Hansard

I thank Meghan Gallacher for bringing the debate to chamber and I commend her for her speech. The Labour amendment is intended not to take anything away from any part of her motion, but to enhance it by talking about the Wishaw neonatal unit, which is an issue that she has addressed herself.

“When you have a child in neonatal intensive care you don’t know what to expect. The family could be called in at any minute to say goodbye. What happens if their child is 200 miles away?”

Those are the words of Lynne McRitchie, whose newborn son, Innes, spent four months in Wishaw’s neonatal unit, fighting off infections and sepsis.

In those first anxious days, Lynne was told that Innes could die at any moment. Innes is now six years old, and Lynne is one of the Wishaw neonatal warriors, raising her voice in concern at the Scottish National Party’s plan to downgrade the neonatal unit that saved her baby’s life. That decision is opposed by everybody, from clinical staff and local communities to the former SNP Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing, Alex Neil. It is a thoughtless centralisation of neonatal care that means that the sickest babies could be transferred to Aberdeen, a three-hour journey away, because there is insufficient capacity at Glasgow and Edinburgh.

The SNP Government says that it is following expert advice, so I remind the minister what the “Best Start” report actually said. It stated:

“Three to five neonatal intensive care units should be developed, supported by 10 to 12 local neonatal and special care units.”

Five neonatal intensive care units could easily include NHS Lanarkshire, as Scotland’s third-largest health board. It could easily include the neonatal multidisciplinary team at University hospital Wishaw, which was named the UK neonatal team of 2023. Why, therefore, did the SNP Government interpret the best start recommendation as narrowly as possible, and stop at three specialist units?

The best start proposals offered a vision in which mothers and babies receive

“truly family-centred ... and compassionate ... care”

and noted—as Meghan Gallacher did in her speech—

“The benefits of keeping mothers and babies together”.

I will quote Lynne McRitchie again. She said:

“They talk about keeping families together but parents have not been consulted on these plans.

Mums and babies should not be separated and if there is not enough accommodation at these hospitals then that is what will happen.

Parents would have to stay in hotels. Mums are often discharged before a baby and if there is nowhere for them to stay what will they do?”

The “Best Start” report pledged to redesign services

“using the best available evidence”,

but NHS Lanarkshire was not represented in the options appraisal process, nor did the decision makers use data from the existing neonatal unit in Wishaw. They did not take account of the existing skills and knowledge in Wishaw, nor did they acknowledge the comparatively high number of premature babies being delivered in Lanarkshire.

The evidence for that devastating decision is, therefore, shaky at best, while those to whom it matters most feel left in the dark.

Monica Sheen is another Lanarkshire mum. On multiple occasions, she got the call that every parent dreads: to come to the hospital to say goodbye to her premature son, Alfie. She described the five-minute journey to the hospital as

“the longest of your life”

and said:

“I can't imagine what a three-hour journey to say goodbye would be like”.

Thankfully, Alfie pulled through, but local people, clinical workers and families are all clear that the facility must be protected for the babies of the future. Will the minister therefore scrap the proposed downgrading of the neonatal intensive care unit at University hospital Wishaw? It is in the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care’s backyard. Will he do anything—anything at all—to protect the interests of vulnerable babies and their parents across Lanarkshire? If not, how will the SNP Government ensure that mums and babies like Monica and Alfie can stay together at the most frightening time in their lives?