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I welcome to the meeting John Swinney, Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery; Professor Jason Leitch, national clinical director; Penelope Cooper, director of Covid co-ordination; and Niamh O’Connor, deputy director for testing and contact tracing policy.
We have collaborated closely with health professionals, third sector partners, parents and experts such as the National Maternal and Infant Nutrition Co-ordinator to ensure that the contents of the Baby Box are the most useful they can be.
That is positive, because it recognises that the exchequer function in Government needs to grasp this. It needs to take a role in co-ordinating—that is very much its role just now—and understanding the process of bringing together the human rights and equalities aspects of the budget.
For example, the Scottish Government would have co-ordinated last year’s road races in the cycling world championships with local authorities and policing.
Unfortunately, the effect of the internal market act has been to undermine co-ordination through the common frameworks process because, in practice, it privileges decisions made by the UK Government for England in particular.
There needs to be wider representation of headteachers and, in particular, SQA co-ordinators. I had a meeting with the SQA last Friday, along with six deputes, who are all SQA co-ordinators.