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I work closely with the trade unions. Many of the comments that they have made do not actually relate to the legislation; they are comments on social care in general, and their view is absolutely valid. To be clear, they are raising concerns about the social care system, not about the legislation.

It is important that I listen to all of the parties in Parliament and work out what there is support for. What I am hearing at the moment is that there is strong support for a number of aspects of the bill. In fact, I am not even hearing much concern being raised about amendments that might be needed. There is clear consensus around elements such as complex care commissioning, Anne’s law, information sharing and support for unpaid carers. There is strong support for those aspects.

The things that the trade unions are asking for are outside legislation—so they are not part of the bill—and concern issues such as sectoral bargaining. We are making good progress on that and are close to the point of that being a reality. In fact, the legislation that Stephen Kinnock has introduced in the United Kingdom Parliament is probably more relevant in that regard, and I am in negotiation at the moment with the UK Government about how that legislation can apply in some way to Scotland, particularly given the work that we have already done to put fair work principles into social care in Scotland—we are well ahead of the United Kingdom Government in that regard. I am keen to collaborate with the UK Government on that piece of work, but that would be a separate piece of legislation from the NCS bill.

You are absolutely correct; we are still committed to establishing a national social work agency. There is consensus that it would be a good thing, and it stemmed from a recommendation in the original Feeley report. We think that it is required for the social work profession, which does not have the same level of professional oversight and representation as do some of our other health and social care professions. An agency will help to drive change and continuous improvement and will provide support.

Committee members will all be aware of the number of newly qualified social workers who leave the profession. We want to provide a good and supportive environment so that people are supported to become effective professionals and to progress, through the course of their working life, into specialist areas, if that is required.

I think that Feeley picked out the social work profession particularly because it has a particular role in legislation. I always describe the social work profession as absolutely crucial to upholding human rights in the system. If we want to achieve a rights-based approach to social care in Scotland, it is vital that the social work profession is supported and enabled to fulfil its duties according to law in terms of upholding human rights in the system. That is why there is a particular focus on social workers.

That is not to say that there is no focus whatsoever on social care workers; everyone in the system is really important. The scale of the challenge that the social care system faces because of the change in employer national insurance contributions and how many people no longer working in the system that might translate into is really concerning. Everyone who works in social care is really important.

I am well aware that professionals such as occupational therapists work in the same sort of areas as social workers. We are working with their professional body to make sure that they are well represented in the decisions that we are making. However, it is important that social workers have their own professional body and that we, as parliamentarians, recognise how crucial that profession is to the delivery of human rights-based social care in Scotland.

My main focus is on outcomes and on what we need to achieve for the people of Scotland. I have heard loud and clear that the system that we are currently overseeing to deliver social care is broken and that we need to fundamentally change the way in which we deliver.

I ensure that the voice of lived experience is heard loud and clear, which I think is part of my role as minister. I have been dismayed at how that voice has not always been heard in the discussion about social care. Some very strong institutions are involved in delivering local and social care, and the people who access social care are often not heard within that. I consider my relationship with those people to be very precious and, when I make representations to Cabinet, I absolutely talk about how the decisions that we make will impact on them, as well as what their wishes are and what outcomes they want to see in the system.

Those people tell me clearly that they want a human rights-based approach, to tackle the variation around the country, and a system of social care that protects their dignity, supports them and has in place early intervention and prevention before they reach crisis. They also tell me that, when things are not going well, they want a clear system through which to put in complaints or concerns and to have those concerns investigated and upheld.

I am a junior minister, and I am very happy to take the guidance and wisdom of all my senior colleagues. That is what happens with collective responsibility. We have a great deal of experience around the Cabinet table and in our Government. I listen carefully to how my colleagues think that we can deliver the improvement that we need to see, in the same way as I listen to all of you as parliamentarians.

No—those costs will come every year. It is a permanent change to employer national insurance contributions. Social care will be hit particularly hard because of the number of part-time employees in it; there are lots of low-paid and part-time employees, so the change will hit the sector particularly hard.

The group is not meeting at the moment, but we could revive it. I regularly meet a number of stakeholder groups. I meet very regularly with the social covenant steering group and the key stakeholder reference group, and have done so throughout the development of the bill. In fact, I am meeting them today, after my committee appearance. The expert legislative advisory group is a much broader group that focused particularly on the drafting of the bill. We could bring it back together in the future if we or Parliament feel that it would be useful.

I regularly meet the care home relatives’ representatives. In fact, just last week, the First Minister and I had a meeting with them and Campbell Duke, who is Anne’s widower. As is often the case, we had a very emotional discussion about the circumstances that have led them to plead with the Government and Parliament to bring Anne’s law to life. At the meeting, the First Minister and I reiterated our absolute commitment to delivering Anne’s law in legislation. We assured the families that under no circumstances will we allow the difficulties in legislating for the NCS to mean that we do not legislate for Anne’s law—we will do it.

It is really important that we get the bill right, and I am really grateful for the families’ continued input to that. The reason why the amendments on Anne’s law were held back from the package of amendments that came to the committee in June was that we have not quite got the bill right yet, and I have assured them that it will not be right until they think that it is right. It is not my opinion that counts; it is theirs.

On that basis, I am really pleased that Anne’s law has, in effect, been introduced in Scotland, which we heard Kevin Stewart mention in the chamber last week. He put the spirit of Anne’s law into health and social care standards for care homes, which has strengthened them, and people who live in care homes can now name family members or friends to visit them when there are restrictions on routine visiting to prevent infection. They can also name people who directly participate in meeting their care needs.

I go back to the discussion around Anne’s law. The National Care Service (Scotland) Bill was chosen as the vehicle for Anne’s law because of the commitment throughout the entire bill to people’s fundamental human rights and to embedding human rights in our social care services. There are more options and flexibility with primary legislation than through amending secondary legislation, but we will not let the challenges with the bill prevent us from legislating. We will do what the families are asking of us.

You are absolutely correct that there is an unacceptable level of variation. We often use Ayrshire as an illustration of that. As you said, the area has one health board and three local authorities. East Ayrshire has a fairly low level of delayed discharges. As I said, delayed discharge is not the be-all and end-all, but it is the tip of the iceberg. North Ayrshire has more than double the level of East Ayrshire, and South Ayrshire has more than three times the level of East Ayrshire.

There are different levels of priority, spend, grip and assurance in each of those systems, and there are challenges. Demographic differences might contribute somewhat to the differences; indeed, we probably will not get uniformity across the country, even if there is a national system.

We are hearing loudly and clearly that there is some support for recognising the situation as it stands and improving and picking up learning nationally. For example, South Ayrshire Council, which I spoke to recently, has started a frailty service in its hospital that is having a huge impact on the efficiency of its system. That is a really effective piece of work. We need to learn about that quickly and translate it throughout the country, because it is having an almost immediate impact, but we have very little in the way of mechanisms for doing that.

I think that it was Henry McLeish who said to me—he does a lot of work for Alzheimer Scotland—that if he visits an area of Scotland where there is absolutely amazing work going on and asks, “How do we get this happening in the other 31 local authority areas?” he is told that the charity or third sector organisation that is delivering that amazing work has to go and persuade the other 31 local authorities to do the same thing. A mechanism is needed to make sure that great work is picked up nationally.

When we first made the shared accountability agreement, we agreed that operational responsibility and statutory responsibility delivery would absolutely remain with local authorities. I have reiterated many times that I believe that that is really important. I come from the rural west Highlands, and what works in my part of the country will not work in Edinburgh or in Fife. It is important that delivery of social care can take into account the local challenges and the local assets that are available in every community.

However, there is undoubtedly unnecessary variation. The bill, as it was originally introduced, meant that ministers would have had sole responsibility for social care in Scotland. At the moment, it sits with local authorities. We said that local authorities, the NHS and ministers would share accountability and that together we would make sure that there was top-notch local delivery and national oversight. When the committee looked at self-directed support, it made it clear that one of the things that was required was national oversight. That is what we agreed on, and we have been working on that. We have been meeting weekly with local authority colleagues and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities since June last year in order to deliver that. We had agreed, I would say, 90 to 95 per cent of what was required to deliver that.

As I set out in the chamber last week, around June this year, local authorities came to Government and said that they had capacity challenges in facing the delayed discharge crisis and continuing negotiation over the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill. They asked whether we would take that off the table temporarily so that they could focus on delayed discharge, so we did that. We paused negotiations but, without coming back to the negotiation table, local authorities then withdrew their support for the shared accountability agreement. I set out in Parliament that I was so disappointed with how that happened. I believe that we should have come back to the table and worked on the remaining very small percentage of areas on which we disagreed, but that is not where we are—local authorities have withdrawn support.

On accountability, I think that you have heard in your evidence sessions that the disabled people’s organisations say that we have given far too much power and responsibility to our local authorities, and the local authorities say very clearly that we are trying to take too much power away from them. The fact that we have those polar-opposite views is just the reality of the situation that we are in at the moment. We have to strike a balance between those polar-opposite views—on accountability being entirely the responsibility of local systems, which are democratically accountable to their local population but with no national oversight, or national oversight with no difference in local delivery. We have to find a balance in the middle, and I thought that we had found it. That is why I am frustrated and disappointed by what has occurred.

I have not yet made a decision on that. As I said, I am hearing from political parties in Parliament and listening very carefully on what I think we can legislate on. However, I think that it is important that we have national oversight of what is happening in social care in Scotland. We have heard that loud and clear throughout the process of developing the legislative proposals for a national care service bill.

When we paused negotiations with COSLA, there were three areas of disagreement—direct funding, removal of people from boards and the issue of children and justice, which had been contentious throughout the process. I have been clear that it would be best for children’s and justice services to be within the national care service. That is important to give an individual who is accessing care the most cohesive and joined-up experience. Children who are taken into care are often vulnerable, and they are taken into care because of issues that make their parents vulnerable. Their parents often have adult social care support or justice social care support.

It is important that we look at how integration of the whole system can mean that it works better for vulnerable citizens. That is about recognising that children live in families and in communities and that the child usually requires care not because of their own situation but because of the family situation.

The social work profession has been clear to us that it would like the profession to stay together under one umbrella, so that is something to bear in mind. However, the issue has been contentious with local authority partners, who believe that the decision whether to delegate services should be a local decision.

I do not know whether any of my officials wants to add more or whether I have explained the position adequately.

Donna Bell will take that question.