Chamber and committees

Thank you for giving evidence this morning. Your evidence is very much appreciated and it will certainly help us to form our report on the bill.

I will suspend the meeting until 10.50 to allow a changeover of witnesses.

We move to our next theme, with questions from Jenni Minto.

I have some questions for Claire Hislop about Public Health Scotland’s views. Under section 7, health boards will be required to consult on and publish a good food nation plan. They will also be required to “have regard to” the plans when exercising specific functions, but we do not yet know what those functions will be because they are not laid out in the bill. What are your views on that?

There will also be resource implications relating to the costs of consulting on and publishing a good food nation plan. The Scottish Government suggests that any such costs will be “negligible”. Do you agree that the costs involved in pulling everything together will be “negligible”?

You have given your opinion on what the bill should deliver and aspire to, and on what its ambitions should be, so Public Health Scotland should have an idea of what a plan might look like. We have taken evidence on that over the past few weeks, and we have had the consultation responses, so there should be a good indication of what will be in such plans. Therefore, there should be an indication to health boards of the costs and resource implications of pulling the plans together. That is really important. Do the specified functions need to be laid out in the bill, so that we are certain about what the plans for each health board will deliver? In that way, it will not be down to costs and resource implications, and it will not be based on the position of individual health boards.

We move on to item 3, which is consideration of two consent notifications from Scottish ministers. I refer members to paper 3.

Under the protocol between the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government, the two consent notifications have been categorised as type 1, meaning that the Scottish Parliament’s agreement is sought before the Scottish Government gives consent to the UK Government making secondary legislation in an area of devolved competence.

We will consider the two notifications separately.

Does any member have any comment on the consent notification on the Phytosanitary Conditions (Amendment) Regulations 2022? Please raise your hand or type R in the chat box if participating remotely.

No member has indicated that they wish to comment.

Is the committee content that the provisions set out in the notification should be included in the proposed UK statutory instrument? Please raise your hand or type N in the chat box if you do not agree, otherwise I will presume that members are content.

As no member has disagreed, the committee is content.

Does any member have any comment on the milk and milk products consent notification?

No member has indicated that they wish to comment.

Is the committee content that the provisions set out in the notification should be included in the proposed UK SI? Please raise your hand or type N in the chat box if you do not agree, otherwise I will presume members are content.

As no member has disagreed, the committee is content.

Finally, is the committee content to delegate authority to me to sign off a letter to the Scottish Government, informing it of our decision today?

As no member has disagreed, the committee is content.

Briefly.

We will move on to our next theme, on which Ariane Burgess has questions.

Who would like to kick off on that?

Okay. We have a supplementary question from Ariane Burgess.

Thank you. I will go back to Dr Shields with my next question. We have heard that the bill needs to do this and needs to do that, but you said that we should not assume that it will do those things. The bill, as drafted, is a framework bill. Potentially, as it sits, it will not achieve any of the ambitions that stakeholders would like it to achieve. There may therefore be an argument that the bill should not have been introduced in that way and that the Government should have fleshed it out a little more. At the moment, it looks as though it will be left to parliamentarians to lodge amendments to achieve some of those ambitions. Is that your understanding? Will the bill as drafted enable Scotland to achieve its ambitions?