Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Meeting date: Tuesday, October 25, 2022
Official Report 673KB pdf
Contents
Petitions
Rural Scotland (Healthcare Needs) (PE1845)
Rural Healthcare (Recruitment and Training) (PE1890)
Caithness County Council and Caithness NHS Board (Reinstatement) (PE1915)
Women’s Health Services (Caithness and Sutherland) (PE1924)
The third item on our agenda is consideration of four public petitions that have been referred to the committee. PE1845 is a petition for an agency to advocate for the healthcare needs of those living in rural Scotland; PE1890 is a petition to find solutions to recruitment and training challenges for rural healthcare in Scotland; PE1915 is a petition to reinstate Caithness County Council and Caithness NHS Board; and PE1924 is a petition to complete an emergency, in-depth review of women’s health services in Caithness and Sutherland.
The Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee referred the petitions to our committee after doing its own scrutiny of them, so that they can be considered as part of our work on health inequalities. Colleagues will remember that we did a substantial review of, and inquiry into, health inequalities. The common theme that runs through all the petitions is rural healthcare, which we routinely address in our scrutiny of the health service and which came up as a particular issue during our health inequalities work.
We need to have a discussion about what to do with the petitions. Some of the petitioners have already met the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, for example—I am talking about the final petition, on an in-depth review of women’s health services. Members will also be aware that the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee has already done some work on the petitions. In fact, we have a member here—David Torrance—who is also on that committee. He might want to tell us about some of the work that has been done.
Before I open up the discussion, there are some options to consider in relation to what we want to do.
The first option is to invite a selection of rural health boards to give evidence on the issues raised in the petitions and to follow that up with either a letter to, or a session with, the cabinet secretary. Obviously, that option will take the most time, and we need to decide whether we have time for that. We will not be able to do that this side of Christmas, because our scrutiny of the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill will take up all our time right up until Christmas.
The second option is to proceed directly to inviting the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care to give evidence on the issues raised in the petitions, given that a lot of evidence has already been taken and we have already done quite a lot of our own scrutiny of rural healthcare in our equalities work. I should point out that the cabinet secretary has already spoken to the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee about the issues that are raised in the petitions.
The third option is to take evidence via correspondence. We could write to rural health boards and the cabinet secretary to seek evidence on the issues.
The fourth option is to close some or all of the petitions.
It would be really helpful to hear from David Torrance about some of the scrutiny work that the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee has already done. This is not revenge for him passing the petitions on to us. I genuinely want to know what level of scrutiny there was at that committee.
Thank you, convener. I will remember not to pass on any petitions in the future. [Laughter.]
Some of the work that has been done on the petitions that are in front of us has been quite intense. I would therefore recommend the option of writing to rural health boards and bringing in the cabinet secretary for a meeting. I think that that would be a justified approach to take.
PE1915 asks for the reinstatement of Caithness County Council and Caithness NHS Board. I do not think that it is practical for us to do that, and I do not think that it will ever happen anyway. Therefore, we should probably close that petition.
I believe that only two people support that petition, whereas the other petitions have a lot more substantial support. There is also quite a bit of overlap between the themes in the other three petitions.
I support David Torrance’s position on writing to the health boards. The petitioners would probably like to see some action being taken in the period between now and Christmas. I think that having the health boards gather that information through correspondence and then having the cabinet secretary in after Christmas would make the most of the time that we have, as it would mean gathering information while we are doing other things as well as having an in-person session to make sure that we cover the issues.
That is very helpful. Thanks, Gillian.
I feel that PE1890, on finding solutions to recruitment and training challenges for rural healthcare in Scotland, is particularly important. We know, for example, that it is very difficult to recruit GPs, and we know that nursing provision across Scotland is not uniform. We have significantly worse recruitment in rural areas than we have in urban areas. I could go on with more and more examples.
PE1890 should be brought in front of the health boards. There are rural health boards that should be explaining what they are doing right now. We could follow that up with a meeting with the cabinet secretary to find out what is happening centrally. That is a really important area that we have not got a grasp on, unfortunately.
I should mention that we routinely meet health boards, and we can factor into that work quite a lot of the issues from PE1890 and the other petitions. We said that we wanted to do some targeted work on the workforce, particularly in rural areas. That is why we are having the health boards in. We should remember that. I do not want to duplicate work and have an additional session.
You are preaching to the converted, because I am a rural MSP, and everything that has been mentioned is the situation in Aberdeenshire, but it should be remembered that we will be having health boards in anyway, so the petition can feed into the scrutiny that we will be doing in those sessions.
My only concern about that is that there are health boards that do not come in front of us and there are health boards that hide—I do not want to use that word, but I will. We need to ensure that rural health boards come in front of us and that we get all health boards in front of us, so that we can have that discussion directly. In one of our previous sessions, the health boards that appeared were ones that were not under great scrutiny. It is very important that we get everyone here.
I agree with you. It was mentioned during our work programme day that we wanted to hear from all health boards, so we are endeavouring to do that throughout the year.
Are there any other comments on the approach to the petitions? David Torrance suggested that we should close one, and Gillian Mackay suggested that we should write to all the rural health boards and have the cabinet secretary in.
I support Gillian Mackay’s position on writing to the health boards. We would then have some information that we could look at, and we could speak to the cabinet secretary.
I tend to feel that we should keep all the petitions open. I do not think that any of us covers the Caithness area, although I am not 100 per cent sure about that. I would like to speak to somebody about that issue, because I do not know a lot about it. That would give me a chance to refer to somebody who covers the area.
You could, of course, look at the outcomes of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee’s consideration of the petition. As David Torrance has said, you could look at its recommendations with regard to the petition, which will be linked to in our committee papers.
Does anyone else have a comment?
Forgive me—we have not done this before as a committee. As there is obviously an issue relating to local government and the structure of local government, is that an issue for the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee? With the best will in the world, we are not going to be able to make a recommendation on the restructuring of local government in Scotland.
That is just a thought, and I am not sure how the ping-pong between committees works.
The petition was referred to us, so perhaps it is best that we do not have much more ping-ponging than there has already been—
Pardon that expression.
We need to make a decision. I agree with David Torrance that we should close petition PE1915, for the reasons that he set out. We should keep the other three petitions open and use them as a springboard for scrutiny of rural healthcare and addressing all the issues that the petitioners have raised, and we should get the cabinet secretary in to give evidence. I favour Gillian Mackay’s approach of writing to the rural health boards, but we should keep in mind what Sandesh Gulhane said—namely, that we need to hear from all rural health boards. When we ask them to come in front of the committee, it should not always be the same ones but all of them. We cannot compel people to come in front of the committee, but everyone should take the opportunity to talk about what they are doing to address those issues.
I wonder whether we might need to say publicly who we have invited and who has declined our invitation.
I think that that is all on the public record anyway, is it not? We can talk about that in private session.
Are we agreed on Gillian Mackay’s approach?
David Torrance said it first, to be fair to him.
Are we agreed on Gillian’s and David’s approach?
Members indicated agreement.
There you go—co-ownership.
Thank you, colleagues. That concludes the public part of our meeting. We will move into private session.
11:57 Meeting continued in private until 12:18.