Good morning and welcome to the 17th meeting in 2014 of the Health and Sport Committee. As usual at this point, I would like to ask everyone to switch off mobile phones and other wireless devices as they can often interfere with the sound system. Of course, in saying that, I need to point out to our panel this morning that some members and officials are using tablet devices and that is instead of the hard copies of their papers. Please see that I have got no apologies this morning and we give a very warm welcome back to the net milling. It is good to see you back in the net. We are moving now to our first item, which of course is to take evidence at stage 1 on the Food Scotland bill. We have with us this morning Sue Davis, chief policy adviser, which is Dr James Wild-Goose, chair of the Scottish Food Advisory Committee. Alasdair Donaldson, former member of the Meat and Livestock Commission, member of the Scudamore review panel. I welcome all of you here this morning with us for our deliberations. Given the pressure of time, we will go straight to questions if that is okay. Our first question is from Gil Paterson. Good morning, everybody. I am just wondering if Food Standards Scotland is merely taking over the functions and administration from the FSA, or is there likely to be any benefits financially or financially to the wellbeing and health of the Scottish people? Perhaps I could just explain the role of the Scottish Food Advisory Committee that I chair. That committee is part of the Food Standards Agency, which is a UK-wide body. Essentially, it provides information input interests from Scotland in terms of the UK deliberations of the UK board. I chair that committee and I also sit on the FSA board. Essentially, we look at all of the papers that come forward for decision at the UK board and offer a Scottish input into that. It is part and parcel of the FSA. I might say that, coming here this morning, I am not speaking on behalf of the FSA, I am speaking on behalf of the Scottish Food Advisory Committee and the interests in Scotland associated with that. There is no financial interest in point, the fact that it is simply the regime that we have under the current UK system for allowing Scottish interests to be reflected in the deliberations at UK level. I hope that that is helpful in answering that. We think that this is a real opportunity to create a really strong new body that will be a real consumer champion. We think that it should be much more than just an administrative transfer of responsibilities. We campaign for the Food Standards Agency to be set up and to put consumers first, operate openly and transparently. The Food Standards Agency in England has had some of its responsibilities taken away, which is one of the reasons for reviewing whether or not there needed to be a separate agency in Scotland. In particular, we think that there is a real opportunity to enhance the way that Food Standards Scotland works compared with the agency being more open and transparent in the way that it works. We are also tackling issues that are specific to Scotland, in particular focusing more on issues around diet and health than has been possible as part of the Food Standards Agency. We are also getting to the bottom of some of the food safety issues, such as tackling E. colio 157 and other types of food poisoning, but we are also having the real problem with food fraud at the moment. Research that we did recently shows that we found that many lamb takeaways were not lamb, but they contained other types of meat. Coming off the back of horse meat, I think that there is a real need to get to grips with what is happening there. Obviously, the Food Standards Scotland will have to be closely linked in and work closely with the Food Standards Agency in order to make sure that it is influencing EU policy effectively and effectively getting to grips with a very globalised and complex supply chain, but we think that it is a real opportunity to go further and make it a much stronger agency that really puts consumers first. Another question that, in relation to the fact that Scotland is a very significant food producer and also has a big processing interest, and during the last food and mouse incident there were lots of concerns from the manufacturers and the food producers—or the processes in the food producers—that, since Scotland was free from that particular attack, that they felt that they would be unfairly treated. I wondered what your thoughts were with the new agency that was being set up. Would it have the powers or the prospect to perhaps take a different line if something similar happened in Scotland? Or it could well be the opposite if something happens in Scotland with some incident here that was peculiar to Scotland and not affecting any other parts of the United Kingdom, so that the other parts of the United Kingdom could act differently? Or is that just a step too far with regards to what has been proposed? Dr Weld-Gleeson, Mr Dwellast. Dwellast, thank you very much. There is a certain sense in which what you are saying would be true that having food stand in Scotland, your decisions could be made in Scotland, would be made in Scotland, but to use the term bugs do not obey borders as such, they would need to be very, very close liaison with the arrangements in the rest of the UK. That would, I hast to say, limit, but it would influence the actions that would be taken in the policy sense on things like food and mouth disease. We need to take food stand in Scotland, we need to take these arrangements very seriously and co-ordinate very closely with the rest of the UK in fighting something like food and mouth disease and indeed other very infectious type diseases. We must not move away from the thought that that collaboration is absolutely essential going forward, even having the separate body in Scotland. Can I just make another comment that is relevant to what you are saying? This body, rightly in my view, as the current FSA has, has got consumers as the key focus. Safety, standards, nutrition, the whole area, consumers is the main focus. It is not producers as such, but the key thing is that if you have safe food and it is guaranteed safe food or as guaranteed as you can make it, that is also in the producer's interest because it means that you are generating a system that means that the food that is produced in Scotland is recognised as being safe and off a standard, etc. In that roundabout way, it is not the focus to have a producer's interest with this, but by maintaining a consumer's interest you also enhance business as such, and that is where the sustainable business comes from in ensuring safe food and a food of a particular standard. Just to add, I would emphasise that bugs do not recognise boundaries, so there has to be a collaborative approach on some of the major issues. To turn this round into more of a positive in terms of food, I was on the Scudimod panel representing the meat sector. In relation to meat inspection, there are real opportunities, partly as a result of changes to EU regulations that are in the pipeline, to enhance food inspection activities and, indeed, to aim, the ultimate goal should be an aim of a farm to fork assurance service, and that would underpin the Scotch label. You would appreciate that the Scotch label has recognition internationally and to be able to go forward saying that we have a well-placed food safety system in operation that can do nothing but enhance those opportunities. I agree with Jim's point about bugs not stopping at the border. It is going to be important to look at things on a case-by-case basis. It might be appropriate and possible for Scotland to take a different approach on some issues, but the way that it works will have to be seen in the context of what is happening across the UK, how possible it is to put controls in place, and the wider EU context, where a lot of that will be decided by EU legislation. I agree with the point that having a strong agency that puts consumers first will have wider benefits for the food industry, but it is important to make sure that the agency reaches its decisions based on the evidence and shows clearly and transparently how it reaches its decisions and that it does not get into any issues around trade issues or trade promotion directly. That is maybe put in the public record and I agree with Dr Jim Welgus that when I was visiting China, nothing to do with food, but on another, I do business or my company does business in China, it was amazed that people approached me on the Scottish label and it was actually on the basis of being so trustworthy that they were interested in purchasing, not because of what they perceived the quality, but because it was so trustworthy that the future, I agree entirely, were to your sentence expressed. Just in a couple of sessions we have, you know, what will the bill achieve? I mean we've heard about a private business, one of that, in terms of food and mouth, then the regulation and standards are already in place to monitor this, the enforcement lies out with the agency itself, it's with local authorities or indeed supermarket chains as we heard yesterday, which is much more rigorous in terms of inspection. How will this bill enhance any of these functions when the aim is to reassure people that nothing much is going to change, we're going to still be plugged into the research and the sharing of information and indeed the need to do that. What is the point of this bill? Dr Welgus? Chairman, it's a fair point but I think there are some very clear reasons why we have this separate arrangement or that we have a separate bill and a separate agency setup. You will recall, no doubt from the briefing you've received, that there was machinery of government changes in the UK in 2010, which removed responsibility for nutrition in relation to the population and also a very large element of labelling from the Food Standards Agency. So you had this odd position where a UK body, the Food Standards Agency, had responsibility for those issues on nutrition in Scotland and Northern Ireland but not in England and Wales. That's really not a tenable position bearing in mind that nutrition and particularly obesity, for example, which is clearly an element within that, is a fundamental issue for Scotland going forward. I think that there's a lot that this agency, this body can do in relation to that. I would say that they would need to work very closely with other bodies with that, but I think that there's a lot to be gained quite apart from the things that Alice has mentioned about being able to take decisions ourselves or in Scotland rather on things like the controls, etc. That area is very significant in my view, and I think that this new body could give very considerable leadership amongst the bodies that have an interest in nutrition and obesity, not taking over their interests but actually giving leadership in this area to an issue that will become or has become very, very significant in Scottish life, public life, over this while. The other issue is that the horse meat issue has demonstrated that labelling and standards are fundamental in keeping that together with safety. That machinery of government change that occurred in the UK in 2010 made that split and it was not, in my view, a helpful split, and I think that that came home to roost, so to speak, with the horse meat incident. There are some other things that I could mention, but they are to do with decisions that can be taken in Scotland to do with regulation, to do with enforcement, a whole range of different things on that, but I think that the two main things that I've mentioned on nutrition and on labelling are crucial and are fundamental to this new body. I suppose that's a question of asking what would we do differently as we asked yesterday, but we were told earlier today in a private briefing that we've already got the powers in terms of labelling. If we decided we wanted to change labelling in Scotland, we can do that now. Strictly that's correct, but the advice actually comes through and the responsibility is with the Food Standards Agency on that, so it's that agency that's giving advice. What would happen would be there would be a change and the new body in Scotland would then give the advice on this. Now, the legislative position is, as you say, that those things are devolved and the decisions can be taken, but who is giving the advice on them? It would be the new body rather than the FSA. Is it more likely that we would do something in labelling? Yes. We would be able to take our own decisions on labelling as such and advice would come forward and, shameably, Scottish advice as such on that rather than UK advice. It just relates to some evidence that we took yesterday about the concern of manufacturers if we had different labelling regimes here in Scotland as against the rest of the UK market. I think that it's important to realise that, again, this comes back to the issue of co-ordination with others. I think that it's not right to think that we would end up making a whole lot of different decisions as such. We'd need to co-ordinate and make sure that the decisions that we were taking were the right ones and were ones that were not hampering industry as such, but there will be certain things where we might want to do things slightly differently. I think that one of the key things is actually bringing and making sure that these things on labelling and standards more generally are kept together with the food safety issues. They are not down south, whereas this new body will mean that they will be together and that the decisions and issues will be considered in the round rather than different parts of government deciding on them. I think that that is the key thing. It's an opportunity to really make sure that you have got a strong consumer champion and that we've got an agency that, I suppose, sets the benchmark for how other agencies should be operating. We think, and it was one of the recommendations of the Scudamall report, the first Scudamall report as well, that it's really important to have food safety and nutrition and standards in one place. As Jim mentioned, particularly since horse meat, it's become clear that food standards issues haven't been getting enough attention and need to become a greater priority. We would also see the nutrition area as one where there is a real problem. There's a problem around the whole UK. Scotland has high rates of obesity and diet-related disease and it's obviously a very complex issue, but giving the agency or food standards Scotland more potential to do work in that area would be a bigger advantage. I suppose the other area as well, the third area within the objectives that have been put out in the Bill are the other consumer interests in relation to food. I think those are often poorly defined. They're in the remit of the current food standards agency, but a lot of issues, whether it's about food production methods, whether it's genetic modification or water added to food or different types of production methods, they can also raise different social and ethical issues that mean that consumers may want to have a decision about whether or not they're eating particular types of products. I think that kind of area is something as well that is important that food standards Scotland can look at. Mr Dolan, is there a new one to comment? I think that you can raise an important point about differences that may arise in terms of labelling requirements or legislative requirements in different parts of the country. On the other hand, the Scudamore panel, on how it's way to emphasise the importance of continuing collaboration and the question that then becomes given that, where are the opportunities? Dwelling in my own sector, if you took the meat inspection service, which is actually an integral part of Food Standards Scotland, there are real opportunities to tailor it to the needs of the Scottish processing industry and to make sure it delivers an efficient effective service. I think within the industry there would be a view that that would be a very positive and worthwhile thing. Can I just follow on first on the last question about labelling? From our visits yesterday, I understood that Scotland had led the way in the changes of labelling that are being implemented and was following a decision in Scotland to change labelling that the rest of the UK had followed on. Is that correct or were we given the wrong information? I'm not sure about the detail of the issue that you refer to. There is some leeway in terms of decision making separately in Scotland, but I don't know the detail of that. All the labelling legislation is EU-based, so the ground rules are really set from Brussels as such. There are some derogations or there are some changes that member states can make use of. I suspect that it's in that area that you're referring to, so I don't think that it's inconsistent as such, but it's not possible to make wholesale different changes in labelling that would go against what the EU legislation actually says, or neither are there huge changes, variations, that you can take from that legislation, but there are some. But that wouldn't change because of this legislation? No, it wouldn't. It would still be governed by the EU. No, it wouldn't change. Can I then ask some questions around nutrition and health promotion? I think that what you had said was that the Food Standards Scotland could lead the way in looking at health-related issues such as obesity, but that falls within the remit of local government and within NHS boards throughout the country. What is in the bill to make sure that those organisations work together, because it seems to me that this could be bringing another layer in where there are a number of agencies all trying to do the same work? Health promotion is already a duty that is placed on health boards and local government. How would Food Standards Scotland interact with those bodies to make sure that they are all singing from the same hyn? The answer to your question lies in the question that you said in the question. There are a huge number of bodies that are involved in this area. While we know a lot of the answers as to what to do with nutrition, the feeling that I have and the SFAC has is that there is a need for some coordination and making sure that you get away from the kind of initiativeitis to use a word where you get initiative on initiative on initiative, all good in themselves, but lacking some kind of leadership and co-ordination would be my judgment with this. I think that the role—we have had some evidence of this from various speakers—we have had at SFAC dealing with this. The answer to the question is that there is nothing in the bill that actually requires or demands this kind of co-ordination. There is nothing that says that there will be a directive to local authorities to be doing this or that or, indeed, any other body. However, the issue is providing that kind of national leadership to bring people together to say that this is how we are going to go forward with an issue that is very large in terms of improving nutrition in Scotland and clearly part of the whole question of addressing obesity, as such. We heard quite a lot in the meetings that we have had in SFAC about needing to have that kind of co-ordination. I think that we know what the answers are and what the prescriptions are. It is a question of seeing how they can be implemented, and it is not a question of taking over. It is a question of trying to lead that debate and lead that implementation as such and bring people along. That is how I would see it. I think that it will be really important that there are lots of co-ordination mechanisms in place for different groups. Food standard Scotland will have to be very collaborative in the way that it works with other groups. One of the key things is to make sure that it has really strong consumer and public health representation on its board. That gives a really strong signal as to what it is about and that it is not there as a industry promotion body, because it is set for the bodies that have that responsibility. We think that there is an important role centrally to be promoting good practice and incentivising changes across the food industry. Some work has started to happen that the Scottish Government is already doing. It started to try and look at food promotions, for example, but that has not got very far, whether that is promotions in supermarkets or promotions in takeaways or whatever. There is also a lot of work that still needs to be done around trying to reduce levels of fat, sugar and salt in products. That is not going to be possible in everything, but a lot of work has been done on salt. Obviously, there is a big focus on sugar at the moment. We published some research last week that shows that some savoury ready meals can have as much as 50 grams of sugar in them. There is lots of scope to be looking at what can be done nationally, as well as then making sure what that actually means in terms of delivery on the ground at a local level. Is it then missing from the bill that there are powers to lead in this area, or is it something that is going to have to be set up by maybe memorandums of understanding, working together, looking at what role—I cannot see how Food Standards Scotland can take leadership in this area when other people have a statutory responsibility in this area unless they are empowered to do so. I am expressing my own view with this, but, as you mentioned, it really is collaboration and memorandums of understanding SLAs and various things along that line, to try to bring people together, to grasp hold of this on a national basis. I think that quite a lot can be achieved through that route by trying to bring people together. I accept that the statutory responsibility lies elsewhere as such, but I do not think that that needs to change to be able to get a better focused approach in this whole area. That would be my view with this. I think that, if you sought to change the responsibility as such, that could be a fundamental change as such. I am not sure that it would generate the kind of change that you would want. I think that we know the answers to the obesity issues. The question is, how best to implement that and to encourage people to do the things that they need to do to address the issues. It feels to me much more like, how do you implement this, as opposed to where the powers lie? The leadership is there for, in my view, very important. It could fail, but that boils down to how that leadership actually operates. That is true in a range of different things for this new body. It will need to work collaboratively in other areas as well, not least, for example, in the science and how that is carried forward. On things such as the regulation enforcement, which is a responsibility also of the local authorities, although there is some national responsibility in relation to the EU with that as well. There is a kind of shared type responsibility with some of this that really boils down to saying that we really need to all be working in the same direction under the same kind of leadership and recognise how important those particular issues are and addressing problems together in a way. That is how I see this body actually working. I think that it does need to take a leadership role on these issues. The powers that it has to operate openly and transparently and to publish the advice that it gives will be really important in making sure that it does that. It is important that it takes a strong role and sets out exactly what action it expects to be taken and then can use its powers to name and shame and highlight who is and isn't doing it. In areas, even if it does not have the ability to legislate, it can still make sure that it is delivering change across the whole of the industry. Does anyone get any other comments and terms? Have we got some evidence about the board and the board membership and the composition? Narno, you mentioned that too. Has anyone else got any comments on membership of the board? If I could just perhaps comment in a general sense, I think that it is important that references have been made to having the right structure, the right representation on the board, including health representation and consumer representation. I would just make a general comment that I think it would be important to have appropriate food sector representation on the board as well so that there is a general understanding of how the industry itself operates and can take that to the table. All of that is underpinned by putting consumer interests first, but I think that it is important that the board is as widely based as possible in its views and experience and perhaps a maximum number of seven is something that should be looked at a bit more. Yes, I would agree with that. I wondered about seven as being the maximum as well. I mean, there is no definitive answer to this, but it just seemed to me to be a bit on the small side. It is also very important, however, that the people who are on the board do not represent their particular sector as such. They are in the public interest as such, and that is written into the governance of the bill. It seems to me that it is very important that consumers come first and that, while people come from an industry interest, or from a nutrition interest, or from a public health interest, that they are working collectively to come to a decision that is in the public interest as such, not in the interest of individual sectors as such. That is indeed how the FSA board works, and I think that that arrangement should apply as well and indeed is implicit within the bill itself. I think that that is really important. I think that it would be very dangerous to start to have different industry sectors represented on the board promoting their own particular interests, because I think that that would move it away from the public health and consumer focus that it needs. I think that it should be clearer in the bill that members of the board are there to act in the public interest and that they should not have any conflicts of interest. That does not mean that they do not have relevant experience and skills, but overall they should be there, as Jim said, to act together in the public interest. Separately to my which role, I am the chair of the management board of the European Food Safety Authority, and that comes under a huge amount of scrutiny in terms of its ability to provide independent advice and make sure that it is really making decisions that are in the public interest and aren't about promoting the food industry. I think that the composition of the board and making sure that these very clear procedures in place for how it acts independently will be really important for making sure that the body has credibility. I picked up on the corporate governance issue to allow me to go to the nuts and bolts of the bill, but as a slight aside, it is quite useful not at this evidence session but to get a small note on European food safety standards and traceability and welfare and that kind of thing, because I think given that we have just finished European elections it is quite good to see the positive role that the European Union can play in. I think that is important to put on the record, not one for today but maybe one for another day. The nuts and bolts of the bill, I put this in the language that I understand rather than necessarily the policy memorandum of the bill, but my understanding would be that if trading standards, the local authority found 100 pairs of fake Nike trainers, they could seize them, they could be destroyed, but if you find a batch of food, whether there has been food fraud, but the food is deemed to be safe but been passed off as something that it otherwise is not, sheriffs do not have the power to order the destruction of that food. In my understanding of the bill, this will bring in provision for those powers. That is quite a glaring omission that fraud and consumer goods that is non-food can be seized and destroyed but when it is food it cannot be. That is my understanding of the bill, can I just double check that? That is the power that is going to be given in relation to this bill and are all three of the witnesses content that the mechanisms within the bill is sufficient to achieve that aim. Yes, Sue. I think that what is really good about the bill is that it is extending a lot of the provisions that have only applied to food safety to what is termed as food information in the bill. As you say, that will include the power to seize products that are not labelled properly, that are misleading or fraudulent. There are also other measures such as introducing fixed penalty notices and compliance notices that have previously only been possible for food safety breaches rather than food standards breaches. We think that is really important. We would also like to see an additional power added, which is one that I was on as well for both of the Scudimaw reports, where we recommended that there was also the power for the body to require food industry testing and the disclosure of testing results as well to make sure that, when a situation does arise where there is a potential fraud, it is not just going to rely on everybody's good will, even though that may work in some circumstances, it is not always going to work. We think that is one area where it could be strengthened further. Do you mind if I ask a supplementary on that specific community or before the other two industries come in? If that is okay now, would the duty to disclose food industry testing, would that be a standard duty, would it be a duty that could be imposed by a sheriff that was dealing with an issue through the courts? How would you see that working? The problem that arose within horse meat was that the food standards agency did not have the power to enter many of the premises and did not have the power to actually require the food industry to do testing when it realised that there was a problem. They managed to get a voluntary agreement with the food industry to do more testing, so this would be for that kind of situation to make sure that when the food standard Scotland needed them to do the testing that it could do that. I would assume that if that was not then done, then that could be a criminal offence. Okay, that is very helpful. Sorry, gentlemen, I can cut you off there before you come in. Mr Welguest, Dr Welguest. Yes, thank you. The detail of this would really be for the lawyers as such in terms of the actual detail, but my understanding is very similar to Sue's understanding with this, that what is happening is that for food standards the same provisions as currently apply for food safety as such in the Food Safety Act will apply to standard as well. My slight doubt with this, and this might need to be checked, is about the destruction of the food. Food certainly can be seized and there are various other regulatory elements that go into standards, but I am just not quite sure. I was trying to look there to see whether it was there, but at that point perhaps there needs to be checked with the lawyers as to whether there is destruction involved with this. Could I just mention one other thing? The standard stuff is really very important in terms of the additional regulatory arrangements that exist with this, and some of it is enabling powers rather than actual powers itself, so it will be for decision how those powers will actually be implemented in consultations, et cetera, and FSS will be responsible for that. So it is not the end of the story in terms of the detail of how this will work, it will really come down to some of the secondary legislation that will be involved that will therefore take up those powers as such. The other important thing, and Sue mentioned it, is of course ensuring authenticity and standards is essentially an international type thing, or it can be an international type thing. So some of the legislation here will not pick that up and cannot pick that up because it needs to be carried on at an international level, an EU level, or whatever, to ensure that very long chains, processing chains, are properly regulated. That is a key feature that follows from the horsemeat, and indeed we are waiting to see a little bit about how Governments will actually respond to reports, et cetera, that are out skewed and worn earlier, and all of that, to see how those things might be taken forward. That is a very important element, given how some of the stuff in horsemeat has demonstrated how international some of these problems actually are. That is helpful. Mr Donaldson, did you have anything to add in relation to that? Nothing to add to that. That is covered in comprehension. Can I just clarify then, because I was looking at the policy memorandum that I was looking at, is there examples then of where the food information, where the labelling of whatever has been wrong, where authorities have stepped in, they have seized the food, that they have wished to make sure that that food was not put back in, if you like, to the consumer food chain, even though it is safe just wrong food information or food fraud, but it then still re-enters the world of the consumer? Because from reading the policy memorandum, it would suggest that that is a possibility, as the law currently stands for sheriffs don't have the power to keep the food. If they seize the food, it is perfectly safe, it is not breaking any laws other than food information or food fraud, it has to be returned. Is that the current situation? That is what the policy memorandum was suggesting, because I found that quite staggering. I just want to be clear on my head that that is the situation. That is my understanding of the position that there was a gap in the legislation as such. I am not a lawyer as such, and I haven't looked in the great detail of this, but that is my understanding. The detail would need to be checked with the lawyers to be clear, but I am pretty sure that the memorandum will have been produced by lawyers, and that will be the position, but that is my understanding. In terms of the process of the nuts and bolts of the bill, what is contained within the bill is the duty to report breaches of food standards or food information that does not exist at the moment. I understand that if you ran a small business and sought to enter into an agreement to get some food produce and then realised that it was not legit, there was no duty on you to report that to the relevant authorities, and a good small business would walk away and deal with a legitimate supplier, but there was no compelling of that business. That compulsion will now be contained within the bill. It will be an offence not to report that. Is that something that all three of you are content and are you content with the provisions within the bill in relation to that? Yes, we were really pleased that that was in the bill. It makes it clear that standards are a really important issue. It came out within Scudamore, but it is something that Eliot's interim report and horse meet has also highlighted, where he has expressed concern that there has been a culture within the industry globally to often turn a blind eye or people buying ingredients at prices that could not possibly be realistic. I think that it starts to change that culture and make it clear that fraudulent practices are completely unacceptable. Does anyone have anything to add in relation to that specific matter? We have a couple of supplementaries. If you want to take them first, I have Richard Wales. Is that supplementary on this, Richard? No, that is my question. You have a supplementary? Yes. One of the things that was suggested to us yesterday was that the ability to find somebody or punish them for fraud was really quite inadequate related to the profits that were being made by criminal activity. I wonder whether you feel that the bill has the scope or the regulations may have the scope to ensure adequate punishment of criminal activity, where it is clearly highly profitable. This is something that has been debated at EU level, where the European Parliament has been considering the official controls regulation, and that is going to be finalised when the new commission and parliament come back in the autumn. The commission had proposed that the fine should be equivalent to the cost of the financial gain from the criminal activity, and the parliament has suggested that it should be actually double the financial gain from the criminal activity, which is something that we would support. We think that you need a whole range of enforcement tools, and so the fixed penalty notices will help the requirement to disclose cases of fraud, but ultimately you need that criminal route and you need tough penalties as well. I think it needs to be ensured that as I understand it, that would obviously be reflected in the bill, but it is really important that there is that provision within it. Yes, I have nothing very much more to add to that. I think that it is generally recognised that the financial penalties that exist in this area are very much less than those that exist for contraventions outside the food area, where they really can be punitive. I think that what is happening, as Sue has said, is that this is being looked at at the EU level to see what kind of level of penalties are appropriate in this instance, and then I would expect that things would change depending on arrangements or decisions within the EU. I am pleased that we are trying to ascertain the nuts and bolts of the general support or concerns that you may have, and I am glad that we are supporting relations to the duty to report non-compliance. The terminology in the bill is for food business operators. Are you content with the scope of that? I am wondering if there are others who could be aware of non-compliance who should have a duty to report. I have to say many years ago that I was a kitchen porter in a hotel earning peanuts quite frankly. I would not have wanted to put minimum wage staff in catering kitchens who were in an invidious situation to have a duty to report. There is a balance to be struck of course, but I am just wondering whether or not food business operator is clearly defined or whether it should be widened out. I am not sure that I necessarily agree that it should be widened out, but I think that it is an important question to ask in relation to that. Are we clear what we mean by a food business operator and should the scope of that be widened out in terms of a duty to report? Mr Donaldson, do you see a light on? Oh, right. I am not sure I am the best person to answer, but certainly from a food business operator point of view it is appropriate that they take responsibility for their actions. I do not think that anybody would have any disagreement whatsoever with that. In terms of science, just slightly impinging on the last question, there are different tools in the box, and we are the major fraud, then some of the levels mentioned in here would be less than adequate. I think that that is what Sue is saying is being considered as a wider EU level at the moment. Dr Wilguson, then Sue Davis. Yes, just to say that food business operator is actually a well-defined term in legislation as such, and in fact it is the responsibility of the food business operator to ensure safe food and food of a standard. That is where the responsibility lies. To be honest, I did not really think further than that in terms of who else might be involved, but there are also ideas for whistleblowing and so on. This is more the kind of issues that would be in a code of practice or would be a standard approach to things as to how things would be handled. There are plenty of cases of secure phone lines, etc. It is the kind of thing that I would expect FSS to look at. I think that FSA is looking at that now in terms of whistleblowing, etc., which I think is the issue that you are referring to. I think that it would be dangerous to start changing that kind of definition because it is central to the way that the legislation actually works. I think that it is a good point, but it is worth checking that there is not anybody important that it is excluded. With the horse meat incident, there are all these brokers that suddenly emerge that people were not necessarily aware of before. To make sure that there are different intermediaries that are covered in the definition of food business operators. As Jim was saying, it will also be really important that the new body has really effective ways of gathering intelligence more generally. This is something that Scudamore recommended in terms of getting better at that economic analysis. Horse meat was obviously missed, but somebody should have been working out that horse was very similar to beef and that it was much cheaper than beef, and therefore there was the potential for substitution. I know that it is very difficult, but trying to anticipate where there are other areas that criminals are likely to be making gains, as well as looking at wider surveillance. It is often a difficult issue, but how you get the more informal intelligence from the food industry, where there might be rumours of particular types of fraud taking place? That is helpful. I will come back in later on when my colleagues wish to get in just now. Richard Simpson. The Scottish Food Advisory Committee, at the moment, exists and puts an input to the UK FSA. Will the Scottish Food Advisory Committee continue after the creation of the new body? The simple answer to that is no, it won't. It ceases at the time of besting day of the new body. Arrangements will therefore cease as such. Those were arrangements to allow a Scottish input to be put into the UK decisions on food safety, and that will wholly be taken over by FSS following besting day. So what is at the moment the difference between the food standards agency in Scotland and it realises a subsection of the old food standards agency UK? So you needed the separate body to make that input? The new FSS will have that opportunity to make that input? Yes. It is just worth saying that the food standards agency Scotland is simply the Scottish executive end of the FSA as such. All its line management and all I think comes from the centre headquarters of FSA. What will happen following besting day is that it will be an entirely separate body and it will be self-contained as such. The arrangements that we have had hither to have been simply arrangements to look after Scottish interests within a UK setting. So just to clarify that, in terms of the evidential base for the new FSS, I mean they presumably will take evidence from Rowett, from the Cambridge unit, from the Norwich unit and elsewhere, but how can we ensure that the evidence that they're going to take and is going to be put in will in fact be compiled in a way that will be suitable? It's all about relationships, I mean will we still have access to Norwich and Cambridge because I understand they're complementary to the Rowett. Are these the only bodies? No, no. This is a very fundamental point. In fact, there are a number of scientific advisory committees which are UK-based but which also report to Scottish and Welsh and Northern Irish ministers and they cover the whole gamut of possible food safety or indeed beyond food as well, but some of them are solely food. Some of them have a food remit but other remits as well. They are standard scientific advisory committees and they are charged with providing scientific advice, the best scientific advice that they can get, into the food standards agency. When issues arise that require scientific advice as such frequently, they will provide the scientific advice into that. For example, there's an advisory committee on the microbiological safety of food. They've been very heavily involved in an issue recently to do with raw milk sales and giving advice on that. There are nine or ten of those committees and it's really important that the FSS has got access to that advice and can ask questions within that forum and that's very much in memorandums of understanding territory and one of the issues that will be, I'm assuming, worked up now in terms of ready for vesting day and will need to be ready to go then so that when there's an issue in Scotland that requires scientific advice, that advice is made available to the FSS. That's not to say that there shouldn't also be co-ordination with the very considerable research capabilities in Scotland itself. A number of those, of course, already feed into those scientific advisory committees but you could see a role for something separate happening in Scotland as well in terms of scientific advice and indeed one of the issues that SFAC looked at quite closely was how that might work for Scotland with the FSS giving advice to the new body as such and there are issues, for example, like having a chief scientist responsible for the science, how bodies like the rhowet and various other research bodies around Scotland would actually link into that and these are crucial issues because food safety relies crucially on having the correct science, the best science available to take decisions. I didn't have much to add, actually, was just to say I think that there are the existing scientific committees and so it would be really important that there's a clear agreement about how that's going to operate to make sure that they are going to pick up Scottish specific issues and it may be that the new food body will have to set up its own committees on particular issues and then we would want it to work in the same way that the FSA has where the FSA makes sure that they meet in public, you know, the strict criteria around independence and I think particularly when we're in a situation now where a lot of universities are relying on food industry funding for the research that they do, we need to make sure that there isn't going to be any, well the independence of the research isn't going to be compromised or there's no any perception that its independence will be compromised as well. Thank you very much. We're doing this bill at quite a difficult time in the sense that, you know, after September the 18th we may be independent and I just wonder whether there's, you know, the bill would have to be adjusted even further or what would happen in the event of independence as to how we would link to these quite integrated systems at the present time. I mean it's a it's a it's a nice question, shall we say, with this, a very important question as such. I mean it would be really quite a difficult process and costly process to duplicate. I think we're talking about 12 or 15 committees as such of key experts who who sit and pronounce on a range right across the range of scientific involvement in terms of duplicating that. That's why I think it's important to latch into that from FSS. Now following September I don't know what arrangements might apply but I would have thought it was important to try to get single scientific advice on issues and not have competing advice as such with this and that some sort of accommodation, I mean it's all been publicly funded that advice anyway and it's all in the public domain as such. I think it would need to be considered how that would be maintained, shall we say, and how that advice was obtained after a yes vote in September for example. That would be quite an important issue because there are some quite big, excuse me, scientific issues there. If you think of BSE for example and that kind of issue now, we hope we don't have that again, but you need good scientific advice to tackle that kind of issue and you need it for other things as well actually and so that's essential that that happens. I might just say one other thing about that. With the machinery of government changes that occurred in 2010, the important advisory committee on nutrition, scientific advisory committee on nutrition, SACN, actually became part of the health department of health down south and has now moved on to health protection England, I think it is. Public health England, I got that wrong. It does not meet in public, it's internal and there may be an issue about doing something specific in Scotland about the scientific advisory committee on nutrition. That really boils down to just how the new body would want to work with that, the access that's available, but given how important and how significant nutrition is likely to be for this new body, there is a question to be asked about that. Those are not things specifically for provisions for the bill as such, they are things for provision as to how the new body will actually work and it will be for memorandum of understanding. I just wanted to add to that as well. A lot of advice now comes from the European Food Safety Authority and that's the basis of a lot of the EU legislation and approvals of particular types of products or setting safe levels for chemical contaminants whatever. So it would be important that there's a close relationship and obviously that would change depending on what happens in September but also relationships with other bodies like World Health Organization as well are going to be important. Dorsa is an important point and it's one that's going to require real consideration to make sure that we can find the best way forward that enhances what the Food Standards Scotland role will be. I'm going to take on just a wee bit because the response from the response to consultation and call for evidence, you know, were raising the whole issue about the body being properly resourced and yesterday we had some issues about the current situation and the respect about September 18 about the science and how that can be named but I think that's been covered. The direction and funding of research and who would be deciding these priorities was a bit of an issue that was raised about how the relationships with throughout and others for instance, how we'd get a balance there. Have we got any views on that in terms of the resource? I think that the budget they described yesterday was about £11 million. They were currently negotiating back from the UK body around £5 million so we're talking about this new body that was having an influence in this whole area. The focus for all of this area is on the budget of about £16 million. Do you have any comments? Dr Wellwood? Yes. I think that the whole area of research and access to research and research commissioning, et cetera, will need to be looked at very carefully by the new body. I think that we in SFAC have done a little bit of work on this in preparation to give to those who will be involved in constructing the new arrangements. There will need to be some mechanism for linking in to Scottish-based scientific advice as such. That will need to be done fairly carefully if access to the main scientific advisory committees continues because you would not want competing advice as such. I see a role for that and setting up perhaps a separate committee in Scotland. I notice, for example, that the bill allows for separate committees being constructed. I think that that's right because there are other areas where that might be important as well with this. When it comes to funding, the amount of money available, research funding available to the FSA in Scotland, is very modest compared with the requirement for scientific advice. Collaboration and dealing with others, not least the Scottish Government itself in terms of the money that it spends on other bodies, not just Scottish Government but the scientific research bodies across the UK. Access to that money and collaboration with that will be fundamental in getting answers to some of the questions that are raised. In terms of a general issue on budgets, I think that the budget that has been set in the documentation that you have looks to me to be on the low side with my personal opinion with this. The one issue that I would mention to you on this, however, is that this body is going to be part of the Scottish Administration, and therefore it will be part of the process of allocation of funding in government going forward. If there is a need for more resources, then bids go in through that route with this. That is my general view. The issue of how the future science provision to the FSA in my view is crucial, and the new body needs to work hard to make sure that the right memoranda is around the right linkages and collaboration are made so that the right scientific advice and research comes forward. Just to add in terms of the research budget, it may look small. If I could say that I was a board member of Quality Meets Scotland, it had a research budget of something like £300,000, but it actually attracted additional funding. Whether that was from the Scottish Government, other European sources, I think that there are plenty of mechanisms to actually build on the core funding and be led by where the scientific needs are and secure funding in doing these particular routes. I think that collaboration will be important where it is possible. In many areas, you are only going to have a limited number of experts in which to be drawing on. As I mentioned before, making sure that the source of the funding is really clear, particularly when you are getting into more controversial areas like new food technologies where you need to make sure that you have relying on independent research. The scientific committee structure in terms of how you then assess the scientific evidence works well, where you get a mix of people from multidisciplinary backgrounds who are weighing up what the evidence says and then providing advice. It is obviously the existing Food Standards Agency committees, as Jim was saying, but I think that where there are new areas, it is important to follow that model and look at how you can make sure that you have bringing together a real mix of people to get the best outcome. Do we know? You are interested in Mr Donaldson and, indeed, to Dr Wellgroose's point that there are individual budgets in the different compartments, if you like, of different departments. Have we any idea about what the global figure is? We have mentioned the health service and looking at some of this in the light of obesity and they are spending some money in research. The standards agency is also... Others are... Is there a global figure that probably could be used more effectively if we were focusing on significant problems in Scotland? Yes, Dr Wellgroose? I do not have a figure and I am not sure whether that exists somewhere. It may well exist somewhere, but I can tell you, for example, there is a huge programme going on at the moment on E.coli. E.coli is a very important organism for Scotland. We tend to have a much larger incidence in terms of shedding of E.coli from cattle than elsewhere in the world, actually, certainly in the UK. There is a big programme and a lot of Scottish Government money in that. It is not just FSA money, but a lot of Scottish Government money. There may be research council money in that also as a particular thing. I would envisage in the future looking at things and trying to bring together collaborations to look at issues that are very important for Scotland. When you could envisage, for example, that kind of thing has been important for the shellfish industry, very important for Scotland and perhaps for some other areas as well, but that boils down to how food standards Scotland would take that agenda forward as such. The question was not just the sum of money it would be available, but the question about the independence of that research. There were some general concerns raised about that. Do you have any comment on that? That would be a perfectly sensible comment. I think it just underlines the importance of FSS being independent and transparent, and funding sources should be very clear. I do not think that anybody would have an issue with that. I am sorry for coming so often with this, but there is one of the committees that is on a UK basis as a general advisory committee on science. That is a new development—well, new over the last sort of five or six years, I think. It looks at issues to do with the arrangements of science as such. We will look at the use of industry-led data and have done some work on that kind of thing. I am not aware of it having done something to do with access to funds through industry, but in other words, it does quite an important procedural role in terms of how those kinds of issues would work across the scientific advisory committees and across the research establishments. I think that role is actually quite important for addressing the very question that you raised about industry money coming in in certain areas and the use of industry data as well, which is another issue. Who would decide the priority in the budget? Would it be that bored? Would it be the influence of government? What has tended to happen is that the general advisory committee on science has produced guidelines or procedures to use in particular areas. The one that I remember is the use of data from other industry sources and how that can be handled, best handled in research, so that it seems to be independent and objective, etc. Is there, as you all satisfied, that the terms of the bill would cover any and ensure independence? Would that be the memorandum? I think that a lot of that is left to the next stage to be sorted out through some of the memorandum. That is why I think that the bill needs to be more explicit around some of the issues such as the make-up of the board and avoiding conflicts of interest, although there will be more general requirements around ethics in public life or whatever. The more the bill can be explicit about those kinds of issues, the better. As we found with the Food Standards Agency and the Food Standards Act, some of the things that are left a little bit ambiguous, as things change and priorities change, they can easily be weakened in 90 years. Do you have a supplementary on this, Bob? Yes, just a very brief one. I thought that Dr Wilgers gave a really balanced answer on how you get the best scientific advice when necessary. Obviously, your answer is that you go to the preeminent person or committee that has that advice irrespective of whether it is Scotland, the rest of the UK or Europe when you do that. The more I heard about funding whether it was via the Scottish Government or whether it was via the UK research council or whether it was via Europe, I got slightly excited, if that is the right expression to use, about the opportunities that are out there. Could Food Standards Scotland be ahead of the curve in working with higher education institutions and others to scope out, say, for example, Horizon 2020 to the European £80 billion fund for research and innovation to identify areas of future research, and be a bit more proactive in identifying what the next big thing in terms of research is and getting funds for it and being progressive in relation to that. Would that be a rebit that you would see for Food Standards Scotland, because there is a lot of money swishing about it, particularly at a European-wide level, that I would want to make sure Scotland's research institutions can access and would Food Standards Scotland have a role in relation to doing some of that partnership work? I think it is really important that it is linked in and takes the opportunities where it can, because I think, as Jim was saying, there are lots of the same discussions happening in lots of different places. The European Commission had a workshop on tackling campylobacter a couple of weeks ago, for example, that campylobacter is the main type of food poisoning still, and the Food Standards Agency is having a workshop about that next week. I think some of these things, where you have the same experts looking at different issues, it is important to work together. In one of the initial consultations about the new food body, it was asked whether FSS should have a role in co-ordinating all food research. We were a bit concerned about that, because quite rightly a lot of the stuff that comes out of Horizon 2020 will be about agricultural promotion, about food industry promotion, about developing new types of products, which is important, but is not core to the work that FSS does. I think that it is important to make that distinction, so it takes the opportunities where it can, but it does not get distracted or compromised by going into different areas. It is really just to say yes in answer to the question that you posed. I do think that FSS could have a role in leading the curve, so to speak, on certain issues. I think that it boils down to how they work, and it is not something for the legislation, obviously, but the way things work. I think that they will also need to choose what the issues are, because they will not be able to do everything, obviously. However, I do think that there are certain things where they could seem to be promoting excellence in certain areas. Thank you very much. Eileen McLeod. I think that that was one of the questions that I was going to ask us about Horizon 2020, because I wanted to come back to our relationship with the European Union. I mean clearly, I know that it is not part and parcel with the bill, but given how important that relationship is with much of the legislation that comes from the EU around the food policy legislation, one of the first questions that I wanted to ask was how much EU legislation, what the percentage is, comes from the EU that the FSA is dealing with. I also wanted to ask the question about how do you see the new body developing or enhancing its relationship further with the EU institutions, not just with the commission and the council, but with the European Parliament, because the European Parliament has a very important role to play in this area, given that it is a co-legislator with the council and a lot of the food safety legislation. However, it was also the fact that there had been concerns that had been raised in the written evidence about ensuring that the new body has got an effective voice within an early stage of the EU policy making process and that we are able to put forward Scottish-specific concerns. Given the fact that the new body will have a new role to include diet and nutrition, how do you see that? Obviously, for the moment, the UK remains the key avenue of influence for Scotland to be able to have its sale in European legislation. I think that pretty much all food safety and food labelling legislation is decided at European level. There is a certain amount of flexibility about implementation around that, so there has been a big piece of food labelling legislation that was adopted a couple of years ago, the food information regulations. That covers everything from country of origin labelling to how meat products are labelled to nutrition labelling. The traffic light labelling scheme is a voluntary scheme that has been developed following that. There is also slight flexibility at the moment in that some national provisions around meat products and how things like how much meat you have in sausages and pies and things like that, whether some of those reserved descriptions are retained. There is a little bit of flexibility, but generally it is all at European level. However, as you said, I think that the real scope and where there is the most potential to be doing things differently is in the diet and health area, where some aspects of that are covered by EU policy initiatives, but they are more guidance rather than regulation. A lot of that is really about encouraging and incentivising industry to do things as well as regulating whether there is the potential. I think that the relationship with the EU bodies will be important. Again, I think that it is going to depend on what happens with the referendum. At the moment, the Food Standards Agency is the UK competent authority, so it is the Food Standards Agency that would be represented on FSA's advisory forum and on the standing committee on the food chain and animal health. It would be important to make sure through these memorandum of understanding, as exists already, that there is a clear role for FSS in putting into those positions, particularly where policy is being developed. However, I think that the more informal relationships will obviously be important. FSA does a lot of work on emerging risks, for example, so it is going to be important to make sure that this is a two-way flow of information into that, as far as that goes. I add to that that I agree entirely with that. More than 90 per cent of the legislation will be EU-based as such. However, in terms of the policy development, you will be aware of how the EU works as such. Ideas flow around Brussels and Luxembourg for a long time before they actually become legislation, and there is an opportunity to influence that in that process. When we put our consultation response into the consultation exercise earlier on, one of the issues that we identified was having surconments from the body in Scotland across the European institutions to be being on the spot is really important in terms of how those discussions go forward and influencing things. That would be our view that having a more or less formalised view of how surconments would work is very important in influencing. Just getting information back actually as to what is actually going on and where the key things are, it is very important for this body. Again, it is really just linking what Sue said about having the right memoranda of understanding and SLAs. The formal position currently is set out in memoranda already in terms of the UK represented in Brussels, and that is there. If we have a yes vote in September, no doubt that changes and it changes the ground rules with this, but currently we work within those, but there are certain informal channels that are very important with this. As I say, surconments seem to me to be very important for that information flow and influencing and this new body would have an opportunity to do that. The surconments are a very good idea, but it is also making sure that access to all the relevant advisory and scientific committees, not just at the UK level but also at the EU as well. The same point. Richard Lyle, I think, is the next and last question. Thank you very much. Interesting points you made, and this is not a question, just a comment back. You said that bugs no borders so at the end of the day, whatever happens in September, we shall work with, I am sure, the English and the Scottish agencies will work together with each other. Also, my other comment is that there are many universities who are doing research, food research out there, it just does not need to be the search done at the FSS. Anyway, I will come on to the question that I want to. It has not been covered by local authorities, environmental health officers and I identify that for 15 years I was a manager in a grocery shop and I was previously a councillor. I came across environmental health officers who were extremely committed in order to ensure food safety and to ensure that the public was safe. I would like to go into a comment on which was attributed to which. You may dispute this or you may agree with it. You noted that there was great variation across local authorities in the effective enforcement of food law and you argue that the FSS should oversee and co-ordinate this to ensure consistent standards. Did you say that or did you mean that? What would you suggest that the FSS or, with the greatest respect to environmental health officers, who I know have worked extremely well in order to safeguard the public in their local areas? Why did you suggest that they need to be more effective? Yes, we did say that and it was based on some research that we did that we published in January. We were conscious that local authority resources are under a lot of pressure. We looked at how local authorities were carrying out hygiene enforcement. We basically ranked local authorities across the UK taking into account the level of compliance that they were managing to achieve in high and medium-risk premises so that we did not look at the lower-risk ones, because we appreciated that they were having to prioritise. We also looked at how proactively they were trying to address that where there was non-compliance by looking at how many of their planned interventions had been achieved and whether or not they were getting around to rating new premises. That showed that there was real variation around the country. Westburn Dunbartonshire, for example, had around 50% compliance, whereas others such as Orkney Islands and North Lanarkshire had much higher levels of compliance. It was a similar picture across the whole of the UK. We appreciate that a lot of local authorities are doing a really good job, but it shows that there are real variations in the resources that they have available to them, but also the nature of the premises that they are dealing with. Some of the cities may have a big turnover of premises that are constantly opening and trying to keep on top of that can be difficult. We appreciate that it is something that is a local authority responsibility, but it seems that there is a need for it to take a more strategic look so that it is not just a bit of a lottery whether you are living in an area where your local authority has really cut back and is having difficulty getting around to doing food hygiene work or food standards work, or you live in one where they have 97% compliance rates, and we would see the new food body as having an important role in looking at which are the struggling local authorities and supporting them, looking at what types of food businesses there are and how you can match the expertise that you have within the environmental health profession to make sure that you have got better coverage across the country. In Scotland, where you have got 32 local authorities, there are already good mechanisms for co-ordinating them, so there is the Scottish Food Enforcement Liaison Committee, for example, but we would see that as being a more proactive role compared with what the Food Standards Agency has been doing up till now. Yes, it seems to me that this is a very important issue as well. I will keep saying that it is an important issue, but this one also with the linkage, because the vast majority of businesses that require regulation are regulated through local authorities as such. While it is their responsibility, there is a kind of overall responsibility to Scotland to ensure that there is compliance with the legislation as such, so it is important. I think that the key thing that Sue mentioned was the pressure on resources, and you can see that. I go around the job that I do currently, and I see environmental health departments, and I very much agree with you that there are very committed people in doing this, but I do also see cuts around and lots of change and churn and experience leaving with older people leaving, etc. That itself can have an effect on the operation of that regulatory activity. I think that the new food body will need to look at that very carefully, the model that exists, and look at much more collaboration use of resources, etc. In collaboration with the local authorities, it is back to the same kind of issue that I mentioned earlier with nutrition. There is much more of a collaborative effort in terms of making sure that the right things are done at the right time. I think that it is still possible to do that under declining budgets, but it needs to be looked at very carefully. That is a key thing. I do not see that issue of declining budgets going away anytime soon, and so that needs to be looked at. I am involved a bit with looking at audits of local authority achievement of what they are doing in terms of compliance with the legislation, and it is clear that there is pressure in certain areas. I think that there is greater pressure on the food standard side because of the resources than there is on the environmental health side, but there is pressure on both sides, and that will need to be addressed by the new food body. I think that NHS Lothian mentioned surveillance. There is a lot of surveillance and inspection about food hygiene and so on, but NHS Lothian made the point that there is not any in terms of dietary surveillance what is in there, and that should be a role for the just to broaden that issue. Is that a function of the FSA already, and why is it not going to be? There is already quite good information available under various surveys that are done. They tend to be done on a UK basis, and Scotland sometimes augments the sample to get better information. That is, for example, the information that is used to look at the dietary targets on salt, fat and sugar. There is a fair amount of work. It is a very expensive survey work to do, but that is an area with responsibility for diets that Food Standards Scotland should look at going forward as to whether that information and the stuff that they get back on that is fit for purpose or whether more could be done in this area. It seems to me to be an important point as well. I thank you very much on behalf of the committee for the time that you have spent with us this morning and for the evidence that you have provided. Thank you very much indeed to spend at this point and set off for the next panel. We now move to agenda item number two and continue our NHS boards budget scrutiny. Today we are taking evidence from a number of special NHS boards, and I welcome on behalf of the committee Simon Belford, who is director of finance and business services NHS national services Scotland. Pamela McLaughlin, director of finance and logistics, the Scottish Ambulance Service and Maggie Waterston, director of finance and corporate services, healthcare improvement Scotland. Welcome to you all. In the interest of time now, we are going to move directly to questions, and our first question this morning is from Richard Simpson. I would like to open up by asking about planned efficiency savings. I know that there is not a target this year, although 3 per cent is understood to be the continuing target, but I noticed that healthcare improvement Scotland is saying that its planning efficiency savings of 5.6 per cent and the ambulance service of 4 per cent and national services 3 per cent. Can you give us some examples? In particular, I am really quite concerned about where the savings are being made in terms of workforce, that HIS is saying that 70 per cent of the savings will be through workforce planning. Given the demand for the services of health improvement Scotland and inspection and monitoring, I am slightly surprised that you will be able to make those savings. I wonder if you could give us some examples on how you are going to do that, which are cash savings and which are design savings. For healthcare improvement Scotland, we have obviously created our LDP, our local delivery plan for this year. That has been resourced. We had a voluntary redundancy scheme two years ago and some of those savings are recurring savings that have come through the last couple of years and it has helped us to re-engineer the workforce that we have into reinvesting in scrutiny. For example, we have put an extra half a million pounds into scrutiny in the last two years in order to enable it to do its work. That would be a cash releasing efficiency saving, which has allowed us to focus more on delivery. This is a historic gain from redundancies that you have previously achieved and now it is coming through as a saving on your workforce budget, on your employee budget. I think also we need to look at the make-up of our budget. Some of our considerable proportion of our budget is in separate allocations from the Scottish Government and we are working with them to see what we can transfer into our baseline because some of that money pays for staffing as well. It is related to the non-recurring becoming recurring. I think that someone else may want to ask about that. Will I pick up from the ambience service perspective in terms of our efficiency savings? You are absolutely correct. We have to produce 4.1 per cent of efficiency. 3 per cent of that this year, 1415, will be cash with 1.1 per cent being productivity gains. The ambience service has historically achieved in excess of 3 per cent cash release and efficiency savings over the last few years totaling something in the region of about 20.1 million over the last three years. We have been very successful from the fact that we tend to have work plans that go right across the organisation rather than giving individual targets to individual areas. One of our key work streams at the moment is around our scheduled care service, where we have a five-year plan to redesign that particular service. In redesigning that service, we are making it more efficient and more effective. There have been workforce savings emanating from that particular area, and we have achieved those through natural wastage in terms of people deciding to retire or move on to careers elsewhere predominantly within the ambience service. That is how we have been able to achieve those particular savings. We also have other work streams that are not workforce related, and I can highlight those if the committee so desires, but perhaps hand over to Simon to explain his particular efficiencies. The national services Scotland position is very similar to the ambulance service. The majority of our efficiency savings come from service productivity gains, so we are creating and launching and delivering new services and driving efficiencies out of the existing services. The minority of our efficiency games come from workforce savings. All of our savings are recurring, and I have been in this role for five years now. We have consistently delivered three to four to five percent savings each year in terms of cash releasing savings and have over delivered against our LDP target each year. In addition, along with Health Improvement Scotland and two other special health boards, we have actually returned cash to the Scottish Government for each of the last few years, and that will total the best part of 20 million by the time we get to next year. The single biggest thing we have probably done as an organisation is our property programme, our property consolidation and rationalisation programme, which over a 10-year period will save the best part of well over 40 million pounds. That has been the real driver. Clearly, you get to a point where you cannot continue to deliver incremental savings because you run out of properties to rationalise and consolidate, and we will hit that point over the next couple of years, I say, but that has been the cornerstone for our savings. I hope that answers your question. Can I ask a supplementary question? Specifically, the ambulance service, the thing about double manning, which has come up in the Parliament, the question of the ratio of paramedics to technician ambulance individuals has come up, and the question of passenger transport has come up. In those three areas, are you increasing and improving the double manning and ensuring that it is always double manning where it is relevant, and are you ensuring the non-paramedic ratios? Are those improving? In terms of the emergency side of the organisation, which we classify as unscheduled care, that is your specific question about paramedic technician ratio and single crewing. In those particular areas, yes, we have progressed well in terms of we do not intend to have planned single crewing. Unfortunately, there are some times when at very, very short notice we have to have resources that are single crewed, but that is less than 1 per cent. We have some resources that are deliberately single crewed. That is our paramedic response units, and those are the services that we will be targeting towards those patients that can safely and effectively remain at home and require diagnostics and treatment in their own home environment. In terms of a traditional double crewed ambulance, undoubtedly that is paramedic technician ratio. That is your question relating to that. We are endeavouring to have a 60 per cent paramedic 40 per cent technician ratio. We were supported by Scottish Government recently about two years ago in increasing the number of paramedic staff by 150. However, it takes time to train and educate staff to become paramedic level, so we are not quite at that 60-40 per cent ratio at present. However, during this financial year, we are endeavouring to get to that particular ratio because we need to make sure that it is the right skill mix that attend the patient. Sometimes that should be a paramedic technician, but other times it is other skill mixes. In terms of scheduled care, that is the area where you are describing as patient transport service. That does not have a particular skill mix there, but what we are doing through our patient needs assessment is ensuring that we ask the right questions of those people that require medical assistance on route to hospital or on return from hospital to make sure that, if they require, for example, the assistance of two trained individuals from the ambulance service, that is what they should get. In some instances, they may only require one trained individual, but that is really through our patient needs assessment that we ensure that we are getting the right resource to those particular patients. That is very helpful. Can I just ask one final question in this section? The efficiency savings, obviously, we get the reports annually of what has been achieved and what is targeted for next year, but really from what Maggie Watson was saying, quite a lot of it is actually over a number of years that you plan changes in service, you have redundancies or retirements which allow you to implement those service redesigns and the consequences are that you have savings subsequently. Should we not be actually looking at this in the longer term, and I suppose it feeds into what Simon Belfer was saying as well, that as these savings are achieved year on year on year, there are areas like estates where there is going to be a finite achievement, so it would be helpful in terms of forward budgeting if we had perhaps the opportunity to look at this over a three-year period rather than a one-year period, and I wonder if any of the witnesses have any comments on that. We are all required to submit at least a three-year plan every year in terms of our LDP, our service plan, our workforce plan, our financial plan, so the information is there. A number of boards, mine included, we actually look at five years anyway, and we kind of say, well, where do we want to be in five years time, and then actually track back the actions and activity that we need to take to now, because that tends to lead you down a slightly different route than just evolving from where you are. The information—certainly, Government officials have detailed savings information from every board for at least three years, and that should be available. Likewise, I would indicate to the committee that the Scottish Ambrine Service has a five-year plan in terms of our scheduled care service, so that is a key workstream that will progress currently in year 3. Also, as Simon has indicated, we are required to submit three-year financial plans. Some of the efficiency savings that we are identifying in 2014-15 will also continue in 2015-16 and 2017, whereas others will be completing. In terms of property, the Ambulance Service, as we have 150 locations right across Scotland, we have opportunities where we are trying where we possibly can to co-locate with other predominantly health boards, but if it is not possible in a particular area and we are required to be located in that particular area, we are also examining opportunities with the other emergency services, fire and police. That work has commenced this year, and it will be on-going for several years. It made really good progress initially with Dumfries and Galloway health board and Ayrshire and Arran health board. Not only will that be more efficient in terms of the public purse, but it also provides opportunities for staff to be co-located with other healthcare or emergency services staff. The efficiency and effectiveness that that brings and improvements that it can make to direct patient care cannot go without being said. From the healthcare improvement Scotland's point of view, if I can just put into context, we are just three years old and we have legacy organisations that we have had. We have had a bit of sorting out to do, if you like, to change our model to deliver our purpose. I think what's really important at this stage is to look at we've got a relatively stable strategic environment at the moment. We've got the 2020 vision, the quality strategy taking us to 2020. We've just relaunched or redone our own strategy, which takes us to 2020 and aligns itself very closely with the quality strategy in the 2020 division. We're looking to the longer term now to how we can deliver what we need to deliver, and we're looking at different ways of delivering that. So inspection may not just be inspection, it may be a comprehensive analysis of a board, and we'll be using different factors, so we won't just be going into a board and doing an inspection perhaps, but we'll be looking at what patients have to say, what public have to say, what staff have to say, perhaps what the ombudsman has to say. So we'll be in the round looking at a different way of delivering that, and working in collaboration with others in order to deliver what we have to deliver. That last bit is very welcome. Thank you very much indeed. Just on the efficiencies to get some detail about what that actually means, I mean, the health and improvement Scotland, I think, and know what it means now, to achieve 70 per cent of your savings through efficiencies in the work via the workplace. Does this mean that the workforce that you have needs to go and be replaced with a workforce that you need for the future? Is that the transition you're through? Because two years ago, when the committee was taking evidence for that, there was a big question about whether you had sufficient budget to do what you had. We lost a lot of institutional knowledge and spectres that were there, and I think we actually started really crouting or using contractors. Is that all in place or was that a temporary transitional period? I think you've touched on quite a lot of things that are still perhaps being finalised. A lot of our savings will be through vacancy management. We have quite a big churn in our workforce during the course of the year. Now that's largely because of the funding model that we have, which is we've got a baseline budget, but we also get separate allocations from government for things like the patient safety programme. So we can only recruit people or we have only been able to recruit people on a sort of fixed-term basis. Now that's all about change because we're discussing with Scottish Government about how to resource those particular programmes. So we're not expecting the same turnover. Last year we had a turnover of about 9 per cent, so we felt that the 70 per cent of our efficiency savings through this route is probably manageable. We obviously have to give a very close eye on it, and it may mean that for some corporate services posts, which are responsible if they become vacant, we might just delay recruiting for a month or two, or we'll look at every vacancy that comes up, we'll be looking at how can we do things differently, how can that then enable us to change the way we deliver? Yeah, it's not encouraging to hear that I had that jump because we also know to be fair, it's a young organisation, we also know that it's been asked to do increasing amounts of work, whether that be the children, prisons, you know, so it is a bit of a concern. I mean, I think some of these questions apply to the others, and so I would appreciate if you pick them up. The earmark funding then, in terms of our 70 per cent efficiency, just to help me understand it because I don't, earmark funding is provided for particular initiatives because you're directed by the Government anyway, so they're okay. So we're looking at a core funding that is there that we have got to create the efficiencies on because we're basically negotiating packages of money to deal with the recruitment crisis, to deal with additional responsibilities, say, to play a bigger role in inspection of acute services and clinical services for elderly care or something. Is that the way it works? So we've got this. Yes, efficiency savings will be on our baseline funding. So the funding that we then receive for, for example, the patient safety programme, that won't be subject to efficiencies. So the money we receive from the Government will be spent on the exact amount of... As they specify. Yeah. When it comes to resourcing ourselves for going forward, I mean, we've resourced ourselves up to the local delivery plan, which has been agreed. Clearly, we get ad hoc requests during the year from the Government, or there might be some pieces of work that we decide we want to concentrate on, and we would look to the service to help us to resource that. I think it's really important that what we do is in collaboration with the service. In the past, we have been able to use experts out in the territorial health boards to assist us, and I think that there's a really important philosophical point here in that if we are a central body, we have to be as lean as is responsible, really resourced as is responsible, so that we can deliver real value and free up funding to go to patients. Yeah. I don't know when I've lost it or not, but the final point to that, I mean, the question to that is that you raised earlier. Do you feel that you need a bit more flexibility so you can use somebody... I think you referred to something earlier where you were discussing with the Government where you could use some of these fixed funds to deal with some of the core issues. We've got earmarked funds that you may not be spending at this particular time, that if you had flexibility, you could use elsewhere in the organisation. We would still intend to use those for the purpose in which we receive the funding. We're discussing with Scottish Government just now about having that funding put into our being made earmarked or put into our baseline, so then it potentially could give us more flexibility. Again, I'll come to you, Simon, about just pursuing this, this we've won because I think they apply to you all. How do you plan your workforce and five years ahead when we've got a funding stream that is created that you've just described and the workforce for the future not knowing what a Government, irrespective of what Government, is going to ask you to do in the next five years? Where's the plan and the control of this? We can do that because we understand what our purpose is and because we set our own direction largely. We have a healthcare improvement Scotland to have some ministerial direction and some legislative responsibilities, but we can plan those in. I think that goes back to my point about there being a reasonably stable strategic environment until 2020. Getting good values important, but we're dealing with health services here, so the quality is also important. People coming and going. Simon Bell for our panel. We have our 2020 vision, which is in line with Scottish Government's 2020 vision about delivering more care locally to people in their own homes. From that, we're currently planning what our workforce is going to look like by 2020 and we anticipate that it may look significantly different from how it looks. We have to go with that. We have to make certain assumptions and we can also do different types of scenario planning. That's currently what we're doing at the present moment. We need to make sure that we have got support from our territorial boards in order for us to deliver more care locally at home. It's important that we have effective professional to professional support networks and we're currently in different parts of Scotland putting that in place. I think that he can plan for the future irrespective of what the funding allocations are likely to be. You can do that through making certain assumptions and being able to build a workforce that is flexible and responsive to those particular changes within the external environment. I'm sure we'll come to your risk in those plans as well and accountability because if you're working on that in a certain way about who can be held to your account at the end of the day, I wonder. Simon Belford. I mean workforce planning is an interesting one. I've just come back on the earmarked funding bit. Whilst the strict definition of the efficiency savings applies to the baseline, clearly if you have earmarked funding that continues at a flat rate for several years, the costs of delivering those services may not remain flat. So in order to live within the means of those earmarked funds, there are often efficiencies that one has to make. That's just all the world. I think it's interesting that he says we're in a stable strategic environment from an NSS perspective. I think it's a little different. As you know, we had the public services format part a little while ago and we're now in the joint working book, kind of the only board with its own section, around saying we can and are expected and are willing to operate outside of health. Now clearly we know there is health and social care integration. There is an awful lot of activity going on around shared services and sharing between health, local authorities and other public sector bodies. So for us, there's real clarity about our baseline bit in terms of the services we've provided within the health service. For us, there's quite significant uncertainty as to the scale and timing of other requirements that may be placed upon us. And as an organisation, some of that is relatively easy to create flexibility. So if we take IT for example, there is a ready market out there for flexible resource to help you kind of scale up and scale down IT activity. We just run the swan program, for example. When you get into other areas around things like data integration and how that might all work, there isn't necessarily a ready market of really qualified people out there with the right values and perspectives, et cetera. So for us, we are trying to plan five years ahead, but in some areas of our activity, it's harder. In some areas it's relatively straightforward. We believe we're involved in all the right governance groups and all the right conversations, but I suspect only time will tell whether we've managed to get that balance of efficiencies and not having people and resources we don't need versus effectiveness to actually be able to deliver when we're required, whether we've actually got that right or not. We think we're doing a decent job, but I'm not going to sit here and say that I know for sure. Bob Doris. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, convener. I think it's a really, really important line of question that you're pursuing. Maggie Warterson, did you say that the staff turnover, if you include core staff and staff on fixed-term contracts, was 9 per cent? It was last year, yes. I think it would be quite helpful to know, and if you don't have it just now, fine. It would be good for you to go to the committee to know what the turnover is, if you like, on your core staff, as opposed to—because 9 per cent could be a bit misleading, because if you employ someone on a two-year—if you employ 50 people on a two-year contract with a specific piece of work, that's a little bit different from core staff turnover. Can you give me an idea of how you account for both those two things? Could I come back to you on that one? I don't have that. Right. I would have concerned, convener. Can you describe your core as to your contracted? Are the contractors inspectors? No, the scrutiny and inspection is predominantly core staff. I think for all three witnesses that would be really helpful. I'm suspecting you might now tell me what you think a healthy turnover would be of core staff to allow you that flexibility to redesign service without having to make compulsory redundancies and give you that scope and what you would consider to be a danger of the wrong expression, not ideal for the management of the organisation, because 9 per cent would seem too high, but I suspect it will be a lot lower than that. It will be a lot lower than that for us. I think one of the key things in our demographic, if you like, of our workforce, is that we've got approximately 10 per cent of our workforce is 55 or over. That's an area that we're looking at that's probably very, very experienced. Heading for retirement, we need to keep that experience in the organisation. They may be willing, perhaps, to go reduce their hours, so that would certainly save us some money and keep the experience in the organisation. I think there's some engineering to be done around the demographic of the workforce. On the ambience service, our staff are our core staff. We're not in the same situation as Healthcare Improvement Scotland. Our turnover is 5.3 per cent last year. Again, likewise, when we've looked at the demographics of our current workforce, 25 per cent of our workforce is aged over 50. Over the next few years, we are going to experience a significant amount of turnover. Historically, people have tended to enter the ambience service, sometimes working in our scheduled care service, and then they're able to progress their careers through and into unscheduled care. However, our more recent workforce, we're seeing a lot of people that are coming out of university well qualified with degrees, but not degrees in paramedsin. They are now coming into our workforce. Our workforce of the future will require different types of specialist skills that the ambience service will be able to provide some of that, but we're also looking to the university sector to provide some of that education. We currently have a partnership with Glasgow Caledonian University that undertakes our undergraduate training, and we're looking to universities for some of the postgraduate qualifications as well. You've seen me having to ask another question about whether you're planning for that ageing workforce, but you clearly are, so that's really reassuring, although Mr Belford wants to add anything to it. I haven't got any relation to hand, but I'll look at it too. Okay. The other thing I wanted to ask, convener, was, I'm just wondering if there's an overlap in the different terminologies that we're using, so could, nilusid ringfence funding, it's not ringfence funding, but earmark funding, earmark funding also being non-recurring funding, is there an overlap? Can they be one in the same thing, can it be the same pound? There could be different funding. We sometimes get earmark funding, which is for specific work streams, which could be maybe not just one year non-recurring, but they could be for two or three years. For example, within the ambulance service, we've just taken on specialist retrieval services for Scotland, for both adult neonatal and pediatric. That is earmarked to ensure that we utilise that for that intended purpose and to enable that service to be fully established as one and taken forward. That will be recurrent though, it will stay within our baseline because we intend to look after that service well for the next few years. But in terms of another type of ringfence or earmark funding, it's for the Commonwealth Games, which we're receiving this financial year. Now obviously that's just for one year, although we did have some planning funding for two years previously, but once the Commonwealth Games is completed successfully, then that funding stream ceases. I'm just checking that there is an overlap because I'm sure that you can be told that this is earmarked funding, it's a two-year programme, you must use the money for that, therefore it's non-recurring after two years, it's only going to last for two years and it's earmarked for that purpose. I take it that in general terms there will be overlap. I don't want to dwell on the points, I want to be clear on my head, is there an overlap between those two things? When we're dealing with the health finance department, we are all very clear, there are sort of three categories of funding, there's baseline funding, there's earmark funding and there are additional allocations. Now the baseline funding recurs from year to year, there will be an annual uplift that's decided by others for territories and for special health boards, and we can talk about that if you'd like to. Earmark funding tends to be more slightly longer terminated, I have certainty this year that earmark funds that have been said will be provided for two or three or four years will recur. The final area around additional allocations, which is more about how much we're talking about in commonwealth games, is stuff that actually if that particular director doesn't have money next year that programme won't continue. Now some of that can be a little unrealistic, so for example we've had a number of discussions with a various parts of health director around HPV, because when that was first launched they said well here are some additional allocations, our view was well in order to get the staff, which is about the point Maggie made, but also you're then really asking us to start providing a long term service, you can't then suddenly start the HPV thing and change your minds off to you, you have to carry on at least to monitor it. So that we've been involved quite extensively in trying to transfer money from additional allocations into baseline where it's appropriate. Now clearly that gives me an efficiency ask because I need to find 3% on that money, but actually in terms of being able to find permanent staff to get the right IT contracts in place it's really quite important to have the money in the right buckets. So we've taken probably 70% of our additional allocations out over the last few years either because the programmes are finished or because we've moved it across the baseline. Sorry it's a long answer. I think it's really important and I'm just maybe it's my lack of understanding rather than a lack of clarity and I apologise for that, but am I right to say, Ms Waterson was talking about, when earmark funding which okay could be recurring for a number of years but not not infinitum obviously when it's better to rather than have staff in fixed-term contracts but to make them permanent members of staff and the discussions you have with government is when that should become the core in the baseline funding and it's the how much you can transfer over on an annual basis is there transferring the money over but on a recurring basis so it'll be it'll be following the model that Simon just described. So we've we've got a number of allocations I mean last year we had about 40 separate allocations of funding which in itself turns into a bit of a cottage industry in the finance team of sort of you know chasing it finding it allocating you know so that's not sustainable for us or for the Scottish government so you know we're working closely with them you know to transfer that across and it's an efficiency to be had immediately in terms of of admin support. So just this is my final question can we know. So with I if I was to paint a picture of going those 40 different individual pieces of funding recurring for a length of time earmarked fine we get all that and we go well actually we can track some of those and go. They've been kicking about for quite a long time it would make sense to bundle some of those together and transfer it into the core baseline budget and those are the discussions you're having with government and that gives greater stability for staff members it gives them a career pathway and there's an efficiency saving. I don't know if it works in your mind but I'm trying to be clear in my head. That's exactly and what we would do because we would have permanent staff we would be able to engineer exactly the type of staff that we want and the flexibility that we want and we would have to be looking for efficiencies within all of that and that would be to do with our processes it would be to do with our different areas of our organisation working much more closely together so that we're not just all sitting in separate departments you know there's lots of ways we can do that we've got you know we would have to lean our processes going forward but I'm not saying it's easy I'm not saying it's a it's a very simple solution to things I mean it is difficult but it's difficult for a lot of people to manage budgets. I think the final question I would ask a winner is just almost like a procedural one when do you think this committee or whoever we sit in this committee this time next year or in two years time or in three years time when would it be relevant to ask the question and go you said there was work on going in relation to all these different pots of cash for earmark funding can you give me an update how much of that is now in baseline funding what does that mean in staff terms how many individual members of staff are now part of the the core staff team and have that clear pathway and have that stability when do you think that that I know it's an ongoing process but if a baseline was today if you like in terms of that process when do you think we should get an update on that to find out success I'm confident that negotiations with Scottish Government are going well they've got the same will as we have to make healthcare improvements Scotland's baseline more realistic and I would expect that for budgeting for next year we would be budgeting on a bigger baseline because we would have resolved these separate allocations by then. I think the thing I would say is is the health service it works in annual cycles so each each year you would be able to see absolute data and saying how much is in each pot but it is rather like a bath with a tap and a plug that as we sort out the stuff we know about today new new ideas new activity new projects new issues start coming in as new projects and it's that bit about trans when when is it a project when is it business as usual it's that transfer price but on an annual basis you'd absolutely get the data. Okay and Ms McLaughlin I mean Scottish Ambulance Service a bit of a different situation in relation to that. Yes sir our earmark funding is about 9.6 million as I've indicated 6.6 million of that is for specialist retrieval which is a service that we will continue to provide for the foreseeable future so it's relatively small in terms of our overall funding so we're not in a similar position to healthcare improvement Scotland. If you put a context of numbers on ours five years ago ours was over 100 million and it was 57 last year and it's 33 this year so we've made real inroads. Okay can I thank you for your patience and taking me through how all that works but I found it very helpful thank you. Can I take you back to non-recurrent funding in Scottish Ambulance Service provided examples of what their non-recurrent funding would be which was quite easy to follow can I ask the other two health boards to provide similar examples? Yes we have non-recurrent funding at the moment for for example adverse events we did a big piece of work last year looking at all of the health boards about their adverse events and we've created a framework that we're now implementing across the health service so people can learn from each other with their adverse events and that's about £300,000 in our non-baseline funding it's all non-recurring so it includes the patient safety programme which is just over a million pounds at the moment death certification we're busy moving to that we're going through that process and there's about a million pounds this year that we're expecting for that until it settles down until we've actually stabilised the process going forward it also includes some of the money for the Scottish Medicines Consortium for them to move to the new medicines review and we would expect that once again that's a new process that we're that we're developing and implementing so we'd expect that to be going to the baseline in due course so that those are probably the largest examples. Three examples from us the first would be AAA screening where the aortic aneurysm screening is new and whilst we sort of it's in that project phase it's there as a separate funding it's not on our baseline but hopefully over time like some of MAGA stuff that will transfer into into our core business. We've also been doing some project work developing tooth specific data data capture and data information were previously sort of dentists sort of the information's been on your mouth rather than the tooth level that's already delivering savings but it's still that project phase. Probably the third one I'd highlight is we do a lot of work through Health Facilities Scotland one of our operating teams around the whole asset in his states of the health service and the state of the state report is on the back of us having put in some software and then we're going back round doing further iterations of project work to keep refining keep digging into what's going on so there's elements of activity which is short term funded rather than being in our baseline so three quite different examples from us. Thank you for that seems to me that an awful lot of that will become baseline funding in the future how does that impact on your ability to plan for instance recruit staff because you've got non recurrent funding? Are you confident you are carrying out those pieces of work as efficiently as possible getting the right people for the jobs given you can only offer short term contracts at the moment? Does that impact on how would it not have been better to have this as part of your budget from day one? You have to take that decision as an organisation as to how much risk you're willing to take so in order to provide the service if somebody is simply not interested in working for our organisation on a fixed term contract but actually the service needs to be provided then we end up having to take the risk of employing someone permanently and seeing what happens at the end now depending on other conversations with government and other parties you know other health boards and other public sector bodies there may be things for that individual that team to do when the time comes it depends how transferable their skills are but it is it is a debate we won't for us there's no black and white rules as of its short term funding we get we get fixed contract people we're not that straightforward because in many instances we simply wouldn't be able to deliver the service to the required quality and time and other standards so we do take those risks and if i could just add from the ambience service perspective a lot of the if we know that the funding is non-recurrent and it's only for a defined period of time we tend to target that funding into education training research but where we require members of staff to be involved in projects so for example through the local unscheduled care project at the moment we're piloting in three areas of scotland community paramedics so yes we're taking staff from their current role on a secondment basis to work in those particular areas and i believe that secondments are a very valuable way of being able to develop staff and giving them opportunities to work in areas that they perhaps haven't previously worked in but then you're able to if you're required to if there's not if the funding source doesn't continue then you're able to place them back in that previous workplace for example a patient safety programme we've had we've had to take the risk as an organisation of of employing people on a permanent basis just to ensure the continuity of that when it comes to the new medicines review for example and death certification we've agreed amounts of Scottish government about what we're what we're expecting it to cost to recruit all of these people to deliver these pieces of work but what we will do in essence is we'll draw down that money as we spend it from Scottish government rather than them giving us you know in the case of the new medicines review they may not give us the 815 000 we'll draw that down as we spend it because with you know it's a plan about how we will spend that money and how we'll implement that process but there may be delays in that that it may be slightly more expensive so we would we would negotiate that with Scottish government as we go and once those processes are complete and they're resourced properly then that funding would go into our baseline and there would be permanent recruits. Can I just on a slightly different subject go back to efficiency savings and ask panel McLaughlin about the scheduled care efficiency savings you were intending to make? Yes as I've indicated that's a five-year project looking at a scheduled care which is planned transportation of people that require medical attention on route to hospital predominantly for outpatient appointments sometimes for oncology or renal dialysis but increasingly we're using that resource also for planned discharges to assist the territorial boards in making sure that they optimise their bed capacity and that may be a transfer from a one hospital setting to perhaps step down care or indeed nursing home care or back to a patient's own home and we've got various work streams ongoing there as indicated earlier the key to this is our patient needs assessment to ensure that we have a robust process in place to appropriately assess the individual people that require that type of medical assistance going on to our planning and how we plan the use of our resources and day control as well to make sure that we've got a flexible resource that can respond to the needs of the patient and also to assist the territorial health boards. I suppose that that concerns me because I suppose one of the biggest bug there I get from constituents in the islands and islands is the lack of provision for patient transport service I think which is what we're talking about disabled people who are not told until the day before of their appointment whether or not and most cases not going to be transported to hospital which means that they can't attend but neither on that timescale can their appointment be filled so it creates huge inefficiencies within clinics and hospitals because they have a no-show and also a great deal of distress to patients sometimes elderly and the like who can't make their own way. Is there any work on going to see how we can provide a reasonable service because I get this throughout my whole area about missed appointments from both patients and clinicians? Absolutely and that's why we're looking around our planning and our day control to ensure that situations as you describe do not happen we're also looking at our phone lines to make sure a lot of the demand that we're getting through our phone lines is for people to check whether or not their transportation is booked or not so we're doing work in that particular area to make sure that they they're just looking for the reassurance and that reassurance is there but as I'm sure you're aware especially in you know Highlands and Islands people there are a lot of people that require access to healthcare they don't have a medical requirement for that assistance and there it's working with the voluntary sector and other transport providers to ensure that there is a transport mechanism available for those people who only require transportation and not those that have a medical requirement on route to hospital and we're doing work specifically within the Highlands and Islands in respect of that moment. Given a large number of places have no public transport and there is a medical requirement for them to attend hospital surely we're building a two-tier system if there is no way that they can attend hospital other than via the patient transport service and that's absolutely why we're working with the voluntary sector and we provide a very valuable service predominantly in those particular areas to ensure that the person has door-to-door transportation and we're doing what we can to try and signpost and point people in those particular areas but the ambulance service has responsibility for those that require medical assistance on route to hospital. I'm aware the voluntary sector also help out with that especially disabled adapted many buses and the like but they're given very little notice as are most of the volunteer drivers as to when they're required I mean is there some better planning and where there is no voluntary capacity what is going to happen whose responsibility is it to make sure that people can access healthcare because that's actually what it's about. I mean I'm sure you'll be aware it's the health boards responsibility to ensure that people have access to their healthcare the ambulance service has a role to play in terms of those with you know medical requirements for example if they require oxygen etc and we're working collaboratively in different areas and we're looking at transport hubs game within stratified area stratified passenger transport agencies working quite closely with us in that particular area and we're also looking to see what can be done in the more remote parts where it absolutely take your point that there is not the public transport available in those particular areas or not the frequency of public transport that you would require now Richard Lyle. I actually had quite a number of questions in regard to efficiencies but I think most of them have been asked and I move on to your service development proposals basically noting that healthcare and you touched on it earlier healthcare improvement Scotland in regards to the SMC new medicines review extra money being spent national services of Scotland in regard to service increase for in regard to implants and cardiac conditions and also Scottish ambulance service would be quite interesting to to note what you intend to do in regards to urgent demand services and also investment from discharge from you touched on it slightly discharge from hospital and how you'll make a contribution in regard to discharge process and how this has changed compared to the past demand and strategy so i'd be interested to know what sort of service improvements you intend you know we've had all the bad news a minute ago can we have all the good news now is it specifically the new medicines review you want to discuss or is it just in general I just touched just you know basically touching on each of of the services to specifically what you intend to do yeah well with the new medicines review it's it's increasing transparency about the decision process and also opening the meetings about the decision making so meeting in public so that started and that started in at the beginning of may the whole system for end of life and orphan drugs is changing and that will come through towards the the autumn those decisions will have an impact by autumn and other other areas that we're developing are sort of for example scrutiny and assurance we're looking at a more collaborative model and with the health service so we're looking for boards perhaps we're looking to move to working with them them doing a little bit more self-evaluation perhaps and we can come in and assist them to improve it may be that we put we put improvement people in first rather than an inspection team it may be we put an inspection team in with and an improvement team follows the make them in together comprehensive assessment of care rather than just a pathway of care we're looking at you know empowering more people sort of the implementing or helping health boards implement the participation standard and also looking at assisting health boards with involving the public in health and social care integration so quite a lot of work to do and quite a lot of good news that you're going to be promoting over the next year and we're also looking at quality and you know the quality strategy and how can we help health boards improve their quality infrastructure so that's on the stocks as well. I think that the services you've talked about there and cochlear implants and congenital cardiac conditions are existing services that will sort of develop and grow I think the exciting stuff the good news piece is I think some of the new things the pancreatic islet cells work that we're doing and further for the patients with certain types of diabetes can be absolutely life changing and Scotland really is world leading on that area and that will that will start to take off. Two sort of ITs ones but very much enabling clinical activity one is around things like the emergency care summary and key information summary and the electronic palliative care summary both in terms of the information that's on there and that expanded but also the user base and expanding that into scheduled care as well I mean there are huge numbers of clinicians make you know very regular daily use of that information to provide significantly improved care and we I went to about the scott style stuff as well in the red blood cells the other area I think is is the Scottish wide area network where the contract has been signed and we're now starting that rollout phase of getting health local authorities education Scotland etc on to one common platform on to which you can then plug in things that are genuinely effective and efficient in terms of increasing access to service increasing the efficiency of service increasing increasing the resilience of service so it's one of the things that you know I think swans it's very much in the background but it's absolutely critical to the digital strategy that the government has. So all the efficiencies you've made as I say we've just discussed has enabled you to to look at to transform and to innovate and to promote other items which you know this committee is interested in which patients are quite rightly saying we want so all these other things are helping you to do this yes because I come on to Pamela in regards to the the Scottish Ambulance Service. I was just going to lead on from what Simon said there about data having access to patients record and patients medical information is vitally important for the ambulance service and the item that Simon indicated the key information summary and the emergency care summary are two ways that our staff that are working in the community they can access this information that will enable them to look after the patient and hopefully enable the patient to remain within their home or a homely setting and that's why we're developing community paramedics and over three pilot sites within Scotland at the moment we hope that. Where are those pilot sites? In borders Lanarkshire and in Shetland and on the basis that these are successful and we have to ensure that we appropriately evaluate them then we would hope that that be a model of care that we could roll out further across Scotland. We're very successful in western Isles with that particular model that's been ongoing for several years now. I really want to get a little bit of momentum behind that and then going on to the other areas that we're investing in in this particular financial year. The three RU or the three responder unit is very innovative and in fact it's world class where there's been a witness cardiac arrest instead of traditionally sending two resources a double crew we're now targeting that and sending three resources which could probably be a double crewed vehicle plus a single responder unit paramedic response unit or indeed it could even be first responders and what we've found is especially in the Lothian area where we piloted that return of spontaneous circulation which across the world is something in the region of between 15 and 20 percent we've been able to get that increased to 29 percent so we've seen the value of that so in this financial year we're investing in training and education and rolling that model out to Lanarkshire and Greater Glasgow. In terms of urgent demand historically we've predominantly used our accident and emergency resources to respond to this type of activity which tends to be inter-hospital transfers you know for example within the Lothian area from the Royal Infirmary Edinburgh to perhaps St John's or the Western also GPs contact the ambulance service and what we classify as a GP urgent which may be batched as one hour, two hour, three hour or four hour response time and urgent resources are the right resource to send to those particular cases but we don't have sufficient of them for the the type of demand so we're currently reconfiguring our services both in scheduled care and unscheduled care to make sure that we can increase the level of those type of resources so that we can ensure that our emergency resource is ring fenced and used for emergency activity our urgent resource is ring fenn and used for urgent activity and our scheduled care resource is used for scheduled care activity and through doing that and targeting it making sure that we send the right resource to the patient the patient will see an improved level of service for their particular condition. In finishing career can I compliment both Maggie Waterson and Simon Belford for the work that you do? Can I say to Pam Amor Glockham that I've had personal involvement previously with the Scottish ambulance service and I compliment the work that you do and also the service the excellent service that you do have you know very often you get criticised but I think you do a lot and I think the three items you know the three of you have come out with items which are very groundbreaking and very innovative and will contribute to the best I would suggest one of the best health services that we have in the world. Thank you. No, it's just been an interesting time all the past. No other questions. Can I thank you all for your attendance here and the evidence you provided. Thank you very much indeed for your valuable time. Thank you. We are now closed and previously agreed to go into private session.