Meeting of the Parliament 02 October 2014
I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate and thank the Health and Sport Committee’s convener, Duncan McNeil, for his opening remarks. I also thank all the stakeholders across local government, the NHS, food and drink producers, the industry and regulatory bodies as well as the many others who provided written and oral evidence to the Health and Sport Committee, which assisted us greatly in our scrutiny of the bill at stage 1.
The bill is important, so I am pleased to see that there is general consensus on its broad principles and what it is trying to achieve. As others have said, it will establish a single independent body to ensure that the former functions of the Food Standards Agency remain together, thereby allowing clear responsibility and accountability for all aspects of food safety and standards. That can only be beneficial for consumers in Scotland.
Crucially, the bill will help us to tackle the serious public health issues surrounding obesity. The bill also shows that we have learned the lessons from the 2013 horsemeat scandal, in that many of the measures that were recommended by the two expert working groups that were tasked with reviewing what went wrong in our food chain have been incorporated in the bill.
I welcome the Scottish Government’s response to the committee’s stage 1 report—in particular, the clarification that the Government has provided on the envisaged role of food standards Scotland in relation to diet and nutrition, the accessing of European research funding and the research functions of the new body. I will focus on section 2, which sets the objectives of food standards Scotland and includes a new objective on diet:
“to improve the extent to which members of the public have diets which are conducive to good health”.
As the minister said, obesity presents a significant and growing public health challenge in Scotland. Regrettably, we are near the top of the OECD league table for obesity. Parliament is aware of the contribution that obesity makes to the incidence of other potentially serious long-term conditions, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, osteoarthritis and some cancers, so I welcome the principle that FSS will have a new focus on diet and nutrition. Obesity cannot be viewed as a health issue alone, and neither will we tackle it successfully if we rely only on creating behavioural change.
The causes of the increase in obesity are complicated and the efforts to address the trend will require collaboration across sectors. Many people tend to associate food standards with food safety, hygiene and cleanliness but not necessarily with improving the extent to which the public have
“diets which are conducive to good health”.
I am therefore pleased that the inclusion of the objective on diet and nutrition was supported, in the evidence that the committee received, by the Soil Association, the James Hutton Institute, the British Medical Association Scotland, the Royal Society of Edinburgh and Quality Meat Scotland.
Linked to the competence of FSS over diet and nutrition is the potential role that it can play in influencing the European Union agenda, working together with various Scottish research institutes and groups, not least in terms of identifying and accessing research opportunities at UK and EU levels.
I also welcome the Scottish Government’s response and the memorandum of understanding that is being developed to operate between the FSA and FSS to ensure that the latter has full access to UK research.
FSS’s creation is an opportunity to build more formal and effective working relationships with the appropriate UK and EU agencies. The new body will be able to collaborate, co-operate and share intelligence with other organisations in Scotland, the UK and Europe. Clearly, that will be valuable should we ever see a repeat of international food fraud incidents such as the horsemeat scandal. That will also allow for a similar approach to research.
We have expertise that others need, for example on shellfish, and we have highly regarded research into food and diet, such as that which is being carried out by the James Hutton Institute. We have a lot to offer in that regard, as well as much to gain. As my committee colleague Nanette Milne said, there are substantial potential opportunities for Scotland’s research arising out of the EU’s new horizon 2020 research funding programme. The issue of food security is one of the grand societal challenges that have been identified by the EU to be supported in the context of that programme, with research work focusing on food and healthy diet. The horizon 2020 statement on that theme refers to
“social and economic access to safe and nutritious food.”
That reflects very well the diet and nutrition objective in FSS’s proposed remit.
The creation of food standards Scotland affords us a wider opportunity not only to plug Scotland in to the developing pan-European research, but to ensure that Scotland is ideally placed to make a significant contribution to one of the major challenges facing our society. That opportunity is as significant as our work on the integration of health and social care for adults, which is helping us to make the case very strongly for Scotland to become an international centre of excellence in research into healthy and active ageing using digital health solutions.
I look forward to the bill proceeding to stage 2 and to the Health and Sport Committee’s further discussion on it. I am happy to support the bill’s general principles.
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