 Well, good morning, lidt we rath, and welcome to the 12th meeting of the Economy, Jobs and Fair Work Committee. I have apologies from committee member Gill Paterson. May I welcome our three guests. James Porter of Angus Softatted Fruits Ltd. Dr Donald McCascwrl, chief executive of ScottishCare and Shirley Rogers, director for health workforce and strategic change in the Scottish government. We have a fourth guest here, I think is slightly delayed, but we'll be joining us shortly. May I ask everyone to turn off electronic devices that may interfere with the system and turn any devices to silent, please? Item one is the decision by the committee to take items three and four in private. Are we agreed to do so? Yes. Thank you. Right, well good morning to our witnesses. Thank you for coming along today.左 I'd like to start with a question from the Deputy convener John Mason. Thank you, convener and good morning. I think I am just gonna start with a general question, which is to ask all three of you. We are obviously studying the impact of leaving the European Union. That's why you're here and we've beenarto visiting. We've been meeting different people hearing from different Felly, rydw i'n clyw ydych chi i fod i whaton yn ysgrifennu sektor oherwydd cefnodol o gy background i'r minus o'r tiesion o'r cyffredin gyda un i'r Union Europea. Rhaid i'n ffioedd gyda chi. Dr MacAskill, rydw i'n ffioedd. Rydym wedi bod i'n adnodd i ddesdoedd i'n ei buddyn nhw oherwydd codi am ydiadog. Maen nhw'n an Leonard i'r mwylltio, a'r mynd yn cyrfaith o'r mynd yn ymgyrch i'r 97,000 cylliwll refugees yn Llyfrgell acquisition in Scotland, a GitHub has 88 per cent of care homes over 50 per cent of care care at-home hours delivered. We have no robust data because we had our national care home conference on Friday and I spoke to 10 providers St adrenaline is a number of mechanical�� as we work on these, I mean them statistically, they were employed 6,000 individuals the length and breadth of Scotland. They had a range of European national, European passport holders of between 12 and a half and 18 per cent, our wider analysis suggests that our care home workforce constituents at the low end about 12.5%, at the upper end, The impact in the short term is that we are relatively confident that individuals who are domiciled in Scotland, who like living here, who have made a decision to come, who are contributing significantly to nursing and to social care, that we will be able to encourage them to remain. We are already, however, and in evidence already submitted to the committee, I've highlighted that we are already hearing on an anecdotal basis that it is becoming increasingly difficult to recruit from Europe post the Brexit decision. Even though the technicalities and the niceties of the process of withdrawal have not been determined, individuals are already voting with their feet in Europe by presuming that a country that has voted in the UK terms not to remain in Europe does not want me as a nurse or me as a social carer, so the impact in general we are deeply concerned about. Is there a geographic spread around Scotland, or is it even the figures that you were mentioning? There's a disproportionate number of EU nationals and individuals from furf of the EU who are employed in rural and remote areas, and we are particularly concerned about the impact in those areas. So the care home I mentioned, which employs 120 individuals, 26 per cent of them come from outwith the UK and from mainland Europe. Just to greet our fourth guest who has now arrived, Bartolome Kowalcik, who is the director of Polish business link, thank you very much for joining us this morning. The question that has been asked of our witnesses is what the immediate effects of the decision to leave the EU have had. Now, we've just heard from Dr McCaskill, and I just want to follow up with a supplementary on that, but that will bring in yourself and the other witnesses. Just to say that during the session, if you wish to raise your hand if you want to come in on a point, some of you may come in on certain questions and others on others. Dr McCaskill, just your last comment there before we come on to the other witnesses, just looking at the ONS figures for July to September, there was an increase in the number of European Union workers coming to the United Kingdom. Now, is it the case from what you're saying that that isn't happening in Scotland that that's elsewhere in the United Kingdom? Scottish Care produced two reports published last Friday on the state of nursing and social care. We've got a 28 per cent vacancy level in social care. That's about a quarter of social care nurses in Scotland. In the last year, we have seen a doubling of recruitment from continental Europe. In the last few months, we are seeing organisations who have set up recruitment arms in Europe finding it increasingly difficult to get people across the door because elsewhere in the United Kingdom, the majority of people have voted to leave the EU. The answer to my question, that increase in numbers coming from the EU in the last three-month period is not carrying over into Scotland from what you know. From what I know and the data that we have available from our members, we are not seeing an increase in recruitment into social care and into nursing roles in Scotland. Thank you. Just to bring in the other witnesses, I don't know who would like to come in next, perhaps James Porter? Good morning, everyone. Angus soft-roots is about 60 per cent of Scottish soft-fruit production, and we employ around 4,000 seasonal workers from EU countries such as Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and the Baltic states. We at the moment aren't seeing a problem with recruiting in the short term, although I have heard noises from down south from my counterpart, Alicapra, NFU, that they have serious problems recruiting for next year. Maybe it's just the numbers that they have compared to ours or so much more. I think that the total soft-fruit demand for seasonal labour is around 30,000 across the UK, and they've got veg as well. There's a pretty big number that we're looking at, and it's completely reliant on seasonal labour. There can't be more than two or three per cent that are locally employed. To answer your question about whether we're going to struggle to source that labour in the short term, I think that in Scotland, from speaking to my own employees, they're all keen to come back in the short term. However, there are a lot of questions that are being asked about what's going to happen, where are we, and what's going to happen going forward. They're very worried about that. From having spoken to friends at the NFU, which I should declare, I'm the chairman of the Horticultural Committee of NFU Scotland. They've had a lot of conversations with ministers down south and so on. There isn't going to be a problem getting seasonal workers scheme in place going forward, but we feel that it shouldn't just include temporary workers. The middle managerial level of nearly all of these fruit farms has worked its way up through and gained experience. My packhouse manager started as a picker, and they've come up through the ranks, so to speak. It's vital that we're able to continue to source not just seasonal workers but also to people on the upper levels. Shirley-Rodgers, do you want to comment on that? Yes, thank you and good morning. I guess there are some common themes here, and I would certainly support the theme around uncertainty and the impact of uncertainty. I suppose there were three things that I wanted to pick up. I guess one of the major things that we need to be able to ensure around the provision of the NHS for Scotland going forward is the sustainability of its workforce. We've provided some evidence, I think, already to the committee, but we can give some more detail around the percentages of our workforce that come from EU members and European economic area members. As that 27 October, the most recent data suggests that 1,159 of our medical staff in the NHS in Scotland are EU or EEA passport holders, non-UK, which is about 5.8 per cent of our medical workforce. We know that about 4 per cent of our nursing workforce and about 2 per cent of our dentists are non-UK EU passport holders, so there's an issue about the replacement of those individuals should they not be allowed to stay and practice. There are a couple of other issues that I wanted to pick up on, which I think are of some relevance. The first is how people decide to come and work in the NHS in Scotland. More frequently than not, that's as a result of them having trained here. Scotland has five internationally regarded medical schools and a number of universities providing very high-caliber, high-quality nursing education, another AHP education and so on. There's a good deal of evidence that suggests that where you train is where you stay to practice. People choose to come and make their lives here. We are now starting to get some anecdotal evidence from our medical schools that suggest that, whilst it's too early to see numbers showing a particular direction of travel, they are getting fewer inquiries from European-based students. It's not just the impact on our existing workforce, it's about our supply pipeline. We've been working very hard to increase the numbers of people going into medical school in Scotland in order to give us that supply pipeline going forward. That's always a mixture of Scots, domicile students, the rest of the UK students and international students. The point that I think Donna McCaskill made about messaging is very important. We are anxious that we don't send a message that says, since you won't be able to live here, you may not choose to come and study here, because we know the link there. I guess that the final point that I just wanted to make is that I think for the NHS, mission has always been about sustainability and quality. I think it would be unfortunate if we found ourselves in a position where people who might be experts in their field found it unattractive to come and live in Scotland if they weren't able to do so. Just on the point about students, there is a shortage of places for Scottish students at Scottish universities. That wouldn't impact on the last point that you make about attracting experts, for example, but I'm just wondering if there would be more availability for Scottish students to study in these areas at Scottish universities if they are not taken by EU students. There may, and as you know, we've been working very hard in respect of access and increasing the number of Scots domiciles. By the same token, the reputation of Scotland's medical schools is predicated on the fact that they attract an international audience too. It's also fair to say that Scots medical schools have a financial profiling that means that it's very attractive to them to be able to have some international students at the international rate. What we intend to try and get to, and what we've had a history of trying to get to, is to have the best of the best and provide the NHS in Scotland with the best quality medical and nursing workforce going forward. It's always a balance, and over the last 10, 15 years, we've seen that balance of increasing numbers from other parts of the world and increasing numbers from Scotland too. The point that I really wanted to make in terms of the risk to us in terms of that medical training is that there is no doubt that the highest correlation of where you stay in practice is where you were taught. By international students, you mean non-EU students who pay fees, as opposed to EU students who don't. Yes, you're right. There's a mixture, aren't there? Mr Cavalchick? Apologise for being late. Since I live in Scotland for 11 years, I would like to just add a bit of my knowledge and expertise as a Paul living in Scotland for so many years. First of all, I represent a business organisation backed up by the British Polish Chamber of Commerce, so my perspective is focused on business, but since I live in Edinburgh since 2006, I can also put some knowledge into how it looks from the Polish perspective. First of all, it sends us to 2011 65,000 Poles living in Scotland, so that's the figure. It varies, obviously, depending on the season, because as we all heard, there are plenty of employers who want to employ seasonal workers. All those people living in Scotland, obviously, will be affecting on the Brexit issues. When you talk to the people directly, they worry about the future, so since they live so many years, they ask questions about the status of the country, how they will be employed by current employers, and how they will be treated. From the business perspective, what I would add to the point is I had a chat with a number of members that we gather not only in Scotland, but also in the UK. Staff problems were one of the top three issues. Even if a few members of staff and Poles tend to employ Poles, it will affect them. As a UK company, they rely on staff. We are talking about the boulders, the service industry and the retail industry. The second point is double taxation of VAT at the moment when you trade with the UK with other EU members. Depending on the circumstances, there is no VAT charge. Obviously, what will happen after the Brexit? That is the business perspective of those trading between those two countries. Third thing is that the UK is the third export market for Poland. Obviously, I don't know the figures about Scotland, but part of the trade figures belong to Scotland. Obviously, the question is how the trade will look like in the future. On taxation, are you referring to income tax or what are you thinking of there? When you trade, so where is it bleeding? Are you thinking of import exports, for example, tariffs? Exactly. I would like to move on to some of the other committee members who may wish to ask about some things that you have spoken about or raise new issues. First of all, Andy Wightman. Thank you for coming along this morning. Assuming that the UK does leave the EU, what are your main priorities in terms of arranging a new system of immigration and work permits for the UK? What are the key ingredients of a good system that would work for you? One that is flexible, one that is appreciative of the particular skills of individuals, that realises that people when they move into a new country are not the full package. We all change, we all mould ourselves to the community in which we decide to go. On Friday, we had our awards ceremony and the nurse of the year category contained one of the four nominees from Poland, who came to this country a few years ago and couldn't speak English. After several years, it is now an absolutely indispensable individual offering high-quality care and compassion to somewhat of the most vulnerable in her local community. She would not now have been able to enter the UK because of some of the most recent restrictions in terms of language competency placed by the Home Office. Whatever arrangement replaces current arrangements, I hope that they would be oriented around the needs of the host country. In Scotland, at the moment, that need for my sector is of high-quality, caring, compassionate individuals prepared to nurse and prepared to care. I think that Donald's maid is very valuable. In the health context, if I illustrate that point with the work that we have been doing around the development of healthcare support workers, which is an educational framework that spreads across health and social care provision and is encouraged and designed in fact to give people an opportunity to enter into healthcare at a relatively modest level and be educated and trained and progressed through those levels. It would be very difficult for us to be able to argue at the moment that shortage occupation lists or whatever would allow entry of those very junior people into that system. I think that it would be very difficult for us to be able to illustrate to use the nurse that Donald's just used as an illustration in that space, but that is how we are getting a sustainable, high-quality, well-trained healthcare support work. For me, the point about flexibility is really important. For me, the point about behaviours and the kind of citizen we want to have in our country, which is not just about educational qualifications. The point about caring, supporting, wanting to contribute to the community is very much more difficult to assess, but for me of critical importance in terms of getting a supply chain into that kind of workforce and also, to be frank, getting the kind of people that we want to have living in our communities and populating our communities. My fear is that a system will do what the current system does, which is to make an assessment of how useful somebody is to us and go not too much further. In fact, we need something much rounder that allows people who want to make a contribution to the life of our communities in Scotland and who give us potential to fulfil not just roles in health and social care but across our economy and to allow them to develop in a more appropriate way. It is something that is nuanced to that, rather than simply six hires, a degree in X, Y and Z, tick. Thanks very much. Thank you. I echo what Shirley and Donald have said about flexibility. I would also like to add in simplicity and a non-bureaucratic system to keep it as simple as possible. There needs to be some clarity on what is skilled and unskilled as well. There is an issue around that. If you are coming over to pick fruit, you would say that it is an unskilled job, but if you see what they have to do, it is very skilled and it takes a lot of experience to learn to do that. I do not want to go back over it, but the managerial side of it is that there is a lot of experience picked up there over years of work that needs to be recognised and we need to have a space for folk that are coming over to develop into that. We have been proposing a seasonal agricultural workers scheme similar to the one that was in place until 2008. That tended to focus on students, but I do not think necessarily that we should say that it has to be students that do it. It needs to be as open as possible. I did not mention that welcoming thing that Donald and Shirley were talking about. It is very important as well. There is a lot of concern about how welcome you are going to be when you come over and see it in our sector, too. I think that that is about it. I would like to add to the conversation that the system must be fair to all the communities, so we must understand how, as an ethnic community, we are treated in the country. So, fairness is pretty much what most of my countrymates will expect. Could we move on then to Richard Leonard? Do you have a question about a specific area? Do not feel obliged to come in on every question to our guests, but you may, obviously, if you want to add something to the discussion. It was mainly for James Porter just to explore a bit about what employment model you use, both you as a producer yourself and maybe looking across the spectrum as a the National Farmers Union Scotland convener of horticulture. Do you use gang masters? Do you use payroll agencies? How do you go about it? Most probably around 60 per cent of our employees are returnees, so they might have come over originally having been in touch with a friend who said, look, this is an okay place to work. It is not a complete disaster. You can get a job there and they will look after you, all right. So, in terms of my own situation, it has been mainly word of mouth. Originally we used hops, which you might have heard of, but that was the worker scheme that was set up with sores. They were one of the providers. We have used one or two gang masters in the past to supply workers from the EU, but once we got in touch with them all, we tended to just do it ourselves and just communicate with them directly. It avoided any issues there as well. You were direct contact to your workers and you knew that they were being treated fairly. Many soft fruit and veg growers still use labour providers. They all have to be registered under the GLA. There are lots of different models, but a lot of people use their own websites. Do you pay the Scottish Agricultural Wages Board rates? Yes, we do. I was struck that the very first case under the gang masters licensing authority legislation was a prosecution against a Scottish strawberry grower. I think that the workers involved were Bulgarian, so from an EU accession state. Have there been other examples of prosecutions that you have been aware of? No, I am not sure which one was that. David Leslie fruits of school? Yes, that was about how many years ago was that now? 2010? Yes. As far as I am aware, I cannot think of another one. If you look at the people who are returning, that is a testament to how well they are being treated. There is a common misconception that people coming in from the EU are seen as cheap labour and it is not the case. They are subject to exactly the same payment structure and treatment, and they have access to all the health and safety and everything else that anyone from Scotland would have. I think that our average hourly wage for this season was probably just an excess of £8 an hour. Top 10 per cent would be earning over £10 an hour, plus holiday play, plus they are paying tax as well, and they are paying employers and so on. It is a common misconception that they are seen as coming in and undercutting people from Scotland that might do the job otherwise. What did you do before 2004? Well, I had some cows. We have been growing soft fruit since my father is sitting behind me here, listening avidly. We have been growing soft fruit since I was running about barefoot and beryfields, but it has grown probably 150 per cent in the past 10 years. The absolute core of that growth has been based on bringing in people from Eastern Europe. Perhaps we could bring Ash Denham in to ask the question again then, because I am not certain with respect that we got an answer to that question. I will not ask the same question again. I suppose that it would be good if you could paint a picture for us. If you were in a position where you were unable to recruit from other EU countries, how do you feel that would affect your business? It is quite well. There are two ways that could go. You could either scale right back and and try and match your production to the labour that was available, or you could move it abroad. There is already a lot of talk down south about doing that, because although at the moment the UK is pretty much self-sufficient in fruit from May to September, and we and supermarkets prefer to produce fruit from abroad, if you cannot source the labour, you have no choice. We would have to look at bringing in production from abroad. Angus soft-fruit already does that on the off-season. When we can't, we're sourced fruit from Holland, Spain, Morocco, Egypt, South America. We have a 12-month supply to UK supermarkets. I guess that if we couldn't source it here, we'd look at moving it abroad somewhere. You've tried to source Scottish labour to fill the process and you've had it successful? We do. There's always a few come each year. We have a small number of local people that do come and work, and I have a full-time staff that's predominantly Scottish as well. However, I'm afraid that there are two or three reasons that you can't source enough people locally. First, it's seasonal. I'm pretty sure that James Wethers mentioned this in the committee a couple of weeks ago, but it's seasonal work. It's quite unsociable hours and it's difficult when you've got those things in place to do it without having people living on the farm. You might have to start at four or five in the morning, and then if it's hot during the day, you'll be at later on in the evening or the packhouse is going late at night, so it really doesn't lend itself to having people that aren't actually living there on site. There's also been significant growth. We wouldn't consider ourselves a particularly large set-up, but we have about 250 working for us during the season. It's quite a lot of people and there's not a huge amount of unemployment locally, so we do what we can there. I'm also director of Ring Link, which is a machinery ring based in Lawrence Kirk that has 3,000 members across the whole of the north-east of Scotland. It has an internship scheme where it trains 12 people this year, taking in young people locally between 16 to 19, roughly. There isn't an age gap to find area on that, but it's putting them through forklift training and trying to get them into the industry. That's been supported by Aberdeenshire Council, leader and RHSS. There are initiatives going on within agriculture to try and bring young local people into agriculture, but with the best will in the world, you're not going to get 9,000. The number is soft fruit pickers for Scotland. You're not going to get 9,000 people emigrating on mass into the countryside, and that's just soft fruit. There's veg as well. Do you advertise for Scottish workers in areas where there is unemployment amongst Scottish people or people already living in the country? I think that about five or six years ago we had quite bad storms. I'm trying to remember the year now. It was in 2012 or 2011, and I had quite a lot of damage to our polytunnels in the winter. In January, I wasn't able to get people from abroad and went to the local job centre, and we had about 20 folk out. I think that two weeks later we didn't have 20. To be fair to them, it's pretty tough work. It's not for everyone. However, we have tried, and as I said before, we do bring in—if somebody comes and asks for work locally, I'll certainly give them a go. You talked about people being trained for the whole northeast of Scotland. It doesn't sound like huge numbers to me in terms of the type of numbers of people that you're employing, so I'm just wondering. I'm not in day-to-day discussions, but I know our chairman, Andrew Moyer, and our managing director, Graham Brucer, in regular. I've had conversations with the farming minister and various other people in government to try and see if they can roll this out on a bigger scale, and we'd welcome any support from you on that. I think that this is an interesting discussion because looking at the policy dilemma that we face, in Scotland there are 23,000 young people aged between 16 and 19 who are not in work, education or training. What steps could we take to encourage those young people who are not actively engaged to relocate and find some employment in your sector? I would tell anyone who was that age that, because of the wages board, we have wages structure that's second to none. It's well-paid work, but it is physically demanding. Not everybody wants to go out and get dirty in a field or in a potato shed, but there are schemes there. The internship scheme at Ringlink has been going for about three years now. Most of the people who have gone through it are still working in agriculture, but most of them are still working in agriculture, and there's quite a strong interview process as well. You can't just say that there are 23,000 there that can work—there's a percentage of them that will be suited to agriculture that will want to work in agriculture. You have to want to do it first of all, but I think that that would be a really well-structured scheme. It's practical training to make people ready to work in the industry and the industry recognises that. I'll perhaps move on to Gillian Martin now. I was going to ask a question about the initial impact of recruitment, but I think that that's been well answered, so I won't go back to that. Thank you for that. It's certainly answered a lot of questions that I had. I have a question for Mr Qualchick. Do you represent enough lot of Polish businesses that have set up in Scotland? Is Scotland as well as in the UK? Yes. What has been the impact already on the start-up of people considering going into business or thinking about maintaining their business here, given that they've made that investment—a massive investment that you make starting up a business anyway? Can you give me some feedback on that? There are some figures recently revealed by one of the think tank in London. They compare the figures of people working for someone else, as well as for themselves. There are 30,000 Polish directors in the UK—I don't know the Scottish numbers—as well as 65,000 Polish self-employed. We are classified as a kind of first ethnic community on the ranking. That's two cases. First case, obviously, among the self-employed people, you can find easily people who were forced to be self-employed because of the, for example, temporary works. That is for sure. Some of them are still working for someone else while they have a real skill set like web design, like handyman's, and they can easily combine both working full-time, part-time, and being self-employed. When it comes to the LTV companies and the companies that are setting up business physically here, it's obviously what attracts them. First of all, it's easy to do a business, whether this is in Scotland or in England. It doesn't matter. It's much easier to do business in the UK rather than in Poland. Doing business in Poland in the ranking of the World Bank is—a UK is still in the fifth or sixth place as a fire member while Poland is on 28th. In terms of doing the business, it will definitely attract them to do so. Do you have any figures on how many people are employed by Polish businesses in the UK? Polish businesses, we've never done that kind of analysis, really. It is also so difficult to find whether the business is run by Poles because it is pretty tough questions to a business owner. Are you Polish? Are you Lithuanian? This is not easy to get that kind of data, really, so we can only have the data about physically businesses and where the business owner comes from originally, but in terms of number of employees, I don't know. Some of my members are the employees. In Scotland, we see businesses up to 50 people, so it is small-scale businesses, Polish businesses, while in our portfolio businesses that employ even 200-300 people around. Depending again on the industry, when we're talking about the industry that is relying on temporary workers, it makes sense to employ people who you know within your community. We're talking about the Polish people and others in the C region, but now when we come to a bit more advanced work, when the business owner wants to, for example, employ the salesman or sales force or someone who is already skilled, so they tend to look for Scottish or English employees with proper education here in Scotland and the UK. Liam Kerr, do you want to come in on that? No, because I was only going to come in. Fair enough, fair enough. I'll come over to Gordon MacDonald then. I've just got a number of follow-up questions on the subjects that we've already talked about. There's no doubt that EU nationals have been a valued part of our community for a number of years now. James, you've highlighted the options that are available to your sector, but I'm keen to understand from the other sectors. While we're saying that EU nationals can remain if they've been in the country for over five years, I'm thinking about future workforce planning. You suggested that we need a supply line and we need to plan for the future going forward. What are your sectors doing to address any potential workforce or skills shortages for the next three to five years, for instance, because Brexit has not been triggered yet, but once that's triggered, we don't know what will happen if people are already here in this country? That really is at the heart of some of my concern around that. If I take medics, not because I prioritise them particularly, but because it's the longest of the pipelines in terms of time for training, then if we consider that to become a GP, for example, in Scotland, if you're going to do it at the quickest possible pace, we'll take five years of medical school, two years of foundation training and three years or four years, depending on which degree you take to become a GP thereafter. You're talking 10 or 11 years. Triggering a debate that gives two years makes no never mind, really. That is a significant concern for us in terms of pace. Clearly, we can, as Mr Lindhurst suggested earlier on, adjust the numbers of entries into various bits and pieces of our medical training institutions, but nonetheless it remains the case that whatever we do today will bear fruit for somebody else to pick in a few years' time, and that is a particular issue for us. The other thing that I think it's really important that the committee remembers, and I know that you do, is that the people that we employ are people. The people that we employ are not just a set of skills that happen to come along and twiddle some things in various places. They're people who have made choices, and those life choices include relationships that are not just, you know, if somebody arrives from France, for example, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're not going to marry somebody who is a Scot, have children in Scottish schools and have a life. Depending on how the eventual deal is framed, the consequences of that can be quite difficult. We have been very clear in respect to the NHS in Scotland that we value the contribution of our entire workforce from where soever it comes. We do not believe that the skills of compassion and a desire to help and assist people are shaped by a national boundary. More importantly, we're trying to reassure those people who come from the EU as best as we are able to do so, that we will work with them to try and find solutions that fit their families. As people will be aware, we've got, particularly in rural Scotland, some instances where we've got services that are run by family partnerships, GP practices, for example, where if one or other half of the partnership is not allowed to stay, that has an implication for the whole partnership. A committee member earlier on talked about UK border agency requirements, and one of the things that we would hope is considered in the drafting of those requirements, is that family dynamic and how we deal with those people who have made their lives here, as opposed to just practising here. On the specific of workforce planning, we have now specialty profiles for all of our medical specialties that looks not just at our existing consultant workforce but all of those people who are going through that specialty training. We're developing a similar approach around nursing and, as you'll be aware, nursing is becoming more and more specialised, and we've got advanced nurse practice in a whole raft of different areas, and indeed the points that we were alluding to earlier on in terms of healthcare support workers and various others, allied health professionals and so on. The pipeline for none of those people is very quick. It's a question of investing in training that is going to be of a number of years to investing in training that, for some of our most specialist consultants, runs to a number of decades. The sooner the better, really. I would completely echo everything that Shirley Rogers has said. From the social care perspective, our concerns are really quite severe. Before Brexit, we were already faced with a massive recruitment challenge. In terms of nursing, it was in the 60 per cent of organisations last year who were struggling to recruit. Our survey that was published last Friday was 98 per cent. In terms of social care, every organisation who is a member of ours is having difficulty recruiting at the moment. You talk about workforce planning, and I have shared that with the health and sport committee. We are struggling to offer social care, in particular of our older citizens, as something that attracts Scots and those who live in our country. We have worked with colleagues in education and in other environments. We have worked consistently in as co-operative means as possible to make the care of our most vulnerable something that would attract individuals. The living wage is part of that mechanism, developing terms and conditions that are purposeful, enabling models to individuals to encourage them to work in rural areas. Lots is being done. Even if we were to continue attracting the same number of people from Europe as we are at the moment able to do so, we are still going to be faced with a massive shortage. An academic in Glasgow a few years ago said that, by 2030, every single school leaver in Scotland will have to go and work in social care if we continue to offer the care and support that we do at present. I am not envisioning a time in which that is going to happen, but I am envisioning a time in which individuals will be unable to get out of their hospital post treatment after a fracture of their hip because there is not sufficient supply of staff to meet their needs in the community or in care homes. That future is coming fairly quickly. I want to ask you a question. What makes Scotland an attractive place to do business or for people from Poland to come over and work in Scotland? It is not only from Poland. It is cheaper than London. I am on the regular basis in London and I speak with a number of people who say that they perhaps continue their event in Scotland as a gateway to run the branch or for their business. What attraction is pretty obvious, the first attraction is in regards of the director income tax. I believe there is a 12,500 that you do not pay taxes for the year. In Poland it is equivalent of £700. That is a pretty simple way. If you trade online, for example, if all Europe, why not move to Scotland? The second attraction is perhaps the need of the people within the construction industry. Construction is the top industry among Polish people but doing business here in Scotland and the UK. If you run the business in Poland, run the construction business, why not move and do your knowledge on the Scottish market and fill in the gaps? You can fill in the gaps by taking your countrymates and doing all the dirty work at the construction sites. Employment issues are less happening among those people because they have access to staff. Once they are established, they can build up on the presence. That is probably my answer to your question. I would like to also refer to your first question that you said. What companies, what people will do to get prepared for a Brexit? What we have noticed is outsourcing of the processes that you can outsource. If we are talking about the admin work, for example, if we are talking about accountancy, all those services in the EU region are booming. It is a cheaper workforce for UK companies, Scottish companies, to employ there. Secondly, they have physically staff on the local market. It is no brainer for them to do the research. If you can, part of the processes can outsource to the other countries. I wonder whether I might pursue with Donald McCaskill some of the points that he was making. Are you consulted by the Scottish Government when they are doing their workforce planning for nurses and what form does that consultation take? The quick answer is yes. We have been involved in the last two or three years in the nursing intake review group. We presented evidence to them a couple of weeks ago. For this, for next year, the process is on-going. We have called last week for there to be a substantial increase in the intake in nursing because of the existing crisis around nursing within social care. As Shirley-Anne says, it takes time for people to go through the system. Even without Brexit, we would have been calling for a substantial increase in the number of nurses. However, simply having nurses in places is not going to be sufficient. It may not be the remit of this committee, but there is a particular challenge around attracting nurses to work, first of all in social care and secondly to work with our older citizens. That is a wider societal issue that we need to explore. Why is it, as a society in Scotland increasingly, because all the evidence is there? We do not want to work with our older citizens. It is a fantastic, rewarding career. Our report of 28 nurses last Friday called Voices from the Nursing Frontline describes how brilliant a career you can have in nursing and supporting people at the end of their life and in palliative settings. Unfortunately, we struggle, as one nurse said to me last Friday, her colleagues think that this is not real nursing, but it is real nursing because it is nursing at the most significant points of individual lives. Regardless of Brexit, we need to do something to increase the capacity within Scotland to support our older citizens. I am curious about the lag that there is in terms of workforce planning. You will recall five or six years ago that there was a cut in the number of nurse training places as well as medical training places. There is a disjoint, if you like, for me when we know that health and social care will be the increasing opportunity within the economy and yet we are unable to foresee that in terms of workforce planning. Is there a different way of looking at it than the current system, which does not seem to serve us terribly well? I think that there have been clearly failings in the current system and one of those is that up until recently the contribution of social care has not been as fully included in that process. Integration and the integration boards offer us a real potential of working collectively to plan for the workforce of community needs. Not just what the NHS needs, what the local authority statutory bodies or the voluntary or the independent and third sector, but collectively to look at a community's needs, to do some mapping of what those needs might be and collectively to work together in terms of developing a workforce plan. Brexit has entered a huge uncertainty in the midst of all that because at the moment I have members who do not know if in two years time they will be able to recruit from continental Europe and that is deeply unsettling for them as businesses but much more profoundly it's deeply troubling for the individuals who require that sense of continuity and support. I'm keen to explore why you can't recruit locally. I understand in the case of soft fruits it's very site specific but you have members across Scotland. I'm aware that colleges now are doing health and social care courses for a huge intake of young people. I'm curious to know what are the specific issues that you would highlight are the barrier to recruiting locally. Is it just that the work in that sector is viewed perhaps mistakenly as low paid, increasingly hard work? I'm curious to know what you think the reasons are. I could keep the committee for the whole afternoon in this but there's a whole number of reasons. One is that I think many of our younger generation struggle in relating at an emotional level to individuals who are older who may have behaviour which is challenging and it's only over time that you develop the maturity within yourself of being able to deal with these at times harrowing in difficult situations but we are working very closely with schools and colleges and with the Scottish Social Services Council to offer social care as an attractive career choice for individuals. I've already mentioned terms and conditions so undoubtedly if you can earn £1.50 more by stacking shelves in ASDA compared to working in a care home where you however rewarding an experience it might be you're only going to get paid as a basic carer rate 25 then I think a lot of people make that decision and ASDA benefits and I should mention all other shops who might be involved don't want to advertise so I think there is a profound issue which goes beyond simply planning around the workforce it has to do with terms and conditions it has to do with the value we put on care and it's not accidental that for some providers they find that greater sense of value in employees who are older and sometimes who come from continental Europe. I think Shirley Rogers did you want to give the Scottish Government position on this? I really wanted to rather make a comment around the NHS workforce and in light of the time I'll keep those comments very brief Chairman, two thoughts. The first thing is that for the last couple of years we've been working very hard with colleagues in the social care sector and indeed with other providers to share the methodology for workforce planning that gives us an approach that allows us to share the thinking around how we workforce plan. We use a six-step methodology which is internationally regarded we didn't invent it here but we were very quick to use it here and it gives us the opportunity to take a long term, medium term and shorter term view. The other specific that I just wanted to address was the issue around how we look at numbers. There is no doubt that the days of being able to train one for one in most of our specialties is long behind us so people are making lifestyle choices about the manner in which they wish to work and in some of our specialties we're now almost at the point of training two people for every one that we need to have into our workforce and there's a range of ratios so for pediatric specialties for example we train 1.6 for one in the knowledge that the vast majority of the people who go on to work in those specialties do so and general practice is another very good example many people who go into general practice choose to do so on a less than full time basis. I don't make a party political point I think that the Scottish Government over time has not been particularly good at workforce planning and we are reaping the well wind of that now because of decisions taken maybe five six years ago that failed to see what was coming as you've described you know the the difficult position we're in now and it is the case that vacancy rates in health and social care are causing huge concern across the board is that not right? There's certainly a very challenging set of circumstances it's also fair to say that we've got bigger numbers now than we've ever had before so I wouldn't claim that workforce planning historically has always given us the the finest of outcomes but I simply make the point that increasingly rather than planning in silos we're trying very hard to workforce plan across the sector. I'm just wondering to come back to something Dr MacAskill said in terms of the wages paid is it or could it be a factor in the increasing of wages if the number of available workers to work for that lower wage is restricted for example by leaving the EU? I don't want social care to be a low wage occupation I think we should turn that around if you work with people you should be rewarded the most and if you work with things and I would include money in this so it's not to offend my banking friends you should be rewarded the less amount so on that premise I think it's important that we create an economy of care which is properly valuing of the contribution of workers will we be able to to recruit more in Scotland because we close the door to those coming from continental Europe no it's going to be the opposite effect? I'm asking about if you increase the wages paid will that attract more people because as long as you have an endless supply of workers who will work at what might be a lower wage there's no economic imperative if I can put it that way to actually raise wages so I'm just I'm just wondering I'm not saying that's the only factor but I'm just wondering if that's part of the whole puzzle? It's part of the solution to the recruitment crisis in social care to increase terms and conditions and baseline salary that will undoubtedly attract more individuals we don't have an endless supply I think that's what I'm trying to say we don't have an endless supply of individuals who are willing to work in social care so we need to attract as wide a pool as possible and I think what we have discovered in social care and indeed social care nursing is that that pool is enriched by the talent skills and the individual contribution of those not just from Europe but further afield and we can learn a great deal from individuals who come from abroad if we pay people what they are truly worth in social care and health then yes we will be able to attract more people both within and out with Scotland. Richard Leonard. Just to pick up on Dr McCaskill's impassioned plea for greater value being placed on those people who carry out a caring function is one of the issues here about the gender profile of the people providing those caring and nursing services? I have said elsewhere and written elsewhere that because most of those engaged in care particularly in social care are women who often work part-time often who have left school early so they have minimum educational qualifications. If that had been a male workforce then I think there would have been cries of discrimination 10, 20 years ago so there is an issue of discrimination and bias and there is certainly from our perception an issue of age discrimination at the heart of the way in which we fail to reward those who work in social care. What form does that age discrimination take? Well if you are an older person in Scotland as in elsewhere in the United Kingdom and you reach that grand old age of 65 where something magical happens you cease to be an adult and you become an older person and statistically you will have less moneys allocated to you for instance in terms of your career in terms of your care and support. We are engaged in a project at the moment evidencing the way in which mental health supports which the health and sport committee are considering this morning seem to change dramatically when you reach the age of 65 compared to other countries in Europe per capita in Scotland under for the last 25 years despite free personal care for the elderly proportionately we spend less on our older citizens in health and social care than any other continental european country. Right well I think that probably concludes this morning's session I'd like to thank all of our our witnesses for coming along thank you very much for your contributions and I think we'll probably move to private session now so I'll ask the people in the gallery as well to to leave at this stage.