Chamber and committees

Welcome, cabinet secretary. My question is similar to Gillian Mackay’s question. Have there been any discussions about opting out when it comes to patient confidentiality and the sharing of data?

I noticed that, in relation to the legislative consent memorandum, the Department of Health and Social Care advised that it had undertaken engagement in round-table and smaller discussions, including with the NHS Confederation, which covers England, Wales and Northern Ireland. What consultation, if any, has taken place with NHS Scotland?

This question is for Gill Stewart. You mentioned earlier some of the bigger lessons, such as those around remote learning and assessment, which we have talked about quite a bit. You also talked about e-enabled assessment and co-creation. If you have more information on e-enabled assessment and the remote learning stuff that you spoke about, will you expand on it? I appreciate that that work might be at the very early stages.

Over the past couple of years, you have had to make lots of huge decisions and do a huge amount of work in a very short period of time, and that work is not necessarily what you have been used to doing in the past. I am interested in the work that you are doing now, and I go back to what Ross Greer talked about earlier. What work are you doing on plans and strategies for models of co-production? Given young people’s views on parity, and taking on board teachers’ views, are you able to collaborate and take decisions together?

We did not quite get everything right and we did not quite get the balance right in some areas. It is good to know that we are in a better place this year and that, looking to the future, there is a lot of positive stuff going on. Thank you all for your commitment to working on the changes as they come through in the next couple of years.

I trust that the answer to this question will be yes, but I take it that that will include care-experienced young people, children with additional support needs and so on? We often find that the things that work for those pupils work really well for other pupils as well.

Perhaps I can put the issue of historical data to bed a wee bit. I know that there were some comments that a small number of teachers felt that they were under pressure to lower grades. That was certainly said, although it did not involve big numbers.

My understanding from what the witnesses said last week is that they looked at historical data. If there was a massive difference, that would be a bit of a red flag, meaning that the grades should be reconsidered to ensure that they were right. Is that correct?

With the national care service, we are talking about a significant increase in scope, and I want to ask Derek Feeley and Judith Proctor about the proposed community health and social care boards. How can we ensure that they have the breadth, capacity and ability to collaborate to join up health and social care services in a way that allows us to design care around individual needs?

How do we ensure parity for unpaid carers who carry out different jobs? How do we go about getting that parity? With demographics changing over the next few years, a lot of us will be looking at taking on a caring role. Derek Feeley spoke about shifts towards human rights in social care support. How can we shift the ethos and culture in society to really value the care that carers provide?

I will direct my questions to Leigh Johnston and Siva Anandaciva, but they can correct me and suggest that someone else answers.

I am an elected councillor in South Lanarkshire. Leigh Johnston spoke about the systems management approach. IJBs and health and social care partnership directors have quite a difficult role in working with chief executives in health and with local councils. Pre-Covid, there was some success in freeing up hospital beds through preventative care, upskilling staff, preventing admissions, discharging people from hospital more quickly and shifting funding into care and treatments that are delivered in patients’ homes. With the NCS’s much bigger scope, how will we achieve a bigger shift from hospital to community care? How should the funding work? How do we get the right culture and ethos in place for that shift to happen?