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Do you accept that, if it were decided to bring social work into the national care service, that would lead to a significant increase in tendering? That seems to be what you are saying.

That is slightly different from delegated legislation coming to the Parliament—whether to this committee or another—so that there is an opportunity to scrutinise and vote on that delegated legislation. Will you give an undertaking that you will bring delegated legislation?

I had not planned to ask about this. I am pursuing the point because of what the minister said. It might be something that we can pursue at a later date.

I understood that that is what the minister said—he said that delegated legislation would come to the Parliament. I presume that that means that it would come to this committee. Regardless of whether it is this committee or another committee that considers it, there will be delegated legislation.

I will be brief.

Minister, I note that you said that you will write to the committee about what you call “ethical procurement”. However, do you not accept that commissioning is tendering, which leads to outsourcing and privatisation?

I think that we should support the position put forward by the cabinet secretary that we should not give consent. However, at the previous meeting, I got the impression that Conservative MSPs were going away to, if you like, use their connections to see whether some of the concerns could be addressed. Therefore, I will listen carefully to what is said. However, on the basis of what was said in the previous meeting, I would have thought that that should be where we are, given the gravity of the concerns that were raised.

So you are saying that delegated legislation will come to this committee.

Many of the points that you make are incredibly interesting, including that of how we properly cost those issues and the idea of funding following the individual, which is used in other scenarios. We would be happy to receive evidence in writing of any costings that you are able to put together.

I wonder whether Sandra Cheyne would like to make any additional points about the implications for resources and funding and who provides the service.

Thank you. That was helpful.

I put it to you that, in recent years, the major barrier to social workers being present in court to perform a professional role that they have performed for many decades now has been a lack of resource and cuts.

I do not want to take up too much time, but I want to briefly ask whether the witnesses have looked at the bill’s provisions in relation to the public safety test, which seems to be very poorly defined. Two of the witnesses have said that they want legislative change, because they feel that the threshold is too high and that, at the moment, people are being remanded when they should be getting bail. The issue, though, is whether this is the right legislative change. The concern is that things have been poorly defined in the drafting of the legislation, with a concept being used that has not previously been used in Scottish criminal law, and that there will be a lack of clarity about what that means. Will it mean that more or fewer people will get bail? Which kinds of individuals are more likely to get bail and which are not?

If you do not have a view on that question, you do not need to respond. Perhaps I could ask Keith Gardner, first of all, and then the other two witnesses whether they have looked at and have a view on that issue.