Chamber and committees

I would like to broaden the discussion. Scotland’s food issues are not unique; other countries are looking at policies around food. I am interested in whether the witnesses have any examples that we could look at with regard to accountability or oversight in respect of food legislation. Perhaps Mary Brennan can start.

I smiled at your comment about people-to-people conversations because people are people the world over and we have to recognise that. I am looking forward to visiting Oban high school in the near future, which is in my constituency. Lewis Ryder-Jones, do you have any thoughts and comments on a distinctively Scottish approach and our not being able to follow, given the size of the funding available, the more defined route that we expect from DFID or the Foreign and Commonwealth Office?

I was at a couple of COP26 fringe events and I heard someone comment that the cost of doing nothing is more than the cost of doing something. Lewis Ryder-Jones, could you expand on your statement about support for calls for the cancellation of all external debt payments?

This has been very informative. I will ask David Hope-Jones to answer my question first, but others may wish to comment as well.

In your evidence you said that there was a distinctively Scottish approach to international development. Could you expand on that, perhaps with a few examples from your Malawi experiences?

This question may be a bit specific. At our previous meeting, we took evidence about the possible impact of the Subsidy Control Bill on agricultural policy in Scotland. Do such things fall into your remit? How will you work with legislation that may be brought in that impacts the internal market?

I have a final question. I am interested to find out what matrices you will use to check whether the UK internal market is working well, efficiently or effectively. Clearly, there are economic and business matrices, but there are also matrices for wellbeing and health. Again, there are concerns about a devolved Government wishing to bring in a specific policy because of a specific issue in its area of competence. Minimum unit pricing for alcohol is an example.

I was struck when you said—and I do not mean to misquote you—something along the lines of there not being much evidence gathered with regard to the levels of trade between the UK countries as things stand now. What is the baseline that we will compare to? Does that make sense?

I would like to return to the questions that Mr Ruskell asked about engagement. I note that you have done an initial stakeholder survey. What key learnings came from that? I noticed that there was mention of being even-handed. Could you expand a bit on that statement, please? That is for Mr Scott.

The budget has £3 million allocated to the carbon-neutral islands project, and the plan is to have at least three carbon-neutral islands by 2040, which supports the Scottish Government’s aim to demonstrate the low-carbon potential of Scotland’s islands as hubs of innovation. How we are progressing with that?

I want to ask a general question. You have commented on the fact that there have been hard choices to make in this budget round. When you are creating budgets, the budget headings do not remain constant, and there needs to be some flexibility to ensure that budget is allocated to appropriate areas. Would the cabinet secretary please outline some of the changes that she has made to ensure that rural and island Scotland has fairer allocations to meet the challenges of EU exit and to recover from Covid, as well as for continuing to develop our rural and island economies?