Chamber and committees

Will the minister take an intervention?

Will the member take an intervention?

Will the member take an intervention?

The cabinet secretary referenced the recruitment of 1,000 nurses, midwives and allied health professionals over the past two years. That is welcome, but 7,000 vacancies in our NHS remain unfilled. Recruitment means little without a long-term retention strategy, so how does he plan to ensure that the new NHS workers stay in post, and how does the Government plan to fill the other 7,000 vacancies?

My colleague the member for Edinburgh Southern hit the nail on the head: for nine years—the best part of a decade—we have condemned our fellow Scots to suffering and pain. That should be a mark of shame on our country.

I acknowledge the apologies that have come from those on benches across the chamber, but it is simply not good enough that the Government has failed to respond in the way that it has. Indeed, the latest insult is the letter from the minister to the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee. I am afraid that it is not good enough, as it fails to acknowledge the severity of the trauma that is faced by the women who are affected.

Listening to my own constituents and many others at the petitions committee during the past number of years has, in many cases, been harrowing. For them to simply be talked down to in the form of being given advice about waiting well or for them to be informed that a leaflet will be published in due course does not acknowledge the sheer agony—not just physical but psychological—and torment that they have endured over the years.

The Parliament has been a champion for those voices in many different ways, but it simply has not moved quickly enough to push the Government to put in place the necessary measures to address the scale of the challenge faced by people in this country.

The minister acknowledged in her letter that 135 women have been treated so far. There are more than 800 women in the Scottish Mesh Survivors group. The national health service has had no formal engagement with that group, but it ensures that membership of the group is noted in a patient’s records, which surely shows that that is significant.

What are we doing to engage formally with those women and to understand what can be done about pathways to treatment? It is just not good enough to say that health boards are carrying out consultations, because the answers are already obvious. It is not sufficient to tick a box and to say that the pathways meet the guidelines set out by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence; they must be far more robust, customer focused and patient focused. They must address the reality of the complexities faced by women who may be deeply distrustful of the medical establishment that has gaslighted them for so long and of surgeons who have continued to stand by the treatments and mesh that they have used and who do not accept that they should be concerned about what has happened.

That is the reality faced by women in Scotland today. The whole system has failed them and medical fashion has trumped their rights. That is a devastating realisation—it is devastating that it has taken so long to realise it.

I could not agree more with the member’s point. He is absolutely correct.

The establishment of the service in Glasgow is to be commended, but it is agonisingly frustrating that it is not achieving outcomes at pace. I acknowledge that it was established during the pandemic, but now, three years on from its establishment, we are not seeing the necessary pace of change. I said that there are 800 women in the mesh survivors group, but there are probably at least another 800 out there who do not have such access or membership. The scale of the problem is huge and the treatment rate is not sufficient.

The follow-up rate is also not sufficient. We already know that further complexities have arisen after surgery to repair mesh implants. Those women have not been sufficiently followed up and their on-going psychological trauma is not being addressed.

As the minister’s letter acknowledged, another issue is that no specialist consultant has yet been recruited to the mesh service. It is not good enough to say that the service is co-located on the Queen Elizabeth university hospital campus; a dedicated consultant should be in post and there should be a dedicated helpline for patients, not just a leaflet.

We need clear pathways. We know that the dissemination of advice to GPs is patchy at best and that many GPs are simply so burnt out and hard pressed that they do not have time to do the continuous professional development courses that would give them the latest advice and options available. They are overwhelmed: we get that feedback loud and clear almost weekly from GPs in our constituencies.

I encourage the minister to take on the chin the powerful comments that have been made by members from across the chamber, to note them with the necessary modesty, showing real contrition for this Government’s failure to meet the needs of our fellow Scots and, in her closing remarks, to say clearly what she will do to address those comments.

I also encourage her to take particular note of the transvaginal mesh case record review. There are 46 recommendations in the 2017 report. The minister should clearly inform parliamentarians and our constituents what the Government is doing to meet each of those recommendations.

There is a further series of recommendations in the 2023 report, which was published in June and highlighted additional support mechanisms that could be put in place to aid GPs and practice teams in gaining understanding of how to address the concerns that women might raise with them following transvaginal mesh surgery. What is being done to ensure that that is happening? It is not enough to passively send out letters.

We could have a mesh register. The minister says that it is too onerous for health boards to do that; I say that that is nonsense. Those women’s pain is too onerous and it is time that the Government stood up and recognised that.

We need a clear understanding of the language used to communicate with people.

The biggest communication problem throughout all of this has been the illusion that communication ever happened. I urge the minister to address the Government’s huge inadequacy in dealing with this critical issue.

With an all-day bus ticket in Glasgow costing £5, I agree that free bus travel is an environmental and social good. For people who are seeking asylum in Scotland, who receive just £6 a day from the Home Office, public transport is simply not an affordable option. During challenge poverty week, civil society organisations are calling for free bus travel to be extended to people who are seeking asylum. Will the First Minister confirm that his Government will deliver that?

I am pleased to be opening for Labour in today’s debate on the Government motion on support for the veterans and armed forces community in Scotland. I thank the minister for advance sight of the annual report on support for veterans, and I congratulate him on his reappointment to the post of Minister for Veterans, which I know he performs with great care and diligence.

It is important that we work across parties in the interests of those who serve and have served our country, particularly as they transition back to civilian life. Sir Edward Mountain, a Conservative member for the Highlands and Islands region, spoke powerfully about the implications and complexities around that.

Of course, there is a wider definition of what a veteran is, as many of our veterans are reservists who live in our communities, and have done all along. Veterans also have complex experiences, not least in recent years, following operational deployment overseas and the complexities of dealing with the trauma and grief associated with it.

As my party’s spokesperson for veterans and the armed forces in Scotland, I am in regular contact with veterans and their families, the third sector organisations providing support for them and other stakeholders, and, through that invaluable engagement, I am constantly learning and developing an understanding of the issues facing veterans, armed forces personnel and their families, and of the realities of their day-to-day lives. Indeed, just this week, I had the privilege, along with parliamentary colleagues, of visiting Glencorse barracks in Midlothian, which is home to the Army’s initial assessment centre for Scotland and Northern England, as well as the Royal Highland Fusiliers, second battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland, led by commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Dunn. We were afforded a fantastic immersive insight into the full journey of the young soldier, beginning with initial assessment training through to deployment on operations—indeed, a force protection company from 2 Scots is due to deploy to Erbil in Iraq in December for a three-month period.

In speaking to personnel and their families there, it was clear that they share a great pride in being part of the Army and the Scots regimental family, but they also shared with us some practical concerns regarding the costs of pursuing a career in the Army. I think that that is a critical consideration: how do we ensure that people are able to maintain their service for as long as they wish to do so and are not placed in the invidious position of having to terminate their service and perhaps prematurely become veterans?

A good example of that issue, which came up in discussion with soldiers and their families at the barracks, was the fact that accessing the 30 hours a week of free childcare entitlement can be onerous and expensive, given where the bases are situated. I encourage the minister to engage with the Army in Scotland on that issue and identify a suitable way to address that concern, because my concern about the longer term is that if that feedback continues to be sent to the MOD, it might adversely affect future base-planning strategies and potentially further reduce the Army's footprint in Scotland.

Labour welcomes the progress that is outlined in the annual report, such as the development of the Scottish credit and qualifications framework partnership’s military skills discovery tool and the awareness-raising work that is being done on the financial support that is available to veterans. However, the implementation must be faster in some areas, as the minister has highlighted. The annual report noted concern about the delay in implementing the veterans mental health and wellbeing action plan, and noted that it takes, on average, more than 10 years for a veteran to ask for support for their mental health. Implementing that plan is an absolute priority that we all need to take seriously to prevent people reaching a crisis point.

Further, the report also highlighted concern about the delay in delivering the veterans homelessness prevention pathway. The commissioner said that

“little has been achieved to date and progress in implementing this much needed pathway is slow, with no clear milestones or timelines provided”,

and that is despite the fact that 690 former members of the armed forces have been assessed as homeless or have been threatened with homelessness in 2023-23, which is an increase of 40 on the previous year.

The introduction of guidance such as the wellbeing plan and the homelessness prevention path is welcome, but those strategies need to be resourced and implemented in a timely and practical manner if they are to have the desired effects.

Third sector organisations are certainly valuable in supporting veterans, armed forces personnel and their families within their local communities, and, indeed, I often cite SSAFA Forces Help’s helping heroes model, in my own city of Glasgow, which I believe is a stand-out example of a one-stop shop support service for veterans.

SSAFA’s model provides advice and practical casework benefits for housing, homelessness and a number of other areas such as employability and training, financial advice and healthcare. Research from the University of Stirling and Glasgow Caledonian University found that the social return on investment for Glasgow’s helping heroes service is £6.63 for every £1 invested. I believe that it is a one-way bet for us to look more closely at that model and its scalability across Scotland. Further outline analysis of the pre-pandemic years placed the return figure even higher, at £11.68 for every £1 that was invested.

I believe that that gateway model is a great example of how to access support and how it should look, and I hope that there will be many other positive examples across Scotland. I look forward to members highlighting them as the debate progresses. In the minister’s closing remarks, I would be grateful if he could outline what the Scottish Government is doing to support pockets of positive practice and learn from them and, ultimately, capture them and scale them so that all veterans in Scotland have the right localised and effective support.

The veterans and armed forces community is an asset to Scottish society. As I said at the beginning of my speech, we must work on a cross-party basis to harness their potential and ensure that they have the necessary support. That means being honest about where things are working well, as well as where things could be better. I have set out some examples of where progress is being made. Labour is happy to work constructively with the Government on areas that need further development. I welcome the opportunity to debate this important topic and confirm that members on the Labour benches support the Government’s motion as well as the Conservatives’ contribution to it.

I have been contacted by numerous GPs in Glasgow who face the prospect of losing, from next April, the vital community link workers who are based in their practices. Last week, official figures confirmed that people in Glasgow have the lowest life expectancy in Scotland. Despite that fact, the number of link worker posts in what are some of the most deprived communities is to be reduced from 70 to 42. Does the cabinet secretary accept that any cut is at odds with the programme for government commitment to ensuring that link worker services can respond to local needs? What is being done to save those jobs in the poorest communities in Glasgow?