Chamber and committees

I appreciate that response. Thank you.

I want to touch on the point about payment reform and the idea of creating an incentive, which is certainly logical. NHS National Services Scotland payment remuneration data shows an increase on the pre-dental reform figure, which demonstrates an increase in NHS activity. However, the most recent Scottish health survey found that the proportion of adults reporting difficulties in accessing a dentist is at its highest since 2019, at 34 per cent. Might there be a lag between the data sets, and do you agree that we might need to look at a richer picture of data in order to understand fully what is going on?

A total of 94.6 per cent of the Scottish population are registered with an NHS dentist, but people in the most deprived areas are less likely to have had contact with NHS primary dental care, with just 122,513 adults from the most deprived areas accessing care in comparison with 131,032 in the least deprived areas. Is the Scottish Government aware of that inequality, and what is it doing specifically to address it?

I thank the minister for her comments. I want to ask about the burial management plans that are proposed in the regulations.

Recently, there has been coverage of the distress that has been caused as a result of Glasgow City Council placing adhesive stickers on gravestones that are deemed to be unsafe in cases in which there is doubt about who the owner of the lair is and how to contact them. Similarly, after a tragic incident in 2015 in which a young boy was killed by an unstable headstone in a cemetery on the south side of Glasgow, the council has increasingly taken to toppling headstones, which has caused distress not only to those who own the plots or the lairs, but to people who attend the cemetery, because a bit of an eyesore has been created, with a huge number of headstones lying flat. Victorian-era memorials have been included in that process, and although the descendants have long passed away, those memorials are of cultural or historical significance to the city.

Has consideration been given to those behaviours in the drafting of the regulations? Could expertise in conservation masonry skills and so on be recommended to local authorities by Historic Environment Scotland, whose Engine Shed is a national centre for such skills? Could local authorities be encouraged to develop conservation management plans for cemeteries, especially the older cemeteries of a Victorian character, where there is less likelihood of there being living descendants of the deceased, but which represent a significant part of the nation’s heritage?

I thank the minister and her officials for attending today. I want to build on the point about access, particularly with regard to inequalities. Is an increase in payments for treatments a reliable measure of increased activity and engagement? What other measures does the Government use, given that evidence from boards suggests that people are finding it more difficult to access NHS dental care?

Do any of your officials have any comments to make at this stage?

Do you know when the reformatting work will be concluded?

It is difficult to tell the full extent of the numbers of people who have felt forced to move to private dental care, but, from what we have heard anecdotally, it is not uncommon, and there is a risk of a two-tier system being created that exacerbates inequalities. In fact, that can even happen with the upselling that takes place in what are ostensibly NHS dental practices. Are you concerned that that is an issue, and what can be done to reduce the number of patients who feel that they have to go private to get timely treatment?

One of the main difficulties that has been reported in accessing a dentist has been getting an appointment. The Scottish dental access initiative funding was intended to address that concern, but it has been made clear that only nine dental practices have received that funding over the past four years. Will you provide some context as to why so few practices have benefited from that funding? What could be done to develop that further?

I thank the witnesses for their helpful contributions so far. I will turn to the particular concerns that have been raised around community-based housing associations that are subject to statutory intervention. Concerns have been raised about the rigour of the process for the appointment of a statutory manager.

Usually, an options appraisal is carried out, which tends to conclude that a transfer of engagements to another housing association should take place; even before that process happens, there is the appointment of a so-called transfer specialist. Does the relationship between statutory managers and transfer specialists raise concerns? That could be particularly the case when all those people are on the statutory managers list and no clear declaration of interests is required, which perhaps suggests an inherent bias in favour of transfers of community-based housing associations.