Chamber and committees

To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government is doing to improve trans and lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer plus healthcare. (S6F-00084)

I take the opportunity to wish everyone a happy pride. However, we should always remember that pride started as a protest.

In recent weeks, we have witnessed attacks on organisations such as Stonewall, with some particularly wild and untrue allegations. That shows just how far we have to go to make Scotland a truly equal society. Such attacks cause great emotional pain and they have to stop. Trans people are our friends, colleagues and family, and they deserve to be able to express their identity in peace.

Will the First Minister stand with me to support trans people? Does she agree that the current situation that many trans people face in trying to access gender identity services is unacceptable? That includes typical waiting times of years for a first appointment. Will the First Minister give a clear commitment that the Scottish Government will take the steps that are needed, including through providing funding and redesigning those services, to make a person-centred and multidisciplinary approach for trans people in Scotland?

I thank all education staff for their work during the pandemic. For transparency, I point out that I have many teachers in my immediate and extended family. From changing plans at the drop of a hat to trying to enthuse and engage primary 1s through Teams, the pressure on teachers has, at times, been overwhelming, but they have often been the normality in a time of chaos for children and young people, and that should not be underestimated.

To pick up on Claire Baker’s point about the Give Them Time campaign, I have had constituents contact me recently regarding deferral refusals, despite support for the deferral from education professionals. The worst of it is that those constituents are aware that, if they moved to the City of Edinburgh Council area, the deferral would, in all likelihood, be granted. It is time to end the postcode lottery for deferrals.

As we recover from Covid-19 and attempt to make up some of the lost ground in education, Scotland’s colleges will play a central role. For many students, colleges are the best way to access and sit highers. Given the disruption to qualifications in the past two years, more young people than ever before may rely on that facility in the next academic year. Colleges also offer vocational courses that prepare people for areas that are key to the economic recovery or the delivery of policies for which there is broad agreement across the chamber, such as those on childcare and social care.

Those are all reasons why it is important that college staff are treated with dignity and respect. However, for many lecturers and support staff, that simply has not been the case, not only throughout the pandemic but for years beforehand. Instead of recognising how important the role of lecturers is, college management have repeatedly sought to undermine and downgrade lecturers in a crude attempt to cut costs. Management have sought to replace lecturers with instructor posts, in which people are on lower wages and have less time for preparation and marking, and for which there is often no requirement to have a teaching qualification.

Those repeated attacks on the role of lecturers have directly undermined the hard-won progress that has been made over the past decade by the Educational Institute of Scotland-Further Education Lecturers Association through negotiations and industrial action. Unfortunately, reneging on previous agreements has become all too common a tactic for college management. On far too many occasions, an agreement has been reached between unions and management only for the trade unions to have to take further action simply to get management to honour their own deal. Five of the past seven years have seen major industrial action as a result of that. It is no way to run Scottish colleges.

One of the key challenges that the Government faces is how to break that cycle. In Central Scotland, Forth Valley College has been at the heart of the on-going dispute. The people involved are dedicated lecturers who support schools to deliver highers and advanced highers as well as other vocational courses. At school, my advanced higher biology labs were at the college, as was my sister’s higher psychology course. We both went on to study those subjects at university, and they have had a large impact on our lives.

The college supports other local businesses by providing modules and courses for apprentices. This week, we have discussed the post-pandemic economic recovery, and we have to recognise how essential teaching staff are to that. A jobs guarantee for young people that provides progression and professional development in Central Scotland will rely on our colleges and, specifically in Falkirk, on Forth Valley College. Twenty-seven lecturing posts there have already been downgraded to instructor-assessor posts, which has been challenged by the lecturers’ union.

Lecturers have been forced to choose between that downgrading of their position and redundancy. Pre-pandemic, that would have been an outrage but, now, forcing people to choose between having a wage and a fundamental change in their terms and conditions with no consultation is callous. That is the fire-and-rehire practice that SNP MPs at Westminster are rightly campaigning against. So, where is the Scottish Government on the issue? Despite a national agreement on terms and conditions for lecturers having once again been agreed, the dispute at Forth Valley College continues, although some progress has been made and strike action is currently suspended as the dispute is reviewed.

Colleges are public bodies that the Government funds through the Scottish Funding Council. If the Government is serious about its own fair work agenda, why does that funding not come with stricter conditions on issues such as honouring agreements that are reached through national bargaining and the prevention of fire-and-rehire practices? It is clear that governance reform is needed at the individual college level and at the national level when it comes to negotiations.

For too long, the Scottish Government has appeared content to stick its head in the sand, hoping that disputes will resolve themselves. During the election campaign, we heard positive indications from the previous further education minister that that approach might change. For the sake of college staff, students and the economic recovery to which they are essential, I dearly hope that that is the case.

Thank you, Presiding Officer, and welcome to your new role.

I welcome the commitment from the Scottish Government to produce an NHS recovery plan in the first 100 days. It is great to see tackling waiting times on the cabinet secretary’s agenda, but those who have been waiting for a long time for treatment will want to see it acted on quickly.

Although the speed with which the Government wants to work is welcome, the remobilisation must be sustainable and not push an already tired workforce to breaking point. In establishing mental health support and providing additional staff for services such as cancer screening and GP appointments, resources must rise in line with demand to ensure that our current workforce feel that the sentiment that is expressed in the chamber can be turned into action.

I want to thank our incredible health and social care workforce. In the past six months, I have witnessed at first hand the amazing kindness, strength and empathy that they have shown in the face of the pandemic. As many members will be aware, we lost my mum in December and my grandpa just over two months ago. Without the nurses in the stroke ward at Forth Valley royal hospital, we would not have had those final few precious phone calls with my mum. I am for ever in their debt, and I will fight for the working conditions that they and all their colleagues deserve.

We must take this opportunity to transform the way in which we look at healthcare in Scotland. In recent times, our NHS has been a national sick service. I hope that, with this Parliament and some creative thinking, we can move towards a truly national health service. We will have challenges—long Covid and the backlog of screening and surgeries, to name a couple—but we can start embedding system change now.

We have to look at the drivers of poor health and seek to address them by working across portfolios, which the Parliament has perhaps not been the best at doing previously. Let us take advantage of a fresh parliamentary session and sort that. As MSPs, we have to consider how to solve the drivers of poor health. Air pollution, access to good food, housing and poverty all have an impact on our health and wellbeing.

According to National Records of Scotland, people living in the most deprived areas of Scotland may die up to 10 and a half years younger than people living in our most affluent communities. Poverty and poor health are intrinsically linked, which is a cycle that we have to break for the good of generations to come. Low wages that force families to go to food banks have to be eliminated. Hungry children should be prioritised over bonuses and tax breaks for wealthy individuals.

I welcome the establishment of a national care service. As many members know, that issue is close to my heart. My grandpa received wonderful care and his carers’ work allowed me to continue to be his pal in his final few months. To James and the rest of his carers, I say that I can never thank them enough, but Gramps had me on a promise to make sure that both paid and unpaid carers are looked after.

Another promise that I made during the election was to the many disabled people I met. I promised to be a voice for them, and I wish to partly fulfil that now by challenging the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care to make a commitment to actively listen to and, crucially, act on the input of disabled people, their families and other service users when designing our national care service. We need to make a service that has human rights at its heart and allows people to live to their full potential.

I congratulate the members who are making their first speeches today, including Audrey Nicoll, Emma Roddick, Carol Mochan and Elena Whitham. It is a nerve wracking thing to do, but they all did brilliantly. The depth of talent and expertise in this session’s new intake will certainly give some of our party colleagues a run for their money.

How we choose to remobilise our health service will be vital in ensuring that we have a healthy population in the future. Our health service must always be in public hands and must be given the resources that it needs. Primary care, including general practices and community pharmacies, makes up 90 per cent of patient contact with the NHS and plays a central role in the nation’s health. Support must quickly be directed there and at screening programmes to ensure that no one is missed.

People should be supported to live the healthiest lives possible. Prevention and early intervention are key to achieving that, as is tackling the root causes of poor health, including poverty, air pollution, poor access to food and other factors, including smoking.

Building a truly national health service requires cross-portfolio work and a different approach to the one that we have been used to, but we can do difficult things. This is our opportunity to begin that hard work.

Mental health has been mentioned repeatedly today. I thank those who have shared experiences relating to mental health. Child and adolescent mental health services are undoubtedly in crisis, waiting times for all services are long and we often try to deal with complex needs by offering a set number of sessions of cognitive behavioural therapy. That service is not set up to give people the therapy and support that they need. Many practitioners see people being referred multiple times because the number of CBT sessions that are being offered is not enough. The number of sessions that is on offer often depends on the length of the waiting list and is a postcode lottery. That must be addressed; I look forward to working with the cabinet secretary and the Minister for Mental Wellbeing and Social Care on the issue.

Greens will support the Labour amendment at decision time. We committed in our manifesto to supporting a £15 per hour minimum wage for social care. We did so because we know the critical role that social care staff play, and because we understand how demanding and how skilled the jobs in the sector are. Those jobs are predominantly done by women. We believe that staff should be remunerated appropriately, but we also understand that that cannot be done as quickly as we would all like. We must have a broader debate about the transition to a national care service and how we will pay for it.

We will not support the Conservative amendment because we cannot support deletion of the commitment to a national care service.

We will support the motion. The cabinet secretary has laid out an ambitious plan in it. I aim to hold him robustly to account and, where I can, to push him further to do everything possible to support Scotland’s health and wellbeing to bounce back from the pandemic.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I, too, welcome you to your new role. As is traditional with first speeches, I take a few seconds to thank all who campaigned and voted for me, and my wonderful family and partner for all their support.

It is a privilege to be here representing Central Scotland and its wonderful diverse communities, and I look forward to engaging with as many of them as possible over the next five years.

The past year has been one that no one in this building could have predicted. We have seen the best from our communities—both in my region and across the country—so much hardship and social isolation, the disproportionate effect that the latter has had on disabled communities and the unprecedented use of the word “unprecedented”.

As the new Green health spokesperson, I want to put on the record my deep and sincere thanks to all our health and social care workers across the country, who have worked so hard for so long to protect lives and provide the care that we need. We need to thank key workers from all sectors, who have kept Scotland going throughout the pandemic. They deserve our gratitude and I am deeply thankful for everything that they have done.

The Scottish Greens are committed to ensuring that the health and care sector does not just recover as we emerge from the worst of the pandemic. We must take this opportunity to build back stronger and better services that have people at their heart, both patients and workers—nurses, doctors, carers, pharmacists, porters, cleaners and all those across all services.

Part of that agenda is clearly about fair pay. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is to value health and social care workers and the vital role that they play. I am proud that the Scottish Greens played their part earlier this year when we secured an additional £100m investment into public sector pay.

Fair pay, however, is only part of the story. We also need to radically improve working conditions. We have all heard of the toll that working in our NHS takes on staff. We need to change that culture and give staff access to proper mental health support and counselling, as well as ensuring a work-life balance and progression opportunities that allow them to thrive.

I take this opportunity to give my condolences to all those who have lost loved ones, and my sympathies to those who have suffered from Covid—particularly those who continue to suffer from long Covid. Long Covid will be with us for a time, and appropriate support and staff need to be put in place to give patients the best help. We do not yet fully understand the wide-ranging and complex nature of long Covid and how long many of the symptoms that are experienced will persist, so investment in research and multidisciplinary treatment should be a minimum to ensure that no one is left behind.

Although the vaccine roll-out and current lower prevalence give us cause for hope, we still have a way to go before some form of normality can resume. I encourage everyone under 30 to make sure that they have registered for their jag and to take their appointment once it is sent to them. I also encourage employers to ensure that their employees are available for their vaccine appointments if they happen during work time. Getting the jag is not just about protecting oneself but about protecting everyone, so I ask people to go online, book their appointment and roll up their sleeve.

As we continue our vital work, we must support recovery in the health service, which means the huge task of remobilising services and taking the opportunity to improve on the way in which we did things previously. Our staff have had a hard year and need our support when it comes to the backlog of needs. Measures such as the expansion of the workforce in general practitioners’ practices, so that patients can get at least 15 minutes with their family doctor, and growing practice teams to include welfare rights officers and mental health clinicians would improve access to primary healthcare and support at a time when people might have put off a visit to the doctor. Restarting cancer screening and other health screening is a must, as well as ensuring that a cancer workforce plan is agreed to so that services can meet patient demand.

Mental health is another area that lacked pre-pandemic investment. That issue is not just about treatment at the sharp end, however. We need to end the current cycle of crisis management and look upstream to expand mental health support such as talking therapies as well as cognitive behavioural therapy, exercise referral schemes and peer support.

The improvement of self-directed support in care is an issue that many of us heard repeatedly from disabled people during the election. Personally, I cannot wait to get involved in the development of a national care service and look forward to working with the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care on that. However, while we wait for a national care service to become a reality, we should end the process of competitive tendering and invest in our dedicated workforce. A national care service is needed because caring is a national priority. It is also a public need, so it must be a public service.

The recovery of our health and wellbeing from Covid is about the ability of our communities to look after themselves and one another. From Airdrie to Motherwell to Falkirk, we have come together in the past year to keep one another safe from the virus. We need to harness that solidarity to support our health and care services.

Last week, the SQA sent a panic directive to schools advising them of the need to apply “appropriate penalties” if pupils have been found sharing assessment papers online. Given that, in any normal year, pupils are allowed to take their exam paper when they leave and discuss it afterwards, it should have been entirely obvious that this year’s senior pupils would also wish to discuss their assessments after they had taken them.

The SQA is engaged in a process of allocating blame to everyone but itself for an entirely avoidable series of problems for which it is responsible. Will the education secretary instruct the SQA to drop that threat and accept that pupils are going to discuss their assessments after they have sat them, that those discussions will take place online and that fair enforcement of that directive will be impossible?

made a solemn affirmation.