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Will you explain what concerns you mean?

Those are very fair questions. One of the overarching principles of NPF4 is the requirement to deliver those homes, so it is very focused on that, as you would expect it to be. There are a number of other factors involved in that. We have talked about the different policies on climate change and biodiversity, the infrastructure-first approach and 20-minute neighbourhoods, which are all part of the mix, but it is central to NPF4 that we have a planning system in place that is able to support the delivery of those houses to deal with the situation as it stands across the country.

Although we all agree that the solution to that will involve building more houses across all tenures where they are needed across the country, the local plans are critically important. They will ensure that local communities in planning authority areas have an input on where those houses should be built, which is a key consideration. The framework is absolutely focused on taking that forward.

However, it is clear that planning is only part of the solution, because a number of factors, including commercial aspects and skills, impact on housing provision. I know that the Minister for Housing is very focused on progressing the work in that area, and I am working with him on what needs to be done to help to address some of those challenges.

On the resourcing issue, planning is delivered by local authorities and there is no ring fencing, so they make the decision on the amount of resource that they allocate to the planning process.

There has been a reduction in resources allocated at that level, as you rightly identify. Work is on-going to understand what we should do with fees in the future. There have recently been increases in fees, and work is on-going to understand how that should be taken forward, and whether fees bring more money into the system to support planning authorities to have sufficient resource in place.

There are a number of other aspects, too. There are challenges with regard to the number of planners coming through the system. One could name 50 different professions across the economy where workforce numbers are a challenge, so that is not unique to planning, but it is something that we are seriously addressing.

Last week, I was at an event at the University of Glasgow that involved a combination of academics who do the training, planning authorities and industry partners all putting their heads together around the table to figure out how we can improve the flow of planners into the system. The Government is contributing to that work through the bursaries and other support that we are putting in place to support graduate planning roles as part of the education piece.

I met the national improvement champion for planning yesterday to understand how we can use technology to make the process more effective and efficient, so that we can get more applications through the system, and increase the number of planners who are making use of the technology that is becoming available.

There are a number of different strands of work happening to increase the capacity in the system, but we absolutely recognise that that is a challenge.

The point is that the fee system is not ring fenced.

You are right with regard to the message that I get from developers, and certainly from industry partners. As an aside, I note that part of the challenge is that we are a victim of our own success, to some extent, across the whole economy, in that the significant expansion of renewables capacity and the planned further exponential expansion means that there is a much greater requirement for planners. There is a whole sector—the energy sector—now looking to hire planners, and they are coming from local authorities or private sector employers, so there is a further requirement to increase the number of planners going into the system.

The point about fees is that they are not ring fenced, so the money goes into a local authority’s general pot and local authorities make their own decisions as to what they spend those funds on. That link is not clear—it is not about the fees going into hiring more planners. It is up to the local authority what it does with that money.

We welcome the fact that the outcome on housing is in place. We have talked about the role of NPF4, with its primary consideration of how we enable the building of more houses. Andy, do we have anything more specific to say about that? We are in the process and I do not think that that changes what is in NPF4 or its intent; it just gives it more focus. We have the national performance framework objective and we continue the work to embed and roll out the processes relating to local development plans and all the other elements that we have talked about.

Yes, you are right: one of the current consultations is on the procedures for masterplan consent areas. The concept is that you identify an area where some of the work has already been done, to enable the planning process to be a bit easier and a bit faster to implement in that area. It is about identifying where those areas would be, working with local authorities and local communities and ensuring that, particularly in rural areas, you have fewer hurdles, if you like, because you have done a lot of the groundwork previously to understand what is permissible.

If you want more detail, Andy Kinnaird can provide the specifics.

Sure. You are right that the delivery plan has quite a bit of detail in it as to how the various aspects are taken forward. A number of working groups are working with that, and the consultations that we have talked about are part of that. As for the monitoring period, as I said in my introductory remarks and as you have recognised, it is probably too early to see things being delivered.

You had an evidence session with Craig McLaren, the national planning improvement champion, and he is leading work on a monitoring framework to help us to understand how NPF4 is delivering, how different planning authorities are working with the plan and their level of effectiveness in the delivery process. I had a good session separately with Craig yesterday. That is the overarching piece of work for monitoring, which will come through the process fairly soon.

Stakeholders have a big role here, too, so we are meeting Heads of Planning Scotland regularly, as well as other bodies that have an interest in the planning regime, in working together and in helping to understand how we effectively monitor the deliverables from NPF4.

That is great—thank you very much.

Good morning—it is still morning. I have just a couple of brief points. What is your perspective on the effectiveness of the good food nation plan, and the targets in it, in tackling both dietary challenges and climate targets?

We will come on to that in follow-up questions.

You have answered some of my supplementary questions as well. You have said, first, that the supposed statistic that 98 per cent of the evidence should be ignored is wrong and, secondly, that the evidence that was not included—it sounds as though that was a bit less than half of it—was not included because the methodological approach was not robust enough for the University of York’s work. I was also going to ask how it compares to methodologies that are applied in other areas of paediatric medicine, but I think that you have answered that by saying that it falls significantly short of the literature that you would see in other areas.

I will move on to ask you about how we fill those gaps. What research is under way at the moment? Is it sufficient, and what else needs to be done? How long will it take for us to build an evidence base that allows us to address these questions more robustly?