Rural Affairs and Islands Committee 03 December 2025
A number of different things can be done in that regard. First, we will be open to any further suggestions for additions that people feel might be required in the future. Given that this is a novel approach, we need to embed it and see how it is working. The good food nation team will undertake monitoring, and the mechanisms that are established for that will be important.
There will be review points for the 2022 act, when issues can be picked up through evidence taking or scrutiny of the plan, or through committee recommendations. If any suggestions emerge from the committee, stakeholders or the Scottish Food Commission at any point, we will be open to considering them.
In our engagement, a good piece of work has been done explaining to stakeholders a bit more about how we work in Government and how the specified functions and the have-regard duty are intended to work in practice.
We are open to that consideration and scrutiny in the future, and to any recommendations that might be made.
As I say, we have covered the most critical areas in the good food nation plan as it stands, and we have captured the critical functions as well as the wider description. I am more than happy to keep the committee engaged on how the monitoring is progressing in addition to at the specific review points that are set out in the legislation.