COMMISSION ON THE POWERS AND ELECTORAL ARRANGEMENTS OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY FOR WALES

MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS

of the

EVIDENCE OF:

CHAIR OF THE HEALTH & SOCIAL SERVICES COMMITTEE OF THE

NATIONAL ASSEMBLY FOR WALES,

KIRSTY WILLIAMS

held at

National Museum & Gallery, Cardiff

on

5^th December 2002

LORD RICHARD: Thank you very much for coming.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: You are welcome.

LORD RICHARD: I wonder if you would be kind enough to introduce yourself and your colleague, just for the sake of the record.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes, of course. My name is Kirsty Williams. I am the Liberal Democrat Assembly Member for Brecon & Radnorshire and I chair the Health and Social Services Committee at the National Assembly for Wales. I am joined today by my clerk to my Committee, Jane Westlake, who has been clerk to the Committee since its inception and has provided the most wonderful support and advice along with the deputy clerk, Claire, over the last three and a half years.

LORD RICHARD: Thank you very much. The procedure we have been adopting is that we ask witnesses to say something for five minutes or so to open the thing out, so if you would like to say one or two things now we would be grateful.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Okay. Obviously Members of the Commission will have received the paper that Jane and I have compiled about some of the issues which have affected the Health and Social Services Committee. We flagged up those areas particularly where we feel perhaps the work of the Committee has been constrained by the current powers of the National Assembly for Wales and a lack of clarity about what those powers are.

I should clarify my statements, also, by saying that I am here today in my capacity as the chair and I will do my best to remain absolutely impartial and try and faithfully give you the view of the Committee as a whole, but I am sure you will realise that I have not been able to check all my answers which I may give with the rest of the Members of my Committee, so my views are not necessarily shared by everybody at that Committee.

I would like to tell you a little bit also about how my Committee works and what it has achieved in the last three and a bit years. I have been the chair of the Committee since the very beginning. I am the sole survivor of the original National Assembly chairs. The Committee has been very lucky, also, to have a great deal of stability, we have had the same Minister from the very beginning and also the lead spokespersons from the Plaid Cymru party and the Conservative party have remained the same since the very beginning. I think this has been really crucial for the Committee because we have been able to build up a good working relationship and we have had clarity and continuity with the people involved. Although the rules and responsibilities of the Minister have changed slightly, her portfolio has changed slightly during the lifetime of the Committee, we have been able to remain a stable force pretty much which I think has been of great benefit to me. The Committee has done its very best to work in a consensual way to tackle the issues. We have tried very hard, consciously, all the Members of the Committee have tried very hard, to work in a way which is consensual rather than a way which is adversarial. I think that has been illustrated clearly by the fact that I can count the number of votes we have had to have in my Committee on both my hands in the last three and a half years. We have been able to work towards a consensus at the end of the day rather than having to decide ourselves by some of us voting something and some of us voting against something. We try and work in an informal way, so this is a great shock to me today, this is very formal compared with how we do things in my Committee, very formal indeed.

Also, we took a decision very early on to meet regularly as the Minister, the chair of the Committee and the lead spokespersons. Whilst the Act and the Standing Orders say that the responsibility of the agenda for the Committee is the responsibility of the Chair and the Minister I felt that was not broad enough and very early on we established the Health Spokespersons’ meeting. We meet on a fortnightly basis outside the Committee to agree our forward work programmes, to plan our work programmes and to discuss how we are going to handle business within the Committee. That has been very, very useful in avoiding any nasty spats in Committee about "why are we talking about this?" Well, we are talking about it because we agreed collectively to talk about this.A Why are we handling things in a certain way? Well, because we agreed collectively that this is how the Committee would conduct itself@ . That has meant that we have been able to keep points of order type business to outside the Committee and the Committee’s time has been dealt with doing the job that we are there to do, and that is to scrutinise and develop policy on behalf of the people of Wales rather than argue amongst ourselves. That has been an important part of the way we handle things in my Committee.

It is impossible for me to say what is the most important piece of work, what is the most crucial thing that we have done in the last three and a half years, but I think we have got a huge agenda to deal with and we have touched on many issues of health and social care which are vitally important to people in Wales. I think overall the one thing which does stand out in my memory, and I think all Committee members would share their pride in, is the work that we did on the Children’s Commissioner for Wales. I think we are particularly proud as a Committee that we were able to develop that policy from political commitments in three of the four manifestos into a policy and into a real live post which somebody is doing now and somebody is delivering on behalf of the children of Wales. For me that has been the crowning glory, if you like, of my Committee’s work. We have been able to take that forward first in the UK, and we were pleased that the majority of the Committee’s recommendations were taken into account when it was drafting the necessary legislation. That is the bit that galls us really, we spent all that time, all that work, we developed that policy, it is our policy, it was us who took the evidence from the people across Wales. It was us who argued the points about what it should be like, and then we had to wait to see whether London would agree with us; whether London would give us the opportunity to make that person a statutory post; whether we would have legislative time in London to make that post the reality of what our Committee across the board wanted to achieve, and for us that was a bit trying.

There have been other important pieces of work: policy reviews on charging for eye tests, the health implications arising out of the Phillips Inquiry, the incidence of BSE and currently we are just about to publish our review of services for children with special health needs.

We have been very much involved in the development and scrutiny of important strategy documents and policies leading to the restructuring of the NHS in Wales and closer integration between health and social care services. There have been differences, of course there have, that is what we are there for, there have been political differences but the Committee has worked pragmatically and constructively from early consideration of the policy where there were lots of arguments about what was going on to collectively working together there with the secondary legislation which has arisen out of what has come from London. Although there were people who were principally opposed to what was going on, those parties have come to the table when it has come to looking at secondary legislation and have said "well, we have lost the argument in the first sense but now we are going to look and see what improvements we think should be made in the legislation which arises out of it".

One of the key policy changes that we have been involved in is the restructuring of the way resources are allocated to the NHS in Wales. In February 2000 the Committee recommended a working group - Carys will know all about it- should be set up to look at the allocation formula. Professor Peter Townsend was appointed as the chair of the steering group and representatives from all the four political parties on the Committee were involved in the development of that work outside of the Committee but still keeping that Health Committee input involved. The Committee as a whole was kept in regular contact with the progress and in January this year we considered the final report and from April 2003 the Health Service will be getting its money in a different way, primarily as a response to what the Committee decided, I think, something which needed to change. The first two Wales only Bills since the inauguration of the Assembly have fallen within our field and that has been a huge challenge for us. Nobody on my Committee has previous Westminster experience, so dealing with the legislative process from our perspective as well as learning about how Westminster deals with it has been a real journey of discovery for us and I think we do it better now than we did at the beginning perhaps. There has been quite a contrast also in how we have been able to work, for instance, on the NHS (Wales) Bill where we had the opportunity of pre-legislative scrutiny as apart from the NHS Reform Bill which was going through Westminster already and we had little opportunity to really shape, influence and inform that debate. There has been a stark difference between how we have been able to interact with the legislative process on two of those things.

We have enjoyed a constructive relationship with the Welsh Affairs Committee. We have got to work with them wherever possible, although there are rules from the Westminster side of things which do not allow us to have joint meetings but we have enjoyed a co-operative relationship with them.

The only other area of frustration I can think of - to outline briefly, perhaps - is the issue of free personal care. Again there have been discussions in the Assembly, in the Committee and in the plenary session around this important area of policy but the Committee has decided not to pursue it but to further work on it, spend time looking at further work on it because we know we cannot do it. There seems little point in the Committee spending its valuable time, because we do not have much time, actually thrashing out all the in-depth policy discussions because we could not take it forward if we wanted to without Westminster and Westminster has given us a very clear message that they do not want to give us that opportunity.

The breadth of our portfolio and the limitations on the number of meetings we can hold has made it difficult for the Committee to carry out some aspects of its work: in-depth policy scrutiny and reviews in parallel with scrutiny of legislation, the Minister and other bodies which we give money to, to deliver services for the people of Wales. We have not been able to have as many meetings as we would have liked because our membership clashes with other committees. Many of my members sit on my Committee, they sit on other subject committees also and Standing Orders do not allow us to hold a meeting which means that an individual member would have to pick and choose which one they went to. There has been a very severe curtailment on the ability and the amount of work we have been able to get through because of that.

I have said far too much, obviously, and I hate people that come to the Committee and spend far too much time talking themselves. I will do my best to answer what you have got for me.

LORD RICHARD: Thank you very much. Can I ask a simple question to start off with. How did you become the Chairman of the Committee?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: How did I become the Chairman of the Committee?

LORD RICHARD: Yes?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: After the Assembly was elected the Business Committee looked at the party make-up of the Assembly. The Chairs of the subject committees are allocated on party balance, therefore the Liberal Democrats were entitled to one chairship. Then there was a discussion amongst the business managers and leaders as to which parties would get which Chairs. Through a process of bargaining the Liberal Democrats were given the Health and Social Services Committee Chair and I was appointed by the Leader of my party as the health spokesperson.

LORD RICHARD: The usual channel stuff?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes, pretty much so. Overall the Chairs do have to mirror the party balance within the Assembly.

LORD RICHARD: Yes. The membership of the Committee, is that done through the usual channels too?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Again, across the board, when you take into account all the Committee places, the Committee places do have, again, to reflect the political balance of the National Assembly. It is the business of the individual parties to appoint who they would like to sit on each of those committees.

LORD RICHARD: The party leaders appoint you?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes, the Leaders and the Whips I would assume. The Leader in my case would say which Liberal Democrat sits on which Committee.

LAURA McALLISTER: Can I ask you a question about resources. You talked in your last paragraph about in your opinion there are too few Assembly Members to allow committees maybe to have more meetings or longer meetings. I wonder what your views are on whether there should be an increase in Assembly Members, first of all, to enable a more efficient subject committee structure to work? Secondly, in terms of the actual administrative support you get, in terms of the staff support, obviously with the de facto emergence of the Assembly and the Welsh Assembly Government and the end in part of the corporate idea the Presiding Office - and we have heard from the Presiding Officer this morning - has a very small number of staff attached to his own office which are designed to support the Assembly Members as a whole. What I am getting at is do you have the resources to scrutinise effectively as Committee members and do your Committee members feel they are getting adequate help to enable them to make a challenge to Ministers in that respect?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Right. Things are improving. With the recent inception of the research staff and the research teams to support the Committees that has meant in the last term we have been able to commission and receive additional background papers by which to be able to help us in our jobs. For instance, we had a recent Committee item looking at waiting lists. The Committee research team were able to put together for us a comprehensive critique of statistics about where we were in 1997 and where we were based against the Minister’s promises. Things are improving in terms of the support that is able to come through. It very much depends on the individual Assembly Member. Mine are quite an independent bunch, in the past when Jane has attempted to give them questions to ask witnesses, they have ripped them up: ‘We are not going to be told what we can say and what we can ask and what we cannot ask’. I think it depends very much on the nature of the information and also on the individual Committee. We have been able as a Health Spokespersons’ Group to meet with the research staff and we have been able to look into the forward work programme, identify key areas which have been quite controversial, which might want additional information. We have been able to say ‘the waiting list is coming up in November, we would have to spend some time providing a comprehensive look at that’.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: Just as a matter of fact, you talked about the questions which have been drafted for you and you talked about being told you cannot ask questions. In Ministers’ briefs answering questions in both Houses of Parliament you have things in square brackets or sometimes even in double square brackets meaning ‘this is not for use but it is background’. I have never heard of Committee members being told they cannot ask a question on some issue.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: No, I am sorry. What I was saying was they do not like being told, they do not like it. They perceived being given a list of questions as curtailing their ability of what they can ask. They are a pretty independent bunch and they perceived what was supposed to be a helpful tool to be able to help them identify some of the things maybe they would like to ask, as an infringement upon their rights and they would carry on regardless of it. That is the point I am trying to make.

In terms of membership, I think it has been very difficult to hold additional meetings because of the limits on the number of members and that has made us have to focus very clearly on what the Committee can and cannot do. We have had to be very focused - very focused - in saying ‘ Yes, that is an important issue but we have to prioritise’@ .

LORD RICHARD: How many members have you got?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Nine. There is an argument at the moment about whether we should have ten.

VIVIENNE SUGAR: In the evidence from the Panel of Chairs there is a clear signal that any additional meetings would have staffing resources and accommodation issues.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes.

VIVIENNE SUGAR: One of the things the Commission has to look at is any financial implications of any ideas which come up. Do you have any idea of the scale of the difference of the situation you find yourself in for your argument to be completely effective in the scrutiny role?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: This is my personal view now and it comes from my experience of chairing the Committee.

In an ideal world I would like to be able to spend one meeting a week looking at policy and I would like to spend the next week looking at legislation.

VIVIENNE SUGAR: Right.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: I would like to be able to structure it like that. We would have a meeting, like we are having a meeting now, looking at strategies and policies and the next week we would have a meeting looking at the subordinate legislation which arises out of it. Obviously that will have consequences for the ability of the clerking team to provide the secretariat, even just doing the minutes and getting the agendas and papers out to everybody.

VIVIENNE SUGAR: That is just the current powers?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes.

LAURA McALLISTER: Do you need more members overall though in the Assembly?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: I would say so, yes. If I was going to have more meetings that means I would have to have more members.

PAUL VALERIO: Do you mean double the meetings, double the Members?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: I have not worked out statistically how many members you would need to cover all of that or whether you could have smaller committees. My Committee has grown slightly and some of the other committees have had one or two additional members come to it so I do not know whether there would be an opportunity of having smaller committees. One has to look at the issue of balance and making sure that every party is represented. I have not worked out statistically how many more members we would need. I do not know whether other committees would want to do two meetings a week.

PAUL VALERIO: If this principle was carried forward, would the consequence not be that members would have fewer other subject committees because if they were meeting twice as often there would not be sufficient of them to continue on the existing basis, do you follow?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: In terms of actual number of members?

PAUL VALERIO: Yes. If they are meeting every week ---

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: --- they would not be able to double up.

PAUL VALERIO: They would not be able to double up everywhere?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: No.

PAUL VALERIO: Would that not be a restriction rather than narrowing the breadth of expertise and scope?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: I can only speak on behalf of the members I am particularly close to. I find that members I am particularly close to, who have to double up on committees, find that a hindrance rather than something they would welcome. They are charging around from one week to the next looking at different committee papers rather than being able to concentrate on that one particular portfolio issue. I can only speak for the members I am particularly close to who are in that position, they would rather not be in that position.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: You spoke as if having a meeting every week, one on legislation and one on policy scrutiny, would be an increase in your workload, is that right?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: Do you have one a fortnight at the moment?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes and usually once a term we have scope for an additional meeting, once a term.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: We have had circulated a list of Committee memberships with initials for other committees. In your case I notice you have two other committees.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Me personally?

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: Yes.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: I do.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: I am not being personal. I am trying to understand it. You have got HSS and SC.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Standards.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: Then Regional Mid.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: I just do not quite see how it all adds up given there are two plenaries a week.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: How does that add up to a full week? Explain how it is done?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: All right, fine. Tuesday mornings I come down from my constituency to do a business committee meeting at nine o’clock. The Legislation Committee is meeting also at nine o’clock on a Tuesday morning. Following the completion of those meetings, group meetings take place in a period from about quarter to eleven, I think Plaid Cymru meet, through too, I think the Conservative party meets about 12 o’clockish. Then there are party meetings and then we go into plenary.

After plenary on a Tuesday usually we would have a health spokespersons meeting. If it is a Committee week I would be in the Health Committee on a Wednesday morning from nine through to 12.30. I am back in the plenary at two o’clock. Regional committees take place on a Friday. On some of my Thursdays I have Standards Committee. I am lucky the Standards Committee meets less regularly than the other Standing Committees such as Audit or Equality of Opportunity. I have to find time also for Panel of Chairs because as the Chairman of a Committee I am required to attend Panel of Chairs’ meetings. I have the largest individual constituency to look after as well.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: You mentioned there was a Standing Order which prevented you from not attending Committee. For example, on the Standards Committee, there might be very boring cases, somebody has forgotten to put something down. I just do not understand the lack of discretion. You look at the Committee papers and you say to yourself - like with most other occupations – ‘this is not very interesting, why should I go to that’@ . Enlighten my ignorance.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: There are Standing Orders about attending Committees. If one member is not able to attend three Committees in a row they have to give a satisfactory explanation to the Presiding Officer as to their absence otherwise they can be barred from that Committee and I think that is perfectly appropriate.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: That is missing three.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Three in a row, yes, and I think that is perfectly appropriate. We are paid to do a job. We are paid there to be in those Committees, we are paid there to be in the plenary sessions and I would look very dimly, as the Whip from my group, on any of my members who were just looking at their Committee papers saying ‘ Oh, I do not fancy that, I am not going’@ . They are paid to go there, they are supposed to be there and they should be there whether they think it is boring or not. If they think it is boring they should not be in the job.

LORD RICHARD: Has anybody ever been barred from a Committee?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: No. The Presiding Officer I understand has written to some members about their attendance but nobody has been barred, as far as I am aware.

PETER PRICE: It may be helpful if we are able to see for two or three members your schedule for a week so we can just get a feel for how all these various things fit together. I wonder if you would be prepared to send us a typical schedule of maybe two successive weeks or something of that sort?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Of course, yes.

PETER PRICE: It might help to illustrate it.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes. I can send that.

PETER PRICE: The other point is regarding the issue of Committee memberships and why people turn up, typically how many members from a particular political group would there be on a Committee? Does it depend on the size of the political party?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: It depends on the size of the political group. In the case of the Liberal Democrats we have one member on each of the Committees. In the case of my Committee we have one Conservative member also, we have three Plaid Cymru members and we have three backbench Labour members and then the fourth Labour member is the Minister, so that would be around about the usual party breakdown of those Committees.

I would just draw your attention to the situation that they have found themselves in often in Northern Ireland. My understanding of the situation in Northern Ireland is that sometimes they are not able to have committee meetings which are quorate because people have drifted in and out and their attitude of not needing to be there, not needing to sit through the business, has caused problems in the Northern Ireland committees. That is my understanding, I am not particularly familiar but that is what I hear.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: In Westminster, the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments is inquorate often and I think the quorum from each House is two. I am not saying this is a good thing.

LORD RICHARD: Are you encouraging people to stay or go?

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: I am just trying to find out how it really works. I am ignorant, I do not know. She knows.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: I think if you are more familiar with the Westminster model of doing things, you would find a great deal of difference from how business is carried out in Westminster. For instance, you would expect on a normal day that at least 55/56 Assembly Members would be in the plenary session or would be voting and that absence at Committee is rare.

LORD RICHARD: Really the work is done in the Committee, is it not? Do you agree with that?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes.

LORD RICHARD: You do?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes.

LORD RICHARD: You have to say yes?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: I am biased.

LORD RICHARD: I know. Just say yes.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes. Some people may disagree, some people think it is done on the fifth floor.

LORD RICHARD: One of the things we are interested in is how you see the role of the Committee. You talk about having one meeting on statutory and the next week on scrutiny. On the face of it that is a difficult pair to marry, so how do you manage that?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: It is quite difficult. I think this is the culture that has grown up from the beginning. People from the outside ask us that question, thinking it might be difficult for us, but actually for those of us who have developed it really it is not that much of a problem. We are very aware as Committee members when we are in scrutiny session and when we are in policy development session; the Minister is very aware. For instance, it is quite subtle nuances really. Obviously the Minister’s monthly report is a scrutiny session, and the Minister expects to be questioned.

LORD RICHARD: How do you organise that? How do you organise the scrutiny? The Minister sits in a chair and is grilled or what?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: She sits round the table like we are sitting round the table today. The Minister will give a brief introduction to her written report and then we will take questions from members of the Committee.

I will usually start with the shadow health spokesperson, the Plaid Cymru health spokesperson. He would put his questions and comments to the Minister. The Minister replies. I would give him the opportunity of coming back on those replies. Then I would move on to the Conservative health spokesperson. He would ask his questions of the Minister. The Minister answers. I would give him the opportunity of coming back on those answers.

LORD RICHARD: How long?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS:45 minutes.

LORD RICHARD: The whole Committee meeting takes an hour?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: The Minister= s monthly report is 45 minutes in my Committee.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: You take the Opposition members first?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: That is usual, is it?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: It is usual in my Committee, I cannot speak for the others. We are in scrutiny mode.

PAUL VALERIO: Whilst you are in scrutiny mode, the Minister’s presence is essential obviously.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes.

PAUL VALERIO: When you are not in that situation, have you ever had any inhibitions at having the Minister in meetings?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: No, we have not. I do not know about the other Committees but the Minister very much takes a back seat role. For instance, if we are interviewing or taking questions from visitors to the Assembly, the Minister will very rarely ask a question. She will be sitting at the table but she will let the Committee get on with interviewing, scrutinising, asking questions of that person. It is a help because what we find is that members will have a question for the visitors but they will have a political question as well which the Minister needs to answer. I suppose in another way of doing it you would save all those questions up and then you would have one grand meeting when the Minister would come and you would put those questions to her.

What we do, I store those questions until the end of that particular agenda item and then I will say to the Minister ‘right, Minister, you have heard what the witnesses have to say, you have heard the questions from the members directed at you, what is your response?’ The Minister will take a back seat during the questioning of the individuals who have come to the Committee and will come in at the end at the invitation of the chair. I will say ‘Right, let us hear from the Minister now’@ . I think it is an advantage, obviously, because the Minister is hearing the same evidence that we are hearing. When the Minister gets the Committee’= s recommendations she is not looking round and thinking ‘where on earth have they come up with that from. What planet are they on now? ’ She will have been party to exactly the same evidence. She will have heard exactly the same facts, figures, arguments as we would have heard in the Committee and, therefore, I think has a better understanding of where the Committee is coming from when they are coming forward with their proposals because she has been a part of that process. She has been listening and interacting with that. I think it is an advantage.

The one thing I would say which has been more problematical has been the role of the Deputy Minister. That is quite difficult.

PAUL VALERIO: Why?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Because Deputy Ministers are not really enshrined in the Standing Orders. They were a late addition to the Assembly. It was not until the change of First Minister that Deputy Ministers came in. They are members of the Committee also and I think their role is less clear than that of the Minister. Are they speaking in their capacity as a Deputy Minister or are they speaking in their capacity as a back Labour member of that Committee? That has caused more problems than having the Minister there. People have been saying ‘-hang on a minute, what is he saying? You are giving him time, are you giving him part of the Minister’s time or are you giving him part of the time because he is a Labour member?’. I just had a word with the Deputy Minister and we agreed between ourselves how we would handle that situation. That has been more problematical than the Minister.

TED ROWLANDS: It is generally agreed that one of the factors which influenced the change in opinion about having an Assembly was the belief that the Assembly was going to bring what they saw as the quango state under much greater control and responsibility. I have to say I have not seen the quangos quake very much in the last couple of years.

Within your responsibility you have got quite a large number of quangos. You have got all these health trusts. What powers have you used and to what degree? You have talked about scrutiny, you have not mentioned any of the scrutiny of any of the quangos which fall within your Committee’s responsibility. Why is that not such a priority?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: I think collectively the Committee has not seen it as a huge priority. The organisations we have looked at have been as a result of what was perceived as some problem within that organisation or some things which were going on and causing concern to the members. When the members are concerned about the particular running of an organisation that is when the Committee members have requested that organisation comes in. That has happened on three occasions: Dyfed Powys Health Authority right from the very beginning with regards to their financial stewardship and their money situation; Carmarthenshire NHS Trust following the adverse incident with a patient - and we were assisted greatly in that by the availability of a Commission for Health Improvement Report. The Commission for Health Improvement did a report into that adverse incident and we were able to see whether the Trust had responded to that inspection and was taking things forward - and finally the Ambulance Trust because members were concerned about the issue of ambulance response times.

TED ROWLANDS: So in three and a half years you have only really scrutinised three of these quangos?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: In that particular model, yes.

TED ROWLANDS: Do you feel you have sufficient power to do so? Although it was a major expectation of the public, as a Committee you have not seen it as a priority. Is that more than your power over powers of scrutiny?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: My understanding is that it is not to do with the powers. I think we have got the powers to call the health bodies. There has been talk recently of whether the Committee would like to call in a certain local authority and we would have no powers to compel the leader of that authority to come to my Committee.

TED ROWLANDS: You could summon health trusts?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes. We can summon the health trusts. We have no problems over powers there but, as I said, there has been a debate recently about whether my Committee would like to scrutinise the leader of a council and councillors over a particular issue that has fallen into our remit and we would not have the power to do that, that person could refuse to come.

TED ROWLANDS: Ministers who have come before us have argued that they have brought quangos under a greater degree of accountability. They say they issue much more detailed remit letters to them. The remit letters to these NDPBs sent by the Ministers, do you look at these? Do you see them and discuss them with Ministers?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: No. No, we do not look at remit letters. I suppose the nearest thing that we would look to in that sense is the Health Minister would set targets to individual trusts, whether they be financial balance targets or the financial status of an organisation or whether they would be performance targets in terms of waiting times and the Ambulance Trust response times. We have an input into those targets and into the priorities which have been set by the Minister.

TED ROWLANDS: You have no role in shaping the remit letter?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: No.

TED ROWLANDS: What you are saying to us is that as far as the scrutiny of quangos is concerned, unless a skeleton falls out of the cupboard, as it were, then you go and have a look at it, you react to a potential stand alone crisis which occurs but you do not scrutinise it on a regular fashion?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Not on a regular fashion. The Committee has chosen to use its time differently. I would not say it is as clear cut as saying ‘if a skeleton falls out of a cupboard’, there is no skeleton that has fallen out of the Ambulance Trust’s cupboard but the Committee was concerned about general performance in that instance. In the case of Carmarthenshire there was a not very obvious problem. In the case of Dyfed Powys Health Authority there was a very obvious problem. I would not say we just wait for something bad to happen and we react, the Ambulance Trust example was something where we proactively wanted to talk to the Ambulance Trust about their performance.

LORD RICHARD: Would you think you have the powers to call for an examination in detail on the way in which a particular quango is operating?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes, that would be perfectly within the power of the Committee to do that.

LORD RICHARD: Have you done that?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Only in the three examples I have given.

LORD RICHARD: That is where something has gone wrong.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: As I said, the Ambulance Trust example was an example where the Committee decided that they wanted to look at how the Ambulance Trust was performing. Nothing had gone wrong, we just decided that was something we wanted to look at.

LORD RICHARD: That is the Ambulance Trust?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: On this question of power, my impression is that in the two Houses at Westminster, the Committee itself has no power, they can ask people and they do ask people and in 99 times out of 100, if not 999 times out of 1,000, people come willingly. If they want to force somebody they have to go back to the House.

TED ROWLANDS: To get a resolution.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: That virtually never happens. It is a voluntary thing. Why should that not be just as good for the National Assembly?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: My understanding of the situation, and please forgive me if I am wrong, is that there is written down somewhere a whole list of organisations which we do have the power to summon and most people do not have the power to refuse but local authorities are not part of that list.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: The fact that they are on your list does not stop you asking them. Probably for their own reasons, and quite obvious reasons, they will want to co-operate with you.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: My understanding is that we have had an example where somebody has refused to do that, a leader of an authority has refused to come.

VIVIENNE SUGAR: I was going to ask about the power to summons and the context of what a summons is because there is a difference between asking someone to appear as though they were an agent of the Assembly in implementing policy or providing a service and somebody who comes as a witness to add to the sum of knowledge on a particular topic area. It might be that the fact that the Committee fulfils the dual role at the moment of scrutinising the executive and policy development does not help people outside to understand the context in which they would be required to appear as a witness. You have mentioned the local authority instance, have there been any others? In the evidence of the Panel of Chairs this point is made that there is power to summons persons covered by Schedule 5. Can you think of any other circumstance where you would want the power to summons? Michael is assuming that people will come out of politeness.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: Also they can be named and shamed if they do not. It is the same thing as with the BBC, they say to the Minister ‘Are you going to say something about X or Y’.

VIVIENNE SUGAR: We need to know how important this is in the whole panoply of considerations.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: I would not say it was the top of my priorities as a Committee Chair.

TOM JONES: What about the quinquiennial reviews then? Do any of your authorities or trusts come under the quinquennial review in which case as a Committee you will be scrutinising other public bodies subject to quinquennial reviews and the Committee will be involved?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: I would have to ask the clerk to send you a note on that. Off the top of my head maybe the newly established Care Council for Wales would be subject to quinquennial review. The Children’s Commissioner is required to produce an annual report to the Assembly every year. I am not aware that the health authorities or trusts have to do quinquennial reviews of the type that you will be familiar with as regards to the National Library for Wales, CCW, that type. I can send you a note on that. Off the top of my head I would just say it was the newly established Care Council.

PETER PRICE: You will be very severely limited in resources to investigate what is going on in the health trusts, for example?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes, very.

PETER PRICE: If you felt uneasy about a situation as a Committee and you wished to have a more thorough investigation carried out somewhere by somebody, a person or whatever, and then reported back to you as a basis for your Committee’s examination, where would you look firstly in health and then in social services? Have you implemented this, ever?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: There would either be an issue of appointing a special advisor or we would use the basis of the regulatory inspection framework which would exist already within the NHS or social care. For instance, the Commission for Health Improvement, who do reviews of all NHS trusts in Wales, that could be the basis. We would ask CHI, and some Minister did ask CHI to investigate the situation in Carmarthenshire. I suppose we would look to the Commission for Health Improvement, we would look to the Audit Commission who do work already in this arena in the Health Service.

With regard to social services, we would be looking at the internal agency, I suppose, of the Social Services Inspectorate. That has happened, for instance, in the case of Cardiff where there were concerns raised about the propriety and the service being delivered in care homes for the elderly. A Social Services Inspectorate inquiry was called for and the Committee looked at the responses to that.

Also, again, we will be looking at the newly established Care Council which has responsibilities in this area and also again the joint review team. The joint reviews in terms of social services have been very potent towards monitoring the performance of social services departments within local authorities. The joint reviews are the responsibility of the Social Services Inspectorate and also the Audit Commission.

PETER PRICE: When you have looked at these sort of reports, has the initiative for the report come from the Minister, the body concerned or in some cases from your Committee where you have asked for a report? Have you ever actually asked one of them as a Committee to report in that way? If you did, would you do it through a Minister or directly to that body?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: We, as a Committee, would ask the Minister to establish the report. We have never done it directly from ourselves. I would envisage a situation where as a Committee we would say ‘We are concerned about this particular issue. We call upon you, as Minister, to set up an inquiry into this particular matter’ and we would expect, as a Committee, to receive that report and have the opportunity in the Committee to scrutinise the findings of that report with the people who have written it and also then to scrutinise the findings of that report with the people it has been written about. That was very powerful in the case of the Carmarthenshire NHS Trust where we had the Commission for Health Improvement there, we had the staff, some of the top management of the Carmarthenshire NHS Trust. It was a very powerful session in the Committee where we were able to examine the robustness of the response of Carmarthenshire Trust to what CHI was saying. It was very powerful because you had a group of people who were arguing with the findings of CHI and CHI were round the table with us and we were able to really challenge what was being said by both organisations. It was very powerful.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: Does the Committee never produce a report itself on its own thinking, so to speak?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Not on quangos. The Committee has produced reports on what we thought the Children’s Commissioner role should be. We have produced a report on how Wales should handle the health related findings of the Phillips Inquiry into BSE, and next Thursday we will publish our report into the Committee’s review on services for children with special health needs. In all those reports we had recommendations to the Government on how policy in that area should be taken forward.

LORD RICHARD: Have you had a case where the Minister, so to speak, has satisfied the Committee but not satisfied the plenary?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: No. I cannot think of one.

LORD RICHARD: When you are scrutinising a minister’s performance. He satisfies the Committee, because he is a member of the Committee, but then other people say ‘A Hey, we are not satisfied with this satisfaction, therefore go to plenary’.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes, I suppose we have in the sense that there was a motion of no confidence in the Health Minister, Janet Hutt, which was defeated.

LORD RICHARD: That was not put up by the Committee?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: No.

PETER PRICE: What was the issue in that case?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: The stated issue or my impression of the issue?

LORD RICHARD: Both.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: The stated issue was failure to meet stated health targets.

LORD RICHARD: Ah.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: My perception: politics, mischief making.

PAUL VALERIO: That is what it is all about.

LAURA McALLISTER: Have you been frustrated by the absence of primary legislative power? In the area of health there is a wide range of devolved responsibility. You have mentioned some areas like the free eye tests issue and you also mentioned the mental health pre-legislative scrutiny where you were seeking to depart significantly from the English and as it happened the Bill did not feature in the ----

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: We do not know yet.

LAURA McALLISTER: How often does this issue of only having secondary legislative powers feature as a tension or a constraint in terms of policy development?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: I think it has raised its head on a number of occasions on what I would perceive to be very important issues. As I said, the Children’s Commissioner was a case in point where we felt that we were not able to pursue this particular policy to its natural conclusion ourselves and we were very anxious that our policy would not be picked up in its entirety by Westminster. That was a very anxious time. Initially there were grave concerns about it because it seemed that Westminster would not respond positively to the overtures that we were making as a Committee. It is a testament to the Minister and to the Secretary of State of Wales that that situation was overcome. I would pay tribute to her in that. Even then we saw in Westminster a political party put down complete wrecking amendments even though that political party in Wales had signed up totally to that policy. There were total wrecking amendments laid down that could have totally scuppered the whole process.

Eye tests is another example. The argument may well have been lost in the Assembly about free eye tests but we were not able to have that free and open argument because of the confusion around the powers that we were able to have. I think that is very confusing for the public. The eye test was a perfect example of how confusing it is to the public. In the public perception health is a devolved issue, they think that we are in charge of the health service. Trying to explain to a person why you have allowed certain people to have a free eye test because you are not allowed to give everybody a free eye test is very confusing and a difficult message to communicate to people because they do not understand: A how can you give it to some but you cannot give it to all?@ It is difficult communicating to the public as well about the responsibilities of the Assembly.

The Mental Health Bill was extremely worrying again where we were set on a policy in Wales which was very different from the policy that was being espoused in the draft Bill which would have driven a coach and horses through what we were already doing in Wales, what all the parties were signed up to doing in Wales, which the voluntary sector was signed up to doing and the professionals and clinicians were doing. There we were faced with a Bill that potentially would destroy that and we could do very, very little about it.

On the issue of free personal care, again we skirt round the edges of this argument but we never get involved in-depth in that argument because we cannot give that much time to an issue where we know ultimately we cannot act. We would be irresponsible as a Committee to spend many, many, many meetings developing in-depth policy. It is a question of credibility again, what is the Assembly about and how do you communicate to people what the Assembly is about if we spend all our time talking about things we cannot do anything about.

LORD RICHARD: Do you get involved in arguing with Westminster or Whitehall about it?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: The usual channel of communication would be through the Minister. The Committee would give its views to the Minister. We felt so strongly about the draft Mental Health Bill that we ourselves wrote to Westminster as a Committee. Although the Minister carried the message back as well we wrote because it was part of the pre-legislative ----

LORD RICHARD: Wrote to whom?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: The draft Bill was out to general consultation, so we would have been no more important than your average consultee but we felt the need to really express our dissatisfaction.

LORD RICHARD: As a Committee?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: As a Committee. Our concerns as a Committee rather than just letting the Minister do it on our behalf, because we were that concerned about what potentially could happen to policy in Wales because of what was being proposed. Usually our method of communication would be that we would state our point of view to the Minister and the Minister would carry that. We do not have any formal mechanisms of communicating as a Committee.

PETER PRICE: On free personal care you have indicated that the Committee did not go into detail because there was no likelihood of being able to put it into practice but has there been any kind of formalising of the Committee’s position as to favouring free personal care? Has the Welsh Assembly Government put on record its position? Is there a position of the Assembly on that issue?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes.

PETER PRICE: Is that a clear-cut matter, or is it something that has never actually been C ?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: There was a clear commitment given by the Minister for Health and Social Services following the debate around the Older People’s Strategy that she would press the Government to implement the Royal Commission’s recommendations on free personal care and if the Westminster Government did not respond positively to that, because ideally it should be done on a Wales/England basis, the Minister would press for powers to go to Wales.

PETER PRICE: Is this something which represents the policy of the Assembly as a whole?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: That policy received a majority in the plenary debate, yes.

TOM JONES: You talked about how CHI was helping with the Carmarthenshire Trust issue. That CHI and the new CHI will be England and Wales bodies and, therefore, what service level agreements, what input, have you had as a Committee and the Assembly had into the formation of the CHI Inspectorate? What scrutiny would you be able to have of the final inspections? If CHI says ‘we have a work programme which goes on for 12 months, we cannot get to Carmarthen to look at their work’ and you were not happy with their work, would you have any influence on how the CHI organisation is developing and working so far as Wales is concerned?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: We have had no formal input as a Committee, only by the Minister’s= monthly report. The Minister has reported on moves in that area but we have had no input as a Committee into it. We have in the past asked CHI and NICE - the National Institute for Clinical Excellence - to appear before the Committee so we can scrutinise that body on its role. That has usually been on the basis of their annual report. CHI and NICE do an annual report and the Committee decided that they would like the opportunity to question members of those bodies on the contents of their annual report and their work. We have done that, we have had both CHI and NICE, who have an England and Wales remit, appear before the Committee to question them.

TOM JONES: The Assembly itself does not give them any funds for their work in Wales?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: There must be some financial contribution to that service. That would be a question you would have had to have asked the Minister.

TED ROWLANDS: You just said you would like more powers to legislate and you have areas you wish to legislate. As a Committee you have been involved in a lot of legislation and resource capacity must be a factor.

Taking one of the Bills that you did look at, the reorganisation of health in Wales, setting up these 22 health bodies, what sort of capacity resource as a Committee do you have to check that the Minister is getting it right? She made a commitment that it was going to be cost controlled and on schedule and all the rest of it. Did you have the process and capacity to check these ministerial statements and investigate whether this particular piece of legislation was going to achieve what it was going to do?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes. In answering those questions about the process and whether the whole process of structural change is on board, yes, we have had plenty of opportunity to be able to question and scrutinise the Minister on those particular issues. What we were not able to do, I would suggest, was the way in which that Bill was handled in terms of the primary legislation out of the NHS Reform Bill, we had little opportunity as a Committee to influence the primary legislation, to shape the primary legislation and to have input into that. It was going through Westminster already. The train had left the station as far as Westminster was concerned and they were not concerned in Westminster about whether that affected what we were doing in the Assembly. The train was gone and they were off and we were just a by-product.

As a Committee we did not have that much opportunity to scrutinise and inform the primary legislation. Of course there is secondary legislation which arises out of that and we have prioritised that as a Committee. I think we have established a really professional approach to dealing with secondary legislation. All parties have signed up to that approach where we have amendments going in the week before the Committee which are checked by our legal advisors then, circulated to all the Committee members so they have notice and then we take those amendments. In terms of the primary legislation in which those are enshrined, no, we did not have an opportunity because Westminster was off and away because it was a small part of a much bigger England and Wales Bill.

We have had a better opportunity with the NHS (Wales) Bill. The period of pre-legislative scrutiny has given us much more of an opportunity to look at that draft Bill. We were able to invite the WAC down to discuss with WAC what the contents were. We were able to put our own amendments in. We were able to communicate those amendments to the Minister who then communicated them to Westminster. Most recently, when the Bill has now come out following the Queen’s speech in its final form, we were able to invite Don Touhig down to discuss what amendments had been made to the Bill in its draft form, whether our amendments had been accepted, if they had not why they had not. For some reason London persists in writing legislation in terms of ‘chairman’ whereas our Committee wanted gender neutral language, but apparently Westminster cannot accede to this for us. We had the opportunity to talk about those things with Don Touhig and that has been a much more positive experience of dealing with legislation than the NHS Reform Bill which dealt with the primary legislation around the structural reform.

TED ROWLANDS: The Committee did have the capacity to check something as fundamental as a ministerial statement to the effect that this was not going to cost any more money?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes. The Committee has had a capacity to check that but I would not regard that as scrutiny of legislation. As policy we have had plenty of opportunity to pursue it.

LORD RICHARD: It is policy formulation I would like to talk about now. How does that actually work? For example, do you say to the Committee ‘now look here, it is time we were concerned with that?’ Do you sit down and try and produce a piece of paper? Do you react to the Minister’s ideas and proposals?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: We do it in two different ways. We do it in a way where we sit down as the health spokespersons and say ‘right, we are going to do an in-depth review, what would we like to do it on?’ For instance, the most recent one we have done, Services for Children with Special Health Needs, was as a direct result of Assembly Members responding to their constituents. We have all as individual Assembly Members come across plenty of casework from our own constituencies which have drawn our attention to failures within this particular area of policy so collectively as a group of health spokespersons we said ‘look, we are hearing a lot about failures in this policy area, do you not think we need to have a look at this particular area?’.

LORD RICHARD: You put it to the Committee and the Committee says ‘yes, good idea we will have a discussion’?.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes, the health spokespersons agree and then that goes back to the main Committee.

LORD RICHARD: Who do you speak to?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: The health spokespersons: myself, the Conservative health spokespersons and ---

LORD RICHARD: Suppose the Minister did not agree?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: We would do it anyway.

LORD RICHARD: That is what I am slightly interested in.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: I think we would persist anyway.

LORD RICHARD: The Minister, although she is a member of the Committee, is entitled to say ‘right, I do not think you should have a look at it’?.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Absolutely. The Minister could turn round and say that. I suppose then you would come down to a situation where you would have to have a vote.

LORD RICHARD: Have you ever had a vote?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Not on a policy inquiry subject, no, we have not.

LORD RICHARD: You would have the inquiry, just an internal one?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: No, the most recent inquiry that we have been involved in has taken evidence from a wide variety of organisations, statutory and voluntary. We have taken evidence in various places across Wales. The Committee had a session in Brecon and a session in North Wales to allow organisations in those areas, parents, carers, teachers to come along and give evidence. We have visited particular projects, also, small groups of Assembly Members have come out outside of Committee time to visit examples of good practice.

LORD RICHARD: Then you produce a report?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Then we produce a report.

LORD RICHARD: For the Committee? For plenary?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: It is the Committee’= s report and the Committee’= s report is debated by plenary. Then the Minister has a certain amount of timescale before that Minister has to come back with a response to that report.

LORD RICHARD: At that stage she can say, also, ‘ I do not agree’?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: At that stage she could turn round and say ‘I am not going to do anything about it’@ , yes. They have to respond in plenary to the Committee report.

LORD RICHARD: As far as special needs are concerned, the formulation of policy there is done totally through your Committee, is it?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: This review has been done through our Committee and the commissioning of outside expertise. For instance, we had Professor Joe Seibert, a well known paediatrician here in Wales, conduct a literature review.

LORD RICHARD: Perhaps I am being a bit dense actually. The object of the examination is to produce proposals as to what should happen?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes.

LORD RICHARD: You have done that?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes.

LORD RICHARD: Is it happening?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: This new one we are just about to publish formally so we do not know yet. On the Children Commissioner’= s report obviously it did happen and on the Phillips Inquiry into BSE and health services for vCJD sufferers , we hope in the New Year to have an opportunity to go back and review what action the Minister has taken in relation to that report. The Minister has given a response to that report. I am not aware of any of the recommendations the Minister did not agree to take forward in the plenary debate and we will have an opportunity in the New Year to go back to that subject and to review the Minister’s performance against the statement she made in the plenary.

LORD RICHARD: Yes. It is a strange half way house between scrutinising the Minister’s behaviour and using the Minister in order to try and formulate your policies.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Maybe strange perhaps for those people looking on the outside, for those of us who have no other experience of doing it I do not see it as strange.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: Earlier you used the expression ‘top of my priorities’@ . You said about something ‘...it would not be top of my priorities’@ . What are your priorities? What would you like to do? How would you like to improve your Committee and work of the Assembly?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Me personally, I would like to be able to be confident that if the Assembly decided to develop a policy such as the Children’s Commissioner for Wales I would not have to go cap in hand and rely on other people to implement that formula on my behalf. I would like to have the opportunity, if my Committee sees fit, to introduce free eye tests for everybody in Wales. I would like the opportunity to implement that. I think I would like the opportunity if the plenary session has agreed that there is a majority in favour in the National Assembly for free personal health to develop policy in that area. If the plenary as a whole has agreed we should have policies on student debts and tuition fees we should have the opportunity to do that.

LORD RICHARD: Top of your priority is to get legislative primary powers?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Yes.

TED ROWLANDS: What about taxation to go with it? You are spending money, what about the responsibility of raising money to pay for it? For example, would it be right to cover free eye tests if you raised income taxes to pay for it?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: I think it is a natural extension that tax varying powers would accompany legislative powers.

LORD RICHARD: Which you would be happy to see used in those circumstances?

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: I would be happy to be responsible to the electorate for the use of the powers. What this current system has meant is that we have had to be very creative. We have had to find innovative ways around some of these problems. We could not introduce free eye tests for everybody so we have a look at who we can within the current legislation. We cannot scrap tuition fees but we can introduce Assembly learning grants. I cannot introduce free personal care but there is the opportunity to look at capital limits, perhaps, around what reserves people can hold before they are forced to start paying for their care. It makes you very creative.

LORD RICHARD: That is not a bad thing.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Not a bad thing in itself but you have to find interesting ways of working around these problems. I think that it might just be easier to be able to do it rather than spend time having to find ways around it.

LORD RICHARD: Good. Thank you very much. You have been generous with your time answering the questions. We are very grateful to you.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: Thank you very much.

LORD RICHARD: It has been very useful.

KIRSTY WILLIAMS: I hope so.

LORD RICHARD: Thank you.

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