SpeechHealthDr LIZ CRAIG (Chairperson of the Health Committee): Thank you Madam Chair. It's a real pleasure to take the first call in the annual review debate on health. This year the Health Committee reviewed a large number of entities. We reviewed the Ministry of Health Pharmac the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission the Cancer Control Agency the New Zealand Blood Service and nine DHBs in depth. We also heard from the Minister of Health. So last sitting block we reviewed the aspects of the health response that related to COVID-19 and in today's debate we're going to be considering all of the remainder of the health sector's work. Given the number of entities that we reviewed I'll just focus on a number of the highlights from some of them.So with the Ministry of Health we discussed the health reforms and the work that the ministry was doing to make sure we had a smooth transition. What the ministry said was that it was working closely with the transition unit and also the interim Health New Zealand and the Māori Health Authority which it was hosting. We heard that the time frame for implementing the transition was sufficient because there was really good national governance and oversight in place and they were working well with DHBs and with other stakeholders. But also they were saying that services wouldn't be compromised because the agencies providing the services would be the same.We also discussed mental health and particularly the mental health crisis call-outs and co-response services with the police and we discussed whether these should be funded by existing DHB budgets or whether the Government's $1.9 billion mental health investment should be used to fund these. And what the ministry said was that He Ara Oranga had highlighted the need for a wider range of services in primary care in the community. So what they wanted to do was make sure that those primary care services were available so people didn't reach the point where they needed crisis services. So this was an important aspect of the Access and Choice programme. They also highlighted the role of the helplines that were available to people in that point as well.So with Pharmac we discussed the interim observations from the independent review of Pharmac and asked what progress that Pharmac was making towards addressing some of those issues raised. So what Pharmac told us was that they were seeking more consumer engagement at an earlier stage in its processes that they'd established a Māori advisory rōpū and had increased Māori and Pacific representation in its consumer advisory group and other statutory committees—so basically a real focus on engagement. In terms of the criticisms that it was reluctant to share information with shareholders and the public what Pharmac pointed out was that a lot of commercial agreements with suppliers had confidentiality agreements but it was able to develop processes that allowed it to provide data to the review panel without breaching any of those agreements with suppliers.For the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission: we discussed their first year of operation and the commission said it was very much about establishment. They said that COVID had delayed some of their work—so for example the board was appointed about six months later than expected but it was up and functioning well at the time of the review. We also discussed the commission's independent monitoring role. While the commission said it had taken some time to develop its wellbeing outcomes and service monitoring frameworks it felt that those would be crucial to that monitoring. It also said that in addition to their watchdog role they would also like to act as a guide dog in highlighting areas where things were performing well.So Te Aho o Te Kahu the Cancer Control Agency: with our review there we discussed the effects of COVID on delivery of cancer services particularly through the nationwide lockdowns in March 2020 and August 2021. They talked about basically how treatment services had been largely maintained through those lockdowns although some of the diagnostic services had been delayed—and that was much less impact in the August 2021 nationwide lockdown. I think the conclusion that they'd reached was that the health system appeared to be learning how to safely deliver cancer services in the context of COVID-19.We also reviewed the New Zealand Blood Service and discussed the transfer to Organ Donation New Zealand. We also reviewed nine DHBs in depth.I'd just like to finish by thanking all of those that worked in the health sector in the entities we reviewed for all the work they've done keeping us safe from COVID-19 but also delivering all of those other services that we need as a country. So thank you to all of those people out there working at the coalface on our behalf.