Seòmar agus comataidhean

Do the officials want to do the sums away from committee and come back on that? [Laughter.]

We are working really hard on quantifying the costs and the economic benefits. For example, if we consider the impact on delayed discharges, we know that the conservative estimate of delayed discharge per year is about—

Richard McCallum or Lee Flannigan might want to come in on that. It is in cash terms.

I have not.

I am very thoughtful about that, as I want Parliament to be able to scrutinise the bill effectively. I want your help to ensure that it is the best bill that we can possibly develop, so I am very mindful of how we can introduce a way in which you can better scrutinise the secondary legislation.

I suppose the issue is that this is a framework bill. We think that we have sufficient information. We have spoken to more than 1,000 people, and we have had a long process of co-design. We know, largely, what the primary legislation needs to change, but I do not think that there is any way round having the co-design process continue through secondary legislation, where we will collectively put a lot more meat on the bones.

I am thoughtful about how we can improve, or ensure that Parliament is comfortable with, the level of scrutiny that happens on the secondary legislation. I am very open to working with all the committees in the Parliament. Obviously, the lead committee will want to be involved as well, but I am very comfortable with ensuring that Parliament is able to scrutinise what is happening in secondary legislation.

When I talk about co-design, it is not a completely blank sheet. We have costed for what people are telling us is needed at every stage. If I take the example of information sharing, the financial memorandum shows how we think that that will be achieved and what we think that might cost. However, there definitely needs to be a stage of sitting down with people who access social care and working out exactly what information they are comfortable with sharing and how they want to give people access to it—that kind of level of detail. That does not need to be in the bill; it is better sitting in secondary legislation.

I recognise your concern and, again, I am keen to work with you.

As I said, we are working on providing robust economic information. Some things are easily quantifiable, such as the cost of delayed discharge. I will attempt to put a figure on that, and we can put robust detail around it, such as figures on how much we expect that to improve and how much it would save the public purse. The general principles of the bill have not changed since we introduced it, but the delivery has changed and the costs of delivery have reduced substantially. The benefits of the bill and what we are hoping to achieve with it—its ambitions—have not changed at all.

We are still working through the detail of that.

Exactly.

No, that is certainly not part of my thinking. As a Highland MSP, I say that that kind of market efficiency will not work for us in the Highlands. I am always mindful that, if I can get the social care system to work in the Highlands, I can get it to work anywhere.

That level of detail will be worked out in secondary legislation.