Chamber and committees

I have two issues with regard to the first area we are looking at—patient experience. The cabinet secretary is well aware that I have raised the issue of vaccination services incessantly since 2022, because the general practitioner contract was taken away from GPs and centralised in 2018. Not only has that been a complete catastrophe in the Highlands; as the cabinet secretary knows, it is also believed to have directly led to the death of an infant—not in my constituency, but in the Highlands—because the mother did not get notice of the necessary vaccine for the pertussis virus, or whooping cough, at the right time.

Cabinet secretary, despite my raising that matter with you and the First Minister, and despite the fact that, as I understand it, you have now said that the contract should be returned to GPs, it still has not been. Therefore, people from all over the Highlands have to travel to Inverness. It is sometimes a journey that they cannot make themselves, because of infirmity, because they lack access to a car or other means of transport or because they have to get their parent or friend to take time off work. Is centralisation not completely wrong? Why did the Scottish Government allow it to happen in the first place? When will such services be restored to GPs?

I raise a question of which I have given notice to the cabinet secretary regarding the pause on capital funding for new primary care, and the particular example, in my constituency, of the Culloden medical practice, which has been seeking to move to new purpose-built premises for many years. It is the only practice in the Highlands that has had to close its books to new patients, simply because of the huge pressure of the number of patients on its list. I know that similar pressures might well exist in other parts of Scotland—most of the parts of Midlothian, for example—so this is not only about my constituency, but about a wider issue.

The practice has a tough decision to make. Does it wait for the new premises that it really needs or go for a temporary solution of portakabins, which will cost £300,000 pounds? It does not know, because it does not know when the pause will be lifted. Not only is the pause preventing the service to people in my constituency, who cannot get into the practice, but the practice itself is hamstrung, because it is not armed with information to enable it to make an informed, rational decision.

Cabinet secretary, I suggest that the money can easily be found from the public sector heat decarbonisation fund of £200 million, through which, in one case, the Scottish Government saw fit to spend an estimated £3,560,000 on a building worth £275,000—so, 13 times more than the building’s value. Instead of throwing money away on such ridiculous, preposterous expenditure, it would be better to spend it on the health service, which is really important to people’s lives in Scotland right now.

It will be an announcement. It is another prequel—part of a never-ending process.

Fair enough.

When can we expect the infection prevention and control strategy to be published?

With regard to the national fund element of the petition—the first of the three asks of the petition—I note that, the previous time this matter came before us, members suggested that we ask the Scottish Government about the upshot of its work with the UK Government to come up with a solution. In response to that, there has been a submission from the new cabinet secretary, who says that the Scottish Government is continuing to work with the UK Government. In that regard, I note that there is a new Secretary of State for Scotland.

I strongly believe that it is no use Scotland blaming London and London blaming Scotland. The people in the middle, some of whom are here today, are the ones who are suffering—in some cases, from the threat of bankruptcy—and are under severe pressure. I think that the blame-passing approach is just not good enough. We have a new Cabinet Secretary for Housing and a new Secretary of State for Scotland—Màiri McAllan and Douglas Alexander, respectively. Why do they not just meet and come up with a solution? The current situation cannot go on for ever. The longer it continues, the more it brings into disrepute the Scottish Government and the UK Government, which does nobody any good.

I acknowledge that time is short, but we still have about two thirds of a year to go, and we should try to use that time as best we can. I will explain to those members of the public who are here and have a direct interest in the matter that this committee does not have any budget; all that we can do is put pressure on the Governments to do the right thing. That is our job, and I think that we should invite the cabinet secretary to confirm that she will seek a meeting with her counterparts in the UK Government and not only come up with a solution but explain why people in Basildon have had money handed out to them while people in Scotland have not. She should also explain why the money is being restricted to monitoring and surveys and not to actual repair work. None of those questions has been answered at all.

I appreciate the constraints on the committee, and I will not be pleading for every petition to be kept open, for the reasons that you correctly set out, convener. However, in relation to this petition, a lot of human misery has been caused to people by RAAC through no fault whatsoever of their own. If I were one of the people watching the meeting today, I would be pretty disgusted if passing the buck was allowed to happen.

I hope that members will agree that there is more that could be done. The Governments talk all the time about working together positively, do they not? Well, let us see the proof. That is my suggestion.

It is par for the course, convener.

I will take that as a compliment, convener.

Mary Ramsay submitted a petition in May 2019—six years ago—asking for some kind of adequate provision for essential tremor. I understand that she has been ably assisted by Rhoda Grant MSP, so I have not been acting for her personally. Over that time, Rhoda has been persistent, as has the petitioner, who has lodged no fewer than six submissions arguing that there should be ultrasound capacity in Scotland to provide a national service. There is no such capacity, despite the fact that, in 2018, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence issued guidance recommending that there should be. For quite a while, Covid was used as an argument for not doing anything, and, since then, NHS Scotland’s national services division has repeatedly argued that there is not enough money to do it.

The petitioner estimates that 100,000 people in Scotland suffer from essential tremor, which is a serious neurological condition. However, there seems to be no treatment in Scotland, despite the fact that NICE has recommended that there should be. Moreover, there is treatment in England. I am told that the relevant ultrasound equipment exists in Liverpool and London—it may exist in more places now, as that information is a couple of years old. That means that patients from Scotland who are referred for treatment have to travel to Liverpool or London. Perhaps your officials can come back to me with a specific number for how much that costs, cabinet secretary, because that money is completely wasted and could have been used to provide a service in Scotland much more cheaply.

I put it to you, cabinet secretary, that this is manifestly a pretty farcical failure. The responses from the Scottish Government that we have had have just said, “Well, there is no money and we are not really doing anything,” despite what the NICE guidelines say.

Is this not a manifest failure to put in place proper provision, as has been done in England, for a large number of people in Scotland who suffer from a debilitating neurological condition?

I will move on to the first question. How does the cabinet secretary see the NHS’s ability to recover from the problems of Covid, which were, plainly, all-engulfing? What is his personal commentary on how successful—or otherwise—the NHS has been in restoring the full provision of services to patients across Scotland?

That will happen next February, then. Can people wait until then?