Health Committee, 19 Apr 2005

Meeting date: Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Official Report 100KB pdf

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Proposed Direct Elections to National Health Service Boards (Scotland) Bill

Item 3 on the agenda is consideration of the proposed Direct Elections to National Health Service Boards (Scotland) Bill. I welcome Bill Butler to the committee. He intends to lodge a member's bill to require that the members of health boards be directly elected. The committee requires to consider whether adequate consultation has been undertaken in respect of this proposal. We have already done this with the Abolition of NHS Prescription Charges (Scotland) Bill. There is a paper, including a statement of reasons by Bill Butler, who is in attendance to answer any questions that members might have. Do members have any questions?

Of the 160 responses Bill Butler received, he identified that 44 were from individuals. However, 51 of the responses are categorised as "not given". What does that mean?

It means that, unfortunately, the senders did not put their names and addresses on the responses. Therefore, that is the way they are itemised on the list of respondents, as has happened with other member's bill proposals.

Would it not be normal to list such responses as individual responses?

The problem is that some of those responses might refer to organisations that have forgotten to include a name and address. I was advised that the category to be employed was that of "not given".

I understand that. However, I am pursuing the point because it strikes me that if an address was not included, the sender must have been writing in a personal capacity. Therefore, one would assume it was an individual response. I would have thought it would strengthen Bill Butler's hand to have more of the responses categorised as individual responses.

I agree. Obviously, one would think it would strengthen the proposal to have more individual responses. However, I refer the member to my two previous answers.

The responses that we received covered a wide range of organisations, including NHS boards, health councils, health interest groups, MSPs, MPs and community groups. The non-Executive bills unit told me that the number of responses to the consultation was slightly above average for a member's bill proposal. Although we would have loved to have had the number of responses that the Executive got to the smoking proposals, that was not feasible, so we will have to make do with what we have got, which is a wide range of responses.

You got 16 responses from local authorities, which you say in your note includes individual responses from councillors. How many local authorities responded and how many individual councillors responded? How does the figure break down?

About three quarters were local councils and one quarter were individual councillors. That is a rough and ready approximation, but I think that it is reasonable. Some of the council responses were not from the whole council. For example, Glasgow City Council's response was from a number of councillors who responded to the council secretary's call for responses.

Does "Political" mean political parties or branches or MSPs or a mixture of all three?

It means branches and various other component parts of political parties. MSPs are included in that category, as are MPs.

So it includes MSPs, MPs, branches, constituency associations and things like that.

Yes.

Are there any other questions on the consultation process?

I have the same question on "Academic" and "Religious". There was one academic response, but were there many responses within that?

No. As far as I remember, it refers to a university teaching hospital, but I can check on that for you. That is all it was—I do not mean that that is all it was; I mean that that is what it was restricted to, and it was very welcome indeed.

Are there any other questions from members? If not, we now require to decide whether we are satisfied with the statement of reasons provided. I stress that this decision is not in any way connected to our view on the principles of the bill. It is simply in respect of the statement of reasons. Are we satisfied with the statement of reasons given?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you, Bill.

Thank you, convener, and the committee for that decision and for your time.