Chamber and committees

You said that people have not had the chance to specialise. Do you acknowledge, however, that the major issue is stress and burnout?

Sorry, Kirsty, could you pause? Maybe I was not clear. I am speaking more specifically about women from a BAME background who are engaging, or not engaging, in sport. To what extent has Glasgow Life formed focus groups or engaged with Muslim women’s organisations, for example, so that they can speak about what their particular needs are?

I will pose a question to Kirsty Garrett on a slightly different topic. It follows on from Dr Gulhane’s points about black, Asian and minority ethnic women and girls. You mentioned initiatives taking place in February that tried to look at some of those areas. To what extent has Glasgow Life sat down and spoken to people from communities about their needs and what could be delivered that would help them? We will get the most acute and correct knowledge of the barriers when people who have that lived experience tell us about them. To what extent have you had engagement?

I wonder if I can expand on your Covid recovery plans. Audit Scotland was critical of the lack of consultation with NHS boards on the development of the national recovery plan. It also highlighted that many boards desired greater autonomy in their own recovery plans. Would it have been helpful to have had a more localised recovery plan that you could have worked to within your resource allocation?

Did the Government ask you specifically about workforce issues in relation to the national recovery plan?

From the evidence that has been submitted, I think that there is a huge issue not just with recruitment of new staff but with staff retention. For example, 30 per cent of leavers from NHS Ayrshire and Arran were retiring, and that sort of turnover in your boards is higher than the national average.

First, is retention in the system the significant issue? Secondly, what action is being taken to encourage staff to stay to ensure that we are not facing the twin challenges of having to recruit new staff while trying to keep staff in the system? Perhaps we can hear first the perspective of NHS Ayrshire and Arran.

Good morning to the panel. I will ask about socioeconomic issues for women and girls in sport. We had a response from Lanarkshire health and social care organisations that told us clearly that physical activity and sport are costly. That presents a challenge when it comes to targeting subsidy and access with reduced rates and things like that, which can make a huge difference. I would be interested in Patrick Murphy’s take on my question initially. In the context that we are in just now, in which local authority budgets are increasingly pressurised, how can we do some of that with a reducing resource?

In a previous life, I served on the board of a culture and leisure trust, and there were certainly challenges. There was always a tension around reviewing charging and the eligibility criteria for concessionary rates. Have you found having to change the margins of that a particular challenge, with more people maybe moving outwith the opportunities for concessions?

Thank you, convener, and good morning. I want to follow up on the issue that was raised around people attending inappropriately, if you like. There was an ambition in the recovery plan, as part of the review of urgent care, to reduce the use of hospitals as the first port of call by 15 percentatge points to 20 per cent, although Audit Scotland highlighted that there has been a lack of progress on that. Are you tracking the number of people who attend accident and emergency as their first port of call when that is not the appropriate setting for them? What impact are those attendances having on the overall budget?

I thank the minister for advance sight of her statement. I offer my condolences to anyone who has lost a loved one to drugs here in Scotland

Perhaps especially this week, it is worth taking a moment to stop to assess the progress of this Scottish Government in getting to grips with this public health emergency, which was declared more than three years ago. Tragically, the statistics tell a sobering story. Scotland has recorded 2,269 confirmed drug-related deaths and, last week, we learned that there were 1,000 suspected drug deaths last year, including a significant spike in the last quarter.

It is also concerning that there have been delays and, at times, a seeming lack of urgency. MAT standards implementation was, for instance, promised and then delayed. We have known about the correlation between mental health and substance misuse for many years, but, by the minister’s own admission in her statement, work to deal with that has not always been clear or, indeed, quick enough.

I have two questions for the minister. The first is about timescales. The minister has stated that implementation will start by the end of this year. Can she guarantee to Parliament that that will happen? As she knows too well, there have been too many delays already in addressing this public health emergency.

Secondly, it strikes me that the big thing missing from the statement is data, which was a key recommendation of the rapid review. Last week’s publication in relation to the suspected spike in drug deaths clearly demonstrates that there is a problem in knowing exactly where the issues are and how we should tackle them, and indeed whether action is working. What will the minister do to get data right?