Hansard

I, too, thank Stuart McMillan for bringing the debate to the chamber and for his continued interest in what is a very important subject. I am also hugely grateful for the very helpful and collaborative speeches from everyone today.

I, too, welcome to the Parliament Jill Best and the members of the Scottish medical aesthetics safety group, and I thank them for the awareness raising that they have been working on.

Colin Beattie raised the clear point of significant risk to public health and safety. I have noticed—as have all contributors to the debate—the substantial increase in the number of businesses that offer non-surgical cosmetic procedures such as Botox and dermal fillers. As Miles Briggs said, in June, some of us attended a parliamentary round table on non-surgical cosmetics. I am grateful to Miles Briggs for hosting that event, which gave us an opportunity to hear a powerful account of one person’s experience of a non-surgical cosmetic procedure that went wrong. I completely agree with Collette Stevenson that that was harrowing. I also concur with Miles Briggs’s point that the professionals who attended that meeting came at the issue very much from the perspective of picking up the pieces of work that had gone wrong.

I will touch on the point about Public Health Scotland and the recording of the cases that NHS Scotland has had to treat as a result of such cosmetic work. I have spoken to Public Health Scotland about that and it is exploring further; however, it is a worldwide coding issue, which we need to understand.

I am also mindful of the points that Gillian Mackay and Miles Briggs made about people’s motivation for seeking such treatments. My thoughts will always go out to anyone who may have been harmed by a non-surgical cosmetic procedure. As Gillian Mackay said, we should not shame or blame such people. As Sharon Dowey mentioned, we learned only just last week of the tragic death of Alice Webb, a young mum of five children in Gloucestershire who passed away less than 24 hours after having undergone a cosmetic procedure. My sympathies are with her family.

Many people who undertake such procedures are happy with the results, and there are many responsible practitioners in the medical and beauty sectors, as Clare Haughey and others have outlined. We all want those procedures to be delivered safely by experienced and qualified practitioners, but we know that that is not always the case.

I am grateful to the environmental health officers and public health teams in local authorities who have been working within the powers that they have to address unsafe practice, for instance, by serving prohibition notices. We want to provide a more robust and effective framework to support EHOs, but I also want to provide a framework to support responsible practitioners and give confidence to consumers. We cannot entirely eliminate the risks that are inherent in those procedures. Some are clearly more risky or carry more serious potential side effects than others, but it is appropriate to mitigate those risks.

I remind members that the Scottish Government has made progress in that area. In 2016, we introduced a requirement for independent clinics to be registered and inspected by Healthcare Improvement Scotland. Earlier this year, we expanded that by bringing into the regulation independent services that are provided by pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. Those clinics are the location for a number of non-surgical cosmetic procedures, and consumers can now access them with the confidence that the settings are regulated and inspected by Healthcare Improvement Scotland.

However, as Stuart McMillan and other members have pointed out, there is no regulation of procedures that take place outwith those settings. I agree that that gap in regulation is an issue of huge concern, and the Scottish Government is actively addressing it.

Our consultation in 2020 showed overwhelming support for further regulation. However, some of the comments that we received—on the specific model of licensing that we proposed—were that it was not sufficient to manage the risks for all types of procedures. That is why, at the very helpful meeting with some members on 10 September, I was happy to confirm that I intend to seek public views on more detailed proposals to further regulate the sector. That will build on the previous consultation and the model that we proposed. Work is already under way on that, and we intend to publish the findings before the end of this year. We will ensure that that work is publicised as widely as possible, and I hope that colleagues in the chamber and outwith will do all that they can to support that.

In addition to the consultation, my officials continue to work with the Scottish cosmetic interventions expert group and engage with a range of stakeholders about what regulation might look like. Those stakeholders include healthcare professionals, hair and beauty industry representatives, colleges, environmental health officers and Healthcare Improvement Scotland.

The consultation will be informed by the views of those stakeholders, who have offered valuable advice on the types of procedure that are being carried out, the risks that they carry and the different ways of managing those risks or making the procedures safer.

I will specifically address Foysol Choudhury’s point about age limits. I know that there is an active debate about the appropriate age for procedures to be carried out, and it appears that there is strong support for a minimum age limit for clients. I assure Parliament that our consultation will seek views on age restrictions for procedures in Scotland, as well as the level of training and qualifications that people might need in order to perform those types of procedures safely.

Our ultimate aim is that all non-surgical cosmetic procedures are carried out by appropriately trained practitioners in an appropriate setting, applying recognised standards and using regulated products. As we know, this is a fast-changing sector. Any potential regulation will need to be proportionate, robust and future proofed to capture any emerging procedures. We are working with key stakeholders to get those details right.

I thank Parliament and members for the opportunity to speak in this debate and I commit to continuing to engage with members across the chamber to ensure that we get the regulation right.