Health and Sport Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Official Report 246KB pdf

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Annual Report

I welcome everyone to the 19th meeting in 2010 of the Health and Sport Committee and remind people to switch off mobile phones and other electronic equipment. We have received apologies from Rhoda Grant; Frank McAveety will act as a substitute member.

Item 1 on the agenda is consideration of a draft annual report for the parliamentary year May 2009 to May 2010. It follows the standard format for committee annual reports.

Before I invite comments from members, I have one of my own, which relates to paragraph 20, on the sleep apnoea petition. We agreed to write to the Scottish Government and various other agencies. It would be quite useful for us to say that we are waiting for responses and to indicate when we intend to do something about it, because people will want to know what happened next. We could include words to that effect.

Are there any other comments?

When did we write to the Scottish Government on the petition? I think that it was some time ago.

February.

It is now the end of May and we have had no response.

We have had a response from the Scottish Government, but not from the United Kingdom Government.

Ah!

In fairness, the Westminster election has made it difficult to get a response from the UK Government. Now that that is over, we anticipate that the process will be accelerated.

So we have had responses from the Scottish Government, the Scottish intercollegiate guidelines network and NHS Quality Improvement Scotland, but we have not had a response from the Medical Research Council or from the UK Department for Transport.

Indeed. That is the position.

It would be helpful to put that in.

I would be happy for us to do that—thank you for helping the Scottish Government.

It is important for the petitioner to know what is happening, especially given that the convener of the Public Petitions Committee is at today’s meeting.

That is an example of the new respect agenda.

We have a respect agenda with you, Frank.

That concludes the public part of the meeting. We move into private session for item 2.

09:33 Meeting continued in private until 12:48.