 Fy enw i gyd, ac rwy'n gweithio â'r 31st ddechrau o'r Gweithgatheithaeth i Gwyl Pwysigol ac i'r Sgolwch Cymru i 2023. Rwy'n gweithio gael gwybod nifer o'r gweithgatheithaeth, Tess White wedi gweithio gweithio'n gweithgatheithaeth. Rwy'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithgatheithaeth, oedd ydw i'n gweithio'n gweithgatheithaeth 3-5 i gyd yn gweithgatheithaeth. The second item on our agenda is an evidence session on the National Care Services Scotland Bill. Our first panel today is comprised of representatives from trade unions and for this morning's session. I welcome to the meeting Dave Moxham, who is joining us remotely, Deputy General Secretary of the Scottish Trade Union Congress. Cara Stinson, organiser for Women's Campaign Unit, GMB Scotland. We are hoping to be joined by Lillian Mesa, regional secretary of Unison Scotland, who, unfortunately, has been delayed. We know that stage 1 of the NCS Bill was extended to find compromising consensus. I wonder what impact it is that you expect that agreement between the Scottish Government and COSLA on the shared accountability to have on the national care service proposals. If I could go to yourself first, Cara. Obviously, it's something that we welcome, that local accountability is going to be considered. However, things are still moving really slowly. There is no pace. There is co-design sessions on going, which COSLA, as far as I'm aware, haven't really been a part of with loved experience groups and things like that. For our members, there's still a concern around how things are moving in the way things have been done. We weren't aware that there was discussions with COSLA until after it happened, so our members are now starting to believe that things have been done without people being fully aware of the full picture. I suppose, then, that I can just follow up on that little bit there as well and say, is there any particular impact that you're expecting then from that shared legal accountability on your two junior membership? Well, to be fair, we don't know enough about it right now. I think because everything is kind of a whenever we're asking questions, we're being told things are subject to co-design. There's no guarantees as yet. The bill is a framework. We're actually still not clear as to how that's going to play out. For instance, we're a national care board who's on it. What's it going to do? What's the responsibilities? How is it shared? We're still a bit unclear as we move forward. I'm sure things will become clearer. But at this present time, there's still a lot of concern and worry around how things are actually going to be delivered. Welcome back to national care boards in a wee minute, convener, if that's okay. I did want to give Dave Doff or Trinity to come in as well on that first question. Yep, thanks for just seeing myself there. I'm here today. I thank you for the opportunity to give evidence today. From the perspective of the wider trade union movement, obviously one of the fundamental concerns in the original legislation is the potential removal of local authority control with it potentially local authority direct employment. We've yet to see any clear evidence that that is being significantly rethought. You mentioned, I think, what you alluded to, the very House agreement and the overall relationship between central and local government. To be frank, it's not been a couple of good weeks for that. We very much hope that the next process will be one in which central government listens very closely to local government with whom we broadly concur on the democratic and broader partnership arrangements for the delivery of social care under a new national care service. We very much hope that progress can be made relatively quickly to meet some of the concerns that we and others have got about local accountability and local provision. As I say, some of the slightly more concerning developments with respect to relationships between the two forms of government can be repaired as quickly as possible. Can I ask you, Dave, specifically, is there a feeling that we've been reassured then around no longer being any transfer of staff or assets from local authorities? Has that been something that's been reassured? That's certainly partly a reassurance. What we've yet to see is how that pans out in terms of the respective roles of a national body and local authorities. It's to be hoped that we're on a positive path towards reaching the goal that we want to end up with, as has been said by CARA and would certainly be said by other trade union members, so still a high degree of uncertainty about exactly what the end point would be and certainly the need to communicate at the most fundamental and regular level with the organisations that represent the workers in the sector. Okay, that's helpful, thanks. CARA, I'll come back to you then on the national care board that you mentioned earlier on there. So I'm wondering what is it that you believe that the role and the purpose of that should be? So with the national care board, the GMB's perspective from our members is that there should be full representation from the workforce on that board with full voting rights, so not as an observer, as well as service users, we lived experience. We think that that's the only way that a national care board would work. Currently, obviously, we operate in IGIBs, which, you know, there's no voting rights for the workforce on the ground or the people who use services, so we think that that should be a fundamental change. We are a national care board in how that operates, and we think that it's the only way it's going to work. We are people on the ground, people who use services are having an input into decisions that's been made at that national level and are considering any concerns and any issues at a national level so that they can be resolved in real time with what's happening currently on the ground. What do you think will become of the role for the integration joint boards that exist presently? That's an offer, need to decide. From a GMB perspective, what we are seeing is currently, we don't feel that there are true representation of the members that we represent, and there's no effective voice of the members that we represent on there with voting rights. Obviously, that's one of the big things that we think should be included in a national care board. Dave, can I ask you as well then what you think about the role and the purpose of the national care board and what should become of the integrated joint boards that we have at present? That's the second point in detail, because certainly others and hopefully Lillian Mesa can make it here. Others of our affiliates have more experience of the day-to-day operation and function of that, but I really would want to echo the view that our vision of a national care service is something that is delivered locally with workers' voice on the ground so that day-to-day decisions, problem-making and problem-solving can be made at that level. It would be an application of all of the commitments of the Government if workers didn't have a direct voice. As my colleague says, a direct voice means voting rights when it comes to the national care board, because it simply wouldn't make any sense for us to be engaged in the day-to-day operation, but they're not able to extrapolate those experiences into the framing of the national delivery questions, which are so fundamental to the overall delivery. Before we move on to the next question, you mentioned, I think, in your first answer to Stephanie Callaghan, that you thought the pace was too slow. Could you maybe expand on that? What do you think that we should be setting up a national care service faster? No, so basically there is a lot of talk around the national care service. They're delaying the bill, but nothing is actually happening on the ground for care at the moment. That's what I was alluding to. We know that care is in crisis now. We can't wait years for a national care service to fix the crisis. We have to be fixing it now as we move along. However that may be, however the national care service progresses, for us that's a kind of point to the side, but there's a crisis in care now that's not being addressed. I'm interested in having a discussion around fair work and sexual bargaining. The minister has indicated that the trade unions and the minister have met and discussed this, and I just wondered if you could give us some feedback of your view of the discussions so far on that matter. There has been discussions had with the minister who has met with members and obviously through co-design sessions have met with lived experience, which the trade unions have attended. What I would say is that the discussions have been helpful and the minister getting to hear views of our members and people who use services, but nothing seems to really have come out of it. Nothing is moving forward and nothing changes, so right now it is just discussion. There's nothing more I could add to that. That's where it ends. Lillian, if you're okay to come in at the point that it's stuck at discussions, is there anything that we could be recommending that happens now? Firstly, I apologise to members for coming in late, so apologies for that. There's some dreadful traffic in the road and then an accident, no excuses. I recognise absolutely the frustrations and colleagues who will know that we've been working very hard in terms of sector obag and fair work agenda within the care sector. Going back to the fair work sector in terms of the reports that the fair work convention have produced in 2019, I was very privileged to co-chair the fair work convention's first report and that was around fair work and care. It really was a lens through the work. The report was published in 2019 and it looked at how people were treated in care. We then said that there was a huge crisis in care and there needed to be one of the significant recommendations from that report was sectoral bargain, while that was in 2019. I would like to say that some progress has been made, but I think that Kara's outlined it perfectly. The lack of progress has made the crisis in care even worse. Therefore, we're now in a position where we've got a report in 2019 that tells us that things are bad. Four years later, we know that things are deeper in crisis. The bill itself doesn't mention sectoral bargaining. The bill itself doesn't necessarily recognise fair work. In that bill, it mentions fair work once. If we are committed to a fair work agenda for social care workers, then we need to absolutely have some direct discussion around how that would operate and that needs to come at pace. From 2019 through the fairer report, where the recommendations from the fair work convention are absolutely endorsed, we're still in a position where we don't have sectoral bargaining in that workforce, which is causing huge issues for us in terms of engaging with that workforce around effective voice, opportunity, fulfilment and respect. Right now, the stalling of that is not helping neither the people who are in need of care nor the carers themselves. Significant issues for us. What can we do to progress it? We don't need to wait in the bill. Sectoral bargaining can happen now. There does not need to be a national care service bill for us to deliver fair work for that workforce. Sectoral bargaining is a key pillar to fair work. Thanks. I know that Cara Wann to come back in as well, but the point that I want to ask about in terms of being able to do sectoral bargaining now, can that be done across all the areas, the public, the third sector, the private? Is there a way of doing that now and in the future in the bill? Thanks for driving me back in. I just really want to take a little Lillian's point in here as well. The Scottish Government fair work streams are set up to fix social care now, not to wait in a national care service bill. That's a really important point to echo. This is work that we were made aware that would be progressing now to resolve the crisis in care. It was totally separate from a national care service bill, although it would overlap at some point. We thought it was great and important, but we are now sitting here. As Lillian's alluded to, years down the line and nothing has been implemented or changed, a little progress has been made somewhat. When I say progress, I would say that agreements have now been made within the groups, but that's to the extent of it no action has been taken as yet, apart from those agreements being reached. With regard to sectoral bargaining across the sector, it can be done. Obviously, we have to be very aware that local government collective agreements are already in place, but that is something that the sectoral bargaining work stream, which is work stream for through the fair work work streams, is considering and taking into consideration through fair work on that work stream. The key message is action now really is something that could and can't happen. Can I just ask another question? Possibly, Dave, if you don't mind. I'm really interested in the minister's comments and observation that only 19 per cent of the workforce is unionised. I'm wondering some of the points that we've discussed. Are there anything else that might help us to increase union membership in this sector, because we know that it's dominated by females? We really want to make sure that we can maximise the terms and conditions, because we know that's what can change social care for the good for the longer term. It's a very important point that you raise. Membership is relatively low in the care sector. That's largely because of the intensive splintering of the sector over many, many years. Members, I'm sure, will be aware that unionising lots of small workplaces is a lot harder than unionising larger workplaces. What can happen and what really links these two issues is the agreement and the implementation of sexual bargaining will give workers in the sector a very clear idea, not just about how they can bargain locally within their workplace, but about how their membership and their participation leads to proper standard setting and fair work setting across the whole of the country. Those are two interlinked areas. Our unions work very hard and are very successful in terms of unionising under the current circumstances, but they're running uphill to be fair just because of the way that the sector is organised. Just to reiterate the previous point, I remember well over a decade ago having arguments with Government at various levels about the potential to implement the living wage, and we were told for a long time that that wasn't possible in the care sector, and we then realised that that was essentially a public-funded sector, that there were very many more leavers available to Government than they originally imagined. That goes for sexual bargaining too. When you were funding a sector, you had the power and we was arguing to your team to demand of individual employers that they adhere to not just to certain standards, but to certain ways in which unions workers get together and negotiate at a national level. To reiterate what both of the panellists in the room have said, there should be no difficulty now between moving quickly towards sexual bargaining and that we believe that that will aid unions in ensuring that unionisation is brought to a process sector. As you might be saying, it couldn't be more important in the context of the demography of workforce with women migrant workers and others making up a disproportionate proportion. I declare my interest as a practicing NHS doctor. I've just got a question for Dave. If we want to have, well we are unionised, we have some unions, and we want to have, say, the same work conditions and pay across our country, so we don't want a social worker, say, in Glasgow to pay significantly less than in the Highlands. Do you expect, with what's happening and with the way that the NCS Bill is being run and the way that the agreement is going with COSLA, that all workers at all levels will be pulled up to the highest amount of pay in the country, not only for the hourly rate, but also for things like pensions? I'm a trade union member, if not a trade union representative, so my general answer to that would of course be yes, it's our job to ensure and we don't think that there's anywhere in the sector that could be argued to be particularly well paid, but yes, our mission and one of our hoped outcomes is that people's pay and people's terms and conditions will be pulled up. I can't answer for every single worker and every single instance of pay across the whole of Scotland, but the general drift needs to be sharply upwards, which I think that almost all political parties in the Parliament, the most commentators recognise, would be good for workers, but also be to the sector, be to the potential. Thanks, convener. Good morning to everybody. On the back of Sandesh Gullhane's question about establishing a national care service, do you think that that will increase the visibility of social care and give it equal waiting and equal standing? I know in the previous scrutiny I was keen to look at standardised education, career pathways, increasing the visibility of social care and establishing a process where social care is recognised as a professional career pathway because we see what work social care providers do when they go into people's homes, for instance. I register an interest as well, because I am a registered nurse still with the NMC. I am interested in whether you agree that the national care service will improve the visibility of our care workers if it is nationally managed. That is two really important questions. I should declare an interest as well. The previous job that I had before I took up this role in unison was, of course, 39 years in the NHS in Scotland. I have a steep history of NHS and partnership working and industrial relations in the NHS in Scotland. When I entered and was part of the fair work review into social care to see how staff and workers in that community, more than 200,000 women, mostly part-time, low-paid female workers, had been treated over a number of years. Emotionally, I was appalled, I was concerned and it gave me a clearer drive to look at how we can then make sure that people are treated with that respect in their work environment. I think that allowing a market model to continue will mean that workers will not have that respect. They will be undervalued, they will be underpaid. Without that public sector ethos, we cannot deliver in that high quality that we strive for, both in social care and in the NHS. If the national care service bill does not recognise that we need to incorporate and renew a public sector driven model to deliver social care in Scotland, the population and communities in Scotland will not thrive under that. Equally, the workers working in that space will not get the same recognition as they do within other public sector arenas. When we did the fair work and care report, we met a number of NHS workers, we met a number of care workers, we did a piece of research through Strathclyde University and we quickly realised the difference between NHS employed workers and social care workers. The lack of that voice, the lack of opportunity, security and respect, the lack of fulfilment in their daily job was absolutely shocking. Unless we have that level playing field where the public sector drives a model of care and service, we will not drive up quality. You would promote a national care service bill that supports establishing equity for social care workers equivalent to national health service. That is what I am driving at. If we are able to, in a national care service bill, demonstrate that care workers are given parity so that the career choice of some people, predominantly women, is absolutely right and it is not always full-time work. If a national care service was able to deliver that pathway of the increase of the visibility of social care, that would be something that you would support. Absolutely. The bill currently does not cover workforce issues. If the Scottish Government has changed its mind and wants to include workforce issues within the bill, we need a new bill. We need to scrap the bill and we need to get round the table and sit down and develop and design a fit for purpose national care service that is worthy of the name in Scotland. If we are serious about the workforce and that there is a huge potential within that workforce, then we need to absolutely invest in that workforce. We need to invest in their work, but we also need to invest in their pension provision. Most of those women do not have access to decent pension, so therefore they fall into poverty and pension. We need absolutely a committed investment, as we do with our public services, offering a public service provision of pension that makes sure that people, when they retire, live in dignity and respect. To the whole panel, if any of your members have attended any of the regional forums, what were the themes that stood out to you from those regional forums? Thank you. Good timing of a question. We were at a regional forum yesterday. The lived experience forums that we have been attending has been all different themes around joint decision making, valuing the workforce. Our members currently think that this is just words in a ticking exercise, rather than it being contributing to making the bill better in the introduction of the national care service better. There are points being put across during these sessions, and we believe that they are being listened to, but the information then goes into anabas. I am sure that something is happening at the other side, but right now, obviously, our members are not getting, we are not getting a report back on what is being discussed, where that could contribute to the bill to make it better, or where it could contribute to implementation of a national care service. Right now, our members are attending these events, and they are contributing effectively to them, but nothing is coming back as yet. Right now, the feeling from our members is that the workforce is not having an effective voice, they are getting a voice, but whether it is effective or not, they are unsure. I think that it is a good question, because our members, as well as Kara, are saying that the users of services and families and communities are looking to see how their voices are being listened to in those forums. I suppose that until we know that the bill—I think that we are going in in terms of the direction of pausing and stopping—is absolutely right. If we are looking at what is next for us, we need to make sure that the bill is fit for purpose, that it is going to recognise the workforce issues and that it is going to recognise the challenges, or at least the concerns that a number of organisations have laid at the door of the Scottish Government around its first pass at the bill. Equally, we need to make sure that when we are listening to those voices, we react to those voices. In terms of the stage 1 of the bill, if the bill goes forward, what Unison would like to see is that the amendments at stage 2 are published in advance of any stage 1 debate and vote. We need guarantees and assurances that voices have been heard. If the bill goes through as is, the realisation for our members and service users is that their voices have not been heard. The opportunity to see those amendments flow through, published, and there will be amendments in stage 2 would give those people that attended those forums a guarantee or at least some assurance that they were heard, listened to and action was taken. I do not know if Dave wants to come in at all. Really briefly, the STUC has not been directly engaged in the same way as our constituent unions have. I just wanted to underline that point that Lillian made. We have not seen the outputs yet. Let us be optimistic and hope that the outputs from those fora show that they have been genuinely listening events that can affect change in the proposed legislation, but we need to have absolute transparency in terms of the outputs of that and how it leads to changes within the bill and the amendments that Lillian referenced. We have heard a lot this morning about your priorities and thoughts on various parts of the bill, but going forward from what your members have been bringing up at regional forums, what are the priorities that you think should underpin the work and the design going forward of a national care service? As I alluded to a bit earlier, we cannot wait for a national care service bill whenever that may be or however it is delivered. There is a crisis in care that has to be delivered now. Our members have a general feeling on the national care service bill, as a lot of them are worried about putting a hotmail in the table for their families right now, with things like low pay, bad terms and conditions, without thinking five years down the line as to what might be. If all those ifs and buts, we know clarity around that. We are in a cost 11 crisis, people are struggling. I alluded in the last time that I gave evidence. There are some workers that have came forward and told us that sometimes they are going to the shop and buying services or things at the last of their money and their kingdom deciding whether they are eating their health my services are out. The stage we are at just now is why their membership are more concerned about change now and making it better now so that they can afford to stay working in the system because the way things are going, if there is no change and there is no alleviation on this crisis, we are not going to have a workforce left in social care that is going to be here to see a national care service introduced. If Scotland is to achieve radical change, there absolutely needs to be a public provision of services. A necessary element to a national care service means that we need to look at the public provision, ensuring that the leakage of—for example, right now the bill does not mention and does not give clarity around procurement. It mentions ethical commissioning once. Right now through the joint IJBs, there is an opportunity for more than 20 per cent leakage of public monies going off shore. That means that those opportunities are not being seen in our communities in Scotland. That opportunity to spend where our members spend their money in their local communities is being lost. That well-being growth, that well-being economy is not being realised in Scotland if money is being off shore. Those multinationals that deliver care in Scotland right now are doing exactly that. Radical change, for me, means the public provision of services and the public control of those services so that we do not see that leakage and that the monies that we spend—public sector monies, taxpayer monies—goes back into local communities where it belongs. I do not think—Dave, do you want to come in at all, or—? That point is just to drill a bit further into what Lillian has said, our profiting from care report, which I am sure the committee is aware of, published in 2022, did not just make the comparison between the direct and the private sector when we are talking about the leakage that Lillian is talking about. It made a comparison between the third sector and the private sector, so it found that leakage was not a function necessarily of it being independent from direct delivery. It was a function of the profit-making motive. There is a very clear distinction, and one that we think has not been investigated enough and certainly has not been built into the Government's plans, which makes that distinction between the private sector and the third sector. The leakage figures are really quite startling, and we cannot see any justification, certainly given that along with that leakage you also have lower pay and conditions in the private sector. We cannot see any basis for a blueprint going forward, which sees anything other than the diminishment and eventually of education of private sector for the teams. Convina, Cara, just to turn to something you said earlier. You said things are going very slowly when it comes to the NCS, but last week Eddie Foland said that COSLA was dealing with a very short timescale. How do these two things match up? That would be something that you would have to ask COSLA, I suppose. As far as we are concerned and we are here representing the workforce, things are going slowly. We agree that the bill should be paused until there is more clarity within the bill. GMB's position is that we welcome a national care service because we feel that social care needs are reform, but the bill in its current form is not good enough and does not give enough guarantees to the members that we represent. When I say there is not enough pace, there is not any pace on guarantees, amendments, any clarification or any guarantees to our members that they are going to be protected through this process? Again, I will turn to what Eddie Foland said last week. He said that primary legislation is important and he wants things that he is working on to be in primary legislation. When it comes to guaranteeing workers' rights and things that you think are important for your members, do you think that that has to be in primary legislation? Yes, we believe that there should be some protection for the workforce in the primary legislation. When we are putting amendments forward and ideas forward, we are being told that that could not go in primary legislation because of legalities, it would go in secondary legislation. All we want is guaranteed protection for the workforce that we represent. Wherever that goes legally, as long as that protection is in there, that is what we would support. It has been alluded to earlier. Social care workforce works really hard. They have a really emotional job. It is not just the physical aspects of the job, but the emotional trauma that they get through on a daily basis. I think that the least that we can do for this workforce is give them some protection and guarantee that we are going to look after them the way they are looking after the most vulnerable in our communities. Lillian, when you said that you wanted to scrap the bill and start again when it comes to workers' rights and just coming off what Kara just said there, do you think that it is important to put—is the reason for renegotiation to put things in primary legislation or what is your reasoning if that is not it? The reason that Unison is calling to scrap the bill is multifaceted. We do not believe that the bill in its current form will deliver for the population of Scotland. We do not believe that it recognises and values the workforce. As I said earlier, there is nothing in this bill around workforce matters, nothing. There is one mention in this bill around fair work. There is nothing in this bill that talks about ethical procurement, it talks about ethical commissioning and setting up a process to establish what that looks like. The bill does not give us assurances and guarantees that we need for our members and it does not give guarantees and assurances for the population of Scotland. That is why we need to scrap the bill. We need the opportunity to sit down with the experts in the room who are the workers who work in the service day in and day out when you read the Fair Work Convention report into social care through the lens of those workers and you read those testimonies, you will recognise that every single person, every worker in social care wants to be there. They do not want to be there for the money because they can get more working in the supermarkets down the road, but they want to be there because they want to contribute to their communities and they want to contribute to caring for the population. We go into care as NHS workers and as social care workers and public sector workers because the public sector ethos means that we are delivering for high-quality services and, yes, there is an element of reward through pensions, through terms, conditions and through negotiations. That workforce has very little or none of that and that was the message that came through that report. Sectoral bargaining is an absolute must for the recognition of this workforce. That was four years ago, so are we working at pace? No. You might be able to—we haven't got time, unfortunately, to go into all the details of why you don't think this bill will not deliver for the people of Scotland. Do you think you might be able to write to us with that detail? Let me just advise committee members that Unison Scotland has been doing some work with APSY and we are just about to launch a report that goes into a huge amount of detail around all of the issues that we are describing today. Can I get a commitment for you to write to us with that detail? We launch our report on 13 November to next week. We will absolutely circulate the report to committee members and we will share with you the thoughts in a letter around the APSY report. This APSY report absolutely looks at social care, it looks at the bill, it cross-references around local authorities across the UK and it gives a huge amount of detail. I will write to you on it. Please, thank you. My last question is to Dave. You talk about transparency when it comes to this co-design process. My worry, like Cara said earlier, was about this being a box-ticking exercise and they are not being an effective voice, not just for workers, but anyone who turns up and does speak at these sessions. When it comes, I have read what the Government have put out on 27 September, I think it was that they put out some information. It is all very sanitised and very neatly packaged. Do you think it is important to have the raw data out there of what everyone has said so that we can all see? Yes, I think the general principle of that is the correct one. I am not going to say that there would necessarily be bits of evidence in those sessions, which for reasons of personal experience or other factors might need to be redacted, but in terms of the general thrust of that, we would like to see as much of that as possible. I think this goes to the fact that you spoke around Eddie Foland's statement that he wanted to get on with some of this more quickly than the legislation, if I paraphrase you that. There is a very real sense that there are changes that can be made, particularly as far as we are concerned, in terms of workforce terms and conditions in the middle of towards collective bargaining, that we believe will be underlined during this process, that we believe can take place now, that we believe should be part of the ultimate legislation, that there are some real things, there are some real learning that can take place now, that can be moved forward now, which might the ultimate build stronger because it will be underlining and inoculating the good practice that we develop rather than inventing such stuff and such. So, yes, as much transparency as possible and as much action on those recommendations and the recommendations that come through other sources as part of this consultation. I would just like to ask further about the process of these co-design sessions. You mentioned, obviously, a key ask was the national board and having trade union representation with voting rights within the national board. Can I also ask about the drafting of the charter of rights? Have you been part of that process and if you have been, what is it that you're asking for with regards to the charter of rights, what would the key things be on the charter of rights? It may be, Ms Stevenson, if you could start. Thank you, just as well, to the evidence sessions as well, which might be answering questions that have already been answered. At the sessions that we have attended on the co-design, we have been told that the notes taken are all anonymised so that people feel that they're able to speak so there shouldn't be any issues with transparency. We're sharing that information. With regards to the charter of rights, we have been involved. We were sent a copy and, obviously, given notes, what we decided to do was we actually, you know, there's quite a lot in it that allows to service users, so we did work with another service who represents service users to give comment back on that. The general consensus with that given too much detail on what we felt with the charter of rights was a bit too wooly. There wasn't enough guarantees. It was very kind of an open to interpretation and we think that it has to be looked at and it has to be a lot stronger, a stronger document rather than it being quite laid back, as your member has seen it. Charter on the face of the bill itself at the heart of the actual written legislation? Not just something that's decided by ministers later? Yeah, I mean, there has to be something near the people people can work towards, but one of your big key asks is as well as around regulation. So you can have as many charters and as many codes of practice and all the rest of care inspectors, care inspectorate in SSC, but without proper regulation of whether these things are being utilised and people are being able to access them and know they exist is one of the big things that we're pushing for as well. So you can have a charter there be it within a bill or at the side of a bill, but if there's no regulation on if it's working and if it's being implemented and people are giving the rights to be part of that charter, then there's no point in having it then, is there? Yeah, okay. Thanks for that, Ms Mesa, would you have a thought on that? Yeah, thanks. Just on the care boards and trade unions participation on those care boards in terms of voting membership, unison doesn't have a policy as such yet. We will take that to our committee structures and have that discussion and debate and we'll feed that into this process, but we don't have a policy as such yet. I do think that in terms of setting up the charter of rights and other rights and responsibilities that the Scottish Government wants to see enacted, there absolutely needs to be investment. We don't have the investment to deliver on that charter of rights and those responsibilities, then they won't materialise, they won't become a reality. If you look at the referral to treatment time guarantee that the Scottish Government put into legislation some years ago, I think that we can probably count in one hand the number of health boards that have maintained that right for those patients and communities. So unless proper investment, unless there is a, and I did say, if we are looking at radical change in social care, then we need to invest and investing in public services grows social care and grows the opportunities for the workforce. Investing in multinationals takes that money offshore and does no one in Scotland any favours. So yes, we would be willing to look at a charter of rights, we would be willing to look at how that sits within the legislative framework, but we need the investment and we need the guarantees that those investments will be real. Mr Mawkes, I don't know if you have any further points to add. No? Okay, thanks very much. Can we also just add my declaration of interest as a member of the GMB trade union? Thanks, convener. It's just a quick sub. Earlier, Cara, you talked about something needs to be done now. My understanding is that the Scottish Government has just published a winter preparedness plan on June, July 24. The winter preparedness plan is a joint publication by Cabinet Secretary Michael Matheson and Councillor Paul Kelly, who is the cosly health spokesperson. The winter preparedness plan has eight priorities about prioritising care, how do we support people over the winter, so the development of the national care service bill is for the future and the winter preparedness plan is action that's being taken right now. I'm wondering if these eight priorities about ensuring care at home as much as possible, consistent messaging to the public and supporting staff, there's a focus on recruitment, retention and wellbeing of the staff as part of those priorities. I'm interested if those priorities that will be delivered now over this winter, if we could reflect what works, those could then go into the future regulation legislation for the national care service bill, is that something that we should be looking at as well because this that's been delivered right now could be reflected for the future? Again, it goes back to the regulation of such processes that's put in place because social care have seen many winter preparedness statements come out through the years and as a social care worker myself, I can categorically say that it is on paper and it stays on paper actually trying to access that support. It doesn't happen on the ground. So the winter preparedness plan, do you say it has not been deliverable? I would hope it's deliverable, I would hope that this time is different and obviously as trade unions we would support our members by advising them that this is in place and speaking to employers about it but I'm saying in the past, having worked in social care, it's not always as easy as accessing that support throughout the winter, having worked in home care. If you phone up and say there's really bad weather, there's a health and safety risk, I can't get to that person to deliver care, you are told, you are a carer, that is a vulnerable person, I don't care how you get there, you must get there. That's what happens on the ground. It's great to say that wellbeing has been taken into consideration in my experience, it's never happened before. Again, I think it's about if these things work, then they should be put forward as suggestions moving forward but I think we would have to wait and see if throughout the winter months the staff actually, there's been use of that winter preparedness. So evaluation of the plan is essential in order to then reflect what works going forward and then what we take forward in the bill? Yes, and as I say, I would welcome, I would really hope that evaluation of that is successful because it's needed, it is required to support the workforce and the people that they support so that they're receiving care no matter what in the best possible care. However, at this stage I wouldn't be able to say because we don't know if it's worked as yet. We need to move on. We're running short on time so I can ask members to be concise to their questions and panel members to be concise to their answers please and I'll move to everyone's tweet. Thanks, convener. Good morning, panel. Kara, you said earlier that workers were engaging with the regional forums but there was still uncertainty. Do you think that that is affecting the ral of the workforce and your workers at the present time? Yes, definitely, because they're in crisis now and there is no guarantees of what's going to happen in the future. So from these regional events, when they're putting forward the concerns and the issues that they have, we're basically saying we'll write it and post it and take it back and we'll consider it for the national care service bill. So they're just like we're stuck in this and we're stuck in this crisis and there's no end to it. Nobody's guaranteeing us an end to it or that things are going to get any better. So it's definitely affecting morale and I think also it's dropping people off from engaging within the process. Does anyone else want to come in? No, not on that point. Okay. You also said that in terms of the delivery of services, how the national care service is going to move forward had a lot of holes in it and a lot of areas still needed to be fleshed out. Can you expand on that? It's a bit of an open question and I'm overrun at the time. I would be happy to write into committee with our views and the views of our members because I think probably if I start speaking on that, I'll definitely run over time and I'm very aware that we've been asked to keep her answer short so I'm happy to write in with that information as well. Does anyone else want to come in or do you want to write in as well? Okay, that's me. David Torrance. Good morning to panel members. To what extent will the retention of statutory delivery functions, staff and assets by local government and NHS boards limit the potential scope for co-design to influence any future redesign of service delivery? Can I come to you first, Lillian? Yes, thank you. I think probably we need to think about how we operate now and I'm going to go back to that, the question around winter preparedness very briefly and that's that we have every day in the services winter right now, the pressures that the public services are under right now, there is no summer holiday from pressures in public services so I think that we need to shift to balance care, I think that we need to look at local government and I think that we need proper investment in local government. We can't starve one service to feed another so the NHS and social care and local authorities are absolutely linked because they need to work together so we need to make sure that there's proper investment. In terms of making sure that we have the opportunity for that co-design, what the barriers would be would be if this bill goes through stage 1 without us seeing any of those amendments for stage 2, that would be a significant risk I think for everyone. Everyone, commentators across the country have said in its current form it's not fit for purpose, there needs to be that pause. It's fantastic that we are taking that pause but the voices need to be heard and going back to the workforce they have been engaged in some of those forums but they've also been engaged directly with their trade unions and that's the message we're getting. They want to deliver high quality services but they need to deliver it in a fair work context. In light of a new accord between the Scottish Government and local authorities, to what extent are you reassured that the roles and terms and conditions will be protected by the staff? David could have come to you because you mentioned this earlier. Sorry, I was suspecting for my mute to disappear. I did allude to it earlier. There are significant long-term concerns around the relationship between central and local government in Scotland than I'll view. A consistent view has been that strong local authority is democratically accountable, publicly funded, are absolutely essential and as I said I don't want to go too deeply into an issue I already touched on which is parallel. We did have some hopes that the Verity House agreement would be a reset and it's not entirely clear shall we say that that's gone well thus far. We do believe that this possibly touches on your previous co-design question. We don't believe local authority is perfect. We don't believe that any public sector delivery is perfect but the division is one where locally local authorities are involved in co-design among other stakeholders to deliver the right services locally but that process is matched in terms of the national delivery where worker service users, advocacy organisations, providers but fundamentally government and local authorities are at the table. I don't know if there was an implication in the question that local authority delivery would itself be a barrier to co-design because we don't necessarily see that as being the case. I'm now going to move to Emma Harper. I think that most of what I was going to ask is being covered already. I'm interested in what we've covered about the current status of social care already as far as esteem and career pathways and making sure that the public knows the contribution that our care workers make across Scotland. Over the summer, I was able to hear from workers in stewtry care about the level of skill and experience that they provide for people in their homes and at care homes as well. I'm interested in what you think that your members, your current union members, what do they think about their roles or the perceived about their roles in social care and whether there is more work that needs to be done in order to demonstrate to everybody the value of social care? There is definitely more work that has to be done about the value of the social care workforce. I think that if you sit down with a social care worker and you ask them what they do and their job on a daily basis, the answer they'll give you is I'll just care for people. When you actually break it down and you write the amount of things that they do in a day, even if they're shocked because they're just so used to doing it, they're just so used to that care and nature taking over and doing what has to be done. That could be a number of things, personal care, toilet and medical procedures. We have a lot of the social care workforce who have peg feed, they deal with catheters, they deal with stomas, all of which are quite intricate medical procedures but they don't recognise that because they just do it. That person needs that care and they're there to deliver that care and that's all that's in their mind. So we do have a power of work going forward to show the value in this workforce and change the perception of the workforce himself but as the wider public because the other thing is as well everyone is going to be touched by social care at some point in their life. They may work in it, they may use a service and it's going to come to us all at some point. We might have a family member, a friend or it may well be ourselves in later years. So investing in valuing social care now is definitely the way that we need to move to have a better social care in Scotland in the future. Do you think that I suppose you've given some really good examples actually of peg-tube feeding and care of people who have stomas and I'm also thinking about like supporting people in reablement, recovery from stroke for instance because there's some mobility moving and handling all of that requires lots of skill. So and I'm thinking about like that are we confident that we have a multi-disciplinary approach at the moment of assessing the needs of people so that then care can be delivered really effectively. Is that something that we could reflect in a national care service bill as far as having the right assessment in order to deliver the right care for the right person? Yeah, so I think assessment is important. I think sometimes what's missed in the social care sector as well is assessments are done at the beginning of someone receiving care. So there is a need for care there, it may be that they're being released from hospital, it may be that a need has been identified from a professional worker or a family member. But what's important is moving forward because that care doesn't stay the same and the person who's responsible for assessing that care is the workforce on the ground who's dealing every day with those service users. So not only are they delivering care, they're constantly assessing and passing back for further assessments to colleagues in NHS, to colleagues in managerial positions in the social care sector. But they are the point of identifying the need for further assessment when that person's need changes. And I think we need to recognise that as well. The assessment is not just at the very point of setting a care package up, it's a continued monitoring process. I see Lillian nodding. I think that's absolutely right and I think what we don't see in that care assessment is huge unmet need within our communities as well. So there are huge numbers of people still waiting on those assessments to take place and every local authority in Scotland has lists of people who have applied for care but there is no provision or there is no capacity in the service to deliver that care. So whilst we assess, we need to look at how we use the resources that we've got to make sure that as many people as we can can be part of that process and right now we've not mastered that because of the waiting lists for care. We don't say they're waiting lists for care, we have waiting lists in the NHS but we don't record all of the people who are waiting in our communities for that who are waiting in that social care provision to be assessed. That's a huge amount of work for us to do but I think we can do it if we have a thought around that radical provision that we need to do and invest in our public services to deliver it. I need to move on to Tess White. Okay, yep. Thanks very much. So I'll move to Tess White who's joined us remotely. Thank you, convener. I've got one question for Dave, one for Cara and one for Lillian if I may. My first question to Dave and Dave, you made some criticism about the way the current the sector is currently organised but to what extent do your members confident that the national care service bill will provide a suitable framework for a robust and sustainable social care and support service? In a sense, the jury is out because we don't know yet or we certainly don't think that we've reached hope, we haven't reached the end of the road in terms of what the new service will look like. I can't pretend and maybe my colleagues will just understand. I can't pretend that we're getting a great sense of confidence just now from our member organisations that what's currently being tabled is sufficient. However, I do think that there's a degree of optimism. I do think that most people have identified most of the issues that need to be addressed. It's a question to return to the theme of a lot of this evidence. It's a question of action that can be taken now and improvements to the current bill or, as Lillian says, a new bill to reflect that. Confidence isn't high, but I guess hope and ambition is, but we do fundamentally believe to return to this point that the direction of travel needs to be in terms of direct public provision. That's a message that we get through consistently from our members and it's currently a big miss in terms of the proposals that we think still needs to be rectified. Thank you, Dave. A second question to Cara, if I may. One person contacted the committee to say that they feared their unwell mother's 24-7 care responsibilities for their father would kill her, but she has been told that there are no residential care beds due to lack of funding. The national care service is behind schedule in order to go back and get further consultation, but what would you like to see the Scottish Government do in the interim to improve social care and increase capacity? I suppose that it goes back to the topic that we don't like to talk about and that's funding, but if there's no funding and investment into social care now, instances like that person that wrote into the committee, unfortunately, it's going to keep happening, it's going to keep happening more. We need funding, we need investment, and we need support for the social care sector so that people can access the care that they need, and that is well trained staff that provide that care as well. Thank you Cara. My final question is to Lillian. Lillian, what are your key concerns about the current and immediate issues in social care and support provision such as staffing and capacity? The recruitment and retention strategies, the workforce plans identify a joint approach to workforce planning in Scotland through health and social care, but they miss out a huge swath of that workforce. We don't have the data on private, we have some information on third sector, but the private sector, we don't have the data in terms of that workforce, the capacity to deliver, but also in relation to delivering those services. The workforce plans right now in Scotland have focused hugely on the NHS, they look at the career pathways, they look at the training opportunities and there's very little in that in terms of that career pathway or recognition and opportunity that social care can be a professional job to be involved in. A lot of people see social care as a step and stone to the NHS, that's not the social care workers themselves, that's the thinking out there from other people. We need to turn that on its head, social care is a professional job, professional opportunities need to exist in there and that's around career pathways, training and development and including within an integrated workforce plan would be a stat. Thank you. Thank you, convener. Thank you very much. I thank the panel for evidence and attending today and we will have a short break to change panels. We'll continue our scrutiny of the National Care Service Scotland Bill, the second panel, where hearing from today is comprised of representatives of care providers and the voluntary and third sectors. I welcome to the meeting Rachel Coquette, chief executive officer coalition of care and support providers in Scotland. Dr Jim Elder Woodward, OBE, convener for Inclusion Scotland and member of the People-led Policy Panel Inclusion Scotland. Rob Gowns, Policy and Public Affairs Manager, Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland and Dr Donald McCaskill, chief executive of Scottish Care. Jim is supported by Lisa Ellers from Inclusion Scotland and we're going to move straight to questions and to Tess White. Dr Jim Elder Woodward, the announcement that legal accountability would be shared between the Scottish Government, the NHS and local authorities was made prior to the co-design process with stakeholders over the summer. So you described this as a backroom agreement. Could you expand on these comments? Thank you. Do I need to proof? Okay. Yes, we were very disappointed in this agreement because we felt that the people with lived experience was supposed to be the central pillar upon which the NHS would be delivered. And we felt that this agreement did not take any co-design process and it was taken for that reason to any other stakeholder other than the Scottish Government. We did feel that with all that issues with co-design and that there's never truly talked to us about the issues in social care, despite our three-year attempt to talk to them about the portability of care and care charging. We had to walk away from those discussions over the after the three-year period and we were very disappointed because we know what seems to be the feature over the development of the national care service. I hope you can understand what we're doing then. I can. Thank you, Dr Alderwood. That's my question. Back to you, convener. Thank you. I'd like to hear the panel's views on the proposals for legal accountability for social care and being shared between Scottish ministers and local authorities because that's quite a significant change to how the bill is first proposed. If I come to your cell for actual first. Thank you, convener, and thank you for the opportunity to come back and talk about the bill as you continue to consider it. I'd have to agree with a lot of what Mr Alderwood has just said. We were deeply disappointed that a bill that purports to be about co-production and engagement ended up with a deal done quietly behind closed doors, which we certainly were not involved in any more than our colleagues at Inclusion Scotland were. Some of you may remember those of you who were on the committee back in December that CCPS had put forward a whole pile of suggestions for how the bill could be improved given where we were at. One of them was really about if co-production is to be at the heart of the bill then it has to walk the talk. And this felt like it did quite the opposite. That said, I guess I'm also just left with lots of questions because whilst we're told that there is to be this shared accountability three-way between the NHS Scottish Government and COSLA, I actually don't know what that means and I'm not sure if we really ask Scottish Government, COSLA or the NHS, they could give us a clear answer yet either. So it's very hard to understand quite how that statement will actually relate to changes to the bill and to the proposed structures. But I also think there's been a massive focus on accountability and I think it sort of misses the point. Not that people at a political level should not be accountable for care and support and we know from the People-led Policy Palace that that's been a very important part of the emergence of the NCS. But actually it goes back to a concern that we've had for a long time which is that we've sort of lost the vision of what we want social care and support to be. And I think if we can get to a point of agreeing that the purpose of social care is to support people to have the rights that are due them to thrive in everyday life, underpinned by choice and control and participation, if that's the point of social care so that people who require care and support can genuinely thrive, then I almost feel like we're starting the conversation from the wrong end. That what we've got very caught on is political ownership and actually the point and you know we can talk about the rights and wrongs of the STS Act and how it's been implemented. But if the point of social care is choice and control at the front line then actually that's what we should be looking at and that should be underpinned by the principles of good governance which includes transparency, which includes participation, none of which have been clear in the deal that was done over the summer. So I guess I'm left with I do not at this point genuinely understand what that deal means for the structure of the NCS and I think an awful lot of energy was expended over the summer I guess in those discussions which seems to have got us remarkably backed up holding the status quo and that is not what this was meant to be about. So I hold serious concerns and many questions and I wish we could get back to articulating a vision for social care and then we look at how form follows function and I feel we've lost that in the midst of these discussions. Rob? Yeah we'd also be sort of we were sort of taken aback and concerned by the the announcement I think there's it raises questions about how it fits in with the co-design process if some parts are being co-designed, some parts are subject to decision making between Scottish Government and COSLA and where that extends so for instance the country announcement about shared accountability and we're told that the details would be co-designed that was then followed by announcement of a national care board and again that to be a decision between the Scottish Government and COSLA and the NHS I think it it sort of leads to some questions around what parts of the co-design process are genuinely co-designed and at which parts are as Jim said are they sort of subject to veto by the Scottish Government and COSLA and I think there's concerns for our members we've sort of encouraged people to take part in the co-design sessions the regional forums over the summer but a number of our members have been skeptical or been concerned partly because there's been many uh much engagement around what what the issues are with social care that they they feel they've told people many many times before um a concern is is that if uh if this is I suppose becoming a kind of a well-resourced consultation that that risks letting people down many of whom have have told us that um that they felt let down and unheard by the current accountability arrangements um so I think that um we would um we would have some concerns well not surprising I agree with everything that's been said so far a it just felt as if we were taking a journey back in time we were going back to smoke filled rooms with maybe not all gentlemen making decisions about citizens but it felt like that but I think the real sense of disappointment was twofold one was that it risks as replacing the status quo with just a refreshed new normal and that's not what people use supports it's not what people who provide and manage care services it's not what people who work in care services want we want the vision which Fili began to describe in his report we want that sense of recognizing we can't go on the way we are and the verity house agreement paradoxically and ironically given that verity means truth was lacking in a truthfulness and an honesty and I suppose in terms of your second part of the question and with regards to accountability we have to recognize that public services in this country in terms of social care are delivered 70 percent of them by the third and independent sector so where does accountability lie yes there is need for political responsibility and ownership but the primary accountability has to be with the citizen with those who are employed to support that individual and with providers of care and support across all sectors so this felt like something something predictable but lacking vision and taking us down an alleyway which was going back into the past so I'm very disappointed but then again I'm not sure of the verity house agreement still stands I mean given the events of the recent time I think we're we're straying off well but they're in live the problem we in the sectors don't know because decisions aren't being made elsewhere jim was there anything that you wanted to add to your your original answer yes I wanted to say I wanted to say one thing those of us who are in the seat of social care have never ever been involved in how that social care was planned or delivered to us. We need the objects of social care not the subject of social care. We want you to understand that we are the subject of social care not the object of social care. We were excited right at the beginning of this call to saying that this call to discovery was wanting at last to talk to us because culture didn't want to talk to us to the terrible things of the neoliberal management of social care which not only put the foundations before the needs but also to override the ethics of social care and social work. We want those issues back in the table. We want those ideas that social care isn't about bad blocking it's about giving people the ways that they want to live. So we were excited and very keen to be part of the call to fame and this announcement has made us feel that we're being used. We are being used. We are just the part on top. The real decision making has ever been taken behind the box and we are not truly part of a system which takes our thinking and our knowledge into consideration. We are being used by this call production and we are really disabunding. Given what's just been said about the feelings around Verity House, what do people think of how the co-design process has gone so far in terms of the regional events over the summer? I think there's probably mixed views and I think it's probably it wouldn't be fair to say that they've been terrible by any means. I've been along to some of the events our members have felt they were able to share their views and comment on parts of the process and, as I mentioned, we've encouraged and supported people to get involved. We've helped the sub-scotch to come and host some of the online events so it's cool. I think probably where the crucial bit is still to come. The reports did a job of capturing some of the issues that exist and I think there's very little that we would disagree with a lot of things that we have heard before. I think the next bit is how people are going to be involved in making decisions about what the new system looks like around things like the charter, around some of the arrangements and the complaints mechanisms and I think that that's probably the proof of the pudding will be for that part. Rachel, did you want to come in? It's hard to follow on from some of the comments that have been made around the disappointment in the co-production process. We too have had staff and members attending the events. There was obviously a major event yesterday and the feedback I had from that event was how interesting it was that not-for-profit third sector providers were hardly mentioned in the entire day which says something about what co-production might mean in practice I think from our perspective. I guess it comes back to the difference between these gargantuan announcements that were made over the summer and the potential to feel like some of the discussions in co-production become quite marginal in the face of the potential for what those decisions might mean for the bill and whilst we can look beyond the bill potentially if stage one is passed and it goes ahead I actually don't know what the bill looks like at this point in time given the announcement I mean the bill can't look like it currently looks so what's it going to look like and where is the process for all of us to engage in shaping that so when the announcement was made in the summer we certainly came out and said well we're disappointed it is what it is it's been done it's a political agreement that has been made but we now need to be involved in helping to shape this if we're going to be true to Fili in a sense that good governance is participatory and gives everybody a voice and you know we asked for a national care board because we said it was really important because all of the people with a stake should be involved in a participatory governance process for something this important that still hasn't happened we're still not involved in those discussions I still don't know what's the bill is going to look like so whilst I think it is important that there is a process that is robust and engaged actually none of the national care service is going to happen until the bill passes and the bill is a big question that I don't see as really having the discussions about as we should be thank you what's the panel's view of current plan timescales for the passage of the bill and what do you hope could be achieved from the additional time we now have compared to the original timetable to continue from where I was speaking just now which is at the moment I don't know what the bill will look like I can't but imagine that given what has been agreed there will need to be fairly substantial amendments made to the bill at stage two and it's never a great position to be in when you're looking at really substantial amendments going to a bill so I guess there's a question for me about stage one and what is it that in terms of the principles that are being agreed but also what exactly will those amendments look like there's clearly a lot of work to do to get those amendments right to engage with all of us not just those of us around the table today but everybody who has a stake in what the bill should look like and what a national care service should be and it's now a couple of months since that announcement was made so I'm wondering whether the extension what the pace of the decision making around those amendments will look like it's really important to get this right I hear what the minister has said about evolution not revolution frankly the national care service five years down the line is not going to solve the immediate crisis that we are in but actually at the moment we are just firefighting and we have to firefight otherwise there will not be a sector to be part of a national care service nevertheless there has to be the hope of understanding what that reform looks like and I think I would hope that in this gap there will be a clearer articulation of a vision there will be a clearer articulation of how all of those with a stake will participate in reshaping this bill as it goes through and that there will be a clearer understanding of that before the end of stage one just to carry on I think there has to be empowerment and engagement that's a critical part of redesign that's not happened we've we have for different reasons and we might go on to them had a summer of real care disenchantment there is not energy out there to be engaged in the development of a national care service our members are far fighting struggling to continue to exist to recruit workers to deliver care and support and it feels rather like saying to a passenger in a lifeboat of the titanic what's your next holiday going to be because at the moment they're struggling to survive and the national care service other than for those of us who are let's be honest more politically engaged and a little bit of care is an incidental matter to the front line worker in home care to the front line nurse in a care home who's struggling to deliver her care and support at the moment it's really difficult for us to engage people in a process which is so lacking in rigidity uncertainty and as has been said already there are clear elements within the engagement which we would absolutely agree with but there is a fundamental issue of whether or not we still have the right people around that table of engagement and from the independent care sector all our members be they charitable not for profit employee owned or private at the moment do not feel engaged in the national care service process because partly because of the Verity house agreement but also significantly because of for instance the statement made by the minister in her letter to the committee on the 20th of September which mentions the national board consisting of all players but doesn't mention providers can you imagine any other sector for instance general practice where radical systemic reform was being planned and you don't talk to gps or any other business sector with dramatic change in policy articulation and direction and you don't engage with those who are critical to that whole process and that's providers and workers and those who engage in support as Jim has said two of those are included but by and large providers have been an afterthought did Rob or Jim at all want to come in Rob? Yeah I think in terms of the bill I think there's I think I agree with with Rachel that there's a quite a degree of uncertainty about what it will what it will look like when it comes back we were certainly engaging with the bill when it was expected that sub stage one would be in would be in March and we're looking at potential amendments around that that said there was a number of members who were finding it difficult to engage with because of the because of the lack of detail I think it's probably it would be good for the Scottish Government to be able to sort of set out what changes they would be looking to make to the bill particularly to reflect the the announcements around governance and some of the the results of the the sort of the co-design process which are which are still ongoing so that we can allow us to better engage with the bill because at the moment it appears that it may change from the form that's in but we don't quite know how yet. Jim did you want to come in at all? Yes. The point is that I don't know because the take people for the bill has been extended simply because of the noise being by the discontent of the bill. When I went to the original bill I thought it was very weak and slimy. I didn't think it had any real structure to it but I thought it was revolutionary. For example, the national care service is to be based on human rights. There's going to be a human rights approach. Nobody knows what that means and I feel that the bill is to say something about how does the person become empowered to access social care. But on the other hand, accessing social care under the eligibility criteria really boosts the buyer and the people wanting help. Now I was on the field of viewing. I was part of a advisory commission and feeling made a wee mistake in saying that eligibility should be reformed and removed. Though the government has waxed onto the reform word and fixed the removed word, whereas we in the advisory committee were absolutely adamant that eligibility criteria needs to be removed and the person wanting help should be empowered by what is called the right to need satisfaction and that right is nowhere near the bill. We're wondering a right to the procedure to empower people by giving them the right information, the right advice, the ability to raise their own needs assessment and the right to have their own needs recorded. None of that is in the bill. None of that is being talked about by the government. They think that they could be visited in the charter. But what legal status has that charter got the top donor books to the charter? What we need are human rights, the right to social care, the right to be empowered and to argue our own corner. Because at the moment people aren't that thing equal to care. I totally disempowered by the eligibility criteria and the resource allocation system in which we have got no bias. There's no bias in the resource allocation system that allows us to say that our needs are important. We need the rights, we need the agency in the system and at the moment the bill says nothing about the rights or the agency of the individual seeking help. I hope you understand what I'm saying. No, I got all of that. Thank you very much. Thank you, convener. Just to declare my interests as a practicing NHS GP. In the last panel, Carl Stevenson of the GMB raised concerns that the co-design process is merely a box ticking exercise with the workforce not having an effective voice with Dave Maxim concerned about transparency. Do you agree that this is the case for the independent sector? If I could start with Rachel, please. I can't speak for the Scottish Government about where they are with it. I don't believe that that is their intent. I do believe that they have good intent in what they're attempting to do by looking at how to co-design a national care service. In effect, however, I come back to the point I made earlier and actually far more eloquently expressed by colleagues, which is the lived feeling of being in it is not of it being something that is fully engaged on the matters of the bill, for example, which is what we are in Parliament specifically to talk about. It's quite hard to see the progress of how what's coming out of those sessions is therefore informing the legislative process that we're here scrutinising today, which is not, as colleagues have said, to say that those discussions are not important. They clearly are, because the national care service goes beyond a piece of legislation. But the piece of legislation is what we have. There's not a great sense to me that there's a connection clearly between what's being heard and what's being delivered through a bill. As I said, colleagues yesterday at the event were particularly clear to me that they felt like our sector was just not really a fundamental part. I think Donald had mentioned the letter from the minister and I listened to her evidence to you. Providers are absolutely key here. When it comes to seeing how co-production will be embedded not just in the discussions but actually in the delivery of a national care service, when we have a national care board that seems not to involve us, then it's hard to see. To go back to Donald's point about accountability in the sector, as I said, social care is based on choice and control. That requires a diversity of providers. Those providers in my membership will, 91 of them, are charitable organisations with their own boards. Therefore, those boards are accountable for what is being delivered. I don't see that at all in a sense of co-production of a national care service being taken into account. It feels like we have a really old-fashioned view of what governance is. Actually, we could do better. At the moment, what happens is that Cosler and the Scottish Government will argue about who has the money and who doesn't. In the end, the accountability is pushed down silently to providers who are being asked to provide care with too little cash. The accountability is held by those individual providers. We have to have a much more inventive creative way of thinking about governance and to do that in a properly co-produced way. Dr Elder Woodward, on the panel, you said that you felt as though you were being used and that people had no voice. Is this a criticism of co-design or the whole process? The whole process, really. My criticism of the co-design is that the Government are doing their co-design in silos. We're talking to this group of individuals, that group of individuals, but we're not talking across them. What we really need to do is to cross-partialisation of ideas and criticism so that we can talk together to form this new service. I sympathise with the workers, but the workers are really important people in the lives of the disabled people. Without my PA's, I wouldn't be here today talking to you. I recognise the importance of not only giving people the correct relation and the correct environment, but giving them the voice as well. My PA tells me what they want as well as me telling them what I want. I don't feel that cross-partialisation of ideas and opinions within the co-design process. We at the PRPB and the Scottish Government group have been asking for a meeting with the council and that's been put off and put off in case we repaint to them. I don't understand that, because there's a lot of anger and a lot of hurt among people caused by the need with the management of social care, where the pound is more valued than the care and the care ethics. There is a lot of anger and a lot of distrust of care there among our crowd, but I think I've always thought this cross-partialisation of ideas and opinions, the co-design work will not be truly met. I hope you can understand what you're doing. I can, but I do hope that you get that meeting with COSLA that you would like. Turning to Donald very briefly, all the panel has talked about being left out by a secret agreement between the Scottish Government and COSLA. Eddie Fallon of COSLA said there's a very short timetable. Cara Stephenson from the last panel said things were moving very slowly and perhaps that's because of the level of engagement. Am I right in thinking that you do not feel engaged and do you feel that this timetable is arbitrary and it's been moved once and it can be moved again to allow you to have engagement? I don't think it's just us who don't feel engaged or involved. Dr Woodward is absolutely right in saying that there's a real potential here for cross-partialisation in exchange of ideas because if you get the right people around the table who are COSLA, who are local authorities, who are independent and third sector providers, people who use services, support the trade unions, the front line workers, there is a real potential and Jim mentioned the whole idea of a human right to social care which a number of us have been talking about for years and at the moment the Scottish Government is considering responses to their consultation on the potential development of a human rights bill, we have a real opportunity to transform the delivery of social care in this country and engaging in silos is just reflective of the poor management of social care provision where we have a false relationship created between the commissioner and the contractor, the person who uses support and the worker or indeed the provider. We need to quite literally get round the table to redesign the redesign process so that everybody is there and not be frightened of where that journey might take us because if we're fundamentally agreeing, and I think most of us do, that there is a right to social care support which is not about maintenance but allowing an individual to thrive and flourish and to grow into their fuller humanity, then we need to create a system that enables that rather than continue to embed a status quo however dressed up and modernised which just entrenched the siloed mentality which does people who use support sales service and does those who work and those who provide those services. So we don't feel included and engagement is about empowerment and that's where we need to get. I think at the moment most of us are concerned with keeping the roof over the social care buildings head and that if we push this another six months that will be no great shakes because at the moment there are fundamental issues of crisis management in social care in Scotland at the moment and there is less and less appetite to engage in a process which fails tomorrow rather than the immediacy of today. I just want to ask Kate about our point about amendments to the bill and the likelihood of significant change at stage 2. The unison regional director raised at the previous panel the need to publish the stage 2 amendments ahead of stage 1 to have clarity and to try and de-risk the process, would you agree with that? I think whether it's the full amendments or at least it's some intention of what those amendments would be. I think it's very hard to understand what the bill might be after any stage 1 vote approves the principles at this stage without some further clarity. Now what that does for the timetable I think is a discussion between Parliament and the Scottish Government but I think the Scottish Government given the agreements that have been made and even just the formation of a national care board, I mean who's around it, what's it going to do, how is it going to link to other national bodies, what are the core functions and I do think we can't keep going down the line of just saying every last detail will be in secondary legislation. We need to understand the relationship between a national care board and a local care board indeed will there be a local care board or are we just going to reform my JBs? I also am not sure anymore. So is the care board legislation coming off the bill or is it staying on what's it doing to the Public Bodies Act which was passed all of nine years ago? So it does feel like we need the clarity to understand the principles of exactly what is being voted on though that is obviously not for me to do but for us to understand even how to put our resource into our limited resource given what's going on in the sector, how do we as a sector put our resource into trying to make this right and I think we need greater clarity. I mean I speak to Cosler and to Scottish Government regularly and I don't have that yet. Do any other panellists have a view on the amendments at stage 2 and the need to try and bring that or bring sight of that as close to stage 1 as possible? Yeah I think that would be it would be helpful to have and I think even if it's in principle I think we had started looking into areas of the bill that could potentially be amended and sort of some of those my colleague Hannah Tweed raised with the committee when we were giving evidence last year and some of those we've sort of discussed with the Scottish Government and sent them suggestions. I think it's quite difficult to envisage where a bill might be amended if there are bits that might be sort of changing as a result of sort of government amendments so I think it would be helpful for the the Government to set out how they would intend to to amend the bill to reflect some of the discussions over the summer and some of the the announcements since. Okay any other points a key component of the legislation is going to be the charter of rights and unless it's been mentioned in previous comments recently just there do you feel this is something it needs to be on the face of the bill and it can't just be subordinated to secondary legislation maybe Dr Woodward if you had a view on that. Yes I'm not quite happy with the charter I want to know what is the legal status of the charter the documents are right or not because I take it to the court or not these questions are still to be answered what is the legal status of the charter but I don't know and the answer to your first question I think it may be an idea to update of the second part before talking about principles because we need to arrange the second part on the principles and if we do that with both together we cannot after seeing that alignment but to go back to my first point what is the legal status of the charter if it is on the face of the bill does that give me more rights than I don't know right but dare I say this this is an opportunity for joined up legislation and governance you know we are talking well we will soon be talking potentially about a human rights bill and the incorporation of the united nations convention on economic and social rights which contains within it the right to health which contains within that a long narrative around what social care and independent living and rights attached to that might mean so if we're creating a charter of rights for that to have teeth in terms of social care that's where it needs to be it needs to be in the human rights bill very clearly what does it mean for the citizen in scotland to have the right to social care and independent living and so there is an opportunity to add teeth to this existing bill but also add some practical resonance to the human rights act and I think that would assure those of us who've been advocating in terms of a human right to social care for some time that's very helpful do you want to make a final point sorry I think the we've been the chart has been something that we've had several discussions with the Scottish Government on because I think these are sort of questions that we had about what the status of it would be and the role I think it's intended to be an articulation of rights that people already have whether that's in sort of international human rights treaties where that's domestic law and I think that it's been raised with us that the the Charter of Patient Rights and Responsibilities is in law but that's made it quite difficult to change where there are things that have that have changed over time that might want to amend it so I could understand the rationale for that I think probably what the most important thing about the the Charter is is that it that it has teeth if people's rights aren't being upheld if they're being breached how where does the redress come in how do they get something done about it how do they get it put right and how do they they claim the rights that they have so I think that that's probably the most sort of important part of the of the Charter is that is that people can claim the rights that they're in it okay that's very helpful thank you very much thank you I'm going to move to everyone tweet thanks convener good morning panel thanks for all your answers so far dr mcaskill you've talked about crisis management right now workers are tired and struggling to engage with the process it's ongoing and what do you feel of the main current concerns about social care in terms of capacity deliver delivery culture staffing what more can be done right now this has been a really difficult summer i think it's fair to say for anybody delivering social care in scotland many of us including representative bodies were scunnered and were knackered we're scunnered because we have offered solutions and we have been disappointed so the first minister in an early articulation in his first statement to parliament in the 18th of april said we're going to pay social care staff 12 pounds an hour we expect the summer asking when how are we going to get that because we need that in order to retain existing staff and attract new staff when aldy is being 1340 an hour for a new entry we didn't get that answer until 20 weeks later and the answer was you're going to get it but you have to wait until next april and then last week we discovered that the living wage is going to be 12 pounds an hour which is great but what we've done in that process of time miss spent and delay and deliver is that we've lost all the opportunity to consolidate the social care sector by saying we value you we recognize your contribution as a workforce and we're going to pay you 12 pounds an hour now now government has consistently said there is no resource available that falls very hollow when people in the sector see others quite rightly and we're not disparaging their success in gaining a better remuneration and reward but it falls really hollow to frontline social care workers to see that reality and to see that as a new start in social care somebody of your equivalence in the nhs is getting paid 19.2% more for exactly the same job so that lack of equality of treatment that lack of priority of social care in the midst of a very very troubling period has led to a workforce crisis and we are losing workers hand over fist and i really fear for the winter because it will become challenging as the cabinet secretary last week said so that's one thing workforce the second thing in that i will shut up and let others speak is that we had a really disappointing winter plan published last week by cosla and the scotish government because not for what it contains but what it does not contain it says nothing it gives no hope it gives no sense of confidence to people who are unpaid carers who are exhausted beyond measure for the care and support of their relatives it says nothing to frontline social care staff about how they might be rewarded and remunerated it says very little in terms of the third in the independent sector and you will be aware that both Rachel and I published an open comment saying that we were dismayed at the lack of real engagement there is a statement in the q&a attached to the document that the third and independent sector were thoroughly engaged and involved we were not and that actually probably dismayed us more than anything there is a deception at the heart of those statements i pretend that this is a whole system solution and that this plan will get us through the winter last year my members and Rachel's members came up to the plate with really challenging times and we helped our colleagues in the NHS get through a pretty challenging period that's not going to happen this year and the lack of political engagement and involvement by scotish government and cosla i have never seen the like of before is placing social care providers in real peril but much more importantly is placing citizens around the country in very real risk of having packages of care withdrawn and if they desire additional care and support not that not having those met so workforce and a winter plan which is not worth the paper it's written on i mean just very briefly everything he said we are running very tight for time so if people can please keep their questions and their answers sharp thanks thanks convener i'll do my best so to keep it very sharp everything donald said i would heartily agree with we are in a huge recruitment crisis last year of over half the people who moved jobs in our sector left the sector altogether and that is a terrible position for people who require care and support because the fact is it's then simply not there we are hearing from providers every day that they are struggling to maintain service the winter plan last year and this year focuses very heavily on people who have been delayed from discharge from hospital which of course is right but if you look at the numbers of people who were waiting for care packages or waiting for assessment they outstripped them by far we're not addressing the fact that there is insufficient capacity to deal with even the need we know about let alone unmet need we are far far away from that and we are still in a position where ethical commissioning is meant to be part of that this bill i heard the previous session talking about the lack of conversation about procurement but the fact is i i don't think coming to the verity house agreement as what's happened since is off the mark because what we have is a national care service between the local and national political leaders which they want to share accountability but i mean this feels like an on-off relationship that could be you know part of married at first sight at this point i don't know whether we're in or out and the fact is whilst that is going on and there may or may not be a fully funded council tax freeze um either money's going to be have to be found locally or money's going to have to be found nationally but somewhere that money is going to have to be found if it's not the crisis and social care will only get worse and competitive tendering on price is still too often where we are at which is what this bill was meant to be dealing with and we can't wait we could be doing it now but we're not okay thank you for that and i'll try to be brief conrina um last week we heard that a national social work agency could support and invest in social care um excuse me uh social care careers going forwards career paths and i think the trade unions had uh mentioned this as well ensuring that staff can progress if they wish what are your views on this but actually it's an answer to a question which is not the primary question at the moment because career pathways are essential for social care we have the most fantastic women and men working in this sector they have taken us through hell and back and they're still there uh the level of mental health fatigue and burnout is is deplorable so we need to immediately not just think about planning for the future where we have a laddered system of career pathways in social care and in an integrated manner we create real multidisciplinary teams in our community between health provision and in acute and secondary and primary and general practice and social care but at the moment it's really difficult when the differential rates between a carer fresh in the door and a senior carer or even a a supervisor in the community with regard to a home care are so marginal because of a lack of investment and resource career pathways are only possible if you have a whole system maturity about it and at the moment we are we are managing with the crumbs of what's left over because of the myopic attention to the nhs thanks convener good morning everybody just a quick question about self-directed support it's been 10 years since the 2013 act came in and we've had questions at this committee and about self-directed support and how it's working or not working and donald you said that 70% of carers is third sector organisations so i'm interested in what difference you think the bill can make to improve current immediate challenges in social care like improving self-directed support which is all about you know taking control and making choices for yourself i'm not sure who would want to go first i'm happy to speak and it's an issue that's really close to many of my members hearts they're very involved in attempting to implement self-directed support in full and as you say it has been a real challenge it's a one of those moments of a good piece of legislation that's that's not yet been implemented in full and actually there may well be things within this bill that could help deliver that further but i would say that there is a cultural shift that's at the heart of why self-directed support has not delivered perhaps as we would have liked and i remember a member of mine early in my career at ccps saying perhaps if we'd implemented self-directed support in scotland properly we may not have even needed the national care service bill which i think is an interesting perspective the culture is that genuinely giving people choice through self-directed support means giving up control from those who currently have it it means rethinking completely differently about the the rights as we've been talking about of people to to have choice and control over their supports and care and it also means being able to actually have whether it's a personal assistant or somebody employed through a provider organisation there in order to be able to deliver it all of those things are problems at the moment there is a risk aversion and not always a great understanding i think of what social what's a self-directed support could be in terms of supporting people to thrive so there is much much much more that we need to do particularly i think with local government about how that could work and i'm looking forward to those conversations as they may emerge over the the coming months as we also take forward this bill i think they are directly linked okay thank you um and yes of course sorry to this a a doctor it would would want to be 2013 was um very important to these people people not only were we involved in the rating of the out but we were also and we were also expecting this to change the care theme to allow disabled people to be the subject of their support to be able to manage and control the systems and services that give them a way to be lived but the other ideas you know and i cannot change a system without the culture being changed and my culture relating to social care didn't change to facilitate that we were not told about option one we were told that option one was too difficult for us to manage we needed to be looked after by the social care delivered by local authorities in the south sector and people were put off and I agree with you by the setting of this of local authorities and the real problem of option one was the lack of support to become an employer there's no real support in the local area to help people take on for the first time the responsibilities on being an employer now it's better living there that we are to be able to have the support in the community provided by our own peers we need to be clear support of our option one allowing the disabled people need to come together to support one another and to help people manage their support in Glasgow the centre for the group of living supports over 1200 people in Glasgow with the people and HR issues but we've already got three CILs in Scotland in 2005 the government office published a report called improving the race challenges of the people and in that report in 2005 it recommended that by 2025 there to be a CIL in every local authority there needs to be a clear support organisation in every authority to help both on the option one manage their own packages other women's life is lacking I can tell you that I did you can't empower the individual without empowering their collective and not even do for humans and companies I believe for the people people if you want to empower the individual you need to empower their collective okay thank you I'm very conscious of time we're due to finish this session in 11 minutes and I have quite a lot of questions so members still want to get through so if the panel are happy to stay until 12 that will hopefully help us to get through more of those and I'll move to Tess White thank you convener for donald dr donald mcaskill and rachel cack it cack it if i may so last week you both described the scotish government's winter planners wholly insufficient to address the crisis in the sector and that it's deeply disturbing direction for the sector so could you kindly just elaborate on those remarks that you made thank you and thank you for the question so within a plan that it was as donald has said purported to be a whole sector plan there are very few commitments to the sector and no real money attached to anything that does have commitment and I do appreciate that this year's plan doesn't come with a lot of money at all than I'm sure our NHS colleagues would be saying that too however um it doesn't take into account the fact that donald and myself have sat in many rooms raising these issues for some time and it simply doesn't seem to have been adequately heard that our sector is really struggling to continue to provide a service and the winter plan rather than being based on what we've discussed today which is the rights of people to access care and support as they need it it's very much predicated on the need to get people out of hospital quickly now that's not a bad need of course we don't want people to sit in a hospital bed any longer than they need to but it does miss the point of social care it goes back to my earliest contribution today which is that actually we should be supporting people in our communities to thrive and also we should be stopping people going into hospital in the first place and if you don't have a social care system to do that then you're actually just plugging a leaky bucket you know you're you're not really dealing with the issue at source what disturbed me most aside from those things that donald has already said is the statement in the winter plan that suggests that social care funding can be diverted simply to fund those at the most crisis end of social care support now it's not like we don't know that that may be happening in some areas anyway it's the fact it's been written down and endorsed by Scottish Government and COSLA that I think is a really dangerous position for anyone who's in receipt of social care and support because when we know that things are tight when there's still no agreements on council tax when we know local government and central government are struggling for funds to us that read as a carte blanche to allow local partnerships and councils to start taking away the sort of maintenance and important provision of funding to all of those who actually require social care to thrive and I and I know I've said this in blogs but we do have a statement from the Scottish government that the priorities for this government are equality and opportunity and community and I do not think that that as a statement supports any of those at all and I'll just add I've already said probably enough about this subject I've been around these tables for a long period of time I have never experienced the lack of engagement and inclusion of the majority of those who deliver care and support at the front line and that is deeply disturbing there is more to life and more to our priority as a nation than delayed discharge accident and emergency wait times regardless of the trauma in the front pages of our newspaper this morning and avoidable admissions but the only way in which social care can deliver and address itself is adequate resourcing inclusion and prioritisation and presence and if they allow social care to aspire and achieve to what it can deliver then we will address delayed discharge because primarily people are delayed because there isn't a social care package available for them we will prevent people from unnecessarily being admitted into hospital because that's a social care outcome and we will support a system where accident and emergency waiting times are in part because of an overcrowded internal NHS acute secondary system the failure to think to include and to plan whole system means that we've got a fragmented response and a very damaging dangerous one thank you and just my quick follow-up for Rachel if I may so ccps published a report in july which raised a red flag about the number of staff leaving the social care sector altogether so we took you described this morning about about pay and the references to aldi but what are your main current concerns Rachel please about social care and supports for instance in terms of capacity delivery culture and staffing thank you for a brief answer that's a a big question I think what we put out in the july report remains and has increased I think what donald has already said about the announcements on pay have been deeply disappointing and and if I'm honest damaging in terms of the hope of the sector we are seeing turnover rates increasing at an alarming rate I am still speaking regularly to members who are struggling to maintain services that they already have let alone expand in terms of need given that we're going into the winter and we still have a serious cost of living crisis so in terms of the ability to deal with the inequalities and outcomes that we see in communities and I can see press this morning around that it's becoming harder and harder to manage and even in those areas of significant government priority I'm talking to members who are seriously considering having to have to close or hand services or hand back contracts or reduce them none of us none of us wants to be in that position we have a situation where as donald said we have got wonderful staff who are working in this sector who are really committed to the importance of social care and having continuous relationship it's not about episodic care this is about people feeling that they can trust the people that they're working with to support them in their daily living and to be able to thrive whether that's in home in community in work or in school it requires trust and it requires continuity that continuity is increasingly difficult to provide when we are struggling to fill rotis to manage the number of people in service and and the the lack of investment that is commensurate with what we see going elsewhere and like donald I do not begrudge our our colleagues across the public sector in the pay awards that they have received but it does not ring true to say there is no money there has been a decision to allocate money that has not come our way and and that we have to be really honest about and that's the situation that we are in so contracts that continue to depress price uncertainty about the future in terms of where funding is coming from difficulties in actually meeting existing need with available workforce let alone unmet need and enormous pressures that have been building on this sector not for any short time but for a long time are definitely coming to their head right now well that's in a nutshell thank you very much over to you convener thank you thank you David Torrance thank you again and good morning all the panel I'm thinking about how ethical commission is or could be in a bill what would you like to see okay I'm happy to kick off I mean ccps has been working around the the field of ethical commissioning and procurement for many years and have you know done as much as we can to offer very practical solutions I think there are almost two questions for me in here because actually ethical commissioning we could do without the bill there's an awful lot that we could be doing now to reform the practice of how commissioning happens and how procurement then happens and I do think it's important to remember that in the current system commissioning and procurement are split because IJBs can't hold contracts so IJBs you know and health and social care partnerships work together to to create a commissioning plan for their local area but they then have to direct local government to then contract for that service now I think one of the questions for me in in this bill which we now know is clearly going to be rewritten is should that continue I guess my assumption had been that with a national care or with a national care service and and local care boards that there would be an integration of commissioning and procurement which may deal with some of the issues that we have between vision and reality when it comes to actually the buying of service from providers given the agreement over the summer I don't know where that sits anymore I don't know whether that split between commissioner and commissioning and procurement will remain and I think that's the question that we do need to look at in terms of what government and cosler are expecting so I think there are things that we could come back to there are some important statements in the bill already around procurement but I think what we what we what we have seen from the work that we have done and putting out things like new model contracts comes back to what Jim was saying and it's a cultural issue we could be making decisions now that would change how commissioning practice works that would stop this being about price competition I do understand the pressures that local and national government are under in terms of funding but actually we should be partners in finding solutions and actually what we too often in is in battles over funding to actually manage a service that will meet current let alone unmet need so I'm particularly interested in what will happen with money flow because in the end money is power in all of these things and I'm not convinced that the agreement over the summer doesn't just keep money flowing in the same way as it does now because we're short of time I'd like us to stop talking about ethical commissioning because it means so many things to so many different people and I would rather start talking about human rights based commissioning and contracting and procurement which internationally is well recognised like human rights budgeting and let's put rights in the charter of rights and let's put rights into our other legislative opportunities ahead of the parliament in the next period of time we've got to get better at how we contract procure and commission the important social care provision and ethical commission is just too loose it can mean so many things and even if we develop a set of principles unless we tie that into robust legislative practice legislation then it'll mean it will continue to be interpreted in different ways so again there's an opportunity there but we need to be around the table to have those conversations and they can't be left alone to the traditional contractors and commissioners who are Scottish Government and Cortella. I don't agree with any terms we ought to get rid of ethical commissioning in the table of a human rights based commissioning process I don't feel that in terms of ethics what we need to do is to fund TfF support organisations a different point before but the history of TfF support in Scotland has been one of the questions we run a lot of local groups up in the country living the funding in favour of large commercial organisations or in health provision by local authorities and if you talk about ethics one of the ethics ought to be empowering the individual by empowering the individual's collective and that's not been happening today thank you quite happy to move on because you're time that's great thank you I think we will we're going to have to draw this session to close my apologies to members who haven't been able to get their questions in can I thank the panel for their evidence this morning at our meeting next week we'll be hearing from public health Scotland on minimum unit pricing for alcohol followed by an evidence session with the minister for social care mental wellbeing and sport on mental health national secure adolescent inpatient service miscellaneous amendments scotland regulations 2023 and that concludes the public part for our meeting today thank you