Health, Social Care and Sport Committee 10 June 2025
To add to the commentary on how well you think that we have done, with the resource that we have been provided with, we are punching above our weight. We are a small organisation that is now recognised internationally. We have gained a lot of attention, and many visitors come here to see how we do things.
However, we could certainly do better. We are one of the few organisations to have had a flat-line budget since we were vested in 2015, which is a real-terms cut of in excess of 20 per cent. You will no longer see Food Standards Scotland actively campaigning in the way that we used to, and there are plenty of messages that we would like to amplify, but until our budget allows us to do that again, we will need to seek new and novel ways of getting our message across that do not cost any money, such as by using social media and so on.
There is a sense of us punching above our weight. You need only look at examples such as the recently publicised tea fraud case in Scotland, in which a successful conviction was secured. We have a small team of four investigators who find something under every stone that they turn over. However, we are now having to actively throttle back, because we do not have the resource to turn over the stones that we think could be turned over.