 I have businesses. Our members' business debate on motion 17.050 in the name of Clair Adamson on child safety week 2019. This 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 Clair Adamson to open the debate. Ms Adamson, please. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I thank those members who have signed the child safety week motion and all of those who will take part in the debate this evening. The Child Safety Week is the flagship annual campaign led by the child accident prevention trust, and it runs from the third to the ninth of June, with a theme this year of a family life today. Accidents remain the main cause of death in Scotland for children and young babies. Two out of five child deaths are from unintentional injury and 7,260 children were admitted to hospital following accidental injury, some of whom will have experienced life-changing injuries. However, that is just the tip of the iceberg, because the hospital admits that that doesn't record the presentations at A and E from accidents that could result in breaks of bones, burners or scalds or any of those lesser injuries that none the less are very traumatic for I would like to highlight a change in circumstance since our last debated safety in the chamber. The Scottish Government has committed to embedding the UNCRC, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, into Scots law and all aspects of Scottish life. This is particularly important because we know from the statistics that disadvantaged groups and those from SIMD areas of deprivation are far more likely to be the victims of accidents and unintentional injuries. Article 24 of the convention states that, to ensure all segments of society, in particular parents and children are informed, have access to education and are supported in the use of basic knowledge in a number of areas, including the prevention of accidents. I must apologise to the minister in advance that I am likely to bring this to the chamber frequently over the coming years to ensure that accident prevention makes it to the top of the political agenda. That is very important because we have a statutory duty on road safety in Scotland but there is not a statutory duty for safety in the home, for instance. We know that pressures on councils have led to a lot of home safety positions being incorporated into other roles, such as trading standards within the councils. It is something that we must be very vigilant about. Can I mention the partners that are involved in this year's child safety week, Safer Scotland from the Scottish Government? I think that the road safety information for road users is a bitrex that has produced the bitterest substance that has ever been discovered. I do not know whether the minister has yet to take a bitrex test, but I am sure that she will not have forgotten it, as she has. Thomas Cook's children's charity is also committed to improving lives and benefiting communities in the UK. I could turn to some of the dangers that are involved in that. I recommend that people look at the capped Twitter feed and their website, which contains useful information about the potential dangers to young people and children, but it also gives good advice to parents about how they can avoid unintentional injuries. Burns and Skull can be from the use of hair straighteners, which we know can, especially in a young child, because it is a grab injury. That can restrict their movement as they grow older and restrict their hand movements. Having a lifelong change to the outcome for that young people, we also know that the hot drinks and hot bath water are also an area that we have to be very vigilant about. We also know that one of the most frightening things for a parent to experience is stopping breathing. That is an area, again, that a change in the way that we live has brought new dangers in that area. We know that blind cords have a particular danger for young toddlers. That is a campaign that has been running for a long number of years now, but we have also very tragically seen recently babies and young children being suffocated from nappy sacks. There is lots of advice about safe storage of nappy sacks away from courts and play areas, because that is another potential danger for young people. We also know that poisoning is also a worry for parents. In my day, we had a cupboard that was kept all the bleaches and chemicals in it, and we were told not to put them into bottles that looked like drinks and all those things. I remember those messages at that time, but, of course, time and technology moves on. We now have a risk from liquid tabs, which are very common in households that are used in dishwashers and in our laundry. I have to see that a lot of the manufacturers have taken cognisance of the work that not only the cross-party group on accident prevention and safety awareness has done, but other organisations involved in that area have moved away from some of the prettier colours and the more scented liquid tabs to make them less appealing to young children. That is to be welcomed. Button batteries have become very common in many electrical items that can be bought. A lot of them are in toys that are presented for use for children and toddlers. They pose a particular hazard not only because they can be swallowed very easily by a young child, but they can have a devastating impact and be fatal in some circumstances. We need to alert parents to those possible dangers. We also know that falls from cots, from high chairs, just in and around the house, dangers from falls can have a serious impact on young people, and we should be looking to prevent those wherever possible. Road safety, as well. Members may know that I have a particular interest in this area having had tragedy in my own family regarding road safety. I have to say that it was that that brought me to this area. I am not a practitioner in safety at all, but it is something that I feel in the position that I had as a councillor and an MSP that I should be promoting. I am not the only person who has taken that positive from a family tragedy. If we look to the particular area of drowning, where there has been a lot of work done in Scotland, we now have a Scottish drowning prevention strategy that came from the work of the members of the cross-party group. I would like to pay particular credit to the Spears family in Glasgow. Duncan and Margaret lost their son when he was on a night out in Glasgow and was drowning in the Clyde. They have been campaigning tirelessly to have the signage improved along the Clyde walkways and also to have ropes attached to the life providers that are there on the key side. It has to be a tribute not to the Spears but to any family who have come forward and become the face of a safety message. It means much more to the public and puts a face to what can be seen as quite a dry and technical advice area. However, when you put the human aspect in the air, we have had families come forward to show the effect of burns on their children. We have had people come forward to warn about carbon monoxide poisoning and how it has been affected by that. I really have to pay a tribute to the bravery of those families who are willing to come forward and try to prevent that happening to anyone else. Fire safety and carbon monoxide poisoning are two of the areas that we worry about in our families. We know that there is much more frequent use of electrical equipment, but we also have cheaper versions of equipment and chargers being used that can pose a danger. I pay tribute to the work of the electrical safety first in advising consumers about ethical purchasing and also warning of the dangers along with our trading standards officers who work in that area. Later this evening, I will be convening the cross-party group on accident prevention and safety awareness. We now have over 140 members, all of whom are dedicated to making our lives as safe as possible. We have said that we want Scotland to be the best place in the world to grow up, and that means that we want Scotland to be the safest place in the world to grow up. I commend the motion to the chamber and thank you to the members who will be taking part. I thank the public in the gallery because I know why you want to clap, but it has not permitted applause in the public area. Speeches of four minutes, please. Gillian Martin will follow up on Alison Harris. I thank Claire Adamson not just for securing this debate but for the huge amount of work that she does on safety issues. Being safe is all about assessing risk and taking steps to minimise that risk. You can only do that through discussion and education. I thank her for all she does to facilitate that. Family life has always been a changing situation. The other day, I was speaking to a constituent at a sports club and it turned out that he had been a fireman in the 1970s in Clydebank. My mother and father had three small children in the fat or the fat, as it is known, in the 1970s before we moved to Aberdeenshire. I was recalling the day that we had a chip pan fire and I was joking with them that maybe he would have attended that. He said, well, I think that every Clydebank family in the 1970s had a chip pan fire at one time or another. I'll have been to thousands. That high risk has largely gone. We do not really use open chip pans any more. Electrical safety has improved in the homes and altogether a safer place, but as technology improves, the old dangers are replaced with new ones. Helping children understand what to do to avoid harm and deal with accidents and emergencies can never start too young. I want to commend the work done in schools in my constituency by the Dinky doctors. I had a wonderful morning with the nursery children at Mintlaw primary who were treated to a fun interactive hour where they learned how to call for an ambulance, what to do, for example, if they get burned or any of their family needed help. The Dinky doctors embed accident prevention and response into short sessions that go right up to primary 7 and are age-appropriate every step of the way. For the nursery kids, Teddy is the patient and the kids would know what to do if Teddy fell and he wasn't answering. In the later stages of school, the Dinky doctors will be teaching more complex things such as CPR and other emergency response methods to young people. Avoidance of accidents in the home environment is key to child safety, but so many accidents still happen in the home as wood-burning stoves and open fires would become more fashionable. The dangers that we thought would be eradicated with the affordability of central heating and having radiators rather than open fires coming back. As fashion has changed and we have hair straighteners with high-temperature ceramic plates being used every day, in the home, we increased the chance of severe burns. I thank the child accident prevention trust for the excellent action pack that they have developed, which looks at ways how to prevent accidents in a modern home. I will put a link to that on my social media, as it is exactly the resource that will help families and community groups and organisations to make meaningful safety changes in homes across the country that can keep those who are most precious to us safe from harm. However, what of the future? We have a climate emergency and families will be encouraged to leave their cars at home as they do the school run, which is only right, something that I welcome, but that means that our streets are going to have to get a lot safer. Safe routes to school are built into the requirements in every local authority. Colleagues will know that I am a cyclist, a nervous cyclist. I want safe cycle routes to school to be a requirement as we tackle the twin challenges of childhood obesity and climate change. I think that children should have the right to cycle on a path that is free from cars. Parents should also have the peace of mind to allow their children the freedom to get to school under their own steam by foot or by bike. Right now, cycling to school for too many is far too dangerous, and we know that a quarter of all cyclist deaths are children. We need infrastructure change starting now. Other EU countries have made a conscious decision to change their streets to encourage cycling and prevent accidents. Lives have been saved, health and wellbeing has been improved and families have peace of mind. We can do what we can through education and make our homes safer, but safety on our streets needs decisive action to give children the right of a safe cycle route. I thank Clare Adamson for bringing this member's business debate on Child Safety Week to the chamber this evening. As we have heard, Child Safety Week runs from the 3-9 of June. It is with thanks to charities such as the Child Accident Prevention Trust, who work tirelessly in their efforts to promote and raise awareness of the risks of child accidents and, more importantly, how they can be prevented. The theme of this year's Child Safety Week is family's life today, where is the risk? The aim is to highlight the new dangers facing families today from our modern and sometimes complex lifestyles. I have visited numerous nurseries in my capacity as party spokesperson for children and young people, and, although those visits have not directly been in relation to child safety, it is always very evident that the stringent rules that nurseries have in place and the standards to which they operate in order to prevent accidents in that environment. I am sure that I am not alone when I say that children should be free to lead active, healthy lives and that they should be given every encouragement to experiment, play and take risks. Odd bumps and scrapes are all parts of growing up. They are how we learn about the world around us and, as parents, we accept that, but there is a balance to be struck. Sadly, accidents involving children continue to devastate lives, with under-fives particularly at risk. On average, half of the under-fives attend accident and emergency every year following an accident that could have been prevented. However, it does not have to be like that. By getting down to our kids' level and seeing the world through their eyes, we can spot dangers and help to keep them safe. Sadly, many neighbourhoods have seen the demise of the school crossing patrol, which means that fewer primary school children are receiving pedestrian training. I firmly believe that road safety awareness is a crucial life-saving skill, and all children should have pedestrian training. However, education is, of course, just one aspect of road safety. We, as parents, have a vital role to play in teaching our children the skills that they need to stay safe. As I mentioned earlier, family life today is far more complex. It is certainly more complex than it was compared to 10 years ago, and it is often the very things that make life more convenient that bring new risks and new dangers. By new dangers, I am including things such as dishwasher tablets and even laundry capsules. They might sit innocently in a cupboard, but in their eye-catching packaging, it turns them into one of the things that appeals to a child's curiosity, pretty to look at but potentially deadly in the hands of a child. Probably one of today's biggest distractions around the home and outside is the use of mobile phones. I am sure that we are all familiar with the age-old saying that you need eyes in the back of your head when you have young children. The time that it takes to be distracted by the reading of one single text is enough time for a child to run out on to a busy road or street or swallow that dishwasher tablet, or indeed worse. However, set aside the distractions of mobile phones, the reality is that they are now part of everyday life. Sadly, however, they can come with a whole host of risks for our children. Roughly 35 per cent of children in the age bracket 10 to 11 own a mobile phone. Children today are growing up in a completely different world and they face problems that I never had to face when I was younger. If you think that your child will not be affected by, for example, sexting, the statistics would strongly disagree. According to a UK survey on teenage mobile phone habits, six out of 10 UK youths have been asked to send a sexual image or video of themselves. Shockingly, 25 per cent of those asked actually did send an explicit image or even more shocking a third sent it to someone they knew online but not in real life. If I listed all the dangers that our children are exposed to nowadays, both within and outside the home, I do not think that if my own children were still young that I would have ever let them out of my sight. However, we have a duty to our children, a duty to let them be just that children, to let them explore, let them learn, let them laugh and let them live. Thank you very much. I call Ewan Gray. We are followed by Mark Ruskell. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and thanks to Clare Adamson for bringing this important issue to the attention of the chamber this evening. It has been highlighted already just how devastating an impact childhood accidents can have upon children themselves but also their families and communities across the country. That is the largest cause of childhood death in Scotland after the neonatal period, as the motion tells us, should really give us pause for reflection to consider if we are doing all that we can to reduce these kinds of incidents. The work done by the Child Acts and Prevention Trust is, of course, vitally important in supporting parents and families to understand and help them to navigate the risks of modern family life. This week is a welcome opportunity to highlight the work that many other organisations are doing and to highlight, as colleagues have done, the resources that they have created online and otherwise for access by parents and by families. Accidents can happen to any family in any home. Parenting is tough and difficult, a risk in itself, whatever the family circumstances. There are plenty of examples that we can all think of, of tragedy striking, the privileged and perhaps the celebrity. That cannot hide the fact which Clare Adamson drew our attention to, that childhood accidents and by extension preventable hospital admissions in Scotland, as elsewhere, are socially patterned. If we look at the most recent statistics, we can see around a 30 per cent difference between the most and least deprived areas for admission to hospital as a result of unintentional injury to children. What is more with this, as with many other illnesses, conditions and reasons for hospital admission, there is a correlation, an exact gradient, showing that no matter where you are on the SIMD ladder, you are less likely to be admitted for an unintentional injury than those who live in an area more deprived than your own. You are more likely to be admitted than those who live in an area less deprived than your own. The chances of suffering admission for an accident are determined significantly by your socioeconomic status. What can be done to reduce that inequality and reduce the overall numbers of accidents that lead to admission and injury? How do we support those more vulnerable families to minimise that disparity in apparent risk to their children? We know some of what works, because evidence this week from the Institute of Fiscal Studies has shown that sure start centres in England, family centres situated in the most disadvantaged areas and designed to provide targeted early years in learning for the whole family, have closed that hospitalisation gap for children between the most and least deprived areas by as much as half a very significant reduction. Such results in improving children's health and wellbeing just show us what can be achieved by addressing some of the wider issues of inequality and vulnerability in the family generally. As we reflect on this evening's debate and consider what can be done to promote greater safety for children, we should certainly bear in mind those results from England and the evidence that addressing some of the inequalities of income and wealth can make a difference, too. Thank you very much. I call Mark Ruskell to be followed by Mark McDonald. Mr Ruskell, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I can also thank Claire Adamson for her real leadership on child safety issues in this Parliament and also the excellent work of the Child Accident Prevention Trust that I have heard about in the CPG. It is now one week almost till the stage 1 debate on my restricted roads 20-mile-an-hour bill, so I would like to comment on the importance of speed reduction in tackling child casualties in our communities. Claire was saying that there are many personal stories out there, but my personal stories at a classmate of mine was run over and killed when I was at primary school when he was out playing on his bike. This incident did not happen outside of the school. It happened in the residential street where he lived, like four-fifths of the child casualties that we have on our roads. Obviously, there was an unimaginable impact on not just his family but also on the wider community through that death. The first person to be killed in a motor accident was in 1896, and the coroner at the time said that such a thing would never happen again. He wrote those words in his report. Unfortunately, we are now over 100 years on from that. We have seen over half a million deaths in the UK alone through road accidents. It is important that, although things are getting better, we continue to take action. I think that an important and central step to delivering safer streets is to get the speed limit right. It is about infrastructure, as Gillian Martin has pointed out, but it is also about that first step of getting a safer speed limit, not just outside of schools but where people actually live, which is where my friend was killed. A Government policy on this is good. 20 mile an hour is the norm. It is backed by the World Health Organization. It is backed by the OECD in the EU, but the reality is that, at the moment, it is a real postcode lottery as to whether you live on a street that is 20 miles an hour or 30 miles an hour. If you live in the borders and you are a child, you are likely to be growing up on a 30 mile an hour road. If you live in Fife, you will be on a 20 mile an hour street, or Edinburgh. The Rec Committee published its report last week. It is a report that certainly recognises the benefits of 20 in terms of road safety and the benefits of promoting walking and cycling. One of the recommendations is that local councils should continue to choose not to introduce 20 mile an hour in their areas should they wish to. I do not agree with that. I believe that it is just going to perpetuate the inconsistency that we have already got in Scotland, which leaves some children more vulnerable than others. I would like to commend the work of Sustrans, who do some fantastic work in this area of child safety. They, unfortunately, were not invited to give evidence to the committee, but they did come out of the report a couple of weeks ago that showed that traffic incidents involving children are three times more likely to happen in deprived areas than in more affluent areas. There is a double injustice here because its deprived communities are often locked out of the transport opportunities. The communities with poor bus services, car ownership is low and yet they face higher risks purely just down to the postcode that they live in. Of course, we all know that, through this discretionary approach, it will always be the more affluent communities, the well-organised communities with community councils who will be successfully lobbying for 20 mile an hour zones where the deprived communities will be left behind. The evidence is there that 20 works. In Fife, we saw a big reduction, 20 per cent reduction in accidents as a result of Fife going completely 20. It was even higher, 32 per cent reduction in more deprived communities. It is time for Scotland to join Wales and London in declaring Scotland as a 20 mile an hour nation and ensuring that the default speed limit in those streets where we live, work and play goes from 30 to 20 miles an hour. Mark McDonald, to be followed by Bill Kidd. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I, too, congratulate Clare Adamson on securing the debate. I echo Mark Ruskell's comments that, for a number of years now, Ms Adamson has been leading the way in relation to safety and accident prevention in this Parliament. I hope that that continues to be the case. In her speech, she mentioned the issue around poisoning and one area that I noted in the child accident prevention trust information and growing risk and emerging risk is around the liquid nicotine refills from e-cigarettes, which our hospitals are reporting growing numbers of children accidentally swallowing and ingesting liquid nicotine from e-cigarette refills. That is an emerging risk that needs to be borne in mind in individuals and families where those refills are to be found and need to think very carefully about safe storage of those. The other issue that Clare Adamson mentioned, she spoke about the issue of the cases that we talk about being the tip of the iceberg because they are the ones that we see measured in statistics. That chimes with a report from within the journal The Archives of Disease and Childhood. One of the co-authors was Dr Jamie Cooper, a consultant in emergency medicine at the Royal Aberdeen Children's Hospital, who said that we only see the tip of the iceberg when it is not alleviated. In the journal article, three cases were highlighted from within Aberdeen alone of children choking after eating whole grapes. Unfortunately, in two of those instances, a five-year-old boy choked while eating grapes and after a school club had a heart attack and died. A 17-month-old boy choked while eating grapes with his family at home. While the grape was eventually removed by paramedics, the little boy sadly still died. In the third instance, a two-year-old choked while snacking on grapes in the park, suffered two seizures and spent five days in intensive care but thankfully recovered. Those are only cases in Aberdeen. Within the report, it highlights that grapes are the third most common cause of death in food-related incidents. My researcher wondered what the other two were, so she looked them up and they are hot dogs and sweets. I still cut my own children's grapes before feeding them to them. Chances are that I probably will until their teenagers and tell me to stop doing it. I will take clear Adamson's intervention. Clare Adamson, thank you very much for taking the intervention. The cross-party group on accident prevention and safety awareness was delighted to have a presentation through the Mark Scott leadership awards from a group of schools in Cumbernauld who had taken inspiration from those very stories and had developed a training programme. They themselves became first aid trained and were then going out and teaching primary schools about the dangers of choking and giving their expertise on to younger groups of children. I just wondered if the member would agree that that first aid awareness is really important and that people should take up opportunities to learn about it. Mark McDonnell, wake up your time, I'm very grateful for that. I'll come back to that a little bit later, now that I've got that time back to be able to do so. The other issue that was mentioned by Clare Adamson was drowning. Members from the northeast who are present in the chamber will perhaps remember the tragic incident in 2016 where my constituent, Julie Walker, died while trying to save her six-year-old son, Lucas Aberdeen Beach, who sadly also died. That was the incident that led to the formation of the Aberdeen Water Safety Group bringing together various agencies in the city of Aberdeen to look at how water safety could be promoted, not just at the beach but also in relation to the two rivers in Aberdeen as well and some of the open water that exists within the city. There's another group that I want to highlight based on my constituency and that's Absafe, an organisation that does a huge amount of work to improve safety awareness in the city. They have an interactive facility called the safe in Bridges of Dawn, in my constituency, where their team and volunteers deliver engaging fund and informative sessions that teach children about everyday hazards and how to deal with them, including road, railway, home, fire, safety, solvent misuse, anti-social behaviour, cyberbullying and security. They're funded by Aberdeen City Council to ensure that every primary seven child in the city receives a complementary day visit and their lessons follow the curriculum for excellence ensuring the delivery's age-appropriate support-required learning outcomes and if it's the GERFEC principle. Finally, Clare Adamson mentioned first aid, and I absolutely agree that first aid training is important. It was great to see the announcement that all local authorities in Scotland will deliver CPR training in schools, but CPR training will only take you so far in relation to being able to save a life. For example, in a choking incident, wider first aid training is perhaps necessary. I noted the first aid training call from St Andrew's First Aid through its petition to the Petitions Committee. I recognise the Government that said that this is a matter better dealt with by local authorities on an individual basis. I hope that perhaps we might see some leadership from COSLA and local authorities in relation to that, and wider first aid training for children can be made available to ensure that they are equipped not just to spot hazards but also to deal with the situations that they may face with their peers. I call Bill Kidd. We are followed by Brian Whittle, Mr Whittle, the last speaker in the open debate. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I, along with others, would like to share my appreciation of Clare Adamson for bringing the topic of child safety week to the chamber. By doing so, Clare provides us with the opportunity to highlight the impact that safety habits and accident prevention measures can have for families across Scotland. It is important that we continue to discuss child safety as there are new and unexpected hazards, as has been mentioned by others. It is worth saying again that they are changing new unexpected hazards that people were not aware of previously, but we need to learn about those things and we need to be aware in our modern world. The child accident prevention trust, which instigated child safety week, says that, as a result of accidents, more than 2,000 children are admitted to hospital every week. We can work to reduce that number by prompting consideration of some of the new dangers and hazards that children face. Accidents, of course, by their nature, are an unpleasant surprise. The child action prevention trust is working to reduce that element of surprise by collating information about the causes of accidents and providing tips on how to help parents to consider those unexpected hazards. With that information, they have created a free guide for educators, child protectioners and other professionals to help them to start conversations with parents about how to prevent the unexpected. In other words, the trust has created free prompts for parents and practitioners to help them to recognise hazards that they otherwise and understandably may not have been aware of. What underpens this debate and is also the context of and motivator for child safety week is the deeply sad reality that this information has not always been available to parents who have ended with losing children through accidents. Accidents are also the leading cause of death, serious injury and acquired disability for children and young people in the UK. The reality of this makes discussion of child safety extremely important. Alongside the child accident prevention trust, parents, teachers, child care practitioners and more, we are all motivated to start a Scotland-wide conversation about how we can minimise hazards and prevent accidents. I fully support child safety week. I have written to all schools and nurseries within my constituency of Glasgow Annesland to encourage teachers and play workers to use the free materials provided by the child accident prevention trust. This is a conversation that needs to be inclusive. One in six parents have difficulty reading, so it is important that the action packs activities are used to engage parents. That needs to be in everyone's radar so that children from across Scotland and from all backgrounds are safe. That can include practical demonstrations as well as leaflets. The trust action pack outlines simple and practical information covering hazards that can cause burns and scalds, a child to stop breathing, poisoning, falls and drowning. The pack also looks at tips on road safety and fire safety. It tells us that a baby's skin is 15 times thinner than an adult's skin, so babies can be badly burnt on hot things much more easily than an adult can. Young children also do not have the reflex to pull away from something that is burning them. Rather, that is something that is learned. The trust points out an example of hazard of hot drinks, a cup of tear, coffee and scald a baby as much as 15 minutes after it has been made. The free pack is available to download from the child accident prevention trust's website, and it contains many helpful tips. It is easy to read and has activities that child practitioners can use to help to engage parents in the conversation. I encourage those working with children and in contact with parents to use the trust's free materials to participate in child safety week 2019 and to start conversations about how we can increase children's safety. I gently remind members to use full names and the chamber has only been a few slip-ups in this perfectly understandable friendly debate. Brian Whittle, then I move to the minister. I also add my congratulations to Clare Adamson for bringing this topic to the chamber and commend the work that she continues to do in this important field. We all know the well-known phrase that accidents happen, but what we are debating in here is that there are many cases where they do not have to happen, and there are simple precautions that can be taken to make the place safer for our children. The challenge of planning ahead, as parents will tell us, is trying to see accidents before they happen. I think that that is something that we do intuitively. A young child sees the world differently from an adult literally because they are smaller than us and figuratively because we may see a washing up liquid capsule and they may see that as a sweetie. The phrase, particularly young children who do not understand the dangers, rely on their parents and other adults to take responsibility and reduce risks, is something that I want to come back to and focus on a bit later in my speech, if I could. However, I think that the importance of collaborative working, not only among organisations who run campaigns such as Child Safety Week, but also between parents and families is important. Whether that is new parents sharing their experiences or getting the opportunity to share their experiences with other new parents or new grandparents sharing their memories and knowledge. I think that even encouraging older children to think about what hazards there are and how they can help to protect the younger siblings at home. Speaking for experience, I will support anything that reduces the risk of me stepping barefoot on a piece of lego. Education plays a huge role whether formal education and guidance from the Scottish Government and other agencies of the anecdotal education that we gain from speaking to other people and learning from their experiences. I think that we have heard today about the dangers of modern lifestyles, about more batteries and electronics and more devices using smaller, button-type batteries, liquids that colour for washing up liquid capsules, even things like blind cords. Not all of those are new dangers. Choking hazards and poisonous liquids are nothing new, but many of the same basic rules apply. I think that it is not a case here of wanting to take up a nanny state approach. It is vital that we give children the space to learn the awareness of their environment. Children will always hurt themselves at some point, and when they do, they will learn how to avoid it happening again and how to deal with it. We are trying what we are talking about. We are building up a resilience, and we have got to be careful not to sanitise the environment too much so that they do not get that ability to learn. It is important not just to eliminate hazards from around children but to try to teach them why they are doing it and what that hazard is and what it could do. Teaching our children to be aware of hazards is just as important as keeping hazards away from children. If I could go back to that idea that adults need to take responsibility and reduce the risks for their children, I think that there are a couple of meetings that I had last week. One was with Alcohol Focus Scotland. One of the phrases that they said to me that they had been interviewing children with parents who have an alcohol problem was the phrase that the children said, which was what they most wanted to happen. Was their parents not to drink while they are still up so that they could take their alcohol once the children had gone to bed? That resonates with us for so many different reasons. I knew that this debate was coming up and why that resonates with me. We know that alcohol impairs our ability to focus on our environment, not just in terms of the attention that we give to our children. However, if our judgment is impaired—this counts for drug use as well—if our judgment is impaired, by definition, the danger to children must increase. I was down in Westminster yesterday with the Scottish Affairs Committee looking at the drug and alcohol problem in Scotland. Deprivation is an area in which there are more issues around problem drug and alcohol use. It is a much bigger and much wider issue that we need to discuss. We need to focus our attention on that area and on a much wider issue. We need to look at how we are dealing with the drug and alcohol issue. In turn, that will improve the safety of the environment in which children are involved. I would love to talk about this more deeply, Presiding Officer. I realise my time is at an end, so I will leave it there and again thank Clare Adamson for bringing this to the chamber. Thank you very much. You need to put down a parliamentary motion in a member's debate. It is something like that, Mr Rittle, if you want to expand on it. Worthy. I call on Mary Todd to close to the Government minister, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Let me begin by thanking Clare Adamson for bringing forward this really important motion. Maintaining the safety of our children is of the utmost importance, and the Scottish Government remains committed to this, as it does for improving safety for everyone right across Scotland. It has been great to hear the contributions from the members around the chamber about all the innovative work going on, the length and breadth of Scotland, to help children themselves to recognise risk, to help young people to spot hazards and to risk assess and to respond to accidents. That work is going on from nurseries to schools to community groups. That has really been a pleasure to hear this evening. The work led by Ms Adamson through the cross-party working group on accident prevention continues to address the important issues that contribute towards keeping safe, and that crosses so many of our national outcomes and ambitions. We have heard a whole variety of different angles here in the chamber, and that shows us how cross-cutting the issue is. The safety of particular population groups, including children and older people, and how we move about our communities, both on foot and by transport, and the key messages around staying safe in our homes. I commend the cross-party working group for its endeavours and for the range of partners that are involved, including the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, the Rossba, the Scottish Community Safety Network, COSLA, the Scottish Public Health Network and the Scottish Business Resilience Centre. Of course, the child accident prevention trust, for whom this week the Scottish Government is once again delighted to support the national child safety week in Scotland. The key to success in this area lies in working together to raise awareness about risks, to progress actions and initiatives that help to reduce incidents. Importantly, working with our communities to better understand the issues and to identify solutions. As we have heard, it is very clear from statistics that, sadly, unintentional harm remains a major cause of death and injury amongst children. The under-fives are disproportionately affected by unintentional harm, which is one of the leading causes of death in children under the age of 15 in Scotland. Although we want children to lead active, healthy lives, we need to equip parents with the tools and information that will enable them to do that safely. The tragic impact for parents of losing a child or dealing with a life-changing injury just cannot be underestimated. I know that we are all in agreement across the chamber that one life lost is one too many. Although it is clear that work still needs to be done to reduce those figures, we know that the number of children admitted to hospital as a result of unintentional injuries has fallen steadily over the past decade, from 8,353 in 2008-9 to 7,259 in 2017-18. The number of deaths due to unintentional injury among children has also fallen from a peak of 147 in the mid-1980s, when I was a youngster, to 16 in 2017. That is a really dramatic shift. The need to keep up this momentum links directly into the importance of child safety week. Since 2008, the Scottish Government has supported the Child Accident Prevention Trust to run this special week to help to increase awareness and inform parents about accident risks to children and the simple steps that can be taken to avoid those accidents. Earlier today, the Minister for Community Safety, Ash Denham, visited Smile Child Care preschool centre, where she met childcare providers, parents and carers, and the event focused primarily on burns, scalds and poisonings. I understand that everyone involved, including the families and practitioners, agreed that it was useful and informative. I spent the morning myself and Clober nursery in Mulgai with an incredibly innovative setting, who were doing a lot of outdoor work involving STEM. The children were sewing and working with hammers and nails—incredible work—but a lot of work had gone into risk assessment to make sure that they could safely explore those things and safely follow where their curiosity took them. As Ms Adamson highlighted, this year's Child Safety Week family life today, where is the risk, is dedicated to raising awareness about the risks of everyday household items that have become a convenient part of modern living. We know that the under five suffer most injuries at home, and this year's campaign highlights how, due to modern technology and other advances, home safety is much more complex than ever before. That makes it difficult for each generation. There are still some of the same old hazards there, but some of those are brand new hazards that just did not exist before. That distraction of the mobile devices—as guilty as any parent for watching my phone when I should be watching my children—and the increased use of button batteries and those brightly-coloured detergent liquid tabs all pose new risks to children's health and wellbeing that parents and carers might not have considered. It is really great to hear from Claire Addison that manufacturers are responding to some of the concerns that have arisen and designing in risk mitigation. That is an important way of tackling the issue. I am aware that, over the week, a range of local activities are taking place right across the country, working with health visitors, community nurseries, nurses and home start groups, among others, to raise awareness of key accident hazards, together with practical prevention measures. I thank the minister for taking my intervention. In respect to drowning accidents—I know that you referred to that just now in Scotland—would the minister agree with me that it is very concerning that 59 per cent of local councillors in Scotland do not have a water safety policy in either coastal or inland waters? I agree with that. That is concerning. I come from a small fishing village that I grew up in. I represent the Highlands and Islands, which has a vast and beautiful coastline. We are well aware of the risks of water nowadays, but those things seem to keep occurring with devastating regularity and anything that we can do to tackle that. I am sure that drowning is preventable. Anything that we can do to tackle that should be done. The Scottish Government is delighted to endorse child safety weeks resource packs, which are available to community groups and services, providing ideas and information on how to prevent accidents. My congratulations to the child accident prevention trust for once again is working so hard to raise awareness through this excellent week-long initiative. Nationally, our policies, including GERFEC, the baby box, the programme, the family nurse partnerships, all contribute to ensuring that our children lead healthy, happy and safe lives. As a Government, we continue to work with national and local partners to raise awareness of unintentional injuries and to improve outcomes for all the vulnerable groups. That includes working with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents this year. They have done a great deal of work with the building safer communities executive group on unintentional harm, chaired by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, and that engages a whole range of partners. We are going to solve that problem by working together. On Friday, that partnership is hosting its second national learning event for local practitioners, where over 100 delegates will come together to discuss and share local practice. That event will also see the launch of an unintentional harm and injury website for local practitioners to share evidence, guidance and best practice examples from across Scotland. It is a fantastic tool that has been developed collectively, and it will be excellent to see that grow as a route to improving outcomes through learning and from all the great work that is under way across Scotland, adapting it to meet local need. I thank once again Clare Adamson for bringing this important issue to the chamber, and I commend again the child accident prevention trust on Rossbuff for their truly excellent and continued work to support child safety across Scotland. Thank you. Thank you Minister. That concludes the debate, and I close this meeting of Parliament.