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Yes. One of the potential benefits of a national care service is that it will allow us to create more consistent pathways for training and career options for individuals in the social care setting, with opportunities for people to move around the system in a way that they might not be able to do at present.

Part of the challenge is that it social care is a fragmented sector. We have public sector provision, voluntary sector provision and independent sector provision and, despite the fact that there are national standards for care delivery, how they operate often varies. One of the benefits of a national care service would be that we could take a more consistent approach across those three areas, which could help staff with training and potential career routes.

Addressing the fractured nature of the way in which the social care system operates at present is one of the core purposes behind the national care service. It could deliver much greater consistency across the country.

Yes. I am particularly pleased to see that fund reopening because I set it up when I was Minister for Public Health. When the fund was being closed at the UK level, I chose to establish an ILF here in Scotland. Our reopening it—with an initial budget provision of £9 million in the next financial year—will enable us to open it up to around 1,000 additional disabled people who often have much more complex needs.

One of the real strengths of the independent living fund is that it gives individuals, particularly those who have complex care needs, much more control over how their care arrangements are delivered and by whom. I am therefore particularly pleased that we are able to reopen it for new people to apply to it. We are now taking forward the necessary work to put in place arrangements for opening up the independent living fund for individuals in the next financial year.

There is quite a bit of work going on around that at the present time. John Burns could say a bit more about electronic prescribing. Some new information technology infrastructure is being rolled out for general practices, and about 30 or 40 practices have in place some of the new IT system, which will help to facilitate that. The system is due to be rolled out over the next couple of years, which will allow us to move towards electronic prescribing so as to reduce some of the burden. IT infrastructure is key to facilitating that, and the new GP IT system is designed with a view to providing much more around electronic prescribing.

I am not sure about a minimum standard, but I am happy to check that for you and come back to the committee on that.

On the staff wellbeing issue, the NHS is nothing without its staff; its staff are absolutely critical, so supporting their wellbeing is of high importance.

If there is one thing that frustrates me—it frustrated me when I was a health minister previously, and it has frustrated me since I have come back into the health portfolio—it is the inability to do things using the once for Scotland approach. If one health board is doing really well in an area, it can be a challenge to get other health boards to adopt that practice. We are doing work on the once for Scotland approach to ensure that, where we see good practice in supporting staff and wellbeing, we can utilise it in other health boards so that that experience and knowledge are shared. We are doing work to support that happening much more effectively.

It is important to learn from and share boards’ experiences. We also provide the national wellbeing hub, which gives staff 24/7 support through a range of different programmes. The key thing is that, where there are good initiatives, other boards should learn from them. Those experiences should be utilised much more effectively.

We have a number of programmes to support rural GP initiatives. Some of that is about financial support—making it an attractive setting for them to work in. Stephen Lea-Ross can say a wee bit more about that and about ScotGEM, which, as you mentioned, is a specific Scotland-based project to support recruitment.

I do not know why that is the case, and I am more than happy to have a look at the matter and respond to you directly on it. It seems a reasonable issue to raise and to be addressed, but I know neither the background to it nor the reason for it. I am more than happy to take a look at it and come back to you.

I think that that demonstrates the Scottish Ambulance Service’s very innovative approach to providing services. The same applies not only to those services, but to the services that NHS 24 provides, with a significant amount of resource being made available to help support individuals who present with mental health issues. There has been a significant improvement in the service’s performance in that area. In fact, the chair of the board was highlighting to me yesterday how mental health supports are a key priority as it moves forward.

We are seeing the Ambulance Service, in particular, becoming almost more of an outreach service in some ways, although that is probably not the best way to explain it. A see-and-treat approach is being taken much more often, in which the service provides direct interventions to patients there and then, instead of its having to convey them to an accident and emergency department or a mental health unit. That is an area where we want to see innovation and development continue.

The committee will be aware of the additional finance that we provided to the Scottish Ambulance Service to increase its recruitment, and that is another expanding area. Some of the preventative work and support that the Ambulance Service can provide with regard to urgent unscheduled care are really important, and I think that that sort of approach will prove increasingly critical in helping to sustain and support our services. I absolutely want to continue to build on and progress that approach in both mental health and non-mental health settings.

As you will be aware through the inquiry, funding is allocated to health boards through the NHS Scotland resource allocation committee formula, and is distributed on the basis of population share, geography, deprivation factors and so on. That approach has been taken for some time now and continues to be taken. As has been the case historically, we also provide tailored support to individual health boards if they face financial issues in-year and require financial support as a result. In the short term, therefore, if NHS Grampian requires additional financial support, we will try to provide it, if the funding is available.

Equally, we will continue to make progress with our use of the NRAC formula. I know that NHS Grampian has raised the issue of parity. As I have mentioned, we have already provided another £200 million in this financial year to try to close that gap further, and we will continue to try to do that in the medium term, too. We will, through the combination of short-term tailored support and the move towards NRAC parity, try to manage the issues for boards including NHS Grampian.

I am surprised by that, because I do not get such feedback when I talk to boards about the financial challenges. They readily acknowledge that we are aware of the significant pressures that they are under, so I am surprised if some have given you the impression that you described.

I think that I understand what you mean. Are you talking about providing more money?