I appreciate that. Are we at the point at which we need a strategy to pull things together so that people know what will happen next and the process is accelerated, given the points that the finance secretary made about the Christie principles? The evidence that we got from University College London included mention of the importance of access to the arts for children and people who have mental health issues, and use of the arts to reduce physical decline in older people.

I look forward to seeing the strategy and I hope that it is produced soon, and not far into the future.

It is good to get on the record those points about change that could make a big difference. On your point about transport, lessons could also be learned from the work that has been done on transport in Glasgow and Strathclyde.

I have a follow-up question for Coree Brown Swan about that issue of different levels and relationships. You talked interestingly about relationships and agreements in Canada and the cross-border and intergovernmental work that is done there. Will you say a little more about that? That could be a way of strengthening the impact that we could make. I am thinking about intergovernmental work, but I am also focusing on interparliamentary work. Do you agree that there is a potential role for, say, the metro mayors to change the dynamic at the centre so that it stops thinking about running things and acknowledges multilevel Parliaments and Governments?

I, too, thank you for the submissions that we received in advance. It has given us a bit of depth when looking at the alternatives.

To broaden out the discussion about interparliamentary work, we briefly heard from Dr Anderson about horizontal relationships, which are not factored in or formalised, the scope for doing that in the UK and for learning from other countries. I am thinking about the horizontal relations between the UK Government and the devolved Governments and between those Governments and local government, so it is about acknowledging that multitier set of relationships.

To kick off, can you say a bit more about where we are on that, Dr Anderson? We have met the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee—the UK Parliament’s constitutional affairs team—and we have met the House of Lords team that is looking at constitutional change, and it feels as though there is an appetite for change. The issue is thinking through what priorities to push in terms of interparliamentary and intergovernmental relations, so that you do not miss out that potential radical change that could solve some of the challenges.

On one level, civil servants have longevity—they might be there longer than the politicians—but on another level, ministers get reshuffled and the composition of Parliaments change. Parliaments have greater stability through committees, as well as through cross-party links. It is interesting to consider how to make that work going forward.

Dr Brown Swan, you made some comments about the memorandums of understanding. Will you say a bit about how those have worked? We had not had them for that long before Covid came along. Are there any lessons from the past couple of years about what we need to accelerate to make them work better?

I think that we agree with that. [Laughter.] Whether we are talking about environmental and rural issues, economic issues or trade issues, we cannot be experts on all those areas. The question is how issues in those areas are flagged so that we achieve effective cross-parliamentary working. That is really important.

I thank the cabinet secretary for advance notice of his statement.

In 2020, the then Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Fair Work and Culture said that

“the decision to move Scotland’s Census to 2022”

was

“the only option in which there is confidence of producing high quality outputs”

to

deliver the benefits required by the people of Scotland.” —[Written Answers, 13 August 2020; S5W-31002.]

NRS were clear at the time that a response rate of at least 90 per cent was critical to achieving the delivery of high-quality census returns. The cabinet secretary now says not to worry, because the delayed and underperforming census will be sorted through sampling 53,000 members of the public. That is a subset, so how will it reflect the different challenges in different local communities? Will it not be less reliable and less accurate? How will the diversity of Scotland’s population be represented?

I agree with the cabinet secretary that we need to understand what went wrong, but how can we have any confidence in this Government’s promise to learn lessons from this census? There were challenges in and lessons from the 2011 census that needed to be addressed, such as around programme management, data collection, field operation, output content production and dissemination. What went wrong this time? With hard-working staff, I visited residents of a tower block where, just two weeks ago, there was a 57 per cent return rate. How will their needs be met? How many people on low incomes across Scotland, who thought that they had returned the census through digital means, should now be worried about being fined £1,000? Given the cost of living crisis, we need to know the answers to those questions.

I thank Graeme Dey for lodging his motion. Last month, we had an excellent debate that was prompted by Sharon Dowey, but the debate today gives us just a little more time to reflect on the impact of the conflict on people, not just as numbers or statistics.

For many people, the impact of war and serving on the front line stays with them throughout their lives. It is not necessarily something that they want to talk about because of its impact on their lives, on their mental and physical health and on their families. While we celebrate this 40th anniversary, we also need to remember that it is an incredibly painful anniversary for many people who lost a family member. The impact of the war lives with them today.

I want to reflect on the impact on veterans and how we support them, but I also want to reflect on the lives of the people who live on the Falkland Islands and on how we can retain and develop our links with them. It was striking to see from poppyscotland in its briefing that even now, 40 years on, veterans are coming forward for the first time to seek support; 40 years seems to be a long time to wait to ask, but it is critical that we support them.

As Graeme Dey said, the knowledge that we have of the impact on veterans’ lives is not new. Between 1916 and 1919 injured soldiers were treated in military psychiatric hospitals for post-traumatic stress disorder, as we would call it now, but then it was called shellshock. Recent estimates show that up to 325,000 British soldiers might have suffered from shellshock from the first world war. For too long there was stigma for the people who had to live with the aftermath of their service. Results of a 2018 research project from King’s College London estimated the rate of PTSD among United Kingdom veterans of all conflicts to be 7.4 per cent. The rate of PTSD among the public is 4 per cent. That is something to reflect on. The evidence showed that the rate was even higher for veterans who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan: for veterans who had been deployed to those conflicts the rate of PTSD was 9 per cent, and for those who had been deployed to war zones in combat roles the rate was even higher. Its was predicted that many would develop mental health conditions. As was highlighted in Graeme Dey’s speech, it is important that we act. There are on-going impacts on veterans who are living with the after-effects of PTSD and who need ongoing support now, wherever in Scotland they live.

It is very welcome that the motion acknowledges the work of poppyscotland in providing life-saving services. It offers financial, housing, mental health and employment support, among other support services. Veterans who come home from combat cannot be left behind by the country that they served, so we must challenge the stigma that they often face. Poppyscotland fills gaps where there is underprovision, and the work of its services is absolutely vital.

Across the road from Parliament is Scottish Veterans Residences’ Whitefoord house, which provides supported housing for former members of the UK armed forces who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Its work is invaluable.

I want, because it is important, to finish with a few words on the impact on the Falklands war on the islanders themselves, who were grateful for support, but who themselves needed to recover from stress and from the anxiety caused by armed conflict and unexploded bombs on their land.

There are many links between the Falkland Islands and Scotland—some of the first settlers there were from Scotland. Even the islands’ name came from Scots. We have strong ties to the islands through the Scots Guards.

I am told that the dialect that is spoken in the Falklands is a very unusual mix of Scots and Somerset English. That makes islanders somewhat unique. There are 60 nationalities now living there. The Falkland Islanders are keen to use the 40th anniversary not just to commemorate their freedom and to thank those who served in the conflict, but to show the world the modern Falklands. There are research institutes for Scottish, Antarctic and Mediterranean academics. There is an 80 per cent return rate to the islands among those who leave to go to university, and there is only 1 per cent unemployment. There is maybe something to learn from that.

The state is also important in supporting islanders. There is support for people to enable them to go on holiday because of the costs, and welfare rates are very good. University places are funded to enable students to come to study in the UK and then to go home.

As we celebrate the 40th anniversary, let us remember those who put their lives on the line, not just in the Falklands but in military conflicts since then. Let us also reflect on the aspirations of the islanders, and on how we can retain and develop our links with them. I welcome the commemorative services that will be held later this month. Let us think about how we develop our links, whether that is through the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association or through our academic research links. The 40th anniversary is a celebration: we need to think not only about the past but about how we will move forward together.

Will the member take an intervention?

I think that we all agree that this has been a good debate. There has been a lot of competition, a huge amount of pride for people’s areas and a real sense that more is to be done. Making new national parks for Scotland is unfinished business.

The debate has been a very long time coming. Although I welcome the support from the first speaker today, Lorna Slater, for another national park, I am keen to get more detail, and I would like to know that that support is not just for one national park and that we will have a strategy for national parks—plural—going forward.

A debate on this issue was the first debate that we had in the new Parliament, and I was proud at that time to announce our priorities and reassure MSPs that we would make swift progress on establishing our first two national parks. Listening to colleagues today has reminded me that there were a lot of different views at that time on what the nature of those parks could be, but we got on with it.

In particular, the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs and the Cairngorms national parks were long overdue, and I join others in thanking the APRS and the Scottish Campaign for National Parks for all the work that they did before then as well as for the work that they have done since—for more than a decade—to try and get successive SNP Governments to make progress. I am genuinely shocked that there have not been any new national parks, which is why I particularly welcome today’s debate. This has to be the start.

As colleagues across the chamber have said, the benefits of national parks are clear: celebrating and enhancing our wild scenery, ensuring effective management and protection and enabling forward planning. They are good for tourism; they attract visitors to spend money and, by doing so, boost our local economies. As Colin Smyth and Emma Harper said, they are particularly important in creating new opportunities for our young people. As others have said, they support rural development and act as exemplars for land management and the sustainable use of resources. National parks are also part of our national identity, and they can demonstrate that the stewardship of our natural environment is something to be proud of.