King Annette: Health (National Cervical Screening Programme) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
King Annette: Health (National Cervical Screening Programme) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:615;Page:11271] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of Health) 
: 
 I feel I need to answer some of the points raised by Sue Kedgley. She left the impression that somehow or other the bill that went to the Health Committee was changed by the Government or somebody else. I remind the Committee that the bill that went to the select committee underwent a very extensive consultation process by the members of that committee who were drawn from all parties in this House. The amendments made by the committee were reported back to Parliament and they were quite major changes to the original bill. 
Members will recall that I saw the amendments and accepted the advice of the committee. As far as I was concerned it was Parliament working at its best. It was legislation that a Government introduced which was then looked at in terms of the evidence given to the select committee and the amendments made by the select committee came back to this House as recommendations. 
There were of course some things we wanted to improve and I will talk about those in a moment. But Sue Kedgley said in her first speech tonight that at the last minute amendments were parachuted in with this Supplementary Order Paper. If the member looked at the Supplementary Order Paper she would see that those amendments came directly out of the meeting I had—and she was there at that meeting—in my office. We discussed how we could address the outstanding issues in order to make the legislation work as well as we could—as well as address the concerns our women members of Parliament had raised. 
Muriel Newman is standing in for Heather Roy tonight and Heather Roy played a very constructive part in the amendments. Her main concern was that there should be an independent review of this programme and members will see in the Supplementary Order Paper that we have built in an independent review. That was a concern from ACT and I had feedback from Heather Roy that she was happy with the way we had completed the bill. 
Certainly Lynda Scott was very keen to ensure oversight of the evaluators’ work with general practitioners and that concern came through from the general practitioners themselves. We have ended up by giving general practitioners oversight. They might be busy people but they said they would like the right to have that oversight and we have included it in the Supplementary Order Paper. 
Another important issue that was raised by women in my room that night—I think Dr Scott has already raised it—was ensuring that the women were given the information to opt out of the programme which involves over a million of them if they wanted to. Those were the three main concerns that came out of our meeting and into the Supplementary Order Paper that is now on the Table of the House. 
Subsequent to that Dr Scott tabled a Supplementary Order Paper and I know it is one in which she has thought through the issues. She is trying to find a way through the issue of primary health records and I gave her an undertaking that I would get advice on that matter and look at it seriously. 
Over the dinner break we sought advice from Professor Skegg and members will recall that the professor was an adviser to the committee throughout the hearings. I was unable to contact him initially and first of all had a response from Dr Julia Peters. Dr Peters has also been an expert on the National Cervical-screening Programme. She was previously the clinical director of the programme and is a public health specialist. I asked her and finally Professor Skegg to look at Dr Scott’s amendment and both of them felt that if the amendment were to pass it would compromise the evaluation of the programme. Based on that advice I will not support Dr Scott’s Supplementary Order Paper but I recognise the spirit in which it was presented. That advice from Professor Skegg and Dr Julia Peters is available if people would like to see it. 
I think what has taken place here needs to be kept in perspective along with what we are trying to achieve. The issue is whether we have a gold-standard cervical-screening programme for New Zealand women or whether we do not. The key as Dr Scott has said is that we have to be able to evaluate a programme properly. If we cannot we do not know whether we do or not.