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Ms Harper is correct that there is additional funding for community optometry, community audiology and the continued expansion of pharmacy first to ensure that people have the opportunity to access the right care in the right place and so that we are able to have the broadest possible front door. It is also about shifting the balance of care. More anterior eye services and community glaucoma services are moving into community optometrists, while community audiology services are also due to be expanded, with additional investment in the budget.

I think that it absolutely is. I know that Emma Harper, as a rural MSP, takes a particular interest in the programme, and I think that it has delivered benefits for areas such as Dumfries and Galloway. It is about providing specialist education and training for people in rural practice and giving them an additional incentive to remain there because of that additional level of training and education.

We continue to evaluate ScotGEM and its effectiveness in providing our rural communities with medical practitioners who can be retained in those communities. I am Orkney born and bred, and I recognise the challenge of recruiting and retaining staff members in such communities. I think that the programme is successful, and I would be happy to provide the committee with more evidence on its work and effectiveness.

The first thing to say is that the leadership of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde is substantially different from that of the period under scrutiny through the public inquiry. It is important that services are still able to be provided now by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde—stretching beyond the Queen Elizabeth to all aspects of service in Greater Glasgow and Clyde. The board is of course subject to the highest scrutiny possible in terms of the public inquiry, and there are also the annual board reviews and other official-led processes that take place throughout the course of the year.

Scrutiny and conditions being attached to the board’s statutory responsibilities to deliver services are a normal course of affairs in the resource allocations that are provided to health boards. On top of that, there is the additional scrutiny of the independent judge-led public inquiry.

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We are seeking to do both. We are providing significant additional funding to our college sector so that it can provide additional spaces. However, given our demographic projections, we need people of working age to come to Scotland, because we do not have the people to be able to meet all the needs of Scotland’s services and of the wider economy.

We need migration to sustain our public services and economy. Of course, we need to train and support people to come through the system, and we are providing additional resource for the college sector to do that, but we also heavily rely on migrant labour. That will continue because of our demographic challenges and the fact that we will have a falling working-age population in years to come. That is why we need a migration system that will work in the interests of our services and wider economy.

That question builds on the answers that I gave to Ms Mackay. The Government’s position for the budget has been that employers should meet their statutory pay obligations. Meeting the minimum wage is a legal responsibility that employers have. We have set out to provide the additional resource that is required to go from the minimum wage to the real living wage. I recognise that that means that, compared to previous years, there is a gap.

As I set out in response to Ms Mackay, I have met COSLA already. The Government has received correspondence from the likes of Rachel Cackett of the CCPS, and discussions are on-going on that. We recognise and value our social care staff, which is why we are providing increased resource to support them to be paid at least the real living wage. That policy is not matched in all parts of the UK but, in spite of the very tight fiscal settlement that we have, we have maintained that commitment. We will continue to work with COSLA and employers on what the settlement means.

As Dr Gulhane knows, we have set out the priority projects that are being funded through the capital programme: University hospital Monklands, the Princess Alexandra eye pavilion, the Belford hospital and the joint campus on Barra. In the infrastructure plan, we have set out a series of primary care investment projects, which will be developed through a revenue finance model in due course. That is under consideration with the Scottish Futures Trust at the moment.

Our capital budget has been squeezed and continues to be squeezed by successive UK Government budgets, which means that the investment that we are able to make in capital projects such as new hospitals, new health centres, digital and other investments is more challenging, especially when we consider the corrosive impact that inflation has had over the past three or four years. The public pound is not able to go as far due to construction inflation spiralling.

We have to make challenging and difficult decisions, but we have set out our priorities in a transparent way through the budget and the infrastructure investment plan. We continue to invest in repairs and maintenance, as well as new equipment, in order to give the people of Scotland the best service possible.

On Carrick Glen, there are processes that need to be gone through before any commitment can be made to sell the site, which I want to be assured on and satisfied about. Those discussions are on-going.

On the national treatment centres, we are investing to protect planned care services at Gartnavel general hospital, Perth royal infirmary and Stracathro hospital. Although we have not put forward capital for new-build national treatment centre sites, because we do not have sufficient capital to do so, we are moving to a model of protecting planned care on a larger population basis.

That is the policy intent behind constructing new national treatment centres, and we are seeking to provide that care within existing services until we are in a position in which new capital becomes available, should the position of a UK Government change.

Absolutely. Work is under way through the Scottish Futures Trust in order to ensure that the very stringent value-for-money tests that are associated with spending decisions through the Scottish Government can be met. In the absence of conventional capital becoming available as a result of successive UK Governments squeezing our capital budget, however, we need to look at ensuring that our primary care spaces are bigger and more flexible to meet the need with regard to shifting the balance of care.

We are going to be asking our primary care practitioners to be doing more as we move services—which we have spoken about—from hospital-based clinics into the community. We will need infrastructure to meet that need, which is why I have asked my colleagues in Government—Alan Morrison is leading on this work—to find a model that meets the public-value test while allowing us to proceed with capital investment that enables the realisation of the Government’s policy intent for more services to be delivered in the community.

No. The extortionate PFI costs will not be emulated. We will be looking at a different model that ensures that we protect the public finances as best we can.

Ms Harper is absolutely correct. She mentioned the undoubted linkage between housing and good health; another example of a policy area in which health and social care is probably the greatest beneficiary is our action to address child poverty. We know that poverty is one of the greatest determinants of poor health, not just among children but for people’s long-term health trajectories. Work on that is being done across Government: a Cabinet sub-committee on child poverty, of which I am a member, is leading on looking at how we ensure that cross-portfolio attention is given to those areas, so that there is not a pot of money being spent in one area of Government without looking at the wider benefits that that brings.

When we have a difficult fiscal environment, it is critical that we understand where decisions are being taken that can have a multiplicity of benefits across other portfolio areas. Housing is one such area, and addressing child poverty is another. As another example, we are looking at the climate change plan and working our way through the environmental factors that drive poor health. We work collaboratively in all those areas across Government.