Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)

Meeting date: Thursday, December 16, 2021

Official Report 1106KB pdf

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Edington Hospital

The next item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S6M-01177, in the name of Craig Hoy, on Edington hospital.

Motion debated,

That the Parliament notes that the decision has been taken to close six inpatient beds at Edington Hospital, North Berwick, which is NHS Lothian’s last cottage hospital, and relocate them from 13 September to the East Lothian Community Hospital on a temporary basis due to workforce pressures; understands that this move has taken place without any community consultation and has raised concerns about the long-term future of the Edington in the community; notes that an online petition, Save the Edington Hospital, has already received over 5,000 signatures; believes that this acts as a demonstration of the level of concern about the move; recognises the hospital's long history in North Berwick and that the construction of it was made possible by a bequest from Miss Elizabeth Edington of Ethandune, Dirleton Court, North Berwick; notes that building work commenced in 1912 and that the hospital was officially opened in 1913; believes that it has been providing good patient care for the population of East Lothian for almost 111 years and that it has been a well-valued and supported service in the town, with its closure leaving many upset and feeling disadvantaged; further believes that the service provided by the Edington Hospital is important, and notes the view that services for communities in East Lothian must be retained, in light of the growing population in the area.

13:07  

Local health services are a vital part of local communities. That is why it is an honour to open this debate. The Edington hospital is at the heart of North Berwick, one of the communities that I am proud to represent. However, the cottage hospital’s in-patient beds and its minor injuries clinic are currently closed.

From the outset, I stress that I understand the pressures that our national health service is under. In fairness, however, we need to understand that those pressures are not new and that not all of them are Covid related. Healthcare staff across NHS Lothian and the East Lothian health and social care partnership are dedicated, but they are overstretched. They want to do the right thing by patients, and I thank them for everything that they do.

Across Scotland, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to local healthcare provision. The Edington hospital is a well-used and well-loved service at the heart of our community. For more than 100 years it has served the people of North Berwick and East Lothian. The hospital, which was constructed thanks to a bequest by Miss Elizabeth Edington, is operated by NHS Lothian and is supported by the Friends of the Edington Hospital. Prior to Covid and the hospital’s closure, it had nine beds and provided medical care for a range of chronic conditions, mobility problems, respite and end-of-life care. The hospital was staffed by 10 nursing staff, eight clinical support staff and four domestic staff.

Fundamentally, the voice of patients must be heard, even during a pandemic. On 1 September this year, with no local consultation, NHS Lothian announced the closure of the Edington, due to staffing constraints at other facilities. Only last week, it was announced that those services will stay closed for at least another month, with every possibility of its closure being extended further.

Six in-patient beds, and the staff who supported them, have been temporarily relocated from the Edington to the East Lothian community hospital in Haddington. NHS Lothian says that that has provided additional nursing capacity and allowed it to keep 14 beds open at the community hospital in Haddington, but that does not tell the whole story. Writing in The Scotsman, a local community practice general practitioner, Claire Doldon, said that the Edington

“was a mainstay of local patient care”.

She added that it

“allowed us to manage patients close to home, without ... admission to an already stretched hospital sector.”

After the hospital closed, I took the decision to undertake a community survey to gauge the views of local residents. I secured the views of 1,929 people, 77 per cent of whom said that they had personal experience with the hospital. Of those who were surveyed, 97 per cent were opposed to the closure. The community voice is clear: they want the hospital services reopened. I hope that the cabinet secretary will, today, add the Government’s voice to that call.

The value of the Edington hospital cannot be measured, by national health service managers or by ministers, on spreadsheets.

I am grateful to Craig Hoy for giving way, and for bringing this important debate to the chamber. Do you agree with me that the nuance of the benefits of the Edington hospital does not seem to be reflected in any NHS assessments of its value, which are based simply on the number of beds?

Precisely—that is exactly why so many local residents have been in touch with members for South Scotland and for East Lothian in respect of the matter. The hospital provides much-needed high-quality levels of care.

Jane from North Berwick told me:

“My Mother spent her final days there. She was so well looked after and as a former nurse, was happy to be there unlike her stays at the Royal Infirmary and the Western General.”

Local resident Lynda said:

“I have used the Edington since when my son was small. The Edington looks after the community from scrapes and scratches through to respite & end of life care. It is our beating heart.”

East Lothian is the second fastest-growing area in Scotland, and Midlothian and West Lothian are growing fast, too, yet health services across the Lothians have not kept pace. Many of the pressures were there before Covid. Had the Scottish National Party invested at the same level as the United Kingdom Government funding that was given to Scotland during Nicola Sturgeon’s time as Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing, an additional £1 billion a year would be being spent in our NHS.

Had the Government built sufficient workforce capacity when the sun was shining, the system would not have hit breaking point when the Covid storm hit. There are currently 1,011 vacancies in nursing and midwifery in NHS Lothian alone, and 5,761 across Scotland as a whole. When the cabinet secretary speaks, it would be good if he could say how the Government intends to plug that gap.

Local GPs are also concerned about the closure of the hospital and the manner in which it was closed. Dr Andrew Smith is a GP in Gullane, with 25 years’ experience of admitting patients to, and looking after patients in, the Edington. He says:

“I was not informed directly of the decision—I contacted the Director and received a second-hand apology.”

The community council, the local area partnership and Friends of the Edington Hospital say that they have been left in the dark. Responses to their freedom of information requests are sketchy, redacted or still outstanding. They say that hard data is proving hard to find.

Today, my principal ask of the cabinet secretary is that he encourages NHS Lothian to consult fully and to engage better with our communities. I also ask him to help to ensure that data about bed use, the minor injuries clinic numbers and the knock-on effects on other services are put in the public domain as quickly as possible. Lastly, will he bring forward the date on which he plans to meet with local campaigners so that he can hear at first hand their urgent concerns?

The on-going closure of the minor injuries clinic is also adding to the pressure on the accident and emergency department at the Royal infirmary. The expectation that those who are injured should be able to make their own way to Edinburgh to receive treatment is unreasonable for many. Furthermore, we were told that moving nurses to a hospital where there were significant pressures would reduce those workforce pressures, but at least one experienced nurse from the Edington has chosen to leave the NHS rather than move hospitals.

The decision to close respite and palliative care has put pressure on other facilities in East Lothian, including hospices. In her Scotsman piece, Dr Doldon said that closing the hospital had been “counterproductive”. She also said that there had been a

“knock-on effect on central inpatient ... services, the loss of a more personalised local service and an associated high staff turnover.”

Whether it is on staffing levels, pressure on the care sector, respite services or palliative care, the closure of the Edington hospital is likely to have had a negative impact. All the while, beds that could be put to good use lie empty and a minor injuries clinic is closed.

There is cross-community and cross-party support for the rapid reopening of the Edington hospital, so I hope that ministers will listen and agree to work with me and parliamentary colleagues, meet urgently with local campaigners and work to tackle the underlying issues in our NHS so that the Edington is reopened and its future is assured.

I remind members that the only “you” in the chamber is the Presiding Officer and that comments should come through the chair.

13:15  

I thank Craig Hoy for securing the debate. Four minutes is not enough time to talk about the Edington hospital, but I will try to cover as many points as I can.

First, I thank all the NHS and care staff in East Lothian and across the country for all their efforts now and in the past 21 months. It has been an incredibly difficult time.

The Edington hospital in North Berwick is an integral part of the psyche of North Berwick and has been a consistent feature in the lifetime of everyone in the town. As Craig Hoy said, there will be few people in the town who have not used the facility, be that the minor injuries clinic, step-up or step-down care, or end-of-life care for loved ones.

The Friends of the Edington group, led by Murray Duncanson, has been a fantastic support for the hospital over a number of years. When the announcement about the temporary closure of the hospital was made, it came as a surprise and a shock to us all. At the time, as the constituency MSP, I pulled together a steering group, which consisted of myself, Craig Hoy MSP, Martin Whitfield MSP, all the local councillors, the Friends of the Edington, North Berwick community council, North Berwick Coastal Health and Wellbeing Association, local GPs and the local area partnership. That cross-party and cross-agency group has worked really well and has met fortnightly to discuss options to push for the hospital to be reopened as soon as it is clinically safe to do so.

We currently have the unprecedented pressures of the new omicron variant, in what is the most challenging moment that we have faced in the pandemic. I thank everyone who was involved in quickly opening the drop-in vaccine centre at the Corn Exchange in Haddington. The centre, which opened today, was incredibly well put together. There are already queues at the centre.

We all acknowledge the reasoning behind the temporary closure. The pressures on our NHS are unprecedented. In Edinburgh, the Royal infirmary and Western general hospitals are under incredible pressure, and that has been passed down the line to East Lothian community hospital in Haddington. Only this week, East Lothian Council communicated its issues around social care recruitment and pressures on delivering care packages. The push for mass vaccination has resulted in a demand for staff. The pool of staff for the NHS, care work and mass vaccination is being stretched, and it is incredibly difficult to balance those issues. In addition, as Mr Hoy and Mr Whitfield will be aware, we were told last week that delayed discharge cases in NHS Lothian were around 400, with the vast majority in Edinburgh.

The main reason given for the closure of the Edington hospital was the overall staffing pressures in the NHS Lothian hospital estate. We were told that more beds would be available to residents in East Lothian if they were provided at East Lothian community hospital rather than the Edington. I think that it was mentioned that there were 14 at the community hospital, as against nine at the Edington. There is a nuanced debate, which has been mentioned by both my colleagues, regarding the other issues that are impacting on the situation, including the pressures on hospices. There are empty care beds in East Lothian that could be used. More detailed consideration will be needed.

We were also told about recruitment issues at the community hospital in Haddington, which leads me to an ask of the cabinet secretary. The Friends of the Edington and local MSPs have asked for figures on staffing and staff shortages and for the criteria for reopening the hospital in relation to the staff establishment. We have all been told that that information is available only through a freedom of information request. That information needs to be transparent and openly shared in the steering group. That is fundamental—it is one of the key asks that we have had from the steering group, which met only last night.

The steering group also asked for information on the impact of the closure of the minor injuries clinic and whether that has presented additional pressures on A and E facilities in Edinburgh. Again, we were told that we would need to submit an FOI request. We heard from Claire Doldon, who has mentioned the pressures on local GPs. That, too, needs to be discussed.

The Edington hospital was discussed at a recent meeting of MSPs and MPs. We managed to secure monthly instead of quarterly reviews as well as an assurance that NHS Lothian chief executive Calum Campbell would meet the steering group in the new year to explain the clinical reasoning for the temporary closure and answer any questions.

I conclude with another ask of the cabinet secretary. Can he reassure the people of North Berwick that there are no plans to close the Edington on a permanent basis? The Edington has provided care for many in North Berwick and East Lothian over many years. I hope that it reopens as soon as that is clinically safe.

13:19  

I am in the unique position of agreeing with all the statements that have already been made across the chamber. That speaks not just to the heart of how the community feels about the Edington hospital crisis, but to a way of resolving it.

Having opened in 1913, the Edington hospital has a place in the heart of every living person in North Berwick. It became part of the NHS in 1948 and was described as a cottage hospital, which was a smaller hospital where people who were in crisis, had a panic or were sent by their GP, could attend to get any service, from getting a splinter out of their finger, all the way through to dealing with a broken leg.

Because of that versatility, the value of the Edington hospital has wormed its way into the heart of the community. That love is shown by the thousands who have signed the petition, the hundreds who turned up on a cold Sunday to make a heart in the park for their Edington, and those people who will gather later on, Covid permitting, to celebrate with Christmas carols around the Edington.

The community does not just love the Edington hospital; it needs it. The hospital serves myriad purposes from, as we have heard, the nine beds—although, when the location was moved, that number reduced to six—to the minor injuries unit. Both facilities were provided by the same staff and they allowed people to avoid taking a train or buses to the nearest hospital that could deal with them, or standing outside their pharmacy to try and get help there. The Edington was a location that people could trust. When they were told that the location needed to go elsewhere, they took that advice with confidence. The challenge that has occurred over the closure, due to Covid, is that the way in which it was announced and how it has been handled has flown in the face of the community’s experience of its NHS through the Edington hospital.

Community members have had to fight to get answers to their questions and to get people to come and explain the closure to them; even at this time of crisis, that is unacceptable. Through that hospital, people are making choices about the way that they face the Covid disaster that looms in front of us, and they need to have confidence in their NHS. For them, their NHS is, in part, a cottage hospital, where they take the smallest or biggest of complaints to people who work at the local hospital and live in the community.

With all respect, I do not think that any of the community’s asks has been unreasonable. There is an economic model that says that, at a time of crisis, we bring all our resources together, but there is another model that says that, if that hospital had been supported, so much pressure would have been taken off the larger hospital units in the other areas that, perhaps, the way through this Covid crisis could have been different.

I know that members have heard about the asks today, including agreeing to meet the steering group and responding to the freedom of information request. That is crucial, because the data belongs to the people who are asking for it. In order to understand the decisions that are being made, they need to see the data and have it explained. I welcome the NHS Lothian chief executive’s agreement to meet the steering group and the people who have petitioned on the matter, and I hope that that will happen as soon as possible. That is an opportunity to say sorry to a community for the way in which something happened and to start making it better. However, we need to fill those 1,000 vacancies across NHS Lothian.

13:24  

I believe that local health services are a vital part of local communities. The Edington hospital, which opened in 1913, has served the people of North Berwick and East Lothian successfully since then—up until now. Prior to Covid and its closure, the hospital had nine beds and provided medical care for a range of chronic conditions and mobility problems as well as respite and end-of-life care.

On 9 November, I wrote to Maree Todd on the matter. I had raised the closure of the Edington hospital with her at the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, having visited North Berwick to attend the hands around the Edington rally. In my letter, I voiced concerns about fears that the hospital, which provides palliative care to local residents, was going to be shut down for good and asked whether she would contact NHS Lothian and reverse the closure of the in-patient palliative beds at Edington Hospital.

The minister replied that East Lothian health and social care partnership and the integration joint board were agreeing criteria for the safe reopening of Edington hospital and ensuring that staff were engaged and informed and that there was also full engagement and consultation with local communities, community groups, staff and elected members. She also said that the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care would be meeting with the community hospital campaign group soon to discuss its concerns and future plans for the hospital. As my colleague Craig Hoy said, it is vital for the meeting between Humza Yousaf and the community hospital campaign group to take place as soon as possible.

I am sad to say that NHS Lothian’s gold command group met last week to review the decision to temporarily move staff from the Edington to East Lothian community hospital in Haddington, and the decision was taken to keep North Berwick’s Edington hospital closed. Ultimately that decision centres on workforce pressures. There are simply not enough staff. I have been calling for resilient and robust workforce planning—indeed, not just a plan but real action—to address the long-term issues with our workforce. These issues have long pre-dated Covid and, in fact, can be attributed directly to decisions taken by the Scottish National Party Government from as far back as 2007, when Nicola Sturgeon as health secretary cut the number of nurse training places.

As we have heard in the chamber, there is cross-community and cross-party support for the Edington’s rapid reopening. If the Government cared about community hospitals as much as the rest of us, it would have done something about this. There was no consultation—there was nothing. After everything we have faced over the past 18 months, it should be clear that, if we had more services in communities, we could—and should—manage things better. To decide to close a community service now makes no sense, because we need more services in the heart of our communities.

13:27  

I congratulate Craig Hoy on securing the debate and all the speakers so far on the content of their speeches.

I was very pleased to join members of the Edington hospital campaign in North Berwick to hear at first hand how much they love and value their local hospital. As we have heard, the Edington is more than 100 years old, and it has been serving the community of North Berwick and its many visitors, of which I have been one, year after year. The community hospital offers a range of services from palliative care to out-of-hours services, but, for me, the critical thing is that it is supported by GPs, allied health professionals and nurses, and it provides much valued and safe local healthcare. I make no secret of the fact that I am a complete fan of local services—and especially so when the service itself is well run and sustainable, as the Edington is.

Let us review what happened. We are all alive to the fact that there is a pandemic, but the decision to transfer services away from the Edington was apparently based on staff shortages. Let me be perfectly clear: these were staff shortages elsewhere in NHS Lothian, not at the Edington. NHS Lothian took the decision on 25 August; it consulted the Scottish Government the same day; and a press release was sent out on 1 September, secure in the knowledge that agreement had been reached with the Scottish Government. As a result, six beds were transferred away from the Edington.

The changes were to be temporary, with a review promised after three months. I wrote to the health board and the cabinet secretary and asked: who was doing the review? Would the local community be involved in the way that they were not the first time round? What were the review’s criteria?

I am still to receive a response from the health board or the cabinet secretary, but I had a response from the health and social care partnership. However, there was nothing in it about the current review. It is genuinely appalling that there is so little transparency and that local people and local clinicians were not consulted. That cannot happen again. Information must be shared with the local community and local clinicians.

The health and social care partnership’s response was interesting, because it tells me that there is a work programme to review the long-term model and provision in relation to two care homes and the Belhaven hospital and Edington hospital sites. My goodness me, a change board has even been set up to do that. All I can say to local people in that area is that I have seen some of this before in my area. They need to engage now, because every instinct of the NHS board will be to centralise services and there is a danger that more services will be lost.

The changes that have been made have already had an impact, which others have described. Let me take the minor injuries unit as an example. Many people have ended up going to the front door of A and E needlessly when they could have been seen locally, which contributes to the crisis in our A and Es and hospitals. I will not go on.

I have three asks of the cabinet secretary. First, meet the campaign group, local people and clinicians to understand how much they value the provision. Secondly, ensure that the health board and the health and social care partnership are transparent and share data without the need for game playing and freedom of information requests. Thirdly, please give a long-term commitment to the hospital so that services that are appropriately delivered locally are not centralised and remain in North Berwick.

13:32  

I commend my colleague Martin Whitfield for the work that he has done on the issue and for standing so strongly beside the North Berwick community.

A petition that gains thousands of signatures from local residents who care deeply about their hospital and their community is a call for health boards and the Government to listen. Clearly, that call has not been listened to and the views of the public have been ignored in relation to the continued closure of the community ward at Edington hospital.

The pandemic has restricted how we live our lives, but decision makers are still able to do consultations using virtual meetings and other platforms. The fact that the decision has been made without any real consultation with the public, as we have heard, should be a concern to us all, and I hope that the cabinet secretary recognises that it simply should not have happened.

Health services are at their best when they are local—when people are familiar with the setting and environment and have a connection to it. Closing a hospital that has provided more than 100 years of good care and service to its local community will undoubtedly have adverse impacts on the community that it has served for so long.

In the aftermath of a pandemic, people will, and the Scottish Government and health boards should, recognise the importance of local community care. Its importance is heightened that bit more when the building in which the care is provided has been a staple of the community for so long, with generations brought up knowing the hospital and linking many personal memories to it. We should be doing all that we can to protect, not close, hospitals such as Edington.

We all understand the severe pressures that the NHS is under, and we know that staffing is an issue in some areas—although not at Edington hospital, as we have heard. It is incumbent on the Scottish Government to provide the resources to create new posts and address staff shortages wherever they are, and it is important that people know that their local services are valued.

The NHS has carried us through the pandemic; it is the very best of our country and our proudest possession, but the underfunding and undervaluing of health services by Government has led us to a situation where staff in community care facilities are being moved to centralised health hubs, which should not be the case.

Let me be clear: the Scottish Government’s underfunding and undervaluing of the health service long predates the pandemic. Lessons need to be learned and should have been learned long before now.

The people of North Berwick understandably feel as though a big part of the community has been torn away from them. They are understandably unhappy at the lack of consultation and understandably concerned about the future of their local hospital. They have not been communicated with and I hope that the cabinet secretary can give them some reassurance that the Scottish Government is doing all that it can to secure the hospital’s future and communicate with the public.

I reiterate a point that I have made throughout the debate: health services are best when they are delivered locally, are easily accessible and serve local communities. The fact that the local hospital that we are debating has such a history and connection to the people whom it serves is an added benefit that should be preserved for as long as possible. The people of North Berwick deserve first-class local services on their doorstep. They deserve to be part of the consultation and to be listened to.

I thank Craig Hoy for bringing the debate to the Parliament.

13:36  

After being slightly mean to Craig Hoy yesterday, I will attempt some redemption by thanking him—

I will buy the cabinet secretary a box of chocolates.

That is the way to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care’s heart.

I thank Craig Hoy for securing the debate. It is important. If we were voting on his motion, I would vote for it. I see nothing in it that causes me any difficulty. He spoke well, as did all members who spoke—I did not necessarily agree with every word that was said, but I will come to that. I will pick up on the core themes of each of the speeches.

Martin Whitfield gave an excellent speech. He got to the heart of why hospitals, particularly community hospitals, are so important to our communities. They are there from birth to death and everything that goes in between.

Some of life’s most difficult moments have taken place when we have been surrounded by doctors, nurses and other hospital workers, who have shown great compassion and care. In such a tight-knit community as North Berwick, Edington hospital has no doubt been a central feature in many of those moments. Of course, hospital staff also celebrate with us in joy. There are many moments in my life that I will not forget, the top of those being when my daughter was born and I got to hold her for the first time, supported by the doctors, nurses and other theatre staff who were there.

Every member recognises the importance of Edington hospital being at the heart of the local community. I reiterate that I understand that, and I know that NHS Lothian understands it, too.

I will touch on and reiterate a few points that other members raised and will give some assurance if I can. There have been three key themes—if I have missed anything out, members are more than welcome to intervene on me—on which members asked for assurance: consultation, transparency and the hospital’s long-term future.

On consultation, I think that everybody recognises that, particularly during the pandemic, we cannot expect health boards to do the full level of consultation that they previously did. [Interruption.] I will address the point that Craig Hoy makes from a sedentary position shortly.

I emphasise that the health board could not do the full eight to 12-week consultation in the midst of a pandemic, given the rise in cases of different variants—at the moment, the omicron variant. However, members suggested that some consultation could have been done. That is a fair request and a fair issue for the health board to reflect on. Nobody in the community would have expected an extended consultation, but they would have expected some discussion to be had with them. Equally, having met regularly with the chief executive and chair of NHS Lothian, I know just how rapidly they have had to make some extremely difficult decisions. However, the points on consultation are well made and I will not dispute them.

I will talk about what is happening at present before I look forward. When I met Paul McLennan a number of months ago, he raised with me the issue of transparency and data in relation to Edington hospital, and he spoke well again today. It is not unreasonable for the local community and its representatives to ask for transparency in the decision-making process. It is not always as clear as having metrics. We can use metrics and spreadsheets, and we can analyse the numbers, but, as many members have said, we also have to take into account the experiences of the local community. Qualitative experiences can be as important as our quantitative data analysis.

Many members have requested that NHS Lothian release such data, as opposed to freedom of information requests having to be made. I will certainly take up that issue with NHS Lothian. I would like to know the reasons why it is taking its approach, to see whether they are reasonable. If they are not, I will certainly ask NHS Lothian to engage in a fully transparent process, because the last thing that we need is for people to mistrust NHS Lothian and to question its intentions in relation to what it is doing. During the pandemic, NHS Lothian has done what it has done for very good and important reasons.

Paul McLennan, Craig Hoy, Jackie Baillie and others talked about the long-term future. I have said clearly in written communication that there are no plans to permanently close Edington hospital, and I reiterate that today. I hope that members will understand that at this moment, in the midst of the pandemic, it might be difficult to say which services will be available in the long term.

I just want to ensure that the cabinet secretary does not complete his remarks without addressing one ask that was made. He is due to meet the campaigners at the end of January, which will be after the next review period.

I understand that the cabinet secretary recently visited the community hospital in East Lothian but that he did not inform me, Mr Whitfield or Mr McLennan, whose nose was, I think, slightly put out of joint. The next time he visits, the kettle will be on, the chocolates will be out and we will be very happy to meet him.

Will the cabinet secretary accept the campaign group’s core ask, which is to meet its members before the next review, so that he can be fully appraised of their concerns?

I am afraid that my immediate priority, given the current pressures that I am under, is dealing not only with the immediate concerns relating to the omicron variant but with the booster campaign, on which the First Minister took a number of questions today. The member’s party leader highlighted just how important the booster campaign is. Therefore, I will stick to the meeting that is in the diary early in the new year. Notwithstanding the importance of the issue that he has raised—I hope that I have reassured him and the community on its importance—I hope that he will understand that I have some immediate pressures and that I need to fulfil my duties in that regard.

If Craig Hoy, other regional members and, indeed, the constituency member were not informed of my visit to East Lothian, I apologise for and regret that.

As I said, I plan to meet North Berwick community council, and my intention is that local members will be at that meeting, too. I hope that, at that point, we will have a clearer picture of where we are. Given the difficulties that we are facing, particularly with omicron, I am not necessarily envisaging much change, but let us allow the review to do the job that it needs to do. I understand the importance of the issue to the local community, and I look forward to meeting the campaigners in the new year.

13:44 Meeting suspended.  

14:30 On resuming—