Chamber and committees

I will pick up on some of the questions about the patient safety commissioner’s remit. Baroness Cumberlege’s report wanted the commissioner to look at medicines and medical devices, which is what the commissioner in England is doing, but the remit here seems to be broader. Thinking about all the people who are involved in promoting safe patient care, there is a bit of a crossover that I am worried about. I am interested in how the panel feels about widening the remit to enable the patient safety commissioner to hear from people who have had poor experiences.

My question might be more relevant for the next panel of witnesses. I am thinking about the system for reporting incidents, which is perceived as punitive by healthcare staff. It is better to deal with near misses than to wait for a significant adverse event. My background is 30 years of operating room nursing. It is highly technical. It is very unsafe—not in the sense of the practice, but there are sometimes so many barriers, and it is a team-driven environment. Errors are not intended, but the Swiss cheese model comes to mind when we talk about patient safety.

I am interested in hearing your thoughts about how we need to encourage the reporting of incidents so that we can put effective measures in place to prevent them and about how that would support a patient safety commissioner’s work to look at encouraging reporting so that we can develop safer methods.

I welcome the opportunity to ask about levelling up in the chamber. It seems that one of the UK Government’s central tenets is that its fund should bypass the Scottish Parliament entirely and avoid the inconvenience of democratic oversight. That is in contrast with what happened with decades of European Union structural funding, which was allocated through co-ordination between the European Commission, the Scottish Government and local communities, and was delivered through the LEADER programme, for example. Does the minister share my concern that Westminster has encroached on devolved responsibilities and failed to engage with communities directly?

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?

One of the things that we need to be cognisant of in the chamber is the need to use respectful language that is carefully constructed to convey respect for our colleagues. Do you agree that we need to use respectful language in the chamber?

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.

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.

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?

Will the member take an intervention?

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.