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I am happy to share that with the committee.

To answer some of your other questions and bring it back into one answer, for the strategies and plans to be effective, stakeholders have to be consulted on them. In order for us to have an effective and sustainable health service and if we are to have a workforce strategy that means anything, the workforce and trade union representatives must be consulted and must be part of the discussion. They will absolutely be part of the discussion.

No. We consulted the British Medical Association and others directly on the implementation of the 2018 contract. It is obviously very difficult to bring forward something that takes a one-size-fits-all approach, while understanding that there will potentially be an impact of that.

That is partly why we are working to ensure that we have multidisciplinary teams coming through; looking at the primary care improvement plan; and providing investments so that we continue to see further investment in primary care in rural communities. It is also why we are continuing to support initiatives such as ScotGEM, which is about encouraging people who are going through medical training to specialise in rural general practice. We recognise the need to ensure that we continue to support rural general practice.

As I said, I was born and brought up in Orkney, and I recognise the role that general practitioners play in rural communities. Those general practices are anchor institutions, and they are a critical element of the sustainability of those communities. I am passionate, therefore, about ensuring that we continue to support rural general practice so that it is sustainable, and so that we continue to have a primary care service in rural and island communities to prevent further ill health among people who might otherwise end up in secondary or acute care.

That is part of the reform and improvement discussions that I hope to bring forward later this month. I will be looking to work with all parties, and others who are represented around the table, to ensure that we take forward the best ideas for how we can put the NHS on a sustainable, improved and recovering footing as we move forward.

It is about making sure that we continue to see a sustainable workforce for our rural and island communities. It is in development; we have already set out the fact that some of the work is very much live. The focus is on ensuring that we continue to see a supportive and encouraging workforce strategy that ensures that we have a strong recruitment and retention policy for rural and island communities.

I believe that it is for the social care side as well.

I can speak to a more local example that I am aware of. I declare an interest in that I am recused from Government decision making on the new Monklands hospital. However, from a constituency perspective, I am very aware of the close involvement of clinicians in that hospital’s design.

If that has not happened to the same degree in Broadford on Skye, I would be keen to know about that to ensure that NHS Highland and others can learn from that experience, so that we have projects that are informed by clinical experience to ensure that we get them right.

Again, that goes back to the discussion around the nursing and midwifery task force and looking at how we make sure that we are set up to take advantage of the existing opportunities that are available in higher education institutions. The training places that we have available are not fully subscribed, so for those considering a potential career or a career change, look at the opportunities in your local university. There is also the nursing bursary to help to support a transition to or an entry into nursing.

Stephen Lea-Ross referenced the helpful example of the Open University work. I am very keen to look at what more can be done—the discussion is happening at the task force—around the earn-as-you-learn pathway and whether there are more opportunities for that, so that people can either shift within the health service or come into the service.

To get directly to Ms Maguire’s point about training being delivered as locally as possible, we will continue to work with higher education institutes to see what more is possible, particularly for remote and rural areas. I was at Robert Gordon University last week and saw some of the fantastic work that is being done there around nursing and paramedic training. There is real enthusiasm among nursing students for what they are embarking on and where they are looking to serve their time.

I hope that we can continue to provide that opportunity to others, particularly, for the benefit of this discussion, in remote and rural areas, so that we continue to have people to serve in the areas where we need service provision.

There are frameworks in place around the integration of health and social care that should allow for some of those discussions to take place. Where there is an understanding on the part of IJBs and health and social care partnerships that there are particular workforce challenges in the communities that they are looking to serve, those discussions can start there and spread to other forums. However, of course, where we have that convening power or, indeed, where we can provide that guidance, we will continue to do so. There are good examples of some of that work being done already, and we need to build on those and try to provide that advice on a wider basis.

Obviously, local health boards and integration joint boards are responsible for their own delivery, and we have clear expectations that they will ensure that services continue to be sustained and delivered. We work closely with them, particularly on the workforce. We have instituted the areas of work that Stephen Lea-Ross and Paula Speirs have already set out, but there are others, such as the ScotGEM—Scottish graduate entry medicine—programme for rural general practitioners, that ensure that we continue to support new entry into rural and island areas.

We have the highest fill rate in the UK for the priority foundation areas, which is a good thing when it comes to filling the vacancies in rural and island areas, The fact that we are competing well against the rest of the UK is a good thing and shows that the work that we are doing with IJBs and health boards is coming to fruition. Obviously, challenges remain, and issues are clearly outstanding in certain areas, but the progress is there. The work that Stephen and Paula have already set out will, I hope, continue to support local areas in developing their workforce strategies.

I would be very interested in hearing more about the direct experience that you have been able to pick up. I presume that that will come through in the report, but if there is anything that the practitioners in Broadford would be able to feed straight in, I would be keen for us to look at that as part of our reform and improvement work. We are keen to look at how we can blur the lines of health boards and ensure that we maximise the operational capacity through better working arrangements for our staff.

However, I am cognisant of the fact that, although such an arrangement might work for many people, there are others who would prefer to have a fixed-point contract that involves working in a fixed-point place. Therefore, we would need to handle that carefully, but I would be very interested in hearing more about the experience that you picked up in Broadford.