Scottish Parliament Health and Community Care Committee Wednesday 12 September 2001 (Morning)
[The Convener opened the meeting at 09:34]
Good morning. Welcome to this meeting of the Health and Community Care Committee. I welcome the Deputy Minister for Health and Community Care.
I will make a short statement to the committee—and I hope on its behalf—before we begin the proceedings.
All of us watched horrified, stunned and with disbelief the events of yesterday. We have no appetite for politics today. We are brought together by the images that we saw yesterday as technology whizzed the news around the world. Most important, we are brought together by our common humanity. The victims of yesterday's tragedy are in our hearts and in our prayers. Our thoughts are with not only the people of America, but with the politicians of America, because they have some difficult decisions and difficult days ahead of them.
I do not believe that there is any appetite on the committee this morning for politics, so I suggest that we carry out the legislative business that we have this morning, which is to debate the motions on subordinate legislation that the minister must move. Following that, I suggest that we close the meeting and put the other business on to our agenda for future meetings. I am aware that there has been some confusion in the media and therefore among the public about whether the meeting would go ahead this morning and I am mindful of the fact that people might have wanted to come to hear what we said about certain petitions. For those reasons, I suggest to committee members that we proceed as I have suggested. Is that agreed?
Members indicated agreement.