Meeting of the Parliament 23 January 2024
I am delighted to open this debate to celebrate and support breastfeeding in Scotland.
As the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health, I am clear that improving the health of babies and young children is fundamental to underpinning Scotland’s overall population health. To enable us to do so, our ambition should be for every baby in Scotland to be breastfed. That is not to say that I do not believe that parents should have a choice about how they feed their children—they absolutely should—but those choices can sometimes be unduly influenced by external factors. For mums who either struggle to or just cannot breastfeed, there might be no choice at all, but those women who can breastfeed should be encouraged and supported to do so.
The United Kingdom has some of the lowest breastfeeding rates in Europe. Breastfeeding—the provision of human milk—is the most accessible and cost-effective activity available to public health and is known to prevent a range of infectious and non-communicable diseases. Despite recent welcome improvements in Scotland, the majority of babies are still wholly or partially formula fed for most of their first year of life.
The evidence about the benefits of breastfeeding for both mother and baby is clear and is about more than nutrition: the physical act of breastfeeding itself brings many additional benefits, and its contribution to the health and development of babies has lifelong impacts.