Chamber and committees

I am okay, convener—I have had my questions answered.

Professor White mentioned conscientious objection. I have had a constituent who is a health professional contact me about that.

I am interested in how the law in Victoria provides for the option of conscientious objection. There are issues around providing information and support or assessing a person for voluntary assisted dying, or even supplying medication—that would involve pharmacists and nurses, which is who I am thinking about. Will you say a bit more about how the law works in Victoria and elsewhere in relation to supporting persons who conscientiously object?

Good morning, minister and officials.

From a quick Google search, I see that the UK consumes around 31 million eggs per day, or 350 eggs per second. That is a lot of eggs. I am interested in hearing a description of what you will be doing for retailers, customers and businesses. How will communication take place to ensure that they know what the changes are with regard to derogation and the process?

It is about having knowledge and skills in the right areas. For example, neurodiversity is linked to gender dysphoria.

I will pick up the point about international collaboration and working together. We are talking about a small number of persons who are seeking care in relation to gender. In my previous job as a registered nurse, I would look at what people were doing in England, Ireland and Wales, and when I worked in California, it was the same thing—you network with the people who are specialists. That would be part of the engagement of networking with people who provide specialist care, such as researchers, doctors and so on. I imagine that that is what Professor Sir Gregor Smith is talking about. We are not just waiting and watching in Scotland for somebody else to take action: there has been participation and collaboration from the start.

This will be my final question. Has the decision to stop self-referrals had any impact on the length of the waiting list?

I forgot to make it clear earlier that I am a former NHS Scotland and NHS England employee and am still a registered nurse.

I come back to the point about having a multidisciplinary team approach. We know that the skills that are required are specialist ones. Who would be in such an MDT?

I go back to what you said about multidisciplinary teams. When the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health gave her statement on 3 September, she said that there would be a move to a more distributed network, with a more regional model and a multidisciplinary team approach, which you have already described. What might such a regional model look like, especially when we are already struggling to staff services?

We might have strayed a wee bit from the technical aims that the SSI is supposed to be achieving. There has been a lot of discussion about rebasing, retargeting—however we want to describe it—and co-design. Part of what needs to happen is the promotion of trust and engagement, including with young farmers, new entrants and our next-generation farmers, and that is what seems to be coming out of this.

However, I want to bring our discussion back to the fact that we are supposed to be approving the statutory instrument so that payments can continue. Am I correct in understanding that this is a technical instrument?

Thanks.