Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Ms Kimmins): The Department proposes to make a statutory rule (SR) to specify the public service bodies that must ensure that period products are obtainable free of charge, as per section 2(3) of the Period Products (Free Provision) Act (Northern Ireland) 2022. The statutory rule will be subject to the draft affirmative procedure.

In attendance we have Chris Matthews, deputy secretary of the resource and corporate management group; and Irene Culleton, head of people, organisational development and equality branch. Thank you both for attending. The session will be reported by Hansard. Please make your opening remarks, and we will then open up the meeting for questions.

Mr Chris Matthews (Department of Health): Thank you. I am conscious that the Committee is a bit pushed for time, so I will keep my remarks fairly brief.

This is a follow-up session to our initial submission on the proposed SR. We wrote to you in August to answer the questions that had come forward, so I do not propose to go through all of that now. There are a couple of points to update you on.

On the operational date, our current best estimate from consultation with the trusts is that we will go live in April 2025. I will give you a bit of background on the scale of premises that we are talking about. From the initial canvassing of the trusts, which has to be refined through consultation and engagement with service users and patients, we are looking at 1,300 premises across 507 sites. If you think about the operational scale of providing free products in that context, you realise that there are a lot of challenges for the trusts, which, as you know from previous sessions, are under a lot of pressure both financially and in terms of their capacity.

That is as much as I want to say to update what we said in our August letter. I am happy to take any questions from the Committee.

The Chairperson (Ms Kimmins): Thank you, Chris. I want to raise a couple of specific things. Some of the information is still a wee bit patchy, and I have concerns about how we can move forward.

The first and most glaring concern is about the financial implications. The responses stated that it is not possible to provide them. While, as an estimate, it is not a huge amount of money, it is difficult for the Committee to sign off on, or give approval to, a blank cheque, because we do not know what the implications of that will be. We do not know whether it will have implications for other services or other things being provided through the Department. We need absolute clarity on the cost or even an estimate, given that we are in a challenging financial situation. I do not want to be sitting here in six months' time, saying, "We're losing a service because trusts have had to find the money for this". Nothing should be pitted against anything else. Is it possible to get some clarity on that?

Mr Matthews: To be clear to the Committee, there are probably two parts to that. The first is that the Department is in a deficit position, so whatever the cost is, we will, essentially, just be deepening the deficit to pay it. The second is that we hope that around October/November, after the engagement exercise that they are now going to do, the trusts will have refined, across the 1,300 premises that they will have to kit out, how they are going to do it. For example, will they have dispensers? All those sorts of discussions will have to be had, which will drive the final cost. We did not want to give you a finger-in-the-air estimate that would be of no use to your decision-making. Towards October/November, we hope to be able to at least give you some kind of estimate because that is the point at which we will be looking to start procurement.

The Chairperson (Ms Kimmins): OK. I am conscious that both the Department of Education and the Department of Justice have completed this exercise. My understanding is that they had costings when they were doing so. I am just trying to understand the difference: how are they able to get costings but we are not?

Mr Matthews: It is a question of scale and how individual trust premises approach it. The variety of places in which you might be providing the services mean that it is really difficult to look at Education or Justice and compare to estimate the relative demand in Health. Our costings are likely to be very different from theirs.

The Chairperson (Ms Kimmins): Am I right in thinking, Chris, that, post-October/November, you will be able to provide some costings?

Mr Matthews: In our current plans, that is when we will be looking to procure and get contracts, so by that stage we will need some costings and should be able to tell you.

The Chairperson (Ms Kimmins): If the Committee defers a decision on this again until that information is available, will that impact on the procurement process?

Mr Matthews: No. It is a statutory obligation. The Act is in place and we know that we have to comply with it. It will not affect progress if you are not comfortable making that call now.

The Chairperson (Ms Kimmins): It is a difficult position for us to be in. We are all supportive of the Act: it came through the Assembly and is a very important piece of legislation. However, with regard to due diligence, it is important that the Committee understands the cost and implications of its implementation.

Other members may want to ask about the financial end of things. You advised that the Department had consulted with the bodies specified. What views and feedback were received?

Mr Matthews: We have had discussions with the trusts, and they, obviously, have concerns about the cost and are asking how we are going to meet that. They also have the operational challenge of finding the people to stand the service up and working out how they will provide the service and procure it. Again, the challenges are of the kind that you would expect to see in this kind of operational implementation. There is nothing unusual about it, in and of itself, but the context in which it is happening makes it much more challenging for the trusts to have confidence about its financial implications and the operational impact on the people who need to lead on it.

The Chairperson (Ms Kimmins): If trusts are expected to find money for the measure from their own budgets, might some of them not implement it and say that they cannot afford to?

Mr Matthews: They are statutorily obligated to do it, so that is not a conversation that we can have. We will not be able to show exactly where the money is coming from, but if it is helpful to the Committee we might be able to show the equivalent services that the cost of implementing the Act's provisions amount to. That may give you a sense of the impact to calibrate your decision.

The Chairperson (Ms Kimmins): I will open up the floor to members. We can have a discussion at the end about where we want to go. Thank you, Chris.

Mr Donnelly: I noted from the report that several other areas in the UK already provide the service. Scotland, for example, already does. I assume that there are similar-sized hospitals and trusts there that you could have looked at. Has that been done?

Mr Matthews: Other jurisdictions do not provide a service as universal as the one that will be provided here. The services in our neighbouring jurisdictions tend to be either for inpatients or patients. Our Act proposes universal access. Basically, anyone who is in those buildings can get access to those services.

Mr Donnelly: Is it not correct that Scotland does provide such access?

Mr Matthews: In Scotland, the service is mandated for patients, but other people can access it. In our system, the statutory mandatory access is for everybody.

Mr Donnelly: In Scotland, is it not for members of the public?

Mr Matthews: Sorry?

Mr Donnelly: In Scotland, is there not full access for the public?

Mr Matthews: I think that they can access the service, but I do not think that provision is mandatory in the same way that it is here. We can check that, but, from what I understand, that is the position in Scotland.

Mr Donnelly: Maybe I got it wrong, but from my reading of the papers the Scottish hospitals do provide the service.

Mr Matthews: Yes, they do. It is open to patients. It is also open to members of the public, but that is not statutorily mandated. That is my understanding.

Mr Donnelly: If it is the case that they do provide the service, could a comparison be drawn to estimate how much it would cost here?

Mr Matthews: It could be instructive for trusts in working out what their procurement costs are likely to be.

Mr Donnelly: Has that been done yet?

Mr Matthews: We have not done that yet. As I said, the work that we have done so far with the trusts has been to scale up to scope the size of what we are talking about and how long it might take them to get to the point where they are ready to begin procurement. Essentially, trusts are not in a position to give us an indication of what they think it will cost them.

Mr Donnelly: Do you think that you will have those estimates by October/November?

Mr Matthews: Yes, because if we are going to meet our deadline for procurement then we will need to know what it will cost us at that point.

Mr Donnelly: My other reading of the situation from what I have seen in the papers is that trusts do not have to provide the service if they cannot afford to do so. Is that correct?

Mr Matthews: No. It is statutorily mandated, so I think that they have to provide it.

Mr Donnelly: I will see if I can find the relevant wording. Bear with me. If anyone wants to go on ahead, please do so.

The Chairperson (Ms Kimmins): I will let Diane in. Obviously, procurement will happen after we have had this discussion, and the Committee has already considered the SR. Is it normal procedure for the Committee to be asked to sign off on an SR before the costings are done?

Mr Matthews: As the Act was the result of a private Member's Bill, it is a bit different. Ordinarily, if a policy comes from the Department, we will cost it before we get to the legislation phase. However, because the legislation has come from the Assembly, we are costing it after the fact. It sort of depends.

The Chairperson (Ms Kimmins): Were your colleagues in Education and Justice in the same position of presenting it to their Committees before it was costed?

Mr Matthews: I am not sure about that. I have not seen any of those other sessions. They may have been able to get costings earlier than we were, but, as I said, the trusts have found it quite challenging to get their arms around the costs.

Mrs Dodds: I absolutely agree with your assessment, Chair: it is very difficult to give assent to something when you do not know all the implications and costings around it. I stupidly missed the number of sites and the extent of it. Will you go through that again?

Mr Matthews: It is 1,300 premises across 507 sites. That is for all five trusts.

Mrs Dodds: That is a very significant investment. When you are doing the procurement, I suspect that it may start off at a different level from where it ends up. Will there be a scale that you are looking for? How will you do that?

Mr Matthews: Part of what the engagement will tell us is likely demand. That is one of the things that is unknown at the minute. Depending on the location, making something free will probably drive a certain amount of demand. That will depend on who is using the facility and so on.

Mrs Dodds: Have you looked at other areas? For example, for quite some time, further education establishments have been making period products available. Have you looked at the demand trend in those establishments?

Mr Matthews: I do not think so. It is something that we could look at with the trusts. The trusts have asked us to look at that, but I do not think that we have been able to get any information on it so far. It could be helpful, but the trusts have to engage with service users to get to the point of understanding.

Mrs Dodds: I accept that.

Mr Matthews: We have not done it yet, but that is not to say that it might not be useful.

The Chairperson (Ms Kimmins): Danny, would you like to come back in?

Mr Donnelly: I am just going to read from the papers. In Scotland, the Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act 2021 received Royal Assent. The Act:

It also:

Mr Matthews: OK, so we may have misunderstood what is being specified there. We will have to go back, look at the regs and see what is specified there.

Mr Donnelly: OK, no problem.

The second bit is about the trusts:

So the trusts have to confirm that they are in a position to do it before —.

Mr Matthews: That is from our letter to you in August. That was our way of saying that, until the trusts are able to do their full assessment of what it is going to take for them to implement the service, we will not be able to tell you when it will be implemented. That does not mean that there is an opt-out for the trusts.

Ms Irene Culleton (Department of Health): Under the legislation, the trusts have to produce a written statement to outline how they plan to implement their various schemes. From memory, that is what is meant in the letter.

Mr Donnelly: The wording is confusing.

Mr Matthews: Apologies if we have caused any of you confusion there. Once something is statutory, there is no opt-out. I appreciate that the wording could have led you to a different conclusion.

Mr Donnelly: No problem. OK.

The Chairperson (Ms Kimmins): Thank you. To be clear, the legislation was brought in to try to reduce the burden on those who are probably the most vulnerable in our society. Obviously, as I said, we are all supportive of that. If we sign off on something for which we do not have costings, my concern is that, further down the line, we might be told, "Because the Committee has agreed to this, we have now lost a critical service in health" or something like that. If that happens, we will end up with things being pitted against each other. That is only one example of the concerns in my mind.

We need absolute clarity. It would be remiss of the Committee to approve something when we have no idea how much it will cost or what the implications of that will be. That is not to say that if it the cost comes in at £10 million we will not approve it. We just need to know the costings. We can discuss now how we move forward.

Mr Matthews: I apologise for not being able to give you those numbers now.

The Chairperson (Ms Kimmins): I do not know why things are done in the order that they are, but, for me, that is one of the most important pieces of information that we could have had.

Members, that brings us to the question of whether we are content with the merits of the policy and content that the Department makes a statutory rule, or whether, given the issues that have been raised, we wish to defer our decision.

Mr Donnelly: Defer, until we get more information.

The Chairperson (Ms Kimmins): I think that we should defer because we need clarity on the implementation and the cost. Until we have that, we probably cannot make a decision. If we can get that information when it is available, we can revisit our position.

Thank you both for coming in this afternoon; we appreciate it.

Mr Matthews: Thank you.