Chamber and committees

Good morning. I recognise a lot of what has been said about safety, particularly for women. Something that concerned me last year was reports in the media that there has been a consistent trend of girls assaulting other girls on trains, particularly in the west of Scotland, with the British Transport Police describing it as a consistent trend. Minister, what discussions have you had with the BTP in that regard?

Mick Hogg from RMT Scotland was very complimentary last week about his early talks with you, minister. He also talked about taking tougher action on known perpetrators of antisocial behaviour. I do not think that banning young girls from the trains would be the answer—I think that the cohort tends to be between 12 and 16. However, is work going on more widely in schools and through youth engagement to find out what is at the root of that antisocial behaviour, which is difficult for passengers and for staff?

It has been more than 140 days since NHS Lanarkshire hit the panic button and declared a code black. None of us wants that to be the new normal for NHS patients and workers. Can the First Minister reassure my constituents and people across Scotland that the test and protect transition plan will not make achieving NHS recovery any harder? Can she indicate when NHS Lanarkshire is expected to de-escalate from code black?

Will the member accept an intervention?

Will the member take 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.

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?