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I am aware that I have taken up a lot of time, but I have a final question, which is about a potential alternative approach. The policy memorandum talks about non-legislative approaches as alternatives, but it does not consider an alternative legislative approach that seems fairly obvious to me, rather than broadening the bill.

In relation to hate crimes against individuals, we have the concept of aggravated offences. If it is shown in the court that the offence that has been committed was motivated by prejudice on the grounds of race, sexuality, transgender identity, disability or another protected characteristic, the court treats it as an aggravated offence and is required to take that into account in sentencing. It seems to me that, if we want the courts to take into account the real trauma that is experienced by those for whom war memorials or other memorials have a special emotional significance—those memorials might have a special cultural and social significance to the whole country—requiring aggravated offences to be considered in relation to vandalism, desecration or whatever damage was done would be a much more flexible approach. The courts would be required to consider all the circumstances in relation to the meaning and importance of a memorial and the motivation of the offender. Did you consider that alternative approach? If not, would you?

Thank you for that answer, which perhaps relies on the idea that high sentences are an effective deterrent to crime in general. I would question whether there is robust evidence to support that across the criminal justice system, but that is perhaps something that we can explore as the bill proceeds.

I will ask about scope and what the offences in the bill would apply to. First, you have very clearly articulated—you used the word “trauma”—the emotional impact and the social, cultural and emotional significance of the memorials that you are talking about. I hope that it goes without saying that the whole committee and, I suspect, the whole Parliament, take that very seriously and very much respect that.

It seems to me that the same argument applies to a wider range of memorials, structures or entities—call them what you will—than the ones that you have covered in the bill. The bill says:

“something has a commemorative purpose in respect of armed conflict if at least one of its purposes is to commemorate one or more individuals or animals, or a particular description or category of individuals or animals, who died in armed conflict”.

The second world war was clearly an armed conflict. The Holocaust, specifically, was one of the greatest atrocities in modern human history—it was an act of genocide—but, in isolation, would it be seen as an armed conflict? Would a Holocaust memorial be covered in the legislation or not?

Is it your view that a memorial to the battle of George Square, which was surely an armed conflict between striking workers and the British state, would be covered?

I am sorry, but I have to challenge that. You have mentioned the Spanish civil war memorial in Motherwell, which has been desecrated with fascist graffiti, and I think that the Glasgow one has also been attacked in the past. Those were not people who fought for our country or for any country; they were recruited by the Communist International to fight fascism. It was not about one country or another. Your definition is about those who died in armed conflict.

Good morning to the witnesses. I will touch briefly on the sentencing issue that others have mentioned, but most of my questions will be about the scope of the bill.

I welcome the fact that, in your answers so far, you have placed some emphasis on lower-level penalties, such as community payback orders, which might often be appropriate. However, I am concerned about the upper limit of 10 years’ imprisonment that you have suggested. There are people who have been convicted of multiple offences of trafficking class A drugs and who have received shorter sentences than that. You might generally have a view that sentences should be longer—I do not know, but maybe you do. Is that a fair comparison? Is there not some concern that your upper limit is too high?

Thank you.

My question leads on quite well from that. I will talk about food education—a lot of that is about schools, but not exclusively so. At the highest level, is there enough ambition for food education in the plan? That may include cooking skills, but I am thinking about education around our relationship with food in a broader sense, whether that is in the curriculum or through education more widely.

You mentioned training, skills and career opportunities, whether they are in food preparation, cooking, growing at a community level or in our agriculture system. We need to do a lot to make those opportunities and careers attractive, interesting and exciting, but we must also think about the current workforce, particularly within the public sector. Getting a culture change and a change of attitude is not always easy. We do not want people to feel that they are just being berated and told that they are doing it all wrong, but we do need to achieve significant change. How will the Government work with the workforce, particularly in the public sector where there is a far more direct employer responsibility, to create a sense that the existing staff feel part of any change agenda in the food culture and have a sense of ownership?

I will go back a wee bit, as I have a supplementary question on the one health issue that was raised a few minutes ago—broadly speaking, the idea that we can achieve coherence among human health, climate and sustainability, and animal health and wellbeing, and that a less meat-intensive agriculture system, as well as a less meat-intensive diet, is a positive route to achieving all three of those things.

From the last panel, we heard a call for a balanced and nuanced understanding of those issues, and a rejection of the idea that there is some kind of extreme demand for mass culls of animals that would destroy the rural economy, or the idea that there is no such thing as a healthy vegetarian or plant-based diet, because, of course, there is.

How can you convince us that the Government is embracing that balanced and considered approach to uniting those agendas, when it has explicitly rejected the advice of the UK Climate Change Committee on agriculture and land use, basically because the Government does not want to start talking about less meat production?

Okay.