Hansard

I am delighted to open for the Scottish Conservatives. We support the general principles of the bill. Although its subject matter is more technical than in most health debates, it is important, for reasons that I will come on to.

The bill intends to amend the Universities (Scotland) Act 1966 to remove the provision that prevents the University of St Andrews from awarding degrees in medicine and dentistry. That will allow those on the ScotGEM course to receive a joint degree in medicine from both the University of St Andrews and the University of Dundee. That course was created as a result of shortages of general practitioners and shortages in rural medicine.

The bill seeks to right an historical anomaly. The prohibition was intended to be temporary and originated when the University of Dundee was created as a separate institution in the 1960s, when the clinical school previously used by the University of St Andrews became part of the new University of Dundee.

The bill will allow students taking the ScotGEM course to receive a joint degree from both institutions. It is worth remembering that the ScotGEM course is run in collaboration with the University of the Highlands and Islands. It is generally believed that, by removing the prohibition, the bill will create a fairer higher education sector and enable all of Scotland’s institutions to maximise the options and opportunities that they offer. That is significant in and of itself and shows that the bill is not merely about a technicality.

The ScotGEM course is important because it was initiated to address workforce shortages in rural areas, which face difficulties in recruiting and retaining GPs. As a member for the Highlands and Islands, I am aware of the issues that we face in my region. Scotland has always had a higher number of GPs per capita than in other parts of the UK, due to our unique geography of sparsely populated rural areas and high-density urban ones. Both require more GPs per head than might normally be the case.

This is where I must strike a more critical note. The Scottish National Party Government has presided over a GP crisis. A hard-hitting report by Audit Scotland in 2019 said that the Government was ill-equipped to sort out Scotland’s GP crisis and would struggle to meet its commitment to recruit an extra 800 family doctors in the next decade. Between 2009 and 2019 there was a reduction in the number of GP practices, while the size of the average practice patient list increased.

That is a long-standing problem. In 2008, the British Medical Association warned Nicola Sturgeon, who was then health secretary, that Scotland faced a severe shortage of GPs. There is still a significant shortage of GPs in Scotland. It is no wonder that the Royal College of General Practitioners in Scotland predicts that there will be a shortfall of 856 full-time-equivalent GPs this year.

Others have mentioned the concerns that were raised about the bill, which it is worth acknowledging. There is a fear that the bill might lead to the University of St Andrews setting up its own medicine degree. The Aberdeenshire health and social care partnership is concerned about the effect that that could have on the recruitment and retention of school leavers and graduates in the north-east.

Others have argued for a partial, rather than a complete, removal of the prohibition on St Andrews awarding medicine degrees. The University of Dundee has argued that an independent medicine degree at St Andrews could have a negative impact on teaching capacity in the area. Those concerns should be recognised.

Scottish Conservatives agree with the Health and Sport Committee’s view that the bill is important. We support it at stage 1 and look forward to seeing how it progresses through Parliament. It is important to acknowledge some of the concerns that stakeholders have raised at stage 1, as well as the worrying context of Scotland’s continuing shortage of GPs.