Hansard

I apologise for my brief absence from the chamber during the debate’s opening speeches. I had to attend to a call from my son’s school.

I am pleased to speak in the debate, and I echo Jackie Baillie’s gratitude to the Government. We have been calling for the debate for quite some time, because it is incredibly important and long overdue.

As we have heard, chronic pain is a hidden condition that affects 800,000 people in Scotland, which is around one in five Scots. It can result in significant suffering both for people who are affected and those around them. Sufferers describe it as a marathon in which they can never reach the finish line. The impact of the debilitating condition has serious ramifications: studies have found that highly persistent chronic pain is associated with poor mental health, poorer general health and even joblessness.

Despite all that, and despite nationally commissioned reports in the past ten years, chronic pain is still not even officially recognised as a condition. For far too long, thousands of Scots who have been suffering from chronic pain every day have been badly let down. We have heard about it in the debate; anyone who reads the report by Healthcare Improvement Scotland will be troubled by what they find. The report looked at provision of adult chronic pain services across primary, secondary and tertiary care in each NHS board area, and found that provision across the country is

“patchy and fragmented”,

and that

“access to services varies considerably between, and even sometimes within”

NHS territorial boards. It continues:

“Very few NHS Boards have dedicated funding streams for these services.”

The quality and effectiveness of the services is rarely monitored. Both healthcare professionals and service users describe a significant discrepancy between the descriptions of available services and the services that are provided. In fact, no health board can provide an accurate description of the chronic pain services that it provides, or of the resources that are available to fund them.

If the Presiding Officer will allow me, I will come to the Government’s pain management implementation plan, which is sadly lacking in detail and leaves many questions unanswered. There is no clarity on how services are to be improved, very little on staffing and a great lack of detail on investment.

The Government says that it has collaborated with people who have chronic pain conditions in developing the plan. However, members of the Parliament’s cross-party group on chronic pain have a different story to tell—we have heard about that already. They say that there has been no proper partnership: 10 patients who were elected to a closed Government committee described being ignored, silenced and repeatedly being denied meetings with the cabinet secretary or health ministers. They say that they did not approve the original report or the implementation plan, and some of them even describe the motions for today’s debate as “vague spin” that could be twisted into anything. That is a damning indictment from the very people who desperately need the Government to take action to improve chronic pain services across the country—it is hardly the seal of approval that the Government has suggested.

I recognise the importance of pain clinics within our local services, which offer a wide range of treatments and provide support to relieve the symptoms of chronic pain that comes from conditions including arthritis, back problems and nerve damage. Those services are under real strain: there is little capacity and a lack of the skilled professionals who are needed to provide those services. I know that the local pain clinic in my colleague Liam MacArthur’s Orkney constituency has recently had to close, which has had a serious knock-on impact for the people who are reliant on its regular service. Although efforts are under way to ensure that health boards on the mainland can provisionally provide that service, the issue highlights the need for more targeted support—both to maintain provision and to identify gaps in the service in advance.

Availability of specialist services is also important. In 2020, the First Minister’s governance report set out her Government’s plans to reduce reliance on chronic pain specialist services and increase self-management. That came as a blow to many severe pain sufferers, who credit specialists with having given life-saving help. For some people, it really has saved their lives. However, two years later, patients still await clarity about which treatments might be cut.

The Government’s nonchalant attitude to health will, sadly, come as no surprise to the almost 200,000 Scots who are currently suffering from long Covid. Let us not forget the real link between chronic pain and long Covid, because pain is one of the symptoms that many sufferers face. The Government is devoting twice as much money to its efforts to break up the United Kingdom in a referendum next year as it is to helping people who are suffering from long Covid. That is shameful. We need to revolutionise our approach to long Covid and chronic pain. The Government’s plans and its whole approach leave much to be desired.

Thousands of Scots are waiting in pain, and they need more than just lip service. They need local, specialised and targeted care, and it is up to this Government to provide it to them. We are being watched in the chamber this afternoon. This debate has been a long time coming, and is long overdue. Let us not meet the challenge with lip service; let us meet it with real action.