Seòmar agus comataidhean

I thank my colleague Paul Sweeney for bringing this important debate to the chamber. I am not surprised that he chose Marie Curie’s great daffodil appeal as the subject of his members’ business debate, because we have discussed many times the excellent work of Marie Curie and other hospices. He has fought with passion—and he spoke with compassion today—to raise the on-going issue of funding and sustainable resourcing of these essential services. As he mentioned, less than 40 per cent of Marie Curie’s costs are covered by commissioned income, and events such as the appeal are so important.

I will be clear: the Parliament is right to encourage as many people as possible to support the Marie Curie great daffodil appeal this year, as in other years. That encouragement should be given in order to promote the good work that the organisation does and offer people the opportunity to make any donations that they can, but it should not allow us, in this place of power, to ignore the need to properly resource those essential palliative care services.

The safety of our staff is of paramount importance. Without staff safety, we cannot deliver patient safety—they go hand in hand. What discussions has the cabinet secretary had with the trade unions about the impacts on the workforce of the delay to capital projects? Has the Government assessed the impacts of the up-and-coming implementation of safe staffing on service provision?

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the potential impact that any mass delay of NHS capital projects would have on patient and staff safety. (S6O-03143)

The establishment of a national care service gives the Parliament the chance to be bold, ambitious and innovative. I am clear that it is not Scottish Labour that is delaying it; I fear that it is the Government. The bill could have been introduced 10 years ago. The Scottish Government has chosen to force a bill through to stage 2 despite it falling seriously short of the mark. The convener is correct to say that we took hours of evidence. The report includes page after page of criticism and a major change in the deal with COSLA.

At the last minute, the minister has chosen to send a letter to the Parliament rather than to engage with the committee. I have only three minutes to respond to that, but, if the minister would come to the committee, the committee would be able to undertake proper scrutiny.

Time and again, trade unions, the third sector, carers and people who receive care came to the committee, or spoke to members individually, to express serious concerns about the way that the bill was progressing, but the Government’s conclusion has been to ignore that and push on anyway. The minister might have spoken to hundreds and hundreds of people, but she has not listened to them, and, as we have heard through their stakeholders, hundreds and hundreds of people are still very confused.

Labour has called for a national care service for years, because, if delivered properly, it would deliver much-needed parity between health and social care. It is challenging to fully understand the SNP’s motives when it comes to its stubborn position on the national care service. It is widely acknowledged that the bill as introduced has changed direction significantly, is unclear and needs further scrutiny at stage 1, and the Government agrees. Members of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee agree, and other committees have expressed extensive concern about the bill. Stakeholders continue to express extensive concerns.

I want to address the minister’s notion that we are delaying things. Extensive evidence was given to the committee about the things that we can already take forward at this point. Fair work principles, the work with the trade unions and the work on Anne’s law do not require the bill, so will not be delayed, but that is not what the Government chooses to tell people about the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill.

As members have heard from my colleague Jackie Baillie, Labour wants a national care service. My colleague and I tried hard on the committee to fight for an expert advisory group, but that was rejected. We asked for amendments at stage 1, but that was rejected. Eventually, we had to ask for the general principles of the bill, which are completely unclear, to be rejected. The committee chose not to reject the general principles, although there was a significant division.

I must close now, but I hope that members—particularly back benchers—choose to send the bill back to the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee for proper scrutiny.

This has been really useful. I am interested in what you said about some of the legislation that you have looked at listing prohibited behaviour. The sense we are getting is that we are not likely to go for that option here. Have any of the people who have had to implement the legislation indicated that they found one way to be better than the other?

I thank Ivan McKee for bringing this vital debate to the chamber, for his work in this area and for his kind comments on the work that members on all sides have done together across the chamber.

When all around us is war and the lust for war, it is important to be clear that we, in this Parliament, stand for peace. I do not need to reiterate the sheer number of needless deaths in this conflict or the plight of people who have been taken hostage or tortured. In my contribution, I will, as I have done previously, highlight a terrifying reality that is often left unmentioned by the media: the disgraceful number of pregnant women who have lost the children that they were carrying before or shortly after their birth, and who have, in many cases, simply been prevented from having access to the necessities of childbirth.

There are about 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza, and 40 per cent of those pregnancies have been classed as high risk. Nevertheless, 180 women still give birth daily—can you imagine? Despite the situation, they must carry a child while being exposed to constant bombing and try to give it adequate nutrition in a country that is being starved to death. Can any of us even begin to imagine what that is like? Can we imagine what it is like not to have clean water to hydrate ourselves or to clean and wash our newborn baby?

As the International Court of Justice noted in its recent order, under international law, that is illegal and Israel must stop doing it. Nevertheless, since that ruling in January, reports of exactly the same actions have come out. I cannot adequately explain how I feel about that. How must the families feel? They must be absolutely terrified. To carry a child can be a worrisome experience at the best of times, but to be doing so in a war zone, and to realise that no one is coming to help you, is utterly unimaginable.

As a citizen of one of the most powerful countries in the world, I feel desperately ashamed that weapons that are funded from the UK and, no doubt, manufactured in Scotland have been used to perpetuate that. No amount of GDP is worth being involved in that.

I want to be clear that the time for peace came long ago. The situation has gone well past the point of self-defence, and the leadership of both Hamas and Israel are engaged in a fatal battle to the death that will spill further across the region, which is, of course, a worry. The violence must stop. We must not remain silent. We must have an immediate ceasefire.

I thank members for the opportunity to speak and to raise those voices. I am glad that, on the whole, we have had a constructive tone in the chamber today.

Midwives in Wigtownshire and across my South Scotland region are facing increasing pressures in their workload due to rapidly growing work. The pressure is intensified in the region by travel distances between the towns and villages.

As Emma Harper did, I note that if the Scottish Government is truly going to ensure that women in Wigtownshire and other rural areas have a choice of where to give birth, it will have to tackle recruitment and retention. Can the minister give us a timescale for when she might be able to look at the issue for that particular area? Retention is a major issue in the midwife profession.

I am pleased to close the second debate for Scottish Labour. As before, I thank the Liberal Democrats for bringing this important debate to the chamber in their own time.

Having listened to the debate, I think that it is fair to say that NHS dentistry in Scotland is in crisis. Patients cannot get an appointment, dentists are leaving NHS practices, and our constituents and communities are suffering. I note, however, as Willie Rennie acknowledged, that when services are available, they are of high quality. Dentists are doing the best job that they can for their patients.

Despite what some members on the back benches think, this is a crisis and much of it is of the Government’s making. It should worry the Government that I do not think that a single member of the public really trusts it to be able to fix the situation, so it needs to demonstrate that it can take action that will fix it.

In the amendment, the cabinet secretary again goes for the blame everyone approach, rather than talk about the Government’s involvement. It is quite remarkable how often we have to go over that. To be honest, it is not surprising but, given that we have all talked about the information that we get in our inboxes from constituents, it is an insult to dentists and patients not to acknowledge some of the things that the Government has not put in place.

It is fair to say that it is a self-congratulatory SNP amendment that calls for Parliament to welcome the Government strategically prioritising dentistry access—after 17 years in power—and to thank dentists for their “continued commitment”. We all know from our inboxes that dentists stay in the NHS because of their commitment to it. It is little wonder that patients feel that they are being forced out of NHS dentistry and that they are unable to get an NHS dentist.

Of course, it is right that we acknowledge the impact of the pandemic on dentistry because of its face-to-face nature. We know that dentists have by no means recovered, but it would be entirely disingenuous to suggest that the problem is only a post-Covid one. Other members have mentioned the words of the chair of the British Dental Association’s Scottish dental practice committee, which made me think, so I will quote them again. He said:

“the fundamentals of a broken system remain unchanged.

The Scottish Government have stuck with a drill and fill model designed in the 20th century.”

I know from what we have heard from the dental profession that it tried to help the Scottish Government to get this right. David Torrance, who is in the back row of the chamber, probably needs to listen to the dentists themselves, who say that there have been no changes to the model of care and that, despite recent changes in the payment system, NHS dentistry remains in dire straits, with a two-tier system becoming an increasing reality for patients. It feels like sticking plasters and will not cut it. That is what we are hearing from the dentists and the dentist professions.

I want to mention the oral cancer statistics that Willie Rennie gave, which are important facts that show why we must resolve the issue. I am running out of time, but I want to say that Claire Baker gave us excellent statistics that the members on the Government front benches should really look at. There is evidence from the COVID-19 Recovery Committee that private dentistry is not experiencing the same exit issues as NHS dentists. That is an important part of the inequalities that are happening.

I am pleased to close on behalf of Scottish Labour and I thank the Liberal Democrats for bringing the debate forward during their debating time. To reflect on the previous speech, by Keith Brown, a key point is that we have such a short time to speak because it is always the Opposition parties that have to bring such debates to Parliament. I would welcome it if Keith Brown put pressure on the front benchers to use Government time in the chamber to talk about such issues, which I agree that we should talk about.

I think that members know that I appreciate the concerning impacts of Brexit and the Tory Governments that we have had. I have said that many times in the chamber, and I do not shy away from doing that. However, it is fair for Opposition parties to come to the chamber to say that patients and staff are getting fed up with the SNP deflecting blame and deflecting from taking any responsibility for how poorly things are going in the NHS for staff and patients. To be honest, it is a key responsibility of back benchers to put pressure on front benchers to talk about and take responsibility for such things.

The direction of travel regarding access to primary care is undoubtedly the wrong one, which is piling pressure on parts of the health service that could do without it, as Alex Cole-Hamilton said when moving his motion. Let us be clear—it is honest to say that the target to deliver 800 new GPs is not being met. Sandesh Gulhane gave the evidence for that. Waiting lists are dangerously long, with many people waiting in pain. In primary care, people sometimes cannot even get to speak to a GP. It is fair for Opposition parties to bring such issues to the chamber.

Mental health appointments for children and, in particular, for adolescents are still extremely hard to come by. My colleague Paul Sweeney outlined that the promise on that has more or less been abandoned. We must make those points in the chamber.

We are coming at the issue from different directions. I think that I have been fair in my assessment of where we are. The Scottish Government has a massive budget for the NHS and has lots of staff to manage and support, so it must take some responsibility for that.

Beatrice Wishart put it well when she said:

“The problems did not start yesterday”.

She gave a fair reflection of what has happened over many years, before Brexit and Covid. We need to be honest about that.

I see that my speaking time is running out. The cabinet secretary mentioned recruitment and retention and spoke about physiotherapists. We require physiotherapists in my region, but responsibility for our inability to recruit people to physiotherapy courses, in order to gain more physiotherapists far into the future, lies at the door of the Scottish Government. The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy has been trying to speak to the Government about how we recruit and retain more physiotherapists.

Scottish Labour will support the motion, and we hope that members will support our amendment.