Chamber and committees

To be fair, they were talking about the amount of inspections, rather than any kind of outcomes. They were hoping that the national care service would not be adding another layer of inspection on top of what they already have to do in that regard.

During the pandemic, freedom of information was one of the areas in which there were emergency powers because of the deployment of staff to other areas. I do not want to ask you to speculate, because you say that you do not know what the rationale is, but is there maybe something that relates to that?

I want to bring the discussion back to the Government’s other drives and digital strategy with regard to health. I think that we have got into the situation in our discussion today of saying that the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill is what will introduce a single interface that links records but, in fact, an awful lot more is going on in Government on that. It is not the national care service that has prompted that work; the Government has been working on it for several years and it comes up time and again in the committee, in relation not just to the national care service but to every aspect of health and care.

A few of you have been in front of us before talking about that point in general. Can we put it into that context? There is a wider strategy to make that interface work for all health and social care systems, not just as part of the bill.

After we have heard from Scott Heald, we will go to Kenneth Meechan.

Emma, do you want to come back in?

We should always be bringing it back to the bill.

We need to move on to talk about Anne’s law and advocacy.

We will have a discussion in private after our public session ends. Is this something that you want to raise—

We will make sure that we raise that point with the minister and get clarity in relation to your concerns and questions.

We now have questions on monitoring and evaluation. Emma Harper and Evelyn Tweed want to come in on that topic. If anybody else wants to pick up on any of the aspects that we have mentioned before we round off this panel session, please let me know.