Chamber and committees

I will stop there for now.

It was to pick up on what Elena Whitham was saying about the regional land use partnership and other activities that were going on. Many people were supportive of the tourism economy, for instance, but the option for the smaller core area did not include some of the dairy farmland. It is interesting that we have ended up with no proposal at all, but many other things have been going on.

Would that aim link with the Scottish Languages Bill, which, I hope, we are about to pass? That bill promotes Scots as well as Gaelic, so cross-portfolio connections could be a part of this.

I will pick up on what Rhoda Grant said about housing. We know that there are housing challenges in rural areas. I am thinking about support for repopulation—people say that we need to address depopulation—in our rural areas. That will be part of the aim

“to promote sustainable economic, social and cultural development of the area’s communities”.

Providing housing is a critical part of helping to address depopulation.

Good morning. Some stakeholders have questioned the intent behind adding “cultural development” to the aims when there is existing wording around “cultural heritage”. They have suggested that those concepts could be better differentiated by, for example, reference to support for the creative sectors. What is the intention behind that change, and could it be made clearer in the bill?

While we are talking about fixed-penalty notices specifically linked to farming, I know from our national rural crime officer that there is interest in Police Scotland looking at six-week limitations for accessing Conic Hill, part of the west Highland way, which goes through the Lomond and Trossachs area. That would limit access for folk with their dogs or mandate that the dogs go on a lead in order to reduce livestock attacks. Are you aware of that? Could that be pursued? According to the rural crime officer I spoke to, that could help to reduce livestock attacks during lambing time.

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?

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?