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As I say, I am assured that the level of engagement that we have with everyone with an interest in particular aspects of the bill is sound and that we are hearing from experts, including lived experience experts, on what they need the bill to deliver and how it needs to go. I think that we have come to an absolutely reasonable position. We have achieved consensus and we are moving forward.

Yes, that is one of the reasons for the level of variance that is set out. I am sorry, Richard; I interrupted you.

As I said to your colleague Mr Mason, we recognise that there is a level of unmet need for social care out there that has not been quantified. We think that there probably are people who should be able to access social care who currently are not doing so. However, we think that we have a good understanding of the people who are in the system being assessed, waiting to be assessed for care or having been assessed for care and waiting for packages; we have a good understanding of those unmet needs.

I think that that can be worked out in co-design. Undoubtedly, local delivery will still be down to Shetland Islands Council and the local NHS.

We are reasonably clear on the costs. We have a range for each of the costs associated with the bill, and I am confident that we have done robust calculations on those ranges and that, as we narrow it all down, the final costs will come within them. We have a good understanding of what the final costs will be.

The thing to understand is that we are currently running a social care system that is costing the nation a substantial sum of money. I recognise the uncertainty of moving from the way in which we do things now to the way in which we will do them in future, but I am reasonably confident that we will have a far better system. The system will deliver better for the individuals who are accessing care and for the people who work in care, and the costs will be outweighed by the economic benefits.

I go back to the point that I made to the convener: what the committee is scrutinising today is the cost of the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill. The cost of the bill is likely to be less than 1 per cent of the current cost of social care, and it is likely to be less than half a per cent of the total cost of health and social care spend in Scotland.

I represent a rural area, and I absolutely recognise that, in my part of the country, it is not about money; it is about a lack of people. The ageing demographic in some parts of rural Scotland means that it is very hard to find young people of working age to take on those roles. I do not have a quantification of that, but I point to the on-going work across the board. It is not just about improving pay; it is also about improving terms and conditions as well as ethical commissioning.

There is work on fair work outside the bill, and there is very close working with the sector on improving recruitment, advertising, marketing, firming up pipelines, and making sure that it is simple for people to get qualifications and registration when they come into the sector, that they are supported when they come into it, and that there are pathways to qualification for professions for people who work in the sector who might like to study for the regulated professions that require degree-level education, such as nursing and social work. We recognise that there is a lot to be done to support the workforce. Much of that work is happening outside the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill.

On what the bill will deliver for the workforce, ethical commissioning is a real step forward. From that ethical commissioning, we will deliver better pay and conditions for the workforce, and there will undoubtedly be an increase in status for the workforce.

We are very fixated on the costs and economic benefits. The question that I put back to the committee is whether we can afford not to do it. We are spending a great—

That is a clear economic saving. As I said, we can literally support twice as many people if we provide an early intervention and prevention package, rather than providing a full package of care after a crisis has been reached. That means that we can support twice as many people with half as many staff.

There are some councils—certainly the local authority in the area that I represent—that have large underspends in that area because they cannot recruit the workforce. They have the money, but they cannot spend it.

At the core of what we are talking about is what the bill is going to deliver. We have discussed in great detail some aspects of the bill. One aspect is ethical commissioning. Bringing in ethical commissioning and procurement will undoubtedly improve pay, and it will improve terms and conditions. That will make a difference to people working on the ground.

The national board, which we have discussed in great detail, will provide better oversight and governance, as well as a system of escalating support that will be welcome to the many people I meet day in, day out who work in the system and who are distressed by the situations that they are exposed to in which the system is failing to function at the moment, because they really care.

We have the national and regional work on complex care. The national social work agency will undoubtedly improve things for the social work profession—I have absolutely no doubt about that. At the moment, social workers are employed under 32 different sets of pay and conditions around the country, and there is very little in the way of workforce planning and support for newly qualified practitioners and for practitioners who are following an advanced pathway, which is also patchy. The national social work agency will undoubtedly improve that.

Do I believe that the bill will improve things for workers collectively? Yes, I do. Alongside the bill, the Scottish Government is committed to improving workers’ pay. We have demonstrated that by increasing the pay of social care workers in Scotland to £12 an hour from next April. That is a 14.9 per cent increase over the past two years. Although I agree that we need to go further, that means that social care workers in Scotland are the best paid in the United Kingdom and are paid substantially more than their equivalents in England and Wales.