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Is there a danger in legislating for a national care service before we have the detail of that review? Should those aspects have been in the bill in the first place?

Thank you, convener. I have two questions, but they will be directed to individual witnesses.

I will begin with Patricia Cassidy’s comments. I am looking for a bit more clarity about where chief officers are on a number of issues. In many of the submissions that we received from local authorities, IJBs and health and social care partnerships, concern was expressed about what disruption to services will do to integration. Angus HSCP said that

“Significant work has gone into the establishment of IJBs”,

and that a national care service

“could take the focus away from integration and continual improvement”.

East Lothian HSCP said that

“It would be damaging and counterproductive to restructure services again, less than eight years since the integration of H&SC.”

Are chief officers of the view that there needs to be structural change to the care boards, or is there a sense that there is not enough detail in the bill to make a judgment about whether we should move towards that and about what the change would look like?

I will pick up on your response to Evelyn Tweed on accountability to the Parliament and the minister being held accountable for social care. Is it your view that social care is not currently being held to account by elected council members and health board appointees—who are appointed by the Scottish ministers—who sit on IJBs? The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities would take exception to that because of how councillors are connected to their communities and hold social care accountable. Is the principle of local accountability not at stake, to some degree, if we focus everything on the Parliament?

Thank you both for those responses. There is an issue about the structures around care boards, the culture that is embedded through HSCPs, and some of that integration work.

I have a question for Alison White on the point about potential staff transfer. Last week, we heard from COSLA, which, obviously, was very concerned about the local government space and what might happen to local government staff. As you represent social workers, can you give me a sense of what the anxieties are for the social work profession about what their future might look like?

I am keen to understand more about the approach to community health services and where they should sit within the structure. I appreciate that it is difficult at this stage to fully understand and discuss this, but should responsibility for community health services sit with health boards or the proposed new care boards?

Thank you for that response. I appreciate absolutely what you said about co-design; I witnessed some of that in a previous role before I became an MSP. As the framework bill stands, does it meet your expectations and the expectations of those with lived experience? My contention is that people want detail, and they want to help to co-design that detail through the legislative process rather than after the fact. It feels like a structural bill rather than a bill about culture.

I will pick up on that point about the framework bill and the way that this has come about. Some witnesses have said that the concern about its being a framework bill is that co-design could have happened prior to publication of the bill. The bill could have been co-designed and if it had been, we would now be having a different discussion. The views of those who are calling for a pause, including Social Work Scotland, Unison the union and COSLA, have been fairly well documented.

I am keen to get your views on whether there should have been a co-design process prior to the bill’s introduction. I do not think that anyone disagrees with what you have said about the fact that people want to see tangible benefits. Do we need more pace on other parts of your review recommendations—for example, removal of charges for non-residential social care support? Should we invest money now in order to move the dial on those things, rather than waiting for the delivery of a national care service by, potentially, the end of this session of Parliament?

Thank you. I will move on to Alison White. I appreciate that you are here to represent Social Work Scotland, so I will not ask you necessarily to respond as a chief officer.

I want to ask about Social Work Scotland’s view at the moment. It has called for a pause in the legislative process. Is that to do with what you said about co-design? You said that there should have been a process of co-design prior to this point, rather than it happening through secondary legislation. Is there anything that you want to add about how Social Work Scotland arrived at that position?

The second part of the question was on the faculty’s submission. There were concerns about the delay in getting to secondary legislation in order to make the change that is required in social care at the moment, and there are issues with staffing and improving outcomes. Do you have a comment on that?

The committee has heard that women over 50 make up 80 per cent of the social care workforce, and colleagues have touched on the point that informal caring and support is often a responsibility that people have outside their work. On a wider point about carers, I know that a framework bill is obviously not going to say anything about how we support carers with regard to, say, rights to paid leave, but do you think that it is important that there be at least a statement of intent on that? Frank Jarvis might want to comment on that from the human rights space.