Meeting of the Parliament 22 December 2022
Thank you, Presiding Officer. I begin, as you and many others have done, by wishing everybody all the very best for the festive season—a very merry Christmas indeed—and all the best for 2023. I have a secret list of who I think will be getting a lump of coal for Christmas, but it would be uncharitable of me to even suggest who might be on such a list.
As is customary, I begin by thanking Douglas Ross for securing this important members’ business debate. I am pleased that, notwithstanding the exceptionally long couple of nights that we had as we engaged with the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, we were still able to make time in the Business Bulletin for this debate, which is important not just to members in the chamber but to many people across Moray and, as Finlay Carson has demonstrated, across Scotland.
I am pleased to acknowledge, too, that an exceptional cross-party campaign exists on this matter. I have met a number of elected members—Douglas Ross, Richard Lochhead, Rhoda Grant and many others across the political spectrum—in relation to that excellent campaign.
I restate the Government’s cast-iron commitment—as Karen Adam asked me to do—to returning consultant-led maternity services to Dr Gray’s hospital. I will not go through the background, because people are aware of it now that they have heard it from other members; instead, I will try to address some of the points that have been raised.
Many colleagues have made the point—Edward Mountain made it most forcefully in his contribution—that it is so important that we listen to clinicians, whether in Raigmore or at Dr Gray’s. That clinical expertise is exceptionally important. I do not want anybody to leave the chamber thinking that I do not listen to and put a lot of stock in the opinion and expertise of clinicians. The concerns that clinicians had raised were playing heavily on my mind when I last talked about Dr Gray’s in the chamber, which is why I was not in a position to approve the model 4 plans then.
Douglas Ross and other members have posed a question to me a question about model 4, and they have raised concerns along with keep MUM, the maternity voices partnership and others. I think that model 4 has probably become a distraction. We are trying to describe an improvement journey, with all the elements that are required for an integrated model. When I asked Douglas Ross whether he believed in cross-boundary working, his answer was, “Absolutely”, which is right. If we are going to have a sustainable model, with all the recruitment challenges that we have in not just the north-east of Scotland but many areas of remote, rural and island Scotland, cross-boundary working will be exceptionally important.
However, it is fair to say that there are clinical, community and elected representative concerns around model 4, and that model 6, which is the plan that we have in front of us, will not go fast enough for many people. Many months ago, people were saying in the chamber that model 6 might take seven or 10 years, which is what they had heard from others, but I should say that it is far more ambitious than that.
Having taken all those things into account, I have decided that we will not continue with model 4 as previously outlined. However, as I have already said, I expect NHS Highland and NHS Grampian to continue to work together to ensure sustainable maternity services for women in the north of Scotland.