Skip to main content

Language: English / GàidhligDark Mode

Loading…

Seòmar agus comataidhean

Official Report: search what was said in Parliament

Criathragan Hide all filters

Dates of parliamentary sessions
  1. Session 1: 12 May 1999 to 31 March 2003
  2. Session 2: 7 May 2003 to 2 April 2007
  3. Session 3: 9 May 2007 to 22 March 2011
  4. Session 4: 11 May 2011 to 23 March 2016
  5. Session 5: 12 May 2016 to 5 May 2021
  6. Current session: 12 May 2021 to 1 April 2025
Select which types of business to include


Select level of detail in results

Displaying 876 contributions

|

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee

Right to Addiction Recovery (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 25 March 2025

Elena Whitham

That complexity is key, and it leads on to my next question, which is about advocacy. We know that people require advocacy when they come to deal with such issues. MAT standard 8 is about the independent advocacy and social support that are required. That includes thinking about housing and other, wider factors that we know impact on people’s lives.

Do you think that the bill provides adequate reassurance on the need for independent advocacy and on factoring that into people’s journeys, or do you think that it needs to be strengthened in that regard?

Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]

A Climate Transition for Scottish Agriculture

Meeting date: 19 March 2025

Elena Whitham

Those contributions have been really helpful in setting a marker for us to think about the issues. We do not think about food security in such terms, so that is pretty helpful.

Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]

A Climate Transition for Scottish Agriculture

Meeting date: 19 March 2025

Elena Whitham

Dr Vera Eory mentioned soil passports. That would be a good way of thinking about how we baseline and understand what soil health in an agricultural business looks like. I absolutely get that there is a set of principles for regenerative agriculture and that it will be, and look, different in each place. Nonetheless, how do we actually empower farmers? David McKay talked about farmers being able to look at their phone and see all the data on soil health on their farm and what is working well. Might a soil passport fit in with that kind of thinking?

Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]

A Climate Transition for Scottish Agriculture

Meeting date: 19 March 2025

Elena Whitham

I am not sure, convener. I think that Tim Eagle is next.

Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]

A Climate Transition for Scottish Agriculture

Meeting date: 19 March 2025

Elena Whitham

Good afternoon. I want to spend a wee bit of time speaking about regenerative farming. We have danced around that this morning, although a lot of your answers have alluded to it. One of the very first speeches that I made when I came to this place was on the subject. It is new to a lot of people, but I learned about it way back in the early 1990s from taking environmental science courses in Canada. We were starting to think about dust bowls, compacted soils and the very real threats at that time.

How do we make the concept of regenerative farming more accessible to our farmers in Scotland and enable them to understand it? Knowledge exchange is important. David McKay talked about that, and I have been out on a farm in my area with the Soil Association to see it in practice. As I come from Ayrshire, you will not be surprised to know that my grandfather was a dairy farmer and I have friends who are dairy farmers. A lot of really interesting things are happening down there, such as the First Milk co-operative, which has a regenerative farming programme and is rewarding farmers with financial benefit for producing soils that are healthy by, for example, ensuring that there is clover and that the swards are healthy. There are also individual farms such as Mossgiel Organic Farm, which is working towards net zero and is able to gain public procurement contracts because it is recognised that the farm offers a valuable, nutritious product.

How do we make the move to regenerative farming accessible and well understood for those who are at the soil face, so to speak? I do not think that we do that at present. I am also concerned about the tier 4 issue. Is there enough resource around that? How do we address that?

David, will you start, as you have touched on that aspect already?

Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]

A Climate Transition for Scottish Agriculture

Meeting date: 19 March 2025

Elena Whitham

Is it the case that, if the move towards sustainable and regenerative agriculture is done correctly, it will not necessarily impact on businesses’ long-term profitability if they are supported along the way to get themselves to that position? Even if we consider reducing herd sizes and reducing consumption, if that is done on a whole-farm basis and a societal basis that drives the kind of cultural change that we know that we have needed for the past 30 or 40 years, it should not affect profitability or our food security in Scotland.

The committee has been concerned about how we ensure that we get the right tree in the right place and that we think about trees on farms as something that is beneficial, as opposed to the argument that comes back to saying, “We can’t eat a tree.” That is a part of the whole thing that we need to consider.

Rural Affairs and Islands Committee [Draft]

A Climate Transition for Scottish Agriculture

Meeting date: 19 March 2025

Elena Whitham

That is something that we really need to bottom out, because a lot of people who are doing regenerative farming will say that they believe that they are sequestering a lot more carbon than their farms are emitting. We are on a journey to try to catch up with that kind of carbon auditing. It will be helpful once we get to the position where we understand that clearly and collectively.

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]

Right to Addiction Recovery (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 18 March 2025

Elena Whitham

You have outlined that some rights need to be brought into domestic law. Do you feel that the bill could be the vehicle to realise that? Could the rights that you mentioned, such as the right to the highest attainable level of health, be incorporated in the bill in order to realise those rights for people, or would we still need a human rights bill to incorporate those aspects?

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]

Right to Addiction Recovery (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 18 March 2025

Elena Whitham

I will explore some issues regarding treatment options. The bill as drafted outlines several treatment options that individuals who have a diagnosis of drug and/or alcohol addiction may access. Those include, but are not limited to residential or community-based rehabilitation, residential or community-based detoxification, and stabilisation services.

Some of the written submissions that we have received from organisations, including from Social Work Scotland and from the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland, express a little concern in their perception that the bill focuses on abstinence-based recovery rather than on harm reduction. I will explore that idea a little. The Royal College of Psychiatrists also has some concerns about unregulated rehabilitation services and how to better protect people in that space.

11:15  

Does the bill, as drafted, effectively integrate harm reduction approaches with the range of treatment options that it proposes? We should recognise that people are sometimes not able to access residential rehab when that might be the thing that supports them in the long run, and looking back, they sometimes recognise that it could have supported them at an earlier stage. I am trying to square all that, and wonder whether you can speak to it. I will start with Peter Rice.

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]

Right to Addiction Recovery (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 18 March 2025

Elena Whitham

That speaks to my second question. People with lived experience have emphasised to us that it is all about wraparound support, and that recovery goes well beyond any rehabilitation that might occur. Things such as mutual aid and recovery communities, as well as that wider look across to housing and so on, are all important. Does the bill, as drafted, adequately promote the collaborative working that there needs to be between health, addiction services and broader support services? I will start with Dr Williams.