Chamber and committees

What we see is a strong inequality gradient, so this is a poverty-related issue. We are tackling poverty with at least one hand tied behind our backs. You are a general practitioner and you work in Glasgow, so you ought to understand the social determinants of health very well. People will struggle to see improvement if they have one Government that gives—a Government that pulls a lever to improve child poverty, such as the £20 Scottish child payment—and another Government that takes away, such as the Westminster Government of your party. Add to that two years of a pandemic and the impacts on the level of physical activity for children and young people, which we have detailed clearly—impacts such as a reduced level of active travel, not attending school, people living in poverty and an inability to access the outdoors and exercise. You can therefore see that things would undoubtedly get worse.

We have an obesogenic environment and we have to acknowledge, understand and work on that. Some good work is being done on a four-nations basis with the UK Government to tackle that obesogenic environment. The UK is bringing in policies around advertising before the watershed of foods that are high in fat, salt and sugar. I am very pleased about that—we have been asking about it for a long time.

We will work together where our policies are aligned, but we need to tackle the food environment as well as the opportunities for physical activity. Fundamentally, we will not solve the problem without tackling poverty.

I recall from my time as Minister for Children and Young People—

It is a good question, and a challenging one. One of the challenges related to that question is that holistic family support will definitely look different in different parts of the country. There is not a one-size-fits-all solution; delivering services to support families in an urban area requires a different approach to doing so in a more rural area. Holistic whole-family support is absolutely central to our aim in Scotland. It is central to keeping the Promise and it builds on work that has been done for years. For example, GIRFEC is very much about pulling together all of the people who need to be involved with the child and collaboration and prevention. Holistic family support will build on that.

The independent care review shone a light on some really difficult stories and it is impossible to ignore them, and we in Government and the Parliament have made a promise to our care-experienced children and young people that we will do more to support families to prevent children ever requiring the care of the state and needing to come into care.

We have a lot of investment in that area, but we have a long way to go before we get to that genuine holistic preventative family support. Too many families in Scotland reach crisis before support is there.

I have talked a lot this morning about universal services that are available to support families. However, we need to get better at identifying those families who are really struggling and need more support so that we can put in extra support before the family is in real trouble. Children live in families and families are vital.

Absolutely. I have loads to say. I will stop and let you guys ask some questions.

I have done my daily mile this morning.

Thank you. First, thank you for inviting me along to the committee to discuss the two provisional common frameworks. Officials in my team have been working with our counterparts in the UK Government, the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive to develop a four-nations approach to the delivery of the European Union repatriated functions on common areas of interest in the frameworks. The ministers of the four nations have agreed the content of the provisional frameworks, which were published on 2 December 2021.

Policy on organs, tissues, cells and blood safety and quality were and continue to be highly regulated at EU level. The purpose of the frameworks—and what they give Scotland, to respond to your question—is to ensure that, post EU exit, there is a joined-up approach across the UK to the continued maintenance of high standards of safety through the delivery of regulatory functions in these areas. That includes agreement as to how divergence will be managed within the UK, as well as governance and decision-making processes.

Throughout the process, we have committed to continuing to work collaboratively to develop common frameworks on the basis of consensus and in line with the agreed principles of the joint ministerial committee on EU negotiations as of October 2017. The provisional frameworks have been operational on an interim basis since the end of the transition period and they will remain provisional until the parliamentary scrutiny by all legislatures has been completed. I am happy to take questions.

I think that that question is probably best put to the two ministers who will be in front of you next. However, I must challenge your brass neck, frankly, given that we have spent so much of the past 10 or 11 years talking about the impact of austerity and welfare reform.

You called it the attainment gap, but its full name is the poverty-related attainment gap. You cannot close the poverty-related attainment gap without tackling poverty. We have detailed very carefully in just how many areas the party that you represent and support is undoing the work of the Scottish Government.

I am not saying that we are powerless, because we are not powerless in this situation. The investment in the 1,140 hours of free early learning and childcare, for example, is one of the many ways in which this Government has shown its commitment to and delivered for children and young people in this country. Laying the increase in the poverty-related attainment gap at the SNP Government’s door when the Westminster Government has increased the level of poverty in the country is a difficult one to take.

The evidence is that, of the four UK countries, Scotland has the lowest level of poverty. The policies that we are enacting are making a difference. We have more affordable housing, which is one of the ways in which we are making a difference to children and families. Food bank use is increasing in all the other countries in the UK; in Scotland, it is decreasing.

Our policies are having an impact, but we are attempting to solve the problem without switching off the tap of appalling and damaging policies that come from Westminster.

I will try not to talk for a long time—I will take your guidance on that, Ms Baillie.

I think that, for all of us, the pandemic has shone a light on inequalities, including pre-existing inequalities and systemic inequalities for black and minority ethnic communities globally. It is almost as if the scales fell from our eyes and we realised that, in some cases, we were perpetuating inequalities rather than tackling them.

The Scottish Government has a strong history of working with communities and ensuring that the voices of those with lived experience are at the heart of the development of policies with regard to children and young people. You may wish to ask Clare Haughey about this, but we have done a lot of work to ensure that children’s voices are right at the centre of policy development. However, although I think that we are making some efforts, I would not go so far as to say that we are having the impact yet that we desire.

I have a couple of points in response to Sue Webber’s questions. One of the key roles in this whole picture is that of school nurse. We are investing to increase the number of school nurses, and 250 extra school nurses will be recruited. Their role is very much to support school-age children and they play a vital role in improving their health and wellbeing. There is evidence that investing in school nurses can reduce the requirement for CAMHS, so we are continuing to invest in preventative work.

If I could pick up the issue of bikes that Sue Webber raised, we have a number of bike pilots going on around Scotland that are looking not just at getting bikes into the hands of children and young people but at the barriers that they might face to cycling. Do they have somewhere to store the bike? Do they have someone in their community who can fix the bike? Do they have access to cycle routes? In those projects we are also exploring ensuring access for disabled people, who are another group in society that faces health inequalities and is unable to participate in sport. We are determined to use the learning from those pilots. Clearly, Ms Webber is not aware of those pilots, so I will make sure that, in our follow-up letter to the committee, we give you some information about that. That will improve things.

The final thing that I want to mention is that sportscotland has a strategic partnership with the Scottish Association for Mental Health, which is a leading mental health charity, to consolidate the work across the board between sport and mental health and ensure that everything that we are doing is as impactful as it can be. A couple of things have started already. For example, more than 1,300 staff members of the Scottish sport workforce, including active schools co-ordinators, have attended a total of 110 sessions, including maintaining wellbeing reflection sessions, sessions on how to have a mental health conversation and mental health awareness workshops. All that work is important and it is vital for the preventative work. Sport on its own is good for your mental health, but we are trying to maximise the impact of sport by working smartly with partners to enhance the work that is going on, and I think that we are seeing some benefits.

I absolutely agree that we need to increase the investment. That is why we are doubling the investment in sport and physical activity in this parliamentary session, with a particular focus on inequalities. We want to reach those communities. We also want to reach women and girls, who we know are not participating in sport, and disabled people, and we want to see more people from black and minority ethnic communities participating in sport in Scotland. We recognise that that is an area in which inequalities have an impact.

We are doubling that investment and looking to improve participation and offer opportunities. Over the course of the pandemic, active schools co-ordinators have been redeployed into schools to lead physical activity, and physical education has been prioritised. Through that universal offer, there are ways that we can ensure that children and young people still have an opportunity to participate.

As we came out of the pandemic last year, there was investment in a summer of fun or a summer of activities. Active school co-ordinators made a real effort to support children and young people to be active. Again, that was targeted at more deprived communities.

There are discussions to be had—I have those discussions on a regular basis—about whether there is support for the school estate in all communities in Scotland, for example. There are arm’s-length trusts in some local authority areas, and there is a challenge in hanging on to the sporting estate in some of them. In some communities, that has been quite welcome. Sports clubs have stepped up, taken over the running of facilities, and improved how they meet the community’s needs. That is community empowerment in action, but that is more challenging in some communities.

There will not be a one-size-fits-all solution. We are looking at the issue very closely to ensure that whatever is done in each community meets the community’s needs and people are not left behind.

There is another thing that I need to work on, which is difficult because we still have Covid in this country and we are not out the other side of the pandemic yet. Despite the fact that we dipped under 6,000 cases yesterday, we still have reasonable levels of Covid in Scotland.

We need to ensure that children can access the school estate. We need to work towards that, and there are good pilot programmes. Last time I was at a meeting of this committee, I talked about some of the work that is going on in Dundee to ensure that children can access the school estate for sporting and cultural activities. Both have good evidence bases to support protection and mitigation against adverse childhood experiences. We need to work with our local authority colleagues to ensure that we are all absolutely focused in the same direction and are improving the situation for our children and young people.