Hansard

I thank members for their contributions to the debate. I also thank them for their well wishes today and yesterday. I assure the Parliament that no one is more disappointed than I am that I am not in the chamber for the final stage of the legislation. Undertaking a stage 3 while you have Covid is definitely not an experience that I would recommend.

The passion that members feel for the bill is absolutely clear from the contributions to the debate on a huge range of food-related topics. I am also grateful for the weight that so many organisations across Scottish society have placed on the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill.

I know that the bill has taken time to finally reach the Parliament, having been disrupted by the pandemic, but we now reach an important milestone on our good food nation journey. The bill will enable everyone who is affected by food policy decisions to hold the Government to account. It will create new and innovative national and local food plans that will fulfil ambitions, on a long-term basis, for the betterment of everyone in Scotland and for our health, our environment and our wonderful food and drink industry. That is important because of the global challenges that we face, from climate change to the supply chain disruption that we have seen through Brexit, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

We must effect the changes that are needed to address those challenges, both on a national scale when it comes to our food system and in our food culture in how we think about food and in the food that we choose to eat. That will be achieved only through long-term planning that effectively links the Government with public bodies at a local level. The bill will give us the tools to do that.

Many points have been raised in the debate, which I will try to touch on. I hope that I manage to cover them all. I will start with universal free school meals. There has been much discussion about the provision of universal free school meals. I stress again that the Scottish Government takes the issue of school meals seriously. We are already committed to funding the expansion of free school lunches to all children in primary and special schools during the course of the Parliament, and, as things stand, all children in primaries 1 to 5 are offered universal free school lunches during school term time.

Yesterday, I asked Parliament to reject amendments that Monica Lennon lodged on the issue because they would have created unclear legal effects on public bodies such as health boards and local authorities. Again, I want to be absolutely clear: this Government is committed to the expansion of free school meals. However, the right way to expand universal free school meal provision is to work with our partners in local authorities to plan for that expansion, and we will, of course, continue to do that.

Rachael Hamilton put a couple of questions to me today. In response to those questions, I say that, in the coming year, we will develop plans to deliver free breakfasts to children in primary and special schools and will start a pilot provision. We know that delivering free breakfast provision in primary and special school settings will improve the equality of access to nutritious food for children, and, in order to effectively deliver an expanded breakfast offer, we need to better understand the extent of current breakfast provision across local authorities. This year, our priority is to map that existing provision and plan what the delivery of a future breakfast offer should look like in order to best meet the needs of children and families in Scotland. That sort of work will be important for all our good food nation plans. As I said yesterday, those plans are the best place for that detail to be.

The right to food was raised by Colin Smyth and others. As is the case with other comments of his, he mischaracterised the Government’s position on that, because the Scottish Government is committed to the right to food and to enshrining it in law—there is no question about that. However, as I have said before, there are complex interdependencies between a host of human rights, which is why we cannot take a fragmented approach to their incorporation. That is why we will bring forward a human rights bill during this session of Parliament. However, I strongly believe that, although that incorporation is important, it is through the kind of initiatives that we intend for the good food nation plans that we will make access to healthy, local and nutritious food a reality for everyone, which will really give effect to that right.

I will touch briefly on the use of language in the debate today as well as in the bill. Colin Smyth made much of the bill having regard to various provisions, and he really downplayed that phrase. It is important to remember that we use that language and that legal text for a reason.