Chamber and committees

Thanks very much for those answers. I ask for just a wee bit more clarification on what you mean by improvements to the track surface. Am I to understand that tracks are moving away from loose, gravelly surfaces to more compacted ones? We hear about many issues relating to animals going into a bend on an oval track, which is where injuries can occur. Will you say a little about the proposals for straight tracks? How could those work in practice?

Okay. Thank you.

At stage 2, there was much discussion about the importance of ensuring that the bill’s provisions do what they set out to do. That is only natural, given that it is a landmark bill for animal welfare and wildlife protection.

The bill extends the powers of Scottish SPCA inspectors to investigate wildlife crimes, bans the use of snares and glue traps, and puts in place new regulation on wildlife trapping, grouse shooting and muirburn. Throughout its passage through the Parliament, concerns have been raised about the effect of the new provisions and how they will be used—in particular, concerns in relation to the impact of the muirburn provisions on mitigating wildfires and the extension of powers to Scottish SPCA officers. I therefore echo Emma Harper’s comment, when she spoke to amendment 76, that regular monitoring is essential to assess the bill’s effectiveness.

My amendment 110 adds a statutory requirement to review and report on the operation and effectiveness of the provisions in the bill within five years of its receiving royal assent. It sets out that the review must in particular consider the parts of the bill that relate to glue traps, snares, Scottish SPCA inspectors and muirburn. It also sets out that the Scottish ministers must prepare and publish a report of the review and lay that report before Parliament.

I believe that that review will facilitate the Scottish Government’s commitment to an open and transparent approach to legislation. I also think that it will help to allay some of the concerns that have been expressed by members of the Parliament today. I would welcome the minister’s comments on this important amendment to review and report on the operation of the bill.

I move amendment 110.

I thank Rhoda Grant for her comments, and I am pleased to hear that the minister agrees with my reasons for lodging amendment 110 and that he will support it. I urge colleagues to do the same. I will press amendment 110.

Amendment 110 agreed to.

After section 28

Amendment 36 moved—[Jim Fairlie]—and agreed to.

Long title

Amendment 37 moved—[Jim Fairlie].

I also thank my colleague Karen Adam for bringing this important debate to the chamber and extend my heartfelt gratitude to all our young carers throughout Scotland, including those from South Ayrshire and East Ayrshire in my Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley constituency. Some of them are in the gallery today. I thank all of them.

I first met the young people from South Ayrshire young carers back in June, when I attended a screening of their brilliant short film entitled “The Weekend” at South Ayrshire county buildings. I have always been in awe of the resilience, determination and love shown by our young carers, but nothing prepared me for how blown away I was to be by the film itself and by the young people when they took the time to explain to me how the film came about and gave me an insight into their daily lives. I came away totally humbled and determined to help to amplify their voices in the Parliament.

I am delighted by the success that their young carer awareness-raising film has garnered. Initially, the film was intended only for local use, but it is now raising awareness of young carers throughout Scotland and the United Kingdom. I was very impressed to learn that the film was entirely co-produced, with the young carers starring in, writing, producing and directing it. I give a big thanks to the local social enterprise film company The Iris and South Ayrshire Council for recognising the value of co-production. It empowers in a way that simply telling a story cannot.

The film is a poignant and thought-provoking illustration of the life of young carers through their own eyes. It tells the story of three young people as they navigate their lives and caring roles over a single weekend. It is important that the film contains a story about parental substance use, which the young people have been praised for including. I hope that that will help to challenge persistent stigma and encourage children and young people in such a situation to come forward for support as young carers.

The film has since received several accolades, including winning the Scottish public service award for diversity and inclusion and winning the Scotland and north-east England regional final of the Great British care awards in the unpaid carer category. The young people will head to the UK finals later this month and I am sure that members will join me in wishing them the best of luck. They are also finalists in the YouthLink Scotland awards for equality and diversity later this year.

It is important that the film is now included in continuous professional development learning modules for Education Scotland and Carers Trust Scotland. That has really helped to raise the profile of young carers locally and nationally. Through their work with schools, the film supports young people to self-identify as young carers, to ensure that they get support to achieve equity with their peers, and gives those who are not carers an insight into the lives and everyday experiences of young carers. It challenges assumptions and improves peer understanding, which is absolutely vital. The authenticity from co-production and the pioneering content have produced a resource that is changing the lives of children and families throughout the country.

I will see whether I can get the film shared with MSPs because, as the legislators of the land, it is important that we hear directly from young people. It is exciting that the young people are now working with primary-age children to make a film that is suitable for their age and stage. The young people involved in “The Weekend” are involved as peer mentors in that new project. I think that that is amazing.

On national support for young carers, the young people told me about how important it is to have protected funding for young carers at a local level and for young carer training to be made mandatory for education and social work, alongside the statutory child protection training. They need to be seen, to be heard and to be supported. We need to actively demonstrate that we care for the carers and that we all have a responsibility to ensure that those young people are supported in their caring roles and that they are supported just to be kids. That means recognising what supports need to be put in place to truly provide the equity that gives them real equality and a fair future.

Does the minister agree that we would be far better able to support all of Scotland’s fishing industry had the Westminster Tory Government kept its much-repeated Brexit promise to fully replace all European Union marine funding?

I thank my colleague Emma Harper for bringing this important debate to the chamber. I also thank Beat, which is an amazing organisation that has for many years been amplifying the voices of those who are dealing with eating disorders, and which has provided us with information and has led on eating disorders awareness week 2024.

I want to make special mention of ARFID Awareness UK, which is the UK’s only charity that is dedicated to raising awareness of avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder. Hearing comments such as:

“She’ll eat when she’s hungry”,

“If that was my kid, she’d clear that plate”,

“If she doesn’t eat it, heat it up again and give it to her for breakfast”,

“You’re spoiling her and you’re making a rod for your own back”,

“Just get her telt”,

“In my day, a skelp is what you would have used to fix this”

and

“She’s just being picky and you need to put a stop to this fussy nonsense”

made me dread interacting with anyone as a family unit when food was involved, as it became ever more clear that my youngest was developing a serious aversion to the majority of foods that we all enjoy daily.

I can trace it back to the moment when, as a three-year-old, she choked a wee bit on a homemade chicken nugget. Almost overnight, she went from enjoying a variety of foods to tolerating only a handful. There was a distinct link to anxiety and sensory issues, and with what we later understood to be neurodiversity. At times, her food intake was limited to only a couple of items, mostly beige and carbohydrate in nature.

After a year, our general practitioner advised us that our child had selective eating disorder and that there was not a lot that we could do except to offer her a wide variety of things in the hope that one day, magically, she would start to eat again. In retrospect, that approach often caused more harm than good, as new foods were met with such suspicion and terror that anything relating to eating had any scintilla of enjoyment removed, leaving a highly distressed child and two highly distressed parents.

We stopped eating out. I dreaded parties and social events, as I knew that well-meaning folk would try to coax her into trying the lovely food that they had prepared, while casting aspersions on our parenting abilities with passive-aggressive comments. In a sea of judgment, my mum was the only person who kept saying to me, “Elena, if the wean is only going to eat your lentil soup and bread and nothing else, just feed her that with a smile and love and ignore what everybody else thinks. It’s just background noise.”

My child stopped eating at school when she was not allowed to bring in crackers and peanut butter—one of her staple safe foods—given the risk of allergies among other children. After protracted negotiations, she was allowed to have vegetable soup and bread from the canteen, and she would not be forced to eat a main course. Maybe 200 calories at most would see her through the school day. She avoided the canteen totally while she still attended secondary school, as the smells and the noise of people eating overwhelmed her.

At nearly 16, she now has a slightly longer list of safe foods, including her much-loved plain udon noodles and bubble tea, but we often lose some of those when recipes change or when something is no longer made, or when she has eaten a certain food every single day for a whole year and just cannot face it any more. She is slight and often exhausted, and the health service still does not really know how to help her, or the thousands of other young people who are living with ARFID.

I know that the Scottish Government has a special focus on eating disorders, and I hope that the minister will say a wee bit about how it plans to help those like my Sophie. We must ensure that every layer of our health service, from health visitors to GPs and child and adolescent mental health services, understands the needs of those who are living with ARFID. We also need to educate the public and those working in our public services, including our schools, to stop needless pressure and guilt being laid at the feet of parents who are doing their level best just to get enough calories of any kind into their children. The condition really is far more serious than is suggested by the “fussy” label with which children are often saddled.

I will follow on from the question that the deputy convener has just posed. Like many others, I am interested in understanding how the Scottish Government and the marine directorate will resolve the data deficiencies. In her letter to the committee of 8 February, Gillian Martin outlined that the three strands in question were enhanced observer coverage, passive acoustic monitoring and a science presence on compliance vessels. I am interested in understanding how we can move firmly into a co-management principle sphere, where we work collectively with our fishers, who have a vast knowledge of the area that they work in. They also have an interest, as we all do, in ensuring that the bedrock of the marine environment is protected. That is a key plank in our planet’s ecosystem, but it is their livelihood.

You have already alluded to the fact that you have had meetings with the CFA, and I hope that you will meet the Scottish Creel Fishermen’s Federation as well, but, given the financial pressures that the marine directorate is under, how do we ensure that we involve the industry in developing shared scientific data? There will always be vested interests in different aspects of this matter, but, given that we do not have a shared understanding of the scientific data at the moment, how can we involve the industry meaningfully?

You have made a really important point, which alludes to what Emma Harper said earlier. We also have fish that are moving for climate reasons. It will be very difficult to manage fish so that they stay in one area when other pressures are influencing fish behaviour and where they go. It will be important for us to understand what the science tells us is happening beneath the surface of the sea. That shared scientific data, which our fishers and our marine directorate will come to together, will be really important.

Good morning, everybody. I am not sure whether this is something to declare, but I note that I am the nature champion for the hen harrier.