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I would need to read the letter and get back to Social Work Scotland on the detail of it. Unfortunately, I have not seen the letter. Lee Flannigan saw it last night, but it was not addressed to us.

Donna Bell wants to come in on that. I suppose that the thing to emphasise is the cost of the national care service relative to the cost of social care spend. The cost of the national care service, from 2031-32, would represent between 0.54 and 0.82 per cent—less than 1 per cent—of spend on social care. It represents between 0.2 and 0.31 per cent of the entire spend on health and social care, so the cost of the bill is relatively small compared with the enormous amount that is being spent on social care. It is important that everyone understands that.

There will be some costs earlier than the first three years. The three years is to do with setting up the local care boards. We will begin to set up the national care board as soon as possible after the bill is passed. We are working to deliver things such as the national social work agency now, so some of those things will start sooner.

The implementation costs of Anne’s law are likely to be small. Much of that work has been done, but there will be an education piece that is associated with that. Some costs will start from day 1, and some will come a little further down the line compared with the bill as introduced.

I think that we have already given full information. Not every bill that comes through this Parliament has an accompanying business case. Members do not get that level of detail about economic impact or the value of the investment with every bill that comes through Parliament.

I am happy to furnish the committee with more detail. I want to have robust, quantifiable figures, but the reality is that much care work is female work and is unseen and unaccounted for in our society. That is one of the challenges that we are facing and one of the reasons why we are determined to improve the delivery of social care. There are no accurate numbers about how many unpaid carers are out there. From looking at that population, we have some idea of how many there are and we know that care is a gender issue and that far more women than men are impacted by unpaid care. We also know that, for working age carers, that impacts their ability to work. Unfortunately, we live in a society in which women’s work is unaccounted for and invisible, so it is tricky to get robust evidence. I am determined to work to improve the quality of the evidence that you have.

The powers of the national care board are clear. We have agreed what the board will do, but the detail about its composition, and about who will sit on it and will have voting rights is still being negotiated and designed.

The national care board will be interested in service delivery, and it will certainly have powers to intervene, particularly where there is service delivery failure. That is somewhat similar to what happens in the NHS at the moment, where there is an escalation framework of support to ensure that local NHS boards are helped to deliver as required. On the ability to direct budgeting and so on, I think that the system that we are introducing will enable far better financial scrutiny. Local authorities and the NHS are signed up to that. They are inviting that level of scrutiny and shared accountability so that we can do a better job together.

There would definitely be room for variation on operational delivery. There has to be. As I have said time and again, I live in the rural west Highlands, and the way that care is delivered in the village where I live is very different from the way that care is delivered in Inverness, which is within the same local authority and NHS board. Necessary variation is not what we are worried about.

Yes. I would expect the system to work more efficiently. Public Health Scotland already publishes data on that type of issue. That is the kind of unmet need that we know about at the moment. We can probably furnish you with that published information from Public Health Scotland, to make sure that you are aware of it.

I would expect the system to work more efficiently. At the moment, it is strained and reactive. We have come through a pandemic. The health and social care system in its entirety faces the most challenging times that it has ever faced, but our plans are designed to improve the situation, speed up those decisions and, at heart, ensure that people receive a quality service and are treated with dignity and respect.

We have a commitment to increase the spend on social care. We are increasing the amount of money—the quantum—anyway, and there will be efficiency savings if we do things correctly.

There is a simple calculation. Anecdotally, if a frail elderly person spends 10 days in hospital, that costs them 10 years’ worth of lost muscle mass. If, before they reach crisis point, we can help and support them to live independently in their own home, with a good care-at-home package, we will be able to help twice as many people—they will need half as much care as they would if they reached crisis point and required care on exit from hospital.

That is the type of efficiency saving that there will be if the system works better—if we can genuinely shift the spend to early intervention and prevention. Those efficiency savings will mean that we can help more people. Literally, through that change alone, we will be able help twice as many people before a crisis than we could after a crisis.

Yes. I regularly meet them.