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Kevin Mitchell, can you explain the Care Inspectorate’s opposition to the national social work agency?

Can I be absolutely clear? Do you feel that the Scottish Information Commissioner needs to be taken out of the bill completely and that you should not have been included in the first place?

I think that all of us on the committee, and most patients, would be keen to ultimately arrive at a place where the patient holds their own data—their own records. That would be an ideal scenario.

What safeguards do you think need to be put in place? You mentioned lots of things in relation to moving data to a more centralised location. I will put that question to Kenneth Meechan first, but I would also like to hear from Ken Macdonald on that same point about safeguards.

I thought that your submission expressed some opposition to it. Am I mistaken?

Yes, absolutely.

I have to say that I was a little surprised by the convener’s remarks around Covid; in previous committee meetings, we heard that the bill would make no difference in relation to what happened during the pandemic. I believe that care homes closed themselves before the Scottish Government told them to because there were still attempts to push patients in to care homes.

Cara Stevenson, will you elaborate on what you were saying in that regard? Tracey Dalling and Roz Foyer, both your unions are calling for the bill to be stopped and for the crisis that we have right now to be addressed. Will you say a little bit more about your reasoning behind that?

Sorry. Tracey, you spoke earlier about the emergency framework being one part of this. I would like to know a bit more about that.

Okay. Both the unions want to stop the bill and concentrate on the current crisis. Cara, will you expand on that?

Thank you.

When you say “conservative”, you do not mean the party. Is that correct?