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Official Report: search what was said in Parliament

The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.  

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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 19 December 2024
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Displaying 595 contributions

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Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]

Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 5 November 2024

Gillian Mackay

Great. Thank you.

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]

Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 5 November 2024

Gillian Mackay

That is great. Thanks, convener.

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee

Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People (Independent Review)

Meeting date: 29 October 2024

Gillian Mackay

If there is time, I will ask one final question, which builds on what Gordon MacDonald asked earlier. Some young people were close to being prescribed either puberty blockers or hormones, or both, when the pause came into effect, and others who are going through the system may come to that point while the pause is still in place. Is there any monitoring of the possibility that those young people might access black-market medication because they do not feel that they can wait for the pause to be resolved? How are we monitoring the resulting harm, both of the potential use of black-market medication and of the harm done to young people who were given a pathway that they anticipated would have one result but which has come to a conclusion that they were not necessarily prepared for?

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee

Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People (Independent Review)

Meeting date: 29 October 2024

Gillian Mackay

Professor Smith, among the allegations by the petitioner is that the decision to pause prescriptions is ideologically driven, given that it is not unusual, as we heard earlier, for paediatric treatments by doctors to include use of off-label antipsychotics. How would you respond to those allegations? Do you believe that the service should be available for children and young people?

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee

Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People (Independent Review)

Meeting date: 29 October 2024

Gillian Mackay

I will just interrupt here. Could prohibition—a complete pause and inaccessibility, even through private prescriptions—actually drive more young people to use non-traditional methods of access, rather than potentially having oversight and monitoring from clinicians in the first place?

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee

Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People (Independent Review)

Meeting date: 29 October 2024

Gillian Mackay

I will go back to a point that Professor Strath made earlier. I have spoken to trans young people who cannot understand why some young people can be prescribed puberty blockers for precocious puberty but trans young people cannot have them. They do not feel very different to their peers who can be prescribed the drugs. Can you give me some insight into why we are where we are and why the research is going ahead?

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee

Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People (Independent Review)

Meeting date: 29 October 2024

Gillian Mackay

The panel will be aware that there has been a petition in the Scottish Parliament to end the pause on prescribing puberty blockers to children. In relation to that specific request of the petition, to what extent do doctors have discretion, as part of the current pause on prescriptions, to issue new prescriptions outwith the planned clinical research?

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee

National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2

Meeting date: 8 October 2024

Gillian Mackay

Before we set any hares running with relatives, we must be clear that that has not yet come out of the bill, which is still as it was when it was introduced at stage 1. No amendments have been passed.

Do you believe that that should remain in the bill, or is it your position that that aim should be delivered elsewhere?

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee

National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2

Meeting date: 8 October 2024

Gillian Mackay

What are your views on the intention to bring social work services together, particularly given the potential inclusion of children’s services within the national care service, the pattern in which things are included—or not—across the country at the moment, and the potential difficulties that that could cause?

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee

National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2

Meeting date: 8 October 2024

Gillian Mackay

Good morning. We have been discussing a few of the things that everybody has some concerns about, but there are parts of the bill that people agree should be implemented. There have been delays in the implementation of Anne’s law—we have heard from relatives of care home residents regarding their concerns about implementation. Pending the implementation of Anne’s law, are the two new health and social care standards that were introduced in 2022 sufficient to ensure that care homes residents can maintain meaningful connections? Why have there been delays? What else could be done to support the implementation of Anne’s law?