Health and Community Care Committee, 27 Oct 1999

Meeting date: Wednesday, October 27, 1999

Official Report 247KB pdf

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Arbuthnott Report

I have a couple of other points to discuss with the committee. I suggest that we now suspend the public session and go into private session. We will discuss some housekeeping points about finalisation of witnesses and how we will produce the report. [Interruption.]

One of the matters that I want to discuss is the possible reduction in GP practice level that is mentioned in the BMA submission.

Immediately after this meeting, I have a meeting with representatives from Unison who want to speak to us about pay. Members are invited to attend that meeting.

Do members have any further questions?

Lothian Health made quite a thing about how it could lose out, cross-boundaries. Could we ask for an expanded written submission on that?

I would prefer to have an expanded written submission from Lothian Health rather than that we go down the route of listening to all winners or losers. The two boards that we heard from, Shetland and Glasgow, have their views on their own allocations, but they also added something to our thoughts on the impact of remoteness and on deprivation and the urban picture. Part of the reason that I decided to go for Shetland and Glasgow was because they could bring a wider impact to our discussions. We will return to this point when we decide on further submissions.

Duncan, did you have a question?

I would like some clarification and discussion on the structure of the committee and the way in which it works. I found what we have just been through utterly infuriating, for a number of reasons. First, the length of the minister's attendance was not adequate. We all had a range of questions that we could not get through. That is particularly bad as the minister made a lengthy statement at the beginning and a party political broadcast halfway through. Frankly, that was disjointed and helped no one. One of the things that defines this committee is the fact that we tend to proceed on the basis of what is good for health, not what is good for one party.

Secondly, I am concerned about members' ability not just to ask a question but to follow it through. The whole point of having a minister here is so that we can pursue our point and ensure that the minister is accountable. For example, Mary made a point about the British Medical Association, but was not allowed to ask the minister whether she agreed with the BMA; that is a nonsense. She should be able to press her point all the way, then return to it to try to highlight contradictions. That is the role of a committee.

Thirdly, I am concerned about the way that this meeting has been managed. I understood that Mary and I—and others who asked questions before us—had to condense our questioning to ensure that we could fit it all in. We had been told that the minister had to leave at 5 past 12, but after that time we had 10 or 15 minutes of your questioning, convener. I am delighted for you to ask questions, but let us be fair. The position of convener does not entitle you to an additional 10 minutes.

Before the point at which I asked those questions, I had kicked the minister off with the question on transparency. Apart from that, I asked no other questions during the session. By the time we reached the end of the questioning process, everyone had had a chance to ask some questions.

Duncan's first point is absolutely right. We did not have enough time with the minister. The minister gave very lengthy answers to our initial questions and I agree that, at one point, her response tended towards being a party political broadcast. Possibly I should have jumped in and stopped her, but it was difficult to do so at that stage in the proceedings. I was mindful of the fact that we had a range of issues to get through and I wanted to ensure that we had covered all the issues that we spoke about earlier this morning. Unfortunately, Duncan, you were not able to be with us when we had that discussion. I also wanted to ensure that everyone got a chance to ask a question. I know that that is not a perfect situation, but it meant that by the end of the session, all the points that people had discussed in advance had been covered.

Mr Hamilton indicated disagreement.

You may shake your head, Duncan, but if we had gone down the route of pursuing people on particular issues beyond a certain point, we would not have been able to ask questions on other issues that we had previously agreed that we wanted to address.

Margaret, with respect, I think that you are confused. We can raise an issue with one opening question—that goes on record as a question—but today the answers were, frankly, evasive or entirely vague. The point of the exercise is that one can pursue the matter until a proper answer is given or one can at least highlight the fact that there is not going to be an answer, but that did not happen today.

I suggest that, if we are to undertake this exercise at all, we should do it in proper depth. Either the minister gives us adequate time to pursue these subjects in depth or we restrict ourselves further and tackle a couple of subjects well. As far as I am concerned, this meeting was a complete mishmash—a complete joke.

The key issue was the time available—I was aware that we were tight for time. I understand where you are coming from, Duncan, and I agree about pursuing issues to a logical conclusion. However, I felt that, if we had done that, we would have spent the time on only three issues rather than on the number of issues that we had decided in advance that we wanted to cover.

In our submission, we will be able to say what we think about these issues. We did not have enough time with the minister—we were just getting to the stage where everyone would have been happy to pick up on the points that had been made and to pursue them. I was trying to ensure that we covered the range of issues that we had decided that we wanted to cover; I also wanted to ensure that everyone had the opportunity to say something. Initially, I said to members of the committee that, as well as asking the questions that they had signed up to ask, they would also be able to input some of their own ideas—for example, Mary added to the question that we agreed earlier. The issue is both the time available and the length of time that the minister took to respond, particularly to the earlier questions.

The way in which the meeting was run meant that I started at about a minute and a half to 12 o'clock and was told that the minister finished at 12. Yesterday, I raised many points of concern that people had taken the time to tell us about. Like other members of the committee, I read through the papers, which contained genuine points of concern—they were not party political points.

I was quite insulted when the minister came in. I agree with Duncan Hamilton: as a committee, we all leave our political hats behind. We work extremely well as a committee and do not need the minister to insult our good working relationships. I am pleased to make that remark on the record.

I felt that the minister scornfully dismissed much of what was said. I am frustrated to end up with a list of points of which hardly any were adequately addressed—I leave this meeting with more questions than answers. I feel not only that she has done a disservice to this committee but that the committee has done a disservice to those who gave us these submissions and who raised their concerns at yesterday's meeting.

I do not think that you can say that we have done a disservice to the people who raised issues with us, Mary, as the committee's report will make use of their submissions. It is up to us to ensure that that report is robust and reflects those submissions. I go along with you 110 per cent on the way in which this committee conducts itself as a group of individuals. I welcome the fact that we try to put party politics behind us—indeed, I gave Dorothy a hard time about that yesterday.

We have a job trying to access information about this issue in order to be able to put together a report. The way forward is for us to organise another meeting with the minister and the officials from the Executive. We should ask for another meeting in light of what we heard today and the fact that members had so many questions left. As I intimated earlier, that would be better than trying to pursue the matter through written questions.

Will you convey to the minister the committee's displeasure at the way in which she handled her answers to our questions, which was terribly disrespectful to the committee? She made a party political broadcast; she did not answer questions. I would like you to convey the committee's view that she indulged in evasive, political stuff.

I do not want to be too party political, but it is becoming unavoidable. There are two questions. The first concerns how the minister conducted herself; the second concerns how we conducted ourselves. We should deal with those separately. The next meeting that the minister will attend, on 17 November, will be different. That meeting is what we should address, as she will be in a different position. We must bear in mind the fact that she is in the middle of consultation.

The minister was asked about Shetland, but she is not bound to defend the allocation of money to Shetland. Members must give her the benefit of the doubt. She is conducting a consultation programme. If we make a good case for Shetland, or for anything else, we are likely to win the day. She was not here to defend everything in the Arbuthnott report and we should have borne that in mind—and perhaps some of us should have been more aware of it at the beginning. She is consulting on a report that has been prepared by someone else, so I do not agree with Duncan Hamilton that she had at this point to express an opinion on Shetland.

I think that all members would agree with that. I certainly agree with it.

I do not share members' condemnation of the minister on that point. However, I agree with Duncan Hamilton on the way in which we conduct ourselves. The next key meeting will be the one that the minister attends, which will provide us with the opportunity to pursue issues, although we will want to question other people as well. Perhaps we should adopt a habit—without being too mechanistic about it—of allowing all members to ask three supplementary questions, or some such principle, as long as we discipline ourselves.

The next time the minister comes, we should be able question her for three hours, which would give members long enough to pursue issues as far as they want. Usually, I try to allow members to pursue a line of questioning until they nod in my direction to signal that they have finished and that they are happy. On this occasion, I was not able to do so. Today, I was aware that there were many aspects that we were still not addressing, and I was probably too nice to the minister. I let her go on a bit too much at the beginning and then made comments about the time that we had left and the need to get through things. There is a difference between having an hour of someone's time and having three hours of their time.

It is a habit with the minister. She has got into a habit.

You will have to address that, convener, as you ask questions at the beginning. Mary Scanlon had to rush through a whole series of disconnected questions with a gun at her head, so to speak, as there was only a minute and a half to go. You allowed that to happen and proceeded to take 10 or 15 minutes yourself at the end.

I took a few minutes, and the minister obviously had answers. I thought that the answers that she gave at the end were quite evasive.

All her answers were evasive.

She was dodging us all the way through.

When she answered my questions, she brought in the officials, which she had not done before. She could have answered my questions quickly and simply, but she chose not to do so. She chose to get bogged down with one aspect of my second question—which was not what I was asking about—and chose to bring in the officials, which she had not done before. That extended the questioning more than I had anticipated. I thought that when I asked the questions she would say to the first, "Yes, we will look at extra data resources"—it was a simple question—and that she would have to spend a minute or two answering the second question, which did not warrant the 10 minutes that she took.

That is the minister's habit. I had some sympathy for you when you asked your question, convener, as you had to repeat it. That is what took up a lot of your 10 minutes. She was still not giving an answer. That was the pattern throughout, as it was on the last occasion when she addressed us.

For some reason or other—I do not know why—I quite like the minister. She has some warmth and I would never accuse her of being dishonest; she is only starting out. However, she has got into the habit of talking an ever-rolling stream of waffle. If we can help to cure her of that habit, in the early days, I am sure that she will develop into a very good minister. She is hooked on the belief that she can get away with an endless, insulting stream of waffle, but that is part of the dishonesty of politics, which the public does not want to know about. In the worlds from which members—some of us, at least—have come, the answers that people want are "Yes", "No", "Maybe", or "I will look into it".

We do not want the waffle to continue. You need to pull up the minister on that and ask her for short answers, otherwise we will get nowhere. We will nag at you, convener—perhaps unfairly, because you, too, are a waffle victim. You have to come down on her about that.

I accept some of the blame for what happened, because I should have come down on the minister harder and earlier. I did not really want to be unpleasant at the beginning of the meeting.

I know, and the minister is likeable. It is just that what she is doing is not likeable.

The minister is playing with that—it is her style.

It is in the minister's interest to harness the good will of the committee. I feel that she was insulting and I believe that she owes us an apology. There is good will in the committee. We are considering joined-up government, partnerships and social inclusion; those practices should all begin in the committees of the Parliament. That was not a good way in which to conduct business.

I would not go as far as that. It is Susan's style. I have been in situations outside the context of politics in which she has had a similar style. I think that we should ask for a further meeting with her.

I think that we are looking for a little more discipline from you, convener, towards the people whom we question. I agree with Malcolm that we need to have more discipline in the way in which we prioritise our questions.

We want discipline.

I am not going to be defensive about this point. Today, we were meant to start at 9.45 am, but we were only just quorate then. We were about to question the minister—someone else was coming in before that. We all have reasons why we do not attend committee meetings bang on time—I am not always on time—but at the beginning of today's meeting we were discussing how we would approach the questioning of the minister as a committee. The majority of the committee was not here to discuss that.

It is very difficult, in the middle of something else—we were tackling Greater Glasgow Health Board, whose representatives I had to give due respect—to spend my time going back and forward to the members of the committee who were not able, for whatever reason, to be here on time. I attempted to parcel out questions to people who had arrived late, because that was the only way in which to do it; once you have established that some members are going to ask certain questions, the meeting will work only if you give other members different questions. That was a major problem for me this morning. I did not expect to arrive at 9.45 am and find that the meeting was in danger of not being quorate when we were going to meet the minister.

I accept 110 per cent the point that I could have been far more robust with the minister and I will learn from it. We learn about so many things as we go along. Several weeks ago, I told members that I would make mistakes; I made one this morning. I cannot accept that members of the committee who do not turn up at the beginning of a meeting—when we are discussing our tactics for taking evidence—will, later in the day, say that we did not take the right approach to questions to the minister.

My point is that you could be more robust with us, the members of the committee, as well as with the minister. In other words, you should tell members that they should put in a submission containing questions that they would like to ask the minister; if those members are not present, those questions can then be asked by people who turned up on time but did not put in a submission. As convener, you can tell us that.

Yes, but as the convener, first and foremost I am an individual. It is not my style to be robust just for the sake of it. I would rather ensure that, as and when everybody is here for a meeting, they have their chance to say something; I also want to ensure that we cover the breadth of issues that we identified in advance. Many of those issues were identified as a result of the submissions and comments of members. We were not able to pick up on some of the detailed points, but we had only one hour.

At previous meetings, convener, you kept an ordered list of members who wished to speak. That encouraged our discussion to flow, although one disadvantage was that it did not allow for supplementary questions. Perhaps we could return to that practice.

That may be helpful and I will consider your suggestion. We must still decide whether to request a further meeting with the minister next week. What are members' views on that?

There is no point. She will only waffle on for another three hours.

There would be no point in asking the minister to come back next week. I explained my position; we will see the minister again on 17 November.

Do we all agree?

I think so. Having the minister here next week would be a futile exercise.

It seems that we are all agreed on that.

The key point is that we need access to information. Do members agree that we should submit further written questions to Dr Kevin Woods?

Members indicated agreement.

Good. I will e-mail members this afternoon to request details of their further questions. We will have to be quick to meet the Arbuthnott consultation deadline.

I have had a verbal assurance from the Executive that the deadline has been extended until 22 November. That would allow us to discuss our submission on 3 November.

Is the BMA coming to give evidence at that meeting?

The BMA will certainly be invited. Do members want us to invite any other organisations?

What about the unions?

They were invited but have not responded.

I am very surprised about that.

We will leave it at that.

Meeting closed at 12:48.