Hansard

I should say that I know David’s family well and it is lovely to see them in the public gallery. I have the utmost admiration for Sharon, his mother, who in very difficult circumstances has sought to see what she can do to help other families. I have seen the SPICe briefing but, for me, it comes back to a point that Mr Ewing made on a previous petition: what if Sharon Duncan, the wider Hill family and some of the organisations that they are working with are right, and the National Screening Committee is wrong? Certainly, if it were my child, I would want to know that that question had been exhausted. I would be keen for the committee to write to organisations with a relevant interest—Cardiac Risk in the Young, Save a Life for Scotland, the British Heart Foundation, St John Scotland and Chest Heart and Stroke Scotland—to seek their views and expertise on what is called for in the petition, and to find out about any work that they may be undertaking on conditions affecting sudden cardiac death. I would also be keen for the committee to write to the UK National Screening Committee to ask when it expects to review the evidence for screening for sudden cardiac death, and to write to the network for inherited cardiac conditions seeking further details and an update on its sudden cardiac death project. In addition, I would be keen to go back to the Scottish Government. It has provided quite a helpful response on the petition, but I would be keen to interrogate further its role in informing the National Screening Committee’s work. It is one thing to ask questions and make representations, but I do not know how much more it can do. Certainly, David Hill’s family and Sharon Duncan, his mother, are not in a unique position. There are families like them in every part of Scotland, as we have seen through activities that have been undertaken in Parliament since David’s death. The least that those people deserve is for us to try to understand how the process works and be absolutely sure that all the evidence has been taken into consideration.