Health Committee, 13 Jan 2004

Meeting date: Tuesday, January 13, 2004

Official Report 203KB pdf

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Budget Process

Item 3 on the agenda is consideration of a paper on the budget process by our adviser Andrew Walker. Last week—and, indeed, during the budget process itself—we discussed how we want to scrutinise the budget in future. Andrew has kindly laid out in a more comprehensive way how some of our proposals might work. Do members have any comments on the paper? If members have no comments, I take that to mean that everyone is happy with it.

I should point out that the Executive has responded to the committee's suggestion that it would be worth while discussing collation of NHS boards' five-year spending plans from their local health plans. That should ensure that next year we do not find ourselves in the same position as we have found ourselves over the past four years. After all, we have kept on asking the same questions without necessarily getting the answers that allow us to carry out budget scrutiny.

The Executive is happy to agree to our suggestion. It has also proposed that officials from the Health Department meet the committee's adviser to discuss the information that the committee would find helpful and how best to present it usefully. Such discussions would focus on the decisions about the budget that we reached in October.

The committee has to approve our adviser Andrew Walker's attendance at such meetings with the Executive as might be necessary. Do members agree to that?

Members indicated agreement.

Do any committee members wish to attend those meetings with the adviser in a small group or are you happy for him to attend by himself?

It might be best if the adviser attends one or two meetings to sort out the ground work and then reports back to the committee. At that point, we could decide whether a reporter need be present.

Would it be more sensible for the convener and the deputy convener to thrash out the matter with officials? They could then come back to the committee when they have firm proposals with which they are happy.

That is a good idea.

Thank you for that helpful suggestion, Mike.

I thought that you would like it.

So are you suggesting that the convener, the deputy convener and the adviser meet the Executive? When we are happy with the arrangements, we can withdraw and leave the adviser to continue the discussions and he can then report back to the committee.

Yes.

Are members agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Members will recall that the minister attended last week's meeting. In that light, the committee is also asked to consider the data that it would like to have—by which I mean specifically the data that we did not have in order to scrutinise the budget properly this time around. I ask members who have any suggestions to send the clerk an e-mail, which can then be considered as part of the discussions involving the adviser, the convener and the deputy convener. The clerk will e-mail members asking for that information and giving a date by which suggestions should be submitted.

Finally, our adviser has offered to give us a presentation on resource allocation in the NHS. Would members find that helpful?

Members indicated agreement.

The presentation will happen on some future date to be agreed.