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I am not sure that it is my experience that people know that. They might know the name of the health board. In my area, they would know that it is Forth Valley NHS Board because the hospital is called Forth Valley hospital; that is probably why they would know that.

You said earlier—I forget how you termed it—that there is an attempt to make sure that the standard of service that people receive across the country is the same. That is often called for in relation to local government, which ignores the fact that there are 32 different mandates in local government but that is not the case in the health service. If you are trying to achieve, quite reasonably, a standard level of service for everybody across the country, is that not another negation of the idea that we need to have 22 health boards?

My last question is about comparative evidence. What comparisons do you carry out in various areas? The obvious comparisons would be with Wales, Northern Ireland and England. We have talked about it in relation to attracting the right number of candidates to go on to NHS boards. What are the lessons that could be drawn from what happens down south? Apparently, as we heard earlier, the lesson to be drawn in Wales is to do what Scotland does. What comparisons do you do with elsewhere in the UK to give yourself a sense check of the issues and how well you are dealing with them, particularly in relation to staffing and getting the right personnel in?

If it is not too much of a surprise, I will hand back to you, convener.

You gave an example about singling out a candidate for being non-meritorious. Nobody wants to get into that situation. It is not good for the candidate, either.

I have a separate point on NHS appointments specifically. You might not want to answer this question, and I would understand why if you did not. Is the proliferation of NHS boards part of the reason that we struggle to fill all of them with the right calibre of candidates all the time?

It would be really useful to compare neighbouring countries. That should be more than what you are able to say about the links that you have with elsewhere. There is a need to look at performance and at the issues that are faced, not just in this area of appointments. That seems to be an obvious piece of work that would be useful.

Also, I agree that we are often the last to see the merits of the things that we do here in Scotland. We tend to concentrate on the problems.

My last question is about what you have been saying about incivility. That is a huge issue. We had a situation last week in Parliament where the refusal to accept an amendment to a justice bill has resulted in a number of members being accused on social media of favouring child rape. That is how bad it is getting here now. Many members have cameras and police patrols around our houses these days because we have received death threats and so on.

I agree with you that incivility is a present problem, and I was interested in the work that you are doing with others in that regard. It is important that you speak up publicly about it. That would not be to say whatever I want you to say but to say what you found. I have a view that perhaps part of the reason that people do not come forward—I think that you alluded to this—is that they have seen how people in public roles can be treated. Unless people and trusted actors like you also speak up about the situation and not just those who are affected by it directly, such as members of boards, Parliaments and councils, it will be hard to turn the tide.

I did not really expect that, but there you go.

In what you have talked about, you have referred a couple of times already to accountability. If the public watch First Minister’s question time every week—I am sure that you will have to do that as well, whether you want to or not—all that they will see is questions being put to the First Minister, quite legitimately, about issues in the health service. Where do you think they see the accountability of 22 different health boards? Do they see that at all, or do they see it as the Government being responsible?

It is just that, in my experience, if somebody has an issue with a health board or with health services in their area, the last people they go to will be the health board. They might access the complaint system, or they might go to councillors or MSPs, but the health board does not feature. Unless it is something like the closure of a hospital, the health board does not feature at all. That is my point. Is the health board a needless layer? I suppose that it is difficult for you to comment on this, because it is down to Government policy, but does the current configuration of 22 health boards, a number of which the public do not even know exist, add to accountability in any way?

I am conscious of what you were saying earlier about the development of scrutiny of public appointments. Back in 2007, when I was first elected to the Parliament, a separate committee of the Parliament dealt with public appointments, and I think that I became the first convener of the then Standards and Public Appointments Committee, which joined the two functions together. Since then—I spent a decade of the intervening time making ministerial appointments—the role with regard to public appointments has hugely expanded, as has the role with regard to audit. It is a bit of a chimera that that is all down to ministers. Ministers’ freedom of choice is fundamentally limited, not least because of the code of conduct and the various things that you ask them to do and ensure are done. However, that is also due to the nature of civil servants who, perhaps naturally, will tend to focus on like-minded people. They are the ones who will draw up the shortlist by and large, although I concede the point that they will ask ministers for suggestions.

Given all the rules around appointments, to what extent is the environment in which ministers are being asked to operate in order to make appointments now counterproductive? As Jamie Greene mentioned, the freedom to take account of diversity is much more constrained now, because the candidate has to fit the model. Furthermore, we are operating in an environment in which the failure rate to appoint in the first round is 25 per cent.

Consideration of diversity in public appointments must include the ability to look from outside, to be objective about it and to think afresh. To what extent have you looked afresh at the impact of what you do in the appointments process?

The point that I am making is that civil servants are absolutely assiduous at making sure that they comply with the code and that that might be an issue in itself. I was not making the point that feedback from ministers might inform some further thinking. How have you sought to ensure that you have looked at the issue as much as you can from outside? If the environment is such that there is a 25 per cent failure rate—there are other challenges—we are not getting this right.

I should say that the view of ministers, certainly when I was in post, was that your office is co-operative and is pragmatic in applying the rules. However, is the environment such that the freedom to get less conventional candidates even on to a shortlist is being nullified?