Chamber and committees

Will the member accept an intervention?

It is a privilege to serve as a member of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, and I invite colleagues and the public to tune in on a Tuesday morning and follow our debates.

I do not know what I was expecting from today’s debate. I know that it is a challenge when there is so much that we can say and so many topics to cover. I feel that members have tried, but we have heard a few soundbites and a bit of spin. I will try hard to avoid that, because on the committee we are really collaborative. There is a lot of different experience among the committee members—we have a former cabinet secretary, and former and sitting councillors, and we try to leave our party politics at the door.

To be honest, in the crisis that we face around the world, with the climate and nature emergency, none of us can afford to be proud—we have to take good ideas wherever we find them. Just yesterday, we saw the youngest-ever petitioner to the Scottish Parliament, who is seven years old. He came here with a brilliant idea—I think that he met the First Minister as well—and he put a smile on people’s faces.

We should be proud that we are, I think, an open and listening Parliament. Whether you are seven or 77, if you have a good idea, you can drop the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee clerks a line. I am sure that they will thank me for saying that, but we genuinely want to hear good ideas.

We also want to work with Government, whether that is the Scottish Government, the UK Government or local government. The committee currently has a big inquiry that is looking at the role of local government in achieving net zero, particularly in relation to finance. I was going to intervene on my colleague Liam Kerr when he talked about the two Governments and say that we must not forget local government, which is really important to net zero. We need to hear more from our colleagues across Scotland’s local authorities.

That is not what I had written down in my notes at all—those are just my reflections on what I have heard so far. When you are on the back benches, you get a bit looser in your style of speaking.

I do not think that any of us are under any illusion about the scale of the challenge that we face. It was a real privilege to play a very small part in COP26 and to attend it with colleagues. Some progress has been made, but we know that it is not enough. Colleagues who were involved in the final day of the COP26 deliberations said that COP27 has already started. That is what we try to do in the committees: we try to look to the future.

I go back to local government, because I want to talk about energy. When Liam Kerr was speaking earlier on, I was going to suggest that we need to look more closely at what is happening in local government. Just last week—I am checking my notes—I read some really encouraging news from North Ayrshire Council about its plans relating to solar farms and other renewable projects. It says that its solar and wind turbine projects could potentially generate 277 per cent of North Ayrshire’s future energy demand. That would make North Ayrshire a net exporter of excess renewable energy to help to decarbonise electricity.

Some really good, innovative stuff is happening out there, but we have heard from local government in our inquiry so far that resources are an issue. We are therefore looking at what other means of finance exist for local government. We all need to be open minded on that.

I commend to members a really good report by Unison, about decarbonising our public services, which was published during COP26. We need to look at that, too.

When I spoke for Scottish Labour on the front bench just before COP26, I said in an amendment that we must

“take all necessary steps to secure a just transition to net zero in Scotland, ensuring that no individual, family or community is left behind.”

That is a good note to end on.

I thank the committee for having me back. I am grateful for the work that has been done and the submissions that have been made to the committee, and I welcome much of what the cabinet secretary has said. I had a brief chat with Karen McKeown this morning—we are in regular contact—and she is really grateful for the attention that the committee is paying to the petition. She knows that you will understand the issues because of your local experience in helping constituents.

I was struck by some of the comments in the SAMH response. One that stands out is:

“recovering and renewing the previous system will not be good enough.”

That is absolutely correct. The Royal College of Psychiatrists has also made some important points. It talks about needing a “radical refresh” of the current mental health strategy and, importantly, about the experience of the workforce, who are already stretched and exhausted. We know that burn-out is a real issue for clinicians and people on the front line in healthcare roles.

I hope that the petition will be kept open and that we will do everything possible to ensure that people do not fall through the gaps. The Government clearly has good intentions, but there are legitimate questions about the additional resource and how it will be used. I go back to the point, which SAMH makes eloquently, that we have to do more than just recover and renew the system. We know that it was far from perfect and, sadly, too many people have fallen into crisis, or deeper into crisis, For many, that has resulted in them losing their lives. We know that suicide can be prevented.

I am here to again offer my support to my very courageous constituent Karen McKeown. Karen has been a real rock to many other people who have found themselves in a similar dark place. Nothing will ever make up for her loss. Karen will not mind me saying that, following Luke’s death, it has been an on-going battle for her and her young children to get support. Karen’s son has autism and her daughter has required on-going support. I want to be honest with the committee, because I represent people who rely on NHS Lanarkshire, that the support is not always there—the waiting times are excruciating. As members know, that is not unique to Lanarkshire.

We have to keep everything on the table. We have to let people right across Scotland know that there is no complacency on the issue. People’s lives are worth more than any amount of money. The points that Karen has made about ensuring that the money and resources get to the right places are important, and we must continue to listen to lived experience, including that of many of the workforce, who have their own mental health issues.

I know that the committee gets a lot of petitions, so I am grateful to you for the time that you have given to this one, which is relevant to everyone in Scotland. I know that, no matter what happens next, Karen will continue to fight to ensure that the system improves so that no one falls through the gaps. The convener read out the statistics. Karen is beavering away with her own freedom-of-information requests, but we know that, when people present at A and E and do not get the help that they need, it is an appalling missed opportunity. There is space to provide more specialist support in order to try to ensure that we have a trauma-informed support response across the board. Thank you for listening.

Several times in his speech, the minister talked about “visitors”. He did not talk about family care givers. Alex Cole-Hamilton has recognised the important contribution of people such as Campbell Duke and Natasha Hamilton, who are in the building today, listening to every word. They are not visitors—they are family care givers. Does Alex Cole-Hamilton agree?

Will the member take an intervention?

Is the clinical advice telling the Government to delay Anne’s law? If not, why is it not happening?

Will the minister give way?

Will the minister give way?

Will the minister take an intervention on that point?

In closing this short but hugely important debate on behalf of Scottish Labour, I thank everyone who has taken part and those who are listening, including Campbell Duke and Natasha Hamilton, who are in the Parliament building with other members of the Care Home Relatives Scotland group. Natasha’s petition is 97 signatures short of 100,000, so I ask those who have plugged it but have not signed it yet to please do so and to share it on social media.

I will be clear: the debate is not about the principles of Anne’s law, nor is it about the case for Anne’s law. It is about the when of Anne’s law, and what we have not heard from the minister is a date. Evelyn Tweed thanked the minister for all his hard work, but we have been here before. I will come on to speak about the debate that we had back in 2020, when we all agreed the principle of Anne’s law.

Today is about delivering on a promise to give effect to Anne’s law. We heard about the SNP manifesto, but this is not about one manifesto. Sue Webber and others are correct that Anne’s law has cross-party support—we are all on the same page.

I thank the former health secretary, Jeane Freeman, who was very accessible and approachable and who had regular meetings with colleagues from across the parties. In the debate in 2020, she recognised the unintended consequences of the lockdowns and she talked about the importance of touch. On the same day, she also gave evidence to the COVID-19 Committee. That gave people hope that things would change and that we were going to use the tools that Jackie Baillie and others have talked about, such as the use of PPE, vaccines and testing. We have all those tools, but if the minister were to look at his own figures on the Scottish Government website, he would see that we are going backwards. More care homes have put in place restrictions. This week, a higher number of care homes than last week are allowing only essential and outdoor visits. Has the minister seen the Scottish weather? We need to look at that issue.

We cannot be complacent. We are hearing loud and clear from our constituents and from the Care Home Relatives Scotland group that people living in care homes are being treated differently from the rest of society.

Jennifer Dick’s mum lives in a care home in Edinburgh. The care home put in additional restrictions from 21 February, which have been extended to 15 March. When Jennifer asked if she could take her mum, who had tested negative for Covid, on a short drive, or even back to her house for a visit, the manager said no. I believe that the restrictions will now be in place until 22 March.

When the minister meets the group tomorrow, I hope that he will discuss those matters. I hope that he will also apologise to Campbell Duke and Natasha Hamilton, and to the others who are listening today. It is great to hear tributes from Gillian Mackay and others about the importance of the motion and the principles, but anyone who votes for the Government amendment today will erase Anne Duke from the motion.

The motion amplifies the voices of the people who are asking us to get it right. That is not my opinion, or that of Jackie Baillie, Alex Cole-Hamilton or anyone in the chamber; it is what the group, which does not feel listened to, has been saying.

For new members, I point out that, in October 2020, a motion was lodged in my name that recognised the importance of family caregivers—I say to the minister that we did not talk about visitors; we talked about caregivers. At that point, 200 days had passed, and Jackie Baillie is right to say that we are now two years down the line.

In that debate, we all agreed the principles, yet we do not have Anne’s law. We even paid tribute to politicians in Ontario for legislation that they were progressing—the More Than a Visitor Act (Caregiving in Congregate Care Settings), 2020.

I think that the Tory amendment today is correct, and we will be able to support it.

I want to talk about two women: Hollie, who is 37; and Alice Hall, who is 97. Holly has a learning disability and lives in a care home. She wrote to the minister at the end of January, I believe, saying:

“It feels like I’m back to square one again. It feels like I’m a prisoner again.”

She feels forgotten. Alice knows that her time on this earth is limited. Her daughter, Sheila, said:

“after 2 long years, 3 vaccines, surviving Covid ... surviving isolation ... my mum needs to have the same freedoms as everyone else in Scotland.”

The situation is urgent, as my colleague Paul O’Kane conveyed. We need to stop the dithering and discrimination. On behalf of care home relatives Scotland, I say to the minister: please bring back to our care homes the love, hope and joy that are missing. People want joy; they want hope. People living in care homes—they are living in their own homes, as has been rightly said—do not deserve to be treated differently.

Yes, we should protect people in care homes using all the infection prevention and control tools that we have, but the Government must stop making excuses. I beg ministers just to get on and take this action on behalf of Anne’s family and all the other families who are living through the situation today.