Seòmar agus comataidhean

Yes, but it has proved challenging to use them. Ministers have very little locus to intervene. Many of the statutory powers lie with local authorities, which are democratically accountable. You will have heard me say that in the chamber many times. The powers are certainly not the same powers of intervention and oversight that we have with the NHS and it has proved challenging to use them in the past. We think that this collective and shared agreement is an appropriate way forward. If the national board should decide collectively that intervention is required, it will be a much more straightforward process to put escalating support in place.

Yes.

We have said that we are on a trajectory of increasing funding for social care. I have been clear that I agree with Feeley that, if we do this right, there will undoubtedly be efficiency savings. The obvious example is that early intervention and prevention is not only significantly better for the individual but saves a great deal of money and means that we can help more people.

We absolutely recognise that there is unmet need out there and that, if we make the system easier to access and navigate and we take a rights-based approach, there will be an increase in access.

I do not envisage any additional unfunded costs. We are working hard to establish the costs, just as we do with the introduction of any new system. As Richard McCallum said, there is a budget process every year and, as part of that process, we sit down with our local authority partners and look at what requires to go into the funding.

What happens every year is that we do our costings, they do their costings, we come together and there is a negotiation.

In general, councils let COSLA negotiate on their behalf. That is the mechanism that is in place for us to interact with councils. However, in the course of my work and my efforts on the bill, I meet individual councils, which sometimes raise concerns with me.

As I said, that is not the main concern that people come to me with.

I think that local planning and delivery are key. With regard to national representation, COSLA has its own democratic functions and structures. I interact with Paul Kelly—given how regularly we meet these days, we are tired of seeing each other. We are the poster girl and boy for the Verity house agreement. He is a North Lanarkshire councillor, but his work is very closely linked to that of the COSLA leaders, who represent every part of Scotland.

Therefore, I have no concern that COSLA is unable to represent rural and island views. I think that there are sufficient democratic structures in COSLA to ensure that the voice and the concerns of rural and island council areas can be heard and represented.

We have done a great deal of economic modelling, but I have pointed to the areas where there is still uncertainty and where more robust modelling is required. There is still some uncertainty in quantifying the unmet need that the system currently does not capture.

We will see whether we can bring you back a little bit more detail on the workforce that is out there, the number of people who are employed in social care at the moment, and how we expect that to change should we have a fully functioning social care system. I think that that is what you are asking for.

At the moment, there are clear areas in which agency spend, for example, is really high because of the lack of workforce. With the improvement that we intend to bring to the system with a functioning social care system, having the workforce in place need not cost more in every case—it may actually cost less to deliver if we have an appropriate workforce and we are not spending phenomenal sums of money on agency staff. I will see whether I can get the committee more detail on that.