Hansard

Finally and belatedly, we debate this devastating condition in Government time. It is shameful that the SNP-Green coalition has made sufferers wait this long.

Long Covid was first recognised more than 18 months ago, as we have heard several times. It affects more than 150,000 Scots and that figure is rising. It has been characterised as possibly the biggest mass disabling event since the first world war, but the Government’s progress on it has been utterly glacial.

Long Covid is insidious, debilitating and widespread. It manifests in any combination of hundreds of symptoms, including air hunger, diarrhoea, muscle spasms, brain fog and chronic fatigue. It ruins livelihoods and it hobbles lives.

Until now, sufferers have been deprived of a voice in the proceedings of the Parliament. Today, they speak through those of us, such as me, Jackie Baillie and Dr Sandesh Gulhane who, from the Opposition benches, have dragged the Government to this point. Today we speak for sufferers such as Anna, who, at just eight years old, has had her education and her childhood ruined by long Covid. When asked by her mum Helen Goss, one of the founders of Long Covid Kids, to describe her condition to the first meeting of the long Covid cross-party group in the Parliament, she did so using just three words: “I hate it”.

Anna is just one of more than 10,000 Scottish children who are battling the condition and who seldom get the attention that they deserve.

I speak today for Stuart, my constituent, who is with us in the public gallery. He is a man of an age with me. He had his whole career before him but now cannot be sure whether he will have the strength to leave the house on any given day. Even now, despite the belated recognition in the remarks of the cabinet secretary, each of those people, and the 150,000 people like them, would be better off moving to England where there are long Covid clinics, care pathways and dedicated research trials.

On this matter, the Government has been woeful. Only after considerable pressure did the cabinet secretary announce £10 million for long Covid in September last year. Until this month, however, not even a penny of that money had been allocated.

Prior to that point, and at every time since, long Covid has only ever been raised in the chamber during Opposition time. In November, I led the first parliamentary debate on the matter. In January, my colleague Beatrice Wishart asked the Government to provide an update on the impact of long Covid, and she was told it would perhaps be discussed as an option at the bureau. In February, I highlighted to the First Minister that fewer than 1 per cent of long Covid sufferers had been referred to the Chest, Heart & Stroke Scotland support service. She told me that there was no need to intervene. In March, Jackie Baillie, Sandesh Gulhane and I pressed the First Minister on why none of the £10 million had been allocated to the long Covid support fund, or had even been spent. She said that the allocation would be made in the following weeks, but weeks and weeks have passed.

The weeks and months have passed and the SNP-Green coalition’s approach to this awful condition is one of manifest disinterest. To add insult to injury, neither party could be bothered to send a representative to the national long Covid hustings ahead of the council elections.

I say to the Government, both SNP and Green, long Covid sufferers see you and they will find you out. The announcement that £3 million will be spent this year is eight months too late. It is wholly unequal to the challenge and it will not touch the sides, but that is what we have come to expect from the Government when the main resource that it has made available to sufferers during these past two years has been the Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland support line.

Make no mistake—that is a valuable service for those long Covid sufferers who reach it. It offers them a safe way of speaking to their advice line nurses and provides wider support through the long Covid patient support group. I want to make it clear that my frustration about the lack of progress is not about the Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland service, but that fewer than 1 per cent of long Covid patients have been referred to it. The First Minister might believe that there is no good reason to intervene, but I can assure her that there absolutely is. There is currently no primary care pathway to the service, which means that when someone with long Covid visits their GP, it is unlikely that they will be referred to the service automatically. They might be lucky enough to have a GP who is aware of the support line and encourages them to call it, but many will not be.

In England, by contrast, people who visit their GP about long Covid can be referred to a post-Covid clinic, where they can be assessed by a doctor, a nurse or a physiotherapist. The Government may say that those clinics do not always get the best feedback, but at least patients in England have the option of using them. That option is not available here. As a result, Scottish sufferers are being left far behind and are not getting the help that they need.

The Scottish Government must recognise the enormity of the public health disaster that the long Covid situation represents. The cabinet secretary must start listening. He must listen to Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland, which has told ministers that an integrated automatic referral system needs to be put in place; he must listen to Long Covid Scotland and the other third sector organisations that are calling for a human rights-based approach to provision; and he must listen to long Covid sufferers such as Stuart and eight-year-old Anna, who are crying out for him to take account of their experience and to act.

When Scotland’s pandemic story is written, the tragedy of that story will undoubtedly be found in our care homes, but the scandal of that tale will be told in the Government’s indifference to Scotland’s long Covid sufferers.

I move amendment S6M-04472.2, to insert at end:

“; recognises the work of Chest Heart and Stroke Scotland in operating the vital long COVID support service; regrets that less than 1% of people with long COVID have been referred to the service, and urges the Scottish Government to take immediate action to expand the pathways to support, including enabling GPs to refer to the long COVID support service automatically.”