Chamber and committees

I will not, if that is okay, so as to keep on the right side of the Presiding Officer.

I will share with members a few quotes that have come directly from the members of the shed in Barrhead. I think that these quotes typify what the shed means to them. One person said:

“It may just be a shed to you, but to me—it’s my Sanctuary.”

Another said:

“The men’s shed has been my life saver since my wife died.”

From those quotes, it is clear to me that we need to do as much as we can to provide support for these organisations, which, for some people, are indeed a lifeline.

As other members have said, it is not rocket science. It is a model that has, in some ways, always been around, but the difference that it makes is huge. As Christine Grahame said, we need to think about the preventative spend aspect, particularly with regard to the savings to the health budget.

We have heard from other members about the issues of funding and the sustainability of men’s sheds. Sustainability of funding is crucial, and I know that it worries many people who are active in the men’s shed movement. We have heard about some of the national issues that the Scottish Men’s Sheds Association is experiencing, and I hope that the minister will pick up on those in his concluding remarks.

There are also issues at a local level in relation to support and the funding for leasing the buildings that men’s sheds occupy, with councils sometimes dragging their heels when it comes to making decisions on future support. We need to explore further the asset transfer framework in the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015. The men’s shed in Barrhead has raised issues about the validation certificate and the length of time that it can take to have that confirmed, the uncertainty that it creates when it comes to applying to funders, and the group’s desire to have a sense of control over the buildings that it occupies. I am conscious of time, so I hope that the minister will be able to respond to that issue, or perhaps take it offline with me.

Next year, the Scottish men’s shed movement will celebrate the 10th year since the first ever men’s shed opened in 2013. Since then, from Barrhead to Ullapool, the movement has gone from strength to strength, and that should be celebrated. I look forward to us all coming together in the Parliament next year, with perhaps even more guests from men’s sheds from across the country, to celebrate that milestone.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to close this important debate on behalf of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee. As we have heard this afternoon, the inquiry has highlighted a number of key challenges and opportunities that we face, as Scotland seeks to improve the health and wellbeing of all its children and young people.

As the convener stated in her opening speech, we all want children and young people to be able to live happy and healthy lives. I think that that was echoed by Alex Cole-Hamilton when he said that the topic should keep us all up at night. We can all agree on that.

It falls to me in closing to try to build some consensus. I think that the debate has found a degree of consensus at points, but it has been challenging in other areas as we exchange ideas and views. However, it is clear to me that everyone who has contributed to the debate wants to see a better future for children in Scotland.

During our inquiry, we asked witnesses where they thought that policy actions should be focused as a first priority to improve health and wellbeing outcomes for children and young people. Our witnesses were unanimous in their response: tackling poverty needs to be the overriding priority. As other members of the committee have done, I take the opportunity to thank our witnesses and all those who gave evidence to our committee.

That need for a primary focus on tackling poverty has been reflected in much of the debate this afternoon. We must acknowledge the evidence that we received, and the minister’s evidence to the inquiry, which illustrates what the Scottish Government is doing to tackle poverty in order to improve the health and wellbeing outcomes of children and young people. As many argued during the debate, we should not be under any illusions that there are not challenges with regard to the policies that are being delivered.

As many argued during the debate, we should not be under any illusions that, in the face of the current cost of living crisis, there is not a huge challenge in terms of poverty and the issues that it is creating for children and young people across our country.

In the evidence that we heard in committee, it is clear that we need both the Scottish Government and the UK Government to work closely in addressing the crisis. We have heard an exchange today about some of the things that both Governments need to do in order to make that a reality.

Witnesses told us about the devastating impact that many UK Government welfare reforms and reducing budgets in welfare have had on young people and families across Scotland. However, witnesses also pointed to the need to use the powers of this Parliament to go further on the Scottish child payment and to provide more sustainable funding for local government services and third sector providers in order to tackle the cost of living crisis.

I was particularly struck by evidence that was recently submitted to the Social Justice and Social Security Committee by the Poverty and Inequality Commission, which is included in our committee’s inquiry report. Bill Scott from the Poverty and Inequality Commission put it quite starkly when he said that, irrespective of whether current targets on child poverty are technically met,

“poverty is deepening for real people at the sharp end”

and concluded that

“that will have a lifelong impact on ... children’s health and attainment.” —[Official Report, Social Justice and Social Security Committee, 21 April 2022; c 19.]

There can be little doubt that that is a theme that our committee and others across the Parliament will return to over the course of this session. In particular, the conclusions that the inquiry has drawn about the overarching impact of poverty on the health and wellbeing of children and young people are already being taken forward as part of the committee’s current inquiry into broader health inequalities. On the topic of health inequalities and the relationship with poverty, I thought that Carol Mochan, Emma Harper and other colleagues spoke powerfully.

Our inquiry and today’s debate have highlighted a number of key areas in which we, as a committee and as a Parliament, might wish to undertake further, more in-depth scrutiny in the future. We have heard that today in many contributions from across the chamber. Colleagues have highlighted issues, including those experienced by care-experienced young people, which we heard about from Meghan Gallacher, and the cost of the school day, which Stephanie Callaghan highlighted, as being areas that we must drill down into and look at in more granular detail in order to tackle many of the inequalities that we have found through our inquiry.

The inquiry also heard about the intrinsic link between physical health and mental health, and about how participation in sport and physical activity has the ability to benefit both. In its evidence to the committee, the Scottish Sports Association described investment in sport and physical activity as the best buy in public health and it argued that encouraging

“lifelong participation in physical activity ... reduces the burden on the NHS and the need”

to intervene to address

“illness and other long-term health conditions.

As part of the inquiry, we have welcomed the Scottish Government’s commitment to increase funding for sport and physical activity during this session of Parliament. All of us will, of course, want to scrutinise the delivery of that. However, it is quite clear that we need to find ways to encourage and support young people throughout their lives to engage in sport and physical activity. Siobhian Brown spoke about the joy that a child might experience in taking part in an egg and spoon race on their first sports day. How do we continue that throughout their life and break down the barriers to participating in sport and physical activity that often exist as children get older?

That is particularly true for girls and young women, and a variety of witnesses told the committee about the challenges and barriers that can exist for them. The committee will look at, in more depth, what those barriers are and how we break them down. We will also look at other groups who experience barriers to participation in sport, not least black and minority ethnic and LGBT+ people. I thank Gillian Mackay for exploring some of the broader health issues for LGBT young people.

Today, there has been a focus on CAMHS and mental health services for young people across Scotland. We heard a large amount of evidence in committee around the need to continue exploring better ways to provide services to young people, and to look at where services are offered in communities and where they are offered in schools. Gillian Martin and others have referenced good-practice examples in places such as Grampian that we need to look at when expanding the available service provision.

I was just coming on to reference the challenges that exist in CAMHS—

I thank Meghan Gallacher for bringing the debate to the chamber, and I wish her well for her forthcoming maternity leave.

I apologise to you, Presiding Officer, and to colleagues, as I will need to leave prior to the conclusion of the debate. I thank you for your accommodation in that regard.

I declare an interest as the chair of Neilston War Memorial Association.

I pay tribute to all those who have served and lost their lives and are recorded on our memorials across Scotland. I am thinking in particular of the Falkland Islands conflict, as we gather only the day after the 40-year anniversary commemoration of the conflict’s conclusion. Forty years on, we remember the 255 British personnel who made the ultimate sacrifice, many of whom are recorded on memorials across the country.

It is quite simply appalling when a war memorial is vandalised or desecrated. Meghan Gallacher is right to say in her motion that

“war memorials are not representative of political or religious iconography”.

Instead, they serve an important purpose in Scotland. That purpose is bringing people together to remember.

I believe that it is right that we take remembrance seriously, especially considering that we have asked so much of our armed forces, and given the historic horrors of the first and second world wars, in particular.

War memorials should serve not as a glorification of war but, rather, as a reminder of what happens when dialogue fails and we fail to respect our differences and find common cause in our shared home on this planet. It is with that in mind that I believe that the idea of making vandalism of a war memorial a specific criminal offence has considerable merit, and the proposal should be fully examined. As such, I look forward to seeing the outcome of the petition that has been submitted by the friends of Dennistoun war memorial group and to engaging with Meghan Gallacher on the proposals that she hopes to bring forward.

To make a real and substantial difference right now, the Scottish Government should support police and prosecutors to exercise the full force of the current law to deal with vandalism. In my village of Neilston, we take great pride in honouring the lives lost to war and the pain of a community left behind. In some cases, that pain continues to be experienced by families to this day.

The Neilston War Memorial Association, which I have spoken about before in the chamber, is run by local volunteers and has worked hard to place and maintain memorials throughout the local area. That includes the regular maintenance of our cenotaph and the erection of a series of benches and information boards telling the story of those who died in the Arctic convoys in the second world war and the shelter that was given in Neilston to hundreds of refugees whom those men died protecting. However, in recent weeks, that relatively new memorial was vandalised. My community and I were outraged by that and the behaviour that was associated with it. It made me think about what action our community can take to stop such acts from happening again.

I do not doubt that some people vandalise memorials with political motivation—there is, of course, evidence of that—but I believe that people can also carry out such acts out of ignorance. I am sure that many in the chamber will agree that the best way to overcome ignorance is through education. We must ensure that schools across our country teach lessons about, for example, the horrors of the first world war. We should hear about the stories and experiences of young people in our communities who never returned—young men who, very often, were just like the young people hearing those stories today. We must make those stories relevant rather than just relying on names etched in cold stone on our war memorials. It is only by educating young people about such horrors and the impact that they can have on people in their communities that we can make war memorials relevant to young people and give them a sense of ownership over them. I know that many schools in Scotland have done incredible work on that already by, for example, arranging trips to places such as Flanders and Normandy.

I hope that, with a stronger focus from the Government on supporting groups such as the Neilston War Memorial Association, and by working with Police Scotland and our schools, we can end vandalism of war memorials and continue to promote their protection and enhancement in all of our communities.

If the minister will forgive me, I am not keen to facilitate a conversation between two members in my summing up on behalf of the committee. I am sure that they might want to take up the issue offline.

Problems persist in CAMHS, as Dr Gulhane and Paul Sweeney both showed when referring to cases to do with a constituent. We need to look in more detail at what happens when people experience a mental health crisis. People need to be taken seriously, and the service that they are given needs to get the heart of the issue and seek to support them in a holistic manner.

I am conscious of the time, Presiding Officer, so I conclude by thanking everyone who has contributed to this afternoon’s debate and by echoing the convener’s earlier words of gratitude for all the contributions that we received during the inquiry.

As we have heard today and throughout the inquiry, although there are many challenges, there are also lots of opportunities and inspiring examples of good practice we can draw on to improve health and wellbeing outcomes for children and young people across Scotland.

I look forward to the Government’s formal response to the committee’s inquiry report and hearing how ministers intend to take forward our key findings and recommendations. I believe that, across all parties, we share a common goal to improve the health and wellbeing of all children and young people. I hope that the debate has been a useful springboard for us on the way to achieving that.

Good morning. I thank the witnesses for their presentations, which were informative. All the evidence that we have heard, including in the informal sessions, has been useful and insightful.

I am keen to talk about culture in our public services and in service delivery. In the evidence from the group from the Hub in Dumfries and Galloway, someone talked about

“judgmental and uncompassionate public services”,

and they described those as “punitive rather than supportive”.

Obviously, we can see direct links to the issues that Dr Sharon Wright talked about in the social security system more widely. Is that also people’s experience of other public services that exist, whether in the NHS or in local authority housing provision? It is stark when people say that the network of support that we all want to be there to help people is perhaps doing the opposite, and when they feel that it is judgmental.

How do we begin to shift that culture? We have had undertakings on what the Scottish Government is trying to do through Social Security Scotland and undertakings in the local government sphere, but what more can we do to have a culture shift away from that sort of experience?

Given that those comments came from the Hub, I ask Karen Lewis to start.

I will comment briefly on mental health. Both your answers alluded to the multiple and diverse challenges that exist for people. I am keen to understand whether the witnesses feel that front-line workers who support people have enough training on understanding mental health issues, particularly on trying to identify and triage someone who might have mental health issues. That brings us back to the no wrong door approach, trying to take a holistic view of a person and trying to meet them where they are when they interact with services. We have done some of that, but I am not sure that we have done enough. I am keen to get a sense of whether people think that we need to do more and how we might do it across the piece.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer.

The paper is light on detail and heavy on cherry-picked examples, but the First Minister confirmed one thing today when she said:

“If we are in the Single Market, and the rest of the UK is outside the Single Market, then yes there are issues in terms of regulatory and customs requirements”.

The Government paints a rosy picture of trading bliss within the EU, but glosses over the barriers and challenges that lie in the way. The paper that was published today says next to nothing about the actual practicalities of independence. Will the cabinet secretary take the opportunity now to confirm to the democratically elected members of the Parliament, as the First Minister did in her answer to a journalist, that with independence, there would be a hard border between Scotland and the rest of the UK? What analysis has the Government done on the impact that that would have on Scotland’s businesses, economy and wider public services?