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Thank you. We have run over time, and we have to move on to our next agenda item.

I thank all our panellists—those who are online and those who are here in person—for their time this morning. Their evidence has certainly given us a lot of food for thought as we continue our scrutiny of the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill.

The third item on our agenda is consideration of four public petitions that have been referred to the committee. PE1845 is a petition for an agency to advocate for the healthcare needs of those living in rural Scotland; PE1890 is a petition to find solutions to recruitment and training challenges for rural healthcare in Scotland; PE1915 is a petition to reinstate Caithness County Council and Caithness NHS Board; and PE1924 is a petition to complete an emergency, in-depth review of women’s health services in Caithness and Sutherland.

The Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee referred the petitions to our committee after doing its own scrutiny of them, so that they can be considered as part of our work on health inequalities. Colleagues will remember that we did a substantial review of, and inquiry into, health inequalities. The common theme that runs through all the petitions is rural healthcare, which we routinely address in our scrutiny of the health service and which came up as a particular issue during our health inequalities work.

We need to have a discussion about what to do with the petitions. Some of the petitioners have already met the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, for example—I am talking about the final petition, on an in-depth review of women’s health services. Members will also be aware that the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee has already done some work on the petitions. In fact, we have a member here—David Torrance—who is also on that committee. He might want to tell us about some of the work that has been done.

Before I open up the discussion, there are some options to consider in relation to what we want to do.

The first option is to invite a selection of rural health boards to give evidence on the issues raised in the petitions and to follow that up with either a letter to, or a session with, the cabinet secretary. Obviously, that option will take the most time, and we need to decide whether we have time for that. We will not be able to do that this side of Christmas, because our scrutiny of the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill will take up all our time right up until Christmas.

The second option is to proceed directly to inviting the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care to give evidence on the issues raised in the petitions, given that a lot of evidence has already been taken and we have already done quite a lot of our own scrutiny of rural healthcare in our equalities work. I should point out that the cabinet secretary has already spoken to the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee about the issues that are raised in the petitions.

The third option is to take evidence via correspondence. We could write to rural health boards and the cabinet secretary to seek evidence on the issues.

The fourth option is to close some or all of the petitions.

It would be really helpful to hear from David Torrance about some of the scrutiny work that the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee has already done. This is not revenge for him passing the petitions on to us. I genuinely want to know what level of scrutiny there was at that committee.

I believe that only two people support that petition, whereas the other petitions have a lot more substantial support. There is also quite a bit of overlap between the themes in the other three petitions.

That is very helpful. Thanks, Gillian.

I should mention that we routinely meet health boards, and we can factor into that work quite a lot of the issues from PE1890 and the other petitions. We said that we wanted to do some targeted work on the workforce, particularly in rural areas. That is why we are having the health boards in. We should remember that. I do not want to duplicate work and have an additional session.

You are preaching to the converted, because I am a rural MSP, and everything that has been mentioned is the situation in Aberdeenshire, but it should be remembered that we will be having health boards in anyway, so the petition can feed into the scrutiny that we will be doing in those sessions.

I agree with you. It was mentioned during our work programme day that we wanted to hear from all health boards, so we are endeavouring to do that throughout the year.

Are there any other comments on the approach to the petitions? David Torrance suggested that we should close one, and Gillian Mackay suggested that we should write to all the rural health boards and have the cabinet secretary in.

You could, of course, look at the outcomes of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee’s consideration of the petition. As David Torrance has said, you could look at its recommendations with regard to the petition, which will be linked to in our committee papers.

Does anyone else have a comment?

Before I bring in my colleague, I want to ask a follow-up question. There is accreditation, but you also mentioned remuneration for people working in care. Has that also been addressed in the Nordic countries?

Thank you, Dr Connon. I will let you catch your breath for a moment.

You ended by making a point about the ageing population, which is a worldwide concern. Another concern that I imagine affects most countries, and which we are facing in Scotland, is how to attract people into the care sector. An objective of the bill is to make working in the care sector an attractive career, with parity of esteem with our health sector; indeed, that issue came up when you talked about New Zealand. Do you think that, because of what has been done there, New Zealand has less of a problem in attracting people into the care profession? Are there other models that you can point to where there have been good outcomes after reforms have been made?

Sandesh Gulhane has some questions on that theme.