Seòmar agus comataidhean

You know how budgets work in this place. The reason for my language is that we go through a process for setting budgets. No matter what the circumstances are—and I hope that we see improvement in the public finances, although I am not overly hopeful; we will wait and see—and no matter what the UK Treasury does about public finance as we move forward, we have to be absolutely sure that we are establishing services that are fit for the future.

Key to all of this is improving services and moving away from that crisis spend, which costs the public purse a lot and also has a human cost. We need to change that situation dramatically, no matter what.

As we progress with all of this, I am more than happy to come before the committee again to talk about how we are moving forward with the financial memorandum and with updating our modelling and to talk about the business cases. What I cannot do is set future budgets, as you well know. The Deputy First Minister would not be very happy with me at all if I were to do that today at this committee.

I will let Fiona Bennett answer first and then I will come in.

Officials know my expectations in all of this and that I do not like surprises of any sort. I do not want to insult Ms Thomson, convener, but I will say this and she can have a go at me if necessary: I am a data anorak and I think that Ms Thomson probably falls into the same category. If that is an insult, I withdraw it immediately.

I just want to ensure that we get this exactly right, and that will mean having to scrutinise it to the nth degree. It will be not just you and me who do that; we have a tremendous amount of folks helping us, including those on the social covenant steering group, and those people—some more than others—want to know all the workings. We are under intense scrutiny, as is only right.

Beyond that, as I have said and as I will continue to repeat, I am more than happy to appear before any committee to outline how we are moving forward, particularly in respect of the business cases and where we are making amendments as we progress. That is only right. Ms Thomson is right to say that this is a huge piece of work—it is definitely the biggest public service change since devolution, so it is incumbent on us all that we get it right. I am therefore not afraid of scrutiny in that regard.

A number of stakeholders have said that they are unable to carry out the scrutiny that they desire to carry out. I say to those stakeholders that they should have conversations with us and that we will help them through what we are doing. The convener mentioned the Fraser of Allander Institute, which has been in conversation with officials. Anyone can do that. In the same way, as I said earlier, I am more than happy to talk to other folk about the assumptions that they have made. As I said, COSLA has made assumptions that we do not recognise, but I am more than happy to engage with it to see whether some of its workings are right and to take that on accordingly.

I think that Ms Smith wants to come back on that.

We continue to listen to NHS board chairs, chief executives and others in all of this. They are key in helping us to design the services as we move forward and will be involved all the way through the process.

I get that some folks want the process to be delayed, and I recognise the pressures that are out there, but the fact is that the pressures on delivery of care will only grow over the years, because of our changing demography and population, and we cannot have stasis. We need to invest now—which we are doing over the course of the winter—but we also need to get this right for the future. Stasis is not an option.

We will continue to listen to concerns and to ensure that we address them as we move forward. We will continue to engage and, as I have said, to listen.

I think that, if we had done things the other way round, the committee and others would quite probably have asked, “Why didn’t you do it the other way round, given that the primary legislation is the most important thing in all this?” It is a bit of a no-win situation for anyone.

A fair number of questions have been asked about VAT this morning, so I will write to the committee with the detail of where we are at. Of course, we will also continue to apprise the committee of the advice that we receive to ensure that it has as much detail as possible about where we are at.

I will look at that, and we will spell it all out in our letter on where we are at.

That is subject to co-design. Obviously, there have to be some parameters in all these things. For example, if somebody were to suggest that there should be 1,000 care boards, that would not be realistic, and it could not happen—it would be outwith the parameters. However, we have said that we are open to discussion about whether the care boards should be coterminous with local authorities or health boards.

Currently—I am sure that the committee is aware of this—there are not 32 IJBs. There are 31, because Clackmannanshire and Stirling are together in that. Is there the possibility of others joining up as part of the co-design process? Would they want to do that? We would look at that closely.

The other aspect—again, the committee will know about this—is whether we should look at other options for certain parts of the country. Some of the island authorities—although not all of them—have talked before about a single island authority. Would that be favourable in delivering services—not just the national care service—in our islands in the future? We are open to looking at that, too.

We have to make a fair amount of change in all of this, and it is the establishment of the care boards and who is on them that are of real interest to folks. For example, I have not said very much about who should be round the table. There are clearly folks who need to be there, but there have been a lot of suggestions from individuals and groups about who should be there and who has been missing from the formulation of services in their areas.

One thing that I have been clear about is that I believe that the voices of lived experience should be at the table with a vote. Again, however, those matters are subject to the co-design process.