Hansard

I thank the convener and the committee for allowing me to speak. As someone who has previously attended meetings of the committee, I was definitely not going to miss its final meeting of the session. I would like to record my personal thanks to the convener for her service to the Parliament for the past 22 years. It seems like yesterday when we were both starting out in 1999. She has had a very distinguished political career. Good luck to Johann Lamont. I ask the committee to keep the petition open and to include it in its legacy paper, although I know that that might not be the committee’s instinct. I have been contacted by the petitioner, Marion Brown, and Ann Kelly, who is a constituent of mine. The reason for my asking the committee to keep the petition open is that the petitioners and their supporters have continuing concerns. In particular, they have concerns about the short-life working group that the Scottish Government set up to look at prescription medicine dependence. Even though they articulated those concerns directly to the working group, they felt that they had not been acknowledged or taken on board. They made the point to me that it has taken four years to get to this point, so they are nervous about continued progress. There are concerns about the process, which, as I said, the petitioners have raised with the leadership. They also note that the language and emphasis of the Scottish Government and its advisers continue to be very much along the lines of the default position being to prescribe antidepressants without giving much explanation of the potential consequences of withdrawal. There does not seem to be awareness of the long-term problems that could be caused. They again made the point about the lack of practical support for people who are experiencing withdrawal—those issues have not been resolved. As with the first petition, we will have a new cabinet secretary for health whatever the outcome of the election and we need to ensure that mental health stays very firmly near the top of the agenda. Continuing the petition would help with framing that, but, more importantly, it would mean that the petitioners do not need to start again with a problem that remains current and still needs to be addressed comprehensively by the Scottish Government. I welcome the recommendations from the short-life working group, but I do not think that we are at the end of the process; it has just begun. Therefore, I would be enormously grateful if the committee would consider continuing the petition into the next session of Parliament.