Chamber and committees

As we have heard, there are thousands of front-line staff, social care users and bereaved families for whom the inquiry will be crucial if they are to get answers on why Scotland was not better prepared. It is important that those who were responsible for that are properly held to account. Will the cabinet secretary confirm the inquiry’s relationship with the wider judicial system? Will it be set out in the terms of reference that he mentioned, and will that information include how the inquiry will handle evidence of potential criminality?

I am verbose if nothing else, minister.

The point has been made about accountability. We have had structural change already in social care with the introduction of integration joint boards and seven years, I think, of work on the integration of health and social care that has not yet been well analysed.

Local authorities are concerned about the changes that are proposed to accountability, because it will move to ministers rather than being with them. It would be helpful for the committee to understand what discussion is going on with local authorities about their role. COSLA has been critical of the proposal, so it would be useful if the minister could explain what discussions he is having before we get to the publication of a bill.

I appreciate that the minister touched on suicide prevention in his earlier answers, which were very informative. Currently, Scotland has an increasing suicide rate. When we take that as a comparator across the UK, we see that our rate is higher than those in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Are we engaging with other parts of the United Kingdom to understand their experience and what has been done in them? How can we share best practice? Notwithstanding the work that is already being done, I think that we can learn from other people.

All of us on the committee would want to associate ourselves with your comment that one suicide is one too many and to welcome any decrease in the figures.

On “Scotland’s Suicide Prevention Action Plan: Every Life Matters”, the outcome of the review in March was that progress was perhaps slower than expected in some areas. Indeed, I think that you alluded to the need for us to go further and do more. Notwithstanding the challenges that we have all experienced through the pandemic and lockdown and the fact that they have exacerbated the situation with services and people’s lived experience, I am keen to understand how we will drive towards the plan’s very ambitious target of reducing the rate of suicide by 20 per cent by 2022. How achievable is that target? What further actions need to be taken to reach it?

I will be brief, convener. I just want to welcome the minister’s comments about grass-roots organisations in communities, which I think all of us will have experience of. Does the minister feel that there is space to fund some of those organisations at a more localised level and move that sort of thing forward where required?

I declare an interest as a councillor for East Renfrewshire.

I think that this is the first time that the minister has had the opportunity to talk about the national care service with the committee and I am sure that it will not be the last as the proposal progresses in legislation.

We are coming to the end of the consultation phase and I want to start my questions by asking about scope. The scope of the Government’s consultation goes further than Feeley did. There has been a degree of commentary about that. For example, Fiona Duncan, chair of the Promise Scotland, said that she was puzzled as to why children’s services were in the consultation and she expressed some concerns about how we deliver the Promise if it becomes part of the national care service.

I was at the cross-party group on learning disability and lots of folk were concerned about the consultation’s scope and the particular needs of adult social care getting lost in that. What was the rationale for arriving at the scope in the consultation and why does it go beyond Feeley? How do you envisage the bill in comparison to the consultation, once we have processed the responses? I appreciate that there is a lot in those questions.

I thank the minister for that response. I am sure that he will be keen to come to the cross-party group on learning disability as well, so I will book him in for that.

The minister said that people want change. My experience from talking to people is that there is a desire for change but it is perhaps about cultural change rather than being solely focused on structural change.

My next question is—

This is an extremely serious situation, and I, too, thank our NHS staff.

NHS Lanarkshire moved to code black on 22 October, which resulted in some cancer operations being cancelled for patients who were already experiencing unacceptably long delays. Some three weeks on since that code black was declared, the reports from the A and E department of University hospital Wishaw clearly demonstrate that the Scottish Government has not dealt with the situation. When does the cabinet secretary expect all elective surgeries, especially cancer procedures, to recommence?

In all his answers on the subject, the Deputy First Minister has pointed to increased demand due to the pandemic. However, I have statistics from the Scottish Ambulance Service showing that turnaround times in A and E departments have been increasing going back to 2014. In my region, ambulance turnaround times at the Royal Alexandra hospital in Paisley have doubled from 22 minutes in 2014 to 43 minutes in 2021. That is simply unacceptable.

Those statistics clearly demonstrate that the crisis in ambulance wait times began well before the pandemic; they were growing year on year. In answer to Anas Sarwar, the Deputy First Minister would not commit to the maximum 30-minute turnaround time called for by ambulance staff. Will he therefore tell the chamber what he thinks is an acceptable turnaround time for ambulances at A and E? When will he listen to staff and get a grip of this crisis?