Seòmar agus comataidhean

Is your point that the UK Government could challenge the Scottish Government’s plans to bring in stronger legislation later on?

It leaves me with more questions, but we do not have time to go into them all today, unfortunately.

I will make my question brief. It is targeted to John Davidson, in particular. First, I note what a fantastic and successful industry the Scottish food and drink sector is at the moment. It is important that we bear that in mind.

I want to specifically focus on ambition 2030. We have clearly had huge turmoil over the past couple of years. Does ambition 2030 still stand, and is there a way of linking it to the overall plan of the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill?

Pete Ritchie, I will come back to you but this question could land with anybody. If someone is going to have the right to food, they would want all the other rights, including the right to shelter, the right to health and the right to education. Rather than singling out the right to food in this bill, surely we would be better to have it in the overall human rights bill that is coming later this year, so that it is incorporated with all those other rights. Rather than making that single provision for the right to food—not that I dispute the idea that we have a right to food; I absolutely agree with that 100 per cent—would it not be better for it to be tied into a bill that incorporates all our rights?

The question is directly to Jonnie Hall, although I want to come back to John Davidson later on the role of Scotland Food & Drink, the “Ambition 2030” document and the role of public-private partnership.

Jonnie Hall talked about how Scots should enjoy and be proud of their food. Paragraph 8 of the policy memorandum says:

“it is the norm for Scots to take a keen interest in their food, knowing what constitutes good food, valuing it and seeking it out whenever they can”.

There are also a couple of related points at paragraphs 20 and 25, although I will not quote them.

I am interested in what Jonnie Hall said about the farming community getting more back from the marketplace, which I absolutely endorse. However, we have also heard about food insecurity and people living impoverished lives and who cannot get access to good-quality food. How do we make the bill work so that we subsidise or support our farming community to produce the best-quality food but at the same time we make it available? If the farming community wants to take more out of the marketplace, how do we bridge that gap?

I have two questions. One is very narrow, which I will probably direct—[Inaudible.].

Deputy First Minister, there are lots of reports in this morning’s newspapers that the Scottish Government is coming under pressure because of the English Government’s removal of the requirement to wear face masks in schools. I find it frustrating that, because England has done that, Scotland seems to be asking to follow. What is the Scottish Government’s position on face masks in schools?

In the interests of time, I will also ask my second question, which is about medical exemptions. I understand that there are four categories of medical exemption. In the case of someone who has an underlying health risk, would anxiety about their underlying health be considered part of an exemption right for them not to be vaccinated? I am not advocating that such a person not get the vaccine; I am simply putting a specific constituent question.

I direct this specifically to Robin Gourlay. Earlier, Robin, you talked about having a thread and a plan through all areas of local authorities: planning, economic development, health, education and so on. I think that that is exactly how it should be planned out. We need to go into that in more depth; I hope that we can come back to it.

When you talked about the public and private sectors, you mentioned that the spend from the public sector is about £150 million or £160 million, as against £15 billion from the supermarkets. If we were to be prescriptive in getting supermarkets to source things more locally in Scotland, would we bump up against the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020?

On collaboration—

Do you have an idea of what it would cost to set up a new independent body?

I hear your point. It sounds to me as though that would be a smaller body that would duplicate what everyone else is already doing. A lot is already happening across the food sector. This goes back to a point that Robin Gourlay made. Mary Brennan said that we are at the start of a journey, but we are not. The change in Scotland’s food culture started decades ago, and Robin Gourlay and I were at the start of that process. A huge amount of work has been done already, and many organisations are already involved. Would it not be better to find a way of using the bodies that are currently there and to get them to do the work?

There is a broad range of work to be done, and we are trying to make cultural change. Mary Brennan spoke about targets. How do we set targets that get people to change their culture or way of eating? We would have to be prescriptive. If cultural change is to be driven by targets, the Government would have to tell people to eat cheese on Mondays, fish on Tuesdays and beef on Wednesdays. This is a cultural and educational change.