Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning, and welcome to the 26th meeting in 2024 of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee. I have received apologies from Ruth Maguire, and Gordon MacDonald is attending as her substitute. As such, agenda item 1 is to ask Gordon MacDonald to declare any interests relevant to the committee’s remit.

If no one else wants to comment on that, I will go to Emma Harper.

Fiona Davies, do you want to add anything?

I want to just finish up with a specific question for Fiona Davies. You work in NHS Highland, which is the only health board to operate a lead agency model instead of the model that is used in the rest of the country. Is that model an advantage or a disadvantage with regard to a health and social care workforce being able to fulfil all the functions that need to be fulfilled? Given that what we are looking at in the bill seeks to equalise the country, as it were, what challenges would it bring for Highland?

We will come on to the issue of complaints as a specific topic a bit further on, so that might be an opportunity for you to elaborate a little bit more on that. I do not want to pre-empt some of the members’ questions.

I accept that emotions run high on certain matters, but I remind members that I expect them to be courteous to each other.

I have also been informed that we have apologies from Suzanne McGuinness.

We move to questions from Tess White.

The next item on our agenda is consideration of a negative instrument. The purpose of the instrument is to amend the National Health Service (Free Prescriptions and Charges for Drugs and Appliances) (Scotland) Regulations 2011 in respect of prescription charges that are applied to English prescription forms if they are presented for dispensing in Scotland. That is in alignment with the increased charges in England.

The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee considered the instrument at its meeting on 17 September 2024 and made no recommendations in relation to it, and no motion to annul has been lodged.

Members do not have any comments, so I propose that the committee does not make any recommendations in relation to the instrument. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

No, we are on theme 2.

I thank the witnesses for their evidence this morning. It has been very helpful to the committee in its scrutiny of stage 2 of the bill. The witnesses are free to leave, but the committee will continue with its work.

Emma Harper has a brief supplementary.