Chamber and committees

Good morning, panel. Last week, record numbers turned up every day at Victoria hospital’s A and E. Some people see A and E as an easy pathway when they cannot get other services in the area. How can we quickly assess people and get them to minor ailment services, community pharmacies or whatever is in the area? That would take the pressure off A and E.

Where would you consider that any additional investment could have the most impact on winter pressures?

As well as the rising cost of energy, there is inflation when it comes to medicines and food. Do the witnesses have an estimate of the overall cost of that to the NHS in Scotland?

You mentioned that 1,000 additional staff have been put in place. What evaluation has been done to see how they have helped to reduce bed blocking and helped social care services?

New working practices were brought in because of the Covid pandemic. How do we go about redesigning services? Will there be savings, especially from digital work, community care or care at home? The most important thing is to get the public to buy into all that. You mentioned GP practices. Everyone at this table knows that one of the top complaints that we hear is about the lack of face-to-face contact with GPs.

Good afternoon. The budgets in 2020-21 and 2021-22 had large additional sums for health and social care. Is there a need for continued Covid-19-related spending allocations for health boards?

My question is for Audit Scotland. Are our management boards and senior managers making the best use of data to recover from Covid-19, or are there big gaps that stop them doing that?

I would like to close the petition under rule 15.7 of standing orders on the basis that, while the Scottish Government has undertaken to keep this area of law under review, the existing legislation already allows the courts to override principal limitation time limits when it is persuaded that it is equitable to do so and the Scottish Government has no plans to collect and evaluate information on the use of judicial discretion under section 19A of the Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973.

We should write to the Scottish Government to seek clarification on whether there are plans to extend the consumer duty to include ScotRail and other companies that are in public ownership. In writing to the Scottish Government, the committee may also wish to ask for a further update on the fares review—specifically, on the timeline for completing the review—and to ask what action is being taken to strengthen the commitment to a price promise guarantee.

I adopted a cat 11 years ago—or I should say that a cat adopted me. I should never have fed it tuna and chicken. I must confess to pinching somebody’s cat a long time ago.

I would also like to write to the Scottish Government, seeking its view on the additional evidence that has been provided by the petitioner and SPICe regarding cat microchips and compulsory scanning, if that is acceptable to the committee.