Seòmar agus comataidhean

For transparency, in the letter that I write to the committee, I will give full details of everything that I have outlined already, and I will also outline how we are running public workshops on co-design—information on that is available on the Scottish Government website. There are two registers promoting this heavily, as I have outlined already. All registrants will have detailed training around co-design.

I am more than willing to be as open and transparent as possible. I know that co-design is new for many folk. Some folk see it as being very brave; I see it as being necessary in terms of our getting it right. In our letter to the committee, we will outline all that we are doing.

No financial commitments are being directly made through the financial memorandum. The process of co-design will continue, and detailed work on the preferred options will be done through our business case process before spend is committed to.

Again, a number of things have been said about the financial memorandum that are not quite correct. For example, it is clear in the financial memorandum that more than 40 per cent of the projected costs relate to improved pay and terms and conditions for front-line social care workers, and not to bureaucracy costs. The estimated costs in the financial memorandum largely represent investments in service improvements and terms and conditions for front-line staff. Any suggestions that the figures relate exclusively to administration or bureaucracy costs are totally false.

Additionally, investment in areas such as support services will directly improve areas such as data analysis, planning and reporting, which will allow us to better understand outcomes and tailor future investment in order to have the biggest impact on our citizens.

The Scottish Government has said that we will increase social care spend by 25 per cent—some £840 million—by the end of this parliamentary session. That is in our manifesto, and we shall do it.

However, I recognise that there have been criticisms of the financial memorandum, which was produced before the current financial and economic crisis. We will consider what has been put to us and come back with an enhanced financial memorandum. However, not all social care spend that is going on now and will continue to go on is covered by the financial memorandum, which covers bill aspects only.

We have had a fair amount of discussion already this morning about implementation gaps and the postcode lottery, as well as about the fact that folk often feel that their complaints and concerns are not properly addressed. There are three things to take from that. We want to ensure that the implementation gaps are plugged and that we end postcode lotteries. It is galling for some folks to see people who live not far from them getting better services for their condition. The national high-quality standards will be important in ensuring that we end the postcode lottery. We also need to garner knowledge from people to help us to fill implementation gaps.

Preventative approaches must be at the heart of all that we do. We talk a lot about person-centred care; lots of folk get person-centred care, but we need it to apply to everyone. That is why getting it right for everyone is also at the heart of all this. Crisis costs a lot of money, so it would be much better for the public purse, and in terms of the human cost when we get it wrong, to move to there being more prevention, rather than dealing with crises.

Ethical procurement and fair work are important to delivery. We need to ensure that we improve recruitment and retention, which we know are problems. More than that, as I said in an earlier answer, we need to attract new folk to the profession; we need to attract young people into this vital work. To do that, we must show folks that they are valued—not just in terms of pay and conditions, but in terms of career progression. At the moment, we have 1,200 employers; it is often difficult to deal with that many. However, ethical procurement and fair work being at the heart of every single contract will mean that we can do much better.

There might be other reasons why staff transfer to a care board. For example, it might well be that a care board puts in some specialist provision in relation to the flexibilities that it is allowed in its area, and it might want to transfer staff to fill those positions. Of course, that would still have to come with the agreement of all in that regard.

I come back to the question of why we would transfer huge swathes of staff if the current employer is a good one and is delivering good high-quality social care. I have made no bones about that point during the course of these discussions. There are folk out there who continue to say that I want to grab and transfer 74,000 people to the national care service as part of a bit of empire building. That is not the case. I hope that local authorities across the country will continue to be good prime delivery partners that serve people in their communities. That is the ambition.

As I have said at other committees, alongside the draft bill, there is a suite of documents, which includes the policy memorandum. Paragraph 48 of the policy memorandum spells all of that out. I direct the committee to that paragraph and suggest that it looks at it in depth. I also ask others to look not only at the draft bill but at the policy memorandum and the rest of the suite of documents that we have published.

Beyond that, in respect of all of those issues, I continue to, and will always, listen to what folks have to say. I want to allay fears and concerns. I want to ensure that people are enthused by what we are trying to achieve here. The key thing for me—I declare an interest as a trade unionist and a member of Unison—is that I want to ensure that we have a workforce that is bolstered by fair work and that has ethical procurement guarding its back in terms of fair work and pay and conditions.

What do you mean?

That is the big question. We talk about legislative and regulatory changes as well as planning changes, but often such talk does not lead to real change. However, as we have been discussing this morning, if we can replicate what is happening in certain parts of Scotland elsewhere through ethical procurement and fair work, we will get that cultural change. I know that we keep picking on the situation in Aberdeen, but the committee has been there, as have I, so it is one that we all know. If we can give staff that sort of freedom, flexibility and independence on the front line, cultures can change dramatically.

That is the case not just for social care but for social work, too. Indeed, I am due to visit Fife; in a couple of areas, social workers have basically been given a clean sheet about what they can do, and some very positive outcomes already seem to be emerging. That freedom for social workers was embedded in the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968, but we have moved away from it, and many of the social workers to whom I have talked feel that they are not empowered to take the right decisions at the right time for people, because they feel that the eligibility criteria and the budgets get in the way.

We have to move away from that. Again, that will mean a massive culture shift, which can be achieved. Legislation and regulation are fine, but in order to get that culture shift, we have to empower the front line again, and we can do that through ethical procurement and fair work. We need to be trusting of a workforce that should be trusted.

I could also provide quotes from people with lived experience who want to be at the heart of shaping the national care service, which is, after all, delivering for them. I recognise that some people are worried about the change; I get that. Change is often of concern, but I have said, and I will continue to say, that we will continue to be open and transparent on this journey and to listen to people and allow the opportunity for scrutiny.

I will use the example of secondary legislation. Many people out there, and in here, always feel that everything has to be in primary legislation, but that does not allow for the flexibility that we often need for change.

Self-directed support, which I mentioned earlier, is mostly in primary legislation, and we know that people are using the loopholes in that to avoid the spirit of that act. To close loopholes such as those, we have to go back to primary legislation, but it would be so much easier if things were in secondary legislation because, if we found loopholes or an implementation gap, we would have the ability to change that pretty quickly to get it right for people. I recognise that some folk do not like that, and if we were to make change we would, of course, consult people and listen to them. However, using secondary legislation is a major way to ensure that we have the flexibility to get all this right in the future.

On picking the best that is out there, as I have said to the committee in previous appearances, I make no bones about the fact that it is absolutely vital that we pluck out the best work and export it across the board. In informing the national high quality standards, we must look for the best of the best. That is our aspiration.

However, as we continue on our journey, we will not wait for the NCS for some of that. We are already trying to ensure that we export best practice across the board. At the moment, we do not have the power in relation to national high quality standards to ensure that that becomes a given across the board.

On plugging the implementation gaps, the reason why we should have more confidence on this occasion than on other parts of our integration journey is because we will be listening to the voices of lived experience—they know where the gaps are, where the difficulties lie and the barriers that are preventing them from getting the care and support that they need. They will be key in plugging those implementation gaps.

In the future, once the care service is up and running, if we find that there are gaps and there is practice that is not working out for everyone, we will have the ability to change the standards in order to ensure that those issues are fixed.

No, this is not a power grab. We are responding to what we have heard from people right across the country. They want to see ministerial responsibility for social care. It has come as a shock to many people that while, as a minister, I can help to legislate and bring about policy, I have no direct influence over service delivery. It comes as a shock to many members of the Parliament, who write to me all the time, asking me to intervene in situations, which I cannot do, because I am not responsible for the delivery of community health and social care. As I say, we are responding to people who believe that ministers should have accountability for the delivery of social care. We are also responding to people’s view that that accountability should be enhanced at a local level—which I agree with. This is not a power grab; it is a response to people.

On the work that we have done around staff transfers and pensions, the bill only gives ministers powers to transfer staff from local authorities to care boards. However, as I said earlier in response to Ms Harper, it is by no means a foregone conclusion that there will be wholesale transfer of staff.

The Government is, as always, well aware of the repercussions of transfers. That is why we have worked on all of that to ensure that we get it right—and will continue to do so. If there are transfers, we will engage and consult with trade unions on that transfer of staff.

If it is agreed that any staff will transfer to the national care service, following discussions with local authorities, TUPE regulations would apply, as set out in section 31(4) of the bill. The Government would engage with the recognised trade unions in line with TUPE regulations and the Cabinet Office statement of practice. TUPE and COSOP place requirements on both sides to consult with trade unions in good time. We would ensure that such consultation takes place. We would intend to avoid any detriment to staff, including in relation to pensions.

However, I reiterate the point that I made to Ms Harper: there is no intention to make a wholesale transfer of staff.