ON Wednesday, I led a Member’s Debate focused on the liver cancer public health emergency in Scotland.

I wanted to bring this issue to parliament following a meeting with the British Liver Trust, as they revealed that Inverclyde reported the highest rate of alcohol-specific deaths in 2017-21, the majority of which were caused by alcohol-related liver disease.

Alarmingly, 90 per cent of liver disease is preventable – as the primary drivers are alcohol misuse, obesity and viral hepatitis.

However, liver disease is considered a silent killer as symptoms often don’t present themselves until the damage is irreversible.

I’m therefore pleased that the day after my debate, the Scottish Government published a new 10-year Cancer Strategy which aims to significantly cut the number of people diagnosed with later stage cancer and to reduce the health inequalities associated with the disease.

The strategy is underpinned by a three-year Cancer Action Plan that contains 136 actions. Both documents focus on improving all areas of cancer services, from prevention and diagnosis through to treatment and post-treatment care, with a particular focus on the currently less-survivable cancers, including liver cancer.

Onto UK politics, I note the damning 106-pages Partygate inquiry report.

The Privileges Committee investigating the matter concluded that Mr Johnson's "personal knowledge of breaches", combined with "his repeated failures pro-actively to investigate" them, amounted to "a deliberate closing of his mind" to the facts.

Much will be said about this report, but I want to again offer my condolences to those who lost a loved one during the pandemic; unable to spend time with them in their final hours while the PM was, it seems, only too happy to break the rules he asked us all to follow.