Chamber and committees

I thank the minister for her statement. I am sure that all members will share the minister’s shock and disgust at the allegations about the behaviour of staff at the Skye house child and adolescent psychiatric ward at Stobhill hospital in my region of Glasgow.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde has previously claimed that the staff lacked experience in in-patient units and the complexities of the young people being cared for in Skye house. The health board has also previously indicated that there are staffing issues at Skye house. That is clearly an unacceptable consequence of chronic understaffing and an overreliance on a casualised agency nursing workforce. It will be difficult to improve the culture of mental health nursing at Skye house and similar facilities until that fundamental cause is addressed.

Does the minister agree that there must be an urgent review of permanent staffing levels and training at Skye house and other child and adolescent mental health facilities, so that patients and their families can be reassured that such abuses will never happen again?

Stobhill hospital has half of all the child and adolescent mental health beds in the country. It is of national importance, and I welcome the direct oversight that the minister has indicated.

In the documentary, serious allegations were made regarding the routine overuse of intramuscular injections as a way of managing at-risk children. In one case, a young person was restrained 27 times and forcibly injected 37 times in the space of just one month. Will the minister investigate that specific allegation and establish how typical such practice is?

Apologies, Presiding Officer. My app would not connect. I would have voted yes.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. My app would not connect. I would have voted—[Inaudible.]

The minister did not mention social housing in his statement. It is important to note that this year marks half a century of community-based housing associations in Scotland. Just last year, one of the first of those, Reidvale Housing Association, had to fight off a takeover. Will the minister reflect on how we can strengthen the role of community-based housing associations as generators and agents of community wealth building in Scotland, perhaps by making amendments to the Housing (Scotland) Bill?

One of the United Kingdom’s largest food distributors, Bidfood, chose to ignore the warning of danger to life during storm Éowyn and told its workers that it would be a normal working day. Does the cabinet secretary agree that that was completely unacceptable, and will she review the legislative obligations to ensure that companies such as Bidfood ensure their workers’ safety in red weather warning situations, and are held to account if they do not do so?

Does the cabinet secretary agree that it is essential that the demand signal from public sector procurement underpins Scottish ship building? To achieve that, could she look at emulating what the Australians have done with the Australian marine complex in Perth? It is set up as a common user facility, which means that, regardless of who wins public procurement contracts, the companies can use the infrastructure and the facility in Australia to deliver the programmes.

Does the minister agree that, despite all that, the planning system in Scotland remains fundamentally discretionary? That can often introduce conflicts in the planning process when plans are just presented and are developer led.

The German system could be an interesting benchmark. It is more codified, which means that people know well in advance what the preferred styles and densities are for developments. That can introduce a less contentious system and give greater certainty for developers to invest, because they know what they can build out and where.

I, too, congratulate Mr Ruskell, the member for Mid Scotland and Fife, on securing the debate on an issue that affects all our communities. After all, libraries are so much more than places that people just go to borrow a book, although that is an important core service. They are central to building communities and inspiring generations.

In the history of the public library system in Scotland, its immense expansion in the late 19th century was truly a remarkable social achievement. In 1885, only 5 per cent of Scots had access to a public library. That grew to almost universal provision by 1920. In the wake of the Education Act 1872, expanding primary education from five to 13 years drove demand for public libraries across Scotland. We saw that reflected in the growth of municipal socialism in cities such as Glasgow, with the private bill of 1898 to establish the city’s first public library system.

Perhaps it was, in a way, the first public-private partnership, because there were significant acts of philanthropy around that time as well. We heard earlier about the Dunfermline-born steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who, despite his chequered history in regards to workers’ rights, approved funding for 2,509 libraries across Britain and the United States in the early 20th century. To quote him:

“A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people—it’s a never-failing spring in the desert.”

In 1901, Mr Carnegie wrote to Glasgow’s lord provost Samuel Chisholm, describing how he and his family had sailed from the Clyde bound for New York a half-century before and that he wished to donate money so that Glasgow could build new free libraries for Glaswegians. In that letter, he said:

“Glasgow has done so much in municipal affairs to educate other cities and to help herself ... that it is a privilege to help her.”

Although his sizeable donation of £100,000 set in motion Glasgow’s public library system, which saw the creation of 15 public libraries across the city, it was still a requirement for the corporation of the city to finance the operation of those libraries and, indeed, to fill them with books; there was a co-dependency there.

The libraries were also built with great municipal ambition in mind. Inverness architect James Rhind was successful in winning the competition to design seven of them; to this day, those libraries are magnificent exemplars of Edwardian baroque architecture. I am sure that the minister is familiar with the Dennistoun library, which was one of Rhind’s great achievements.

As I said, Carnegie said:

“a library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people.”

We should be in agreement with him on that, at least, even if we do not necessarily agree with his model of capitalism.

Of course, the public library system in Glasgow culminated in the creation of what is probably the most famous library in Scotland: the Mitchell library, which, surmounted by its magnificent bronze dome and the figure of Minerva, the Roman god of wisdom above it, dominates the M8 that runs through the city. That figure is still the symbol of what the public library system in Scotland means today; it is about imparting wisdom to the people of this country.

Even as we hold vast amounts of information in the palms of our hands today, with smartphones and internet connection, our public libraries remain an essential public service that provide free access to technology, education and social connection. That is particularly true in an intergenerational sense, given that older people in particular can be socially and digitally excluded. We know from Age Scotland and others how important the provision of libraries is in that regard.

As we have heard about this evening, we also need to recognise the threat that libraries across Scotland face. Numerous libraries in Glasgow, including Maryhill, Whiteinch and the Couper institute, have faced closures as recently as 2021. Securing their future has been an on-going campaign.

I encourage the minister to consider how we can apply to public service modernisation a bit of entrepreneurialism in the spirit of our Victorian forebears, so that we can renew the public library system, secure the legacy of those great Victorian buildings, and use them for a new social purpose.

Scotland’s drug deaths crisis is a national emergency. Lives are being unnecessarily lost every day across the country, and we must not forget that every one of those deaths is a preventable tragedy.

Although the 10 per cent reduction in drug deaths from the previous quarter is a potential sign of progress, we know that there can be seasonal variations. It is frustrating that the minister would come to Parliament and tell us yet again that the MAT standards are not fully implemented, despite the fact that the national mission on drugs, which was launched four years ago, is now approaching its final year.

Interventions such as the official overdose prevention pilot in the east end of Glasgow will save lives—I had the opportunity to visit the centre recently—but they are not a silver bullet. The Government must properly support health boards to implement all the MAT standards. I am worried that the national mission on drugs will likely fail, given that we are now one year away from its end date and yet drug deaths in Scotland remain the highest in Europe, if not the developed world.

What is the cabinet secretary doing day to day to drive full implementation of the MAT standards across every territorial health board, being cognisant of emerging risks such as the rise of synthetic opioids?