Former Conservative MSP for North East Scotland
I welcome the minister’s amendments in the group. I share Malcolm Chisholm’s concern and look forward to hearing what the minister says about his amendments 86A and 95A. The Health and Sport Committee discussed the issues with bereaved parents. They are obviously sensitive issues. Those people feel strongly that the women’s interests should be put first and that matters should be...
Thank you very much for those kind words, Presiding Officer. Of the seven bills that the Health and Sport Committee dealt with during this session of the Parliament, six have been before us during the past five or six months. This final stage 3 debate brings to a close a particularly busy session that has been quite onerous for committee members, clerks and support staff—no doubt that is...
Jackson Carlaw quickly absorbed the detail of our health service, which I have lived and breathed for a long time. It has been a privilege to represent the great folk of north-east Scotland for the past 13 years and to meet the many people whom I have got to know down here through committee work and the many cross-party groups that I am involved with. However, I am looking forward very much...
I, too, extend my thanks to my North East Scotland colleague Mark McDonald for once again bringing to the chamber a debate on autism. In the lifetime of the Parliament, we have looked at many aspects of understanding and coping with the condition, such as relaxed cinema and theatre performances, which have made such a difference in enabling people—especially children—to enjoy pursuits...
I, too, thank Linda Fabiani for lodging this motion on an issue that we discuss every year. Of course, this year is special, given that we are celebrating Marie Curie’s 30th anniversary of its great daffodil appeal. At last week’s Scottish Conservative Party conference, where Marie Curie had a stall, Richard Meade of the organisation told my researcher of his disappointment at many...
I support Malcolm Chisholm’s amendments, and I will be brief. From my experience in the health service, I am well aware that there are patients who certainly do not want to know the detail of what goes on even in their own treatment, or if there have been mistakes. I appreciate that, for the duty of candour, it is necessary for them to know that there has been something, but it should...
This afternoon sees the completion of the fifth piece of legislation to be scrutinised by the Health and Sport Committee in the last few months of this parliamentary session. I echo the thanks that have already been expressed to all those who have contributed to our understanding of the bill’s provisions and to those who have worked to make improvements to it as it has made its way through...
I begin my closing remarks by returning to parts 2 and 3 of the bill. I grew up in a paternalistic NHS, at a time when patients expected and received little information about the treatment that they were given and accepted without question that health professionals, particularly doctors, knew best and did their best, even when things went wrong. No one would ever have thought that such people...
