Chamber and committees

I am a member of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and it occurred to me that we did the RevivR training during committee one morning. Will the cabinet secretary consider whether it would be worth rolling that out to other MSPs on the Parliament campus?

Thanks for letting me back in, convener.

The National Rural Health Commissioner in Australia listens to people and advocates for them so that their voices are heard. A new report has made it pretty clear that some people have been campaigning for decades. What are your thoughts on how firm the role of advocacy and listening to people needs to be in a patient safety commissioner?

Good morning. I am interested in the remit of the patient safety commissioner for Scotland, and in comparing it with the English commissioner’s remit. We have lots of commissioners in Scotland. According to my notes we have, for example, an equalities and older persons commissioner, a veterans commissioner and the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland. I am interested in how the proposed role would work with all the other commissioners and how it would be different.

I have another quick question about the remit. The committee has been looking at mesh harm and issues to do with sodium valproate. That work could be expanded. I am interested to hear your opinion on whether the proposed patient safety commissioner should look at wider issues, beyond medicines and medical devices. Our bill talks about forensic medical services, but I have concerns about rural issues, including the safety of a population that has, in engaging with the health service, longer distances to travel than people in urban settings have to travel.

The Migration Advisory Committee stated that there is a failure to acknowledge that social care workers are skilled. If that was switched around and they were considered to be skilled workers, we might be able to recruit staff from Europe.

Could the minister give an indication of how much of the social care workforce is unionised and what benefits he thinks the national care service will bring in terms of pay, conditions and sectoral bargaining?

I congratulate my colleague Siobhian Brown on securing the debate. I know that she is doing much work on youth vaping. She laid out perfectly the issues around youth vaping, as Pauline McNeill described. I thank Asthma + Lung UK Scotland and ASH Scotland for their briefings ahead of the debate and for their work to improve lung health or respiratory health in Scotland.

This debate is about youth vaping. I am the co-convener of the lung health cross-party group and a registered nurse, so I am interested in the impact of vaping on lung health, especially given the very serious health concerns that have been expressed by medical experts and echoed around the chamber this evening.

I have amended and scored out loads of my speech because colleagues have covered the information already, but it is worth repeating that nicotine is the primary addictive component of tobacco cigarettes. Vapes do not burn tobacco and do not produce tar or carbon monoxide, which are two of the most damaging elements to health in tobacco smoke, but we know that e-cigarette use can have negative effects on respiratory health. One of my concerns is the nicotine in e-cigarettes and vapes. Research has shown that young people using e-cigarettes are twice as likely to suffer from a chronic cough than non-users.

The member mentioned flavours that are approved for food but, just because something is approved for food does not mean that it is okay to go into people’s lungs. Is that correct?

There is just a one-word answer to that and that is yes. We should absolutely be doing research into and paying attention to substances that people are taking into lungs, which may be meant for food colouring, as came up earlier.

Kenneth Gibson spoke about the disturbance of gas exchange in the lungs and lung inflammation, but it is worth repeating that. Lung damage due to vaping is referred to as e-cigarette or vaping associated lung injury—EVALI. A public health investigation in Illinois and Wisconsin in the US found that the median age of patients suffering from EVALI was 21, but we have heard from colleagues across the chamber that younger people are vaping now.

Despite what the industry may say, nicotine can have detrimental health effects. We know that adolescents are more vulnerable to nicotine dependency than adults. Chronic nicotine exposure can impact brain development. That has been mentioned already but is worth repeating. The lung health cross-party group, which Alexander Stewart and I co-convene, had Dr Jonathan Coutts, who is a paediatric respiratory physician, present us with the evidence of his research about nicotine on child brain development. I refer members to the recording of the meeting. It is in the lung health CPG September minutes on the Parliament website. The impact on brain development that was presented shows that it can contribute to cognitive and attention deficit conditions and worsen mood disorders. That is pretty shocking. We also heard about the effects on mental health.

In addition to the health impact of vaping, particularly on young people, I am concerned about the way in which the vaping and tobacco industry is targeting young people, as others have described.

I will skip to the end of my speech and ask the Government what we can do to tighten the rules on advertising and promoting vaping products. It is a concern that these big bright colours are front and centre in our retail outlets and supermarkets.

Again, I thank Siobhian Brown for bringing the debate to the chamber and I share the concerns that have been raised by everybody about the health impacts of vaping on our young people in Scotland.

Will the member take an intervention?