This search includes all content on the Scottish Parliament website, except for Votes and Motions. All Official Reports (what has been said in Parliament) and Questions and Answers are available from 1999. You can refine your search by adding and removing filters.
I consider that all the issues that you have raised today have been discussed in the Parliament. I have tried to find something new in what you have said and I would welcome your clarification of the two or three things that are absolutely new and which the Parliament did not consider.
I urge the committee to read that document. The values are not new—they do not include any principles that are strange to us—but their encapsulation in that relatively brief format is somehow powerful.
If the Scottish Executive commissioned work on new needs assessments in, for example, 2002, would you expect the Executive to be able to use those new needs assessments to distribute grant?
If we are heavily involved in an investigation by the time of the December visit, that investigation may also throw up one or two issues that we would like to discuss with the visitors.
During that period, as is always the case when restructuring is taking place, attention was paid to financial performance, new teams arriving, what the new financial regime would look like and how the new trust would be managed.
The only reason why we are not allowed to call it a tax is that the Scotland Act 1998 does not allow the Parliament to levy any new taxes. However, an endowment—in new Labour or new coalition speak—is okay.
I am sure that there will be cross-party support for George Lyon's motion, just as there was cross-party support when we visited the new facilities at Craig Dunain in Inverness on Monday.