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Given the current spending challenges, and given that, in real terms, councils now spend about 20 per cent more on social care than they did in 2010, what more could be done, without having a big structural change, to improve the current system and structures? For example, some of you touched on things such as giving IJBs more time to bed in.

Will you help the committee by expanding a little on one of the excellent examples?

When you say “empowerment”, what would need to happen to empower people through the measure that you talked about—the digital record?

You say that the bill should “start again”. In what way should it start again?

Under agenda item 2, we will take evidence, as a secondary committee, on the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill at stage 1. We will hear from two panels of witnesses.

For our first panel, we are joined by Simon Cameron, from the workforce and corporate policy team at the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities; Gerry Cornes, workforce portfolio lead at the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers Scotland; Tracey Dalling, Unison Scotland’s regional secretary; and Jane Fowler, president of the Society of Personnel and Development Scotland. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting.

I will ask the first questions. I will begin with a broad look at the bill overall. Last week, the committee heard from local government and third sector organisations. Although they were concerned about some aspects of the bill, most witnesses welcomed parts of it. What are the witnesses’ general views on the aims of the bill?

Is it your sense that, at the moment, we are not monitoring well enough?

Thank you for finding the relevant document. We move to questions from Willie Coffey.

That concludes our questions. Thank you, minister, for coming in. It has been helpful and illuminating to hear what you have had to say.

I suspend the meeting briefly for our visitors to leave the room.

We now move to questions from Marie McNair, who is joining us online.