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Of course. It has to be. That is why it is important that it is done at a local level, to respond to local need and the local environment, and to the various factors that Emma Harper will be familiar with, given her previous practice, in arriving at what will be required and what a risk assessment would arrive at as the best requirement for that particular shift, or for a longer period of time, depending on the environment that we are talking about. That is why it cannot be prescribed nationally. It has to be delivered locally, but we need the transparency that the legislation provides around how those decisions are taken, and when there has been challenge in the previous year, to arrive at a safe staffing level. The reports will come through in April to determine that, and the ministers will need to respond to those in the Parliament in due course.

They should be, yes, but to supplement that, I reiterate what Emma Harper has just put on the table and my response to Sandesh Gulhane—I cannot prejudge what will be in the reports. I will see the boards’ decisions and the risk assessments and other factors that they have used to determine what the staffing establishment should look like. When there have been issues, that needs to be clearly communicated in the reports that come through to ministers.

To add to Mr Whittle’s point, he will be aware that HIS now routinely inspects maternity and neonatal services. The first inspection is under way and we expect the reports on that in May.

In the light of what we are picking up through the boards’ reviews and other areas of learning, we will interact with boards that have a responsibility to make sure that they are honouring what they should be and providing safe staffing.

I will need to defer to Christopher on that.

We will see what the reports from boards say. I have not had sight of those, and they are not due to arrive with us until 30 April. Challenges remain across the system in ensuring that we have sufficient staffing levels. I will not shy away from that, but I think that this, alongside some of our work with the nursing and midwifery task force, our work on GP attraction and retention and our work with the royal colleges and others on attracting and retaining staff in all disciplines, will help us to build towards ensuring that we continue to have the high-quality and safe clinical environments that people expect.

I am not going to pretend that, on every shift in every ward, staffing is at appropriate levels, because I know that we are sometimes short. However, this is about ensuring that we get to that point. Improvements in that respect will have been made over the past year, and I am looking forward to the reports demonstrating that.

The tools are there as guides for local decision makers in ensuring that there are safe staffing levels. As I said, they are intended to be dynamic and flexible to respond to local need and clinical demand. As Christopher Thompson set out, HIS is working on developing the tools to ensure that they are responsive—the tools are works in progress. As a result of the legislation and the work that the Government is doing with boards on supplementary staffing, significant work is on-going to ensure that establishment staffing levels are appropriate. A considerable benefit is coming through as a result of the legislation and the on-going work that is being done by HIS and by boards.

Obviously, we will keep under review what we publish. We have to publish the board’s responses, which we will get at the end of next month. We will keep under review and consideration the data that is published alongside that.

I again thank Ms Haughey for raising this issue and the panel for giving their experience of the situation. It concerns me, too. The information is there, and we have been very clear with health boards and with alcohol and drug partnerships about the implementation of the MAT standards.

Alongside the consideration that Ms Haughey has offered on the role that Gregor Smith, the CMO, could play, I should say that I regularly engage with the British Medical Association’s general practice committee and the Royal College of General Practitioners. The issue is perhaps something that I could raise in my next discussions with them, to ensure that there is awareness among GPs and that they are accessing the information that is available. That would help to provide the consistency that we were discussing right at the start of this session in our responses to Mr Balfour’s questions, ensuring greater consistency in the application of the MAT standards and access to other services that are available.

I look forward to being able to contribute to that debate, convener.

We absolutely recognise that, particularly for community and voluntary organisations, funding certainty is critical for planning and for recruitment to the programmes that are delivered. Colleagues from the community and voluntary sectors have contributed today. We all support organisations in our constituencies and we want to provide as certain a funding landscape as possible and to support them in their funding applications. We absolutely recognise that providing that element of certainty for as long as possible helps them, sometimes, more than the quantum that they get, because the certainty allows them to plan and to shape their services in a way that year-to-year funding just does not. The fairer funding route has been developed to provide greater levels of certainty and multiyear funding.

As colleagues will be aware, we have an ambition to go further than that. We hope that the funding that we receive—and the certainty around that funding through, for example, the UK Government’s spending review in the spring—will allow us to have greater certainty in our medium-term financial planning in order to provide that level of budgetary certainty. Others across the Cabinet recognise the importance of doing that, not least for recruitment but also in relation to providing the space for those organisations to focus on delivering and building a service and delivering transformational change, rather than having to go through the cycle of funding applications every year—which, as we all recognise, is time consuming and requires a huge resource commitment. We are looking at what more we can do on that.

I will bring in Laura Zeballos or Maggie Page to provide more detail on that. We are looking, for example, at seeking to make sure that there is confirmation of the ability to share data across services, whether it be drug and alcohol services or, in this case, someone’s experience of their pathway through health and social care. The National Care Service (Scotland) Bill seeks to put in place a more robust process to ensure that proper data sharing is in place, because we recognise that there is a challenge with different services sharing data, even within the health service and between the health service and social care.

Laura or Maggie might wish to elaborate on our plans.