Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 01 September 2021
I absolutely agree with Brian Whittle. Local procurement has many advantages, including supporting businesses, reducing our carbon footprint and reducing food poverty. However, doing that depends on giving local businesses the opportunities to bid for procurement contracts.
To come back to my point about local food strategies, we need intense on-the-ground support for local businesses that addresses, for example, digital and logistical infrastructure in order to drive the high-value sales that we need while tackling the skills, confidence and capacity challenges that many of our small and micro businesses face.
The importance of food and drink goes beyond their crucial economic importance. They impact on our health, our environment and our record on animal welfare. For far too long, far too many people in Scotland have lacked adequate access to food, exposing the gross inequalities that we face today. In a nation that provides so much outstanding food and drink, it is to our nation’s shame that many children in Scotland still go to bed hungry at night. Although our food and drink sector in Scotland has grown, so too has the scandal of?food poverty.
It is absolutely right that we celebrate the successes of Scotland’s?food and drink, as we will during food and drink fortnight, which begins this weekend. However, we need to rethink how we approach access to food in this country, and that means recognising that access to food is a fundamental right. It was deeply disappointing that the Government did not deliver a dedicated and comprehensive good food nation bill in the previous session of Parliament. It is not good enough to simply blame the pandemic, because the commitment to deliver that bill was made at the start of the previous session, long before any of us had even heard of Covid.
A bold good food nation bill is an opportunity for Scotland to lead the way on environmental sustainability, healthy eating and animal welfare, and to work with our trade unions to drive up terms and conditions for our food and drink workforce who, too often, are some of Scotland’s lowest-paid workers. Crucially, we need to enshrine in law the right to food, which would pave the way for a clear duty on our public bodies, with clear targets for action backed up by an independent statutory body to ensure that that action is delivered.
The cabinet secretary said that the Government will introduce a good food nation bill early in this session of Parliament, but she also said that the right to food would be in a different piece of legislation. However, the cabinet secretary did not say when we will see that legislation that will enshrine in law the right to food, so I hope that she will clarify that later in the debate.