Hansard

I thank Alex Rowley for bringing to the chamber this important debate. As convener of the cross-party group on accident prevention and safety awareness, I extend my thanks to my colleagues from all sides of the chamber who have supported our efforts in the CPG, and to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents Scotland, which provides our secretariat.

ROSPA runs the water safety Scotland initiative, which in turn runs and supports the Fife water safety awareness project. As Mr Rowley has said, that programme was set up following the tragic drowning in 2014 of Cameron Lancaster from Burntisland.

ROSPA has issued a call to action and it is keen for the Fife programme to be rolled out across Scotland. I look forward to hearing the minister’s response to that call.

A lot of other work is going on in Scotland. The Royal Life Saving Society UK has launched a spring clean awareness campaign, which runs from 21 to 25 March, to warn parents about the dangers of water around the home. That follows the tragic death in Fife of Rhys and Shaun Scott, who drowned in a fish pond in their garden on 12 March. I am sure that all members will wish to extend their condolences to the Scott family, and also to the McGrotty and Daniels family, who suffered such a terrible tragedy at Buncrana pier in Donegal.

Every year the Royal Life Saving Society runs drowning prevention week, which runs from 18 to 26 June this year. It aims to reduce the number of drownings and similar incidents that occur in the UK by showing people how to be safe in and near water and how to recognise water danger.

I have learned from all the work that I have done on accident prevention over the years and from the experts in the field that brain development is not complete until young people are in their 20s. That is what leads to the risk-taking behaviour and the bad decision making to which Alex Rowley referred.

What is so important about all accident prevention initiatives, whether they are on water safety or road safety, is that they teach people transferable life skills. Any work that is done in that area can only contribute to increased safety for our young people as they grow up and start to drive and take part in life’s adventures.

Our CPG conducted an evaluation of the group over the past five years and one of the comments was that it

“has been an ideal way to meet like-minded safety professionals, share information, highlight research and to both give and receive updates”.

That is nice to know, but we were also keen to find out what difference the CPG had made, so the evaluation asked participants what would not have happened if they had not attended the meetings. The response, in one area of water safety, was:

“Department of new ideas such as ‘Smart Signs’ (A Coastguard registered, uniformed approach to the design of all UK safety signage—with each sign carrying a unique location, identifying number, a grid reference and smart phone QR code ... )”.

Further, water safety Scotland would not have got started or been where it is now. I hope that, no matter what the make-up of the new Parliament is, the work of the CPG will continue in some form or other.

I thank Stuart McMillan, convener of the cross-party group on recreational boating and marine tourism, because we had a good joint meeting between the two CPGs, which included presentations from the RNLI. All our presentations—on water safety and other areas of safety—are hosted on the ROSPA website.

I recommend that all members look at the national water safety forum’s drowning prevention strategy for the UK, which Mr Rowley mentioned. I hope that we can develop a strategy specifically for Scotland.