Chamber and committees

People are now keener to live in remote or rural areas because they can work from home two or three days a week and travel only one or two days, rather than having to drive every day to the central belt or, in Dumfries and Galloway, from Stranraer to Dumfries. That is what I was thinking about with emissions reductions linked to mileage or unnecessary travel, whether by clinicians or staff who support the work of clinicians.

I have another quick question. If someone whom we thought was on a transplant list for a kidney, for example, showed up looking for anti-rejection medication and seemed to be doing well, we might assume that they had received an organ somewhere else. Does the legislation support better traceability of organ surgery, procurement and so on? Given that anti-rejection medication is part of the treatment following transplant, would that be a trigger for pursuing what might be criminality if someone had received an organ outside Scotland?

Yes. I am interested in prevention and early intervention. Public Health Scotland became fully functional in April 2020. What up-front preventative actions need to be taken to support better public health across Scotland?

I have a brief supplementary. Public Health Scotland’s website has loads of virtual learning opportunities for clinicians and for anybody in healthcare and social care. It has modules on health inequalities and human rights, health and wellbeing, tackling poverty, mental health, health at work and the public health workforce. There are loads of learning opportunities that people can log into and look at—they are out there and available now.

Will Audit Scotland look at the uptake of those virtual learning experiences, who is involved in taking them up and whether the Government should be doing more to support Public Health Scotland’s work to ensure that the opportunities in that learning environment are taken up by health boards, local authorities and IJBs?

We have talked about prevention. The Government has provided financial support for deep-end practices—for example, in Govan in Glasgow—to monitor engagement. Part of that financial support was for link workers, anti-poverty work and giving people welfare advice. We have that data now to show engagement work and support by deep-end practices. We can look at that data and see the value of investing in that project. Is that something that we can audit right now?

I responded to the NPF4 consultation, and I appreciate colleagues’ comments in the debate so far. I want to focus on two specific issues that the draft framework will have an impact on: vacant, derelict and abandoned sites, and permitted development rights.

Scotland has almost 11,000 hectares of vacant and derelict sites, which is equivalent to 20,556 football pitches, and, on average, people live within 500m of a derelict site. According to the Scottish Land Commission, if a person lives in an area that scores low on the Scottish index of multiple deprivation, they are more likely to live within 250m of a derelict site. Evidence that we heard in the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee affirmed that those sites negatively affect a community’s mental health and wellbeing and that people in those communities feel less safe and are likely to use the words “blight” and “eyesore” to describe those places. People take less pride in their home place when they live beside derelict, decaying or dilapidated eyesores, as the Scottish Land Commission has affirmed in its work.

I have sought to engage with communities and support them to see timely action taken to address those sites across Dumfries and Galloway and the Scottish Borders. Those sites include the former Interfloor factory in Dumfries, the George Hotel in Stranraer, the Central Hotel in Annan and the N Peal building in Hawick, which I visited yesterday. However, as the draft framework and the Scottish Land Commission have pointed out, addressing the issues with those buildings currently presents many challenges to communities and local authorities.

I welcome that the part of the draft framework that discusses the spatial principles for Scotland for 2045 states that they will seek to limit urban expansion into greenfield sites and instead will incentivise the reuse of brownfield sites for redevelopment. However, as noted by COSLA, additional financial constraints exist around utilising abandoned sites in that way, and it is often extremely costly for developers and local authorities to address them. For example, the former Maxwelltown high school in Dumfries cost around £250,000 to demolish before the site could be redeveloped.

I would like assurance from the minister that the Government will work with local authorities and developers to ensure that they are accessing vacant and derelict land funds, and that public funding will continue to be made available to redevelop the brownfield sites and eyesore sites that blight our communities.

I have been involved in the community in Eskdalemuir, the Samye Ling Buddhist monastery and the Upper Teviotdale and Borthwick Water community council. They are all concerned about the dynamic and target shooting activity in the area, where high-velocity weapons of up to 50 calibre are being fired. Those powerful weapons, which require skill and accuracy, can shoot ammunition up to two miles and are being used close by the Romans and reivers walkways, the Craikhope Outdoor Centre on the Borders side of the Borders way and the southern upland way. I share the community’s concerns over safety and the reported high decibel level of the shooting.

The shooting activity operates using a legal loophole. In class 15 of the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (Scotland) Order 1992, permitted development rights allow for a temporary use of land for a different purpose from its lawful use for up to 28 days in a calendar year. The only exemptions are for caravan sites or open air markets. I agree with the community that that is wrong and that shooting activity, particularly with such high-powered weapons and ammunition, should be subject to robust major planning that allows local voices to be heard. I would like to see that in the final NPF4.

I thank the minister for his engagement so far on the matter, but I ask him for a commitment that NPF4 will ensure that any proposal for shooting ranges and activities such as shooting be subject to a robust major planning application. Finally, I reiterate my two asks: to focus on tackling vacant, derelict and abandoned sites and to consider closing the shooting activity loophole in permitted development rights.

I thank Kaukab Stewart for securing the debate. Colleagues have outlined extremely well how benefit sanctions are inhumane, callous and cruel. They are nothing but a symptom of the UK Tory Government’s out-of-touch and hostile attitude to the people who most require support.

Sanctions have consequences. Evidence from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that benefit sanctions increase the risk of homelessness and put financial and emotional stress on families, which harms children. Ms Stewart described that in detail. Sanctions also cause health harms.

Tackling poverty and the cost of living crisis already have many challenges. We have heard about people choosing between paying their bills and buying food—between heating and eating. There is no evidence that sanctions work.

In 2018, I supported a constituent who had battled the DWP for three years before contacting me to receive the support to which she was entitled. I contacted the local MP, who is now the Secretary of State for Scotland, to help, because the DWP is a reserved matter. He offered no support, provided no help and said that he had full confidence in the DWP’s decision making. Because of the issues with the DWP and the extreme stress that that piled on her, my constituent sadly took her own life, leaving a young son and her partner behind. That directly links to what Alex Rowley said about suicide being linked to sanctions. It is a tragic case that simply highlights how the UK Government and the welfare system do not treat people with dignity and respect.

I will highlight the particularly negative impact of benefit sanctions on rural areas, including across Dumfries and Galloway. Rural transport is hugely challenging, particularly for people who are on welfare support and are more reliant on public transport to attend jobcentre appointments. Jobcentre appointment times do not coincide with rural transport timetables, but I have found the jobcentre’s approach to accommodating the needs of people who live in rural settings to be extremely inflexible. One person whom I supported was sanctioned and lost 100 per cent of his income because his bus was five minutes late.

That punitive approach appears to be continuing, now that face-to-face appointments have resumed following removal of Covid-19 protections. I call on the minister to work with the UK Government to consider the need for a flexible and person-centred approach to appointments for people across rural Scotland, and for not penalising people for living rurally. I welcome the fact that, in contrast, Social Security Scotland considers rural needs by offering telephone appointments and advisers who will even visit people in their own homes.

The Parliament and the Scottish Government are constrained because we do not have complete control over welfare; we cannot mitigate every measure that is foisted on the Scottish people. The only way to truly address the unequal, cruel and callous Tory welfare system is by Scotland taking its future into its own hands and becoming a normal independent country.

I mentioned rural areas earlier, and we are talking about digital inclusion and exclusion. We have found that people in rural areas have used digital access to have telephone or video calls for mental health consultations. Will we continue to measure that to see how digital access benefits people, with those in rural areas being able to see somebody? People should still be able to see someone face to face, because that might be the best way forward for some people, but it could be quite positive for people in our rural areas if they could continue to use NHS Near Me, for example.

That is good to hear.

I was also thinking about how we direct people. For instance, we have had some feedback that people go and see their GP and expect to be given tablets for their type 2 diabetes, for instance, when maybe a social prescribing programme could help reverse that condition. We saw that in the television programme “Fixing Dad”, in which Geoff Whitington, who weighed 20 stones, managed with support from his family to lose a lot of weight. What else can we do to show people that alternative pathways are adjuncts and are not necessarily class B rather than class A things? We have seen, especially during the Covid pandemic, how important it is to support people’s mental health by, say, getting them outside and walking.

I am also thinking about recruitment of GPs. The Scottish graduate entry medicine programme is unique to Scotland and was created as a collaboration between the universities of St Andrews and Dundee to support training of GPs. I assume that that is going well. This might need a longer answer than we have time for today, but I would like a wee update on how ScotGEM is going.