Chamber and committees

Like Fergus Ewing, I want to highlight the point about saving lives. Although that is something that we need to put front and centre, it was not mentioned that much at last week’s committee meeting. Certainly, the first priority for any Government is to protect its citizens, and the bottom line is that the buck stops with it. After all, the very first human right is the right to life, and we need to be alive to exercise all the other rights that come underneath that.

Just as the actions of a future Scottish Government cannot be predicted, so we are in exactly the same situation with partners. We cannot guarantee that organisations such as those whose representatives we were speaking to last week will act very responsibly in future circumstances.

It was good that the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland said that he believed that all the actions that had been taken so far during the coronavirus had been necessary, proportionate, lawful and time limited and that we had met all those things. Mr Rennie and others talk about the Government being in the majority in the Parliament and pushing the bill through, but is it not true that we all have an equal interest here? As we do not know what Scottish Government will be in charge in the future, all of us, from every party, have an equal interest in ensuring that safeguards are in place and that we have a balanced right to offer adequate protections in the future.

I was wondering whether the possibility of a sunset clause was discussed. Was consideration given to refreshing or reviewing the proposed legislation at the start of each parliamentary session?

I have a couple of questions. How does the Scottish Government’s proposed approach compare with what is happening elsewhere in the UK and in other countries?

One point that has been made is that service design should be informed by evidence. How can we build a more effective evidence base to improve service design? What lessons do we need to learn to improve the future design of alternative pathways? That question is for Dr Williams, first.

My second question is for Wendy Panton. What specific actions should be prioritised to improve service delivery? Should scaling up successful things to national level be a priority? For example, our papers mention an Audit Scotland case study about Highland Council’s introduction of primary mental health workers. The evaluation of outcomes from that showed that 78 per cent of young people and 95 per cent of parents felt that the support had mostly or completely helped their situation.

The question was about what specific actions should be prioritised to improve service delivery. The second part was about whether that approach should be one of the priorities.

I will pick up on that. Is there a conflict between the evidence-based approach and the idea of patient participation and co-production? Is there a problem with the two pushing up against each other at times? How do we get the two to integrate and work effectively together?

I thank the panel members for coming. I have a question for Margaret McKay. She mentioned that we need co-ordinated national and local messaging to the public. I totally accept that that is the case. What difference has the patient participation group made in her area? How effective has it been and what positives can we take out of it to improve the experiences of patients more widely?

A lot of the things that have been mentioned came up. Self-referral, waiting lists and being left in limbo were issues. People felt that they did not hear anything for quite a long time.

Another issue was that there is not enough information and people struggle to access the pathways. People who are already vulnerable—elderly people and people who are in poverty, or do not have confidence, or are suffering from depression, for example—were highlighted, and the lack of knowledge of autism came up.

There were some positives, as well. Social prescribing is seen as particularly good for people who do not have great connections in the local community and feel a bit isolated. It has made a massive difference to them. People were also getting some really good services through pharmacies, including the ability to access urgent medication to prevent an ambulance having to be sent at very short notice.

I have a question for Hannah Tweed. Do link workers have formal qualifications or undergo formal training, or is there a huge advantage to drawing in people who have a range of experiences, skills and community connections and who can connect well with patients?

I want to ask about early years provision. Laura Tomson has said that quite a bit of information is being collected on young people, because they are a captive audience, and I am quite interested in hearing about what we are doing with the youngest children in nursery and early years education. There is, for example, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children’s pants rule, which is all about privacy, consent and speaking up at a really young age and making it clear that both girls and boys are core to prevention in that respect.

What kind of work is going on around early years with regard to helping children speak up and challenge language through, for example, role play and practice? Are we, for example, treating gender-based violence as being unacceptable in the same way that racism is, but going back a few steps to address the language that underlies it in the early years?

I am not quite sure exactly who to direct that question to—I am happy for anyone to come in on it.