Chamber and committees

To ask the Scottish Government when it will end the reported practice of children and young people being admitted to adult services for treatment, rather than a national health service specialist child and adolescent mental health ward. (S6O-03573)

Like other members, I start by thanking and paying tribute to those who work in our public services. As other members have said, they are the backbone of our society, and we should thank them for the work that they do. I never stop thanking them for the work that they did during the pandemic, which we should recognise every day in this Parliament.

During the SNP leadership election in 2023, the now Deputy First Minister famously—or, perhaps, for SNP members, infamously—said to the former First Minister:

“When you were transport minister, the trains were never on time; when you were justice minister, the police were strained to breaking point; and now as health minister, we’ve got record high waiting times.”

I have to say that I do not agree with the Deputy First Minister, because I do not think that she should have just blamed the former First Minister. This Government needs to take responsibility for that, which it has not, and today’s debate has demonstrated that, after 17 years, the Government finds it easy to get into the comfort zone of just blaming others.

The debate has probably not shone any light on where the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament genuinely could transform and reform our public services.

I will if there is time in hand.

I will come on to that in my speech. I welcomed what the health secretary said last week. I have been calling for that during the whole time that I have been in this Parliament. We need to have a national conversation about where our health service is. The fact that, every single week, as MSPs, we raise problems about our health service requires us to look in the mirror and consider why that is the case.

We should start by looking at Audit Scotland’s reports. It has highlighted workforce challenges, and has said:

“The Scottish Government needs to act quickly to deliver services differently.”

It has called on the Government to act on the workforce crises that our NHS has faced for too long.

Audit Scotland has said that the Scottish Government’s economic strategy “lacks ... political leadership”. There can be nothing more damning than Audit Scotland saying that politicians in the Government are not providing the leadership that we need to grow our economy and deliver our public services.

I want to touch on the recent declaration of a housing emergency by the Scottish Government. That is welcome. Each week, local authorities have declared housing emergencies—last week, it was Scottish Borders Council and, just this week, it was South Lanarkshire Council. However, we need a fundamental look at how we deliver housing in Scotland. I have consistently raised the issue of children living in temporary accommodation. The numbers on that are now through the roof, but ministers have not done things differently. They have put more and more pressure on local authorities at the same time as taking away funding from them. That has delivered the housing crisis, and ministers need to take responsibility for it.

The charitable sector has asked to be part of the solutions and has called on ministers to let it in, but we have not seen that happening, and we are now in a position in which we have another national emergency. We cannot simply allow every part of our public services to be given emergency status.

The cabinet secretary did not mention the need to reform our public services. Over the past 17 years, the SNP Government has neglected that opportunity, and the potential that exists for our public services to be improved has not been realised. Although the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care has launched a national conversation, we do not know which direction of travel ministers want to take.

At general question time earlier today, I raised the issue of children being placed in adult services. Over the past 25 years, we have not reformed our mental health services to deliver the levels of provision that we need. We say that we want parity of esteem between physical health and mental health, but we need to make sure that our mental health services are there to respond.

One area that is of interest, and which I hope that the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care is looking at, is the reform work that is being done in London in relation to the Metropolitan Police. I know from my casework—I am sure that every member knows this—that, when someone is in a mental health crisis or in distress, we send out Police Scotland to deal with that, which is a completely inappropriate response. The police will then take that person to an accident and emergency department, where they will sit with the police for hours and not get an outcome. They will be taken home, and they might have their meds reviewed. We need to see something different happening.

It is important that we reform services in such a way that the third sector can be used to deliver a different outcome. That is why, as a country, we need to look at the right care, right person model that is being delivered by the Met Police. That model delivers a different response and a different outcome.

We are marking 25 years of the Scottish Parliament being in existence. Over that time, collectively, with additional funding from the UK Government, we have doubled the amount of money that we have spent in our health service. I welcome that, and have always supported it. However, we have not doubled outcomes—in fact, in some cases, outcomes are going down. Has the cabinet secretary done any work to look at why we are not getting more out of our health services, even though we have put in more investment over decades?

In her statement, the Deputy First Minister mentioned the Ukrainian refugee support scheme—the FAST-CARE scheme. Reports suggest that the European Commission has offered that money and that it has been taken by countries—it has not been accounted for in the way that the Deputy First Minister outlined to Parliament. Will she confirm whether that money was not taken or was paid back? When will that money be accounted for? It is not quite clear from her statement how that will be achieved.

It is a broken record.

I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer. I recently held a round-table meeting in the Parliament, when I welcomed Jane and Dave Macdonnell, who told MSPs about the experience of their son, Harris. I thank the MSPs who attended that meeting, at which the Macdonnells bravely read out Harris’s essay, “Escape”, which captured his time being held in an adult service.

Harris said:

“When I became unwell, I was admitted to Huntlyburn Adult Psychiatric Unit, because there were no beds in Scotland available in any Young Person’s Unit. No other young person should have to go through the experience I had.

It was the wrong place for someone who was already mixed up, frightened and unsure of who they were. The environment heightened my anxiety. After treatment for my injuries I was cared for in the Young Person’s Unit in Edinburgh for 2 months and I began my recovery.”

Harris Macdonnell tragically took his own life in 2020.

I welcome the meeting that I recently managed to secure with Maree Todd. The family have had meetings with her, too. I also welcome the news of the fatal accident inquiry that is now to take place regarding Harris’s case.

However, the scandal of children and young people still being admitted to adult services has to end. It has gone on for too long. Will the Scottish Government now act and agree to introduce a ban on children and young people being admitted to adult services?

I might be pushing it.

The member will know of my interest in this area and of the work that I have done on it in my time in Parliament. In my region, the at-home nurse team in West Lothian, which provides intensive support to prevent children from being hospitalised, is a really important step forward.

I return to the subject of the different model that the Met has adopted. The Met commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, stated that the Met was failing Londoners

“first by sending police officers, not medical professionals, to those in mental health crisis, and expecting them to do their best in circumstances where they are not the right people to be dealing with a patient.”

In opening the debate for our party, my colleague and friend Liz Smith stated that the current failures in the Scottish economy were largely due to Scottish Government policy choices, from not passing on support to Scottish businesses, to its anti-growth agenda, which the Greens brought forward when they were at the heart of Government. I agree with that, and I believe that it is time for Scottish Government ministers to dedicate themselves to growing our Scottish economy to deliver the funding that our public services need.

Another factor, which ministers have not yet acknowledged or addressed, is the fact that we are seeing a shift in population from west to east. That is not being reported on but, in years to come, it will present significant challenges for our country. Edinburgh and the south-east of Scotland is the only part of our Scottish economy that is still growing and economically active. On top of that, 80 per cent of potential future growth in the Scottish population is predicted to be here in my region, in Edinburgh and the south-east.