I thank the committee for this opportunity to respond to the Auditor General for Scotland’s report on the 2017-18 audit of NHS Tayside. I also thank the convener for agreeing that our finance director and workforce director could attend to assist the chief executive and me in assuring the committee about the progress that we are making to stabilise our financial position and develop the capability and capacity to deliver the service changes that are required in NHS Tayside to improve our performance and achieve financial sustainability in the longer term.
Hazel Craik from the central legal office has been the principal adviser to the board on the handling of the departure of Lesley McLay, the former chief executive. I realise that her departure has been a matter of concern for the committee, and my colleagues and I will do our utmost today to respond to those concerns as fully as possible.
I hope that the Auditor General’s report, the report that the committee received from the assurance and advisory group and the written submission that NHS Tayside sent in last week will give the committee a good insight not only into the 2017-18 audit, but into the work of the interim leadership team since we took over in 2018.
I will summarise what we believe to be the situation in Tayside as we speak. Before I do that, it is right to record that the board fully accepts the audit report as an accurate description of the 2017-18 financial position and the performance that was delivered by NHS Tayside up to March 2018. I also say up front that, although we note that the Auditor General has acknowledged that the agreement that NHS Tayside reached with the former chief executive was reasonable, we accept that mistakes were made. I apologise for those errors. I confirm that the remuneration committee has met and endorsed the decision to change the former chief executive’s notice period, and that the overpayment of funds to the NHS Scotland pension scheme has been returned to NHS Tayside.
The biggest challenge that was faced by our interim leadership team was not handling the departure of the former chief executive, but bringing financial stability to NHS Tayside and developing the plans to deliver the service changes that are required to bring NHS Tayside into financial balance, while improving performance. I am sure that we will touch on all those issues as we go through the papers this morning.
The committee will note from the papers that we believe that NHS Tayside’s financial position has stabilised and that the challenge that we now face is to deliver the changes that are required to improve that position. As well as improving access to our services, we need to improve our mental health services in particular, integrate health and social care at a bit more pace and develop the workforce that is required to support that. However, those are challenges that we share with all Scotland’s boards.
As the Auditor General and the assurance and advisory group have acknowledged, so far, the interim leadership team has done a lot of work to understand the provision and costs of services in Tayside, and we are now turning that work into action plans for change. That is our priority. At its February meeting, the board will review the progress that the leadership team has made towards delivering our plans for not only next year but the next three years. The level of change that we are talking about will not happen overnight. There is a long history of problems at NHS Tayside—it goes back six years—so I think that three years is realistic when it comes to our ambition to be in financial balance and to improve our performance.
I put on record my appreciation for all the hard work and commitment that the interim chief executive, Malcolm Wright, and the rest of the interim leadership team have put into taking NHS Tayside forward. I particularly thank all the staff across NHS Tayside, who have worked so hard over the past nine months to turn things around. I make special mention of the clinicians, who have played a crucial role by getting involved in redesigning our services. It would be remiss of me not to mention our colleagues in NHS Grampian and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, who have supported me, Malcolm Wright, Annie Ingram and Alan Gray as we have had responsibilities across two boards. Without their support, we could not have delivered on that.