Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 09 March 2022
I really do not have time—I have a lot to say. Maybe I will give way later.
I thank care home staff and health protection teams who have tirelessly worked to facilitate regular indoor visiting in more than 90 per cent of care homes. Those efforts to maximise visiting and adopt the aims of Anne’s law ahead of any new measures show a welcome consensus across the sector.
The development of Anne's law follows a Care Home Relatives Scotland petition on rights for residents to see their loved ones, which was lodged by Natasha Hamilton, who was unable to see her mother for prolonged periods during the height of the pandemic. Her mother was of course Anne Duke, who has now sadly passed away. We fully supported that petition and I am pleased to say that there was cross-party support. In September last year, we made the commitment in our programme for government to strengthen residents’ rights and bring in Anne’s law.
Given the need to move quickly and effectively to ensure that legal rights can be instituted and, importantly, enforced, we have chosen to deliver that work by strengthening the health and social care standards using legal powers under the Public Sector Reform (Scotland) Act 2010, and by strengthening rights further through primary legislation.
As members will be aware, any change to legislative powers requires us to consult, so later in September we launched two linked public consultations to seek views on the preferred options for implementation. We have now received the analysis of those consultations. Responses came in from individuals, including families, and from a wide range of organisations, including care home providers.
The independent analysis showed that there was considerable support for the approach of introducing Anne’s law by strengthening the health and social care standards and then introducing primary legislation. We published that analysis only last week, on 2 March. I thank everyone who took the time to submit their responses.
Given the support for those proposals, there is no need to undertake further time-consuming legislative processes, such as Scottish statutory instruments, to make change happen.
I can announce today that, using legal powers under the Public Sector Reform (Scotland) Act 2010, we will introduce by the end of this month those two new strengthened statutory care standards, which will ensure that visitors can be involved in the care and support of their loved ones and provide a strong emphasis on helping residents and their families remain connected.