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National Assistance (Sums for Personal Requirements) (Scotland) Regulations 2025 (SSI 2025/30)
The third item on the agenda is consideration of three negative instruments. The first is the National Assistance (Sums for Personal Requirements) (Scotland) Regulations 2025. Its purpose is to increase the value of personal expenses allowance in line with average earnings, which is an increase of 4.1 per cent. The policy note states that this allowance is usually increased each April at the same time as social security benefits are uprated.
The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee considered the instrument at its meeting on 25 February and made no recommendations. No motion to annul the instrument has been lodged.
As members do not have any comments, does the committee agree not to make any recommendations in relation to the instrument?
Members indicated agreement.
National Assistance (Assessment of Resources) Amendment (Scotland) Regulations 2025 (SSI 2025/31)
The purpose of the second instrument, which is the National Assistance (Assessment of Resources) Amendment (Scotland) Regulations 2025, is to increase the value of savings credit disregard from £8.15 to £8.50 for a single person and from £12.10 to £12.60 for a couple, in line with the increase in average earnings, which is currently forecast at 4.1 per cent.
The regulations also increase the lower capital limit from £21,500 to £22,000 and the upper capital limit from £35,000 to £35,500, in line with the increase in the consumer prices index, which is forecast at 1.7 per cent. In addition, the regulations disregard various payments to individuals living in residential care, ensuring that those payments are not taken into consideration by local authorities when carrying out a financial assessment for charges for those living in residential care.
The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee considered the instrument at its meeting on 25 February and made no recommendations. No motion to annul the instrument has been lodged.
As members do not have any comments, does the committee agree not to make any recommendations in relation to the instrument?
Members indicated agreement.
National Health Service (Common Staffing Method) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2025 (SSI 2025/43)
The purpose of the third instrument, which is the National Health Service (Common Staffing Method) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2025, is to amend the National Health Service (Common Staffing Method) (Scotland) Regulations 2024, which specify the staffing level and professional judgment tools that must be used as part of the common staffing method for specified healthcare provision.
The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee considered the instrument at its meeting on 4 March and made no recommendations. No motion to annul the instrument has been lodged.
I believe that Sandesh Gulhane has a comment to make.
I declare an interest as a practising NHS general practitioner.
There are 1,003 consultant vacancies and 3,100 nursing vacancies across NHS Scotland. Doctors and nurses up and down the country are working on underfilled rotas, covering and cross-covering, doing extra shifts and suffering moral injury. Not a single NHS worker believes that these regulations have improved their rotas or their work life. The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care has broken his promise to our nursing colleagues in a deal that he struck to reduce their working hours. How do nurses feel about fair work and fair pay when trust has been shattered?
There are no consequences for managers when they flog our hard-working NHS staff. They sit in their cosy offices on huge fat-cat wages, watching our staff burn out. There is no managerial accountability. I would like the minister in charge to come here to discuss the instrument, to see what tangible difference it makes to our doctors and nurses who are working so hard, and to ensure that we have genuinely safe staffing.
I would be interested in getting further information on what common staffing methods are. I know that, in intensive care units, one-to-one care is often provided—that is, one nurse to one patient—whereas, in a recovery room, it is two-to-one care. In the operating room department, no one can cut skin until a certain number of people from the department are present. Staffing levels are based on, for example, the type of anaesthetic and surgery, and whether the patient is awake. That is based on my experience in the perioperative environment, but we also have new roles with physician associates, anaesthesia associates and surgical assistants.
I would be interested in fleshing out the detail on what the instrument means, rather than looking at reducing work hours. I do not think the cabinet secretary has betrayed anybody—that aspect is in process; it is an on-going discussion.
Listening to my colleagues, I am struck by the disparity between what we are trying to do here and the reality on the ground. I have spoken to a lot of healthcare professionals in an acute environment where staffing levels are putting them under extraordinary pressure and are a danger to patients.
There is, in some cases, a disparity between what is legally required and what is happening on the ground. Like my colleague Sandesh Gulhane, I think that it would be to our advantage to have the minister or the cabinet secretary come here so that we can discuss that.
Given the timescales within which the committee has to consider the instrument, I propose that the clerks write to the relevant cabinet secretary or minister to request that they come to committee next week to speak to the regulations and specifically about staffing levels and the professional judgment tools. Is the committee content with that proposal?
Members indicated agreement.
The committee’s next formal meeting will be on Tuesday 18 March, when we will begin taking oral evidence on the Right to Addiction Recovery (Scotland) Bill.
That concludes the public part of our meeting today.
11:41 Meeting continued in private until 11:53.Air ais
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