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It absolutely has not stopped—no. The work on the bill is continuing, which is the first thing that we intend to do. It has had to necessarily slow down, but that work is progressing. There is also a whole suite of work on many other areas that we are determined to carry out.

I hear loudly and clearly from the population that we must make a tangible difference. I am keen to connect them into that feedback loop, so that we are able to say to them, “You told us that this area needs work. This is what we have done, and this is the difference that we have made”.

We agree that we need to make progress on some of that work, and we are going to work closely with the LEAP. I have a meeting with the panel—in the next couple of days, I think—to discuss the programmes of work that we will try to put in place between now and when we legislate. Although the legislation is important, and I think that we have done sufficient work to establish that legislation is needed, it is not the whole answer. We need to make progress on other areas.

We will be talking about the bill work and what it is that we want to do, and there will be some work on drafting the provisions for the legislation between now and then, but there will be a lot of other work on things that we know are not sufficient at the moment—stuff like data collection, progress on the annual health checks, and there is work that can be done in education. There is a whole suite of work that we can progress that does not require legislation, and we will certainly be looking to come up with a schedule on how we intend to make progress on those issues.

We decided to slow down and take a more cautious and considered approach for several reasons, one of which was to do with questions about the scope of the bill and who should be included in it and who should not. Another area of disagreement related to the issue of how to ensure that there is accountability. There are varying views on the question of whether to have a commission or a commissioner. As you know, the Parliament is going through a period of reflection on whether the commissioner landscape is too cluttered at the moment. Although I agree that there were a lot of areas on which there was a good level of consensus, there were some big questions that were unresolved.

There are other issues that we have to take into account when we are considering how to make progress with our legislative programme, such as the number of bills going through the Parliament, the Parliament’s capacity to undertake scrutiny of legislation and budgetary considerations, although the budgetary situation was not a particular consideration in this case, because the costs of the bill were not expected to be particularly high. It is a relatively small, low-cost bill compared with bills such as the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill.

We have to take into account all the different considerations, especially the issue of how to ensure that there is accountability. That has been a particular sticking point and a challenge. We need to take a bit more time.

Thank you, convener and members, for inviting me to talk about the LDAN bill and the work that is taking place to deliver it. My work with and for people with learning disabilities and neurodivergent people is a key part of my portfolio. I believe very strongly that this is an area in which we need to change our approach. The committee has heard from some of our stakeholders and partners, and we have heard that there is significant disappointment about the length of the timescales for the bill. I share the disappointment and frustration at the length of time that real change can take, and I have expressed that directly to many of the people who we have worked with closely over the past two years.

However, it is important to be really clear that this Government is strongly committed to this work. We believe that there is fairly broad cross-party consensus and that the bill needs to progress. I will address a couple of key concerns. Some people are worried that this pause means that we are back to square 1 or that the LDAN bill might not happen at all. I want to tell you why that is not the case.

The bill started as the result of a successful campaign by leading charities to highlight the need for greater accountability for autistic people and people with learning disabilities. From that starting point, we have built a significant body of work over the past two years. That has included publishing work on commissions and the commissioner landscape; early pre-consultation work with stakeholders; setting up three bill advisory panels for stakeholders, practitioners and up to 27 people on a lived experience advisory panel—the LEAP; a review of the existing evidence; taking a human rights-based approach and working in partnership with the LEAP to jointly produce an extensive consultation paper; conducting and publishing an analysis of the nearly 900 responses to the consultation; and a commitment to publish draft bill provisions and to working iteratively with the bill panels on the policy and provisions.

The content of the consultation paper itself is an indication of how far we have come. It highlights and evidences the reasons why legislation is needed—primarily the challenges and poor outcomes that continue to shape the lives of people with learning disabilities and neurodivergent people and the way that those can reach across different ages and stages of life. Improvement approaches in previous strategies have brought about some beneficial change and additional knowledge, but they have not brought about the step change that is needed to allow neurodivergent people and people with learning disabilities to play a full part in their society and communities.

Therefore, we are not at the beginning of the process—we have come a long way. We have set out proposals, around many of which there is broad consensus and strong support. However, there are also areas of difference, including around the scope of the bill and who should be included in the provisions. Therefore, we still have a significant amount of work to do to have a bill ready for introduction with a set of effective, sustainable and funded proposals. Additional work is needed on accountability options, particularly because of the Parliament’s own inquiry into the commissioner landscape but also because this is an area on which there are varied views.

However—and this is key—it is our intention to build on the invaluable work that has been done already and to publish draft provisions for a bill, working on that directly with our bill panels. Next week, we are bringing together the members of the panels to set out our proposals and to agree how we will do that together. That will very much also include what we can take forward now, in this interim period before a bill can be introduced.

Our continued work towards the proposed bill provides the foundation for the longer term. It is the keystone, but not the single solution. Government cannot work alone to change behaviours and perspectives. Partnership working between all of us is what will make the real, longer-term step change happen, with people with lived experience at the heart of it and cross-party consensus that will prioritise the work. We have a lot to do for the people whom we serve, and I am delighted to be here today to talk to all of you about it.

That is one of the reasons why I think that legislation is needed. We need some statutory underpinning to some of the work that we have done. We have done it on a voluntary basis up until now, and we need to give it some teeth in order to effect change.

We are not alone, in Scotland, in many ways. If we look globally, we see that cultural change is required all over the world.

It is a hard thing to do. I am questioned regularly on the coming home work, and I am very frustrated at the slow progress on that. People ask me, “Why have we not made progress?” It is hard to do. There are complex reasons why we are in the situation that we are in, so it requires a whole-system approach in order to effect change. There is not a single magic answer that can make the difference. I guess that that is why the proposed LDAN bill would see work across a range of areas, in a range of different ways, in order to try to effect that change.

We are doing a lot of work with local systems. As you know, it is down to local health boards to provide a service that meets the needs of the local population. That is how we deliver healthcare in this country. Government sets the strategy and local delivery is down to local health boards.

We recognise that there is a challenge because of the increased demand. There is also a global shortage of psychiatrists. We are looking at ways to support and develop services that could more adequately and efficiently meet local needs, perhaps by working on a regional basis. We have developed standards for neurodevelopmental assessment and have done pathfinders across the country, so we have a lot of good ideas on how we can step up and improve the situation, but it is proving challenging in the face of rising need.

I hear a lot of concerns about children in education. As I always say when I talk about the matter, the getting it right for every child approach means that our children’s needs and rights should be upheld regardless of a diagnosis. The diagnosis is helpful, but the child should be assessed on the basis of need and their right to education upheld within the system because of our GIRFEC approach.

We are looking at it.

There has been a significant increase in front-line investment in the current parliamentary session. Our ambition was to increase investment by a quarter, and we achieved that earlier than expected. I expect, given our ageing demographic, that our front-line costs will increase in the next five years.

The financial memorandum is about the cost of the bill, not the cost of social care. At the moment, we spend £5.75 billion per year on social care.

The £345 million does cover some front-line services.

Absolutely. Part of the reason for having this discussion is that we make sure that members of the committee understand that there are things that we can do by different means. There are subtle differences in how we can achieve things.

Take Anne’s law, for example. Relatives of care home residents were initially very keen on the idea of that being achieved through primary legislation. One reason for wishing to use primary legislation is that it cannot be changed so easily. Were we to face another pandemic, changing primary legislation would require a level of scrutiny from Parliament that changing secondary regulations would not require: the latter do not attract the same level of scrutiny.

There are definitely different ways to achieve the same thing. I need to spend time listening to stakeholders and to political parties in Parliament, then I will need to navigate a way forward. It is really important that I work closely with stakeholders. I am content to come back to you with a clearer idea and a proposal. In my letter, when I asked for a pause, I said that I would like to set out in the new year what I think the next steps are likely to be.