Welcome everyone to the 28th meeting of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee in 2022. I have received no apologies for today's meeting. The first item on our agenda is to decide whether to take items 5 and 6 in private today, as well as take certain items in private as required our next meeting on 25 October. We agreed. The next item on our agenda today is consideration of a notification from Scottish ministers for consent to the following instruments the Food and Feed Miscellaneous Amendments Regulations 2022. This notification concerns provisions made to amend retained direct European Union law in various areas of food and feed law, including legislation on novel foods, food additives, enzymes and flavourings, genetically modified food and feed, feed additives, food contact materials and the hygiene of food stuffs. Under the protocol between the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government, the consent notification has been categorised as type 1, meaning that the Scottish Parliament's agreement is sought before the Scottish Government gives consent to the UK Government, making secondary legislation in devolved competence. Before I ask members for their views on this instrument, I want to point out how little time or no time we have been given for scrutiny of this. This was laid very late to the Scottish Government. The Scottish Government has written to us with a recommendation that we consent that it has no issues with it. However, there are still some outstanding issues. We, as a Parliament, our committee consent is asked for in situations like this, but to not have had any notice of this, not allowed any time for scrutiny of it, like we could have had a minister in front of us today, but we were not able to do that. We have flagged up that there is an outstanding consultation on this that is not due to report until today. There may be recommendations or issues that are thrown up by this consultation that we do not have sight of. We do not want to hold up anything that is fixing some of the issues that are with regard to everything that I have just mentioned. However, I have to put on record my severe dissatisfaction at this situation that we find ourselves in. I do not know if any other colleagues have any comments on that. I agree entirely that we have not had sufficient time to scrutinise and, given the information that we now know about the consultation that is outstanding, that makes the matter even worse. The minister even says in her own letter to the committee that she cannot share the draft S.I. It is not in the public domain yet, so it all seems very rushed. I really think that the committee has been put in a very difficult position. I agree with you and I agree with Evelyn. I know that paragraph 4 says that this is an issue of fixing deficiencies, inoperabilities and inconsistencies. I have so many things labelled on it. I know that there are policy issues and technical issues. I understand that consent is being sought. However, there are issues around reading what we have received about the do not eat pictogram and how that will work because there were issues that have not been resolved in the labelling of products. I am concerned about the fact that we have not had enough time to scrutinise the statutory instrument. I have a suggestion. Given the pressing nature of what we have in front of us and whether we consent for the reviews, I suggest that the committee writes a letter to the UK Government Department. We need to recognise that part of the reason is the death of the Queen, but we believe that it is up against the wire even before that. The point has to be made that we exist for a reason and that is to scrutinise what we are agreeing to. If we do not have time to do that, then it is just a tick-box exercise and I just do not think that we should be in that position. We also write to the Scottish Government as well, which will obviously regard our decision today, but we are also making that point to them as well. In that letter, could we also ask for an update on the outstanding consultation that is coming forward and on the point that you made about the fact that we probably should have seen this earlier? That is even more concerning given the closing date of the consultation that we have been advised of. It would mean that, when we were considering the SSI, there could have been several weeks where a consultation was still live when we were being asked to consider this. I will ask members whether the committee content that the provisions set out in the notification should be included in the proposed UKSI. We are in agreement, notwithstanding the comments that have been made. Finally, is the committee content to delegate authority to me to sign off on the letters that we have mentioned, both to the Scottish Government informing of our decision today and an additional letter to the UK Government regarding the timescale and the lack of scrutiny opportunity. We move on to our first substantive item of today's agenda, which is the independent review into racism in Scottish cricket. We will just wait for our panel to take their seats. I welcome to the committee Gordon Arthur, the interim chief executive of Cricket Scotland and Forbes Dunlop, the chief operating officer of Sports Scotland. We have got an hour for questions and we have a lot of questions off the back of the report, which I have here, changing the boundaries and issues that they have highlighted, issues that have been highlighted by a number of very brave individuals who have come forward who anyone watching this will have seen. I would like to ask off the back of this report and the recommendations here. Often when things like this come out into the public domain when they hit the headlines, there will be a number of people who will feel that they want to come forward. Obviously, there was a great deal of work in engaging with people who had issues as part of the report. I would like to ask you, Gordon Arthur, have there been, since the report has been published, have more people come forward and anybody involved in cricket in Scotland right now, what would you say to them if they have not come forward yet but they want to raise issues and, given them the confidence and the courage to do so, their concerns will be taken seriously and they will not be subjected to some of the terrible things that we have heard that the people who came forward before were subjected to. The plan for sport helpline has been kept open. Sports Scotland has kept it open since the report was published on 25 July. I believe that further referrals have come forward in that time. I could not tell you how many, but I believe that further referrals have come forward. We have been concentrating on the 68 that were passed over at that point, so I do believe that there are more that have come forward since then. As I said on the publication of this report, it was a very dark day for cricket in Scotland. The report laid bare a picture that is appalling. You cannot justify or try to justify the scale of this and brush it off as being a reflection of things that go on in society more generally. However, we are looking at a societal problem through the lens of cricket. We cannot solve it on our own, but we are determined that we are going to solve it and make cricket a welcoming place for everybody in the sport. If there are people out there who still have evidence that they want to give and who feel that they have been treated badly in the past, I would urge them to come forward. The more we understand the scale and depth of the problem, the better will be placed to deal with it. The action plan was, on 30 September, the date that the action plan was meant to come forward. I think that one of the strongest and most upsetting aspects of what was reported was that when people did come forward many years ago, they were either ignored or there were no structures in place in order to support them. Can you outline what the action plan is going to do to make sure that when people do come forward that they are dealt with in a way that is supportive and investigates their claims and does not lead to any kind of adverse effects on the individuals that are brave enough to do so? We have a process that is being put in place over the summer to ensure that all the referrals that came in prior to the publication of the report and since will be dealt with through an independent process. We have partnered with Sporting Equals to help to run that process for us to make sure that we have a very thorough process that everybody feels confident in. The action plan has got a small number of main strands to it. One of those strands is to put in place an anti-racism and EDNI strategy and that strategy itself has to deal with a range of issues of which this is one. We need to put in place a method of collecting data so that we are clear of the people playing cricket in Scotland, what their backgrounds are, where they are from and a whole range of different data pieces that will enable us to track how our works are going in the years ahead. We need to put in place a survey to update that annually. We need to put in place education and training for the workforce in cricket in Scotland to make sure that everybody understands what needs to be done going forward. We need to build a long term and robust process to do exactly what you are asking to make sure that the process that we have in place at the moment to deal with this temporarily is built into a long-term process to make sure that people feel that they can come forward and when they do come forward that they will be listened to and they can trust the process. We will speak to them thoroughly and deal with their complaints appropriately. That question is for Mr Dunlop about the wider implications for sport in Scotland. As I said, that report has come out of the back of whistleblowers of many complaints over many years that have not been dealt with appropriately and it has come to a head. It should not have to be the bravery of individuals. I want to know what your reflections are and what your potential actions are of regard to other sports in Scotland. Cricket Scotland is in the spotlight rightly so, but those issues might be across sport in Scotland. We have taken a number of steps prior to the cricket review and the publication of that report had started a couple of years back. We did a piece of work with the other home country sports councils in the UK sport to look at race and racism and inequalities.  Now we have the cricket report on our learnings and experiences that is highlighted. We immediately met all other funded sports to talk to them about the report. They have had a period of time to read, understand, digest, reflect on that report. We are working with them on an individual basis to understand where they are as a sport, what diversity looks like for their sport, how they are, complaints, appeals processes are placed, the level of independence and scrutiny that is applied to those when they come into sport. Importantly, the culture within that sport is important so that, when something happens, how is that managed and dealt with. We have a range of actions. As I said, we are put in place pre the cricket report on that piece of work, but we have built on those now. We have added to those the all-culminate under our EDI strategy, which we developed a couple of years ago now. Again, there is a host of work that we have been doing over a long period of time. In the last two years, there has been a specific focus on race and ethnicity in that EDI action plan that we now have. Thank you. I move on to my colleague Tess White. You have some questions. Thank you, convener. A question for Mr Dunlop, please. Sport Scotland was proactive in commissioning the independent review into racism in cricket earlier this year. However, it was after allegations emerged in the public. My question, Mr Dunlop, is what oversight and involvement did Sport Scotland have before? We have a range of tools, interventions with all funded bodies that we are involved in, including some independent audits of those organisations. We had been working with Cricket Scotland. We clearly did not know the depth of what was happening within the sport or the failings within the sport, but we were working with Cricket Scotland on an EDI action plan at that point. We were using some expert resource to work with them, and plans had been developing and evolving quite rightly. They were shelved once we started to realise the size and scale of the issue at hand. We had to reflect on our own processes, our own audits, so that we get underneath those types of issues much earlier than we did in cricket. There is a period of reflection and some consideration of what we do and how we do it, and there are changes that we will be making. You knew, but you did not know the size and scale? We knew that there were some challenges, but we absolutely did not know anywhere near the size and scale and over the period of time that has now been published in the report. Thank you, convener. Good morning to you both. I have a question for Gordon Arthur. It is about the change in the Boundaries review that had recommendations to produce the action plan that the convener mentioned by September 30. I understand that the action plan has not been published yet and it is delayed, because there has not been adequate or perhaps no anti-racist expertise utilized to scrutinise the plan prior to publication. I am interested in your comments about the delay in the plan and what action is being taken to embed anti-racist expertise in the plan. When do we think that the action plan will be published? The action plan is out for consultation with running out racism just now. It was first developed in the middle of August and has been a developing plan since then. We have been reporting to running out racism on some progress against the plan, but I do not believe that they have seen the plan until the end of last week, the actual plan itself. The plan takes the recommendations from the change in the Boundaries report and puts it into a plan. We have not changed those recommendations at all. They are exactly the same recommendations as the plan set out, the things that Cricket Scotland needed to address and indeed Sport Scotland needed to address. They have been put into a document. The work really falls into three main areas. We need to put in place a review process for the referrals and start that. That process started about two weeks ago. We need to hold a governance review, which we have now agreed the terms and the cost of that. That governance review is about to kick off. That will be finished by the end of the year. We need to put in place an anti-racism advisory group to run all of that work. We have been recruiting people to go on to that. A member of the running out racism campaign will be part of that advisory group. All the work that is done looking at the EDI strategy and everything that falls out of that will be done with the involvement of running out racism and a number of other people from universities and other sectors who have a huge amount of EDI knowledge and experience. All that work, we hope, will have the full involvement of people with lived experience and other relevant experience from different organisations to help us to drive that work forward. The report was published in July 2022, and then the action plan was going to be at the end of September. Has it just grown arms and legs and got bigger as you have uncovered issues that need to be dealt with so that you have had to, I suppose, not prolong the publishing but just make a more in-depth approach to tackling racism in Scottish cricket? The tasks that need to be done are the same tasks that were in the original report. What we have really spent most of the last two months doing since the report was published is putting in the groundwork, building the foundations for the real work to start. So that has been recruiting the new board, it has been recruiting people to go on to the advisory group to run all the EDI work and to get agreement as to how the governance review is going to be done. So the last two months have really been all about putting in those building blocks for the work to happen now. Understanding what was involved as part of that has obviously has come since the report was published because we didn't see the report before it was published, and we've been working as hard and fast as we can over that period of time, engaging as best we can over that period of time to get us to a point where everybody's happy that we're aligned and have shared goals with the same long-term vision, and that's where we want to be. It takes a lot of time just going through that process, but I think that the actual plan, I hope, will be out and published this week. Just off the back, I'm just listening to you, and I'm going back to my earlier question about referrals and people who've come forward. Obviously, people who've come forward during the writing of the report are people who've come forward. Is it fair to say that they have not been investigated yet, that that process is not under way yet? That seems to be what I'm getting from you. You're talking about all the important actions that need to take place structurally, the high-level policy and the putting all the governance in place, but the actual nuts and bolts of investigating all the allegations that people have come forward to make. Where are we with that? What communication has been made with the people who've come forward to let them know the process that they're going to be involved in? Over the summer, putting in place this independent process to review the referrals took us through until the 13th of September. On that day, we announced what the process was going to be, gave more information on what the process would be. We also said at that time that the first individual investigations had begun that week, so two things were happening at that stage. The front-end of the process is a triaging process to try and see from within the 68 referrals which are the most important, the most urgent and the most serious, and to try and prioritise that work. Once that triaging process is finished, which should be finished in a week or two's time, then we'll have a complete plan for the order at which things will look at, but the first two or three cases have already started being investigated. How has that been communicated to everybody who's come forward? Are they all being communicated to individually to let them know that their reports have been received and that this process is what to expect? I'll need to check, but I think that a letter went out to all of them on the 13th of September or the day before. I'll need to check that, but I'm pretty sure that that happened. Okay. I'm going to hand over to Sandesh Gohani. Sandesh is joining us online. Thank you, convener. I've been listening with interest. I'm really quite angry and upset, but publication of this report is not a dark day for Scotland. What happened was a dark day for Scotland. The idea of trying to hide behind societal issues is not good enough. I just have a feeling that this is not being taken seriously enough and things are not going forward at the pace we wanted to. My first question for Gordon Arthur is, where is the HR officer and why has one not been appointed? There are four roles that were recommended that we appoint in the change of the boundaries report. One of those, the HR manager, is a role that we are not sure that the organisation would ideally have in the long run. We are a very small organisation. The staff, including the contracted cricket players, including the development team and the team who run fixtures, for example, when we have international fixtures on. If you take those out, you're left with a staff of about half a dozen people in Cricket Scotland, including myself, the head of finance and administrative assistant. For Cricket Scotland to employ a full-time HR manager in an organisation of that size doesn't necessarily look to be the right way to go forward. We have other ways of accessing HR support, so we are getting a lot of support from Sport Scotland on HR-related managers. Their EDNI officer is helping us with all of our documentation, our job adverts, our job descriptions and are all being supported by Sport Scotland. The recruitment processes that we have been running over the past few months are all being helped by Sport Scotland using the same HR resources that they have and EDNI specialist resources that they have. One of the things that we are doing internally at the moment is reviewing our entire staffing structure to try to make sure that the organisation that is several members of staff short where it needs to be to be a properly functioning organisation has got the resources in place to be able to be a first class governing body for sport, which, when I arrived there in July, it clearly wasn't. We haven't started a process for recruiting an HR manager at this stage because we are getting very good support from Sport Scotland in all the HR-related matters that we need and we will review all those four posts as we go forward. Depending on what comes out of the governance review and the EDNI strategy, we will then be able to develop a job description which reflects the work that is going to be done for recruiting things like our own EDNI resource full-time later on. Thank you for the answer. I do feel that one hand you are saying you don't need a full-time HR because there are only six of you and then you are talking about a full-scale review of all the people and all the things that you need to do. That doesn't really seem to balance, but what work is going into place now to ensure that there is greater diversity within not just cricket Scotland but also the volunteers that you have and the encouragement to get players playing at the top level to make Scotland successful? All of that work will come out of the EDNI strategy. That is why we have put in place the advisory group to help us with a lot of external expertise. We are already working very closely with Sport Scotland. For example, all of our job adverts that go out are being put out through networks to try and make sure that people, for example in the South Asian communities, are aware of the opportunities. We would love to have more women involved in the administration of the sport. Again, we have been putting out our job adverts to various organisations to try and promote better diversity amongst our staffing across cricket in Scotland. We have a huge amount of success at a club level in Scotland for attracting people from very diverse communities. There are many examples of clubs right over the country where in excess of 75 per cent of the members of those clubs are from South Asian communities. In some of the junior clubs, the numbers weigh up into the 90s. At club level, there are huge numbers of young people from very diverse backgrounds playing the sport. People ask the question, why does that not reflect itself all the way through the age group levels and the national sport, the national teams. That is work that we are going to be doing in the coming months. Paul Reddish from Running Out Racism is hopefully going to do a piece of work with us to look at the equality throughout the entire journey from people coming into the sport right the way up to international level, looking at all the barriers that may exist in that journey and trying to make sure that we have a process and a pathway that allows youngsters to come all the way through right up to the national team with an equal opportunity to others. A lot of work is going to be done to address those points. None of those bits of work are quick fixes. They are all requiring a very substantial change to the way that sport has been organised in the past, but I do believe that they will make a huge difference to the way that sport is in the years ahead. Sandesh, am I able to move on or have you got anything else you want to ask me here? Can I come to questions from Paul Cain? Good morning. I wonder if I can just pick up perhaps where we left the last question there around that grass-roots issue and the fact that young players from a South East Asian background in particular do not progress to the national level and that there is a real feeling from the survey respondents about the challenges that exist. 54 per cent of people from a non-white background who responded to the survey said that they would not agree with the statement that there is a level playing field or a fair opportunity of access to that national level. I appreciate what you said, Gordon, about the review that is on going. I represent a community where there are so many young people from a South East Asian background who are playing cricket, who are enthusiastic about cricket, who are well supported by their families, who are passionate. They do not seem to think that there is a prospect that they are going to be able to progress. What is your assessment of why that is? I have been in cricket in Scotland since the 18th of July, so I have not been involved personally to have a long perspective in that. I have been told many of the facts that you are quoting me. I have heard a lot of anecdotal stories. I have heard stories from people who feel that they have not been given a fair opportunity at the juncture from 17th to 19th or 19th to full squad. There is a perception that people are not being given a fair opportunity to progress. I see it as my job to get behind that perception, to test it out, to find out what the reasons are, why people are not coming through the process and to try to create a process that ensures that everybody who wants to get a fair opportunity to get all the way through up to the international team. I cannot imagine why anybody would want our international team not to turn out its 11 best players every time it plays. The idea of excluding people because of their skin colour or because they live in a more remote part of the country and cannot compete because they cannot get to a big club that plays in the top leagues. Any reasons why people would be excluded need to be explored. We need to build a process that gives people as much opportunity as possible. You said that people's perception is not a perception. I think that there is a real challenge and a real demonstrable challenge for people in terms of being able to access. As I said, I represent and come from Ysrenfosharn, a community where we have a large South East Asian community where people, as I say, are well supported. There are a number of clubs, there are a number of school opportunities, for example. I would really like to hear a commitment from you that you are going to go to these communities and speak to people, particularly young people, who have had really challenging experiences and get a sense from them, not perhaps of what we would perceive the situation to be but perhaps what the reality of the situation is. Are you going to give that undertaking? I appreciate what you said about commissioning work to be done, but I thank you in this role and whoever continues the leadership of this organisation to come to these communities. We need to talk to as many people as possible. What we need to do is make sure that we have a really broad understanding of the grassroots sport and in talking to members in different communities and in different clubs, that is one of the best ways we can do that. I am happy to say that when that works on going that we will be out there talking to everybody in the sport to try and understand. I have also talked to people from south-east Asian communities who have described to me why they stopped playing the game at age 19, who had had a very good experience through the 15s, 17s and 19s. They were under huge amounts of pressure from within their family to get professional qualifications to go to university to become doctors or lawyers and what have you, and stopped playing the sport because they are at that stage in their life. Their focus shifted away from trying to be an international sports person to becoming a professional person with a career and continuing to play sport at a club level. There will be many reasons why people do not progress from the junior ranks into the senior ranks, regardless of their skin colour, but we need to understand what all those different reasons are. Twice, I will say it a third time, we need to have a really thorough look at the whole journey and make sure that the barriers, if there are barriers there, are removed so that everybody gets a fair opportunity to progress through the system. What is clear is that we need to drill down. It is my previous point about speaking to those communities, and I think that that is absolutely vital. I wonder if I can just move on slightly because I am conscious of time. I wonder if there is a challenge for many people in terms of professional players setting an example and the players that they play alongside not understanding some of those really systemic issues. I suppose that the deep-rooted nature of racism and the challenges that exist around that and perhaps not being aware very often of the challenges that people face. To what extent has there been training for other professional players on racism, on how they conduct themselves on social media and in various other spaces? Does that exist currently? Yes, it does. The men's international team, and I believe that the women's international team, have all had ED in eye training. That needs to be an on-going part of how we support the squads to make sure that they fully appreciate all the issues. The understanding of those issues is as thorough as it can be. Thank you, Paul. Can I bring in Tess White? Yes, yes, convener. Can I just go back before I ask a question on this? Early years said that you wanted to involve more women in administration. Could you clarify what that means, please? Just in the running of the sport, the Cricket Scotland board until fairly recently, I don't think, had women representatives on it. The volunteer base within the sport is largely white middle-aged males who are running the sport on a practical level day-to-day. The women's game is growing and it would be great if we had more representatives from women's cricket involved in running all the cricket. Governance is your definition of administration. My question is about the work that you are undertaking to improve transparency in player selection. Could you share with us what that is, please? One of the things that became obvious to me fairly early on is that Cricket Scotland has not been an organisation that has been particularly transparent about many things. It has just got on and done things. It has not explained to people how they have been done. It has not published processes for people to see how decisions are made. That feeds discontent when decisions are unpopular with people. If you cannot go back and see who was involved, why were they involved? What the process was so that the questions asked earlier about international selection are a very clear case in point of that. Historically, selection meetings have taken place, teams have been picked and squads have been announced. However, there has been no information behind that at all. For the men's World Cup squad, the men are out in Australia now preparing for the T20 World Cup, and we put a lot of work into trying to put together a very clear and describe and write down and publish a very clear process as to how the squad was picked and who was involved in picking the squad. Why were they involved in picking the squad in talking to people as to who should chair the selection committee? We had a new chair of the selection committee. We had a number of people advising but not voting on the selections so that we had different, much broader, diverse inputs into the meeting than has happened in the past. That is a step towards having a permanent published selection process for the international teams. My view is that we need to take that down to the under-19s, the under-17s and the under-15s, where things are probably even less clear than at the top international team level. The top international squads have always had. There has always been a chair of selectors and there has always been the head coach and the two assistant coaches or what have you made those decisions. When you get further down through the age groups, it tends to us to be the coach of that squad on their own, making those decisions. If that is the case, then in my view that is not transparent enough and we shouldn't be relying on one person to do that. We are unlikely to improve diversity unless we have particularly focused individuals who are trying to make sure that diversity comes all the way through those age group teams. There is a huge amount of work to be done in transparency in the organisation that I am now running, a huge amount of transparency that we need to bring into all of our work. I am completely committed to making sure that that happens. I think that the process for the selection of the men's international team was appreciated that we have done what we have done. I think that that is an important stepping stone to better transparency in all of that area in the coming years. Evelyn Swede, you have some questions. Good morning to you both. What is Sport Scotland doing to support Cricket Scotland generally and in its record keeping, reporting procedures and complaints processes? I think that since the publication of this report we have been working very closely with Gordon, in particular on his small team. He has outlined a number of the practical expertise that we have and that we can provide to Cricket. Over the last two months we are essentially on a day-to-day basis helping Gordon to run Cricket Scotland. We are trying to be really clear in terms of due restrictions so that we do not make procedural mistakes in some of the changes that we are making because it is really important that Cricket is reviewed and set up and structured in a way that is robust and transparent for the future. We are working closely with Cricket Scotland to put in place those changes to provide the expertise and support that Cricket do not have in that first phase. It is also important to hold Cricket to account for the changes that need to happen. We meet a Cricket Scotland, Sport Scotland and representatives from Running Out Racism. We have a monthly meeting now established so that there is check and challenge both from Sport Scotland but also an opportunity for Running Out Racism to raise concerns or questions that they have about the progress that has been made and the steps that are being taken. In terms of the monitoring of that, it is done through those groups and those meetings. Gordon has touched on that a number of times. We felt that it was very important to get in place the big building blocks first, so making sure that the governance review is the terms for that are set and established properly, that the referrals are rightly prioritised given the nature of those referrals and the individuals involved and that the board is recruited and appointed so that Cricket Scotland is in a place to make changes to its governance, to make decisions and to move forward as an organisation. We have been working with Cricket Scotland on a daily basis to make sure that they have the expertise and that we prioritise the right things in the right order to get the big building blocks in place so that we can then address lots of the points that the committee has made this morning. In Sport Scotland's statement of 30 September, it was noted that robust actions and genuine cultural change were needed within the sport. Can you offer us assurances today that that is what we are going to get? Given the progress to date, we do not see that at the present time. Can you give us assurances that there is going to be real change and real cultural change within Scottish Cricket? Absolutely. When I talk about the foundations that we are putting in place, one of the most fundamental things is that the leadership through the board of Cricket Scotland understands the need for cultural change. Through the recruitment process for the chair and for the board members, that is absolutely embedded into the process. Of course, that is our absolute commitment that cultural change needs to happen. It needs to happen in a structured way. We believe that that happens from the board, the governance review, the EDI working group that Gordon has talked about. He is setting up and putting in place the types of people that are being invited on to that group, the background, the expertise that they bring to that. They are all set up to deliver the cultural change that we all need to see. Tess, you have more questions about funding. It is clear that wholesale change is needed at Cricket Scotland. What funding is in place to support that change? I mean, Sport Scotland has invested in Cricket Scotland for a period of time and, again, as we work through these steps and we understand what the organisation needs to look like, there are opportunities to invest and support the organisation either directly or indirectly, as we are doing, just now through either our own expertise that we have within Sport Scotland or expert resource that we can buy and contract in on behalf of Cricket Scotland. There are resources available to support Cricket Scotland. In the first instance, I think that indirectly is the best way to do that because we still are not clear what the structure of the organisation needs to look like. It would be right to give the new board time to come in to fully understand this and for them to have a say in that. Short-term, as they say, indirectly, longer-term, there are resources if we feel that it is the right thing to do and that it would benefit the game of cricket in Scotland. You are saying that nothing has been ring-fenced and nothing has been set aside yet? No, I am not saying that yet. Has Cricket Scotland established a formalised method of communication for sharing updates and examples of good practice between itself, regional associations and clubs? At this point in time, not yet. The relationship between Cricket Scotland and the regions and the clubs in Cricket Scotland, I do not think, is particularly fit for purpose as it is at the moment. It is bound up in the history of the way that sport has been governed, but I hope and expect that the Government's review will dramatically change that so that we have better processes in place and more resources in place to manage certain really big and important things more centrally, and one of those would be around conduct and discipline, which has obviously been a big focus of this report. I do not think that the processes and the application of those processes we have had in place has always been consistent. We need to have on lots of areas like that, as well as on safeguarding and child safety and health and safety, we need to have a more consistent approach across the whole sport, and that is going to require some reset of the relationship between Cricket Scotland and the regions. The reason that we have set a very challenging task for this Government's review to be completed by the end of the year is because I would like to be able to implement the outcomes of the Government's review before the start of next cricket season. That is going to require quite possibly changes in articles of association of Cricket Scotland, maybe of the regions. The regions are all structured themselves quite differently, so the implementation of those recommendations, whatever they are that come out of the review, I think will take a little bit of time, and we are only giving ourselves three months for that, which I think in itself is going to be a stretch. But if the things we cannot do by the start of next season will probably end up having to wait until the start of the following season, and that does not make me happy about anything that is important, we have got to get done in place before the start of the 2023 cricket season. I think that we need to reset the relationship in some areas quite significantly. I think that from my early conversations with people in the different regions, that will be welcomed. I am meeting with the new chair of West District because you may be aware that the entire West District committees resigned, and they had elections in early September. The new chair of West District I am meeting with on Friday, and that is going to be a crucial relationship between Cricket Scotland and West District, bearing in mind the volume of issues that came out of changing the boundaries that related to West District and the fact that they were also singled out as being an area that needed a lot of attention. I think that there is quite an important and significant cultural reset between Cricket Scotland and the regions and the clubs that needs to happen this winter. Given how important communicating a lot of the work that is going on at a national level to the clubs and regional associations is, what timeframe do you expect to be able to formalise some of that new way of communicating with the regions and the clubs in particular? I would love to have it in place already. In our very small staff in Cricket Scotland, we do not currently have a communications person. I have not had a proper communications person, I believe, since the early part of this year, when the person who left was not replaced. We have just been through a recruitment process to try to bring in a new head of communications, and we had one very, very good candidate come out of that process. Sadly, they have been persuaded by their employer to stay where they are, so we are going to need to restart that recruitment. My background is communication largely, so I completely understand the need for us to overcommunicate at this point in time. The reality is that, since I came into this job, I have been working six or seven days a week, 10, 12 or 14-hour days. There is only so much that we can do in the very short term. We need to get more staff into the organisation, and that comes back to the point about supporting Scotland and helping us, and the need to identify the structure and the roles, and to then get those roles in place. We also are working in a recruitment environment where prospective candidates are worried about coming and working in Cricket Scotland right now, because of everything that they have read and seen. I have spent days and days of my time talking to potential candidates, talking to them about what we are doing and what our ambitions are, and what our commitments are, to ensure that they understand that the sport is going to change, it is going to change for the better, and it is going to change in a very significant way, to give them confidence that they are coming into an environment that they want to be part of. It is not easy, but we have just got to keep pressing on as hard as we can. Formalising communications with the regions, clubs and all the participants in the sport is really important. I hope that we will make progress with that in the coming weeks, but I would love to have a new head of communications in place to drive all that work. Sadly, we are not quite at that point yet. This is more for Mr Dunlop. In the debate that we had on this earlier, the session that was brought forward by Co-Cab Sture, it was widely recognised that the issues raised within Cricket are potentially not unique to Cricket. It is obviously important that we take this opportunity to look to the future and help ensure such situations do not happen again anywhere in sport and that providing an opportunity for good practice sharing. Would you consider that, at an appropriate time, a representative working group would be formed to look at the findings of the independent report and to prioritise actions that can be taken to help all governing bodies of sport to be fully inclusive? That could include governing bodies themselves and a representative body in the form of the Scottish Sports Association ensuring that sports are involved in all discussions and that resulting actions and developments are done with sports and not just to sports. Would sports Scotland consider doing that? Absolutely. Those types of conversations are very alive just now. Again, a lot of work done pre-the Cricket report about the type of work and the support and the expertise and how we get the right level of support and expertise to help sports with sports and how we also balance that out when things do not go right and people do not make good decisions and cultures go wrong how we intervene. Those conversations are live. We are working with a range of partners, including governing body representatives, to make sure that we take all the learnings from the report. We take the work that we are doing pre-this report and it comes together in the right balance and package of support and help for sports but also intervention when sports are not getting it right. Can I bring in Paul O'Kane as a specific question on the regional aspect and the regional associations, Paul? Thank you, convener. As someone who represents West Scotland and indeed referred to my previous remarks about the community I come from, I am just keen to understand what the particular issue is in West. Obviously, you heard the comments about the resignation of the board and the replacement, but it seems to me that there is a particular challenge in that part of the country. I do not know if Gordon Orr folks want to elaborate on that. I am not sure that I can elaborate more than the changing the boundaries report has reported. West district was one of the referrals themselves. They were singled out in that process. We need to understand through the Government's review where the discipline process has not been working effectively and we need to make sure that the processes that are put in place work effectively everywhere. I am not sure that I can add an awful lot more to that, which is in the changing the boundaries report about the proportion of issues that were raised that came out of West district. I do not know if you have anything else, Forbes? No, I think that that is essentially it. So a number of the referrals relate to the West district and the West district's handling of discipline at a district level. The plan for sport team said that that needs to be specifically looked at. That is a piece of work that is on-going. There is a new board appointed in the West. Do you feel confident that they will look set to a complete culture change in that regard? I know that Gordon mentioned that he is meeting the new chair. On Friday, I have not met the new committee in the West district yet. There is certainly a more diverse committee than previously. I know that the special general meeting that they held attracted a much wider group of member clubs who have taken great interest in the running of cricket in their district going forward. It is very early days, but that is what we are hoping for. I asked the question today. The special general meeting was done over a video link. I was on the link. There were obviously a lot of new people coming forward. Certainly the next day when I asked one or two people what their feelings were about the new committee and running out of racism and others felt positive about the changes in personnel involved in WDCU. That, to me, is an encouraging start. Thank you. I will come back to Sandish and then Stephanie after Sandish. Listening to what is being said, am I essentially right in saying that there have not been any changes?  This is where you want to go, but you have a governance review and an EDI strategy. Right now from the evidence that I have heard, we do not really have processes and structures in place. Garden. Processes and structures in place for? Processes and structures in place for, so we heard from Gillian asking for timescale. We have all heard about Paul, about going in to speak to communities. We are looking at structures and processes in place to try to increase diversity. We are looking at structures and processes in place on your appointments. We are looking at how all the things that have come out and all the issues that we are having are not getting a sense that this is what you have done already and that is what has happened. I am just getting a sense that this is what you are looking to do. Thank you for that clarity. For example, on all the recruitment processes that have been run in the past two months, the process has changed. We have had input from an EDI perspective on job descriptions, on job adverts. We have sent it out to community groups that have not received the opportunities before to try and encourage and broaden the diversity within the population of people who come forward. We have done the complete reset of the selection process and the communicating around the changes in the selection process. Where there have been things going on, we have been making changes. The really big changes that are going to change the long-term culture in the sport will come out of those pieces of work that are being done in the next two or three months. However, where there are things that we have been able to do in the short term, we have been taking those opportunities to improve transparency and to try to improve opportunities as well. Thank you very much, convener, and thanks for coming along this morning. It seems that those are extremely challenging times, Gordon, not just for cricket, but you have a lot on your plate, too. Forbes are talking about giving the right level of support and expertise to them. I do not know if there is any additional support that could be brought in there. Moving on to developing communication strategies, I wonder if there are specific examples from other sports of good practice that could be adapted and applied to cricket? Yes, we have good practice both in Scotland and in our update last week. One of the new partnerships that we have been developing over the past six months is an organisation called Sporting Equals. Sporting Equals is a UK-based organisation. I have done a lot of work with English and UK governing bodies. Again, one of the reasons for developing that partnership, which was pre-cricut, was to bring in a range of expertise that Sporting Equals has that we felt as though we did not have in Sport Scotland. The combination of the expertise there and we have lots of communications experts. There is definitely some good practice and learning that we are working with Gordon and his team to make sure that that is in place. That is great. It is certainly different sports, not reinventing the wheel is certainly a good idea. Lots of the local clubs and regions have strong links into their community. There is some really good working on there. I wonder if you are thinking about ways that you can tap into that and involve perhaps some of those people more as you are going forward. I will probably get a question for yourself, Gordon. I have already engaged with a number of clubs that have incredibly successful programmes that are bringing in youngsters from all communities. Drum and Trinity would be a good example. I met the chair of Drum and Trinity in Edinburgh, who I think about 93 per cent of their cricketers are from a south-east Asian background. A few years ago, they were struggling to put out two cricket teams at the weekend and now they are putting out five. They have a fantastically diverse membership there. There is lots of great work going on in lots of cricket clubs across the country. Anything that we can learn from them in this process in terms of developing the right culture for the sport, we must learn as much as we can from the pockets of success that are out there already. I have two more members who want to come in, so please make it short. Are you looking to create opportunities or positions for people like that that can really influence their thoughts and culture? How we structure ourselves going forward is a big part of what is going to come out of this governance review. Historically, there has been a cricket Scotland board that has run the sport and there has been a cricket Scotland council that has been the body that governs the running of the sport on a day-to-day basis. The board and the council have not worked as a governance methodology over the past so many years since it was put in place. I am not sure exactly how many, but it is maybe eight or ten years since that has been in place. In the council, we had representatives of clubs and regions. That is what the council was and the board tended to be non-executive directors with a commercial background or a governance background or what have you. How we organise from the top down, from the board right the way down, the representation and the opportunities where people get to put in their input, one of the things I would love to see is for the sport to have an annual conference where everybody from players, coaches, umpires and other official clubs, regions where everybody can get together once a year and talk about the big issues facing the sport and how we take it forward. I have got a completely open mind as to different ways we can do it, but we need to make sure that we have really good information flows right the way through from the clubs to the board of directors who run the sport. We are rapidly running out of time, but two members want to ask very short questions. Tess and then Evelyn. Just to share, I was an HR professional for over 30 years. The optics of you saying that you are deeply disappointed about not being able to hire a comms professional yet you are not even seriously and see it as a major issue not hiring an HR professional. Even part time, most organisations when they want to bring in serious organisational change put HR at the front and in preparation for this I was appalled and saddened to actually see and hear some of the examples so why are you putting comms as a higher priority than HR. Thank you. Primarily because we can get good quality support on the HR front in the short term we need to have we need to over communicate with all our audiences at this point in time and and we really need to be in control of that communications environment. From an HR perspective we can get a lot of support from different places and that will give us time to assess whether we need a full time resource, whether we need a part time resource, what skills within the HR mix are the important skills and what skills can we get in from from other places on the long term basis. If we go out and recruit people now then they will be permanent employees of the organisation and if we find in a year's time that we've recruited somebody full time and we only need them part time we won't be able to change that. I just like to say I challenge that and I'd like to put that for you to reconsider even part time or specialist resource. Thank you. We have our time Evelyn please make it short and we must end up. Okay, thanks. You've talked about a reset but when you do reset who is going to be responsible to make sure we do not get into this situation again? Where does the buck stop? The buck stops with Cricket Scotland. Cricket Scotland needs to do its governance review and appoint a board and a council, whatever that dynamic might be going forward that has scrutiny and leadership of the sport and the sport Scotland's role will be to monitor that and to make sure those changes are in place and to look at our own interventions to make sure that when we do look that we can confidently say the changes that we all want to happen have happened but it's important that ultimately Cricket Scotland and the board of directors will have responsibilities for the sport and for the organisation. Okay with that in mind we may have you back before the start of the next season just to see how far you've come and I want to thank you both for your time this morning. We're going to take a short suspension before we move on to the next panel. Thank you. Welcome back. The fourth item in our agenda is an evidence session with integrated joint boards on their experiences of health and social care integration and I welcome to the committee all joining us remotely Stephen Brown, chief officer of Orkney integration joint board, Vicky Irons, chief officer of Dundee integration joint board, Judith Proctor chief officer of Edinburgh integration joint board and chair, the chief officer group and Alan Steeampson head of health and community care chief social work officer of Inverclyde integration joint board. Good morning to you all. We're going to move straight to questions led by my colleague Paul Cain. Thank you very much convener and good morning to the panel and I think just in terms of the context of this morning I think we were keen as a committee to understand the process of integration essentially and perhaps looking ahead to our scrutiny of the new national care service bill as proposed I'm looking in a retrospective essentially as to what is currently operating and I suppose the the story of that if you like so I'm going to begin just by asking if we can look back I suppose to the time of integration. Do members of the panel feel that planning and guidance for the implementation of integration was suitably clear, detailed and timely so you know what was the experience I suppose of of the planning for that integration process sorry I suppose I should direct that shouldn't I I wonder if Vicky wants to comment first yeah well certainly from my own perspective both Judith and I have been engaged in the evolution of the ijb's from the outset during the passage of the bill but also during the shadow years and I'm currently the chief officer for Dundee however I was originally the chief officer for Angus ijb both through the shadow year and then through the establishment phase from 2015 onwards so I I feel the process was thorough and the guidance was also thorough we worked very closely with the civil servants who were based in Scottish Government at the time to develop that really collaboratively so that we could implement arrangements across the system most systems had a good year of working in shadow forum and that year enabled the systems to put in place many of the local agreements that had to be discussed and developed particularly around the deployment of corporate services as many of those were not delegated into the new integration authorities but they were retained by the relevant NHS boards and local authorities which made up the partnership having said that I think there was still a degree of interpretation present across a number of ijb's in Scotland as to exactly what the governance arrangements and organisational arrangements should look like but in many cases we worked through those issues as we developed the integration schemes and as they were processed through Parliament many of us were in a position where the original integration schemes required further amendment before they were formally approved so I feel at the outset there was quite a degree of guidance and that that enabled us to put in place quite robust arrangements I don't know if my colleague Judith would wish to comment any further from her perspective. I'm very happy to integration from the outset prior to being the chief officer in Edinburgh I was the chief officer in Aberdeen City and was involved in the development of the integration scheme and the development of that ijb. I would agree with Vicky it felt very thorough we had the the bill then the act there was development work with chief officers which enabled us to work together across the country in terms of sharing the practice and understanding what we were each implementing and some of the issues arising as we did that and I think other things that were important to us ultimately included the work that we were able to do with our shadow integration joint boards on establishing the the vision the values the principles the way that they want the work in particular that thing about the added value what was going to be different how were we going to implement that and we were able to set out this egic vision that then became the egic plan and I think set the culture and vision for the integration organisation and that that time in the shadow year felt necessary to for developing the relationships between the partners integration as it was delivered and conceived in that bill was disruptive you know it was doing something very very different and we needed to re-establish the relationships between councils health boards and this new organisation and I started to feel that the time that we had to do that prior to the the go live date was was necessary time and I do think we had a good amount of support guidance and and time to work together to work through that complexity. I wonder if I can just move that one slightly in terms of you know so that's helpful in terms of understanding I suppose the process towards integration I wonder if we're able to perhaps park the pandemic sorry for that unfortunate phrase and I know it's not easy to do but I'm trying to just get a sense of do people feel that integration is well it was well established you know it is absolutely there or is it still very much feel like a work in progress and I don't know if maybe Stephen or Alan want to give their observations on that. Go to Stephen first. Yeah thanks I think there was a load of progress made at the time and as Judith and Vicki described the early days I think there was a degree of excitement and what was the art of the possible around bringing community-based health and care services together so I think there was significant strides but clearly there's there's still also significant barriers we talk about information systems getting in the road we've got loads of information systems across both health and care it becomes very difficult when sharing information we've also got different terms and conditions across health and care and so there's a number of things that would probably leave it to be described as a work in progress and we're not able to bring in Alan Stevenson yet but we're having issues with his connection so Paul I don't know what you want to move on. Yeah so I maybe just to kind of pull this opening segment together I suppose I'm keen to understand the learning from this process as we move towards another process and so I suppose what do you feel you know now that you wish you had known at the start of that integration process that they can perhaps be used to learn as we scrutinise the forthcoming bill? I'm going to go back ground. Yeah I could see Vicki Irons nodding along with you so we'll go to Vicki first. Lesson learnt Vicki if you're not alone I'll come to you first. Yeah so I guess from my perspective and this might give away the length of time I've been working in these types of roles is probably the third set of reforms that we've lived through in similar jobs across health and social care and that there's a cycle to the learning I guess. Certainly I was involved in the predecessor organisations that came before IGPs including the local healthcare cooperatives and the community health partnerships and with each of those changes I think as my colleagues have outlined we've seen significant gains in terms of the operational integration of our health and social care services and really some quite phenomenal work in the way that our teams have operated closely together but we have struggled with each reorganisation for the rest of the system to fully understand how governance works, to fully embrace, support the integration of health and social care and to enable us to develop further. There's something for me about understanding which components of the current health and social care integration legislation have thrived and which other aspects have been inhibited just by the surrounding infrastructure but also the surrounding environment if you like organisationally that supports that and it's in these areas I think that we need to do quite a lot of work to ensure that we don't necessarily pass those on to the next series of reforms and I think we also need to understand where we seem to be very good at reviewing organisations such as the IGB as to whether they're working and whether they're succeeding or not and then replacing them with a new style of organisation but we fail to really understand the organisational arrangements and the characteristics of the other aspects of the public sector and review those to see if there's any change required there and I think it's very clear from both the report that was done under the ministerial group around health and social care integration years back now and then subsequently the direct failure review that health and social care integration has worked phenomenally well in areas where there's been a will to make it work but it hasn't necessarily thrived in other areas where there hasn't been that level of support and development and I think it's really these things that we need to concentrate our efforts on rather than expect another significant organisational change to fix those things I think they're they're much more about the culture and the will to make things succeed rather than significant organisational change and can I bring in jesus proctor I would agree with a lot of what vicki said there you know this is a huge cultural change and I think one of the lessons that I would I would take into any consideration about where we go next is the test of whether it truly integrates the operational delivery and receipt of health and social care queer people and communities need to experience it I think too often we think about structural change at that high level without really really testing through what will this mean for for real transformation and change at the front line for people who are working in that interface with with people's lives so I think it's important to think about that and I think as steven had said earlier many of the things that we weren't able to do and implement it over these seven eight years were because we've remained part of two separate organisations with two separate systems and everything and that mitigated against that real joint and integrated working at the front line the way the fact that we were able to establish that as well as as many areas have done was despite the arrangements rather than because of them so I think there's definitely need to ensure that whatever we put place next really preserves strengths and goes further in that operational integration and perhaps we've been able to do till now. I think we've got Alan Stevenson back not entirely sure if we have visual you visually Alan but I conscious that you probably want to come in on on the earlier question that Paul asked that Steven responded to can we just check to see if we've got you yeah good morning we can hear you great thank you thank you thank you and thanks for giving us the opportunity to speak to committee convener yeah the previous question is about that sorry can paul you should repeat the question then sure no worries Alan I was really just trying to get a sense of you know if we kind of put the pandemic to one side really is your sense that integration is well embedded or is it still very much a work in progress I suppose in terms of that wider piece yeah thank you yeah I think it's work in progress although I've been fortunate to work in a number of areas of Scotland and there is a huge desire to improve outcomes for people and a lot of the old professional barriers have absolutely gone because people know no matter what service use that our family are working with you'll only get those outcomes if we're as joined up as possible so I think there is still work to go many of these a number of the partnerships have been working in an integrated way even before the shadow year so it's important to understand there are a organizations who have been trying to push in those boundaries to to work closer together so it will always be work in progress I think as my colleagues have said I suppose the issue for me is we spend a lot of time talking about structures and we're going to potentially be spending an awful lot of our time initially still discussing structures and I think people within the service realise that actually we're focused on outcomes there really should be a focus on that is the bit about how we should be spending more time there's going to be a lot of time spent around all the old barriers in terms of HR and policies and procedures and how things are set up as opposed to really concentrating on getting better at delivering services to meet people's outcomes so I don't think any partnership in Scotland will say they're there but I think that should be an appreciation that there are a number of partnerships going back many years we've been really working to push the boundary because people accept that not one agency has the answers to provide that assistance and support we need all the agencies working together so I hope that that's answered your question Paul. Thank you very helpful. Thank you. Tess you have a question. I'd like to direct it to Vicky please because it builds on something that Vicky just said so Vicky in 1999 there were 79 local health co-operatives which were replaced by the community health partnerships in 2004 the chp's were then abolished in 2014 which led to the creation of 31 integration authorities so you talked about the will to make it work was there anything else in terms of lessons learned from the previous failed attempts and so what lessons were learned and which issues in your opinion are still proving to be problematic thanks Vicky. Yeah okay thank you very much so I guess each of those series of reforms that you've just articulated really tried to build on the previous set and understand which things which things got in the way of that and I feel with each series of reforms we've definitely progressed in terms of what we're capable of doing in the integration space so I want to say that from the outset I think it's very very clear though that in establishing the IJBs in particular the landscape in terms of scrutiny and governance has become quite cluttered so from a chief officer perspective it's not unusual for us to be have a full set of governance arrangements and reporting arrangements to our integration authorities that in many cases we have to duplicate that in terms of reporting arrangements both to the relevant NHS board and the local authority and that can sometimes really just get in the way of being able to effectively fulfil your role because you spend a huge amount of your time offering assurance and reporting and going through performance management systems of three different organisations so I think the biggest lesson learned for me is that if there's a change in the way forward it would be to declutter that landscape and make the governance and accountability arrangements absolutely clear and try and avoid duplication in the same sense though because each of the authorities that have made up the partnerships have retained ultimate responsibility for the services which are delegated to the integration joint board there has often been a level of misunderstanding around how the IJBs should function and exactly what delegated authority they have so that experience from my own perspective has been great at some points but has also changed over time and that's largely because many of the stakeholders have changed over the period of time that the IJBs have been in place because we're obviously talking seven years now that we've been operating and as individuals change as stakeholders change across the authorities that you work with locally so does the level of understanding that underpins the legislation and what we're trying to achieve through integration so if there's one thing I think that we can learn from this experience is that we need to make the infrastructure, the governance and accountability arrangements much clearer. Also a very particular issue from a chief officer's point of view is that it feels very unusual to be accountable in a line management role to the chief executive of the NHS board and of the local authority when you're also in a role as chief officer directing those two authorities to undertake the plans of the IJB so that can often feel very odd and can sometimes be really quite difficult particularly around the timing of year when you're trying to agree financial settlements and plans accordingly because you're part of the NHS board, you're part of the local authority but your primary role is as chief officer for the IJB and in many places we're negotiating with the very body that either employs us or that we're accountable to so that can sometimes make life quite difficult. I personally have always managed to find a way through that complexity but I know that it can be quite difficult in other areas where relationships aren't quite as strong as they are in the relationships that I've experienced right to his side. We have other members wanting to come in on structure and governance particularly Tessa. I'm going to move on to colleagues. Evelyn Tweed. Thanks convener. Good morning panel. I think that the UK made some really strong points there about previous reviews, how things have got better, how you've worked through issues. Am I right in thinking Vicki from the comments that you've made that as we move forward a lot of what we should be looking at is making governance and accountability more streamlined, taking out duplication, you mentioned various reporting etc, maybe doing things more than once in different avenues. Can you expand on that? I might be asked for the other members of the panel to comment as well. The really short answer to that is yes, if we can make things more streamlined that would make total sense and there's something in there also about reducing any particular conflict of interest, it does sometimes feel like you're quite conflicted if you're trying to participate in the decision making of the NHS border local authority but also do the right thing on behalf of the IJB. Those things don't necessarily always align, so I think it would be very powerful for us to establish the new authority, whatever that looks like in terms of health and social care boards, to be a board in their own right and not necessarily to be reporting through the other two parts of the public sector structure. I do still have some concerns about the fit of that and whether there's enough financial resource to support essentially three public authorities in the size of Scotland but also just exactly how that would work out, because although we've got a very defined series of services that are delegated to the integration authority, those are outlined in our integration schemes, we still work in partnership with a huge range of other services that are retained by the local authority and by the NHS board. We just need to make sure that we don't cut across any of those partnerships and that we don't disintegrate the integration that we've already created through health and social care. Judith MacDonald mentioned something earlier, which certainly strikes a chord with many of us. There's been a large focus on establishing a national care service and ensuring that potentially the new authorities can have direct employment rights for care staff, but we really need to make sure that we can still deploy and integrate all of our health and social care teams that currently form part of the IJBs. If there's a differential between the new organisation being able to plan and deploy and employ parts of that workforce but not others, I think that we worry that that will start to draw some new lines in the landscape, so we just need to really think long and hard about some of those issues and get that right because we don't want to unpick any of the progress that we've already made. Sorry if I've gone off on a wee bit of a tangent, but it is aligned to, if you like, the organisational structure that we need to look at moving forward. Can I bring in Judith Proctor and if our other colleagues want to add anything, if you could please use the chat box, just put an hour in the chat box and I can see that because it's in front of me. Judith. Thank you, convener. Thank you for the question. Again, I agree with Rikki, not for the first time, but simplification and streamlining would be very, very welcome. I think that what we're looking to achieve is agile decision making so that we can affect real change on the ground for people. That is to be welcomed, that focus on developing our services wrapped around individuals shaped by and co-produced by the many people who need those services. However, I don't think that our arrangements do that. They are very complex, difficult to navigate within. I would also question the focus on commissioning change. How much of that change can you commission and direct another organisation that has its own strategic direction that ultimately delivers in a way that is different and responsive to the community? I think that we need to ask questions about that. Stephen's touched on the whole question. I think that we all have different terms and conditions, different organisations, different systems. That makes it challenging for our teams on the ground and I think that we need to do everything that we can to really streamline things for them. When we talk about that, it is a real once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get integration right, to get our care for people right. I think that we need to dig into those perennially difficult challenges and find a way through the meeting if it takes time. However, in relation to those operational arrangements, my view is that they should sit within a single organisation that has the leavers authority and power to direct and deliver those services for the people in that area. I guess that any organisation of that sort would be working very closely with its community planning partners, maximising the potential and opportunity set out in the Christy report. However, I think that the arrangements where you try and tie in one organisation to direct others to change or deliver takes time is difficult. I do not think that that delivers the full potential of integration. I suppose that just building on what Vicki and Judith have already said, from an Orkney perspective in particular, the complexity and the cluttered landscape that both my colleagues have just highlighted is even more evident when we have a population of 22,500. We have the NHS locally, we have the council, we will have a national care service all with our own chief executives and that is before you bring in the other community planning partners such as Byron Rescue and Police Scotland etc. For our communities who are really looking for the best quality outcomes they can get, for the best quality public services they can get, the whole thing feels very cluttered and very complex, as you can imagine. I suppose that going back to Alan's point earlier, there is no doubt that when we focus our efforts and approaches on trying to move the outcomes for people, there is much of the ethos of the national care service that is to be welcomed with open arms. I think that the move towards getting it right for everyone approach in the same way as we have introduced with children's services many years ago. I think that the issues around eligibility criteria, where across the piece we have public services across councils and health boards and IJBs created very strict eligibility criteria that will provide for people with substantial and critical needs. We end up telling people to come back when they are worse in many instances because we are having to ration our services. The ethos of trying to open that up and provide services and supports at as early as stage makes perfect sense in terms of improving outcomes for people, because the earlier you can get in there, the longer you can obtain them and more successfully. From an economic standpoint, we know going all the way back to the Christie commission in 2011, the bit around prevention and early intervention. I am sure that our public health colleagues would tell us likewise in terms of the need to intervene and provide support at as early a stage as possible. I think that some of those ethoses that are coming through from the aspirations behind the national care service are ones that will help to guide us through the difficult discussions and decisions that we have to take around the format and the structures, etc. Thank you. Evelyn, have you got a follow-up question or can I move on to your colleagues? I have got a follow-up, convener. Thank you. Stephen, on those points that you made there, that really helps to clarify how we move forward with work. I am really interested in the pandemic and how IJBs dealt with that. Did that highlight issues? Did it make people think about things in a different way? What are our learning outcomes from the pandemic? How can we move that forward into our future review? I think that it is a personal reflection in many ways, but there is no doubt that at the outset of the pandemic there were a few things that were different and that brought people together in a way that I had never seen before in terms of how do we forget about the organisational boundaries, how do we work together effectively? The factors that were at play, first of all, there was a common enemy, depending on how you want to view the pandemic, but everyone knew that we needed to respond, we needed to be prepared and everyone was on board. There was no one in any doubt that this was the right thing to do in terms of making sure that we had everything in place to protect our communities and protect our staff, our services throughout that. I think that the second thing was that there was no blueprint, there was no established way of doing things, and therefore people were not taking the view that we have always done it this way, so that will just stand as a good stead. There was genuinely a blank sheet of paper for people to look at how do we organise and arrange ourselves in a different way, and nobody pointed to whether I preferred doing it this way because there was no established way. I think that the third and final thing was that there was significant governance through the pandemic. No doubt about it, but it was fleet of foot. It was stripped right down to make sure that decisions could be taken at the most appropriate level without taking three weeks or, in some cases, two years to prepare a business case for a test of change that eventually, by the time that's prepared and ready to be actioned, the world has moved on and things look very different. So there was a fleet of foot that was around at that point that made things very different, and those three factors, I think, are things that we need to be very clear about. So when you focus on what is our ultimate goal, what is our outcome that we want to achieve in getting everybody on boards, one thing is allowing people the space to think about if we had a blank sheet of paper and were creating our public services from scratch, what would that look like to best effect? We find ourselves bolting things on and trying to join bits up, but if we had a blank sheet of paper it would make a big deal of difference. The third thing, and it goes back to Vicki's point, is the real complexity of governance that can be really tricky through all of this, and if we can streamline that and some of the bureaucracy that would free people up to focus on things that really matter, which is about improving the outcomes for the people of Scotland. Vicki Irons wants to come back in, and I've got a very short question picking up on some of the points by Paul O'Kane, so I'll go to Vicki first of all. Thank you very much for your question, and really just to build on Stephen's points, I would go further and say that if we didn't have a foundation that we had established through our health and social care partnerships, I think that the response to the pandemic would have looked markedly different, and I still very vividly recall the first few months of the pandemic response, many because I'd only been in post and done day for three weeks at that point, but what was really evident was because we had really robust and integrated teams, because we have teams who are self-starting, who don't necessarily require huge amounts of direction to do the right thing. The resilience response that was mobilised was really quite phenomenal, and within those first few weeks, as an example, our GP out of hours service established a treatment and assessment centre on the very, very first weekend that we realised that there was going to be a problem with Covid. We were also integral to the development of our testing services for all staff and, latterly, for the public as that rolled out, and, indeed, further down the line in terms of the pandemic, the vaccination service. The key thing that we'll need to remember is that, in those early days, we were doing everything within our power to protect the capacity that we had available in our acute hospitals, but what that essentially meant was that the majority of people's care needs needed to be met in the community, and that was both a very frightening time for our staff, but also quite an exhilarating time for our staff, because they maintained the care that people have in their own homes, they maintained the care that we were providing through our care homes, and I think that they did that very, very well. Just to reiterate Stephen's points, when you move into resilience mode, it does make decisions that are making much quicker, much easier, and I think that we were welcomed into the kind of local resilience partnerships with open arms in terms of mobilising the efforts across our local communities, so I just felt that it was worth reiterating that. Alan, you wanted to come in on this? Thanks, convener. Just to build on the point from Vicky and others, I mean that the level of flexibility and resilience when Covid struck, the level of fear in our community about our staff groups stepped forward into the brink, and whether that was our district nurses, our care at home staff, our colleagues in the third sector. I think that I have never seen or had 25 years as a social worker, but I have never seen the system coming together so well, as I had in those early days, because the level of uncertainty about our staff stepped up and the staff from the health board. We had staff from Inverclyde Council who came forward asking, can we get some training to come and help with care at home? As well as that, our third sector colleagues stepped in to set up humanitarian helplines so that people were able to get a response from people. We could really enhance that offer that the statutory services were able to do, but it would really be through the partnership working of the wider system. That will be one of the things that will always be in my head that has come through this experience of the whole system reacting to this and stepping up and saying, how can we help to keep the most vulnerable people safe at flexibility and agility? Similarly to Vicky, within the first few weeks, we had set up a testing centre in Port Glasgow at the side of the health centre. We then had the army in to help us. All those things are just coming one after the other, but the staff across all levels of the organisation from a leadership and through the whole leadership, through service managers and team leaders, were staff on the ground. That will be my memory from this about how people stepped forward. They put their own fears to the side and that whole system response is something that we should never forget. Celebrate and think about what that tells us about the capacity that we have moving forward into the latest iteration of what the new national care service might look like. It needs to be a response not just from the statutory services but our wider group of colleagues who are far and wide and have a vast amount of experience and a lot of the answers lie in that wider response to health and social care that we are moving forward. We have heard about the local working in terms of officer level, but I am keen to understand a perspective about the board itself and how important people feel that. Essentially, that democratic representation of elected members has been able to scrutinise the work of the health and social care partnership and the work of you as a chief officer.  I wonder whether Judith MacDonald might want to share her view on that. Thank you for the question. I think that the make-up of your board and their interest in the work that you are doing is crucially important. What is really central to that is that the board has its own personality and a public body in its own right. I have certainly, in both IGBs, worked with and really tried hard with the chair and the vice chair and all members of that board to create that culture of, this is not two different types of appointed people, elected members and the one that is coming together with those hats on to make decisions through that lens. They are there as an integration joint board to work for the community in their area and to think differently and to think beyond the boundaries of the organisations that they come from. That is really important. The other part of the board that is hugely important to us is the non-voting members. Certainly in Edinburgh, the approach that we take is that we are a board of everybody who is around that table. Yes, some ultimately will vote if we need to vote if we have only had a vote. On one occasion, we make decisions through consensus broadly that we are doing the right thing and that we have agreement to the proposals that we are putting forward. The voices of lived experience, the people who work within our services, from our professional representatives, is hugely important in helping that whole board to make its decision. The role of local democracy is really important. We link through the elected members who sit on the board, but they are not representing their communities and their constituents when they are on the board. We try very hard to work with our local politicians, including those who are not on the board, because the experience, the knowledge that they bring from those localities and from their case work is hugely important. Our understanding of how our services impact people on the ground and how sometimes we get it wrong and where we can do better. I think that working through local democracies is hugely important, as is also working with third sector organisations, community groups and the people that represent those groups. Yes, I think that it is really important. We have taken very seriously the planning at the level of your locality, the way that you work with your communities. Edinburgh is a large, diverse city, so we have tried to work through localities to ensure that, as far as we are able to, we shape our services to those communities and to the needs of those communities. I think that the experience and knowledge of local elected members, including those who sit on the board, is really important in that. For me, as a chief officer for an IGB, more important is that the board recognises that it is a public body in its own right decisions that it has to make. I think that Dickie talked about tension earlier. The role and decisions of elected members that sit on the IGB can sometimes be, as you may have experienced yourself, counter to the views and directions of your group and the council or of the whole council. I think that it is quite a difficult role for elected members and, indeed, for non-exec NHS directors to sit on that board and to hold on their heads the ambitions of that board and to drive those forward through strategic planning and direction. I am just asking everyone to be mindful of time in both the length of their questions and their answers. We have a tremendous amount of questions still to ask. If I can have our panellists, maybe if they want to add anything to what has already been said, to use the chat box to do so. Can I move on to questions from Gillian Mackay? Just one from me. I will maybe go to Vicky on this one. What impact does any confusion of lines of accountability have on the planning, quality and delivery of services? I think that the major impact is pace of change, because if there is an expectation that the pathway of any significant decisions has to go through the health board and the local authority as well as the IGB, it just affects your ability to make decisions termously. That is the major impact. It also depends on whether there is a different sense of priorities across the two public sectors that make up the health and social care partnerships that have formed the IGBs. Where that is the case, it can also have an impact just in being able to align those priorities to be able to move forward with decision making. Thank you. Cozzler said in his response to the national care service bill consultation, and I will do a straight quote. I would like Alan and Stephen to give a quick response after, please. Cozzler said that structural change typically fails to address long-standing systemic barriers with integration being challenged by lack of resource, infrastructure and staff. As things stand, we risk repeating the cycle of successive reorganisations that change how services are planned and co-ordinated, but fail to address the fundamental and deep-rooted changes needed to integrate services at the front line. My question firstly to Alan and then to Stephen please is, are you concerned that all your hard work over the last few years could be undone? Thank you. You want to go to Alan first. Thank you for that question. I think that, under Clyde's IGB's response to the committee that we have submitted, we did not talk about the fear that we spend a lot of time going back over things that we really should not be spending time on and that we should be taking the learning that we have had from those successive changes. I think that there is a worry, a fear that was not there initially. When the national care service issue came up again, there was a great deal of enthusiasm and excitement. I think that, with the passage of time, it has been more and more of a concern that we will spend too much time thinking through some of the things that we already know the answers to. I think that there is a fear that a lot of energy will be spent in relation to structures when we should be looking at outcomes. I think that it is for us now to make sure that we play a full role in the thinking development. We are the senior leaders and other parts of the services across Scotland to make sure that we shape that properly. I think that the cause is only highlighting some of the genuine concerns that many of my colleagues that I work with have spoken about and the potential to score an own goal if we do not meet the most of that opportunity. I think that there is a fear there and that it is reasonable that we are really experienced senior leaders who have been through many changes would have that fear. I think that we need to make sure that we are shaping this moving forward. Can I ask just before I bring in your colleague, are you being given that opportunity to be involved in shaping the national care service? I think that there are going to be on-going conversations now, moving forward, which people Judith and Vicky have been involved in through our different bodies that represent us. We also have our chief social work officer group, so there is a lot of weight being put on all the things that we are going to start talking about now moving forward. We have been assured that we will have our opportunity to shape this moving forward, so we look forward to being at the centre of this discussion moving forward. We are committed to making this work, so I do not think that any of my colleagues would say that they are not interested in playing a full part in this moving forward. I think that the challenge is there in front of us now to be fully informed on how we shape this moving forward. I agree with Alan to a certain extent, but there is certainly a nervousness that we need to spend a lot of time, effort and energy looking at our structures at a time when we absolutely need to be focused on the needs of our communities across the piece. We recognise that having come through two of the most difficult years, for all the reasons that everyone around the table will know, two of the most difficult years through the pandemic. We know that many of our older people became deconditioned through that period. We know that many of the routine operations that we had to put on hold and the impact of that, we know that we had the impact on people's mental health. As we emerge from the pandemic, there is always that emerging need that comes out as a result of that, and we need to be extremely focused on it. Likewise, when we add in the financial instability across the world and the cost of living crisis that people are facing, the impact that that can have on people's mental and physical wellbeing and health, there is absolutely a need for us to be outward focused in terms of our efforts. I suppose that bit around how much time do we spend on huge structural change again, and it is getting a balance, because there is no doubt that structural change can make a difference. Vicky highlighted quite clearly at the outset the significant impact of the changes that we made for the establishment of the integration joint boards in the first place in the progress that was made through the early days of that. I think that there is no doubt that structures can help facilitate the work that we do, but it is getting the balance around being outward focused and at the same time making sure that we have the proper structures in place to help us to deliver that. On leadership, chief officers, I think that Vicky gave a really good description of how difficult that role is when they are subordinate to chief executives of other bodies there. We did have a ministerial strategic group talking about how they must improve collaborative working. My questions are, how are they currently supported by our chief officers of integration joint boards and how do we help them and what changes do we need to make so that they have the power to lead effectively? Judith, that seems like a good question to put to yourself. Thank you for that question. I think that it recognises the uniquely difficult role that chief officers have in health and social care and integration in Scotland. I think that all leadership roles at this level can be challenging, but there is certainly a unique aspect to the multiple lines of accountability that you have as a chief officer that make that difficult. There are a number of things in that. First of all, there is a nice recognition that across the public sector in Scotland we want to see leaders come forward, we want to see them be able to be developed, we want to see them thrive in these roles and to have opportunity in that. I think that it is an important thing for us as a system to be thinking through around succession planning, where are the opportunities for leaders coming through, and I know that there are some new approaches to that, the delivering leadership programme that is just starting this week. I think that it is an important part of that that is looking cross-sector. In terms of the current cohort of chief officers, we as a group in health and social care Scotland are trying to support one another. We are back together again in person with some development days where we are trying to develop our role as an organisation and as a group in terms of that collective voice of chief officers. How do we influence the wider system because sometimes it can be quite difficult in your own system to undertake that influence because of the multiple tensions there? I think that that is important, but there has to be that recognition that where chief officers in that role require support so that we have a route into the Scottish Government. Again, we try and work with officials there to cultivate that, but the crucial one here is being able to prepare and support leaders in the future and for a national approach to that and to their development. That was really helpful. Does it seem to be that this is at the centre of the high turnover of leadership in IJBs? Is there anything else in addition to what you have said there that we should be doing to try and prevent that from happening going forward? It is a difficult one. I think that there are two interpretations of the high turnover in chief officers. One of those is, and we have seen it, that a number of chief officers have gone into what we might think of as promotional posts as too addictive of local authorities and the health boards. There is something to celebrate in terms of the experience of doing that challenging job preparing you to develop as a leader in public sector in Scotland, but it is undoubtable that some attrition has come about because of the difficult multiple reportings. I think that some of the questions are there about simplification, dreamlining and being able to ensure that chief officers can represent the change that they are trying to deliver and represent their organisations clearly. It is going to be really important in the new arrangements so that that voice is not compromised by any of the tensions inherent in the current model. Emma, you have some questions about performance. Thank you, convener. Good morning to everyone and thanks for coming today. Some couple of questions about performance. Integration authorities have been required to report on a core suite of integration indicators within their annual performance reports. The indicators were developed to allow integration authorities to review progress towards health and wellbeing outcomes. Just looking at the frameworks and the papers, they seem pretty straightforward. I am interested to know if you think that appropriate measures and indicators are in place to track the progress of integration. If not, is there something that you would suggest that it should be added that might be more appropriate? Who would you like to direct that to initially? We use a core suite of indicators. On balance, they are useful as indicators to tell us how we are doing both in terms of our local progress. How well have we performed at Edinburgh since the inception of integration? Are we going in the right direction? Helpful for that. You can also see your relative position across the rest of Scotland. Most of us will add in to our annual performance reports other local relevant parameters and indicators that we think are useful. You will get that local flavour. We will all have in place a local performance framework that goes beyond the annual performance reports, of redeveloping one of those that goes into those services. Obviously, those partnerships that go beyond the bare minimum within the integration scheme will include in their performance delivery of justice services, the performance children's services, etc., so that will need to be reflected. I think that one of the hardest things to reflect in any sort of indicator at that level is the experience of people on the ground. We have talked here before in the committee and in its previous incarnation about how you measure the impact of early intervention. We struggle in being able to articulate what are good indicators around that. Of course, some of the longer-term change that we are trying to put in place in terms of health and equality is reducing the impact of health and equality and narrowing the gap. It is harder to implement. We will not be alone in that in Edinburgh. Some of the challenges in that are the resource to deliver that level of complex analysis of your population. There is always room for changing improvement in that, but it is sweet that we have got it. It has been useful. It has been the same one that we have used over the years. We are able to measure progress against some challenge against them. For us, it remains the late discharges, but we are seeing progress against those indicators. If we are going to change them, it will be important to take forward some of the ones that we are using now so that we do not start with a completely fresh page and we cannot measure the progress from where we are going now into the future and whatever the new arrangements are. When you mentioned particular local issues that you measure, that is probably quite important. For rural versus urban areas, integration authorities such as Dumfries and Galloway and Scottish Borders are pretty rural. Are you able to give a particular example of what local performance measurements you use and successes that you feel have been really good that need to be reported on so that we can continue to look at how to build on successes? We will look at the variance between our localities. We operate as four localities in Edinburgh and try to ensure that we are planning and delivering at a level that is realistic. Our four localities are very large. They are as large as some other partnerships in terms of the population that they cover, but at least it gives us a greater opportunity to respond to those communities in that locality. We look at and report on variance and difference in those localities, and that helps us to think through the relative amount of resource that we might put to one area as opposed to another. It helps us to think where we need to undertake some quality work, where we need to achieve a degree of consistency of approach so that we are delivering the same outcomes for people as we are in other areas. That is one area where it is important that we are looking at our population, our structures and reporting on the changes there. We are seeing things and looking at, for example, the levels of welfare guardianship in some areas being higher than others. That could have an impact on our performance and on the resource that we need. That would be one area that I would point to that it is very helpful to people locally and to respond to what we find. It is just to briefly build on that. Likewise, I agree with Judith that the evolution of the annual report and performance measures that are within that are useful and a continuous method in which the IGB can gauge whether we have been making progress. It is also fair to say that there have been lots of service development that have evolved since we did establish those requirements that are not necessarily covered. What I witness through the local IGB is a request for information that is certainly more up-to-date, because that process in itself can be considerably out-of-date in terms of the data capture by sometimes a year or 18 months, but it is also a request for us to be able to represent the work that we do. That would be one thing that I would want to emphasise in moving forward into new arrangements. Many of the activity performance measures that were judged against essentially look at voids or waiting lists and identify all the work that we are not doing. There is often a particular focus that it feels, from a chief officer perspective, the only measure that we are judged on is our delayed discharge figures. That does not necessarily reflect the activity that we do really successfully. To give you an example of that, although the delayed discharge figures in my own health and social care partnership would, to many people externally, look quite constant. They would look like they are not necessarily improving. That masks a 20 per cent increase in demand that we have covered and that we are providing care for. We also now have a new measure that has come into place, which is about discharge without delay, and that gives an indication that done these performances between 97 and 99 per cent for the number of people who we discharge without any delay at all. For me, the emphasis on moving forward needs to value things that we do well, that we can report back on, as well as performance measures that count the things that we do not necessarily do, and that we are continuing to try to improve on. We heard during the pandemic how you had some teams that are really self-starting and there has been good experience of how to support getting people out of the hospitals. That was one issue that happened in the early part of the pandemic. I am just hearing your thoughts, I suppose, about integration partners and whether they all collaborate effectively. That would be to look at how to improve performance based on the outcomes and the data indicators. Obviously, if there are challenges, how do you foresee overcoming them? From my own experience, that is one of the areas that has really thrived under integration. The teams that support pathways of care, whether that is from the care of the elderly consultants in the acute sector, right through to primary care practitioners and the third sector that Judith MacDonald mentioned, are all pulling in the same direction. We have completely integrated teams that are available across the localities, certainly within Dundee City, and I know that that is the case in other partnership areas, who work on a cycle of continuous improvement, because the demand for our services never stands still. We have all witnessed quite a increase in the level of complexity of the people that we need to support, but also the volume of people who are requiring care through our systems, literally from end to end. We have a completely integrated process in place across the pathway, and our teams are integrated in the way that they are deployed on a daily basis. If you like the level of improvement, the level of collaboration that you are asking about is present, without a shadow of a doubt, in my mind, and it is present on a daily basis, so we need to safeguard that and make sure that that forms part of the foundations of whatever arrangements come into place next. Vicki, if I may, I would like to pick up on something that you said and your earlier answer to Emma Harper about how the focus on delayed discharge can mask quite a lot of the positive things that are being achieved, the flow of an increased amount of people out of hospital and into care settings and getting the support that they need from IJB and the people that you employ. One of the things that we hear a lot is that people are not coming into the care sector or people are leaving the care sector because they feel demoralised. Do you think that that fact that the performance, the good performance and the achievements that are being made, as you say, is in a very challenging situation for your meeting that demand? Do you think that the way that has been reported in the public discourse is part and parcel of the fact that you have those challenges in terms of people's morale? Yes, if I can respond without a shadow of a doubt, I think that the reality of being under constant scrutiny but also feeling like you are on the end of a continual stream of criticism can be very demoralising. I think that those are increasingly really tough jobs to be able to fulfil dealing with lots of people with cognitive impairment, lots of complexity in terms of care needs and dealing with everything that surrounds that, including the pace in which you are required to work for us to be able to ensure that people's pathways of care and that we are providing care at the right place at the right time and that people are not to lead at any part of our system. That has a major impact as well. My colleague Stephen also mentioned something earlier about what it feels like to be providing a role, particularly in care and particularly care at home, where you can be quite isolated in the job that you undertake and that you provide for others. There is a perception now that those roles are very stressful but they carry quite a level of risk. Stephen mentioned it and I still think that we have a legacy of it following the pandemic. There were times when our workforce was genuinely frightened that the jobs that they were undertaking were putting themselves at risk, were putting their families at risk, but at the same time, they were under quite a steady stream of criticism for performing those roles. We have to understand that. We are also seeing signs of trauma across the workforce, so we are now trying to develop trauma-informed support services to make sure that people get their respite, but the support needs to be able to continue in their roles. We have seen a high level of turnover as a result of that. To follow up on that, what do you think of the likes of us as politicians and anyone from the media and the press and the people that report on those things can do to recognise more? Not just that it is a hard job but that it is a really important job and it is a rewarding job and it is something that we should be trying to be more positive to encourage people to stay and to thank people who do that very hard work. I think that a lot of that comes with true recognition for the roles that people undertake. Sorry if I have misremembered that, but I think that there is something in the felio report about parity of esteem as well and for the role of people in caring roles to be valued, not just by ourselves but also by the public as professional roles and essential roles as part of the health and social care spectrum. I think that sometimes it is felt that particularly clinical roles, medical roles and nursing roles are held in a higher esteem, so I think that there is something that we can do both to raise the profile of what people do but also to value that and reward that and recognise that. I see that Judith Proctor wants to come in. I will come to Judith and then I will come to Alan. It is a very good question and it is so important. That is one of the lessons that we will learn through the pandemic is the absolute value and importance of those roles in people's lives. There are practical things that we can do. We can think about terms and conditions. I think that that is important. That is a difficult job. We should value it in the way that people experience doing it, but there is also something about how we create career pathways into and from care into other roles. I know that most of us as chief officers in our partnerships and with our health boards and councils are looking at that. I think that, as a nation, we will have to open the conversation about what it means to be a carer. I think that some of the images that we see are probably not very realistic. We will see recruitment campaigns for somebody selling a cup of tea with somebody. That does happen, but it is also a very high-pressurised role. I think that we need to show it and shine the light on the real work and importance that it has. Again, I would just welcome what was said in the Feeley report about that, because I think that Feeley did absolutely recognise the need for us to elevate our support and esteem for those crucial and important roles. Thanks, convener. Judith just covered the point. I suppose that that is a more of a focus on health and wellbeing for our staff now. Each of the partnerships have put a lot of time and effort into looking at how we can support our staff groups around their health and wellbeing, because it is undoubted that people are tired. They are emotionally tired and physically tired, coming through the past two years. Many of the partnerships have got active recruitment campaigns. With Inverclyde, we have won. Our care at home service kicked off last week again to try to encourage people to think about a career in care as far as more opportunities to move in and care at home and there will be other things that they can do after that. However, a big focus on health and wellbeing has to be the way forward. I do not think that I can remember when EWI had us when capacity came in as a mental health officer. The Scottish Parliament does have a role. It can bring in innovative legislation. I know that there has been issues with EWI now, but I think that someone asked the role of the Scottish Parliament. Yes, there is a big role for that in terms of legislation that can be helpful. There is a huge challenge for us now supporting the staff across. No-one comes in to be a registered social worker to be popular. People know that it comes with the territory, but we need to protect our staff whether it is district nurses or whether it is allied health professionals. The level of disquiet among some people in the community now towards our staff has been an issue for us. We have had to work really hard to make sure that we are doing everything we can to promote health and wellbeing. I think that the committee would want to know about the health and wellbeing work that is going on across Scotland to support our staff in whatever role their current people are working in across health and social care. Thank you very much. I have two questions that Tess White has about strategic planning. Thank you, convener. Alan Stevenson said that people are tired and we have been through a very difficult period in the past two years. My question is what work is going on at the moment to integrate service delivery? Has it stalled? Has the national care service bill detracted resources away from forward planning in this area? My question is about bandwidth. Thank you. Will we go to Judith MacKinnon on that, Judith?  Would you mind just briefly repeating the question? Just very, very quickly. My question, Judith, is about bandwidth. Everybody is tired and fatigued after the last two years. The question is what work is going on at the moment to integrate service delivery? Has the national care service bill prevented forward planning in this area? There is only so much that you can do. Thank you for that question for repeating it for me. I think that there is a real risk of that, that we focus on what we need to do to work towards a national care service. We not exactly take our eye off the ball of what we are doing now, but it disrupts our ability to look in the longer term. Ideally, with our strategic planning, we will be looking beyond the three-year cycle that we have and into 10 years what we want to achieve. We can integrate that with the intent around the bill and the direct fully report that we have been working on, as we already are, on things such as ethical commissioning. That should be a principle of how we commission anyway, so that should not be knocked off course by the work around the national care service. However, as more of the detail around the NCS is made available and comes through the co-production process, it is a real risk that we begin to feel the tension in terms of current direction of travel, planning, relationships, allocations of budget—I think that it is a real issue here—and what we are required to do around the national care service. Questions at the start of this session to us, we are all focused on the processes of when we integrated back in 2015-16. At that point, of course, we had change fund support us. We were able to increase our capacity to do some double running of that sort of element of our work. Again, those arrangements, how we are supported to potentially double run as we transition from our current situation to the future, would be really important. I think that there is a risk. We are experiencing some of that issue with bandwidth now because we all have a longer-term direction of travel to create sustainable, transformed health and social care services within the challenging budgets that we have. However, we are also now needing to focus significantly on winter planning, which is now a year-round activity, surge planning and the uncertainty of future waves of Covid. We now have a permanent focus on vaccination programme, which is hugely important, and just the sheer challenge that we all have in addressing this stage of the pandemic and the consequences of the previous two years. That bandwidth issue does not just relate to the NCS but to the sheer pressure and demand and need for a change of it. Thank you. I am going to bring in Sandesh, who is joining us remotely. Thank you, convener. I have to say that listening to Vicky Irons speaking as a doctor, I am also very confused about IJBs and where they sit and the confusion of authority, local guidance, governance and where the lines of accountability are. That makes real sense to me, what you were saying. My question is about the Audit Scotland said that a clearer line about care boards superseding integration authorities would be beneficial in the national care service bill. It said that this would assist current integration authorities with medium and long-term planning. Question is, do you agree with this and are you concerned that the NCS bill has drafted as undermining such medium and long-term planning? Who would you like to go to first, Sandesh? Thank you for your question. I guess two things about the undermining of the medium to long-term planning. I think that that potentially builds on Judith's response to the previous questions. There is absolutely a requirement that our planning cycle is pretty much continuous these days, but, particularly after Covid, I think that each IJB has had to go through a refresh of our strategic plans just to ensure, first of all, that we can bank the gains that we have made in terms of integration throughout the resilience response, but that we understand exactly how demand has changed as a result of Covid and that we can refresh our strategic plans and respond to that. I mentioned earlier that, particularly for care at home, we have seen a 20 per cent surge in demand, which cannot be explained by demographic change. It has shifted throughout that period, but I think that there is something that my colleague Stephen said earlier, which is perhaps not present at the moment and is a bit of a risk in terms of the interruption of that planning cycle. That is the level of excitement that was there when we were first established. I think that there was a real desire to do things very, very differently and an excitement around change and an excitement around integration and what progress could be made. I think that that has been dampened down recently. I think that some of that is because of the fear of change ahead, to a certain extent, wondering if we go for really significant strategic shifts in care, whether there might be a point in time in the next couple of years, whether the rug might be pulled from underneath that. I think that there is potentially a risk there. That is more about feelings than any particular infrastructure or planning progress process that we have in place, but it is essentially the role of the chief officer to ensure that that motivation is still present and that all of our partners are willing to tie into that. That is our challenge, I feel, to be able to see us through this period of change. We are certainly up for that challenge. Your other question was about the Audit Scotland reflections on, if you like, the streamlining of accountabilities. I agree with that in general terms, but if I can flag up another area of concern that comes from a chief officer's perspective, the possible development of a national care service in parallel to a national health service is of concern. We are worried that we are going to lose the gains of all the work that we have done around the integration of health and social care. From a personal perspective, I think that we have maybe missed an opportunity in not building a national health and social care service as opposed to parallel national bodies and to parallel boards that will be present in local systems. That is one of the areas where I think that there has potentially been a missed opportunity in the proposals that have been set out so far. We are going to move on to talk about collaboration with third and private sectors and questions from Paul O'Kane. I wonder if I can just start by asking again for another reflection, I suppose, on integration and to what extent has legislation and guidance aligned for effects of collaboration with the third and private sector? I wonder if we can maybe go to Stephen first. Yes, thanks for the question. I think that it has helped to facilitate the relationships across statutory third and independent sectors. There is no doubt that it has been described earlier in the session, the make-up of the joint boards, the input of various bodies and key stakeholders from service users and carers through to our trade unions, our staff side and our third and independent sector representatives. I think that all of that has helped to shape the delivery models across the piece. From an Orkney perspective, we do not have an independent sector, we have a real thriving, mainly locally-based third sector who are incredibly valuable to the system and the work that they do and are truly integrated, not just with our health and social care landscape, but right across the community planning partnership arena and our very active partners. Just as an example, for us, our delivery of distress brief interventions, for example, is the third sector that helped to lead on that. The delivery of many of our pathways around dementia diagnosis is Age-Opney Scotland, who work in collaboration with psychiatry and social work, etc., to deliver on that too. All of that continues to thrive under the current circumstances. I think that the legislation that has been laid out and the make-up of the integration joint boards and the approach to strategic planning has certainly, in my experience, assisted some of that collaboration. No-one else has asked to come in on this, Paul. I will throw back to you. If anyone wants to come in, please use the chat box and let me know when I will come to you. We have touched on some of this already, in terms of the governance and the scrutiny within IGBs and having essentially different partners around the table and at a place at the table, particularly for third sector but also obviously for trade union colleagues and others. I wonder to what extent the panel feels that people being asked to leave sometimes when the vote happens or being present at the table and not having a vote, to what extent that actually I suppose maybe phrase or confracks of relationships in terms of that kind of meaningful contribution that people can make. Can you just get a mic live, please? There we are. We should be able to hear, Judith, although I'm still there. Sorry, yes. I'm happy to come in on that one because I think it is a really important one. I think certainly from my own experience, an individual would only be asked to leave the meeting room when a decision had been made if there was a potential conflict of interest through their register of interests. As I've said before, we've worked very, very hard, previous chairs,