Chamber and committees

I totally understand that you will conduct a clinical trial to examine the effects of treatment. However, most of us will have come across trans people who did not manage to receive support. I can remember one man who knew that he was a man when he was at the pre-teenager stage, but went through his whole life until he retired before being able to take affirmative action on that. That is someone whose life has not been as full as it might have been, had he had affirmative treatment sooner. Will you also be looking at the issue of not treating people?

Some of my colleagues might want to probe you a little more on that holistic aspect, which is important.

That has been helpful in laying out some of those points. However, some young people will feel that this is the treatment for them, and that they are being denied even being clinically assessed for the treatment. For them, the trial will be a ray of hope in terms of getting that support. Obviously, it is a UK-wide trial, which is normal for medicines—that is the way that such trials are done. However, is there a route for young Scottish folk to access the trial, and do you know the timetables? Also, do you have any thoughts on what the trial will look like?

That makes sense, but do you have any idea about when it might be?

Just the ones that have been restricted—puberty blockers, but that might be quite coarse language for them.

Those are the ones that I mean.

Do you have any thoughts on possible timescales?

I will go back to the questions that we had earlier, when we were talking about hormone treatment. Other panel members gave us some answers, but we thought that Dr Crighton, who has just arrived, would be more able to give us answers on how young people in Scotland might access clinical trials and what such trials might look like. Thank you, Dr Crighton, for making it along, in spite of the challenges.

Is the data on what is spent not in the outturn accounts that the finance secretary puts out every year?

I will pick up on the idea of preventative spend, preventative work and monitoring what is and is not working. This Parliament is responsible for outcomes around health and care, but we do not have control of all the inputs. Decisions that are made in another place—such as the decision to have 14 years of austerity and the decision that is likely to be made today on the winter fuel payment—have an impact on the health of vulnerable people in Scotland. How do we know that the outcomes that we see mean that our preventative work has not worked? Perhaps it has worked, because, due to the actions of Westminster Governments over a number of years, the situation would have been much worse if we had not done that work, even though the outcomes make it look as though it has not worked.

Briefly, on the point about tracking the spend to ensure that we get the outcomes that we hope for, should we look to any international examples to see whether other places do this better? There will be differences, but can we learn something from them that will help Scotland to do this better?