which we find ourselves.

Do colleagues have any comments?

I agree entirely that we have not had sufficient time to scrutinise. The information about the consultation that is outstanding makes the matter even worse. The Minister for Public Health, Women’s Health and Sport says in her letter to the committee that she cannot share the draft statutory instrument, because it is not yet in the public domain. The process all seems very rushed, and the committee is being put in a difficult position.

I agree with the convener and Evelyn Tweed. Paragraph 4 in the notification says that the instrument fixes

“issues of deficiency, inoperability and inconsistency.”

In reading through the notification, I labelled so many points. There are policy issues and technical issues. I understand that consent is being sought, but there are issues with the point about the “Do Not Eat” pictograph and how that will work going forward. There are issues with the labelling of products that have not been resolved. I am concerned that we have not had enough time to scrutinise the statutory instrument.

I will ask members for their views on whether we consent but, regardless of that, and given the pressing nature of what we have in front of us, I suggest that the committee writes a letter to the UK Government department that has issued the instrument. Maybe part of the reason is the death of the Queen, but I believe that the timescale was down to the wire even before that. The point has to be made that we exist for a reason, and that is to scrutinise what we are agreeing to. If we do not have time to do that, it is just a tick-box exercise, and I do not think that we should be in that position. We will write to the Scottish Government about our decision today and also make that point to it.

In the letter, could we also ask for an update on the consultation that is still outstanding? Your point that we probably should have seen the SI earlier is even more concerning, given the closing date of the consultation that we have been advised of. There could have been several weeks where a consultation was still live but we were being asked to consider the instrument.

Okay—we will do that. Is the committee content that the provisions that are set out in the notification should be included in the proposed UK SI?

Members indicated agreement.

We are in agreement, notwithstanding the comments that have been made.

Finally, is the committee content to delegate authority to me to sign off on the letters that we have mentioned to the Scottish Government, informing it of our decision today, and an additional letter to the UK Government about the timescale and lack of scrutiny opportunity?

Members indicated agreement.