Meeting of the Parliament 03 June 2026 [Draft]
I start by congratulating Morven-May MacCallum on a really excellent first speech in the Parliament. My father contracted Lyme disease when he was working in forests in Perthshire. He spent months in Perth royal infirmary, and I remember going to visit him as a kid. Listening to Morven-May MacCallum’s speech reminded me of that period. Many people are not believed until they are extremely unwell. I pay tribute to Morven-May MacCallum and look forward to seeing what she will do to campaign on the issue and to make a difference over the course of this session of Parliament.
I return to the contribution of my friend and colleague Paul McLennan. At the start of this new session of Parliament, and as a Lothian MSP, I must again raise concerns, as Paul McLennan has, about the growing gap in health funding on a population basis that we are seeing across our country. That is no more acute than it is here in Edinburgh and in NHS Lothian. I have raised the issue consistently in my time as an MSP, but we are seeing a shift in our country’s population, and the Government and the Parliament must start to acknowledge that. If the issue goes unaddressed, it will be one of the biggest problems that our health service will face in the future. I therefore hope that the cabinet secretary, as a fellow Lothian MSP, will agree to meet a cross-party group of MSPs to discuss how we can put in place a population-based funding mechanism to address the issue. I am kind of asking the cabinet secretary to meet herself as a Lothian MSP, but I hope that she will take that forward.
In 1999, I remember sitting in my modern studies class and being excited about the election of this new Scottish Parliament and what it could mean for our country. We used to talk about Scottish solutions to Scottish problems. However, 27 years later, I must ask myself whether this Parliament has been focused on delivering new thinking and fresh ideas for our NHS. I do not think that we can say that it has, and I hope that we can all acknowledge that. Life expectancy figures in Scotland remain shocking: between the 20 per cent most deprived and the 20 per cent least deprived communities, there is a gap in life expectancy of eight years for women and 11 years for men.
Helen McDade spoke about the need for action, which I agree with. Too often, our NHS is good at delivering a process to referral but not an actual outcome. We need a change from having Government strategy after Government strategy to having strategies that actually deliver outcomes. That said, I will highlight two of the strategies that ministers should return to, which are realistic medicine and the “What matters to you?” approach. If we are going to consider where and how patients want to be treated, we need to understand that the NHS often overtreats Scots, and have a reset on that in this session.
We have heard from several members in this debate about poor health spend in our health service, such as when police officers take people who experience mental health trauma to A and E just to sit with them all day and then take them home. I hope that the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Care and the Cabinet Secretary for Justice will genuinely work together to end that practice. Stuart McMillan highlighted ambulances being tied up at A and E units across our country, and Bob Doris outlined well the cost to our health service of not urgently delivering a better hospice and community palliative care system—it is more than £1 billion.
I have two recent stories on that issue from working as an MSP in Edinburgh. We managed to get a constituent—who wanted to return to her roots to die in the Western Isles—back home to have her wishes fulfilled. Another constituent wanted to die at home in Edinburgh, but a crisis meant they were blue-lighted into hospital and died there, which was not the wish of that individual or their family—that should never have happened. We need to consider how our systems can and must change.
I congratulate David Green and welcome him to the Parliament. I have known David for many years, and he will be a great new addition to the Parliament. I met his dad at the kirking of the Parliament, but David has trained his family so well that, when I tried to get any gossip or dirt that I could out of his father, he was not for telling me. David Green made a point about rural proofing, which we need to focus on—I say that as an Edinburgh and Lothians East MSP. We need to look at how often our NHS creates more problems by not thinking about rural communities first.
Lloyd Melville made important points about the elimination by 2030 of HIV transmission. I also highlight the need for us to refocus and return to hepatitis C testing and treatment strategies. For many years, we were world leading in that area, but we are now slipping behind. The strategies that we have outlined and where they are being delivered—sometimes on a board-by-board basis instead of with a once-for-Scotland approach—need to be revisited.
Joe Long is another great new addition to the Parliament, and I also worked with him when he was at Scottish Autism. I agree with him that, in the previous session, one of the greatest concerns was that the Government decided not to take forward the learning disabilities, autism and neurodivergence bill. His former colleague Pam Duncan-Glancy did some good work on a transitions bill for young people. Those bills could complement each other, and I hope that the Government will make their introduction an urgent priority.
As we start this new session of the Parliament, I hope that the cabinet secretary is genuinely ready to work with and reach out to all parties to develop a new plan to improve our NHS not just for this session of the Parliament, but for the future of our NHS.