 The final item of business is a member's business debate on motion 12842 in the name of Richard Leonard. On NHS's 17th birthday, the debate will be concluded without any questions being put. Can I ask those members who wish to speak in the debate to press the request-to-speak buttons now? I call on Richard Leonard to open the debate. Mr Leonard, please. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. As we celebrate and reflect on this debate today to mark the 70 years of the national health service, let us remind ourselves of the vision for a healthy nation, first outlined in Labour's 1945 manifesto. It read, By good food and good homes, much avoidable ill health can be prevented. In addition, the best health services should be available free for all. Money must be no longer the passport to the best treatment. In the new national health service, there should be health centres where the people may get the best that modern science can offer, more and better hospitals and proper conditions for our doctors and nurses. Yet today, as in 1945, health inequalities, that glaring flaw in our society continue to persist, which is precisely why tackling poverty and inequality in Scotland and so the health inequalities that result should be the first priority of this Parliament. Poverty is a moral issue. It does not simply diminish the lives of those people caught up in it, it diminishes us all. It holds us back as a country, it weakens our society and hinders our economy. It is the cause of much preventable ill health, which is why we cannot carry on as we are with poverty deepening and inequality widening. I want to pay tribute today to all of the staff who work so hard to keep our NHS going, day in and day out, night in and night out, caring for and curing our sick. They deserve better support than they are getting from this Government, but it is not just NHS staff who are being let down. It is NHS patients too, patients waiting hours for an ambulance, despite repeated 999 calls and then hours on a trolley in a hospital corridor, many of them elderly, often with underlying health conditions. It is true that we have at long last been able to secure an independent inquiry into mental health services in Tayside, but it should not take questions to the First Minister and families marching into this Parliament demanding justice for action to be taken. It is the Labour Party that founded the national health service, and it is often overlooked that when Labour's Tom Johnstone was appointed Secretary of State for Scotland in the wartime Cabinet in 1941, it was Tom Johnstone who began an experiment in the Clyde Basin of using civil defence hospitals set up to treat civilian war casualties to treat war workers, who otherwise could not afford specialist diagnosis and treatment. He rolled it out across Scotland and in so doing it drove down hospital waiting lists by 34,000. It helped to form the basis for the 1944 white paper, and it blazed the trail for the national health service of the post-war years. Down the years, it has always been Labour Governments that have invested in our NHS. When Labour was last in power, spending on the national health service in Scotland doubled, not merely in cash terms but in real terms. We scrapped the internal market, and we took the HCI private hospital in Clydebank, which the Tories had used public money to establish and put it into the national health service. In the future, we will put before the people the clear choice a decade of austerity and public expenditure cuts with the SNP and the Tories, or a decade of real and sustainable investment with Labour. As we celebrate 70 years of the national health service, we recall its pioneers in the Labour Party. We reflect on its transformative achievements, and we once again renew our commitment to an NHS that is free at the point of use, to an NHS that is fully funded and fully resourced, to an NHS that values its staff and serves its patients and to an NHS that works for the many, not the few. Because the NHS is practical socialism in action. Pure socialism, as Bevan described it, and that in the end is the Labour Party's defining idea. The heraldin of the NHS 70 years ago meant the end of insurance stamps, the means test and endless queues. Medical care was no longer connected to ability to pay. General practitioners stopped having to compete for business and joined forces as part of a medical team. It became a single service and a national service. Commercial principles were replaced with collective action and public initiative. It is a powerful and an enduring idea, which we will defend with every sinew in our bodies. However, it is a powerful and enduring idea, which should not simply be limited in its application to our national health service, but would be well applied in responding to growing demands to provide care for the elderly, where we are seeing commercial principles and a market-based approach pulling us into a crisis and to social care so that we can support the human rights of disabled people, remove the profit motive and pay carers a proper rate of pay. In the field of public transport too and in the provision of energy supply and distribution in housing, the possibilities are limitless. In 2018, it is time that we started to learn the lessons of 1948. The national health service was created when the country was almost bankrupt. It is time that we started to think big and act radically. It is time that we recaptured the spirit of that 1945 Government. It is time that we once again applied those enduring and timeless principles to our times. I thank Mr Leonard. I call Stuart Steamsons, who is followed by Miles Briggs. Let me start by paying tribute to things that the Labour Party has done. That is not a natural thing that you would expect me to do, but in the past 100 years, the legislation that it brought forward to establish a national health service is the most significant and enduring thing that we should all commend. In this Parliament, I have in the past—and I do again today—commend Jack McConnell for his political courage in bringing forward legislation on smoking. The Labour Party is capable of getting things right, but in this debate and the contribution that has been made so far, I have to draw one or two different conclusions from those that we have just heard. First of all, let me just remind the Labour benches that, in fact, it is really the story of the national health service that starts with the Highland and Islands health service that was established in 1913. It covered half of Scotland's land mass. It was not free at the point of supply, but it set the limit as to what people paid very low. For the first time, the ordinary working man and woman had access to health service. In 1944, as Beverage did, he was actually drawing on that model. The routes that have got us to where we are are more diverse than perhaps just the simple idea that it was Beverage. None the worse of any of that, I have to say, absolutely do say. Indeed, the quote from Ngai Bevan in the motion is one that I agree with. I will do what I did in the last health debate. I went again to the carers comments website, and they are all from the last week because it is not all gloom and doom. This is Aberdeen royal infirmary. I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes September 27. The support of the whole-buy diabetic team at David Anderson building has been incredible. The play service is at Aberdeen children's hospital. The play service is a really valuable service that helps children to make the hospital seem less scary. My son's three and a half weeks stay at the Royal Aberdeen Children's hospital. My son broke his femur at two and a half years old and was in traction for three and a half weeks. Now listen to this. My son really enjoyed his titan with the play staff who made his stay very enjoyable. This is someone in traction with a broken femur. That's how good the hospital was. At Dr Gray's maternity, my grandchild was born in August 2017, had to stay in the unit for 10 days. The care that was given to both my daughter and grandchild was exceptional. That tells a lot about the staff in the health service. That's absolutely exact, because that's front-line experience, but it also tells us about the system that supports the staff. I'll just conclude, Presiding Officer, with a comparison of the world before then, because of course I was born before the health service. I have here a copy of a medical bill that my mother had to pay. A year before I was born, she had a topic pregnancy, a pregnancy in the fallopian tube. She had to go to hospital, have that fallopian tube removed, a very serious operation. Unfortunately, it was done with such skill that she was then able to give birth to me, her first-life birth and two subsequent children. The point is, the amount of money that is on the bill is three and a half weeks of the average working man or woman's wage at that time. She was fortunate to come from a family who could afford that. The health service was something that made it possible for that quality of service that my mother was able, fortunately, to pay for, to be available to all. I congratulate the health service on its upcoming 70th birthday. We are all grateful for its enduring contribution to our society. I want to start by paying tribute to the former Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport, as she has announced her intention to leave the Scottish Government. We may have had our many disagreements across this chamber on health policy, but I have never doubted Shona Robison's commitment to improving the health and wellbeing of our nation. All of us have seen how former Cabinet Secretaries for Health and Sport, once they have left the Government, require and acquire a new independent lease of life. I hope that the Cabinet Secretary will take that forward in the coming weeks to hold the Government to account on the back benches. I congratulate Richard Leonard on securing today's important debate. I am pleased to take part in it. I want to begin by putting on record my sincere thanks to all those who currently work who have worked in our NHS, from the GPs, surgeons to consultants to nurses to midwives, health visitors, hospital porters, ambulance drivers, paramedics, hospital cleaners, auxiliary staff and so, so many more. Each and every day, thousands of our NHS workers in Lothian and across Scotland go above and beyond the call of duty to provide our constituents with some of the very best healthcare anywhere in the world, and we owe them a huge debt of gratitude. As we celebrate the 70th birthday of our NHS, it is right that we thank NHS staff, and that is a key part of this celebration. Any organisation is at its heart, its people and the NHS is no different. I am lucky enough in my job as Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Health to meet with NHS professionals on a daily basis. Most of my meetings will focus on challenges facing our NHS and the increasing demands that are being placed on Scotland's health and social care services. Often, more than not, they are about people and lives that have been saved. They are conversations about those who work in our NHS going the extra mile every single day to deliver patient care. They are stories of hope, of love and often recovery against the odds. It is thanks to the efforts of our NHS staff. At all levels, using the medicines and technological advances, we have been lucky enough to see that we are able to access now, that the health of our people has been in many ways completely transformed compared to 1948. A child born in Scotland in 1948 could expect to face a raft of illnesses, including polio, measles, whooping cough and diphtheria. Vaccination programmes have now virtually wiped out those diseases. Child and infant mortality rates are a fraction of what they were and people are receiving treatment for cancer and surviving cancer in ways that could only be imagined by clinicians in the 1940s. This debate, I hope today, is about celebrating our NHS and its achievements and outstanding workforce, but our NHS's 70th birthday should also be a time for us to look to the future and to help put in place the long-term policies and plans that can help ensure that our NHS is there, free at the point of delivery for every constituent in the decades ahead. Building a sustainable NHS needs to be a priority, I believe, for every one of us in this chamber, because our NHS faces constantly evolving new and complex challenges, from obesity-related conditions to an ever-increasing demand for mental health services, antibiotic resistance, the cost of new drugs and technology, and the provision of social care for an ageing population as life expectancy continues to increase. It is that life expectancy that I think we should celebrate as the major achievement in our NHS. All of those massive challenges—all of those are massive challenges—can be addressed. We develop long-term strategic thinking and policies required that will help to meet those challenges in the future, working alongside our NHS staff, who are the ones at the end of the day at the front line and who know better than any politician how to respond to the needs of patients and cope with the demands that are placed on our health service. To conclude, great countries come together to turn challenges into opportunities, and I know that our NHS staff are ready to do the very same to help to transform our health and wellbeing of our nation. In the coming months on those benches, we will be putting forward our plans and vision to help to take forward our Scottish NHS. I believe that this Parliament and every party represented in it needs to come together to help to deliver that sustainable future for our Scottish NHS. However, for the time being, let's celebrate the fact that our Scottish NHS is 70 years young and let's look to the future. If we do, and if we work positively and co-operatively across this Parliament and chamber, I think that we can be confident that the best days of our NHS lie ahead of it. I thank Shona Robison for her service as our health secretary in Scotland. It is no secret that the cabinet secretary and I had our disagreements. We weren't exactly the best of friends, but I genuinely wish her the very best for the future. I also want to begin by congratulating my leader Richard Leonard on securing this important debate today, a debate to celebrate the 70th birthday of our NHS. 70 years since the first time, hospitals, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, opticians and dentists were brought together under one umbrella to provide services for everyone, free at the point of delivery. It is only right that it is a Labour member leading the celebration of the NHS, our NHS, Labour's NHS, Labour's greatest ever achievement and our country's most cherished public service. It is thanks to our NHS that we have all but eradicated diseases such as polio, pioneer new treatments such as the world's first liver, heart and lung transplant, and every day we are treating, supporting and caring for or curing tens of thousands of our fellow citizens, free at the point of need, paid through our collective contribution and no question asked about how much money is in their pocket. Every single day, our amazing NHS staff go above and beyond to care for others, so to all the staff right across the NHS, I want to say thank you. We all have our own personal stories and connections to the midwives, such as June, who cared for my family. To the doctors, such as Dr Rajan, who aided my father's recovery from his heart attack. I have got to say this, otherwise I will not be allowed back in the house tonight to dentists such as my wife for him. To all our NHS and social care staff, no matter what their role, thank you. However, we have also got to be honest that it is a workforce that is overworked, undervalued, underresourced and, after almost a decade of pay restraint, underpaid. So, while we say thanks, our thanks is not enough. We need to support them. Presiding Officer, we have debated here many times in the past few months many of the challenges facing the NHS, the 3,000 nurse and midwife vacancies, the 1 million bed days lost to delay discharge, the 1,200 children not receiving the mental health support they need, the fact that the treatment waiting time law has been broken over 100,000 times. So, what we need to do in the run-up to the 70th birthday is to not just recognise the successes, but also demonstrate how we would fix some of the challenges. Because, as Bevan said, the NHS will last as long as there is fault with faith left to fight for it. While on these benches, we have the faith to fight for it and the political will to deliver the investment that is needed to save it. Over the course of the celebration week, we will be making the case for what we would do differently if Labour was in government. Using our tax system to properly fund the NHS, a credible and deliverable workforce plan reversing the cuts to nursing and training places made by Nicola Sturgeon, a mental health councillor in every school, crisis mental health services, protection of local services, a cancer diagnosis within two weeks, access to vital life-saving medicines, an end-to-cuts to social care budgets and the 15-minute care visit, access to free sport, a meaningful pay increase for NHS staff and a return to the NHS true to the vision of Naib Bevan that once again supports you from the cradle to the grave. If anyone ever asks why we need a Labour Party, tell them the NHS. If anyone ever asks what a Labour Party ever did for us, tell them the NHS. And if anyone ever asks what the Labour Party will ever do, again, tell them the NHS. I call Patrick Harvie to talk about Alec Poole Hamilton. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. As others have done, I begin by paying tribute to Jeona Robison, who is stepping down as health secretary and wishes her well for the future. Can I congratulate Richard Leonard for bringing this motion? I do not think that there is any great downside to having two motions on the same topic in the one week. I do think that it is perhaps a slight pity that there was not the ability to reconcile and unite behind a single motion that would have felt a little more unified, is the only point that I was trying to make. Nevertheless, I would like to express my support for both motions and put that on the record tonight. Several other members have also opened their remarks by commending and thanking the many people who work in our NHS—the dedicated and often tireless, because they have to be professionals who work in our NHS and deliver those services. I have to make that same thanks, and I have to echo Annas Sarwar's reference to Midwives in particular, because that was my mother. I grew up with a mum who very often worked night shifts in the NHS, and that was a natural and instinctive part of my understanding of what healthcare was about. I would have found it peculiar, bizarre and incomprehensible at that young age to think that there was such a recent time—just one generation previously—when there was no such thing as an NHS. It is very easy to think of history just a few decades before your own youth, although it is ancient history, but such a recent change, just a generation before mine, in which there was not an NHS. My experience with the NHS was not just through seeing my mum go out to work there and come back early in the morning as we were getting ready for school, because I was also a bit of a sicky child. I was in and out of hospitals very often with infections and with long-term kidney damage as a result of those infections, and I became a bit of a human-pin cushion, and perhaps I may, even at times, have resented having to go through so many treatments within the services of the NHS. Now, standing here, I can reflect on the fact that I and so many other people would not even know if we would be able to stand here today and make a contribution in a debate if we had not had access to those health services. The gratitude that we all need to convey is deep and profound. Richard Leonard also makes an equally profound point in saying that something of the spirit of that post-war generation needs to be recaptured. A generation that, yes, was brutalised and traumatised by their wartime experience, which was economically not in a strong place to invest, but they did invest. They said that they fought together and survived together, and they were going to rebuild together a society that would make them better off together, not only a national health service but a welfare state. I wish to goodness that we were seeing something of that spirit of that post-war generation in today's political climate instead of an exercise in disaster capitalism, which I fear may be the legacy of our political generation. However, if we were able to recapture that, it would mean not only paying more collectively for high-quality services that make us better off collectively and to remunerate fairly the people who deliver those services, but it would also mean taking a collective social responsibility for the determinants of ill health. Poverty, yes, as Richard Leonard mentions, the inequality in our health outcomes, but also the way in which our food chain has been handed over to commercial interests, the way in which recreational drugs have been handed over to gangsters without any ability for the state to regulate effectively. There is a huge need for us to take collective social responsibility for the things that create and worsen health in our society, because we cannot simply rely on science alone to create the conditions for health in our society. If we run an unhealthy society, we will have unhealthy outcomes, and the NHS alone, even with the greatest support that we could provide, would not be in a strong position to do the work that we need of it. Before I call Alec Cole-Hamilton, can I just say that due to the number of members who still wish to speak in this debate and minded to accept a motion without notice under rule 8.14.3 to extend the rate by up to 30 minutes? I invite Richard Leonard to move that motion, please. Yes, can I move a motion to extend the debate, please, Presiding Officer? The question is that the debate will be extended by up to 30 minutes. Are we all agreed? That's agreed to. I now call Alec Cole-Hamilton. Mr Cole-Hamilton, please. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I would like to echo thanks to Richard Leonard and the Labour Party for bringing this important motion to Parliament today. I will address the cabinet secretary's departure later in my remarks, and so to echo thanks of other members to our hardworking NHS staff. In 1961, a prominent US actor walked into a recording studio and cut a record. I'm sure many other members will have in their iPods that hot-button favourite, the spoken word classic, Ronald Reagan speaks out against socialised medicine. 11 minutes of such vignettes says, Soon your son won't decide what he will do for a living. He will wait for a Government to tell him or my favourite. One of the traditional methods of imposing socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical problem. As a humanitarian project, most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can't afford it. To him and the American right wing, who still support that view, I say nonsense. In 2016, 29 million people in the United States were still without medical insurance. Had I been one of them, then an operation I had 20 years ago to fix a rotator cuff muscle in my shoulder, which resulted in repeated dislocation, would have cost me $30,000. Theatre delivery of my son, when my wife had complications during our first pregnancy, would have cost $50,000, plus the resuscitation that he would have needed. All told, my lifetime involvement with the NHS would have cost me hundreds of thousands of pounds, but I've never left hospital with anything other than a dodgy shoulder fix and three beautiful children. To the NHS, I say thank you. Parties across the chamber are right to remember some element that their own party had in the NHS creation, because it was across party creation. Good things happen when we put aside our differences and work together. It was a Labour Government that brought it in, absolutely right, but it was off the back of Conservative MP legislation, and all of that stemmed as well in some of its infancy from the Beverage report, that great giant of liberalism. In that, he talked about those five giant evils of ignorance, idleness, squallow, wanton disease, and it was at this last giant evil that he envisaged the formation of a universal healthcare system, or, as he described it, comprehensive health and rehabilitation service for the prevention and cure of disease. How prescient is that that more than 70 years ago, we have people talking about prevention, and we are still working towards that goal. We are bolstered by an amazing staff, staffing complement in our health service. People who work all hours of the day and days of the year to bring comfort, safety, security and treatment to our most vulnerable people. Our model of treatment and care in this country is sound. It is the direction of travel that is off. I come on to the cabinet secretary now. My call for her resignation is a matter of public record, but I do not revelate in it today. She is somebody that was always very kind to me, very generous of her time and displayed a rare compassion that is uncommon in Scottish politics, and I wish her well. However, certainly this Government has presided over a panoply of error and misjudgment in the discharge of its responsibilities to our health service. In delayed discharge, which the former cabinet secretary pledged to eradicate, we still see an interruption in flow in which people are waiting as many as 600 nights after being declared fit to go home in our hospitals to get back into their communities. In service redesign without communities involvement with mental health, this is the worst, I think, where 1,000 adults have waited more than a year for first-line psychiatric or psychological therapies, and children in some parts of this country are waiting for two more years. Let us celebrate today the creation of our much-loved NHS. Let us try to strip out the party politics behind it, but that means that the new cabinet secretary is listening to the helpful criticism of Opposition members in her discharge of her responsibilities. Thank you, Mr Cole-Hamilton. I call Ben Macpherson to be followed by Daniel Johnson. I, like others have said, also welcome today's debate as a chance to speak positively and constructively about the huge achievements of our NHS at this very important anniversary. Particularly our wording in the motion around the fact that each and every day there are countless examples of the importance and success of the NHS and to thank the service staff past and present for their compassionate dedication in delivering care to people in need and wishes the NHS a happy birthday. That is the sort of sentiment that I would want us to focus on in this debate. I say that not just because of the countless examples that I see in my very large in terms of population constituency of Edinburgh Northern Leith and different challenges that we have in such a dense urban area, but also I was wondering whether to touch on this or not, but Patrick Harvie has created the open the door for this which is to mention my given me encouragement to do this to my family connection to the NHS. My mother worked for over 30 years as a geriatric physician at the forefront of the NHS here in Lothian before she retired, one of the most challenging areas of our NHS in the current time. Growing up and seeing that commitment, as Patrick Harvie alluded to in terms of a system of that, really was part of my childhood and beyond in terms of recognising the sheer dedication that our public servants in the NHS give on a daily basis in order to make a difference to care for others and to try and tackle the changing scenarios and factors that we have to deal with in terms of the different pressures and the different areas of need within our society that bear down on the health system. It is important for us not to take the NHS for granted as it is unique across the world in terms of its egalitarian and inclusive nature and its history, and it is important to recognise that today. I think that it is good that other speakers have talked about the challenges that are new and complex and the needs and the demands that our NHS is facing. Miles Briggs said that we need to look to the future, and that the motion that Richard Leonard mentioned in his remarks talked about the need for collective responsibility. That call to action, as I see it, is about how we preserve and make sure that we enhance the NHS over the next 70 years so that it is something that we do not take for granted and something that is built upon and improved and facilitated in a way to deal with the needs that come at us. I would like to focus on that in the final time that I have left around us as MSPs and other politicians. We all have casework to do with the health service. We all recognise its importance. I wonder, particularly today, given Shona Robison's resignation and what she said about that, if we should use today as an opportunity to think harder about what we can do more to collaborate. I have watched from a distance on the topic. There has been quite a lot of grace on the topic today, but some of the ways in which we have discussed health in this chamber have been quite ungracious, to be frank. There is a lot of opportunism when it comes to talking about the politics of our national health service. I would say that we should all think more solution focused. We should think before we press the button on the tweet or sign off the press release, will this help? The challenges that will face our NHS over the next 70 years and to make sure that it lasts another 70 years are profound. We could achieve so much more if we worked together, as the motion said, to take forward a triumphant example of the superiority of collective action and public initiative. Let us show public initiative and commit to collective and collaborative action. I call Daniel Johnson to be followed by Alexander Stewart. I am pleased that Richard Leonard has brought forward the motion for debate. In part because the NHS is Labour's greatest achievement, Labour is at its best when it makes change so profound that it cannot be undone. The NHS is one such achievement. The main reason that I am pleased that the motion is forward to debate is because it allows me to do something that is important to me, which is to say thank you on a very personal basis. My eldest daughter was born in 2012 and spent the first four months of her life in the Sick Kids hospital. She was born with an intestinal atresia. Within 12 hours of her birth, she was in an operating theatre being operated on because an intestinal atresia is where there is a blockage that is created in the gut through an interruption in the blood supply. I will never forget those experiences in those first few hours, days and months. The midwives for talking me and my wife through counting the baby's movements in the womb when we were worried that the baby was not moving enough. I will never forget holding my wife's hand in the operating theatre as she went through the emergency caesarean section. I will never forget some of the smallest details when I was talking to the surgeons both before and after the operation, silly things about the details of the room and what they were wearing, but I cannot tell you what they said because the detail was so overwhelming that I just could not take it in. However, I will be forever thankful because I now have a happy six-year-old child just finishing P1, who, despite the fact that she only has half the length of small intestine that she is supposed to have, is the 90th centile for her height for her age. I will be thankful that we knew from an early stage that it was only a matter of time when she was in hospital that she would get out. I am thankful for the care that would have cost hundreds of thousands of pounds if we had to pay for it ourselves. Thanks to the surgeons, the medical teams, the nurses, especially to Mr Monroe and Anna, who is certainly my don't know, but was the nurse who looked after when she first got out of the operating theatre. Above all else, thank you to the NHS for getting us through that time, for providing us with the care that my family needed and thank you to the sick kids who were wonderful. Despite how traumatic that experience was and how difficult it was, I would not change a thing. The sick kids and the NHS more broadly took what was a really stressful situation and made it one that was actually extremely rewarding. I have to say small things, like I have mentioned it before in the chamber. Being in hospital meant that there were nurses on hand to tell me how to bathe my child for the first time, which would have otherwise been an incredibly nerve-wracking experience. I have to say that I finished thinking that if I ever got ill I would want to go to the sick kids because it was such a fantastic hospital. There are some realities that lie behind that. This is the 70th anniversary of the NHS. In 1948, 80 per cent of children who were born with the condition that my daughter was would have died. By the 70s, because of the advances, 80 per cent of those children would survive because the advances in enteral feeding, which is intravenous feeding, and now it is a small percentage of children. The NHS has allowed us not just to progress in medicine, but, as Richard Leonard pointed out, to ensure that we all benefit from those advances. However, the other key thing, and why that experience was so positive, was down to the numbers of staff. In the sick kids, the nursing ratios are one to six. That is about twice the number of nurses that you would expect to see in adult hospital. I would say that we face a number of challenges. The NHS is under huge pressure because of the ageing population and because we are ever more capable of doing new things, new technologies, new medical advances. However, in some ways, it is the same old issues. It is not a magic, it is not some complicated science, but it boils down to resource and numbers. If we want to see the care that we have always wanted to see NHS, we need to resource it. Ben Macpherson is right in a sense that it is easy to get trapped in the small politics with the NHS, but there is also the big politics. The one message that I want to say is that, yes, the NHS is under challenge, but the Government also needs to step up and acknowledge those challenges and accept that it is more than just a strategy or a new bill or a new consultation that will fix it. If we are going to tackle the big roses, we need a step change that we saw with the creation of the NHS, the step change that we saw when Labour was last in power, where we doubled the level of resource going into the NHS. If we want the NHS to continue for another 70 years to do the amazing things that is done for my family and families right the way across Scotland, we need to face up to those big challenges and put in the resource and the investment to make sure that we live up to those enduring principles that the NHS was founded on. I am delighted to have the opportunity to take part in this debate and would like to celebrate, congratulate and thank Richard Leonard for bringing forward this debate this evening. On 5 July 1948, the national health service was launched by the then health secretary, Niabevan, at the Park hospital in Manchester. For the first time, hospitals, doctors, nurses, dentists, opticians and those in pharmacy, all the specialists became one part of a service and that was there to be provided free of charge and really from birth to death and that is what we still have today, 70 years on. It is vitally important that the national health service has transformed the health and wellbeing of individuals across the United Kingdom and is envied across the world. The NHS has delivered huge medical advances and improvements in public health, which means that experts in fields across the sector are there. Why was it there? After the second world war, there was a necessity to look at health, poverty and housing for individuals who would come back from serving. The national health service was an opportunity for us to celebrate and do something. I paid tribute to all the politicians who saw that as the way forward. Without question, I thank all the individuals who have played their part and continue to play their part in providing services, the length and breadth of the country, on a day-to-day basis, 24 hours a day. The NHS has transformed and eradicated many diseases, polio and epsheda, for part of where we were and we have had transformation in lung, in health, in heart, in all of those. When it comes to improving stroke, we have got individuals who have got the bionic eyes, who have had their sight restored, and we have had transformation. Some of that would be seen in the past as possibly science fiction, but now it is everyday use and that has been part of the NHS. Since its conception 70 years ago, it has very much been at the forefront of innovation. You can think back to the 1950s, when vaccinations were something that was not common. It introduced the polio vaccination and the epsheda vaccination. It saw that 8,000 people who had polio or 70,000 people who had epsheda were being looked after. It launched the whole idea of modern hospitals, in which a hospital plan was put in place to ensure that locations that had 125,000 individuals would have a district general hospital. We saw, as I have said, transplants taking place in the late 60s. Moving into the 70s, we saw city scans and test you baby born in 1978. All of those technology, all of those innovations have ensured that individuals had the opportunity and that the whole idea of donor recognition is well. I pay tribute, as I say, to everyone who has participated and taken part. I have something in common with a number of members this evening that my own mother, trained as a nurse, then became a midwife, a district nurse and a health visitor. I grew up with that environment that the phone would ring in the middle of the night and my mother would go out and deliver a child or deal with someone who was needing support. For 40 years, she gave of her time and her talent to the NHS and she knew the value that that created and she knew the opportunity that that had. As I say, I pay tribute to all those individuals who have seen that. The service does a fantastic job every single day, but it comes at a cost. If you look back how many billions were spent 70 years ago starting the NHS, we are now dealing with tens of billions of pounds today across the United Kingdom that we are looking to. It is up to all of us to ensure that we can sustain and maintain the facility. I say that we need to ensure that the way that we all pay our fair share to ensure that the NHS is retained, maintained and sustained for generations to come. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak in this debate and I would like to begin by thanking Richard Leonard for securing this debate. I think that it is fantastic that we have two debates this week in which we have the opportunity to express our feelings and views on the NHS, all of which are not with standing the challenges that the health service faces are universally positive. I want to pay tribute to Shona Robison, Maureen Watt and Aileen Campbell, who are leaving the health portfolio today. I had a brief privilege of being parliamentary liaison officer to the Cabinet Secretary for Health at the beginning of this session and saw first-hand the dedication, commitment and passionate that all three of those individuals brought to their respective portfolios. I congratulate Aileen Campbell on her elevation to the Cabinet and wish her well in her new portfolio. I also want to join with colleagues from across the chamber in thanking our dedicated NHS staff. I come from an NHS house. Both my parents worked in the health service for over 30 years. My mother started off as a theatre nurse, as a district nurse before retraining as a mental health nurse and worked for over 20 years at Gartnavel Royal. That was a very difficult and demanding job at a period when there was significant change in public attitudes towards mental health and how we, as a country, sought to treat and support people with mental health conditions. Similarly, my father worked on a different side of the NHS—a side that is often overlooked, and that was in the States. My father started off as an electrician in the health service, and he worked his way up. Either when there was far more social mobility perhaps to become an electrical engineer before retiring as a state's manager in the health service, and that gave me a perspective. I want to pay tribute to all those people who work in the health service. Perhaps we do not necessarily talk about every day. I know growing up from my father's family events being cancelled when he was on call because a security system had went off, or a boiler had failed, or there was a door that would not open. Things that we perhaps maybe do not discuss enough are the tremendous work that those working in the States and our health service do. It is rather fitting to mention my father. My dad was born in 1951. That was the year that—I will use those words—was that great Labour Government of Atle Dmittyd Office. What is significant is that, in 1951, the average life expectancy for women in the UK was 72 years old and for a man was 66. Last year, that stood at 86.2 years for a woman and 83.4 years for a man. There has been a transformation in the demands that our health service now faces. We are, to some extent, a victim of our own success. Infectious diseases are massively reduced, notwithstanding the challenges that we still face, such as hepatitis C. However, the real challenges that we face are, of course, the non-communicable diseases, the challenges of an ageing population. I think that there have been some very important contributions in this debate, particularly from Patrick Harvie highlighting our need to think more broadly about the social determinants of our health. While we rightly focus on the services that people use, such as the accident emergency or CAMHS, we also have to not allow ourselves to forget the bigger picture of the social determinants of ill health. We cannot just think in a silo about health services, but we always have to think about how housing, education and social security can all be used collectively and holistically to make sure that we have a healthier population. I welcome the measures that this Government is taking, both broadly and in areas such as the national clinical strategy and the 2020 vision, setting out that ambition to have acute and primary services to deliver, but also in the Government's vision of achieving a fairer and more eco-society through having a social security system that is based on fairness, dignity and respect, and also taking the measures that are necessary, be that minimum unit pricing and alcohol or the obesity strategy to be launched. There is much work still to be done, but I just want to close where I began by thanking everyone who works in the national health service for the outstanding work that we do. They really are the best examples of people in this country. Thank you very much. I call John Scottfall by Monica Lennon. Monica Lennon will be the last speaker in the open debate. I begin by congratulating Richard Leonard in securing this debate today, and I pay tribute to Shona Robison, who I know gave her best to our health service in her time in office. I thank her for the personal help that she gave me on behalf of my constituents. I also welcome Jeane Freeman to her new role as Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport. Like others, I congratulate our national health service in Scotland in reaching its 70th birthday and evolving into the remarkable institution that it has become. Everyone in the chamber tonight is bursting with pride and wants to say good things about our national health service is beyond doubt and with good reason. That many of us have a personal story to tell to is touching and reflects the gratitude and commitment that we all feel towards our health service on the occasion of its 70th birthday. Given my age, I feel as if I have grown up alongside the health service and I have many reasons to be grateful for its existence, not least for the GP part of the service, which in my case probably saved my life on more than one occasion. My first encounter with our GP service was the need for five stitches in my forehead as a result of being kicked by a cow when nine months old and calling among their feet in the buyer. My real gratitude is for the life-saving penicillin that I was given to treat secondary infections caused by ringworm, again a cattle-borne problem for me as a four-year-old. Unlike others, I have much to be grateful to the NHS for, then and since. Starting with a budget of £42 million in 1948, the budget today has grown to around £12 billion in Scotland, almost one-third of Scotland's total budget. Along the way, we have seen dramatic advances in so many areas of medicine. In 1954, Richard Dahl and Austin Bradford Hill identified the causal link between smoking and cancer that has led to both improved cancer treatments and the pioneering anti-smoking legislation here in Scotland. 1960s are the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary Pioneer kidney transplants under the guidance of Sir Michael Woodruff, while in 1972, 15 health boards were created in Scotland under the NHS Scotland Act. In 1988, breast cancer screening was also introduced in the UK following a report by Sir Patrick Forrest in the University of Edinburgh, while keyhole surgery was introduced in 1989 at Ninewells with Sir Alfred Crusherry. Fast forward to 2014, and we have seen the groundbreaking development of health and social care partnerships, which takes us up to today and my local health board. We, in Ayrshire, have a diligent and hard-working service in the shape of NHS Ayrshire and Arn, where in almost every case, all of the staff combine and go beyond the call of duty to deliver a constantly expanding and daily more sophisticated service. It is good today to be able to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to our doctors, nurses and all other staff in NHS Ayrshire and Arn and across Scotland. Regrettably, and by the nature of being an MSP, and certainly in my case, by having led the campaign in Ayrshire to keep the two A and E units open there 12 years ago, we as MSPs are in a way like lightning conductors as often. We only hear about the problems and the difficulties of the NHS faced by patients and staff. Most of the time, patients and staff are delighted and proud of the outcomes achieved by our doctors and nurses. Indeed, it is easy to lose sight of the positives in much of the constant debate around the efficiency and future of the NHS, but my only ambition for our NHS in Ayrshire and Arn is to see it being the very best provider in Scotland among all the different health boards. What is important is what has been achieved and what is still likely to be achieved. There is a bright future for our NHS in Scotland. With additional funding promised by both Scottish and UK Governments, it is possible to see how the growing future needs of our ageing population and growing life expectancy will be met. Today, we celebrate 70 years of better health and look forward with confidence to continuing improvement in health care in Scotland in the next 70 years. We should take every opportunity to celebrate our NHS and especially to say thank you on the 70th anniversary. Although 11 men have spoken so far and just one woman, we should remember that more than three quarters of NHS staff are women. An extra special thank you to the sisters in the NHS. Most of us hope that we never need it, but when we do, the NHS is always there. When I told a constituent about this debate without prompting yesterday, she sent me a message about what the NHS means to her. With her permission, I would like to share that with you. I have scumus cell cancer in my colon. It is an unusual cancer in that area. It does not present itself with a lot of symptoms for most people. More often, it is only detected in later stages. However, my GP listened to me when I told her I had some rare occasions of slight bleeding, which worried me. That examination was done on Wednesday and the diagnosis was confirmed the following Monday by a colonoscopy. I then had various tests, CT scans, MRI scans, PET scans, chemotherapy and radiotherapy at the Beatson. I was very well looked after by all involved in my treatment. Despite the slight complication of a heart attack in the middle of it all, the very last step now is to reverse my stoma. Although the NHS has missed the anticipated date for the procedure, it has sent me a letter hoping to increase capacity in general surgery so that I may have a date for my operation soon. I owe my life to the NHS. The hardworking doctors, nurses, radiologists, oncologists, surgeon, colorectal nurses, cardiologists, anesthetists, paramedics and the auxiliary staff who looked after me are true heroes in my eyes. I fully support the NHS and hope that we never take it for granted. I am grateful to Lanarkshire Cancer Care Trust for their services and for taking me to and from my many medical appointments during my treatment. I have had a very positive experience of the NHS, but I know that there is always room for improvements. Long live the NHS and may Scottish Labour—that is us, guys—always fight to keep it as one of our country's finest institutions. Happy 70th birthday, NHS. Because of you, I will see many more birthdays with my family, continue to work and contribute to society and our nation. It is signed with a kiss from mum. That is the story of my mum, Helen, who was diagnosed and treated for bio-cancer and suffered a heart attack in the middle of it all last year. Both she and I and all of her family are so grateful for the amazing care that she has received over the past year from the amazing healthcare staff in our NHS, including Dr Mary Jo Somerville from Calderstide Medical Practices, who was on the phone several times a week. Mr R.G. Mukherjee, resurgent at Hearmyers hospital, Mr Tarek Abdullah, her oncologist at the Beatson, Dr Grunia Dunn, the medical oncologist colorectal at Hearmyers and numerous nurses at the Beatson. My mum has had a phenomenal experience with the NHS, but resourcing problems in the NHS can affect us all. It is true that my mum is still waiting to have her final operation to reverse her stoma. At the end of May, she received an apology letter from NHS Lanarkshire that her 12-week treatment time guarantee had not been met due to capacity issues in general surgery. Even the best of cases are not immune from the challenges and pressures that are facing our NHS. There is no doubt that our NHS faces serious pressures, but in my mum's case I will be forever grateful to the incredible men and women who have treated her over the past few months. As the motion says, it is right that we celebrate our NHS, we should be celebrating, and it is always these incredible stories of success that we should be mindful of when we talk about why ensuring that our NHS is properly cared for is so important. I thank you, NHS, and happy 70th birthday. I thank you very much. I now call on Jo Fitzpatrick to close to the Government Minister up to seven minutes, please. I am sure that members will be surprised to see me closing tonight's debate. I know I am, but like I am sure every MSP, I recognise the precious value of our NHS and the skill, dedication and compassion of its staff. I know that I speak for everyone when I offer my thanks to all the staff who have worked in NHS Scotland past and present, delivering medical advances and improvements to health and social care, meaning that more people can expect to live longer, healthier lives. Although there was of course a good splattering of politics in tonight's debate, there was also a common thread of gratitude to all NHS staff who have been sent across the party lines. I am sure that you will understand if I also offer my thanks for the service of my friend Shona Robison to our NHS and care services. Over almost four years as health secretary, she fought for our health services, and I know just how happy she was when this week she was able to offer our NHS agenda for change staff a pay rise of at least 9 per cent over the next three years. I want to add my thanks to Miles Briggs, Anasawa, Patrick Harvie, Tom Arthur, John Scott and Ben Macpherson for their good wishes and warm words. Scotland has made an immense contribution to the development of the NHS. Indeed, before there was an NHS, the Highlands and Islands Medical Service was established in 1913 as a state-funded health service. It proved highly successful. By 1929, there were 175 nurses and 160 doctors working in 150 practices. By 1935, an air ambulance service was available to transport patients to specialist mainland hospitals. Highlands and Islands Medical Service was a remarkable achievement for its time. It is seen by professionals as having an important influence on the development of the national health service. It was a model of state-funded care that clearly delivered improved health in the communities that it served. After the establishment of the NHS, Scotland continued to pioneer medical treatment and have saved countless lives. In 1958, Glasgow produced the first practical ultrasound scanner, which in modern form continues to save lives across the globe. In 1960, the first successful kidney transplantation in the UK was performed by a team in Edinburgh royal infirmary. In 1980, the world's first clinical service for MRI was performed at Aberdeen royal infirmary. In 1989, the UK's first use of keyhole surgery to remove a patient's gallbladder was undertaken at 9 miles hospital in Dundee, in my constituency. Highlands and Islands, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee, those are only some examples. Health and care staff across the whole of Scotland have led innovation and treatments that have made our NHS admired and emulated across the world. This is still the case today. This Government is working with NHS staff and many other partners to introduce world-leading solutions to improve health and social care. We launched the Scottish patient safety programme, the first national approach to improved patient safety. Professor Donald Berwick, former adviser to President Obama, has been quoted as saying, the reality is that Scotland is the internationally leading success story of the healthcare safety improvement. Other nations have made progress, but not to the degree of comprehensiveness and I think scientific discipline that Scotland has. We became the first country in the world to implement minimum unit pricing for alcohol. We took this bold decision and stuck to it despite the many obstacles that are placed in our way, because we are determined to tackle Scotland's unhealthy relationship with alcohol. Patrick Harvie? I am grateful to the minister for giving away and he moves on to a public health issue. Would he agree that if we are going to have a successful health service for the long-term future and if we are going to have a healthy population, we need to face up to the reality that most developed societies have been more successful at extending lifespans than we have been at extending the healthy active part of life. It is not just the ministers with direct responsibility for the NHS but the Government right across the spectrum that needs to take responsibility for a transformation in public health if we are going to see the outcomes that we all want. Patrick Harvie makes a very good point. In terms of dealing with just about any aspect of government, we need to look across the whole of government to look at how we can make those differences to outcomes and that is very much the approach that has been instilled in our national performance framework about how we can join things up and make the difference to the actual outcomes in people's lives. In his right to say that it is not just the extension, the quality of life is important too. We need to be careful that we are measuring the correct outcomes and the ones that will make a difference, so he makes a very good point. I was just coming to, so I will skip over that piece. In continuing to move our public health priorities forward, we have jointly published with COSLA our public health priorities for Scotland. It touches on some of the points that Patrick Harvie was making. Our new priorities focus on placing community early years mental wellbeing, reducing the harms associated with alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, reducing poverty and inequality, and healthy weight and physical activity. The priorities have been developed in collaboration and broadly endorsed by a wide range of organisations and professional groups. It is not just across government that we need to work together but clearly it is across society. That reassures me that our message about the collective effort of society as a whole and the importance of empowering communities is being heard and is resonating with people. We have already made progress with the publication of an action plan on tobacco, and that will be followed by strategies and plans in the coming weeks and months on physical activity, mental health, diet and healthy weight and substance use. Collective action and public initiative is the driving force that enables our NHS to care for us all, to care for the mother delivering her first baby, to care for those suffering from illness and accident in communities across Scotland, to care for our elderly and ensure that they live a healthy and fulfilling life as long as possible. The NHS has been caring for us for 70 years and will do so long into the future. I again thank all our health and care staff who are past and present for their work. They can take pride in their achievements past and present and have given us a tremendous gift for the future.