Chamber and committees

Yes.

I will follow on from Murdo Fraser’s question about what could be in the bill. Dr MacPherson’s response leads me back to the issue of those who lack legal capacity, how they are currently treated in law and whether they should be liable for interest and charges on loan payments in such circumstances. Is that something that the bill could deal with?

Before I get into lender responsibility, I will hand over to you, convener.

Many people who find themselves in that situation hunker down and do not look for advice. Is there room in the bill to address that, Katie McLachlan?

David Menzies, I will throw something else into the mix as we try to complicate this as much as we can.

One of the things that concern me about some of the responses that we have had is that we seem to be almost driven to put something in legislation by the fact that the advice sector is stretched. Where is the balance to be struck? I think that we all agree that the best scenario is earlier intervention that prevents people from getting to that position. However, we are discussing the matter as part of a bill, so that is obviously not the case. What is your opinion on how we deal with that in the bill? Should we deal with it in the bill?

Thank you, convener. As recorded in the register of members’ interests, I am a director of a small business consultancy, which, from time to time, I do a little bit of work for outside parliamentary time.

Good morning. A couple of things have popped out from Maggie Chapman and Colin Smyth’s discussions with the witnesses. The process that leads to debt recovery tends to be rather protracted and results in what you might call an increasing level of urgency in the interaction between creditor and debtor, which, in and of itself, is stressful—perhaps for both parties but certainly for the person in debt.

There is the idea of a gatekeeper and of how we assess those who are in debt. Should the bill include provisions on how debtors might receive financial advice and at what stage they might receive that? Should we be better at ensuring that debtors understand what advice is available to them? I put that to Barry Mochan.

I will go back to something that you said, Mr Ferris, about encouraging people from overseas to come and work here. You said that we had brought in 50 Polish dentists. I have a moral issue with that in that we are sucking talent from everywhere else and, while we are doing that, we are allowing our own talent to leave or to work privately and not in NHS dentistry. Do you see what I am getting at? Should we not focus more on how we retain our own talent within NHS dentistry?

Minister, it does not matter how many dentists are in training. If they do not want to go into NHS dentistry, it will make no difference whatsoever. Over and above that, we have heard that a lot of dentists’ staff are moving to private practice, purely for financial reasons because private practice can pay more.

We have to understand what the problem is before we can fix it. My concern is that we are hearing one side of the argument, and then what we hear from you differs so much from that that I am not sure what the reality is, although I am not sure what my colleagues think.

We have heard that the NHS is under huge pressure across the board, and dentistry seems to be at the worst end of that. It is to the point where someone said that it is in danger of falling over. We have to accept what the reality is. You talk about the idea that we need more dentists, but what we need is more NHS dentists. How do we get more NHS dentists to practice?

I have a final question. We have heard not only that there can be a long delay in getting payment for treatments that have been done but that some treatments on the NHS actually cost the dentist money to deliver. Are you looking at that issue?