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Most of the stuff that I was going to ask about has already been covered, but I just wonder whether any of the panel members have been involved in the co-design activities that have been held to date. If so, how did you find them? If not, would you be keen to be part of them? What would you like to see from those activities?

If you do not mind, I would like to start with Fanchea Kelly.

Thank you, convener, and apologies for the earlier confusion.

I welcome the witnesses and thank them for being here. It is always nice to see Susan Douglas-Scott.

You have been providing the service for 10 months now. What would you say were the one or two things that you have learned in that first 10 months that you would take into the future? I suppose that Emily Johnston might be the one to answer.

I am sorry. The screen froze and I was not sure whether Emily had finished speaking.

Susan, you have been part of a number of organisations that have worked with the Scottish Government. Could you give me an overview of how things have been going during the past 10 months?

That is a positive response.

I have one final question. Do you plan to include in your future annual reports more detail about the use of the service in Scotland, or do you think that the way that is being done now is fine?

Yes, that is fine.

I was expecting to come in later, convener, but I am happy to ask my questions just now. They are on theme 3.

I am not suggesting for a second that you do not support the principle of a national care service, but surely you have the opportunity to sell what you are asking for. I do not think that the Government is looking for a prescriptive method of providing a national care service. It is looking for something like what happens in the national health service. If ministers are held responsible for something, they have to have a general overview of what is happening in the service, which does not happen just now because of the way that it is broken up between local and national Government.

Surely it is for you and the other organisations to point out the failings. The Minister for Mental Wellbeing and Social Care will appear before us next. I will take on your role and ask him some of the questions that you have asked us. Surely, you can see that there is an opportunity for you to get the kind of care service that you want, which will give parity of esteem across the country.

I go back to what Rachel Cackett and Frank McKillop were talking about. Frank has kind of answered my question. They spoke about the problems that they had, and said that they wanted co-design to be in at the front. Frank went on to talk about some of the issues that had arisen with self-directed support and so on.

Clearly, the bill is a way of trying to effect everything that should have happened in the past but did not happen very often across the country, because of local authorities, as opposed to national Government. It might be a way of ensuring such equality of commitment across the country. I accept that the financial situation differs in different parts of the country, but maybe the bill is a way of resolving that issue as well.

In particular, Rachel Cackett, do you not agree that the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 showed that co-production and co-design after the introduction of a framework bill could be the way forward? Mr Feeley certainly seemed to think so. Why do you not think so?

People usually try to silence my microphone rather than turn it on.

I come back to Tracey Dalling’s analogy about the house. Is the bill not more like having an opportunity to purchase something and then design it once you see the space and where the opportunities are?

On the issue that was just mentioned—the 61p mileage rate versus 45p mileage rate—surely a national care service would create the opportunity to work closer together and resolve some of those issues. I completely agree that people doing the same job in the same area should not be getting different terms and conditions.

There has to be a long-term aim of ensuring that there is equality. That might not exist now, but surely there is an opportunity when you co-design. The Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 is a good example. Co-design after that legislation was passed worked in that case. Why will it not work in this case?

We heard from Mr Poolman about barriers that prevent workers from working together closely. I was a member of a community health and care partnership in Glasgow 11 or 12 years ago, and I saw the same problem, not between the workers but between the people who held the power, who found it very difficult to trust the workforce to work together. Might a national care service help to smooth over some of those problems, which still exist between health and social care, even though things have got better in the past 12 years?