Meeting of the Parliament 17 March 2016
I ask Mr Finnie to let me carry on. I have only four minutes.
Food is produced and it gets to the shops where people can buy it. The problem is that not all people can afford to buy it. That is not caused by the cost of food. The truth is that, in terms of family income, food costs are about a 10th of what they were in the 1950s. Food costs are not the problem—the problem is the other costs to the family that cause distortions. Food is a relatively insignificant cost, but housing costs are higher than ever. Fuel and transport costs are high. As a natural result of that, food often becomes a low priority, although it has a low cost. That is why so many of the organisations that have been mentioned today are so important to ensuring that food is made available to those who find that food is the thing that drops off the table at the end of the day.
As I said, we have a good system in place and it does not need radical reform from the bottom up. However, it needs to be adapted to cater for the demands of the small minority who are currently suffering. The charitable sector does an enormous amount of good work, but we all know that the sector should not be required to achieve those objectives. Although we praise the charitable sector for the good work that it does, let us find a way to ensure that, in the future, the best of Scotland’s produce ends up in the hands of those who currently can least afford it.
12:56