Chamber and committees

Your point about ScotGEM is timely. The first cohort has just graduated, so now is a good time to follow that up and consider what we might do in that regard.

Are there any other comments on the petition, or is everyone more or less in agreement with the points that have been made? Do we agree that we should again bundle the petition into a wider piece of work about rural healthcare, given that all the issues will come up?

Let us take the decision. I ask for a show of hands of members who are in favour of closing the petition but with a view to doing a wider inquiry.

I see that we agree unanimously to do that.

I totally agree.

Okay. Paul, do you want to come in, or are we ready to move on?

We agree that we will defer our decision on the petition until we have found out more about on-going work. We will therefore keep PE1924 open.

Gillian Mackay has questions on medicines and medical devices.

Panel members, please indicate to me if you want to come in.

I will take Dr Williams.

I thank Dr Gary Duncan and Dr Henrietta Hughes for their time this morning.

I will not pause before we move on to the next item on our agenda. Our guests can leave or stay—it is up to them—but I am going to move straight on.

The protocol is that the committee must decide either to take forward the petition, which means looking at an agency, or to close the petition and then make a decision about further scrutiny of the more general issue of rural healthcare that has been raised. We could absolutely do that—we can discuss that when we discuss our work programme.

I believe that NHS Dumfries and Galloway is one of the health boards that will come to the committee in due course as part of our general scrutiny of health boards. Therefore, a lot of the issues that Emma Harper has just raised—the issues that that health board area is facing and the decisions that have been made there—can be put directly to that health board.

With regard to petition protocols, we either take further evidence on the idea of an agency or close the petition. That would not preclude the petitioners from coming back with a new petition based on something that we find out as a result of any further work and scrutiny that we might do as part of an inquiry or whatever.

The final questions come from Paul Sweeney.

I want to press you on the substance of the petition, which makes a targeted call for an agency. We need to decide whether to take evidence on the idea of having an agency. Are you talking about taking evidence on the wider aspects that surround the call for an agency?