Chamber and committees

Do you monitor situations in which someone who has a mental health emergency or an urgent need of that kind is engaged with by the police rather than by the Ambulance Service? Do you track occasions on which the police, rather than ambulance crew, escort someone to the emergency department?

In the previous parliamentary session, I was a member of the Health and Sport Committee. We heard from the Scottish Ambulance Service about how, for instance, the police ended up looking after people in emergency rooms, which took up their time. I am interested to know what work has been done to support the police in dealing with NHS calls and whether the Scottish Ambulance Service or other parts of NHS could do that.

I do. Given my interest in food standards and how we are altering and changing them as we engage in things such as novel foods, I am interested in paragraph 9 of the policy note, which is about monitoring. It says:

“Food Standards Scotland will work with Local Authorities where problems or suspected infringements of the legislation arise.”

I am interested to know—we might need to write to Food Standards Scotland about this—how Food Standards Scotland will work with local authorities. How will we monitor that? I ask that out of general interest.

Thanks.

Alexander Stewart mentioned the chamber desk team, which is a small team. Is it burdensome for the team members to manage motions? There are a lot of motions—some people would have certain things to say about motions that they might not find as valuable; we have covered that already—and I am interested in finding out whether that team feels burdened by having to process so many of them.

Like Stephen Kerr, I sympathise with what Graeme Dey’s letter is about, but, for people who live rurally and remotely from this place, a motion is really beneficial, because they feel that they are being heard and that their work is valued, whether that is in relation to a charity or to local action that is being taken forward. We all have motions related to our cross-party groups as well. For example, today, I have a motion about world asthma day, and there will be a debate in the chamber about it. I know that not all motions are for debate—some are just to recognise or to congratulate something. Therefore, I would be keen to monitor the situation and see how we get on, but I would not like to prescribe to colleagues whether they should write motions in a particular way.

Specifically, is the optimal way forward the introduction of a licensing scheme?

My short supplementary is about training and education. Professor Newton, you described the complexity of muirburn, with small patches being burned and the fire being managed to make sure that it does not get out of control. Should the issuing of licences be correlated with a requirement to provide education and training for our gamekeepers and land managers?

Good morning. It is interesting to hear that this is not just about the management of grouse. The convener has brought up the issue of medicated grit, and we have heard about raptors. I want to confirm whether the introduction of a licensing scheme would be the optimal way to manage grouse moors, track what is happening and collect data. I am looking at Professor Newton because that is what he has said: this is the only way forward for being able to manage or trace what is happening, rather than just having a voluntary code of practice.

I have a quick supplementary question. When I did my nursing training, there were two intakes every year, which meant that entry-level and more experienced nurses worked together during their training. Should we be thinking about doing that again? Having students at different levels in classrooms or on site would make it possible to offer peer support and mentoring. Should we be considering that?