Chamber and committees

Does NHS 24 use a local information system for Scotland—ALISS—to direct folk to third sector organisations that provide help and support with regard to mental health issues, for instance? Is using ALISS or directing people to local third sector services using whatever apps are available locally part of the upstreaming and downstreaming plan?

Good morning. You mentioned falls earlier. I am just looking at the “Our 2030 Strategy” document, which says that 12 per cent of ambulance call-outs are for somebody who has fallen, so there is work being done to look at that. However, 10 per cent of call-outs are for patients with respiratory difficulties such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease—COPD—exacerbation. As a co-convener of the cross-party group on lung health, I am interested in what work is being done to help to support the respiratory patients, for instance, because they might need not an admission but a referral to an onward pathway for better management of their COPD.

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?