Chamber and committees

The whole idea of corporate social responsibility is really important, particularly given what you have said about the price rises being lower for certain foods and higher for others. That almost seems counterintuitive, given the processes that there might be for high-fat and high-sugar items. I get that fresh food does not last long on the shelves, but that is having an impact on consumers. In particular, it will have an impact on more vulnerable groups, such as children, older people and people in socially deprived areas. Thank you for highlighting that.

The next item on our agenda is an oral evidence session with Cricket Scotland and sportscotland. This is an opportunity to receive an update on those organisations’ progress towards implementing the recommendations of the independent review into racism in Scottish cricket, and it is the second such meeting that we have had. I think that the last one was around October last year.

I welcome Kaukab Stewart, who is not a committee member. She is attending for this item, and I hope that we will be able to give Kaukab the opportunity to ask some questions after members have asked questions of the panel.

I welcome to the committee Gordon Arthur, the chief executive officer of Cricket Scotland, and Anjan Luthra, the chair of Cricket Scotland. We also have with us Forbes Dunlop, the chief executive officer of sportscotland. Welcome to you all, and thank you for making the time to come back. Anjan Luthra will make a brief opening statement.

Thank you very much, Heather. A lot of our members want to speak to you about EU exit in detail and how that is impacting on the standards of, and access to, food.

I want to take us to other events of the past year. There have been some significant global events, including the conflict in Ukraine, which is a major supplier of food to Europe, the UK and beyond. The cost of living has increased dramatically, and inflation is 9 per cent and was 10 per cent; it has come down slightly—not that you would know from the price of food in the supermarkets. How are the supply chain issues that are being caused by the conflict in Ukraine, by EU exit and by the cost of living impacting on families who are finding it difficult to access good-quality food? How are you reprioritising your work around those issues? What impact is that having? How are you responding?

I thank Anjan Luthra, Gordon Arthur and Forbes Dunlop for attending and providing that update. As I said, it was our second update on the work that you are doing.

We will now suspend the meeting and have a short break to allow for a change of panel.

It is interesting that high-sugar, high-fat and salty foods are not being impacted as much as fresh food. It does not take a genius to work out that a family with a very limited budget trying to keep the kids from being hungry has to make choices. The long-term impact of that on health inequalities and children’s health could be significant.

Thank you.

I have a couple of questions. My first question was going to be, “When is your action plan going to be published?”, but I note that the Cricket Scotland action plan was published yesterday afternoon—members are catching up with it in real time.

Mr Luthra, you talked a little about the efforts that have been made to engage with stakeholders—I guess that that is everyone in cricket across Scotland—on the action plan. What will your programme be for disseminating the information in that action plan? More specifically, what about the recommendations in relation to the Western District Cricket Union, where quite a lot of the complaints came from? Can you address the wider question of how you will disseminate the action plan and say what specific measures you are taking in the western district?

Do you not want that panel to be in place for the start of the season?

You have pre-empted what I was going to ask. Big retailers have a big part to play in this.

With the cost of living crisis, high energy costs and the other issues that you have mentioned, do we run the risk of seeing the return of health conditions that, we thought, were banished to the past?

As a committee, we recommended, following our deliberations on the national planning framework, that local councillors should be able to turn down planning applications on the basis of health. Would you support that?

Emma, you wanted to talk about the Scottish food commission.