Chamber and committees

The group leader of the Labour Party told the Parliament two weeks ago that

“There are now 860,925 people on an NHS waiting list”.—[Official Report, 29 May 2025; c 12.]

Jackie Baillie repeated that in her opening speech. However, Public Health Scotland—which, as I assume the Opposition parties understand, does not work for the SNP and is utterly politically impartial—has said that

“figures for the number of ongoing waits of patients waiting ... should not be added together to determine the proportion of the total population waiting”.

Mr Sarwar and his allies in the other parties were caught out on that last year, when the Full Fact organisation said of his misuse of statistics:

“Politicians and the media must take care to use the best evidence available and describe it accurately, so people are not misled about the state of public services.”

I could not agree more. If they cannot even get the basic facts of their attack lines right, why would anyone trust a word that they have to say about our health service?

Thank you, Presiding Officer.

If they cannae even get their attack lines right, why would we trust their word on our health services? No one in our national Parliament has denied the scale of the challenges facing our national health service. I know about those challenges, given my background as an NHS nurse and a former employee of NHS Dumfries and Galloway, with friends and connections who tell me what is going on on the ground. I thank everyone who commits their time and effort to the amazing professional care that they provide to patients every day.

I believe that the Scottish Government has taken step after step, not just in our post-Covid world, with all the additional challenges that have been added to our health systems, but in the years before that, to get our NHS working at full efficiency. Scotland offers the highest nursing, midwifery and paramedic bursaries anywhere on these isles: a non-means-tested £10,000 a year here, whereas England offers just half that. Our NHS provides the highest pay out of all four UK systems—a state of affairs that was reflected in the vote to accept the agenda for change pay deal earlier this year.

Scotland has also led the way in the training of physician associates and anaesthesia associates in our NHS, which has increased assessment and treatment capacity. We have worked with medical schools to ensure that the training and education are in place to continue that programme in the future.

As an MSP for South Scotland, I am acutely aware of the particular challenges that our health service faces in rural areas. That is why the uniquely Scottish ScotGEM—Scottish graduate entry medicine—programme is particularly welcome. It brings graduate training up to postgraduate medical degree level to NHS Dumfries and Galloway, to help to provide care in our part of Scotland.

I always find it interesting that I am the only person to big up ScotGEM and its success, and that the Opposition doesnae want to tell the good-news stories. The cabinet secretary and I have talked about that.

Again, the SNP is putting resources and money where it is needed, with bursaries funded for those who come to work in our rural communities. That is a Government that is acting when action is needed. What is more, we are committed to a public health service that remains free and in which medical need is the most important thing. It is for Labour members to explain why their health secretary down south has taken more than £370,000 in donations from profit-making private health businesses over the past decade. We are clear that our NHS will remain publicly owned and publicly accountable.

I do not doubt that Labour members are genuine about wanting a better national health service—I doubt that there are many people in the country who do not want that—but their words are not matched by deeds. Their attempt to weaponise the multiplicity of challenges that our NHS faces for electoral ends is an attempt to pull the wool over Scotland’s eyes.

Good morning. I have a quick question. Did Brexit make sanitary and phytosanitary checks more complicated—worse, basically—for companies that export food from this country?

Good morning to you all. I am interested in hearing about how inspections are carried out. My understanding is that, previously, there was a cyclical approach to them, which was later changed to a risk-based approach. I will be interested to understand how the Care Inspectorate identifies risk. Is there a danger that inspection can sometimes come too late, such as when problems have already been reported? What data and information do you use to identify high-risk services?

A final question from me. Does the Care Inspectorate delegate responsibility for quality assurance to local authorities or integration joint boards? How do you work with your partners to implement inspections or to have them deliver the changes that are required?

I understand that services can answer self-evaluation questions. How does a self-evaluation translate into a grade such as “satisfactory” or “excellent”?

Would changes to what you are hearing on the ground lead to unannounced inspections?

Food crime was mentioned earlier. Is it a big problem? What do we need to tell people in Scotland to be aware of? I know there was an issue with fake vodka in Coatbridge last September. How do we help people to identify whether, for example, fake vodka is out there?

Good morning. It will not be a surprise to you to hear that I am interested in ultra-processed foods. I know that there is a difference between processed foods and UPFs. I have been following the work of Henry Dimbleby, Dr Chris van Tulleken and Carlos Monteiro in Brazil. Henry Dimbleby spoke at Dynamic Earth in April 2024—I was privileged to be in the audience and it was really interesting to hear him speak.

I want to be clear about what we are talking about. Ultra-processed foods are created using food tech and food science purely for profit. There are issues in this commerciogenic environment where low-cost ingredients are created from fractioning and then recombining, and chemicals are added that are essentially cosmetic to enhance colours and flavours.

Does Food Standards Scotland have a different view now compared with what was outlined in March 2024 on the topic of processed and ultra-processed foods? We are a year on and more research has been done and presented. I would be interested in hearing about that.

Should we continue to watch out for the evidence that is coming out from specialists such as Carlos Monteiro in Brazil regarding ultra-processed foods, the chemicals that are added and the enteric substances?