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It was interesting to hear from the bill team that there will still be inconsistencies, between rural and urban settings. It was not going to be uniform across Scotland anyway, so my thinking is that it would be a case of changing from 32 different set-ups to perhaps five or six—I do not know how many boards there will be. We will see as we go forward.

Will that figure come back to the committee?

Another issue that I want to raise is information technology costs, which was touched on by Michelle Thomson. It is mentioned in the financial memorandum that a key aspect of the bill is to

“enable the creation of the nationally-consistent, integrated and accessible electronic social care and health record.”

We understand that the detailed costs of that cannot be provided yet, but the FM does not even give an indication of what those costs will be.

At this point, do we have any idea what those costs will be?

Asset costs have been mentioned. You said that those could vary across boards, depending on whether they own the assets.

From my time in a local authority, I remember a private care home going into administration. The local authority had to step in and buy that asset, because there were residents with complex needs who had to be cared for. In the future, it would be the national care service that would have to step in and provide that service and buy the asset if it was felt that that was the right thing to do.

The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, as the voice of local authorities, has been vocal in committee in saying that there are many unknowns for its members. They will be going into the budget-setting process in the next few months. When will they have a bit of clarity, or at least start to get some?

Could you not have those standards and quality as things are now?

I asked the bill team about that earlier. There is a political will for a national care service to happen, so it will happen in some form, but we do not yet know what that will be. What is local government’s preference? Would it be to transfer the 75,000 jobs and all assets to the Scottish Government, or to be providers to the national care service, so that you maintain the assets and most of the staff but the statutory duty as the provider of last resort has gone to the Scottish Government? Some people might think that that is a good thing. What is your preference for how that would shape up?

Therefore, you would, potentially, still have the boards that the Government seems intent on having, and those would commission services—perhaps from the IJBs or other places—and still set the quality and consistency that you talk about as well.