Hansard

As Nanette Milne said, this is the fifth bill that the Health and Sport Committee has scrutinised recently—in the past five months, to be precise. I know that because I have been on the committee for only the past five months. Like Nanette Milne, I pay tribute to our clerks, who have been brilliant both with the bill and with all of our heavy workload. I also thank the people who drafted our amendments as well as those who gave such useful and important evidence to the committee at stage 1.

There are five elements in the bill. I can deal with the first two quite quickly. First, everyone supports the right to voice equipment when it is required, and I welcome that provision. Secondly, the specific provision on smoking, which creates a legal basis for having no smoking outside hospitals, has, at the end of the day, proved not be controversial, although there was a lot of discussion about it at stage 1. Although some of the detail of that will come in regulations, everyone welcomes the fact that the policy will be strengthened by being given a legal basis.

I touched on the duty of candour when I introduced my two amendments on the issue, describing, as others have done, the purpose of the duty. I thank the minister again for accepting my amendments. In the evidence received by the committee, Marie Curie, Unison and others strongly supported the legislation because they thought that it would help to drive culture change and ensure organisational shift towards a supportive culture of learning and improvement. That is certainly the intention of the duty of candour, and it is up to everyone to ensure that that intention is realised in practice. One of the committee’s recommendations in its stage 1 report was that there needs to be a co-ordinated, planned and resourced programme of awareness raising, training and support for staff responsible for implementing the policy. That is crucial.

A crucial distinction, which was perhaps not always clear in the concerns that were expressed to the committee, is that, unlike the duty of candour, the ill treatment and wilful neglect offence is to do with deliberate actions. It is crucial that there is training, support and education for relevant staff and organisations so that people and organisations understand what the offence is and know, particularly in the case of organisations, what their roles and responsibilities are.

At the end of the day, perhaps the most contentious provisions turned out to be those on nicotine vapour products. However, I do not think that the tone of this debate will replicate the sometimes acrimonious tone of the debate at stage 1, when people who were pro-electronic cigarettes were lined up against those who were against them. It is striking that, although there are widely varying views inside and outside the Parliament about the issue, all of us support what is in the bill.

I lodged an amendment at stage 2 just to ensure that we can distinguish between the e-cigarette part of the register and the tobacco part. When I met the minister, she reassured me that they will appear quite separately to the public on the website. That meets, at least in part, the concerns of many people who do not wish ordinary cigarettes and e-cigarettes to be conflated in any context. However, we all support a degree of advertising control and actions that prevent young people from accessing those products. Again, the detail of that will be laid out in regulations.

We got a great deal of useful evidence. I was particularly struck by the evidence of Professor Linda Bauld, who has done a great deal of work on e-cigarettes. Members may have heard her on “Good Morning Scotland” at 7.15 this morning. I have been very influenced by her views on the issue. She said in evidence to the committee that

“A recent study shows that people in the UK who stop smoking using electronic cigarettes are 60 per cent more likely to be successful ... than those who use willpower alone or who buy nicotine replacement therapy over the counter.”—[Official Report, Health and Sport Committee, 1 September 2015; c 11.]

We all want Scotland to reach its ambitious target of reducing smoking prevalence to 5 per cent by 2034; I am sure that we would like it to be even lower. I believe that e-cigarettes have a role to play in that. I support the provisions in the bill and hope that we will be spared the rather negative comments about e-cigarettes that we sometimes hear.