Meeting of the Parliament 21 May 2014
I want to take us into three areas of the debate.
The first is the question of transparency, on which I will spend some time, because I want to be able to establish to the chamber that what Richard Simpson disagreed with me about at First Minister question time was, in fact, erroneous on his part.
We can remove the question of transparency and then get to the issue of principle as to when a Government minister is able and is not able to intervene and take action on a matter that affects their constituency.
Thirdly, let us look at the rights and wrongs of the issue. Let us look at the patients in Lanarkshire.
Finally, let us also look at the competence of the health secretary.
The reason why I disagreed with Richard Simpson was because I can establish beyond any doubt that the whole detail of this area of decision making was in the public domain. I have here the press lines issued to the Sunday Herald on the weekend of 1 December 2012, which were reported in the Evening Times of 24 January 2013. I will have them put into the record so that every member in this chamber can see them. They go into great detail about what happened on the day of 26 September 2012:
“The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing, Alex Neil, is not currently looking at proposals from NHS Lanarkshire on the provision of Mental Health Services.
Previously, on 26 September, Alex Neil, as Cabinet Secretary for Health, had made his concerns about the proposed reconfiguration of mental health services across Lanarkshire known to the NHS board through Scottish Government officials.
With over 500,000”—