Chamber and committees

As you know, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care and I have written to the UK NCS, which is an independent body, and we understand that, over the next three years, it will be reviewing evidence. The evidence must be robust and peer reviewed, so we are pleased that that is part of the screening committee’s work programme.

We are already considering what we can do once the UK NCS makes a decision. It was clear, when Kym Kestell answered a question on screening, that it is not just about screening; we need to ensure that we have the pathways in the various health boards to ensure that they can support people who are screened and might have a condition. We do that work regularly with health boards.

With regard to data, I touched on the Public Health Scotland Scottish cardiac audit, which was released yesterday. There is an iterative process to ensure that we are collecting the right data, and the scope has been extended, as this is the first year in which the audit has contained additional information on congenital, if I can use that word—

When the First Minister and I met the Hill family, one of the outcomes concerned the need to understand clearly what sportscotland is doing. Sportscotland has some guidelines, and Scottish Rugby and the Scottish Football Association have clear pathways to ensure that people who are participating in sport have the right healthcare monitoring that they need. In that meeting, I was struck by the work that the Hills have been doing on monitoring young children who have been playing sport. We have been looking at that in preparation for any change in the UK NSC guidelines.

I understand the concerns that you have raised, Mr Ewing. That response prompted us to start thinking about, if that decision was changed, what we need to do in Scotland to work with clinicians to ensure that we have the right processes. Those questions prompted us to review whether we would change what we do if the UK NSC’s decision changes in three years.

Yes, and I was, too. That is why it is important that Public Health Scotland is now gathering the inherited cardiac conditions information to allow us to shift, and is also gathering information from sportscotland about what is done through sport. As I said earlier, the information that the Hill family gave us at the meeting with the First Minister was very compelling and we are looking at that.

I am content to take that away and have a conversation with the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills about it. You are right that, in different areas of Scotland, different training is given. I have highlighted that people from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution may be going into schools, and I know that the St John Ambulance service has a very good plan to go into schools to provide support with that. I completely understand where you are coming from.

I would be happy to have that engagement. From a public health perspective, we have very good relationships with Scottish Women’s Football, which has supported us with an anti-vaping campaign as well.

At the start of this evidence session, we talked about the importance of community engagement and ensuring that the community has guardians—that is how Steven Short and others described it. That ensures that, in the community, there is continual refreshment of skills. As I said earlier, when someone is on the phone to the call handler, they will get prompts to tell them what to do.

I would suggest that, if you fancy refreshing those skills, there are a lot of events happening around Scotland. I highlighted the walking football event that I was at. St John Ambulance was there, giving support alongside the Stroke Association—I think, although it might have been Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland. At a lot of events, and certainly a lot of the agricultural shows in Argyll and Bute that I go around, there is an opportunity for people to get refresher training. There are also good online resources on the Save a Life for Scotland website.

I would just like to say thank you. I appreciate the evidence that you gathered in your previous evidence session.

I will hand over to Professor Bauld to answer that.

That is a good question. We were talking about that earlier. The LCM will allow us to include digital ways of getting identification, but it will not stop the use of paper identification. We will not be repealing provisions on the use of paper forms of identification from the Tobacco and Primary Medical Services (Scotland) Act 2010 until we have new regulations in place.

We will do some consultation on the regulations to ensure that we get them right, but it is through the important conversations that we have with trading standards and the regulatory review group representing businesses that we will understand the best way of implementing them if the decision is made to do so.

As I highlighted earlier, we also have the updated register, which will allow us to push out information to retailers, so that they are kept informed of any changes.