Hansard

I congratulate the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport on her reappointment and also Maureen Watt and Aileen Campbell on their appointments.

I welcome the tenor of the Government motion, which acknowledges the multifarious challenges that we face in delivering a healthier Scotland and, importantly, recognises the need for a joined-up, collaborative approach to meet those challenges.

I also welcome the creation of a dedicated position of Minister for Mental Health. That has a great deal of cross-party support and signals the clear intent of this Administration to bring about long overdue parity between mental and physical health. Mental health must be a national priority.

As the son of a retired psychiatric nurse, I am keenly aware of the incredible work that mental health clinicians and staff perform. I look forward to the detailed development and implementation of the proposed mental health strategy. The commitment to increase mental health spending to more than £1 billion by 2020 is welcome, as is the investment of £4 million a year in the recruitment of 100 mental health link workers in Scotland’s most deprived areas. It is vital that those in need are able to quickly access service providers such as Recovery Across Mental Health, which provides support to many people in my constituency of Renfrewshire South. Such organisations are invaluable and we must continue to support them.

In this debate—as in many others—we must consider the challenges posed to society by growing inequality. We are all aware of the complex reasons behind health inequalities. My constituency has been subject to many of the challenges that are faced by post-industrial communities in the west of Scotland. Compared with the national average, people in Renfrewshire South are more likely to be admitted to hospital and there are significantly more alcohol-related hospital stays. The Government’s recognition that

“health inequalities will require an approach that looks beyond the NHS and that roots activity to address inequalities across government”

is welcome, and I look forward to that principle continuing to inform proposals for the new social security powers that are coming to the Scottish Parliament.

However, it is important to remember that for too many people, inequality begins in the womb. I am delighted that the Government has taken important steps to address that, with baby boxes and the recent announcement that all pregnant women will receive free vitamins by next spring. That builds on the work already undertaken by the Government to address neonatal inequality, for example by overcoming the barriers to breastfeeding that too many women face.

As with mental health, the work of the third sector in making Scotland healthier in that respect must be acknowledged. Last weekend, at the outstanding Lilias Day event in Kilbarchan, I met Melanie and Hazel from the Breastfeeding Network. The network does outstanding work in communities such as Johnstone, Linwood and Kilbarchan to support mothers to make informed decisions about breastfeeding and to provide access to help when they need it. It is vital that we continue to support organisations such as the Breastfeeding Network to ensure that they continue to play an active role in making our communities healthier.

I conclude by addressing those people who challenge the principle that the NHS should be free at the point of use, in particular those in the chamber who were elected on a commitment to reintroduce prescription charges—although, admittedly, they have been decidedly more coy on the matter since being elected than they were during the campaign. Those who adduce arguments in support of the proposition—I summarise—invariably follow the formula of asking why someone on a high salary should be exempted from a nominal fee for medication prescribed by a GP and contend that such a charge would provide a welcome source of revenue and would be entirely compatible with the principle of fairness, as only those who could afford the fee would be required to pay it.

One could respond to such an argument by highlighting the way in which, in the previous system of prescription charges, many on low incomes slipped through the net and consequently were subject to charges that they struggled to pay. One could also raise the question of how much of the fee would reach resource budgets once it has been through the bureaucratic wringer of means testing. However, as important and valid as those technical critiques are, my view is that the most fundamental objection to prescription charges is that they undermine the universalism that must be a motivating ideal in the delivery of all our public services, especially our NHS.

Universalism is not an ideal that is easy to realise, but it serves as a beacon. It shows that our minds and thinking are not bound by the present and that we dare to imagine the kind of truly equal society that we can and will be.

Over the coming parliamentary session—and indeed the coming decade—Scotland, like many countries, will face great challenges in the delivery of health and care services. However, it is clear that this Government recognises those challenges and has the ideas and the vision to deliver the healthier Scotland that we all seek.