Hansard

I thank Rona Mackay for bringing the debate to the chamber once again and allowing Parliament to recognise fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. As she will know, I have participated in these debates because the issue is close to my heart, and I really appreciate her bringing it to the chamber.

It is important that we continue to highlight FASD’s impact on Scotland’s communities and raise awareness of the long-lasting impact that exposure to alcohol during pregnancy can have. As other members have highlighted, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder affects 4 per cent of Scotland’s population, which is a startling figure, given that—as others have said—it is preventable. The UK chief medical officer recommends that the safest approach for people who are pregnant or are planning a pregnancy is not to drink alcohol at all. That will keep the risk to the baby to a minimum.

Of course, it is important that people understand the risk of drinking during pregnancy, but a point that I would make, and which Rona Mackay made, too, is that we, as elected politicians, must take our responsibility in this regard seriously. We live in a Scotland that normalises alcohol; in fact, excessive alcohol culture is almost normal, up to the point where it becomes a problem. Therefore, we must, as Ms Mackay has said, understand this issue as a public health situation, and we must have more debates about population-wide measures to reduce alcohol-related harm.

Research indicates that individual women are often not aware of the advice not to drink alcohol during pregnancy, so clearly more can be done with regard to public health messages that can improve awareness, especially given that, as colleagues have said, 46 per cent of pregnancies in the UK are unplanned. I would hope that putting out that messaging early to young women could be useful.

The Government’s “Women’s Health Plan” commits to providing accessible information and advice on pre-pregnancy care, which is welcome. In the medium term, there is a plan to develop a framework for pre-pregnancy care to raise awareness and understanding of the importance of optimising health before pregnancy. That might be an area on which we could work with the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health to ensure that we get accurate information and that we can talk about the use of alcohol in pregnancy.