Chamber and committees

Yes.

I would like Labour and everybody else to reconsider for the sake of clarity. Amendment 51 is important for clarity and enforcement. If there is no proper signage, it will be very difficult to enforce, and leaving it up to the health boards is not good enough.

The financial memorandum states:

“There is no requirement in the Bill for signage to be displayed outside a protected premises, and there is no expectation at present for signage to be required.”

I remember that, when the minister gave evidence to the committee at stage 1, we had a discussion about signage and how it would be on-going. Amendment 51 seems to give sufficient flexibility and it is not particularly prescriptive or onerous. I also note that it includes regulation-making powers for Scottish ministers. That is why I encourage the committee to reconsider and review the issue and put signage in the bill.

Thank you for that. It is important to go back to the substance of the committee’s report in that respect.

Like my colleague Rachael Hamilton, I welcome Gillian Mackay’s suggestion to engage with us on the issue. As she says, it is important to make the bill robust. I want to say a few words in advance of meeting Gillian Mackay with Rachael Hamilton.

The committee made it clear in paragraphs 7 and 22 of our stage 1 report that the legislation should be subject to regular and on-going review. We have just discussed how the timing might be different, so we could talk about that. I take the committee back to the reasoning around the recommendation, which was

“to ensure restrictions continue to be proportionate to the legitimate aims of the Bill as circumstances change over time”.

Legislation such as this seeks to address the balance of rights and the bill is about the balance of rights between different groups. The key point of amendment 58 is that regular post-legislative review is crucial. Building something in to make sure that it is robust is really important.

As I said, Rachael Hamilton and I welcome Gillian Mackay’s willingness to include the post-legislative review provision at stage 2, which is covered in amendment 39. My concern is that an initial review period of two years, followed by five-year increments, does not really go far enough towards meeting the committee’s recommendations in this regard, so when we meet I would like to test that further.

Amendment 58 calls for an annual review, which makes the provision more robust. It draws from the committee’s recommendations, as well as from section 8 of the Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) Act (Northern Ireland) 2023, which comprehensively covers areas such as the effectiveness of the legislation in achieving its aims, as well as the impact on those who are engaged in protests and vigils, which we talked about earlier in the meeting.

Amendment 58 also seeks regular reporting on the number of arrests, prosecutions and convictions under the act, and on the act’s on-going compliance with the Human Rights Act 1998, which has been mentioned previously. It seeks input from key stakeholders such as Police Scotland, health boards and local authorities, and it gives Scottish ministers flexibility to consult in that regard.

It is important to enshrine in the bill a checklist of who the key stakeholders are. Those points are all covered by paragraphs 7 and 22 of the committee’s stage 1 report. I am not trying to be prescriptive, but I am trying to capture as much information as possible to ensure that the bill is effective over the longer term.

Given that Gillian Mackay has said that she is willing to meet Rachael Hamilton and me, I will not move amendment 58 but will instead seek to come up with a form of wording that is mutually agreeable.

I would like to ask a question. I welcome the spirit of what Gillian Mackay and the minister are saying about their willingness to engage on this important point. Are you open to looking at the issue with Rachael Hamilton and me? Do you have an open mind? How much wiggle room is there? Are you willing to look at the issue completely openly?

To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government’s response is to reports that no national health service board has implemented placental growth factor-based testing for pre-eclampsia, in light of it having been recommended in March 2023 by the Scottish Health Technologies Group. (S6F-03166)

Women in Scotland are being denied a test, so I welcome what the First Minister has just said, because the provision of such testing could save their lives and the lives of their babies.

The test is already being used widely in NHS England, and it is clear that Scotland has been on the back foot with implementation, with health boards having indicated that funding is a major obstacle. What price can we put on mothers’ and babies’ lives? If the Scottish National Party Government is serious about women’s health, can the First Minister tell us when the necessary resources will be made available to all health boards for those life-saving tests?

The statistics are sobering, and the Public Audit Committee’s report is damning. In any given year, one in four people experience mental health problems. Life expectancy for people with prolonged mental illness is significantly shorter. The suicide rate is consistently higher in Scotland than it is in Northern Ireland, Wales and England. The number of female deaths by suicide is rising. The cost of poor mental health to the Scottish economy is close to £9 billion.

Scotland is experiencing a mental health crisis, and the healthcare system under the SNP Government is simply not equipped to cope. Demand is rising, but capacity is not. Too many people are languishing on waiting lists for treatment. Millions of pounds are being spent on locum psychiatrists because health boards cannot recruit to permanent positions.

It is therefore welcome and necessary that mental health services across Scotland are being scrutinised by Audit Scotland and the Public Audit Committee. That work shines a much-needed light on the pressures in the mental health care system and the lack of progress by successive SNP Governments. It is clear that the SNP does not have a grip, from the lack of data to support the delivery of services to the barriers that people continue to experience as they try to access care. Patchy provision, too few face-to-face appointments and unachievable policy commitments have defined the SNP’s record on mental health to date.

Meanwhile, real-terms spending on mental health by the Scottish Government has reduced. Third sector organisations such as the Scottish Men’s Sheds Association have been forced to wait anxiously for news of funding from the SNP Government. The first men’s shed started in 2013 in Westhill, in my region of Aberdeenshire, and it has done vital work to improve men’s mental health and wellbeing, but there is no plan in place for long-term, sustainable funding from the Scottish Government.

When I hosted a round-table event on perinatal mental health in October last year, the message was the same—the third sector is stepping into the breach, but there is no certainty over funding. Organisations are worried about recruiting staff to meet demand when they might not be able to pay those staff in the next financial year. Last week, I spoke to one GP surgery in my region that told me that it had nowhere to signpost anyone to in the community for mental health support, because the service had closed. That is dire. There must be a better way for the SNP Government to support such organisations.

Audit Scotland’s report highlighted specific concerns about access to mental health care in rural areas, which I strongly echo. The report quoted a rural resident who said:

“If you live in a rural community or outside of a catchment area you have no services available. You try to access the services where they are available but you’re up against a brick wall.”

The reality on the ground is that there is a postcode lottery in mental health care.

There is no mother and baby unit outside the central belt, which means that new mums in serious mental health distress in my region must leave their families and travel miles for specialist treatment. According to the Maternal Mental Health Alliance, only two out of the 14 NHS boards currently meet UK-wide quality standards for specialist perinatal mental health care.

The centralisation of services is having a massive impact. The Mulberry unit for mental health at Stracathro hospital in Brechin closed in 2017 because of staffing pressures. Services relocated to the Carseview centre in Dundee, which is some 35 miles away and involves up to a two-hour journey on public transport one way. The decision to close the Mulberry unit was not about providing a superior service at Carseview; we know from David Strang’s damning report into mental health services in NHS Tayside that there were serious and enduring issues in the delivery of those services when the Mulberry unit was closed. The people of Angus have been unfairly impacted as a result.

The cabinet secretary has said that he is open to ideas: I would like to ask him and the minister to meet Nicky Connor, who is the new chief executive of NHS Tayside, to review David Strang’s report and its recommendations, whose implementation is still outstanding. As I have said, there has not been nearly enough progress in implementing the Strang report’s recommendations and not enough oversight of that process, either. That is just not good enough. We have a new cabinet secretary, so this is a new opportunity; I ask that he please listen.

Politicians and policy makers have long called for parity between mental health and physical health. That ambition formed the foundation of the SNP Government’s mental health strategy back in 2017. However, that ambition cannot be achieved when mental health services are at saturation point.

It is time for the SNP Government to stop paying lip service to mental health. It must act urgently to implement the recommendations from Audit Scotland and the Public Audit Committee and support Scotland’s mental health services.

Hello, Mr Dunne. There is strong support for the restrictions around packaging, especially given the alarming figure that around a quarter of 15-year-olds in Scotland are using vaping products. Therefore, will the vaping industry work with the Governments across the UK to ensure that changes in standardised packaging are adhered to?

Sometimes—well, often—incidents pressure test a system. We have heard about the tragic situation in Portree.

Last week, in my area, a little girl called Ivy Mae Ross tragically died; I know that the thoughts of all of us are with her family. That incident highlighted an issue, in that a specialist operations terror attack unit had to be deployed because ambulances were not available to attend the scene. That was not just a single situation—it has been going on for months. At that time, many ambulances were stacked outside the hospital. On that occasion, there was no negative impact directly from that, but it set alarm bells ringing. Given the unrelenting pressures on the Scottish Ambulance Service in my NHS Grampian area, in particular—although those pressures are not unique to Scotland—will you, as cabinet secretary, review contingency planning for serious incidents such as the ones that I mentioned?