Chamber and committees

I thank the member for Edinburgh Western for allocating one of his party’s official Opposition day debates to a motion about the inadequate provision for neurodevelopmental conditions in Scotland. I know that our constituents’ access to mental health services is an issue that is close to the heart of many members across the chamber and is one that is reflected in our casework.

It is a matter of fact that this Government has overseen a decline in mental health service quality across the country—and, given the amendment that it has lodged, it seems that it is unwilling to address and remedy that.

We are rightly concerned about the state of mental health services. Even though the Covid pandemic devastated Scotland’s already overstretched mental health services, we find ourselves in a position in which funding is still not being allocated properly to realise best value, waiting lists keep growing, private diagnoses are increasing unnecessarily and service after service is cut across Scotland, with the buck passed to local authorities and ministers washing their hands of the situation.

We need to recognise that we did not build back better. Indeed, it has just been crisis followed by crisis, leading to more broken lives and distressed families across Scotland. A point that we often forget when we talk about funding and percentages is what the Scottish Government’s goal of spending 10 per cent of NHS funding on mental health services and 1 per cent of its funding on CAMHS is supposed to mean. That is not meant to be just an abstract numerical target. It is supposed to mean security of funding for mental health practitioners; the end of waiting times that are measured in months and years rather than weeks; and a Scotland where support is available for those who need it, not just those who can afford private healthcare, where children’s mental health is a priority, not an afterthought, and where getting it right for every child is the reality.

Let us remember that real people are affected by the Government’s failure. We know that people with ADHD are five times more likely to attempt suicide and that self-harm is higher in those with ADHD and emotional dysregulation. Every delay in diagnosis and every failure to intervene early is a decision that might lead to far worse outcomes for the individual who is involved. There is a price to be paid for this Government’s failure, and that price falls on the heads of those who are most unable to pay it. That is why the Labour Party is happy to support the motion, which our amendment seeks to strengthen by calling on the Government

“to publish data on the number of patients with neurodevelopmental conditions who are being removed from CAMHS waiting lists.”

We know there is a real danger that children and adolescents are falling through the gaps and that the current data collection is not able to accurately capture the situation. We therefore need to see a step change in how the Scottish Government collects its data so that the statistics reflect the experience on the ground and are not just a contrived mathematical construct that allows ministers to say, “Job well done,” and ignore the unacceptable reality that is faced by our constituents and is reflected in our casework.

We know that the Government is failing adolescents and children across Scotland. We see that in our inboxes. In Glasgow, we have seen waiting times increase, vital services such as the Notre Dame Centre for children being shut, and more and more responsibilities being placed on the shoulders of teachers and school counsellors to fill the gaps that have been left by funding shortfalls and by a more general deprioritisation of mental health, which we have seen through the cuts to the integration joint boards and health and social care partnerships. That is simply not good enough, and it is not good enough for ministers to shirk responsibility for the consequences of these funding cuts and place it a local authority level.

It is right that the Parliament recognises the mental health crisis that is presided over by the Government and calls for urgent action by that Government to take place quickly. We are happy to support the motion, and I hope that all members will join Labour in supporting our amendment to call for better data collection for those who are removed from CAMHS waiting lists.

I move amendment S6M-17670.1, to insert at end:

“, and calls on the Scottish Government to publish data on the number of patients with neurodevelopmental conditions who are being removed from CAMHS waiting lists.”

What we have just heard about is not a one-off. Complaints that should be taking 20 working days to handle are now being measured in months, not days. That adds extra distress to patients who have had a poor experience with the NHS, compounding their stress and turmoil and reducing even further their confidence in the health service.

It also leads to greater burnout in the NHS patient complaints team, as lack of adequate staffing levels leads to backlog and overworking. Does the cabinet secretary agree that many NHS boards need to allocate more funding to their complaints teams? If so, will he commit the Scottish Government to making sure that all NHS boards’ patient complaint teams have adequate staffing levels to reduce the backlog?

Does the cabinet secretary agree with Charles Woodburn, the chief executive of BAE Systems—which is the largest single manufacturing industrial employer in Glasgow and the wider west of Scotland—who described the deal as a positive step forward for both EU and UK security? Will the Scottish Government work with the UK Government to support Scottish defence contractors to bid for the €150 billion-worth of export contracts under SAFE—security action for Europe?

The commissioner’s remit covers all healthcare providers that are operating in Scotland, including the national health service and NHS-contracted and independent healthcare providers. The commissioner will work collaboratively with other organisations to improve patient safety, adding value to the patient safety system in Scotland.

The commissioner’s role will not duplicate the work of existing organisations. The commissioner will take a macro-level view of patient safety in Scotland and seek to improve overall safety rather than address individual cases.

Our nominee, Karen Titchener, has more than two decades of senior leadership experience within the national health service and is widely recognised as a national and international authority in complex care that is delivered in the home, including acute hospital-level care, palliative care and end-of-life services. Karen has been working in the United States since 2017 and is currently serving as the vice-president of hospital-at-home operations in Wisconsin. Karen’s extensive experience across the United Kingdom and international healthcare systems gives her a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities in delivering safe, effective, person-centred care. The selection panel therefore believes that Karen’s nursing background and her patient and safety-centred approach equip her well to undertake this new role. I am sure that the Parliament will want to wish her well in her appointment.

I move,

That the Parliament nominates Karen Titchener to His Majesty The King for appointment as the Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland under schedule 1 paragraph 4 of the Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Act 2023.

The member makes a fair point in some respects. Nonetheless, significant and important parts of our economy are contingent on the export of and trade in goods. Similarly, a lot of services rely on physical interaction—for example, healthcare provision requires physical interaction. There are instances in which that is still very important and, if we impede any of that, the net effect is that it causes problems for our common prosperity. That is why it remains logical that we continue to remove barriers to trade, where possible, at every level, whether that is by building better infrastructure locally or improving our trading relationships internationally.

I found the whole period when the previous Conservative UK Government was in power utterly obnoxious—it frequently used hostile rhetoric about the European Union and blamed Europe in an abstract sense for the challenges of trade disruption, inflation and labour shortages that followed Brexit, which was, when we boil it down, based on an utter lie and an impossible trinity of issues.

Three promises were made as a result of the Brexit proposition: that we would leave the single market and the customs union; that we would have no border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland; and that we would have no border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It was impossible to achieve all those things. In effect, a border, in all but name, was put down the Irish Sea. That is how the previous UK Government cobbled together a Brexit deal. It covered its obnoxious, wrong-headed and illogical approach with hostile rhetoric about the European Union.

There is no doubt that the EU was a useful scapegoat for the previous UK Government’s woeful handling of issues at home, not least the appalling and destructive austerity programme that it introduced in 2010. The Conservative Government’s approach was hugely damaging—as well as being damaging for our economy and the businesses that rely on exporting to our number 1 trading partner, it led to falling living standards, a deep frustration that improvements were not possible and, in working-class communities in particular, a deep alienation that persists to this day. All parties have not been honest enough about the trade-offs that are required to overcome the challenges that this country faces.

The handling of the so-called Brexit trilemma and the cobbled-together, threadbare deal that Boris Johnson’s Administration arrived at undoubtedly harmed the Scottish economy, and repairing that damage will take some time. Even today, the leader of the Conservatives at Westminster continues on the same tracks, by indulging in hostile rhetoric about the European Union to fire up the party’s Eurosceptic base and vowing to rip up the forthcoming deal with the EU, even though she has not seen the detail of that, as it is at a Government-to-Government stage. I hope that further collaboration will emerge. I am just glad that those vandals are no longer in charge of what is going on.

Just as we have seen from the Conservatives, we have also seen what I feel are rather unfair attempts to manipulate for political convenience the relationship that the Labour Government is trying to build with Europe. It is trying to forge deeper and stronger ties on a bilateral basis. I recall the difficulty that we had back in 2019, when I was a member of the House of Commons, in trying to navigate the Brexit situation. I received a very robust apprenticeship in parliamentary politics when Parliament was trying to navigate the Brexit dilemma after the country had voted to leave the EU in a very simplistic, binary way. We had to work out how to distil that down into a workable set of proposals. There were a number of indicative votes.

The commissioner’s remit covers all healthcare providers that are operating in Scotland, including the national health service and NHS-contracted and independent healthcare providers. The commissioner will work collaboratively with other organisations to improve patient safety, adding value to the patient safety system in Scotland.

The commissioner’s role will not duplicate the work of existing organisations. The commissioner will take a macro-level view of patient safety in Scotland and seek to improve overall safety rather than address individual cases.

Our nominee, Karen Titchener, has more than two decades of senior leadership experience within the national health service and is widely recognised as a national and international authority in complex care that is delivered in the home, including acute hospital-level care, palliative care and end-of-life services. Karen has been working in the United States since 2017 and is currently serving as the vice-president of hospital-at-home operations in Wisconsin. Karen’s extensive experience across the United Kingdom and international healthcare systems gives her a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities in delivering safe, effective, person-centred care. The selection panel therefore believes that Karen’s nursing background and her patient and safety-centred approach equip her well to undertake this new role. I am sure that the Parliament will want to wish her well in her appointment.

I move,

That the Parliament nominates Karen Titchener to His Majesty The King for appointment as the Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland under schedule 1 paragraph 4 of the Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Act 2023.

I am happy to give way to Mr Doris.

I share the sentiment that has been expressed across the chamber that our European neighbours are essential for Scotland’s trade, security and defence. That is why I was pleased that, as soon as Labour came into government last July, genuine and sincere effort was made to begin the hard task of resetting our relationship with our closest neighbours.

It has always been fairly axiomatic to me that the biggest determinant of trade is geographic proximity. That is quite an obvious deduction. It is easier to do trade with someone who is across the street than it is with someone who is on a different continent, and the same logic applies at a national level. Reducing the frictions and impediments to undertaking that trade is mutually beneficial for our common prosperity. If we distil it down, that is the essence of what the European project has been about since the end of the second world war.

Will the cabinet secretary give way?

Presiding Officer, as a member of the cross-party selection panel that you established under the Parliament’s standing orders, I am delighted to speak to the motion in my name and invite members of the Parliament to agree to nominate Karen Titchener to His Majesty the King for appointment as the inaugural Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland. The cross-party selection panel was chaired by you, Presiding Officer, and the other members were Colin Beattie, the member for Midlothian North and Musselburgh; Emma Harper, a member for South Scotland; Gillian Mackay, a member for Central Scotland; and Brian Whittle, a member for South Scotland.

The Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland is a new independent office-holder that was established under the Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Act 2023 and it will be supported by the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The commissioner will advocate for systemic improvement in the safety of healthcare in Scotland and will promote the importance of the views of patients and other members of the public in relation to the safety of healthcare. The commissioner will conduct formal investigations into possible safety issues and gather, analyse and report on information from patients and members of the public about safety concerns. It will report its findings to the Scottish Parliament.