Chamber and committees

Thank you. You said how important bus services are to our communities, and in respect of achieving net zero, which is the focus of this committee. Does the Scottish Government feel that enough progress is being made in establishing municipal bus companies in Scotland? What further action can the Scottish Government take to support such a development? We know that there are funding pressures. You have itemised some of the amounts here, including £5 million of capital resource, but I do not know how far that goes when spread across all the local authorities. Are you content with the progress so far?

Finally, are you familiar with the term “bus deserts”? It is a term that we are hearing more and more. Communities are quite pleased that there is more opportunity for free bus travel, but that is no good to people if there is no bus to get on or it does not run at a time that suits them to get to work or school or to go about their daily business. Is that issue forming part of that on-going research and development? Is the term “bus deserts” worrying to you?

That is helpful.

Can you tell us a bit more about how the community bus fund will work in practice, what funds will be available this year and how the fund can help local authorities to establish municipal bus companies?

Thank you.

That is okay, convener—not a problem.

Cabinet secretary, you mentioned industry. I am keen to know whether Transport Scotland has undertaken any research or engaged with bus operators to establish whether the level of funding that is provided through the network support grant is sufficient to maintain and develop bus services across Scotland.

Thank you, convener. I am grateful to have the opportunity to be here in support of Karen McKeown, the petitioner. As everyone knows, Karen’s partner, Luke Henderson, died by suicide in December 2017, so this is a difficult time for her, her children and the wider family.

We meet at a time that can be difficult for many of our constituents. Many of us welcomed the opportunity to take part in a debate in Parliament on male suicide. That debate will now have to wait until the new year but the issues are of concern to all of us.

I am grateful to the committee because the session with the cabinet secretary and his officials has been great in the sense that he is not trying to put any spin on the matter. I know that he is sincere about the challenges. It was reassuring that, at the beginning, he said that, although there might be a different outlook about the process for getting there, he, the Government and Karen McKeown want the same thing.

To be frank, one suicide is one too many. We can examine the numbers and data, which is important—targets have a role to play because we have to monitor progress—but we are all here because we want to save lives.

Committee members have asked pertinent questions, including about the wider impact on families and communities. I have been scribbling some notes. We are rightly focused on what happens within the NHS—primary care, access to general practitioners, NHS 24, mental health harms and so on—but there is a wider piece of work to do. Therefore, it is good that the committee has kept the petition open.

I have made notes about employers and education because we all have to become more literate about mental health. To be frank, I struggle to signpost constituents to the right place as a regional MSP working across two different health boards and three different local authorities. Pilot schemes are welcome, but it can be difficult to know what the pathway is. All the MSPs sitting in this committee room might have different systems and procedures to which to point people.

Karen’s partner Luke had a history of mental illness. She has highlighted the point that she and Luke knew how to ask for help, so they did the right things. They reached out many times and still could not get the help that they needed. I welcome the work that is in the pipeline for next year and do not doubt the good intentions of the cabinet secretary and the Government but we have serious problems with resourcing and workforce, of which the committee is well aware.

I want to pay tribute to the workforce because what I am seeing increasingly is a workforce that is struggling, and that is having an impact on their mental health and wellbeing. We have to be honest about that.

The cabinet secretary is absolutely right and it is good to hear that he can take a wider view because of his background in justice and so on. Karen McKeown and I met the former Minister for Mental Health, Sport and Wellbeing after I raised this tragic case with the First Minister a number of years ago, and we talked about some of the issues that Paul Sweeney has gone into today, such as drug disorders and alcohol. We have not talked about alcohol but it is a big issue. Clare Haughey, who was the minister at the time and had been a mental health professional, told us that the strand of work was for her public health colleague and she was the mental health minister. We must get away from that siloed thinking, and we are seeing some progress on that.

The petition is so important because the constructive challenge needs to continue, and I am sure that the cabinet secretary would welcome that. We do not yet have answers about resourcing and how we are going to deliver on the good intentions. That is what Karen McKeown talks about in the petition. Without going into detail about individual constituents and others in different parts of Scotland, I know people who, this week, phoned their general practitioner to try to get an appointment to discuss their mental health and the fact that they are struggling dozens of times, even over a hundred times, in two days. Colleagues have previously raised that issue with the cabinet secretary in the chamber and it is the reality. How do we close the gap between what we want people to think is on offer for them to have hope and know that they are not alone and the reality of the waiting times that some people experience? I have lots of statistics here about people in Lanarkshire, for example, who are waiting for several months, if not years, for psychological therapy. We need to go into granular detail about how we are going to do that.

Again, like everyone else, I pay tribute to Karen McKeown. I know that she is listening today because I am looking at my phone and I see that she has been messaging me. This is a difficult time for families with lived experience, but I hope that they know that we, as a Parliament, are taking the issue seriously.

Good morning, convener. I am grateful to the committee for the opportunity to speak about the petition again. I will avoid repeating points that I have made previously.

I join the convener in thanking Ann and Gerry Stark, who are in the public gallery. I thank Ann for lodging the petition and for all the work that she has done to get to this point. They have raised difficult issues that many people cannot even face talking about, but the committee has had a number of supportive submissions from individuals who have had similar experiences.

Committee members know what the petition seeks to do. On the additional information that the committee has had since we last met, the information from colleagues in England is really important, particularly the submission from the coroner. We can see that there is a different approach in other parts of the UK, and divergence can be a good thing. When we have families telling us that there are serious issues about consent, proportionality and dignity for the deceased and their families, we have a duty to look at those issues. I really welcome the additional work by the committee, and I think that the submissions that have been received are helpful.

I still have concerns about the resource and workforce pressures that are raised in the submission from the Royal College of Pathologists. Those issues go beyond this petition, and they merit further explanation. I would certainly like to hear more from the Scottish Government.

To recap, we are here because of Ann and Gerry, who are the parents of Richard Stark. Richard was only 25 when he died in June 2019. It was a sudden and unexpected death. The committee might recall that Ann and Gerry had to fight for a very long time to get answers. Richard’s death certificate was changed about 18 months after he passed away, with the cause of death changed to being a suspected seizure.

Committee members will also be aware that the post mortem was very invasive. I know that this is not pleasant to hear, but, in the committee’s papers, there are details about Richard’s brain, tongue and other body parts being removed.

We have heard evidence about the use of scanners, particularly in different authorities in England. There are resource implications and costs to that, but we have heard how effective those scanners can be.

I am aware that the committee has been given a lot of information, but last week you got an email with a link to a video produced by professors at the University of Leicester. If you have not had a chance to look at that video—I think that it is only three minutes long—I would refer you to it.

On the aspect of the petition that relates to tissue and consent and the role of the next of kin, it should never take a family several months to find out what has happened to their loved one after death. In this case, we are talking about 65 tissue samples, and Ann had to fight the system to have those samples returned. This is going on and people are not talking about it—often because they do not know. Ann knew about it only because she was asking questions. That tells the committee that there are a lot of unknowns.

As you can imagine, it is difficult for Ann and Gerry to sit here today, so I do not want to add much more other than to say that we appreciate the work that the committee has done so far. Ann has felt voiceless in the whole process. The committee has been the only forum in which these issues could be brought into the public arena, so we really welcome the work that has been done. We note that the chief coroner has highlighted a number of points, and I believe that there has been an offer to connect the committee with senior coroners who have experience of the scanning technology. It would be very worth while to pursue that.

I am happy to stop there, convener. Thank you.

Thank you. That is helpful. As the convener explained, we will go into those subject areas.

I will pick up on transport. You will be aware that, pre-pandemic, in Scotland our annual car kilometres were increasing. We have a target of 20 per cent reduction in car demand, but the Climate Change Committee is very clear that there needs to be a paradigm shift if we are to achieve that. I note that in the recommendations in your report you link the target with Scottish Government documents on the national planning framework and the strategic transport projects review. You are clearly looking for more alignment with other strategies and programmes.

What policies does the Climate Change Committee think that the Scottish Government needs to use to support alternatives to car use and to discourage car use? We still have a long way to go to get that modal shift to sustainable public transport and active travel. I know that you do not want to make policy recommendations to the Government, but it feels as though we are lacking in courage, both in the Government and in Parliament, to make some of those tough decisions. It will not all be popular. If you give us a steer on some of the carrots and sticks that could be considered, that would be helpful.

Can we stick with buses? You have made me think about our local situation in Hamilton, where the express bus service into the centre of Glasgow, which was really popular with students going to university or college, for example, was taken away during the pandemic and we do not have it back yet. In debates on this topic in the chamber, colleagues have talked about public transport deserts in their communities, and it can be very challenging in rural areas. It is great that more people have access to free bus passes, but if they do not have services, that is pretty useless.

Given the target to reduce car kilometres by 20 per cent by the end of the decade, do we need to see more action in that space, with bus services and integrated public transport that actually work for people’s real lives and timetables, whether they involve university, education, work, hospital appointments, socialising, shopping or whatever? A lot of people say that it is frustrating and difficult to get around, which is why they cannot give up using a private car.

What more could be done to resource public transport? The report from your committee talks about continuing the Covid-19 pandemic support for operators and local transport authorities. What is missing in that space, Professor Bell?