 The final item of business is a member's business debate on motion 4.013, in the name of Sue Webber, on economic value of medical charity research in Scotland. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put, and I would ask those members who would wish to speak in the debate to please press the request to speak buttons now. I call on Sue Webber to open the debate up to seven minutes, please, and Sue Webber. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I'm really pleased to be able to bring forward my first member's business debate on such an important topic to Scotland. Cardiol vascular health has always interested me, and of course this becomes more relevant when it relates to you personally. In my pre-parliamentary career, I work closely with medical and surgical professionals in university teaching hospitals across the UK. One of the first surgeries that I observed was open heart surgery in the western infirmary in Glasgow. The surgeon was Mr Alan Kirk, a young dynamic surgeon that was looking to adapt his practice to do beating heart surgery rather than on-pump bypasses with the associated risks that come with that. Much has changed surgically since then, not least the closure of the western and the establishment of the west of Scotland regional heart and lung centre at the Golden Jubilee. Perhaps the canny amongst you in the chamber might recognise his name. Mr Kirk was in Parliament last week, and he is a pioneer of robotic thoracic surgery along with his colleague John Butler. We need clinicians like that to adopt new innovative techniques that benefit patients and improve outcomes. My dad was one of those that benefited from innovation. When he was told that he needed cardiac surgery, I know the look on my face told my mum and dad just how serious things were. I silently wanted to know that he would get an off-pump bypass. I did not want his heart to stop beating. He did. He successfully had his cabbage and nearly 10 years on he has not looked back. Thank you to the team at NHS Lothian. Before all that comes years of research, of investment and blood, sweat and tears from those carrying out the research. Funding for clinical research in Scotland through the chief scientist office has remained stagnant for several years. When investment in clinical research is compared on a per capita basis between the UK and Scotland, Scotland's investment equates to £12.79 per capita, as opposed to £20.55 per capita spend in England. The British Heart Foundation believes that the Scottish Government should increase funding to the chief scientist office in line with the per capita funding of the national institute for healthcare research by the UK Government. If the Scottish Government were to utilise consequentials and its own budget to match per capita the planned NIHR increases to £2 billion, it could transform clinical research in Scotland, securing it again as a world leader in medical research and bringing new and improved treatments and care to Scotland first. It could also generate as much as £257 million for the economy every year and support 6,000 jobs across Scotland. There are indirect and direct benefits on the NHS, too. For example, troponin tests are used to test whether an individual has had a heart attack on admission to A&E. The High State Act trial, led by Professor Nicholls Mills, who is a BHF Professor of Cardiology at the Centre for Cardiovascular Science at the University of Edinburgh, looked at the use of a higher sensitivity troponin test than was previously used. The reduction in time in hospital and the 50 per cent increase in discharge as a result of this new sensitive test has the potential to create huge cost savings for the NHS and a reduction in bed demand at a time when the NHS is under significant pressure. Clinical studies such as that, undertaken in Scotland, are crucial to improving patient care and reducing inequalities in care. Investment in this research clearly has the potential to support the Scottish budget through reducing overall costs in the NHS. Other charities are also raising similar concerns, as well as pointing out the benefits of increased investment. Stroke is Scotland's leading cause of disability. Around 10,000 people every year will have a stroke, and there are 128,000 people living with the effects of a stroke in Scotland. The Stroke Association is the only exclusively stroke research funder in Scotland with a current portfolio of £3.5 million. Investing in stroke research can generate savings for health and social care, as well as improving quality of life for stroke survivors and their families. Research investment for stroke is only £48 per year per year, in comparison to £241 per cancer patient and £118 per dementia patient. For a condition that generates such a sizable economic burden in Scotland, that requires greater priority on research funding and support. Cancer Research UK is the largest independent funder of cancer research in the world. In 2020-21, Cancer Research UK spent £421 million on new and on-going research into prevention, diagnosis and treatment in the UK. It has also supported research into over 200 types of cancer, with long-term investment helping to create a thriving network of research in 90 laboratories and institutions across the UK and supporting the work of over 4,000 scientists, doctors and nurses. Cancer Research UK has spent over £188 million on research funding in Scotland over the past five years across seven universities and currently funds 100 PhD students among other things. It is not just direct health benefits that come from medical research, but there are also the economic benefits that become because of this type of work, benefits to both the Scottish economy and every individual that is impacted by the research. Not every project will result in a miracle cure, a wonder drug or a new approach. However, I think that we can all agree that research saves lives. I now call Paul McLennan to be followed by test-white up to four minutes please, Mr McLennan. I may have to go. I have a chain and cross-party group at half past six, so I may have to leave before the summit from the minister. I thank Sue Webber for bringing forward this debate tonight. Sue and I, along with others, visited the British Heart Foundation research centre near the Edinburgh Island Firmary a few months ago. We were shown around the facility and shown the research that goes on. Sue touched on that within the institution. We spoke to medical students and doctors who benefit from the funding. It was fascinating, absolutely fascinating and made us all aware of the amazing unseen work that has carried out by the British Heart Foundation and other charities day in, day out. In East Lothian, around 11,000 people are living with heart and circuitry diseases. Around 12,000 people have been diagnosed with high blood pressure. Around 27 per cent of adults have obesity in East Lothian and 16 per cent of adults smoke. Nationally, 30 babies a month are diagnosed with congenital heart defect in Scotland. Around 700,000 people are living with heart and circuitry diseases in Scotland. The most frightening statistic is that every 50 minutes in Scotland, someone is admitted to hospital due to a heart attack, so we can see the benefits of the research. Heart and circuitry diseases kill three in 10 people in Scotland. I recently visited the British Heart Foundation shop in North Berwick and was very warmly welcomed and impressed by the set-up. The BHF is the largest charity retailer in both Scotland and the UK. The British Heart Foundation is an important contributor to the circular economy and a sustainable Scotland. The British Heart Foundation has the support of 1,400 volunteers that allow their 75 shops across Scotland to raise money for life-saving research. It also supports the Scottish Government's proposal to ban the destruction of unsolved goods. It believes in reducing waste as much as possible by recycling nations that it cannot sell. It is working towards a goal of zero-voilable waste by 2030. It also sells an average of 1,500 tonnes of what it calls pre-loved clothes across its 75 charity shops. It resells 18,000 sofas every year, so it currently funds £60 million of life-saving research in Scotland, largely due to the sale of the 80 goods. This research funding also creates additional benefits for the economy in Scotland. Research by the Fraser of Orlando Institute in the Valley of Medical Charity Research Funding in Scotland suggested that the funding from BHF creates £80 million in GVA and supports 1,860 jobs across the country. In February, the Institute of the University of Strasco had published an analysis on the contribution of medical research funding by charities to the Scottish community. Their modelling found that, in 2019 research funding by charities supported 7,500 jobs, £470 million output and £320 million GVA in Scotland, charity retailers provide over 25,500 jobs in the UK alongside 233,000 volunteer opportunities. The British Heart Foundation welcomed the increase in the NIHR funding from the Scottish Government to £78.4 million. The UK Government in the 2021 autumn statement committed to increasing the NIHR budget to £2 billion by 24.25 million. The BHF is asking the Scottish Government to commit to ring-fencing any consequential funding that is brought to Scotland from the planned uplift for the NIHR by the UK Government to £2 billion by 24.25 million. Government funding of medical research follows similar patterns to medical research charities, with much of the funding supporting work in universities and the NHS that we talked about. The funding supports the creation of highly skilled professionals who are significant economic contributors in their region. If the Scottish Government were to commit to the NIHR funding uplift, it has the potential to generate £56.4 million to the Scottish economy every year and support over 1,100 jobs. With continuing investment, Scotland can attract more talented researchers and create greater stability to those seeking to build a clinical research career in Scotland. The pandemic reduced the levels of funding from charities and other funders, which have traditionally supported clinical research careers. Career funding is crucial in allowing healthcare professionals to develop the skills to undertake research in the NHS. We can attract these highly skilled professionals to Scotland, bring them with them in the research skills and increase NHS Scotland's clinical capacity. As volunteers week 2022 comes to an end, I thank my colleague Sue Webber for securing the time for this afternoon's debate. It is an important topic and a fitting tribute to the fundraising efforts of thousands of volunteers in the north-east and across Scotland who helped to raise money for potentially life-saving medical research. The funding contribution that charities make to medical research is startling. Without it, the Fraser of Allander Institute estimates that the Government would need to increase direct funding by 73% to cover the shortfall. The work of these organisations and others like them has brought hope to thousands of people who face life-limiting conditions and illnesses. Cancer Research UK supports pioneering research into more than 200 types of cancer. Its contribution to the medical research base should not be underestimated. Over the past 40 years cancer survival has doubled in the UK. Meanwhile, the British Heart Foundation has invested £50 million in more than 100 projects in Scotland, researching heart and circulatory disease. In my own region, the BHF funds two PhD studentships, 10 of the research staff at the University of Aberdeen. Led by Professor Dana Dawson, researchers in the Granite City are carrying out the first national study into broken heart syndrome, a potentially fatal heart condition experienced by thousands of people the length and breadth of the UK. At the University of Dundee, where the BHF supports seven research staff, researchers have been running a treatment trial into high blood pressure. The reality, however, is that these organisations, like so many others, have been hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. At the height of the pandemic, medical research expenditure by charities fell by around 44% as retail trading came to a halt and household budgets faced significant uncertainty. While the UK has largely returned to business as usual as Covid-19 restrictions have been lifted, concerns remain about the future investments in medical research. We have already seen a significant reduction in research spend from the Association of Medical Research Charities for 2021 and 2022, amounting to around £150 million. The BHF reports that it will take three or more years before charity research spend returns to pre-pandemic levels. This has implications not just for Scotland's health research and development, but our economy as well. The third sector medical research not only helps to improve health outcomes for the population, it contributes to job creation, technological innovation and national infrastructure, and it helps to develop Scotland's skills pipeline. Moreover, the Fraser of Allander Institute found that a pound spent by medical research funding by charities has a significantly larger impact than the average pound spent in Scotland. As the Scottish Government looks at the levers it can pull to build a strong economy, I would urge it to think holistically about the value that the third sector medical research can add to the Scottish economy and society. I welcome the debate and give my thanks to Sue Webber for bringing it to the chamber, as well as to the British Heart Foundation for commissioning the research from the Fraser of Allander Institute. The conclusions of that research have been rehearsed in part already on the economic impact of medical research in Scotland, particularly that funded by charities. However, it has been rehearsed over many years in Scotland in a variety of publications. It stresses how important medical and the broader scientific research institutes and work that goes on in our universities is to our communities and also to our country's future. There is no picture drawn of a successful future Scotland that does not have research excellence right at its centre. The conclusions of the report that we have today only add to a wealth of data and policy documents dating back to the start of devolution that come to the same conclusion. I have to say that the importance of university research and innovation to my home city of Dundee cannot be overstated. The performance of the University of Dundee School of Life Sciences is of truly global significance. In the ref, the research excellence framework published only in the last couple of weeks, it came out that the top university in the whole of the UK for biological sciences bar none. However, I wish that I could say that the debate was timely. It makes calls on government that perhaps would have been a little bit better heads prior to the recent resource spending review, which turns out was neither a real spending review nor, as we have heard continuously, a budget, because the result seems to me to be a little more than an appetiser for Andrew Wilson's growth commission austerity. If it is anything that report, that spending review, it is an expression of priorities and I am afraid that education and research as we are talking tonight is not among them. That is confusing for some of us, because education used to be the sacred cause. It was once the defining mission, and it was only a matter of weeks ago central to the supposed economic transformation strategy. Instead, we have 8 per cent real-term cuts for higher education, and we have a globally competitive sector that has to work to attract talent, external investment, partnerships and student recruitment, badly suffering as a result of the lack of leadership and prioritisation by the Government. Specific to research, we have an outstanding set of ref results in Scotland, where improved performance against the previous comparator seven years ago is being rewarded by cuts to budgets. Take the University of Aberdeen in my region, a £2 million cut to the research excellence grant. That is a 10 per cent cut, the absolute cap of what was permitted and more cuts expected to come in 2023-24. That is not investing for the future, it is punishing successes of the past. The debate before us is a request of Government in actual fact to step in when the unexpected happens. When the pandemic hit, the resource coming from charity shops and donations, as people have highlighted, had already dried up. That is what Government should do. It should be there when the rain falls. It should help to bridge an unexpected gap. What is unforgivable is when Government sees the trends, when it actually creates the trends. Our research leadership in the UK is slipping. There is no doubt about that, and it has happened over a period of years and years. The ref results that I have talked about already showed us just a couple of weeks ago that eight of our top 10 performers improved at a slower rate than the rest of UK comparator universities. On the same day that the Scottish Government published its resource spending review, the UKRI, which is the UK-wide research council, published multi-year research funding for universities in England. Research funding for English universities is going up by 31.7 per cent over the three-year period from 2022-23 to 2024-25. That is the direct local competition that our universities must meet. Scottish and English universities compete for research grants using their core funding as the basis to do so. The playing field is deeply uneven, and we can only predict that Scotland's share of competitively one research funding from UKRI will continue to slide from 15.4 per cent a few years ago to 12.9 per cent as it is now and further down again as the years to come. Is this a question of leadership and choices and choices that leaders make? The British Heart Foundation is right to highlight and remind us what our strengths are, but how precarious that position is if the Government chooses to ignore those realities. Thank you, Mr Marra. I now call Stephanie Callaghan, who will be the last speaker before I ask the minister to respond to the debate. Up to four minutes, please, Ms Callaghan. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I thank Sue Weber for bringing this topical debate to the chamber, too. The pandemic has certainly brought attention to the importance of medical research for our health and wellbeing. In Scotland, the life sciences community really did mobilise and respond rapidly to the challenges that were arising from Covid-19, from research, drug discovery and manufacturing to clinical trials for our vaccines, too. Scotland has considered our world leader in medical research, and we must continue this proud legacy across the private, public and charity sectors. The health benefits are really clear, and medical research continues to develop and make life-changing differences to patients. Importantly, research provides hope for the future for so many people who are living with long-term conditions, that there will be less pain, that they will get better treatments, and that they will have a little bit more control over their lives. The focus of today's motion is research charities. Charities really are in a unique position to leverage the power of grassroots movements, too. Generous public donations and specialist expertise from the industry can be complementary in drawing the lived experience of patients and families at this key. Paul McClellan mentioned earlier on how the British Heart Foundation raised so much funds through their stores. He brought to mind a wee meeting that I had with a young man called Mohammed, who won an award for his volunteering, a refugee who had come to this country and decided to volunteer at the British Heart Foundation. He is hoping to be a doctor in the future, too. That was a couple of years ago now, but just so much warmth and so much dedication, it helped to learn the language. There are lots of little ripples that come out from these charities as well that make a real difference moving forward to our communities. The economic value of medical charity research in Scotland is really clear, but it is not without its challenges. As the motion highlights, medical charity research in Scotland supports a lot of local jobs and generates wider investment, too. It supports direct employment at universities and medical industries, but it also supports a bill-over-effect that supports a wide variety of jobs right across Scotland, too. Many of those jobs are highly skilled and well-paid positions within world-leading institutions. Medical research sector is one of the most effective in Scotland at driving economic growth and employment, and it really has attracted talent from all over the globe. However, there are quite serious issues that are facing research charities in 2022, and not least the pandemic has put enormous financial pressure on individuals and on organisations, too. That is not something that is going away any time soon, with the current cost of living crisis looking set to worsen. Medical research funding by charities is estimated at around 46 per cent of all third sector and public funding, making that income integral to Scotland's medical research industry. Long-term consequences of charity funding reductions in Scotland are likely to include shortages of highly skilled medical researchers, stagnation and treatment development, and there is the potential to negatively impact Scotland's reputation as a world-leading research. In response, we have had some charities calling on the Scottish Government to increase investment in third sector medical research by a further £37 million. However, Scotland does not have the same borrowing powers as Westminster, so making a comparison between the UK Government's spending per head of population of England with that of Scotland seems a wee bit unfair to me, given that the Scottish Government's hands are tied ffiscally speaking. Where would this additional investment come from, really, is the question. The Scottish Government is already doing so much to mitigate against some of the damaging policies that have come out in Westminster, including the bedroom tax and looking to increase child support. However, when we don't have the freedom to borrow and make long-term investments in our people's health and wellbeing, our economic options remain limited. I think that we really need to listen to charities and understand the challenges that they are facing and making sure that we are doing everything that we can to support them ambitious work and ensuring that Scotland remains a world-leading research and development. The Scottish Government within its budget has demonstrated already that its commitment to ensuring that researchers have access to infrastructure, training and career development opportunities that they need to succeed and work with partners to. The word to create an attractive environment for students to carry out their research is on-going and I agree that we must work collaboratively with the medical research charity sector moving forward. In reality, it is only by the power of independence that Scotland is going to be able to properly address the challenges ahead and we need that to happen to enhance their economy and improve our nation's health. I would like to begin by congratulating Sue Weber on having this member's debate tabled and to thank those members who have contributed to the discussion on this very important topic. The Scottish Government recognises the important impact that the medical research charity sector has on the wider economy, particularly across the life sciences sector, by investing in growing our own company base and attracting new companies when we are building a community. We want Scotland to grow as a place for true innovation and the research undertaking here to make a real difference to our own and global health challenges. Scotland has a thriving life science community that is recognised for the distinctive capabilities of its business base and research institutions, international reputation and potential for significant growth and creation of high-value jobs. In 2019, turnover in the sector stood at £7.4 billion, with gross value added at £3.1 billion and employing nearly 42,000 people in over 700 enterprises and higher education institutions. The health and life sciences sector in Scotland is supported by a highly skilled workforce operating in a diverse range of functions, including R&D roles, which are in a range of research operations. We continue to invest in our future workforce, recognising the critical role of the development of scientific and commercial skills, sustaining our economic recovery and contributing to future growth. In terms of boosting innovation, we will be updating the Scottish Government's innovation strategy this year. That will provide an opportunity to build on the national strategy for economic transformation and other recent work such as the muscateli report, the Enterprise and Skills Strategic Board report on innovation and the UK Government's innovation strategy. The Scottish Health Industry Partnership is working in collaboration with AstraZeneca, Rosh and the Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre to develop the opera heart failure service. It aims to create a streamlined digital service that can effectively address diagnosis backlogs and reduce waiting times for echocardiograms in the Glasgow area, which will demonstrate a new artificial intelligence technology in the heart failure diagnosis pathway. Heart failure accounts for 1 to 2 per cent of healthcare spending in the countries in which 52 per cent of patients die within five years of diagnosis. Heart failure prevalence is predicted to rise by 46 per cent over the next eight years. Scotland's world-class university research and its key outputs of new knowledge and insights are fundamental to economic recovery and growth. In the baseline grants for university research and innovation from the Scottish Government via the Scottish Funding Council for 2223 was increased by £4.7 million, almost £200 million, to maintain and strengthen Scotland's excellent research base. The impact of research outputs from Scotland's universities has been maximised through increasing linkages into a wider innovation ecosystem, including partnerships with businesses, charities and the NHS Scotland. Michael Marrake Gwenaith Çaunhawn, are you recognised that the allocation of the Scottish Funding Council is as a result of cash cuts? Many universities have improved their performance over the last seven years because of the amount of money that is coming to them. Successes are being rewarded with cuts from the Government. Surely that 31.7 per cent increase from UK research in England is a wake-up call to this Government about what it must do in order to make our sector competitive? Y sector yn Scotland is hugely competitive. We attract far more than a share of research spending across universities and even in terms of charity spending. That is significantly higher than it is across the rest of the UK. The Scottish Government continues to recognise that and to support the research base and the sector. As well as addressing national challenges and creating a highly educated society, our investment in research is helping us to reach the economic, societal and environmental aims of Scotland's national performance framework and the sustainable development goals. Over the past two years, health research has been in the news like never before. I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to all those who have contributed to Scotland's research response to Covid-19, including colleagues from the third sector, universities and the NHS. I would also like to thank the people of Scotland for their extraordinary level of involvement in 2021. Over 20,000 people were recruited into Covid-19 clinical studies in Scotland, including the siren study that provided key early data on whether prior infection with Covid-19 protected against future infection and the genomic study that is generating data on the genes that influence people's susceptibility to particular infections. Scotland has also been fully involved in clinical trials of Covid-19 vaccines with the first patient globally in the Janssen vaccine trial being recruited in Dundee. As part of the research response to the pandemic, we also launched two Covid-19 research funding calls through the chief scientist's office. The rapid research on Covid-19 programmes of 56 individual projects funded with a total investment of £5 million and his awareness of the longer-term effects of Covid-19 infection began to emerge. A second call was launched for research on key aspects of long Covid and from this call nine projects were funded. The research funded through those calls has continued to inform the clinical relevant knowledge base around Covid-19. An example is the cardiac imaging and SARS coronavirus disease 19 study led by Professor Colin Berry from the University of Glasgow and funded as part of the rapid research on Covid-19 call. That study has followed patients in real-time after hospitalisation with Covid-19 and uses a number of medical assessments to understand more about patients' health, including scans of heart, kidneys and lungs. Blood tests to measure both inflammation and blood clotting over the short and medium term and a series of quality of life questionnaires. The first round of results from the study were published recently in the procedures journal Nature Medicine. I look forward to the CSO recently announced the outcome of its precision medicines alliance Scotland funding call. It sees almost £10 million invested in four NHS-led research projects that will accelerate the development and delivery of precision medicine-based approaches to tackle health conditions of major importance in Scotland, including diseases that disproportionately impact those at risk of socioeconomic disadvantage. That investment adds to the strong precision medicine ecosystem in Scotland that includes the precision medicine Scotland innovation centre and the Glasgow precision medicine living laboratory. To finish, I congratulate the British Heart Foundation Scotland and Fraser of Allander Institute on the publication of their respective reports. The Scottish Government looks forward to continuing to work with third sector organisations, including the BHF Scotland, to build on our strong research and innovation base for the benefit of the people of Scotland.