Chamber and committees

I have another question. [Interruption.] Sorry—the dog walker has just brought my dog home. You can see it walking on the back of the couch.

Does anybody want to comment on the issue of escaped farmed salmon’s interaction with the wild salmon population? It is a multifaceted situation.

Good morning. I am interested in the interaction between farmed salmon and wild salmon populations, and the potential risks around that.

The Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee recommended that a proportionate approach should be taken to minimise that risk. The panel members have already spoken a little bit this morning about the risk from sea lice, and I am thinking about introgression of genetic material as well. John Aitchison, has a precautionary approach been applied?

A few years into the disaster that is Brexit, we are better placed to assess and even measure lost opportunities. Will the cabinet secretary outline any analysis of the damage done to brand Scotland and our status as a leading nation for culture by the impact of Brexit on performers and artists?

To ask the Scottish Government what its assessment is of any impact that Brexit is having on Scotland’s culture sector. (S6O-03522)

I am passionate about early intervention and prevention across all systems that impact on our health and wellbeing, individually and collectively as a nation. I believed in that ethos before Dr Campbell Christie’s commission, and it has been the guiding principle for all that I have done in the past decade.

The Government’s motion puts early intervention and prevention and public service reform at its heart. We cannot deny the fact that the Scottish Government has increased the NHS workforce by nearly 25 per cent since 2006. We also cannot deny that, despite 14 years of austerity and inconsistent funding flowing from Westminster, the Scottish Government is, this year, providing a record £19.5 billion for health and social care budgets. However, we cannot fail to recognise that the entire health and social care system urgently needs to be reformed, because, despite record staffing levels and record funding, people in our communities are still dealing with health inequalities and access difficulties. That means that we need to engage in an open and honest national discussion about what we want and need from our health and social care system and how we will navigate the systems and culture changes that are urgently needed. That need has been exacerbated by Covid and Brexit.

Yesterday, I chaired a round-table discussion at Girvan community hospital that was attended by cross-party MSPs, local councillors, community organisations and statutory services. The meeting was brought about by the untimely death of a much-loved local man who passed away despite the heroic efforts of locals, including two off-duty paramedics who worked valiantly for 50 minutes before the ambulance that was drafted in from Kilmarnock arrived. With a lot of unease in the community about access to emergency care, a letter was sent to elected members and statutory services to bring the tragic loss to our attention.

In Girvan and the surrounding villages and hamlets of South Carrick, there is a resilient population that is used to working collectively to deal with the rurality of their lives. They have excellent community groups, including the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, a community fire station and community paramedics, and there are many defibrillators across the area. Neighbours look out for and look after one another, with the deep-held belief that, in their time of need, the state will look after them.

I cannot determine whether the man’s life would have been saved had an ambulance attended within the target time, but, if it had, the family and the community would have known that all had been done for him.

Yesterday’s round-table discussion was wide ranging and hard hitting. We all realise that there are profound equalities issues in rural areas when it comes to accessing health and social care services and, indeed, many other public services. There was an acceptance that an ambulance cannot sit in the South Carrick area in case there is a critical incident requiring its attendance across the rest of Ayrshire, but it remains the case that, when the Girvan ambulance is pulled away, that leaves a vast area without life-saving cover close at hand.

We discussed the innovation that has been undertaken by the locality partnership to bring as many NHS services to the Girvan area as possible within the community hospital and health centre. There was a discussion about the learning from successful area-based shared-working models, such as the one in place in Dalmellington in East Ayrshire and, more recently, the one in Dumfries and Galloway. Both of those models involve looking across all systems, including those relating to housing, access to social security, access to exercise, and healthy food and wellbeing via reductions in poverty and social isolation at all stages of life.

The community conversation yesterday is exactly the type of conversation that we need to have across Scotland. We need to move the discussions away from resting only with decision makers and put them firmly into our town halls and community centres. We need to ensure that community assets are recognised and utilised to maximum effect. We need to move the dial towards investing much more in early intervention and prevention to ensure that our children and their children are able to live long, happy and healthy lives.

I am concerned by the rhetoric in the current political debate, which seems to point to very little increased funding for our public services, including the NHS. It feels more like we will be short-changed, rather than any real change occurring.

If we want to truly create a health and social care service that will support an ageing population and deal with entrenched health inequalities, which were exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, with comorbidities increasing, all spheres of government need to recognise that resources must be made available to innovate and intervene early on. Without investment in early intervention and transformation that is supported by everyone, we will not achieve our collective goal of a robust and resilient health service that is there at the point of need for everyone.

Through modelling, the Scottish Government has found that devolved interventions such as the Scottish child payment and free school meal provision might be keeping an estimated 100,000 children out of poverty this year. Do the findings of the progress report support that estimate? Is the cabinet secretary confident that Scottish Government policies are changing hundreds of thousands of lives for the better and that that would not be happening if those measures were not in place?

To ask the Scottish Government what funding it provided to East and South Ayrshire councils in 2023-24 for discretionary housing payments. (S6O-03501)

Statistics that were released this week show that more than 135,000 awards were delivered across Scotland for discretionary housing payments in 2023-24, with more than 4,000 in East Ayrshire and more than 3,300 in South Ayrshire. As they are our main tool for mitigating harmful United Kingdom Government welfare policies, such as the bedroom tax, can the minister comment on the importance of discretionary housing payments as a means to prevent vulnerable households being driven into homelessness in Scotland? How can we promote their uptake?

I thank Jamie Halcro Johnston for securing this debate. First, let me put on the record that I am the owner of a very old property that benefits from a wood-burning stove, which provides highly effective space heating and helps to prevent condensation, mould and damp. It has been a game changer for the gable wall of my house. It has also helped us to heat our sandstone home during periods of loss of power, and I know that, during a prolonged period without mains power, it would enable us to heat water and cook food. It has also given us a degree of control during the period of volatile energy prices over the past two winters.

All that said, I am very aware that the recently published new build heat standard would not, in fact, have prevented someone who had the same house type as me—an older existing property—from installing a stove. However, I am also aware that the Scottish Government has recently consulted on creating a pathway to 2045, which could require those purchasing a home or business premises to end their use of polluting heating systems within a fixed period following the completion of the sale. I assume that that would include direct emission heat sources, such as stoves and boilers, potentially leaving many homes such as mine, built in the 1800s, with poorer heating outcomes.

We all need to play our part in reaching net zero, and that will include radically rethinking many of our ways of working and living. However, we need to take into account variations in geography, topography, grid connection and capacity and, conversely, our increasingly volatile climate. We need to think about that, because our climate is increasingly volatile and we must ensure that what we do does not exacerbate that.

There is no doubt that the burning of fossil fuels contributes to climate change and that addressing that via legislation is necessary. However, I also understand, as the MSP for the large and predominantly rural Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley constituency, that grid connections can be tenuous for outlying rural communities and isolated farms and cottages and that the stopgap for many of those, for heating and eating, is a wood-burning stove. During the horrendous weather event known as the beast from the east back in 2018, many folk in my area were snowed in for weeks and relied heavily on their stoves. That was not just a power cut for a couple of hours—it lasted for weeks. People who live in rural properties or properties that are remote from the grid infrastructure would still have a need for wood-burning stoves in such emergency situations, and those cannot be portable—they need to be fixed.

I understand that the new build heat standard made some provision for such emergency situations, but, as we have heard, I and many others felt that that was a bit vague and open to local interpretation, so I am keen to hear from the minister exactly how a house builder is able to demonstrate the need for a stove, because, in my mind, that need is almost a given in rural settings.

I have a degree of sympathy with the arguments that burning dried wood from sustainable sources in a modern efficient stove or boiler has a lower carbon emission calculation than some grid resources, and we need to remember that. Indeed, many crofters and those living in rural areas have factored access to sustainable forestry for energy provision into their way of life. We must ensure that we do not exacerbate fuel poverty in any way. I am glad that the minister has taken our collective concern seriously and is urgently reviewing the standard, and I am keen to hear from her on that when she winds up the debate.

It is really important that we start to break down silos in this Parliament. Perhaps if the standard had come to the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee for consideration, we would have been able to flag up those concerns. I take on board the fact that Miles Briggs did that in the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee, but we need to square that circle a bit.

I am keen to bring to the minister’s attention the plight of one of my constituents, who raised an issue in light of this debate. She recently had a wood burner installed but found out only when it was later inspected by a Heating Equipment Testing and Approval Scheme engineer that it was dangerous. She is very concerned about the lack of regulation for stove installation in Scotland and has asked that the Scottish Government considers changes to legislation to allow stove fitting to be carried out only by installers who are accredited by HETAS. If we are going to make changes and ensure that there is a place for stoves in the future, we could look at that type of accreditation.

Thank you.