Chamber and committees

I could not agree more about stress urinary incontinence. Often, it is very treatable, but a lot of women think that they just have to live with it. I, too, would love to see something like that coming along into our schools.

However, my question is about peer support. Does the minister recognise the need for formal mechanisms for the provision of peer support? There is Scottish Mesh Survivors, but not every woman wants to be involved in a lobby group. Peer support is formalised in other countries. Will you look at that?

Our colleague Emma Harper, who is not with us today, suggested that creating something like a Maggie’s centre could be a great idea. I just put that on your radar, minister.

Greig, you said that systems have developed significantly since 2020, and I agree with that. However, women still find things confusing, misleading and inadequate. They have certainly described the service as that in the past, and it is not the one-stop shop that they expected it to be.

In relation to that growing knowledge and expertise, is there a place for the national service to devise national guidance on managing symptoms locally, particularly while women are waiting for long periods for appointments?

That is really helpful. I know that some of my colleagues will have big questions to ask about GPs later.

Thank you, convener, for allowing me in.

The minister is aware that the Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill is currently making progress through Parliament and that Professor Alison Britton’s case review on transvaginal mesh is also coming through. Once the patient safety commissioner for Scotland is appointed, will the minister highlight the need to have learning and improvement work taken forward from the transvaginal mesh situation?

I appreciate that the website has been updated recently and that a number of things have shown improvement. I hope that that will be pushed and will continue to move at pace.

I will ask a slightly different question on that issue. I am interested in data capture. I am not sure whether there is a definitive record of how many women are affected by transvaginal mesh. Is there is a comprehensive system in place for data capture, or is data spread around? Has that data been effectively collated?

I have a question about methodology. Are you looking at using “The Scottish Approach to Service Design”? I can see Donna Bell nodding away there, so the answer to that is yes. Are the public sector and other stakeholders in a good place to coalesce around that just now?

Well done, Donna.

Minister, you have already offered clarity on a number of the points that I was going to raise.

During stage 1 scrutiny, the Scottish Government confirmed its intention that the integration joint boards will be replaced by new local care boards. Is that replacement still the intention?

To follow on from that, what reassurance can you give local government stakeholders that care boards will be suitably aligned with local government?

To follow on from that, are you expecting the representation on care boards to be quite standard or expecting variation, or are you not quite sure about that yet? How does that fit in with eliminating variation across local authority areas?