Chamber and committees

Sandesh Gulhane will probably want to pick up on some of your points, but it is important to bring in Richard Phillips, who is online, so that he does not feel left out. I have not forgotten about him. Richard, what are your general views on the patient safety commissioner?

Sandesh Gulhane has a question on this theme.

That is a good point. Someone has only just been appointed to the women’s health post, so the committee would want her to come before us anyway. Keeping the petition open is therefore an option, with a view to seeing what comes back from the best start north review and other work.

Do members wish to raise any other points?

The final item on our agenda is consideration of two negative instruments. The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee considered both instruments at its meeting on 7 February 2023 and made no recommendation in relation to either instrument.?

The first is the National Assistance (Assessment of Resources) Amendment (Scotland) Regulations 2023. The regulations reflect a routine annual rise in rates as regards residential care charges, increasing the value of savings credit disregard by 5.4 per cent, in line with average earnings. They also increase the lower capital limit from £18,500 to £20,250 and the upper capital limit from £29,750 to £32,750, in line with the consumer price index forecast of 10.1 per cent. The regulations also disregard payments from the Windrush compensation scheme from financial assessments for individuals living in residential care.

No motion to annul has been lodged. As members have no comments, I propose that the committee make no recommendation in relation to this negative instrument. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Our next two meetings, at which we will consider our draft stage 1 report on the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill, will be held entirely in private.

That concludes the public part of the meeting.

Welcome back. We continue our scrutiny of the Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill by taking evidence from the Patient Safety Commissioner for England. I welcome Dr Henrietta Hughes, the Patient Safety Commissioner for England, and Dr Gary Duncan, the chief of staff to the commissioner. Thank you for coming at relatively short notice, because we were not originally going to take evidence from you. However, following discussion with patient groups, we felt that it might be important to hear how things have been going in England in the first 100 days of your role. I will hand over to my colleague Tess White to start the questions.

Thank you—that is very helpful. I am glad that I asked you to continue.

I want to pick up on what you have said about investigations and individual voices. Do you support the rationale of the approach not being about taking on individual cases but about cases prompting wider investigations?

I am going to stop you there, because I am very conscious of time, and members want to ask questions. I apologise for that.

Thank you. As there are no further questions, I thank our five witnesses for their time this morning. I suspend the meeting for a 10-minute break.