Health and Community Care Committee, 14 Jun 2000

Meeting date: Wednesday, June 14, 2000

Official Report 186KB pdf

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Witness Expenses

Agenda item 2 is on witness expenses, about which a paper has been circulated. As members may recall, we decided some time ago—several months before the Prime Minister, in fact—that, as part of the community care review, it would be a good idea to take evidence from people from Northern Ireland because of the system of joint working and pooled budgets that is in place there. Obviously, expenses arise from taking such evidence because of the travel costs and loss of earnings that will be incurred by the witnesses. Is the committee happy that we ask the Parliament to incur that expense for the committee's community care review?

Would it be possible to reduce the number of witnesses from three to two? Half the expenditure would be for the general practitioner—partly for his flight, and partly to pay for his locum. Given that the other two witnesses appear to represent the structures, it may be possible to take evidence only from them.

In some of the models in the Sutherland report, the GP is a central issue, so it would be worth while taking evidence from the GP. Some of the future options for community care involve a very GP-centred approach. I would like to know what the GP's experience of joint management in practice has been. I am in favour of taking evidence from all three witnesses.

We are talking about two, are we not?

We have three people at the moment.

I do not want to add to expense, so I suggest that, as a compromise, we ask in advance whether any of the three can give us information about the Republic.

But that is the Republic—

Yes, but they might know about good projects there.

We can ask them general questions about best practice, which could touch on other areas. If we do not ask GPs to come, we could ask those who do come to tell us how they see GPs functioning in their system. The other two people will be the chief executive of a multifund health trust and a director of community services—one on the health side and one on the community side.

The clerk tells me that the chief executive of the multifund health trust is also a GP, so we can invite two witnesses and leave the GP witness out of the equation. That makes life a lot easier.

I hope that this does not set us up for claims for future witnesses. I do not want us to make a rod for our own backs.

At the moment, there are discussions about a programme of witness expenses, but that programme has not yet been finalised. That is why we have to arrange this slightly differently. In future, a scheme will be in place.

Even then, we will always consider witness expenses case by case. We are not setting any precedents. Members of other committees have expressed the fear that, if we grant expenses to one person, everyone else might demand them.

The fact that this visit will involve flights makes it different. Most of the time, we invite witnesses who are coming from mainland Scotland, so the same level of cost is not involved. We shall invite only two witnesses from Northern Ireland, which should reduce the cost by about £350.

I agree with that, but I think that it is important that the chief executive should give us a GP perspective.

We shall ensure that that information is relayed to him.