Responding to leaked documents obtained by the Labour party, Professor Robin Gauld of the Centre for Health Systems has highlighted the contradiction in the role of elected representatives on district health boards: they are elected by the public, but are legally accountable to the Minister of Health, not to the people who elect them.
Professor Gauld noted that our model of elected boards was not backed by evidence, and that ideally elected representatives need to be "free to speak and represent the public genuinely".