Chamber and committees

I will pick up the point about international collaboration and working together. We are talking about a small number of persons who are seeking care in relation to gender. In my previous job as a registered nurse, I would look at what people were doing in England, Ireland and Wales, and when I worked in California, it was the same thing—you network with the people who are specialists. That would be part of the engagement of networking with people who provide specialist care, such as researchers, doctors and so on. I imagine that that is what Professor Sir Gregor Smith is talking about. We are not just waiting and watching in Scotland for somebody else to take action: there has been participation and collaboration from the start.

This will be my final question. Has the decision to stop self-referrals had any impact on the length of the waiting list?

I forgot to make it clear earlier that I am a former NHS Scotland and NHS England employee and am still a registered nurse.

I come back to the point about having a multidisciplinary team approach. We know that the skills that are required are specialist ones. Who would be in such an MDT?

I go back to what you said about multidisciplinary teams. When the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health gave her statement on 3 September, she said that there would be a move to a more distributed network, with a more regional model and a multidisciplinary team approach, which you have already described. What might such a regional model look like, especially when we are already struggling to staff services?

It is about having knowledge and skills in the right areas. For example, neurodiversity is linked to gender dysphoria.

We might have strayed a wee bit from the technical aims that the SSI is supposed to be achieving. There has been a lot of discussion about rebasing, retargeting—however we want to describe it—and co-design. Part of what needs to happen is the promotion of trust and engagement, including with young farmers, new entrants and our next-generation farmers, and that is what seems to be coming out of this.

However, I want to bring our discussion back to the fact that we are supposed to be approving the statutory instrument so that payments can continue. Am I correct in understanding that this is a technical instrument?

Thanks.

Good morning, minister and officials—thank you for being here.

You say that 2030 is the backstop, but that does not mean that 2030 is when people will start doing the work and making the changes that are needed for all the different schemes, including those that you have discussed. It is not just about LFASS; there are other issues around suckler calves and so on. A lot of schemes need to be developed, and my understanding is that resources are already driving those changes forward.

In the past fortnight, the committee has received a lot of evidence from different people that shows that there is a level of concern. One response says that you

“gave assurances that this does not necessarily mean that schemes ... will go to 2030”.

Can you reassure the committee that, should we approve the SSI today, although 2030 will be the backstop date, that does not mean that nothing else will happen before then?

I quickly put on record that my understanding is that this is a technical statutory instrument. I hear what Rachael Hamilton is saying about the wider issue and the number of people who submitted responses to this statutory instrument. It shows that, as the co-design of the policy moves forward, work needs to be done to promote trust and to engage with the rural and agricultural sector, new farmers, new entrants and all of that. This is a technical instrument, but it highlights and uncovers wider work that we need to be sensitive to when engaging with stakeholders.

Good morning. I am interested to hear whether youse are still in support of a national care service.