Official Report 808KB pdf
Food and Feed (Regulated Products) (Amendment, Revocation, Consequential and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2025 [Draft]
Good morning, and welcome to the first meeting in 2025 of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee. I have received apologies from Elena Whitham.
The first item on our agenda is consideration of a consent notification from the Scottish Government on a draft United Kingdom regulated products statutory instrument. The UK Government is seeking the Scottish Government’s consent to legislate in areas of devolved competence.
The committee’s role is to decide whether it agrees with the Scottish Government’s proposal to consent to the UK Government making the regulations in areas of devolved competence and in the manner that the UK Government has indicated to the Scottish Government. If members are content for consent to be given, the committee will write accordingly to the Scottish Government. We also have the option to pose questions or to make suggestions and to ask to be kept up to date on relevant developments. However, if the committee is not content with the proposal, it may make one of three recommendations, which are outlined in paragraph 13 of the clerk’s note.
In advance of today’s meeting, I wrote to the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health on behalf of the committee with a series of questions on the instrument, and the minister submitted a letter in response on Friday 10 January. Both letters are in the annexes to paper 1. Members might now wish to put further questions to the minister about the instrument. The committee could decide to invite the minister to attend its next meeting on Tuesday 21 January. In that case, the committee would defer a final decision on the instrument until after it has taken further evidence from the minister. Do members have any comments?
I am in favour of deferring the decision until next week after the committee has taken more evidence. There are concerns about the capacity of Food Standards Scotland and the Food Standards Agency to continually review the evidence, as set out in the proposal, alongside a few other issues that it would be useful to explore with the minister and, potentially, with Food Standards Scotland.
Good morning. Like Gillian Mackay, I would like to defer the decision. I have a long-standing interest in food additives and how food is processed. Ultra-processing means that additives, stabilisers, emulsifiers and lots of different things are added to food, so I am interested in getting more detail to see where we can go with this statutory instrument.
It is absolutely appropriate that we hear from the minister. It is a very technical instrument, so it would be helpful to hear from her and from Food Standards Scotland.
We have looked at the issue for a number of years. Generally speaking, the standards to which the UK holds itself are probably not as high as I would like them to be, but they tend to be higher than is the case in much of the European Union. However, it would be appropriate to double-check that that is still the case. As colleagues have said, it would be appropriate to defer the decision on the instrument.
I put it to members that we invite the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health to attend the committee’s next meeting, on Tuesday 21 January, to answer further questions on the instrument. Do we agree to do so?
Members indicated agreement.
We will write to the Scottish Government to that effect.
Air ais
Attendance