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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?

So it would be about looking at physical and mental outcomes from a health perspective.

I have covered all the issues on research follow-up when I asked questions earlier.

That is helpful. Thank you.

My second question is about the roles and responsibilities of yourselves—Food Standards Scotland—and the Scottish Food Commission. The issue has been raised before. What is your perspective on the discussions to clarify that?