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In the interests of time, I would just like to hear the cabinet secretary make a commitment on the important issue of allied health professional staff. They have a really important role to play in the reform of the NHS, but they face significant recruitment and retention problems. I raise that to ensure that the team sees it as an important part of the overall plan for the NHS.

I thank Audrey Nicoll for bringing this important debate to the chamber and the members who have spoken so far for their contributions. On behalf of Scottish Labour, I also welcome international day of the midwife, which is being marked tomorrow, and pay tribute to all those who have contributed to the development of the field as we celebrate 100 years of progress throughout the globe and the global midwife community.

It is right that I begin my remarks by noting and commenting on the work of midwives during the Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic put significant pressure on all aspects of our health service, but midwifery is a very obvious example. In many cases, the partners of women who were giving birth were not able to be with them in the room, so a midwife would be their closest support during childbirth. For many of those women, their midwife would also be their trusted confidante when it came to taking up the offer of a Covid-19 vaccine—something that many pregnant women were understandably sceptical about in the early stages of the pandemic.

On that note, I pay tribute to the Royal College of Midwives for its strong calls for everyone to get the vaccine, importantly noting the impact that severe Covid-19 symptoms could have on both mother and baby and the potentially negative impact of women entering maternity wards without having been vaccinated. The work of midwives throughout the pandemic has been admirable. They have kept services running during the most difficult of times and have provided the support that has been required by so many.

However, there are clear and significant problems in midwifery surrounding the fact that there are over 5,000 vacancies in nursing and midwifery in Scotland at the moment and the feelings of many of those who are already employed in nursing and midwifery that they are underpaid, underresourced, and undervalued. It is expected that agency work will be relied on, in some instances, to fill the gaps. However, the scale of the agency support that is being provided to the Scottish NHS is simply unsustainable. More investment must be put into education and training to ensure that more young people who are leaving school consider a career in midwifery. It is an excellent career for many people.

The Scottish Government must act to pay nursing and midwifery staff the wages that they deserve, ensure that the workplace conditions that they experience daily are improved, and support a workforce that has been under pressure during the pandemic.

Ahead of last year’s Scottish Parliament elections, the Royal College of Midwives, as well as asking for the midwife staff shortages to be brought to an end, called for investment in midwifery to tackle social deprivation. As I have said many times in the chamber, health inequalities remain one of Scotland’s biggest challenges. I would encourage the minister to consider how midwifery services can continue to provide the best start in life for children, protect women as they go through pregnancy, and remain in contact with both mother and child in order to protect mental health and wellbeing and to promote choices for healthy living.

There has been significant progress in the global midwife community in the past 100 years, which is evident in the first-class treatment and services that many members have mentioned today, which are provided by midwives across Scotland and beyond. However, to ensure that, in 50 or even 100 more years, when similar debates are had again, we must have a collective endeavour to overcome the challenges that currently exist in workplace environments and in vacancies. Moreover, we must show collective ambition to use midwifery as a vehicle for tackling the social and health inequalities that continue to grow in our society.

Again, I welcome international day of the midwife and the contributions from all members, and I thank all the midwives in my region of South Scotland and beyond for the incredible work that they have done and continue to do in serving their communities.

No. I thank the minister for that answer. I hope that we can come back to it, as it is an issue that we should explore.

Good morning. Has any research been done on reducing the visibility of alcohol in places where people who have problems may impulse buy, such as supermarkets? On the subject of reducing the visibility of alcohol, including for children and young people, I note that other countries have gone down the route of not having alcohol near the doors of shops so that it is not necessarily seen by people who are just popping in for milk. Have you thought about that? Is there any research on it that you are looking at?

To ask the Scottish Government how long Covid has been factored into its Covid-19 strategic review. (S6O-00992)

Given that answer, can the cabinet secretary explain why the Scottish Government is yet to host a debate on the important issue of the long-term effects of long Covid, and why the scheduled debate on that issue last week was changed to a different topic?

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. [Inaudible.]—I typed R in the chat function but no one has come back to me. I have a terrible connection.

I thank the minister for that news, which is most welcome. Will that provision include the considerable number of other nationals who have been displaced by the conflict in Ukraine?

I thank everyone who has contributed to the debate so far for their very important and engaging contributions.

I must, however, note my disappointment that we have not discussed long Covid, as was planned. I believe that that debate is of the utmost importance and that it needs to take place soon. Tens of thousands of people across Scotland are believed to be suffering from it, so we must speak about it in the chamber. I heard, obviously, what the cabinet secretary has said, but I do not think that the Government has given us an adequate reason why the subject of the debate was changed. That should be noted by Parliament.

I return to the important issue of antimicrobial resistance. In closing the debate, I will reiterate some of the important points that have been made, and sum up my party’s view on this important issue for the future of the country.

My colleague Jackie Baillie and Emma Roddick mentioned that there is some very good news around. It is most welcome to realise that there is reduction in use in many places and, of course, that we are managing to prevent many more infections. Emma Roddick gave an excellent speech on the need to look at prevention first and to make sure that we have the right messaging and training in place to do that. I thank her for her speech, which I thought was excellent.

Sandesh Gulhane was the first to give us some of the history of antibiotics; many other members also mentioned it. His comment about antibiotics being a “game changer” is very important. That fact is why we have to take this issue very seriously. The number of deaths that would be associated with the loss of antibiotics’ function would be, as many members have mentioned, a dreadful step backwards. TB in particular was given as an example of increased infections, and a disease for which we are unlikely to meet our global targets unless we really do something about it.

As a number of my colleagues have remarked, Scottish Labour very much welcomes the efforts to address the risks of antimicrobial resistance—in Scotland and around the world. It is important that we recognise that any attempt to do that must take place on a UK-wide basis and, indeed, globally.

The rapid development of the Covid vaccine was a great example of just how much can be done, in record time, when nations work together with a common purpose. That is the attitude that we should move forward with.

As we all know, any progress in healthcare begins with well-funded and effective research; antimicrobial resistance is no different. Ensuring that there is long-term support for that research is a vital step that we must take in order to preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics and other key medicines for years to come. The Scottish Government should be doing all that it can to support the many universities across Scotland that are doing that work, so that we can play our part in the promising international work on antimicrobial resistance. I am afraid that, at the moment, that support is not as good as it could be.

Unfortunately, Scotland trails behind England in terms of funding, and is devoting a third less per head of the population to clinical research of that kind. The British Heart Foundation estimates that without charitable funding the Government and other public bodies would need to increase direct funding by 73 per cent to make up for that shortfall. That does not sound to me as though the matter is a priority for the Government. That needs to change. If we want to be world leading, we have to put in the funds to achieve that.

It is with that in mind that my party is calling for the Scottish Funding Council to be tasked with a review of the domestic and global funding streams that are available to Scottish universities and research groups, so that we can effectively contribute to the global research efforts into antimicrobial resistance, and of the avenues that are available throughout the UK and in international research partnerships.

As we have heard from other members, effective prescribing also has a role to play in preventing the rise of antimicrobial resistance, but the report from the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee on its inquiry into the supply and demand of medicines across NHS Scotland last year was very critical of the progress that the Government has made in improving prescribing practices in Scotland. In particular, the committee was very critical of the inability of the NHS in Scotland to collect data on the outcomes of medicine use in patients, which will make it much harder to understand antimicrobial resistance better.

Prescribing in primary care makes up the bulk of our NHS medicines spend, despite there being ineffective monitoring of those medicines when the medicines reviews are carried out with patients. Again, that does not sound like the kind of foundation that we want if we are to push ahead with tackling antimicrobial resistance. As the cabinet secretary said, those things have to change. My party wants to fully support efforts to do that.

I reiterate that although the debate has been useful—I have learned a lot and some very important points have been made—it is disappointing that after months of evading the question of support for long Covid patients, the Government still has no answer or solution in place that could give thousands of people some peace of mind. The habit that has been developed of kicking the can down the road and hiding behind unpublished reports is not a healthy one. It really is time that we start to reconsider the way in which we do business, so that we discuss in the chamber the true priorities of the people, not simply what suits the Government at a particular moment.

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on what plans it has to offer home fee status to Ukrainian refugees in Scotland, or those displaced following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (S6O-00977)