Chamber and committees

I, too, want to congratulate Marie McNair on bringing this timely debate to the chamber ahead of action mesothelioma day 2023 next week. I also thank her for her kind words about my private member’s bill; I look forward to working with Marie McNair and other members of the Social Security and Social Justice Committee as the bill makes its way through the parliamentary process.

With around 200 new cases of asbestos-related cancer and mesothelioma a year in Scotland, the risks from asbestos have not gone away. Mesothelioma is a painful, incurable and terminal disease, and—as many members have done already—I want to pay tribute to the long-standing and on-going work of Clydebank Asbestos Group and the information and support that it continues to provide to people with asbestos-related conditions. I also pay tribute to Action on Asbestos and Asbestos Action. Collectively, those organisations have provided decades of critical support and help to people across Scotland who have suffered from what is predominantly a workplace disease.

Both Action on Asbestos and Asbestos Action have told me that their case load—the people seeking support for asbestos-related cancer—is increasingly female. They are nurses, care workers and hospital staff who have worked caring for our sick and dying friends and relatives for decades in buildings that are ridden with asbestos, and teachers who have worked in schools that have asbestos are also increasingly suffering. The disease can take up to 20 years to develop—long after people leave work—so most treatments rely simply on palliative care.

In 2020, the gendered experience of mesothelioma—GEMS—study found that the high-risk occupations for asbestos exposure differed entirely for men and women, and that so too did the experiences of explanations and support that was provided at the time of diagnosis. Gender roles also influenced how people coped with a diagnosis of mesothelioma. These are very real gender differences that our industrial injuries system has not taken account of.

That can be seen in the disparity in the applications for industrial injuries disablement benefit, which must be addressed urgently. The current benefit is gendered against women. For example, asbestos-related ovarian cancer—which the most common gynaecological cancer in UK women—is missing from the scheme. Even if we include cancers that affect men, the scheme includes only one fifth of the cancers that European schemes recognise.

I want to put on record my thanks to the charities that are supporting those who are affected by asbestos for their support for my Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill. The need for a new, powerful and independent council that puts workers at the heart of the new Scottish benefit—employment injury assistance—which can research the extent of mesothelioma and asbestos-related cancer in modern workplaces, is urgent, but so is the need for the council to have, at the heart of its purpose for that benefit, the driving mission to close the gender gap.

It is because asbestos is still found in many older buildings that it continues to put the communities and workforces in every one of our constituencies and regions at risk, and that is why we must continue to recognise it in our policy decisions. There are homes across the country that will need to be retrofitted for net zero that still have asbestos in their lofts, floor tiles and pipe insulation. Asbestos is in our local schools, which will need to be renovated or rebuilt and maintained. It is in the NHS estate, where hospitals will need to be rebuilt or maintained, and it is in everyday places where we live, work and study or go to to get treatment. We can still be exposed to asbestos.

Though asbestos was completely banned in 1999, the exposure risk remains, and there are real policy questions about managing and removing asbestos that we must tackle. I hope that we can heed calls and deliver the action that is required.

I want to touch on cruise ship stays, which have been omitted from the bill. I know that the Government is considering that in further discussions about the new deal. Why have cruise ship stays specifically been omitted, considering that the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities called for their inclusion, which is commonplace in other European cities?

I can see the attraction in the inclusion of cruise ships, because clearly some local authorities would benefit to a much greater extent from a cruise ship levy than they ever would from a levy on overnight stays on land. Barcelona has answered such questions. I appreciate that you are talking about different questions, but other areas have answered them. Has there been any work done with other places that have introduced a similar levy? As I said, areas of this country could benefit massively from it.

Thanks.

Mr St Clair—did I hear correctly from the convener that you are COSLA’s solicitor?

I am sorry. That is fine. I misheard that at the start. I was going to ask whether there is a view on the matter from COSLA.

Before my second question, which is about exemptions, I declare an interest as convener of the cross-party group on carers.

Under the bill, local authorities would be able to provide exemptions, and there is also provision for national exemptions. Why was it not considered appropriate to include at the outset an exemption for people who travel for hospital care or to provide care? I am thinking in particular about parents who stay in hotels to be close to their sick kids in hospital.

Okay. Thank you.

Across the country, patients and staff are crying out for help to get the treatment that they need or support to do their job; that is what overwhelms my email inbox and office phone line. I get email after email and call after call from people who are in pain, unable to work or unable to go about their daily life because they are on a waiting list with no end in sight. If that is what I get and what Carol Mochan gets, it is what every single MSP will be getting, yet the Government comes to the chamber and dismisses those concerns. Instead, it continues to blame the pandemic for record waiting times, delays to national treatment centres and an NHS workforce crisis.

It is more than two years on from the 2021 election, which is when the people of Cumbernauld and Kilsyth were promised a new treatment centre that we were told would help to clear the waiting lists, but the Government has not even mentioned the treatment centre in its amendment to the motion. In Cumbernauld, it will be June 2028 before the first patients are seen, and even that date is doubtful. The centre will not open in 2026, as was promised on those glossy election leaflets. The treatment centre was meant to help people who were on gynaecology, urology and ophthalmology waiting lists—waiting lists that the health board said had increased by 83 per cent before Covid. At the end of March this year, of those people who were on waiting lists for those specialisms, more than half of ophthalmology patients had been waiting more than 12 weeks, half of all gynaecology patients had waiting times of six months and a quarter of urology patients will wait more than a year.

Under Humza Yousaf, nothing was done to recover from the pandemic, and now we are left with waiting lists that are the First Minister’s legacy; this is his mess, and those are his waiting lists. Freedom of information requests that I have seen show two years that have simply been wasted. Damning internal documents put into doubt the new centre that is meant for Cumbernauld. Report after report has warned that NHS Lanarkshire is concerned about its

“inability to fund and recruit additional workforce”.

The health board is concerned about how it will attract staff to the town, and, worse still,

“due to workforce restrictions, the board may have to increase days of working per week.”

That means asking burnt-out NHS staff, who are already struggling, to increase their working week to cover for SNP Government failures. That is entirely unacceptable, but the First Minister knows that—he knows that he wasted two years while those waiting lists spiralled.

When the First Minister gave an update on his NHS recovery plan in October 2022, it scrubbed out the timescales for Cumbernauld’s new local centre, and, when the health board did the right thing and said that the opening date should be pushed back to 2028, his Government published its updates with no dates at all. That was a cover-up operation consisting of spin to deceive the people of Cumbernauld. That centre was meant to be worth £40 million in investment and more than £12 million annually, but now it goes without a mention in any Government documents. The First Minister did that knowing full well that, only two months earlier, officials had told him that those election commitments were at risk. They said that

“successful delivery appears to be unachievable”

and that

“the major issues do not appear to be manageable or resolvable”.

That advice was given to the First Minister.

The Government has let down the community of Cumbernauld, and, in today’s amendment, it washes its hands of the issue. Instead of talking about investment in the town, the amendment droned on about England and Wales. The SNP wants to be in power, but it never takes responsibility. Patients and staff are fed up with endless excuses and the Government’s constant blaming of someone else for its ineptitude. Only the Labour Party will properly fund our NHS, ensure that it is fighting fit and deliver the treatment centre for Cumbernauld that is so desperately needed.

Do you have any indication of why that variability exists? Is that because of structural issues, or is it purely about personnel issues?

Carol Calder touched on absence and talked about planned work. Is there any indication already that the sickness absence level in 2021-22, which I think was the highest on record, was purely pandemic driven or was driven by the burden that we put on council staff in asking them to do more with diminishing resources? Before you start that detailed work, is there any early indication of why sickness absence is at that level and whether you expect that to come down as we ease out of the pandemic?

Is it even going to be possible to deliver some of the changes that we are talking about with sickness absence levels as they are right now?