Meeting of the Parliament 09 December 2014
I was at my local bakery a couple of weeks ago; Mrs Carlaw and I are quite partial to its potato scones. Other, inferior, potato scones are no doubt available elsewhere. I was there during the local school’s lunch hour, which was quite an eye-opener. One pupil ordered a mutton pie and haggis in a roll. That was a combination that I had not hitherto heard of. The pupil ordered sauce—tomato and brown—and demolished the whole thing in short order. That made me think about the underlying obesity issue. One does not want to be po-faced about the occasional treat; I have had a mutton pie from time to time, and I like haggis, although I have never had the two combined in a roll, with two types of sauce.
It is easy for us to be intellectual and high-falutin’ about the responsibilities of food standards Scotland in relation to better diet. As we as a Parliament have found in grappling with many other cultural issues, such habits are deep-seated. It is quite a tall order—but nonetheless necessary, over time—that we address significantly within the broader health portfolio what we now understand to be an emerging crisis for the health service. When the Parliament was founded, we would not have included that issue on the agenda for future legislation.