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I will bring in Donna Bell, who was very close to the ELAG. The ELAG was brought into being largely because Parliament suggested, during stage 1, that we needed to put together such a group. We were already in the process of hearing from and listening to stakeholders a great deal. I will check with Donna, but I think that more than 70 organisations were involved in the group.

Absolutely, and I will be looking for allies who will work with me on the things that we agree on—and we agree on a great deal. I will be looking for allies across Parliament who will help me to progress the changes that we all want to see. I rarely hear from parliamentarians here that they want things to stay the same. I think that everybody acknowledges that the system needs fundamental change, so we need to work together on what that change will be.

Given the complexity of social care and the number of stakeholders involved, it was very likely that no single stakeholder view would be reflected in the bill. However, each of them was heard and the bill was developed with their collaboration. We worked hard to bring to life what people were telling us.

Do you want to say more, Donna?

Anne’s law will be implemented as soon as is practically possible. I think that the care home relatives know and understand the challenges that we are facing. Anne’s law will engage the European convention on human rights, and when we are balancing human rights, it is always tricky to get the legislation correct. They understand the complexity, the sensitivity and the challenges that are involved, and we are working very closely with them to get the balance right on those rights. I assure them that we will deliver Anne’s law. We need to take time to get it correct. As I said in my letter to the committee, I will come back with a new timetable for the new year, so I do not think that they are going to be waiting terribly long. I do not think that there will be a long delay.

There has been lots of discussion about how long it will take for the national care service to come into being once the legislation has been passed. There have been quite a lot of headlines in the newspapers about how many years it will take for that to happen. Anne’s law could be implemented immediately, as soon as the bill is given royal assent. As soon as the bill becomes an act, we could see rapid implementation from that point on, and we would be working to deliver it as soon as was reasonably practicable. I am remembering my Government jargon: as soon as is reasonably practicable and as soon as the bill becomes an act, we will be working hard to deliver it for them. There is no reason to wait.

As I said, we meet weekly with local systems—every one—across the country. The Cabinet visited Ayrshire recently to meet system leaders and had detailed discussions about some of the challenges that they face.

We very regularly meet people in some of the areas that face particularly difficult challenges, in order to drill down to find the explanation for local variation. For example, as part of my ministerial role I have regular meetings with Highland systems to look at why their delayed discharge rate is so high compared with rates in the rest of the country. There are some reasons for that—for example, rurality and poverty have an impact. However there is undoubtedly a level of variation that is not explainable only by those factors. The challenges that are faced in Highland in delivery of social care—the geography, topography, sparse population, labour market shortages and competition with hospitality in the labour market—also apply in Argyll and Bute, for example, which does not face the same challenge in respect of delayed discharges.

Yes. The data-sharing potential is absolutely crucial, and it can be delivered only by primary legislation. You are right that people regularly tell us how traumatising it is to have to tell their story time and again. Committee members will have heard evidence from people who have a variety of carers who wear health or social care hats, and those carers might go into someone’s house every day, but the systems do not appear to talk to each other. Therefore, we absolutely need to do better.

Data sharing would make the system significantly more efficient and free up a lot of time at the coalface. Such an approach would also be a lot kinder to the people who access social care, because they would not have to tell everyone the things that are important to them time and again—they would do that just once.

As you will be aware, I am a junior minister with responsibility for those things in my portfolio. I work as part of a team of health ministers, and we work as part of a Cabinet structure within Government.

That statement is incorrect. The forecast cost of the national care service, as refined, is £345 million over 10 years.

Yes, absolutely. That is one of the most crucial things that people are asking us for. They are unhappy that they face a postcode lottery, with people in one part of the country having one type of social care system and access to certain services and people in another part of the country facing a completely different situation.

There is a focus on delayed discharge numbers not because they are the most important aspect of social care but because they are indicative. Delayed discharges are the tip of the iceberg and they indicate a dysfunctional system. Delayed discharge numbers vary by a factor of 10 across the country—the level of delayed discharges in the worst area in Scotland is 10 times that in the best area in Scotland. That is an unacceptable level of variation for our citizens to tolerate, and I agree with them that that needs to change.

You are absolutely correct. During the bill process, I have personally spoken to hundreds of people who access social care, and the team has heard from thousands. People are telling us loudly and clearly that the system is not working. We have increased investment and, as I said, we have set ourselves a target of increasing investment. Many would say that the fundamental challenge is a lack of investment, and I would not disagree that social care needs more money. However, we have invested an extra £1 billion over the past few years, and we have not seen the systemic improvement that we would have expected from that investment. The Feeley review looked closely at the system, and Derek Feeley said that the system very clearly needs reform and that it is not simply a case of pumping additional money into a system that needs reform.

We have a suite of work. A lot of work is being done to improve conditions for social care workers. We have worked closely on, and are close to delivering, a collective bargaining system. A lot of work is being done to attract people into social care careers and to support them with continuous professional development.

As I described in the chamber last week, we have a weekly collaborative response and assurance group meeting at which Government and local systems come together to look at delayed discharges in particular in order to work out how to tackle them and how to tackle unmet need and to look at what can be done to improve efficiency in the system and pick up areas of best practice. It is difficult for local systems to pick up best practice in other parts of the country and translate that into their area. It is not a case of one size fits all, so people have to adapt best practice and apply the methodology that has been used in parts of the country where it is working well to their area. As I have said before, I live in the rural west Highlands, and it is clear to me that it is not a case of one size fits all. However, a national care service would enable us to better pick up best practice, share it around the country and ensure that our entire system works as well as it possibly can, despite the strains.