– in the Scottish Parliament at on 10 June 2020.
Monica Lennon
Labour
First Minister, it has been reported in the
Daily Record today that, according to NHS Lanarkshire board papers, it is suspected that almost 100 patients and staff contracted Covid in non-Covid parts of hospitals and that, sadly, a fifth of those patients later died.
Following on from my questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport in recent weeks, including yesterday, I have had a lot of families in my parliamentary region getting in touch with me. Do any of those figures include patients who had recently been discharged from hospital and who died at home in the community? In particular, is that something that the nosocomial review group is looking at in relation to recent discharges, and how can families who want to raise concerns and who have questions get in touch with the nosocomial review group?
Nicola Sturgeon
Scottish National Party
As I said earlier, the statistics that the health secretary has shared with Parliament are unvalidated. That means that it is not safe or responsible for any of us to draw firm conclusions from them until they are validated.
There is work going on to understand whether infections were acquired in hospital or were acquired in the community; that includes patients who were diagnosed in hospital, whether or not any patient sadly went on to die, and infections in staff who work in hospitals and have perhaps been working with Covid patients. That still has to be understood.
As I said earlier, we hope that that work will be completed by the end of this month and then it will be published for not just members of Parliament but members of the public—including families who have had this direct experience—to look at.
Until we have that validated work, I simply say to all members to be a little bit cautious about drawing firm conclusions from the unvalidated statistics at this stage.
The cabinet is the group of twenty or so (and no more than 22) senior government ministers who are responsible for running the departments of state and deciding government policy.
It is chaired by the prime minister.
The cabinet is bound by collective responsibility, which means that all its members must abide by and defend the decisions it takes, despite any private doubts that they might have.
Cabinet ministers are appointed by the prime minister and chosen from MPs or peers of the governing party.
However, during periods of national emergency, or when no single party gains a large enough majority to govern alone, coalition governments have been formed with cabinets containing members from more than one political party.
War cabinets have sometimes been formed with a much smaller membership than the full cabinet.
From time to time the prime minister will reorganise the cabinet in order to bring in new members, or to move existing members around. This reorganisation is known as a cabinet re-shuffle.
The cabinet normally meets once a week in the cabinet room at Downing Street.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
