Chamber and committees

I want to comment briefly on PE1871, which was lodged by my constituent Karen McKeown. I have been working with Karen for several years, including on this petition, and I again pay tribute to her.

I am grateful for the work that the committee has done. Its health-themed scrutiny with the cabinet secretary was really good, because we want to look at things in a joined-up way. In her letter of 18 November, Karen McKeown has highlighted to the committee that some progress has been made; after all, we cannot sit here as MSPs and say “Everything is terrible” all the time. I agree with what Karen has said, and I welcome the fact that

“80% of staff in Lanarkshire have completed Mental Health Carer Aware training”.

That is really good, although we are still seeing a crisis across Scotland.

I must challenge the cabinet secretary’s claim that there is a focus on prevention. That might be the intention, but the practice is somewhat different. Just at the weekend, I was listening to the Scottish Police Federation talk about the huge demand on front-line police officers to provide a mental health crisis response. That situation is nothing new, but it is getting worse.

Constituents are telling us that there is an overreliance on the police; that more and more people are having to find money to pay for private treatment, even when they cannot really afford it; and that although the NHS wants to deliver prevention and early intervention, it is still bogged down in having to deal with crisis. It just feels as though there is more still to be done. We now have another new minister; I welcome Tom Arthur to his post, and it would be good to hear directly from him, as Minister for Social Care and Mental Wellbeing, about the fresh ideas that he is bringing to the table.

Again, on behalf of Karen McKeown and for everyone bereaved by suicide, I want them to know that the Parliament is listening. We know that these deaths are preventable if the right action and resources are in place.

Yes, thank you, and thank you to the committee for all your work, and especially for the visit to University hospital Wishaw NICU.

Dr Wardle, thank you for your written evidence and your oral evidence today. To put that in context, are you able to explain for the committee’s benefit whether you or your executive committee members have visited the site at Wishaw or Glasgow, or indeed the other units that we are discussing today?

Thank you—that is helpful. It reinforces what has been my position all along, which is that the decisions need to be informed by people who work in the local services and those who have used local services—they need to have a seat at the table.

Dr Wardle, you are a member of the British Association of Perinatal Medicine, and you clearly have the best interests of patients and your members at heart. Is it regrettable that no one from NHS Lanarkshire had a seat at the table and was able to ask questions and inform the decision, when clinicians from Glasgow and elsewhere were involved? To have robust decision making, should there have been representation from NHS Lanarkshire?

Your clinical expertise is valued and appreciated, but we have had five or six co-chairs, people with national experience and people from outside Scotland, but no one from Lanarkshire.

But they have not made decisions. They said that they tried to do the right thing by trying not to prejudice decisions because they felt that they had an interest as one of the units, but it looks like there has not been consistency around other people’s decisions.

On the—

I will just make an observation on that, as I know that I need to hand back to you, convener. If co-location was a factor, it sounds as though the process was weighted against Lanarkshire right from the beginning, because that was one of the criteria that you mentioned. It sounds as though our local service had no chance with all these different co-chairs, and that is regrettable.

Thank you for clarifying that. I ask because you made a number of important points about what should be in place for babies and families across Scotland in terms of the right resources, transport and capacity, and you cited the evidence that has informed your position in relation to centralisation. However, the evidence that we have as MSPs, especially those of us who represent communities in Lanarkshire, is that we do not have enough resources, we do not have the right transport and we do not have the right capacity. Do you accept and acknowledge that, today, the unit in Wishaw is not simply a local unit, because it serves a huge region of Scotland—as the convener set out at the beginning of the evidence session; that it is already serving as an overflow capacity site for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, because the reality is that Glasgow already cannot cope; and that, by the Scottish Government’s own admission, the modelling that has been done so far and which may already be out of date shows that at least dozens of babies from Lanarkshire will have to go to Aberdeen, which is a considerable distance by ambulance, when, as you said yourself, travel is not ideal and would put babies at risk? It would be most helpful if you could address those points.

I still do not understand the status of the equality impact assessment.

I apologise—I thought that you were currently the co-chair. How many co-chairs have there been?