Chamber and committees

We are rightly critical of the scandal that is costing the taxpayer £400 million, but the people who are paying the biggest price for the latest delay are the islanders who will endure yet another summer of chaos and disruption. That, alongside ferry breakdowns, is not simply an inconvenience—it will be the difference between a business surviving or folding, and between employers hiring or releasing employees this summer. What support and compensation will the Government make available to save businesses and jobs on Scotland’s islands?

To ask the Scottish Government when its review of capital spending will be complete. (S6O-03274)

The cabinet secretary will know that women in Caithness and Moray are currently travelling more than 100 miles to access maternity care in Raigmore hospital, in a unit that is not fit for purpose. The promised Caithness redesign has been shelved, along with the Dr Gray’s hospital and Raigmore hospital maternity unit improvements. People in Fort William have waited two decades for their new hospital, as have people in Barra and Vatersay, with their new hospital having been abandoned altogether. General practitioners and their patients in Grantown thought that they had a new surgery, but the last part of that complete service redesign has also been paused. A pause to those capital projects will disproportionately affect patients across the Highlands and Islands because of past neglect. Will the cabinet secretary give me a commitment that those projects will be reinstated when the review completes in the spring?

I, too, thank Douglas Ross for bringing this debate to the chamber, and I join him and the other speakers in commending the work of the save our surgeries group’s campaign. Its fight to save the GP services in its community has been fantastic and it refuses to take no for an answer. I also thank Age Scotland for its briefing on the debate.

As Douglas Ross said, the surgeries that were closed have never reopened and they will now remain closed permanently. They not only covered Burghead and Hopeman but encompassed a population of around 7,000 people. Despite the fact that there has been no response from the joint board, the practice or indeed NHS Grampian, the campaign group remains pragmatic, because it believes that there is a better local solution to be found. It has suggested nurse-led services, with nurses being available locally in the community to do things such as taking bloods, physical checks and enabling older people who are not good with new technology to have video consultations with the practice at Lossiemouth.

However, that has fallen on deaf ears, and people are forced to travel from Burghead and Hopeman to Lossiemouth. Those are short journeys in miles, but there is no direct bus service, so patients need to travel by bus via Elgin. As we have heard, that can take four hours. Not only that—the fare is £9. If people cannot get a bus, they can take a taxi, which costs £60. If people have to pay such huge amounts of money simply to see their doctor, that is no way to be an NHS that is free at the point of need.

There is a dial-a-bus service as well, which was suggested as an alternative, but that requires to be booked the day before. If someone needs an emergency appointment, it is absolutely unsuitable, and it does not cover the whole of the surgery opening times, so it might be that people can get a dial-a-bus service to the surgery but cannot get home again.

To add to that, Age Scotland tells us that 82 per cent of older people prefer face-to-face appointments with their GP. The changes are therefore more likely to impact on the very vulnerable. Age Scotland also tells us that 26 per cent of people with a disability and 47 per cent of people with long-standing health conditions in Moray do not have access to a car, so they are absolutely dependent on public transport.

As we have also heard, those villages are expanding and are therefore in more need of GP services. Anywhere else, that situation would be seen as a success story, because we are always talking about depopulation in rural areas. Where we have growing populations, we need to preserve the services to allow people to continue living there.

This debate speaks more widely to closures and changes to services in rural areas, through centralisation, which means that people do not receive the same levels of services if they live in rural areas.

There are wider issues, as others alluded to. The 2018 GP contract was supposed to make GP services sustainable, but it has had the opposite impact on rural GPs. The Scottish Government can see that—it is demonstrated in front of it—yet has not acted to look at a rural GP contract. Those problems do not appear to be at play on this issue, but we need to find a solution for the people of Moray. Will the cabinet secretary therefore make sure that the IJB meets the campaigners, as they want it to do, and will he intervene to make sure that those people have access to local GP services in one form or another?

I, too, thank the clerks to the committee, all those who work for the committee and all those who gave evidence on the bill. I also thank the parliamentary staff who stayed late on Tuesday night to allow us to get through the stage 3 amendments.

This was an extremely difficult bill to scrutinise. We were handed a bill and told that major amendments would be added at stage 2, but at that time we did not realise that major amendments would also be dropped in at stage 3. That is not the way to make good legislation, and I fear that there will be consequences to the way in which the Scottish Government has handled the issue.

The regulation of grouse moors is not a new issue. The Government had time to legislate. Indeed, my colleague Peter Peacock raised the issue way back in 2010, during the passage of the Wildlife and Natural Environment (Scotland) Act 2011. It is not something that was raised only recently. However, it is a shame that behaviour regarding raptor persecution has not changed sufficiently in the intervening years. We are now licensing grouse moors because of that behaviour, and I hope that grouse moor owners realise that they are on notice. If illegal raptor persecution on grouse moors does not stop, I am sure that there will be further legislation.

I am not a fan of grouse moors. I cannot understand how someone gets pleasure from killing a living thing for sport. However, the bill is not about banning grouse moors; it is about putting them on notice. I was interested to learn from the evidence that we heard that other species, such as curlew, merlin and golden plover, thrive on grouse moors. There is something to be learned from the management of grouse moors about how we can provide habitats for those birds, to encourage their numbers and protect them in the future. A huge amount of knowledge on land and habitat management is held on those moors and we need to learn from that, regardless of our opinion of the purpose of grouse moors.

I have concerns about the amount of legislation that is coming through the Parliament, and this bill is no different. We are presided over by a Government that does not believe that it will ever lose power. Its back benchers do their masters’ bidding, and I, for one, will have a wry smile when they cry foul, in opposition, when a new Government uses the powers bequeathed by them to carry out policies that are not to their liking. A wise Government legislates as though it is its last day in office and in the full knowledge that it will be required to keep future Governments in check. That is not about the balance of power; it is about legislating wisely and ensuring that there are checks and balances in place.

There is, of course, a need for enabling legislation on occasion, and muirburn is a case in point. The science is not clear. Wildfires on degraded peat with a large fuel load release huge amounts of carbon, as we saw in the devastation in Cannich last year. Does muirburn have the potential to protect peat from wildfires? We must ask that question, because we need to manage the fuel loads to ensure that wildfires are kept in check. However, we do not know the science—we have to be honest about that. Therefore, it is necessary to have the ability to adapt regulations. When scientific knowledge evolves, the regulations need to evolve, too, but that needs scrutiny and the bill does not allow for that.

I hope that the bill will provide a step change in how grouse moors are managed. Raptors should no longer be persecuted and grouse moors should be playing their role in protecting nature and the environment. I very much hope that that is what comes from the bill.

Can you talk me through the process a wee bit more? You talked earlier about having a 12-year-old dog at home. Which dogs do you decide to keep and which do you decide to rehome? What is the process, and what does the rehoming centre do?

Earlier, you talked about a bond. Was it £200? Given that the dogs are, I suppose, like athletes, they will probably have more complex issues when they retire—with muscles and bones, for example. Does that put people off taking them and rehoming them? Are they more expensive to keep than a dog that would be just a pet all its life?

After last night, you never know. [Laughter.] We were here until late last night, which is the explanation for that comment.

We have talked about dogs retiring and being rehomed. Do all retired dogs go to a rehoming charity? George Stark, you mentioned that you used to work with a charity in Scotland, and you seemed concerned about that charity.

Is it the same for you, Daniel Alcorn?

Do they adapt quite easily? Does the rehoming centre have to do things to help them to adapt from coming in from kennels to going out to a home?