Chamber and committees

Greig Chalmers has already alluded to this issue. The financial memorandum says:

“It is expected, upon establishment of a scheme, that all applications will be made within one year of the scheme opening.”

I presume that that is because the scheme will be advertised on social media and because you will know who has had mesh implant surgery. Is the one-year timeframe narrow, or do you think that it is reasonable?

Does that affect the labelling of products as well? Health-harming products might contain certain chemicals that are used in food production. I note that NFU Scotland is calling for clear country-of-origin labelling. Do the provisions in the bill bleed into those issues?

I will be quick. What are the cabinet secretary’s concerns about professional regulation? Our briefing paper says that the UK Government recognises that it might want to reform

“the overarching system of healthcare professional regulation.”

Are there concerns about that? Obviously, we have our own healthcare workforce that we need to support, look after and protect.

Good morning, cabinet secretary. I have a question on the advertising of food and drink products that are less healthy and might be harmful. You said that you want to have a four-nations approach, but I am interested in how we discern what is reserved and what is devolved. We want to take forward legislation that works for us in Scotland as we try to tackle obesity and reduce alcohol consumption. I note the recommendations in the recent report by the British Heart Foundation. How can we prevent legislation that we develop being impinged upon by UK Government legislation?

I am interested in issues and ideas around fair work, recruitment and retention. My first job, before I started my nurse training, was in a care home, although that was a long time ago. What should we do to support recruitment and retention, aside from considering wages? A band 5 staff nurse gets about £15 an hour, and they train for three years, with knowledge and skills development, competency demonstration and assessment. Does there need to be more structure in education in order to encourage recruitment and retention and so that people’s roles are perceived as skilled jobs, whether they work in home care, in a residential home or in a nursing home?

In the Health and Sport Committee, we took evidence on shifting the balance of care and moving finances into a social prescribing model. One of the things that I am interested in is the prevention of type 2 diabetes complications. We spend lots of money mitigating or treating complications—£800 million is a lot of money—when those complications are preventable.

What is the value of social prescribing? Should it really be invested in more in order to help to improve health and tackle inequalities? I am interested in that because of the previous committee work on social prescribing. Maybe we should start with David Walsh.

Thanks, Gillian, but I do not actually have a supplementary question—I was just correcting a spelling mistake in the chat box. [Laughter.]

I will try and be quick. In the last session of Parliament, we did a report on social prescribing. We can keep people out of hospital in the first place by engaging them in practices that support health, wellbeing and physical activity, thereby preventing complications of type 2 diabetes, because 10 per cent of the NHS budget is spent on mitigating those complications. I am interested in what the witnesses think and I suppose that the convener can choose someone to answer the question.

I am thinking about low-hanging fruit. Healthcare providers are starting to get more education about adverse childhood experiences. Police officers in South Ayrshire are now going through training to recognise ACEs, which is really important. When I started my vaccination programme training, there was nothing in the e-learning modules about tackling stigma related to alcohol and drugs for healthcare professionals who work outside alcohol and drug services. If we are thinking about low-hanging fruit and on-the-ground delivery of education, do you think that we need to consider ensuring that healthcare professionals know about adverse childhood experiences as well as things such as the stigma that is related to alcohol and drugs?

Thanks, convener, and good morning to our panel of experts.

The Scottish Government has published its public health priorities, with a number of items that need to be addressed. Among the priorities are:

“A Scotland where we flourish in our early years ... A Scotland where we have good mental wellbeing ... A Scotland where we reduce the use of and harm from alcohol, tobacco and other drugs”.

Six priorities are listed. This is the first time that Scotland has had a simple, overarching public health strategy, and it is the first time that the national public health priorities have been aimed at wider determinants of health.

I am now co-convener of the cross-party groups on health inequalities, on improving Scotland’s health and on diabetes. I am trying to bring them all together so that we can have everybody round the table having the same conversation, instead of having different conversations in silos.

I am interested to hear whether the expert panellists agree with the Scottish Government’s public health priorities. Do you think that something needs to be added?