Official Report 149KB pdf
We have seen the letter of 12 January from the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing, Nicola Sturgeon, and the proper copy of our report was circulated to members before this meeting. Are there any comments?
The cabinet secretary's letter was generally helpful. However, she does not address the issue that we discussed at some length: the power to dismiss an elected member of a health board. I suppose that there is a substantive policy issue there but, under our responsibilities, the committee was saying that if there were to be such a power, it should be prescribed in some way. The cabinet secretary is silent about that, and it is an obvious omission, but she has responded very positively in other ways to what we suggested.
As there are no other points, we will leave it at that for the moment. The cabinet secretary's response is pretty good and a lot of things have gone our way, although Malcolm Chisholm has pointed out the one glaring omission from her letter. Is everyone happy with that?