The Rural Affairs Secretary Mairi Gougeon has written to the Prime Minister calling for detail of the announcements made by the UK Government this week on food security.
These included funding announcements made in a public letter to farmers earlier this week, and following the UK Government’s recent Farm to Fork summit. Scottish Ministers were not invited to the summit.
The Affairs Secretary has said it is vital that the Scottish Government receives more information “to gauge the sufficiency, extent and implications of those announcements for the sector, and to understand how these apply to Scottish agri-food producers and those of the other devolved governments”.
It comes after the Scottish Government announced its own new dedicated Food Security Unit, focussed on ensuring Scotland’s food security by monitoring the supply chain for possible disruption.
Its establishment was a key recommendation of the Short-life Food Security and Supply Taskforce, set up by the Scottish Government together with industry immediately following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The new Food Security Unit will take forward the legacy activity of the taskforce. It will monitor food system resilience and engage widely so that government and industry are able to react as quickly as possible to any future shocks.
This week in Holyrood saw a Scottish Government debate on Securing a Sustainable Food Supply for Scotland, which saw reiteration of the point that Scotland has only a fraction of the powers, levers and funding required to do that.
I’m Graeme’s Parliamentary Assistant based at Holyrood, but I support his constituency work as well. Having been Caseworker to an Aberdeenshire MP some years prior, joining Graeme's team in 2019 was a return to this line of work from a role in fundraising.