Chamber and committees

Oh dear.

Thank you, Presiding Officer.

I am really interested in the subject. As a type 1 diabetic, I feel that if a gene could be put into my body to allow my pancreas to produce insulin, that would be worth supporting. I reiterate, however, that it is about undertaking proper, measured research and then taking technology forward. We need to look at everything appropriately.

I am interested to hear the sentiments of many across the United Kingdom, including NFU Scotland and the NFU in England and Wales. The NFU has stated its opposition to the UK Government’s preferred option of not requiring labelling for precision-bred products; the UK Government’s approach would mean that consumers will have absolutely no way of knowing which products are genetically modified, and yet it remains on course to implement that change. Last week, I had a similar discussion with witnesses from Food Standards Scotland during a meeting of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee. FSS is interested in looking at how the product will be labelled as all this goes forward.

I am conscious of time, Presiding Officer. We need to ensure that the Scottish Government, and stakeholders in Scotland, are involved. I am interested in the impact assessment that the UK Government has produced, but I do not have time to talk about it today. Gene editing is a really important and emotive issue. If it is pursued, it must be pursued properly, and the UK Government’s Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill must not impact on devolution. We need to use the best science and evidence.

NPF4 provides needed flexibility in planning, which will better enable local authorities and communities to deal with eyesore, vacant, abandoned and derelict buildings, which, evidence shows, have a negative impact on the wellbeing of communities. The minister will be aware of my campaigning for buildings in South Scotland, such as the George hotel in Stranraer, the Central hotel in Annan, the N Peal building in Hawick and the Interfloor factory in Dumfries, which need to be dealt with. I have a current petition on the Interfloor factory, which I encourage Dumfries and Galloway folk to sign.

Will the minister comment specifically on how NPF4 will allow for the matter of derelict buildings in our communities to be addressed?

Will the cabinet secretary clarify that we are discussing the development of enabling legislation that will give the industry the scope to respond to potential future challenges? NFU Scotland’s director of policy, Jonnie Hall, previously said:

“Put simply, the Bill is not policy and it does not, and will not, set policy.”

Will the cabinet secretary set out some of the advantages and flexibilities that the Scottish Government’s approach allows for, to better support our hard-working food-producing farmers?

How would the member recommend that we capture the vitamin C from those vitamin-enriched potatoes? Vitamin C is destroyed by heat and light and dissolves in water, so I am wondering how we would capture it. Would we need to drink a whole tattie-pot of water?

Wow—I wish that I had more than four minutes for this speech.

We need to be more canny about how we proceed with the science and technology. I am passionate about evidence and about progress. Stephen Kerr is obviously passionate about what he speaks about as well. I welcome that.

The use of genetic technologies is a complex and emotive subject. It is abundantly clear that there are issues that need to be addressed if genetic modification, gene editing or clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats—CRISPR—are to be used in our food system.

The United Kingdom Government has introduced its controversial Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill, which aims to enable the expansion of gene-edited crops and livestock across the UK. Although the bill might be intended as England-only legislation, the documentation is clear that it will have a significant impact on areas that are devolved to the Scottish Parliament. It will allow gene-edited products into Scotland for sale, aided by the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020.

The bill makes it clear that the UK Government is intent on diverging from the UK-wide GM regulatory regimes through the various relevant common frameworks. Any shared Government discussions of that nature should have taken place prior to the bill’s introduction to enable consideration of potential policy divergence. However, that was not the case. Indeed, the UK Government invited the Scottish Government to join discussions on the bill only the day before—aye, the day before—it was introduced to the UK Parliament, despite numerous requests from the Minister for Environment and Land Reform and the Welsh Government to see a draft of the bill and discuss it.

We know the proposed benefits of gene-editing technology: increased crop yields, increased disease resistance, increased nutritional qualities and adapting to the increased temperature as climate change continues. The views of stakeholders in Scotland will be central to decision making on that devolved area of responsibility. They encompass views and evidence from the scientific community, views from across the spectrum of industry interests and, crucially, the views of consumers and the public as a whole.

I, too, congratulate Carol Mochan on securing the debate. As we heard from Tess White and others, AHPs encompass a range of health professions and make up the third largest workforce in NHS Scotland. I, too, welcome to the gallery those who have come to their Parliament this evening—it is great that they are here.

AHPs include dieticians, occupational therapists, orthoptists, physiotherapists, speech and language therapists and many others that members have already named. Carol Mochan may notice that I mentioned dieticians first; I learned so much about insulin and carbohydrate ratios, and counting carbs to help manage my type 1 diabetes, from a fab dietician, whom I thank.

The breadth of AHPs’ skills and their reach across the age continuum, the third sector, communities and health and care settings make them ideally placed to be leaders in the public health environment. Their expertise is used to support prevention and self-management and promote wellbeing, and it is right that we celebrate their contribution to the health of people in Scotland as well as to the prevention agenda and our NHS.

Even before the Covid pandemic, Scotland, like the rest of the UK, was facing a number of significant public health challenges as a result of its changing demographics. Those changes are driven by improvements in life expectancy, as people are living longer; alongside that, people are having fewer children or are having children later in life. In addition, younger people are moving away from remote and rural areas, such as my South Scotland region, towards towns and cities. We know that that brings both opportunities and challenges for the delivery of public services and for society at national and local level. Those challenges have broadened the need for AHPs to ensure that people are being seen by the most appropriate skilled professional.

AHPs act as a catalyst by championing prevention and beneficial lifestyle changes to improve health and wellbeing, thus maximising an individual’s potential to live a full and active life so that they can thrive. AHPs can significantly improve productivity, quality and effectiveness by working in collaboration with their medical, nursing and social care colleagues. Complex problems require teamwork within the multidisciplinary team, and I know from my former NHS colleagues, and directly from my working life in my previous NHS clinical role, that AHPs support patient flow throughout the health system.

AHPs are experts in assessment and rehab, and their expertise brings different ideas and a different perspective to the delivery of services. The role of AHPs is integral to many clinical pathways, but there is always a huge opportunity to increase and better utilise our AHPs, for example by including them in NHS leadership roles.

Carol Mochan is right to ask members to visit local allied health professionals. Just last week, I visited Specsavers in Dumfries, where I met the company’s director of NHS services, Stephen McAndrew, and the director of Specsavers Dumfries, Elaine Campbell. I was totally impressed by how Specsavers has worked with the Scottish Government, particularly over the pandemic, to ensure that patient needs have been met. We discussed glaucoma, visual impairment, vision loss and the excellent knowledge and skills of the team in Dumfries. Specsavers and other optometrists have a demonstrated track record of improving eye health and dealing with eye problems, so that people avoid a hospital visit or admission.

I also heard how Specsavers is moving into doing more audiology work. I would welcome an update from the minister on the Scottish Government’s work to support and enable the provision of audiology services in primary care and to ensure that everyone has access to audiology services, as we know that good hearing health can contribute to productivity and to people staying in the workplace for longer and having a better quality of life.

I welcome the Scottish Government’s commitment to raising public awareness of the work of AHPs, including through the “Scottish Allied Health Professions Public Health Strategic Framework Implementation Plan”, but given how much pressure our NHS is currently under, I ask whether the minister has plans to increase the awareness-raising efforts, in order to ensure that people are seen by the most appropriate professionals and to prevent secondary admissions to hospital.

Allied health professionals do a fantastic job every day, and I thank them all for what they do. I agree that we need to increase awareness of the invaluable role of AHPs and of the contribution that they make.

Fantastic. I thank the member for taking an intervention. I just want to ask Paul O’Kane, as a member of the Health and Sport Committee—which I am as well—whether he would concede that we are just two sessions into the scrutiny of the bill and that there is time to submit changes and to take evidence. Everybody is dumping on this right now, as though there is a massive issue with it. Do we not need to take the time to scrutinise it and allow all the voices to come out?

Here we go again with these Opposition debates, with members talking down the SNP Scottish Government’s commitments and, indeed, our hard-working NHS and social care staff. Such debates in this chamber are becoming wholly tiresome. Last week, it was Labour and, this week, it is the Tories. It is becoming increasingly harder to see the policy differences between the two better together parties as they come back together and make a massive muckle midden together in the lead-up to our indyref. Mibbes that is just what is going on.

Anyway, to dispel the drivel in the Tory motion, I note that the establishment of a national care service will be the most ambitious reform of public services since the creation of the national health service. The national care service, as proposed in the bill, will bring together social work, social care and community health to strengthen health and social care integration for adult services.

I know that at the heart of the bill is the idea of caring for human beings and looking after people whose verbal responses to the consultation indicated that they want a more joined-up service that brings all the care providers together.

By the end of the parliamentary session, accountability for adult social work and care support will transfer from the Government to ministers, who will be accountable.