Hansard

My question to the minister is, "Why are we having this debate?" Is it just to announce the formation of a committee? If that is the reason, it is a bit feeble. If the purpose of the debate is to give members the opportunity to repeat what many of us have been saying since 1999, when it was first suggested that we should have a sexual health strategy, is that the best use of parliamentary time? The speech from the Conservatives was, to be quite frank, from out of the dark ages and will leave many young Scots in the dark about relationships education as much as about sexual health education.

If the debate is not about just repeating positions that people have held previously, what is its purpose? If it is about announcing progress since the statement in January, perhaps it would have been courteous and informative to Parliament to have provided members with some documentation—a photocopied report announcing progress to date would have been helpful and would have moved the debate on. Some of us are a bit tired and weary of having to return to the chamber time and again to repeat concerns about the appalling sexual health record of Scotland. However, this is a time when we should be at our least tired and weary, because the momentum to ensure that action is taken is needed more than ever.

Subjects such as relationships and self-esteem have been mentioned repeatedly in the debate. Sexual health is not the only concern we have about our young people. Perhaps the minister should discuss with his colleague Peter Peacock in the Education Department how we can ensure that self-esteem and self-respect are part and parcel of our education system, because tackling those issues will help to tackle many other issues.

On parental involvement, on page 80 of the report I see an interesting comment from somebody who attended one of the consultations. He said:

"When my son started going with a girlfriend I spoke to him and I said to him ‘watch what you're doing and go to the chemist and just be careful'. But with my daughters—my wife asked me if I was going to talk to them, but I said no. I don't feel it's the man's place to talk to the daughter—but maybe it is?"

Just over a week ago we had a conference in the chamber with parliamentarians from Africa, G8 countries and Europe. The subject of much of the conference was HIV and AIDS. In one of the workshops, a Ugandan parliamentarian said:

"One of our biggest problems in tackling HIV and AIDS is that men don't want to talk to their daughters about sex and sexual health, and politicians and public servants don't want to talk about sex and sexual health."

If we have achieved anything, perhaps we have moved on in that public servants and politicians are talking about sexual health. However, as the report says, perhaps there is a problem in how parents talk to their children and how men and women relate differently to their sons and daughters.

I would like to hear more about the McCabe report's recommendations on parental education. We have glossy documents such as "Ready Steady Baby!: A Guide to Pregnancy, Birth and Early Parenthood" to help people know what they should do with their children. I am not suggesting that the Executive should go out and produce masses of glossy documents, as it is prone to do, but perhaps a "Ready Steady Teenager!" document might be helpful. Also, although I see points about parental education in the report, I have heard nothing about what is happening.

On consistency of information, I remind members—particularly the Conservatives—that article 24 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that no child should be deprived of the right to access public health education and services. I welcome the Roman Catholic Church's movement on education services, but I ask the same question as I asked in January: who will monitor the quality and provision of sex education in non-denominational and Catholic schools and report to Parliament on whether they are satisfied that the points that have been made about public health and access to information are upheld? I look forward to hearing an answer to that.

I am concerned to read that some surveys suggest that the lack of information is still prevalent. A survey by Developing Patient Partnerships tells us that 45 per cent of young people in Scotland

"mistakenly thought that they had to see their GP before they could access sexual health services".

We are six years on from 1999 when we said that we needed a sexual health strategy. We need to ensure that we monitor our progress robustly to see where we are going.

I ask the minister to address online access to sexual health information, because that is what young people want. In the Developing Patient Partnerships survey, 78 per cent of young respondents cited online information as a need. However, we know that blocks on websites mean that young people who want to access such sites might not be able to do so. We need to address that technological impasse.

On funding and the provision of resources, we know that John Reid provided £300 million for the strategy in England and we have heard the minister's announcement of £5 million a year over three years, but is that enough? The briefing that we have received from the Scottish NHS Confederation suggests that

"Shortages of suitably trained staff in some areas will mean that many aspects of the strategy will take longer to implement than others".

We are talking about a national strategy, so I would like to hear from the minister what services in what parts of the country will not be able to implement parts of the strategy because of resources.

Rather than being tired and weary about progress to date, we should say to the minister that we are watching him, that we expect results and that we expect the momentum to be continued rather than slowed down. If the purpose of the debate is to ensure that he knows that, perhaps it will be useful.