Seòmar agus comataidhean

We continue our scrutiny of the Scottish Government’s proposed stage 2 amendments to the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill, with a third panel of witnesses. I welcome Isla Davie KC, from the Faculty of Advocates; Jennifer Paton, who is head of policy at the Law Society of Scotland; and Jan Savage, who is executive director at the Scottish Human Rights Commission. I also hope that we will be joined shortly by Suzanne McGuinness, who is executive director of social work at the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland. We move straight to questions.

It does not look as if anyone else on the panel has a comment.

Thank you.

Agenda item 2 is a decision on taking business in private. Do members agree to take item 6 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

Good morning, and welcome to the 26th meeting in 2024 of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee. I have received apologies from Ruth Maguire, and Gordon MacDonald is attending as her substitute. As such, agenda item 1 is to ask Gordon MacDonald to declare any interests relevant to the committee’s remit.

If no one else wants to comment on that, I will go to Emma Harper.

Fiona Davies, do you want to add anything?

I want to just finish up with a specific question for Fiona Davies. You work in NHS Highland, which is the only health board to operate a lead agency model instead of the model that is used in the rest of the country. Is that model an advantage or a disadvantage with regard to a health and social care workforce being able to fulfil all the functions that need to be fulfilled? Given that what we are looking at in the bill seeks to equalise the country, as it were, what challenges would it bring for Highland?

We will come on to the issue of complaints as a specific topic a bit further on, so that might be an opportunity for you to elaborate a little bit more on that. I do not want to pre-empt some of the members’ questions.

I accept that emotions run high on certain matters, but I remind members that I expect them to be courteous to each other.

I have also been informed that we have apologies from Suzanne McGuinness.

We move to questions from Tess White.