Chamber and committees

Yes, and I need to remind everybody that I am a currently registered nurse. I forgot to say that at the beginning.

I have a quick question about the economy. Normally, we take gross domestic product as a measure of how successful a country is. However, we now have a Cabinet Secretary for Wellbeing Economy, Fair Work and Energy, so we are looking at wellbeing and we know that, if we help to get people out of poverty, that can support them into being more productive. Do you agree that supporting a wellbeing economy is an approach that we can take to how we budget for health? It will be relevant across portfolios when we are talking about things such as housing and poverty and addressing the issues that we face in Scotland.

Thanks.

My question is for Philip Whyte. I have some bits of paper in front of me about preventative approaches. Henry Dimbleby has written a lot about ultra-processed foods, and Professor Pekka Puska has done work in Finland on reducing the mortality of people through a whole-system approach by getting restaurants, cafes and supermarkets involved in providing healthier choices that are affordable for people. I am thinking about having preventative spend rather than secondary care constantly fighting fires. Something has to shift in the way that we invest, in order to stop folk getting into the hospital in the first place and to stop people being sick.

I am also looking at our paper on non-communicable disease prevention. My colleagues Gillian Mackay, Carol Mochan, Sandesh Gulhane and Foysol Choudhury and I have been part of a cross-party approach to look at non-communicable diseases, which contributed around 53,000 deaths in 2022 in Scotland. Something needs to be done differently. What do you suggest that we cut in order to move funding to preventative spend? There is only one pot of money, and it is a real challenge to figure out what we need to do differently.

Thank you.

You mentioned the voluntary sector in discussing the complexity of the provision of care. The committee often speaks about the third sector as it relates to social prescribing, for example. How does the Government plan to ensure that third sector agencies are supported and viable, given that they are important to the provision of social care services?

I come back to the national centre for remote and rural healthcare, which will commence next month; I think that an announcement was made on that. My region—South Scotland—is pretty rural and remote all the way down to Stranraer. Where are we with that centre being ready for next month?

I thought that someone else was going to kick off on this topic.

Convener, do I have time for a quick question about palliative care?

One of our themes is how we tackle obesity. I am interested in the issue and have recently asked questions in the chamber regarding ultraprocessed foods and high-fat, high-sugar and high-salt foods. Carlos Monteiro, who is a professor of nutrition and public health in Brazil, has done some great research, and books by Chris Van Tulleken and Henry Dimbleby that talk about ultraprocessed foods have recently been popular. How can we understand more about the relationships between foods, and not just their sugar and fat content? This question is for the minister, because it is in the public health portfolio. I am interested in the powers that are available to us in Scotland in regulation of marketing and sales of those types of foods? Can you give us an update on work that is being taken forward?

Finally, will the Scottish Government’s provision of free school meals for primary-school age children, which it is expanding, help to tackle what is being called an environment of “commerciogenic malnutrition”, because of the way in which big manufacturers are targeting unhealthy choices at young folk? Will widening of access to free school meals by the Scottish Government help to address some of the issues with overweight young people?