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One of the key principles of the national care service is to raise those standards and to look at national pay bargaining as we move forward. I am a great believer in fair work and the Government is committed to fair work principles, which will be embedded in the national care service. One of the reasons why so many of the employers who deliver social care are having difficulties with recruitment and retention at the moment is that they are not providing their workers with fair work. I am sure that many of you will have seen, as I have, that there is a lot of movement within the social care workforce. In many cases, that is the movement of folks who want permanent contracts, higher pay and better conditions—and who can blame them?

At the moment, the good employers out there—and there are some, without doubt—are gaining the benefits from the pay and conditions that they offer, and some of the employers who are not living up to the principles of fair work are losing employees. A lot of that is people fishing from the same pool, which is a difficult situation. It may resolve a tension in one area but cause one in another area. I hope that we can iron out that scenario as we move forward with fair work and national pay bargaining.

The other issue is attracting young people, in particular, to social care and social work. We have to show young folk how they can progress in their careers in those areas, which is not so easy at the moment. However, we have had discussions with the likes of NHS Education Scotland, the Open University and others to look at how we can provide better training, qualifications and education to make progression easier. We know that, during the course of their careers, some folk will want to flip jobs. It may well be that they want to go from social care to the health service or social work, or vice versa. Sometimes, that is not so easy to do, and we need to make it easier. In order to grow the workforce for the future, we have to make it much more attractive, particularly for young people. Career progression and career pathways are immensely important.

It has made matters for many very, very difficult. Some of you will have heard me mention before that, in conversation with one employer, I heard that they lost 40 per cent of their workforce in one of their facilities after Brexit. Folks chose to return home because of what happened and because of the feeling that there was a hostile environment. That has had an impact on service delivery. Some folk have said that we overegg the pudding when it comes to talking about Brexit, but that is a prime example of the impact that Brexit had on service delivery. Although I am not saying that every service lost 40 per cent of its staff, there are tales from right across Scotland about the impact of people returning to their home countries because they did not feel welcome in the UK any more.

I know that we have done our level best to try to reassure folk that they are welcome here in Scotland, but we lost a lot of good people who were delivering for our most vulnerable people.

There are many different views on the national care service consultation, and I think that it would be fair to say that I have heard them all. Some folk thought that the consultation was too long, some thought it was too short, others felt that some of the questions that they wanted to see were not there. The list goes on.

The NCS consultation is not the end of the engagement on the service. I have made it very clear, right from the beginning, that, as we move forward, we must continue to talk to, listen to and consult with stakeholders, and in particular the voices of lived experience, in order for us to get this absolutely right.

That is why the work will continue throughout. It will go on as the bill progresses, and beyond the bill as we shape the NCS. It is not just about the legislation or the regulation; it is also about the cultural change that is required. There will continue to be engagement on the NCS all the way through.

As I have said to the committee time and again, and will probably continue to say as we move forward, I am very keen to hear the voices of lived experience. We need to hear those voices as we shape social care for the future.

In all that we do—in the work of the Government, of integration joint boards, of local authorities and of NHS boards—we must listen more to the voices of lived experience. Let me be frank with the committee: some of the work that we are doing at the moment would not have been at the forefront of our minds, but issues have been brought to us by folks with lived experience. One of the key things for me about the national care service is ensuring that the voices of lived experience play a part in shaping services.

I might be a bit controversial here—that is not like me, I know—but it is a decade since I left local government. Looking at procurement now, from this place rather than from the local authority side, I can see some real changes that have happened in certain places.

One of the frustrations that I have—this is certainly a frustration for those who are supported and receive care—is that, in recent times, there has been more involvement in the formulation of the tender and the contract by the likes of accountants and the legal bods than there has been by front-line social care staff or folks who receive care. Quite frankly, we need to turn that on its head.

We often concentrate on the legislation and regulation. Sometimes, it is difficult to legislate for or regulate cultural change. We know that we have a job of work to do with regard to changing culture, particularly in certain areas, by which I do not necessarily mean geographical areas.

One of the main ways in which we change the culture is to ensure that the voices of lived experience remain at the heart of all that we do, at not only national but local level. That is why I am very keen to ensure that the voices of lived experience have a role and a vote on care boards. I hope that that will come to fruition, because I think that it will change the dynamic a great deal.

I know that in many parts of the country, folks with lived experience are already at the table, but I want them at the table with a vote, because that will make a real difference in relation to cultural change.

There is a lot going on in terms of fair work as part of our on-going work to set minimum standards for pay and conditions, as we move forward. The fair work in social care steering group that we established will continue to explore that across the entire spectrum of social care work. The group’s work is critical; we are working on the objectives that were agreed with the group at the start of last year. I look to officials on my left and right to see whether I am right, but I understand that the steering group will meet tomorrow to agree new priorities. I will correct that later if it is not meeting tomorrow; it is certainly meeting very soon to look at the new priorities.

As I have already pointed out, we are taking action now with partners in local government and the care sector to accelerate improvements, including to levels of pay. We are also in discussions with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities about our next steps on workforce development. Members might be aware that COSLA leaders took a paper on the issues to their final meeting before the local government elections. We will revisit that with the new and reinvigorated COSLA when it appoints new leadership and spokespeople.

We are fully committed to working in partnership with trade unions, staff and providers, including on recruitment, leadership at all levels, pay, terms and conditions, learning and development—which I touched on earlier—and career pathways. We will focus specifically on the commissioned-care sector in the first instance, but we will reach across the whole of adult social care.

I am sorry if I am going on for too long, but I am being as specific as possible about the 2019 fair work report. As part of our commitments from that report, we are ensuring that we move forward on social care workers having an effective voice in workplaces. We have included the requirement to consider effective-voice measures as part of fair work first procurement guidance, which includes there being appropriate channels to be heard, such as trade union recognition. I could go on at great length about that, but the convener is probably going to stop me.

I will continue to listen to folk—I gave the example of my meeting yesterday—and officials continue to do so on a daily basis. It might be useful if we provided the committee with an idea of what has been going on in the past month or two both from my perspective and from the officials’ perspective. Some folk have said, “Oh, you’ve been quite quiet during the pre-election period,” and there were obviously things that we could not say at that time. Even so, we have continued to talk to stakeholders, listen to them and take on board what they have to say. At the very heart of it all is listening to the voices of lived experience, which, as far as I am concerned, is key.

I would say that the work that we have done on the social covenant steering group is citizen leadership. However, citizen leadership is not just for the level of folk who will help us to co-design the NCS. We—not just Government, but the public sector as a whole—need to listen to the voices of the very articulate and experienced folk who know how the system works, what works well, where the system does not work and where it has failed many of them. We need to listen to people as we shape the right care system for all.

Let us take, for example, a call that I had yesterday with disabled people’s organisations, folks from the independent living movement and folks with lived experience of disability.

Although a lot of the conversation yesterday was about the national care service and how we move forward on that, folk also talked about the here and now, because that is relevant to them. A large part of yesterday’s discussion was not about the national care service per se; a lot of folk were discussing the difficulties that people in certain parts of Scotland have in accessing self-directed support. The committee knows that there is a bit of a postcode lottery with that at the moment. In some parts of Scotland, the options that are available to people are restricted, which does not really conform to the Social Care (Self-directed Support) (Scotland) Act 2013 itself or to the spirit of the act.

At the moment, we are reviewing the guidance on self-directed support to make it easier and more understandable for people to access what is their right. That is one example from yesterday that is not focused on the national care service and is focused on the here and now. As the committee is aware, we are reviewing the guidance in order to improve the law for people.

Yes, I do. Thank you, convener.

As you will be aware, Audit Scotland recognised that our commitment to a national care service indicates our recognition of the significant challenge within social care in Scotland. Indeed, the findings of the Audit Scotland report were largely in line with the independent review of adult social care that was led by Derek Feeley, which is precisely why we are acting now to further increase investment in social care and deliver a national care service by the end of this session of Parliament.

I am clear, though, that we should not wait to establish the national care service to take action where it is needed. Therefore, the Scottish Government will increase public investment in social care by 25 per cent over this session of Parliament so that, by the end of the session, we will have budgeted over £800 million more than current spending for increased annual support for social care.

In the latest programme for government, we restated our commitment to transformative social care reform, including the development of options for the removal of non-residential charging for adult social care. In addition, I have committed to invest £50 million over the life of this parliamentary session to support the regulation and development of the social services workforce through the Scottish Social Services Council. For unpaid carers, the Scottish Government announced an additional £4 million to help organisations working with unpaid carers to put expanded services in place.

Other more immediate action that I am happy to take questions on includes support for the workforce to address recruitment and retention issues, and work that is under way to develop the healthcare framework for adults living in care homes in Scotland.

For the interim steps, as well as the establishment of the national care service, we are committed to listening to the voices of lived experience. Conversations with those with lived experience are already informing our review of self-directed support. Keeping those with lived experience at the heart of our decision making will help us to shape a system that improves future services and makes things better for everyone.