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The committee was told earlier this week that the legislation in front of the Parliament, in unamended form, could expose the public to a bill of £3.9 billion. Is that correct?

You would understand, minister, that none of this is ideal. We are talking about variances between £3.9 billion and £2 billion and trying to shave away an understanding of what some of the cost base might be. For a finance committee to be brought such evidence within the space of three days is deeply worrying, is it not?

Would you not consider that the core cause is the chaotic way in which the legislation has been pursued? You have introduced one model, which you have completely changed during the process, and you have recognised some of the reasons for that.

You are talking about completely different delivery mechanisms. In your evidence today you have been unable to express what the shape of the national care service board will be or how integration authorities will operate. You have also given us a cost variance that jumps between £1.8 billion and £2 billion and then to £3.9 billion. You are not able to express any of the co-design models that will be conducted after this point, which might add to or increase costs, and which committee members have been greatly concerned about. Is the core issue not the way in which you are handling the legislation, and in how it has been handled for years?

The core of what we are talking about is that the hundreds of millions of pounds that you are asking the taxpayers to pay is for bureaucracy rather than for care workers, is it not?

But the bill identifies that what is delivered locally is the core problem and at the heart of this. To be fair, you said that local people—or local authorities and the NHS—recognise that change is needed. That is why we had IJBs and, before that, change funds. Those issues were recognised by the institutions, yet we are still in the position in which, if you have two competing sets of priorities with voting rights on one board, the money cannot flow to the strategic objective. You are not proposing anything in the bill to solve that.

We were told on Tuesday that the board could do things such as workforce planning. Why can civil servants not help ministers to do workforce planning at the moment?

Would the national care board replace those 170 civil servants? You have civil servants sitting next to you, so I am not asking you to chuck people out the door, but you suggest that that is where that money will come from.

Will you explain that, then? It is a little bit confusing, given the evidence that we received on Tuesday. The figure of £3.9 billion, frankly, came as a great surprise to the whole committee.

We will wait and see.

That is useful.

Following on from Mr Mason’s questions, I want to touch on the integration authorities. Can you give me an update of your estimated costs for the changes necessary to introduce the new versions of the IJBs?