Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you.

Some of my specific questions have been answered in responses to others, but I will follow on from Colin Beattie’s questions about the implications for individual members. Can you give us an idea of the scale of the impact that being on the wrong benefit could have on an individual, so that we can understand how that could impact on someone’s life—whether they are already retired and have been given the wrong pension, or are looking to retire but have been given the wrong estimates?

I will ask some questions about the food hygiene information scheme. There has been a bit of media coverage of the scheme in England, where they have a sticker that goes on the window. Obviously, it relies on the establishment to change that sticker, so that people know whether it is accurate, and I think that they are looking at moving to an online system.

We have an online system, which sounds good on the face of it—until you actually try to use it. You go to the Food Standards Scotland website and it is great. You can put in the name of a specific business or you can put in a street. I have typed in “Canongate” and asked it to tell me which businesses were assessed as having a requirement for improvement; the options are simply “pass” or “improvement required”. There are seven results, which cover a range of different food premises. There is one in particular, which I will not name but which is a pub that I would have eaten in. Edinburgh’s pub food scene is great. The inspection date is given as 4 September 2024. However, what was wrong in September 2024? Is it safe for me to eat there now? The site is meant to be about sharing information.

There is a link to the City of Edinburgh Council’s food safety website, which takes me to a general page that tells me that, if I want specific information, I have to go back to the Food Standards Scotland website. Without emailing the council’s environmental health service, therefore, I do not know whether there is a significant reason why I would not want to eat there, whether it is being fixed or whether several people have had food poisoning.

We have a system that, with modern technology, should work so that people have real choice. I am keen to encourage you to look at how that could be fixed for the future, because it is not an information system just now.

That is fair enough. However, this is meant to be an information scheme. It is great if it is being looked at, but my point is that, if I have taken the bother to go and look it up, in the short term, I should at least be able to see that information. If I am taking my friends out to eat someplace, I do not want them to get food poisoning. If a particular place has been assessed as requiring improvement, surely I should be able to easily access the report. If a care home has an improvement scheme notice, you can go online and see it. Food Standards Scotland and local authorities should surely be able to work together to get that in place pretty quickly.

Right now, there is no penalty for a business, because customers simply do not know. They do not know whether they are going somewhere that has great hygiene or not-so-great hygiene, and they cannot find out what needs improvement. Maybe it was about a wee mistake or something that was fixed almost immediately, or maybe it was about something like a lack of hand washing, which is significant in terms of passing on the pathogens that we talked about earlier.

I would encourage you to have a look and see whether something can be done soon.

Do you have confidence that the SPA is getting to grips with that now?

We will take that as a positive.

10:00

First, I put on the record an interest that I have: a close family member works in forensics, so I will steer clear of any questions that directly relate to that.

The first area on which I will focus is equalities. The report reminds us that, in 2023, the then chief constable—quite dramatically, as I recall—acknowledged that Police Scotland was “institutionally discriminatory and racist.” The current chief constable set out, in her 2030 vision, the commitment for Police Scotland to become

“an anti-racist and anti-discriminatory organisation”.

There are a number of on-going pieces of work, including the policing together programme, and there is a strategy in place. In spite of that, however, your report notes that Police Scotland’s internal audit in 2024 found that policing still

“does not have effective arrangements in equality and human rights impact assessments.”

It would be good to hear what your audit found with regard to what those failings are and why policing is not managing to take that forward in a way that will make effective arrangements for equality impact assessments. What is missing, and how is policing progressing with that?

Did you say that you would be looking at the policing together programme again in 2027-28?

At that point, that might be something that the Auditor General would look at.

I move on to the Police Scotland estate. You say in the report that the current estate is “unsustainable” and that

“around £500 million will be required to deliver the masterplan, with a £200 million funding gap still to be addressed.”

That is quite significant. What is being done to manage that and prioritise what needs to be done quickly over what can be done later?