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I am in agreement with the general principles of amendments 22 and 23, but I would like clarification of why you are highlighting local authorities. We recognise from the evidence that we took that the majority of the debt in this area falls to local authorities, but why are you singling out local authorities to be treated differently from any other creditor? The regulations, as they currently stand, do not support similar treatment of local authorities.

I was just going through the regulations. One thing that you could do around environmental impact—I am sure that you do this—is to procure based on air miles. I totally understand that there are not many tuna off the west coast of Scotland yet and that we may want to have tuna on the menu, but that is brilliant.

We can hold up East Ayrshire Council as an example, because around 75 per cent of the food that it procures for schools is local, as in from Scotland. I think that the furthest afield that it gets produce from is Edinburgh, for the fish. It can tell us which farms the eggs come from. I love that kind of stuff. There are instances out there in which that is happening, so it can be done. However, I know that the council is under financial pressure in relation to maintaining that, which, as we discussed earlier, could lead to a huge negative impact on the outcomes.

How can the Government, through contracts such as those of Scotland Excel, weight procurement more towards those outcomes? That is presumably what we want.

Good morning. I will take the themes that my colleague began and run with them. There is tension between outcomes and cost. You will know that I have a specific interest in public procurement of food and the impact that it can have across much of our society. We want to have the highest-quality food in our schools and hospitals that we can—for example, food that was grown just down the road. That would improve our kids’ outcomes at school and tackle many of our poor health issues, including hunger, malnutrition and the relationship between health and attainment. It would help with recovery in our hospitals, the rural economy would benefit and we would reduce our carbon output. However, budgets come along and have an impact on that aim.

Julie, I have been looking at Scotland Excel’s work for quite a while—not from a critical perspective, but to inform my thinking about how we could improve outcomes. In 2016, I looked at the area in a lot of depth and was surprised at how little of the food that our public sector procures actually comes from Scotland. Given where we want to be, and the outcomes that we want to have, how far should we look at the issue in the long term? How much of the pressure that is put on you comes from local councils’ budgets and their ability to pay for the service?

From the other perspective, our food producers are perhaps not the best at dealing with the contracts that are required. Every single time I go to farms and meet representatives of NFU Scotland, they talk about struggling to get access to Excel contracts because, in the scheme of things, they are small operators. How do we use the public procurement framework to make it easier for them to come into the fold?

Graeme, I will come to you in a minute on that question, so please be prepared.

Can I ask a final, very small question, convener?

Who would have thought that, out of everything in that report, people would jump on the reference to buying chicken from Thailand?

I note that the French always manage to do what we are discussing really well.

My last question relates to our schools and hospitals, where there is a distinct lack of ability to prepare food on site. How much does that impact on what you deliver, in terms of orders for pre-prepared food as opposed to food that could be prepared on site? Perhaps Julie Welsh can answer that.

I will leave it there and come back in later if there is more time.

I want to look at a practical example of the idea of higher up-front costs potentially delivering a better long-term result. I cannot think of anything that is more relevant, Mr Beattie, than the food that we give to our patients. The last time I looked at the issue in any great depth, I saw that there was huge disparity among NHS boards in respect of hospitals’ ability to prepare food on site, given where we seem to be going in developing facilities that have their food prepared off site and brought in. Surely it must, given its size, be difficult to procure into the NHS locally produced and locally prepared food.

Perhaps Melanie Mackenzie can add to that. As I said, there is big variation across councils. South Lanarkshire Council is one of the councils that I have looked at. I have also looked at East Ayrshire Council, which is the gold standard; I understand that it is under real pressure to maintain that standard while balancing its budget.

Craig Fergusson mentioned the idea of maintaining a high standard of food, which, is potentially easier through a central contract. I suggest that the highest-quality food that is kicking around is produced by our own food producers. The issue is how we get it on to the plate. In terms of risk, is the ability to manage multiple contracts a real barrier to progress?