Mr. Philip Watt:

Absolutely and what struck us about the Scottish system is the involvement of both patients and clinicians. This committee has invited us here as patient advocates.

However, the committee should also bring before it the clinicians because they feel equally outside the system as often they are not asked for their opinion in a systematic way. They are our doctors and many of them are involved in the clinical trials on these drugs. The Scottish system was very good from this perspective. Certainly the day we were there, there was no disagreement between what the patients' representatives said and the assessment. Obviously there was a greater sense of trust in the system.

I understand Deputy O'Reilly's point on interaction with the drugs companies and I suspect she was thinking about cystic fibrosis when she mentioned it.