 Good morning and welcome to the 28th meeting in 2022 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. The first item on our agenda is to decide whether item 3 consideration of evidence in private. Are members all agreed? Members have indicated their agreement. The next item on our agenda is an evidence session with the Minister for Mental Wellbeing and Social Care on the Financial Memorandum to the National Care Service Scotland Bill. Mr Stewart is joined today by Scottish Government officials, Donna Bell, director of social care and national care service development, and Fiona Bennett, interim deputy director for NHS integration and social care finance. I welcome you all to the meeting and invite Mr Stewart to make a short opening statement. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the committee. Thank you for having me along today to give evidence and take questions on the NCS bill and the financial memorandum. This is an enabling bill that sets out a number of provisions. The national care service that is proposed in the bill will bring together social work, social care and community health to strengthen the health and social care integration for adult services. By the end of this Parliament, accountability for adult social working care support will transfer from local government to Scottish ministers. The government are establishing a programme of gathering evidence and undertaking research to inform future decisions regarding children services and justice social work and whether it would be appropriate for them to become part of the national care service. The aim of the NCS is to improve the already high quality and consistency of care across Scotland and to reduce variation, ensuring that everyone, no matter where they live in Scotland, is provided with the best possible care. The proposed bill sets out that, at a national level, the functions are focused on consistency through national oversight. Services will continue to be designed and delivered locally. That is right to support delivery with and for our communities and the people that they serve. The purpose of the NCS is not a nationalisation of services. The principles of any new system will be person-centred with human rights at the very heart of all that we do. That means that the NCS will be delivered in a way that respects, protects and fulfills the human rights of people accessing care support and their carers. The NCS bill sets out a framework for change, but the key details will be developed as part of a co-design approach. Co-design is all about engaging and working with people, those people with lived experience of and people who deliver community health and care support. Those are the people who understand the challenges best and who are therefore best placed to help to drive forward the improvements that we all want to see. That represents a new approach, convener, to drafting the detail of the bill. The intent is to work more collaboratively to reduce the gap between the legal and the policy intent and its delivery following the difficulties faced in realising the changes identified in previous service reviews. Integrated health and social care has long been the joint ambition of both local and national Government, but people who access and deliver care have told us that that is not delivering the quality of services that is needed consistently. Combining national oversight with local expertise will ensure that the right balance can be struck and ensuring consistent and fair quality of service provision across Scotland, allow for better sharing of good practice and innovation and remove unwarranted duplication of functions, making the best use of public funds. The financial memorandum sets out the estimated costs for establishing and running the national care service and their proposed local care boards. It does not cover any proposed changes to wider policy such as those set out in the independent review. The financial memorandum includes significant assumptions on required investments and pay in terms and conditions for front-line local Government care staff if they were to transfer to the NCS. There are still discussions on going with regards to any transfer of staff or assets from local authorities, and that is a key area for co-design and one that will not be rushed given its importance. Work is on-going with all financial considerations under constant review as new information becomes available. To be clear, convener, we are not waiting for the NCS to start improving social care. We are already taking steps to improve the outcomes for people accessing care and support, and our priority will be to continue to be maximising front-line spending. The Scottish Government's commitment to fair work and the support for fair pay and conditions is a long-standing policy and will be embedded into the values of the new national care service. By rewarding and valuing the workforce to deliver the best possible service for the people of Scotland, we will make the sector fit for the future and more attractive to people who are coming into the profession. As a traditional, I will start with some opening questions and then move on to colleagues around the table. You started by talking about the fact that it is stated the purpose of the bill is to improve the quality and consistency of social services in Scotland. Throughout the evidence sessions, the view of everyone is what we want to see, but why is the structure the best way to deliver that? We have tried to tease out in questions that we have really had all the answers that we would like. If there are some issues affecting some local authorities in terms of consistency and quality of care, why is that note being addressed, even through, as I said, when Ms Bennett and Ms Bell were giving evidence through naming and shaming? Why not say that these are the local authorities that are not stepping up to the mark and not delivering the services that they should be delivering, rather than going for this all-encompassing new structure? We need national high-quality standards. That has come across very clearly from those who are being supported by carers and by front-line staff who believe that national high-quality standards are the way forward. The other thing about all of that, convener, is accountability. Having been imposed now for 18 months, it surprised me at the very beginning how many of those folks who are being supported by our care system mentioned accountability. They do not feel that there is the accountability that there should be at a local level, and they feel that ministers should be accountable for more than just the policy direction that we are accountable for at this moment. They feel that those national high-quality standards are absolutely necessary. That came across loud and clear in almost every conversation that I have had with folks with lived experience of the care system. That has come across loud and clear from the social covenant steering group, and that has come across loud and clear from those folks who work on the front line. Let me give you an example, convener, without naming anyone. However, where there are failings for people, I have heard this story time and time again where folk have been pushed from pillar to post while that is not our responsibility, that is the responsibility of the health and social care partnership, or that is not ours, that is the council's responsibility here, or that is the NHS's responsibility here. That leads to real difficulties for people, and we need to change that. That is why we need this change to make sure that accountability is there, so that people know what they can expect from a care system. The independent view said that there was a huge amount of consensus that a national care service was required to achieve consistency and quality. However, the Fraser Valander Institute said that the new system being developed is unlikely to be any better unless it is funded to be better. There are issues about overall funding of the Scottish Parliament that we will not know the pressures that we are under. We have also saw last week some reprofilling or some £70 million with regard to the policy from the Deputy First Minister. How likely is it that we are going to be able to see those positive changes that he wants to see? Can it be done without investing the sums of money that are required without impacting on other services? We know that there are financial challenges, and you mentioned the emergency budget review. It would be better for all of us if there was some more clarity from the UK Treasury about public spending as we move forward. In all that, we know that what we have at this moment in time is a system where huge sums of money are spent on crisis. We need to change that, and we need to make sure that, for the future, we invest in more preventative care, which will free up resources that are currently spent on crisis, which also has a huge human cost attached to it. The Government has also said, as it ensures that the committee is well aware, that we will increase our social care spend by some £840 million by the end of this Parliament. We all know that we are going to have to ensure that we get things right for the future, particularly if there continues to be restraint on the public purse. That is why I do not think that we can stand still. What we are proposing here is not change for change's sake. That is setting up a system, a social care system that is fit for the future to deliver for the people of Scotland. I think that we will support the policy ambitions, but let us look more at the finances of it. One of the issues that has been brought to our attention by witnesses is the scale of uncertainty in terms of the costing. Last week, Fraser Valander said that one of his concerns was—indeed, that was supported by the other general—that the costs that are on the face of financial memorandum are not the workings beneath that to see how those costs have been arrived at and why we have the breadth of costs that we actually have. We realise that there is uncertainty and there will be secondary legislation and so on, but in terms of financial memorandum, which is what we are trying to see evidence on, it is of concern that there are not more detailed costings involved in terms of the delivery of that. The financial memorandum itself provides the estimated cost of establishing the NCS. It should be noted that that does not represent a budgetary commitment, but instead provides an indicative cost that will be further refined as the co-design work progresses and uncertainties are clarified. Folks are saying that all of that should be in the financial memorandum, but the standing orders of the Parliament are quite clear that the financial memorandum should be what is covered in the bill. Obviously, in terms of other refined work that we are doing, we will continue, as always, to report to Parliament, including committees like your own, around about what the expected costs are coming from some of the co-design work. If we were to make assumptions on some of those issues at this moment in time, we would probably rightly be accused of having already made our minds up about certain aspects of what we want to do as we move forward. That is not what we are about. That co-design is not lip service. We want the stakeholders, the voices of lived experience, local authorities and other public bodies, the third sector carers and others to be involved in that co-design process. As you mentioned the Fraser of Allander, I know that they said that they couldn't fully understand the financial memorandum until they got more information from the Government. Can I say that the financial memorandum is published to support the detail provided in the bill, as I said previously, and that further detail will be available through future business cases. Discussions with Fraser of Allander Institute that was had between officials and them was to explain more about the financial memorandum and was not new information, as some folk have said it was. With that co-design work still to take place, it would be wrong of us to make lots of assumptions around the outcomes of that co-design work. I do not think that anyone would be accused of making up your mind too early. I think that people just want to ensure that the bill goes forward with solid financial foundations. That is the issue that we are grappling with. For example, there are a number of areas where the financial memorandum fails to give any indication of likely scale of costs at all. Audit Scotland, for example, lists a number of areas where no indications of costs are being provided. Those are significant. The cost of any national care boards, transition costs for local authorities and health boards, including double running, the impact of changes to VAT treatment, the impact of any changes to pension scheme arrangements and associated contribution costs, arising from pay, harmonisation and rationalisation, the external potential changes to capital investment maintenance costs and the cost of health and social care information scheme. There is also the issue of transfer of assets. There are real issues here that more information could and should be forthcoming surely at this point. Let us take the last example that you gave about transfer of assets and staffing from local government, which is one of the things that some folk have caught on to. We have taken no decisions around the transfer of assets or the transfer of staffing, and that will all form part of the co-design. I have gone on record on a number of occasions saying in terms of the local government staffing aspect that there is already good delivery of high-quality care in many places by local government, so why would we need that transfer to take place? That is part of the co-design process. In terms of some of the areas that you touched on, for example, VAT, that is an area in which we are exploring in great depth. We have saw independent professional advice on VAT implications of options available regarding the structural setup of the national care service. Of course, as you would expect, we are actively engaging with the Treasury to make early progress with obtaining a VAT neutral position. It would shuff me to bits if we could get a prompt response from the Treasury on those issues, but, as the committee is aware, the Treasury sometimes takes some time to come to decisions about those things. Obviously, though, if the VAT situation is not resolved, we could be in the same situation. We had a police and fire service whereby millions of pounds have been contributed to the Treasury in VAT when it could be much better spent on local services. One issue, of course, which came out when the evidence from your officials was that not all staff may transfer. We are talking about a national service, but some staff may stay with their local authorities and some may move. Is that correct? Indeed, convener. One of the reasons why we have put staff transfer into the bill is that local care boards will be, or maybe depending on what Parliament does here, the provider of last resort. It is important that we have the ability to have staff transfer in those situations. Just like we have seen in recent times where there have been closures of services in the independent or third sector or people deregistering services, we have seen those transfers take place between third sector, private sector and other third sector partners or local authorities. At this moment in time, that is happening on a fairly regular basis. However, as provider of last resort, if that is what Parliament chooses, there has to be the ability to have the staff to ensure that there is a continuation of care for people. I do not know if Ms Bell wants to add to that, convener. When we gave evidence before the provider of last resort point is very important, we know that there are some areas that have already had to step in in social care. The point that we drew out in our evidence was that, in the independent review, Derek Feeley was really clear and we were really clear that local authorities provide excellent services across the country. Derek was very clear in his report that local authorities could remain as providers of social care, and that is a matter for discussion and negotiation with local government. My door is open to local government. I will listen to what they have to say on many of those issues. We will act accordingly. As I said previously, many local authority care provision is of high quality, and we would not want to see that go, convener. What the Society of Local Authorities of Executives said in evidence to us was, and I quote, that the financial memorandum does not represent the outcome of the Feeley review or the national care service consultation. You cannot see the total costs, you are not able to look at what the priorities would be within them, or to properly compare alternative models against what is laid out in the financial memorandum. I disagree with Solace in that point. I have seen estimates from others of possible costs. For example, COSLA itself has estimated that the cost will be in excess of £1.5 billion, and they say that outstrips are a pledge of £840 million of investment. I am not sure where COSLA and others have got those estimates from. I am more than happy to go through in-depth with them where they get those estimates from, but we have not had sight of those, and I would be very happy to take an overview of that. I think that the other aspect of this, convener, is the independent review itself. The recommendations on the independent review itself are pretty wide-ranging, and they include areas such as the national care service, but also changes to other policies that are not necessarily included in the NCS. For example, they have a great deal to say about charging policies and other supports for carers. As I reiterate again, each individual recommendation has and will continue to be subject to further policy work and financial assessment, as well as economic appraisal, because I know that the committee will be interested in that aspect of all of that, too. I would say that the numbers in the financial memorandum and COSLA's calculations are not currently compatible, but I am more than willing to have COSLA explain to me their workings, and we will equally explain back what our workings are and see where we can come to in terms of agreement about some of those issues. I think that one of the difficulties is that COSLA's sole receipt for etc said that the consultation came out without any prior discussion, and therefore they were caught on the hot with it. It also came out over the summer when they were trying to prioritise recovery from Covid etc, and they also felt that it was a standard consultation time and something of this magnitude. It should really have taken a lot more time for them to develop and discuss issues with the Scottish Government and present more detailed responses. They may argue that, convener, but we have been at this for a very long time. It is not just the consultation itself. There was all of the work around about the independent review and all that Mr Feely has done in that regard. Again, voices were listened to there. I have to say that, from the point of view of the voices of lived experience, they think that all of that has been too slow. If you were to ask them if the consultation was too short, the answer would be, from most, a resounding no. A lot of people, a lot of organisations, a lot of stakeholders engaged with that consultation. I have spoken and listened to, which is the most important thing, thousands of people since I came into post. Officials have been engaging with people right across the board in all of that. If the committee were to bring forward some of the folks from the likes of the social covenancy ring group, they would say that, no, this has taken too long and the consultation was the right thing to do, the right time, and that we need to move forward. However, what I would say to the committee is that, just because the consultation is over, it does not mean that the engagement does not continue, because it will continue throughout that process. A huge amount of my time and a huge amount of officials' time is spent in talking to stakeholders and the voices of lived experience in order that we get that right. We want those folks to be fully engaged in the co-design process as we move forward. One of the things that came out of the evidence was the potential impact on the viability of local authorities as an unintended consequence. The ultimate role of the policy is to deliver for the people who actually require the service. If there is a conflict between the viability of a local authority in delivering that service, where would we be? Some local authorities have very small management teams relative to others who have a wide range of roles if the expertise is perhaps transferred, possibly for very good reasons. That means that that local authority may not be able to deliver on other areas of service. How much time has been spent looking at that particular issue? Decisions over funding are still to be determined. However, the intention would be that there would be no detriment to local government finances. Any funding to transfer would be directly associated with the similar transfer of costs to ensure an overall neutral impact. We recognise that, in establishing a national care service, including any transfer of akinitabilities and associated financial resources from local authorities, we need to take consideration of the impact on those local authorities and their ability to resource and deliver other public services. As you rightly pointed out, those scenarios may be more challenging for smaller authorities—island authorities, clack manager—and that is why we will continue to ensure, as we move forward, that we will have those discussions and those engagement. What I would say is that we want to reach an overall neutral impact. However, the decisions over that funding, as I said at the very beginning, have yet to be determined. The issue there is not about the funding being neutral. If a management team is reduced, then there is a difficulty in them being able to deliver those services. It may be that they have to retain a similar size management team in some of those local authorities, which they have already. You end up with a diseconomy of scale. If you are transferring some of those services, but ultimately you are still having to leave much the same team behind, you are then going to have to fund additional staff for those new services. You end up with a more costly and some might think more cumbersome delivery, surely? No, I do not necessarily agree with that. One of the things, convener, which this Government and I am sure that this committee on numerous occasions has spoken about and certainly Parliament has discussed at length over periods of time, is shared services, co-operation and collaboration in order to do our best for delivering for the public, which is ultimately what we are all about. I recognise that there are some concerns in certain quarters around about aspects that you have described. I have heard these first-hand. Ms Bell and I were in Shetland the other week for a huge conversation around about national care service and the impact on Shetland. We will continue to listen and ensure that we do all that we can to ensure that there is no detriment. However, I think that the scenario in which you are pointing out the challenges and your right to do so can also lead to a huge amount of opportunities in terms of shared services and ensuring that we are doing our level best to deliver for the public of Scotland. Where would the third sector fit in with those shared services? We took evidence last week from the Alliance, who said in a quote that they fear that additional costs would be incurred in order to meet with information standards and data sharing and to update software, undertake training in relation to that. Although those costs might be modest relative to the overall skill of costs, that could have a significant impact on the individual viability of third sector organisations. Is there a concern that that could be an unintended consequence? I have said to many a committee before that I am a man who does not like unintended consequences and that is why we will dig deep in all of this. I have great respect for the Alliance and their views. However, what I am unable to quantify at this moment in time is how much it costs to collect data at this moment, which is often quite disparate and can be very difficult in some regards. We need to get better at all of this. I think that one of our ambitions is to ensure that data collection is streamlined and becomes better. In order to support the improvement and benefit from data, one of our main planks in the bill is the investment in the workforce in order that we get that right as we move on. Again, I am more than happy to speak to the Alliance where there may be difficulties in that. Equally, I think that we would have to go back to it and say that some of the cumbersome processes that have grown will probably take a lot more time than a streamlined system of data collection would. One of the things about the financial memorandum is that there is only 3 per cent inflation built into the financial memorandum, as we know that it is already 10 per cent. You have indicated to the committee this morning that the intention of the Scottish Government is to fully fund the bill and its changes. Will it be fully funded at the prevailing rate of inflation? What impact does it have on other local government services? There seems to be a contradiction with the resource services review that we had in May whereby there is going to be a flat financial cash settlement with inflation at 10 per cent. That means significant reductions in service-deliveried staff numbers. Obviously, we will have a service that is apparently going to deliver more effectively for more people, albeit that there may be some savings, but there will initially be significant costs in setting up the apparatus. Is the Scottish Government committed to inflation-proofing the bill? Ysgrifennedig was used at the time of the writing of the financial memorandum based on the forecasts available. We understand that more recent Scottish Fiscal Commission forecasts are now available and estimates will use the updated profile. Of course, we have seen a massive change in inflation in a very short period of time, which many of us could never be predicted. Inflation, as we all know, is very volatile at present and has moved markedly since the estimates in the financial memorandum. Our financial modelling will continue to reflect the most recent inflation rates, and we will update accordingly as we move forward. With that, I will bring in Ms Bennett, if you do not mind, convener. Just briefly, to note as well, inflation is at 6.2 per cent in the financial memorandum for this year and next, and it drops back down to 2 per cent in line with the Bank of England forecast. Yes, but the current rate of inflation is at 10 per cent. The point that I was asking was that would the will of the bill be inflation-proofed? There is not much point in saying that we are going to deliver the funding for this bill if at the end of the day the reality of inflation is not reflected in terms of the delivery of it. We are at 6.2 per cent or 3 per cent, as no 10 per cent. We are already building in, and, as I mentioned earlier, the Deputy First Minister had to make a difficult decision with regard to funding of the bill only last week. How can we be sure that we end up with a service that is delivered the way that the Scottish Government and all the service users want to see it delivered? Let me assure you that we will update the financial memorandum, and we will continue as we move forward in terms of the formulation of the business cases to take account of the current financial and economic circumstances, including inflation. I would say to the committee that you are well aware of that the financial memorandum and the business cases are not in themselves budgets, and budgetary decisions around a bit spend will have to take place in the normal way in this Parliament, as you would expect. I have noticed that you have been very careful with your language in taking account of inflation and reflecting the prevailing rate of inflation. I can understand that you are not in charge of the budget minister, but I think that those who will receive the service are looking to see whether there is going to be huge sums of money dedicated to setting up the structure. Is it going to be hobbled from the start? It is a flagship policy for the Government. One would have thought that ensuring that it delivers, even against the financial odds that we are currently facing, would be an absolute priority. It does allow me somewhat that even at this stage there does not need to be a guarantee that that would be the situation. You know how budgets work in this place and the reason why my language is what it is, is because we go through a process in this place in terms of setting budgets. We need to ensure that no matter what the circumstances are, and I hope that we see some improvement in the public finances, but we will wait and see. I am not overly hopeful, but no matter what the UK Treasury does in terms of public finances, we must make sure that we are establishing services that are fit for the future. The key aspect of all that is about improving services. It is about moving away from that crisis spend that costs a lot on the public purse but also has that human cost, and we need to change that dramatically no matter what. As we progress with all of that, I am more than happy to come before this committee again to talk about how we move forward in terms of the FM and updating it, around about the business cases and how we progress with all of that. What I cannot do here, convener, is set future budgets as you well know. The Deputy First Minister would not be very happy with me at all if I were to do that at this committee today. Indeed. We will now open up the session to colleagues around the table on the first to ask the question of Michelle to follow by Liz. Thank you, convener, and good morning everybody. I suppose what I want to do is just focus again on the matter at hand, which is the financial memorandum. There has been a lot of chattering external to this committee about the national care service per se, but my own personal view is that I always welcome audacious and ambitious projects for change. However, at the same time, I recognise particularly in this case that it is a large project, which is a longer term outlook. Wide breads of scope and rising inflation have been brought out and it is complex to deliver. I think that the minister said earlier that folks are saying that all of this should be covered, which I think that he was referring to the extra items that the convener outlined were not mentioned. I do not think that that is true. My frustration has been that, despite the fact that the estimated costs have, in years 1 and 2, around about 50 per cent variants and more than 100 per cent variants in years 3, 4 and 5, we do not have everything covered. My frustration was that I expected to see something in the FM that said that we do not know about the following areas. We are going through a process where they will have to be discussed. We have talked about that, for example. However, it was almost as though they did not exist, and that was my frustration. Ultimately, I want to have confidence that the FM represents the best picture at that time, even if they are estimates that have a wide degree of variance, as is the case just now. Knowing that, having read everything in redness for today, what would you or your team do differently next time to reflect those concerns? I will bring in Ms Bennett, if you do not mind. You understand that there are various unknowns that could result in large-cost differentials, such as the transfer of staff and their associated pay terms and conditions, as well as other things such as the digital improvements that we may need. At all times, we have been trying to be as transparent as we can in terms of the approach and to highlight the potential costs that may be incurred if the bill were to be passed. It is not to underestimate or overestimate the reality of the situation. As I have stated throughout, those estimates will have to be refined, because times have changed since the financial memorandum was written. We will provide updates on all that as soon as, and if there is any other material change, there are some assumptions that I do not think that we can make. If we make assumptions around some of the areas of work that are subject to the co-design process, folks will think that we have already made up our minds about how we move forward. I do not want that to be the case because I need everybody at the table with open minds. Obviously, there will be parameters around that co-design. In those circumstances, as we develop all of that, I pledge to the committee and to Parliament that, again, we will be open and transparent around the expected financial costs of all that work. Ms Bennett is the expert on the financial memorandum. She wrote it. She is probably a sick fed-up of me in terms of my questioning and all of that, but she will cover off in some of the other aspects about some of which are within the FM itself. Briefly, on paragraph 52 of the financial memorandum, we note some of those areas of uncertainty, VAT, assets and pensions. As ministers outlined, it is important that we go through that process properly. We have sought independent advice on VAT and pensions already to look at the range of options that we are working through. We absolutely will provide further financial estimates for those areas through the business case process. Going back to my original question, knowing what you know now for you both, what would you do differently next time? I am sympathetic to the complexity and the nature of this type of work. I am entirely sympathetic to that, but it is not unreasonable to suggest that it is just not quite landed at the right level in terms of this finance committee setting aside the ambition around wanting to change social care from a scrutiny of the financial memorandum, from a confidence perspective. I do not think that you can see particularly at that first session the committee emerged with confidence in the estimates and the articulation of the unknown unknowns. What I am trying to establish is listening to that and acknowledging that, particularly perhaps to yourself, Ms Bennett, what would you do differently next time? Can you give some reflections on that? Or, if it is unfair, I will ask the minister. Maybe I will come in on that. Some of the areas that Ms Thomson has highlighted are mentioned and outlined in the policy memorandum, as areas requiring further detailed development, including those costings. One of the things that we should have done better in all of that is informed folk, communicated with folk a little bit better around the documentation that we have put forward, that we have laid, as being a suite of documents that are complementary information to support transparency in all of that. Maybe that is something that we could have done better. In terms of the landing of that with some stakeholders, they have picked that up a little better than others. However, in that suite of documents, we have been open and transparent around the work that we have done, the financial memorandum that pertains to the bill, but also being transparent around the other work that needs to be done and how we go about doing that. My last point is reflecting on engagement with stakeholders and the convener's point and comment about the period in which consultation was done and engagement with key people about understanding the basis of your estimates being done without prejudice to future decision making, because that has also not come through. I just wanted to pick up on something, minister, that you said that you intrigued me about data collection costs. I often this committee go back to my old life of large transformational change programmes. I am surprised to note that we do not have what is in effect a unit cost per service by local authority. Can you give me a bit more flavour to that or have I understood it correctly? You have understood it correctly. One of the main frustrations for me is about data collection in order that we get services and design services, not only for today but for tomorrow. It can be very frustrating getting some very basic information. We need to turn that around dramatically in order to make sure that we have services that are fit for the future. It is also a frustration in terms of the length of time that it takes to get certain basic information to make key decisions. In all of that, that is not only just a frustration for Government, but also a frustration for stakeholders, for those folks that Mr Gibson mentioned. You feel that it may take them a little bit more time in order to do some of that data collection work. It may save them time if we manage to get all of that data rather than them doing their own research and all of that. I will maybe take in Ms Bell, convener, to add to that too. I think that there are two points here. There is our ability—I mean our collective ability—whether that be local government, the NHS or Scottish Government to understand the data that we have particularly on social care. We have done a lot of work already on that, so we now have more data on unmet needs, more data on understanding people waiting for care, for example. It has been quite tricky to secure a consistent response to that. We are now at the point where we believe that the data is of sufficient quality for publication, so that will happen later on this month. However, that has been quite difficult, particularly around the issues of consistency of collection and the logistics that sit behind that—how it is collected, how it is made available, et cetera. I think that Mr Stewart makes good points about our collective understanding of the data that we have and how it is used for improvement, very importantly. The other point that the Alliance was making was around the third sector and the requirement to provide data to commissioners. What we find is that, particularly if third sector partners are working in more than one local authority, they are often providing different data to different local authorities for different purposes. The strain that that places upon those third sector partners is actually very significant, having spent time with third sector partners and seeing that they are perhaps, if they are active in many local authorities, perhaps providing reports on different bases. That might be right, depending on the outcomes that they are achieving, but perhaps to 11 or 12 local authorities in a different format, in a different set of parameters and measures, that takes up a significant amount of time for those third sector partners. The point that Mr Stewart makes is a really important one and quite significant. I will add to that some of the third sector partners that we are talking about who work across local authorities, often in very specialised services, and many of those local authorities have very few clients indeed, but some of the bureaucracies around about that cost them a lot of time, a lot of resource and money that they would rather spend on helping folks. There is a refinement that is required here without a doubt. I think that it is a very important point that you made, because what we want to be able to do is support this confidence measure, if you like, and to do that we have to compare apples with apples. I suppose that it does equally well bring into question where, if we have concerns being expressed about a loss of economies of scale for so on, how do we know that that is true if we cannot do that data comparative of apples with apples? I agree that it is important in the area and that probably feeds into the wider picture. Last question then, I mean obviously you have agreed to come back to tonight and I think that that is something that committee is really keen to see. And my last wee question then is at the end of all this, whether it is five years or whatever, whether it is elements or descoped or the scope increases and obviously we get great uncertainty over inflation and environment. Given the uncertainty, how on earth will we be able to compare ultimate actuals with estimates? That strikes me given what you are outlining with the data a major challenge, because that is the ultimate test of the processes that we are going through where I fully accept the uncertainty because of the scale of the project. I am going to take Ms Bennett in first and then I will come in please. Yes, no thank you. We will continue to track changes to any assumptions that are made, so from when the financial memorandum was done we have continued to make sure and have an audit trail of any changes to assumptions, whether that is inflation as policy and design decisions are made. We will continue to adjust the assumptions that underpin the financial figures to make sure that there is a clear trail of where we were from the financial memorandum to where we end up at the end of that period of states. We will make sure that that is transparent about what has changed so that you can see why the additional level of data, those exclusions or rationale for exclusions and all that sort of thing is so important. Minister to finish. I think that officials know my expectation in all of this because I do not like any surprises whatsoever and I do not want to insult Ms Thomson convener by saying this, but I will anyway and she can maybe have a go at me afterwards. I am a data anorak and I know that Ms Thomson probably falls into the same vein, if that's an insult, I withdraw it immediately. I want to ensure that we get this absolutely right, that means that we have to scrutinise this to the end's degree and it won't just be me and it won't just be you that will be doing all of this. We have got an immense amount of folks who are helping us with all of this, including people in the social covenant steering group, and they want to know without a doubt all of the workings of this. Some more than others, I have to say, but we are under intense scrutiny in all of this and that's only right. Beyond that, as I have said and I will continue to repeat, I am more than happy to come in front of this committee or any other committee as we progress to outline how we are moving forward, particularly when it comes to the business cases or where we are making amendments as we go through. I think that that is only right. Ms Thomson is absolutely right that this is a huge piece of work. The biggest public service change that there has been since devolution is incumbent on all of us that we get at right. I am not afraid of scrutiny in that regard. Minister, you said in the parliamentary debate last Wednesday that this is potentially a huge change to social services should this bill pass. You also said in that debate that you were very keen to set out the principles and that they ought to be very heavily scrutinised. You cited that financial sustainability is one of those key principles. How are we supposed to engage in that scrutiny if we don't have anything like the detail that we need when it comes to the financial memorandum, partly for some of the reasons that Michelle Thomson cited and for some that the convener cited? Minister, you have to admit that there are many stakeholders who are deeply unhappy about the fact that they do not have the relevant detail to be able to undertake sufficient scrutiny. There are a number of stakeholders who have said that they are unable to carry out the scrutiny that they desire, but what I would say to those stakeholders is that they have the conversations with us and we will help you through what we are doing here. The convener mentioned Fraser Vallander. He has been in conversation with officials. Anyone can do so. Just like as I said earlier on, I am more than happy to talk to other folks about the assumptions that they have made. Cozla, as I said earlier, has made assumptions that we do not recognise, but I am more than happy to engage with them to see if some of what they have got in terms of their workings is right or not and to take that on accordingly. I think that Ms Smith wants to come back. I do not doubt that there will be conversations, of course, there will, but, as a committee and as a Parliament, it is our duty to scrutinise any piece of legislation, but, particularly when it comes to a very sizeable piece of legislation, we have to be very clear in our own minds about a financial memorandum that accompanies that legislation. The concern that we have as a committee, and I think that I can say fairly safely that irrespective of what we think about the bill, there are concerns that have been laid out because of a lot of the evidence that has been provided to us in the last three weeks. That evidence is on the basis that what is before Parliament is not sufficient for the detail of the scrutiny that is required for us to decide whether that can progress in its current state or whether we have to have a complete sort of different approach to the process. Do you accept, minister, that the concern is sufficient? Particularly among those who are trying to scrutinise a financial memorandum, do you accept that there is a cause to pause this bill until there is more detail than is before us just now? No, I do not. The financial memorandum covers the bill, and that is the estimated cost of establishing a national care service as per the bill. What some other folk want at the moment is the detail around aspects of the costs in terms of delivery of service and other aspects that we have said will be subject to the co-design process. As I have said to others already this morning, it would be wrong of us to make any assumptions around about any of those costs because the people that we want to be involved in the co-design would then say that they have already made their minds up about how they are going to progress with that because they have attached a financial cost to that already. In my responses to both the convener and Ms Thomson earlier, what I have said is that that co-design work will be subject to individual business cases. I am more than happy for this committee, for Parliament, to scrutinise all of that as we move forward. We will be open and transparent about all of that, but what we will not do is make assumptions before that co-design work is completed. I reiterate again that the financial memorandum provides the estimated cost as per the bill. In all my time in this Parliament it is the weakest financial memorandum that I have ever seen and that includes some for various pieces of major legislation. What would you say in answer to those witnesses who at our committee have told us that for some of the projected additional costs to this bill they have had to go and ask civil servants for some further detail because it has not been presented to them as they try to establish their own projections of the financial memorandum? I already mentioned the Fraser of Allander institute approaching civil servants around the financial memorandum. I will bring Ms Bennett in because she will have featured in those discussions. As I said earlier, my understanding is that they have no new information at all in that regard. However, we are pointed in the right direction around the FM itself, but I will take in Ms Bennett because she has been involved in those discussions. It is a very detailed and complex landscape to fully be able to understand the assumptions that underpin every part of this would not be right at this stage because we have not been through that co-design space. There will be further discussion to be had to make it clear the work that has been carried out and that will be set out in further detail as time goes through. There is public available information, which much of that has been based on, for example the local finance returns from local government, which can be used by others trying to estimate those costs. As Mr Stewart has said, we are very open to more conversation to set out how we have come up with these estimates and indeed take feedback from others. I do not think that Mr Stewart is just about having conversations. What this committee is asking for and what the Parliament will be asking for is further detail. I completely understand that you could never put out a full set of estimates and call. I completely understand that. However, too many of our witnesses and too many people who are making commentaries on this bill are making it very clear indeed that it is extremely difficult to provide the best forecast of costs because there is not sufficient detail that has been provided by the Scottish Government. That makes it very difficult for the points that you raised last week in the debate in Parliament where you set out the laudable aims of the bill, but you made it very clear that it is our job to scrutinise that. You are right, it is our job to scrutinise it. Forgive me for saying so again. We cannot do that unless there is adequate information on which to base the scrutiny. Do you accept that? No, I don't, because some of those folks want information and assumptions around about some of the things that we have said will be subject to co-design. I can reiterate that point enough. If we come out with financial assumptions now around about some of the aspects of the work that we want to achieve through co-design, people will think that co-design is a sham. I want folk to be involved in that co-design to ensure that we have good law that leads to good implementation and bridges the gulf that there is in terms of that implementation gap. I know that some of the folks out there—because I speak to them—want detail about every aspect of service delivery as we move forward. We cannot give that at this moment in time, because that would be breaching our pledge to co-design with the voices of lived experience, with stakeholders and others as we move forward. The bill itself is there, the financial memorandum covers the bill, and we will come back again and again with the business cases for the co-design for further scrutiny. However, what I will not do is be bounced into making assumptions around what some of the aspects of the co-design work will cost, because folk out there, as I say, will think that we have already made our minds up about how we move forward. Minister, let me try this from another angle. You have said persistently that this bill is about people. I understand that. But to ensure that we are delivering first-class services for people, it needs some structures surrounding that. What the Scottish Government is proposing is that there is a vastly different structure put in place from the existing one. That may have merit, but in order for us to be persuaded of that merit, it is surely incumbent upon the Scottish Government to set out as much detail as it possibly can to help us along the way to persuade us that the change that the Scottish Government wants to make is not just desirable from the laudable aims that you have set out, but is actually workable and deliverable. At the moment, we have far too many people around the country telling us that they have serious concerns about what it is that they will be asked to do to make that work and certainly whether the costs are applicable. Do you accept at least that there is genuine concern and that is another reason why the bill should be paused for the time being? I do not think that the bill should be paused. I know that some folks are opposed to the change that we are trying to make here. I think that there are concerns. We will listen to folk about their concerns and work our way through with them. I come back to the point that some folks out there and you have had it in evidence here and others committees again have had the same, whereby folks want answers to some of the questions that we have said will be subject to co-design. I cannot at this moment give assumptions around that or we lose the confidence of those folks who want to help us co-design the services as we move forward. I come back to the point, convener, that we want to ensure good law here. We want to ensure good implementation and we want to ensure that we bridge that implementation gap. The only way that we can do that well is by having the voices of lived experience and other stakeholders who have not been involved in the shaping of services to this degree before at the table. As we move forward with that work, we will ensure that the business cases are there and that they can be fully scrutinised by all. I want to be as transparent in all of this as possible, but I am not going to be able to answer questions now about certain aspects of that, because if I did, the co-design would be said to be a sham by many. My final question, minister. I will give you the comment of somebody who is on the front line and who at our committee was speaking on behalf of the chief executives of NHS boards, who very much agrees with the principles of some of the things that you are trying to deliver, but who nonetheless was very sceptical about whether that could be delivered in a way, particularly at the moment when the NHS is facing so many difficulties and when there is absolutely no spare room within the NHS. He is telling you, minister, that the NHS bosses are not happy about the bill in terms of its workability. Do you accept what he is saying, Mr Rafe Roberts? Again, we continue to listen to NHS board chairs, chief executives and others in all of this, and they are obviously key in helping us to design the services as we move forward and will be involved all the way through this process. Now, I get that some folks want to see delay. I recognise the pressures that are on out there, but in terms of pressures, in terms of delivery of care itself, that will only grow over the years because we have a changing demography, a changing population, and we cannot have stasis here. We need to invest now, which we are doing, and we are investing over the course of this winter, but we need to get this right for the future. Stasis is not an option here. We will continue to listen to concerns. We will try and ensure that we address those concerns as we move forward. We will continue to engage, and we will continue to listen. Minister, my first question is just in relation to sequencing, because I understand entirely what you said in opening about what Parliament standing orders require you to lay out in a financial memorandum, and I appreciate what you are saying about not pre-empting the result of co-design processes. To me, at least, that begs the obvious question, maybe it's a daffladi question, of why did we not do the co-design processes before reaching this stage of the parliamentary process? I don't think it's a daffladi question at all, and it is a dux in a role situation. I think that what we need to do is progress with the primary legislation and then move on to the co-design for the secondary legislation and the service delivery. If we had done it the other way round, folk could equally have argued why have you not dealt with the primary legislation, the framework first, before moving on to that co-designing of secondary legislation and services? I accept absolutely that there are drawbacks to both, but do you accept that the drawback to this sequence of events is the challenge that presents to parliamentary scrutiny of what, as part of the Government's own words, is the most significant reform taking place in this term? I think that if we had done it the other way round, then quite probably committee and others would have said why didn't you do it the other way round, because the primary legislation is obviously the most important in all of this, Mr Greer. I think that that's maybe a bit of a no-win situation for anyone. Just returning to that, I appreciate what you said as we would all expect that you're engaged with discussions with the UK Government around trying to achieve that neutrality, but surely until those discussions reach a conclusion, hopefully a positive conclusion in that regard, the default position at the moment is that there will be that liability. I'm not sure why that's not in the financial memorandum if that is the status quo at present until an agreement for something else is reached. Take Ms Bennett out, please. Thank you. Until the status of the care boards are established, it's not clear what the VAT impact will be or not, so at the moment local government are section 33 bodies, NHS or section 41, so depending on how care boards are established will impact the VAT liability that could be incurred, as noted, we've engaged with independent advice to give us further options on that. We do have estimates from 2014 from when IJBs were formed. We're looking to update those estimates now to understand what the scale of that might be, but we are taking our time to work through that with an independent expert. Camila, there has been a fair amount of questions on VAT today. I'll write to the committee with the detail of where we are at at the moment and, of course, continue to appraise the committee of the advice that we receive so that you have as much detail as the committee is possible around where we are at. I think that I would appreciate that minister. I would have to say, though, that I think that there are other members who want to ask questions about code design, including myself. I know that Daniel also wants to ask on that, so I think that there will be further exploration of that specific issue as we progress. Ross, I appreciate that minister and the committee will appreciate that further information, but surely based on the answer that Ms Bennett has just given, there's at least a range of potential costs that could be assumed for VAT and man understanding the standing orders for what's required for financial memorandums, the range could have been put in there. I will look at that, Mr Greer, and we will spell all of that out in the letter around where we are at. Just one final question from myself. The emergency budget review announced last week included a £70 million saving in the budget line for social care and the NCS. We all understand why the emergency budget review is necessary, so I'm not disputing that, but I'd just like to understand a little bit more how much of that £70 million, if any, was specifically related to NCS costs in this current financial year. I'll take in Ms Bell and probably provide you with more detail on that as well. We have done some reprofiling of the national care service budget line, and that includes some slippage due to recruitment issues and two digital aspects of the programme. The estimated reduction is around £15 million in the NCS line. There is an intention that that will be shifted forward into next year to pick up the slippage. We're clear that the programme at the moment is still on track, but there is some slippage in the programme. The re-phase that Ms Bell has outlined is to ensure that we have the right skills in place as well as we move forward. We will continue to ensure that we have the resource to allow for the meaningful engagement with people with lived and living experience and other stakeholders to, but we'll give you more detail on that issue to you, convener. I appreciate that. That's all from me, convener. Thank you, convener, and I suppose I'm going to be building on some of the stuff that's already been said already. Just on the question of how much planning was done before the bill came forward, something like how many care boards there's going to be, I imagine the cost would be quite different if there's 32, which would match each council area, or say 8 or 9, which would match the health boards as they are. At what stage is the thinking on that at the moment, or is that also a co-design issue? That is subject to co-design, Mr Mason. Obviously, in all of these things, there has to be some parameters. If somebody, for example, were to make the suggestion that there should be 1,000 care boards, that's not going to be realistic and could not happen and would be out with the parameters. However, we have said that we are open for discussion around whether those care boards should be coterminous with local authorities or with health boards. At the moment, and I'm sure the committee is aware of that, there are not 32 IJBs. There are 31, because Clackmannanshire and Stirling are together in that. Again, as part of the co-design process, is there the possibility of others joining up? Would that be something that they would want to do? The other aspect of all of this, and again the committee will know about this, is do we look at other options for certain parts of the country? Not all of the island authorities have talked before about single island authority. Is that something that would be favourable in terms of delivering services, not just the national care service in the future in our island authorities? We are open to looking at that, too. Can we at least assume that the minimum would be 8 or 9 care boards and the maximum would be 32? You are trying to paint me into a corridor here. I think that that is part of the co-design process. We have to have discussion with folks around how they see the future. I would not paint myself in the corner saying that the minimum is 8 or 9 or the maximum is 32. I think that there will be a fair amount of ideas and suggestions that come out during the course of that co-design work. I have heard a lot of them myself, but I will leave others to bring that to the table when it comes to co-design. One of the suggestions that we had was that the IJBs or the health and social care partnerships could just take on some different responsibilities, given that the numbers might merge or vary a bit. That would save setting up new structures with the inevitable duplication and staff focusing on what is going to happen to their careers and such things. Would that not have been a cheaper option to just use the existing structures? I think that we have to make a fair amount of change, Mr Mason, in all of this. Again, it is the establishment and who is on care boards, which I think is of real interest to folks themselves. For example, I have not said very much about who should be around the table, for example, but there are very clearly folks who need to be around that table. There are a lot of suggestions from individuals and from groups around about who should be there, who has been missing at this moment in terms of the formulation of services in their areas. One thing that I have been clear about is that I believe that the voices of lived experience should be at that table with a vote. Again, those matters are subject to the co-design process. At least during the set-up process, it really means that, on top of the existing organisations, we are going to have another one at the care board, because the suggestion seems to be that you cannot just switch off other things, the IJB or whatever, on the same day. Much as I am in favour of jobs for accountants, that means that there will be a finance director in the council, a finance director in the health board, a finance director in the health and social care partnership and a finance director in the care board. That seems like quite a lot of duplication. That does not necessarily have to be the case, Mr Mason. As I said earlier on in a previous answer, there are opportunities here, without a doubt, for shared services. I am not going to make any comment about jobs for accountants, but there is the opportunity for shared service aspects to all of that. Another point, as we have already noticed, is that various people have raised VAT so far, and I just wanted to press a little bit more, but I take your point. You are going to come back to us on that. Could you even give us an assurance that you are obviously having talks with HMRC and different bodies? One of the points that was raised a lot will depend on the legal entity in which the care boards are. Is it not possible to say that we will choose a legal entity that would definitely avoid VAT? I will take in Ms Bennett first of all. There are a finite number of bodies that the care boards could be. The list is not a long one. There is quite a bit of work, as police and fire have been mentioned here, in terms of being added to a section 33 body, which is a discretion of Treasury to do. That is what we are working at the moment to speak to Treasury to understand our plans and to get early engagement with them, similar to police and fire, to what was added to section 33F, I believe that it is, of the VAT act. You have already said that you are going to give us more information as we go forward. Can you clarify for me whether the financial memorandum will be revised before stage 3, or are we looking at business cases that are not part of the statutory process? The business cases will be on-going over perhaps years? I would have to check on that, but I do not think that it is possible to change the financial memorandum before stage 3. Let me get back to you on that. We will continue to update all of our assumptions as we move forward in terms of the FEM and business cases, but I do not think that it is possible to change the financial memorandum before stage 3. I am not too worried about that. The business cases, can you tell us how you would see that? Would that be an annual process, or maybe six months later, or what? Would that go to the health committee? Would that come to us, or where would they go? It is difficult for me to say which committee. I would imagine that a number of committees would want to scrutinise some of those aspects, and I would not want to be held to timescales either, to be honest with you, convener. As I said, I want to be as open and transparent as we possibly can, so that would be as and when ready in some regards. I would imagine that not only this committee, but others would want to see such things as soon as they are completed. I think that one of the concerns that was raised with us is that, if it is secondary legislation for some of the roll-out of the national care service, there would normally be less scrutiny of that. Again, I have gone on the record in terms of the secondary legislation saying that we will have consultation with stakeholders with the public on secondary legislation, and that we will allow the max time for scrutiny in all of that. We need to get that absolutely right. I am not in the business of rushing that secondary legislation in order for us to get that right. We have to take the time as necessary. When it comes to assets such as care homes, you have suggested that some local authorities might continue to run them, and Glasgow has some quite modern ones that it has built, or some might be transferred into the national care service. It has also been raised with us how the finances for that work, because some councils might have paid off any loans, some might still have loans or PPP or something linked to a new care home. Will the Government be taking on the loan as well as the asset, or is that all about later discussions? Biaf, as I said earlier on, made no decisions about asset or staff transfer. That is part of the co-design process, and I hope that the Government and others will be fully engaged in all that. I would say to Mr Mason that, as it stands at the moment in terms of provider of last resort, often services are currently transferred to local authorities if there are difficulties in terms of delivery of service. As I have said, the bill provides for transfer if Parliament agrees that care boards become the provider of last resort to be able to make those transfers possible if there is a collapse in a particular service. You mentioned staff transfer then, and that has also been raised with us. Even working for councils, there will be a wide range of terms and conditions for care staff at the moment, and that will be wider when the third sector and private sector are brought in as well. Where are we with the costs of trying—presumably the aim in the long run—to consolidate all of those and people would have more consistent terms and conditions? In terms of the paying conditions of local government staff and the differentials and if they were to transfer to care boards to the NCS, I think that it is 43 per cent, if I am right, of the care board assumptions in the financial memorandum are down to those staff costs if that were to happen. However, I go back to my point that no decision has been taken on any transfer of assets or staff, and that is a matter for the co-design project. When the colleges went into regions and things, it took quite a lot of time to get the staffing terms and conditions and pay aligned. Would it be fair to say that that is going to be quite a major process? I am very well aware of the college aspect of all of that. I go back to my earlier point of no unintended consequences. We would have to work all of that through and we have made some assumptions in the financial memorandum about that. No decision has been taken. It is a matter for co-design and I go back to my earlier point as well. Many local authorities at this moment deliver high-quality care services. Is there a need to transfer those services to local care board control? Probably not, but that is a matter for the co-design. Like the NHS, because some people compare the NHS with the NHS, the NHS is quite a mixed model because it is effectively GPs and dentists of private businesses. It is that kind of mixed model that you are foreseeing on the way forward. We have a mixed model at this moment. I am sure that we will continue to have a mixed model, but there will be some changes in all of that. At the end of the day, one of the main things here is ensuring that there is fair work, national sectoral bargaining for paying conditions, which is extremely important as we move forward, and also the aspects of ethical procurement where fair work has to be absolutely embedded in that ethical procurement. That is what we need to do to ensure that we attract more folk to the care profession as we move forward, to create the right environment to attract people to come and work in that profession. Beyond that, we also need to ensure that we can provide the career pathways that young people want that feel are not there at this moment in time. Those are some of the main opportunities of the journey that we are embarking on here. I would say in all of that that if we do not move forward on that front, it will be more difficult to have a sustainable care provision as we move forward. You have been in pains this morning to point out that the detail of the service delivery is going to be subject to the co-design phase. Let us park that for a moment. Can I ask some points of clarification? You said at the beginning that the point and purpose of this was about standardisation and accountability. For clarity, it is not just those two elements, is it? It is also about commissioning, rather importantly. Secondly, the purpose of this bill is to set up that national apparatus to make a possible centralised commissioning. Is that correct? You are saying that the financial memorandum for setting up that national apparatus is notwithstanding the points around what costs may arise from service delivery or additional services, but the costs for setting up that national apparatus are all contained within the financial memorandum. Is that correct? At no point today have I used the term standardisation, and I never will. What I have talked about is national quality standards, which should be adhered to, but there will still be local flexibility around about the delivery of care. Let me make that clear. There should and will be local flexibility in terms of delivery of care. We will have national standards, but that is not what I would term as a standardisation overall. On the point about centralised commissioning, it is not about centralised commissioning. It is about commissioning again at a local level. It may well be that, as we move forward, we choose in co-operation and collaboration with partners to do specialised commissioning for more specialist services. That is something that many members of the public would like to see, but it is not about centralised commissioning. I was just asking for three brief confirmations of the assumptions. I understand the different words. I do not think that I was suggesting anything different. On that point, can I ask then if it is not about centralised commissioning, can you conceive of a situation where there will be more commissioning boards than the current number of IJBs, or are you clear that there will be fewer? No, I do not see that at all. Again, we are going through a co-design process, so I cannot see there being more. The national aspect of that is not about national commissioning, but what has been made very clear to us by the public at large and by many of the stakeholders in the third sector and elsewhere is that there should be national accountability. That came out again very clearly in the independent review that was put forward by Derek Feely in terms of the recommendations. I have to say that accountability people feel is sadly lacking. That is about strengthening local accountability, having national accountability for the first time. I think that for many colleagues around this table and in Parliament as a whole, sometimes they do not quite understand the fact that we are not, as ministers, accountable already for some of these services, because a huge amount of correspondence that I get is around about delivery of care services, which we try and help resolve for members. However, I have no national accountability, ministers of no accountability, which the public finds difficult to understand and which many members here find difficult to understand. The public wants to see that change, and that is the reasoning for the direction of travel that we are taking. Just looking at the commissioning point in the Feely report, I mean just reading the executive summary even, the point around commissioning that I took from Feely is that it needs to be more personalised. You are saying that it is likely to be fewer boards, that means, to my mind, that it will be done further away from the person. Of all the different points in the Feely report, there was the commission point, there was the standards point. That is why you have pursued this model of essentially creating national bodies that will oversee commissioning, as opposed to, and again, in the Feely report, in my mind, it alludes to the possibility of reforming the inspection and quality regimes. Was that option explored? Was a financial comparison made of what the difference might be in terms of pursuing that model? That would provide you with national accountability standards as well. I am just interested in what options were examined. I do not like folk putting words in my mouth, and I have not at any point indicated today that there is likely to be fewer care boards. I have not said that at all. What I have said is that all of this is subject to co-design. On personalisation, the person-centred approach is going to be at the very heart of all that we do here. We have moved in a direction of personalisation that has made some advances, but not in others. In all of that, we want to ensure that people have as much autonomy and freedom as they can have in terms of the services that they require. Let me give you an example, because, again, a frustration for me is around about self-directed support. The Parliament passed a self-directed support act, which was very good in intention. Some of it, in terms of the primary legislation, folk have found loopholes in that and have not went with the spirit of that act in many places. We are currently changing the guidance again to try and change that, but we need to go further in terms of allowing people that autonomy and freedom to commission their own care, if that is what they want to do. Give them the options that were laid out in the SDS act, many of which are not available in certain local authority areas. Beyond that, listen to people themselves around where that has worked for them and where it has failed. There are examples of local flexibilities that have been put in place that have been absolute game changers in people's lives, and yet other people in other parts of the country have not had access to those services, which would equally make their lives much better. The scenario that I have highlighted is around personalisation of services to a greater degree and putting human rights at the very heart, in some places we have not done very well on that front. I am sorry if people thought I was putting words in their mouth. I was simply reflecting. I believe that the minister used the words so that he could not conceive of a situation where there would be more care boards than IJBs. I was merely making the information— I never said that either, convener. I believe that you did, minister. I will consult the official report, but if I misunderstood and misheard that many apologies, I was simply making an inference based on what I thought you had said, minister. I would imagine that a computer system will be pretty key to the delivery of any public services. In recent times, Social Security Scotland's computer system is estimated to be costing around £250 million. Police Scotland's, when it did not get the funding for this, recent estimates for their IT needs for a new IT record system—£300 million, disclosure Scotland's IT system delivered a few years ago cost £80 million. While we might not know the precise detail of the IT requirements, it is fair to say that in broad terms, in terms of range, we must be looking at a sum in the region of hundreds of millions pans, even if it is at that low range. Do you think that those examples are fair comparators? Think about the sorts of costs that might be incurred by the creation of an IT system for a national care service. I am not going to pluck figures out of the top of my head here at all, and that is one of the reasons why we have said that we will come back to the committee with business cases for other aspects of that. The other thing, convener, around about those issues is that we have to have a general stocktake of what we have at this moment in time as well and whether we have the ability to use and utilise current systems and allow them to be able to talk to one another. Having been involved in public service for a fair amount of time, there have been some IT difficulties that Mr Johnson has highlighted in the past. In my own life, I have been involved in a project in which we replaced a system, which, quite frankly, was the wrong thing to do because the existing system could and should have been adapted. We need to take a stock take on all of that and we can see what is required as we move forward and put forward the right business case in all of that. One other assurance that I would give the committee is that, because I am very well of IT cost overruns from past life, I would be keeping a very close eye on every aspect of the delivery of that, if that was what was required. I was not really getting into cost overruns. Without plucking numbers out there, I was just giving some, I thought, fair and recent comparatives. Coming back up a layer, would you say that the IT will be an important element and that it is likely to be a substantial cost component of what is finally delivered? What I would say is that the IT is a vital component in almost all that we do nowadays, but I think that the starting point in all of that is what do we currently have in place and can that be utilised in order to deliver for what we want? That would be the starting point and then you would go and look elsewhere to see what is required as we move forward. Again, we would come back with a business case for all of that. Just looking at the overall business case of this, we are talking about the set-up cost for the national apparatus will be up to the order of £500 million plus. That does not include IT at the moment and a number of other items. Can you at least explain whether or not you believe that cost will be recouped in benefits and whether or not of the £7 billion that is currently spent on social care and the £8.9 billion that is spent on community health, whether you think that that will drive benefits and efficiency on the current footprint excluding improvements or increases in the standards of care? Just in terms of the as-is, the baseline business case, will that cost be recouped? Will it be additional? Do you expect the cost to go up or down on the basis of that investment? First of all, I do not recognise the figure of £7 billion on social care that Johnson says at the moment. That is for £26.27. That is an assumption for £26.27. Do I expect a recouping of investment? I again am not going to pluck an answer out of my head here, but what I would say, and I refer back to the points that I made earlier, at this moment in time, data collection is not easy. There is a lot of clunkiness out there, there is not a connection. That lack of data, without doubt, will almost inevitably lead to some wrong decision making at various points, which always costs money. That lack of data means that we do not have the ability at points to shape the services in the way that we should to future-proof them and make them sustainable. In the long term, will that data collection lead to savings? The answer to that is yes, without doubt. Am I going to sit here today and make assumptions around what that savings are likely to be? I think that I would be foolish to do so. That was not actually my question, as I said in broad terms. Would it create savings? Would that be recouped? Or is it just going to be additional cost? As we sit here this morning—unless you can correct me, minister—just even in terms of the scope of the bill, as it is, setting up the national apparatus, we are already saying that we do not have the full costs in the financial memorandum because it does not have things such as—you said that the IT is an important element of public service delivery, but we do not know the costs of that. Indeed, we already had the convener set out the things that Fraser Anders said about missing which are the costs of the national care boards, the transition, the impact of VAT that we have acknowledged that we do not have, the impact of any change to pension schemes, the extent of potential changes to capital investment and maintenance costs, the costs of health and social care information schemes. Some of those things are about service delivery, but many of those are about the national apparatus. Likewise, NHS Scotland has set out the issues that we do not know. We do not know about the cost of phasing the functions that they point out that we do not know the size of the wider savings and benefits. We do not know if the transfer will include adult social care in children and justice social care. The list of health functions will be transferred and clarity about future demand. Those are quite a lot of unanswered questions, both about the specifics about running the national apparatus and, indeed, even just in broad terms about the likely impact whether it will be more or less expensive of service delivery. Am I wrong? As I have said on numerous occasions today, the financial memorandum covers the bill. In terms of other aspects of this, without going along the same lines as Mr Johnson, we have said that, in terms of getting this right, we are allowing co-design. We will come back with business cases for every aspect of all of this as we move forward, showing costs, showing savings that are likely to be accrued by those investments, showing how we can save in terms of eradicating the implementation gap that we know is out there in terms of the difference between policy and delivery. We will do all of that openly and transparently. However, today, as I have said, we are here to talk about the financial memorandum of the bill. Many of the things that you have asked today are not part of the bill, but that is not to say that we will not come back to Parliament, probably again and again, with the business cases that you will rightly expect to be able to scrutinise to ensure that we are on the right track in terms of social care delivery for the people of Scotland. That brings us back to the process. Answer this for me, because I really do not understand. I can understand why you might not want to legislate for service delivery prior to the framework. That bit makes sense, but what would have prevented you from doing the co-design work and bringing forward a white paper and then bringing forward this framework bill with that white paper very clearly in mind, which would have enabled you to do the co-design, would have answered many of the questions that we have in front of us and would have given us certainty about the scope? Right now, we actually do not even know because the co-design works, but what functions the national appraisas will need to facilitate. Why not do it that way around? Why not do the co-design and bring forward a white paper and use that as the basis and the context for this framework, but I just do not understand why you did not do it that way around? If we did it that way around, as I said to Mr Greer, it would not have been happy with that either, but the Government set out a number of commitments. The first commitment in terms of national care service was to establish a social covenant steering group within 100 days and to take cognisance of the mind of information that they have. We also said that we would publish the bill within the first year of the Parliament, which we have done. We have also said that, in all of that, we will continue to engage and listen to the voices of lived experience that we will do. Those folks, along with other stakeholders, will help us to co-design that bill. I have trust and faith in those folks in terms of helping us to do that. We need to ensure that as many people as possible are involved in that co-design, which I am quite sure that we will. In doing so, we will also work our way through to ensure that there are no unintended consequences, as Ms Thomson has asked for us to do earlier on, and to make sure that we provide Parliament with the ultimate amount of opportunities for scrutiny, not only of just the secondary legislation but also of every aspect of the financial and economic impact of the decisions that are made during that co-design process. Thank you, minister. I will continue on the process that Daniel was mentioning. Through our evidence sessions over the past few weeks, Solace, COSLA, SIPFA, NHS, Health and Social Care Alliance and trade unions have all condemned the approach that has been taken. It sounds like it has been rushed in this way because there was a commitment to put this forward in the first year. Would that be correct or not? It seems that what we have heard so far could have been done the other way. We could have had the co-design, and then we could have had a bill that we all understood a lot more coming forward. I am not going to reiterate the point that I made. If we had done it the other way, then folks would have said that that is not the right way. I am probably taking umbridge with that as well. Why would you say that that is not the right way? I do not understand that, because I have had more detail. Mr Lumson, I could just imagine that if we had done it the other way that you would have been one of the people who would have said that you should have done it the other way around, the most important thing would be to put the primary legislation in play first before you actually do that. I will go back because what you have said is that we need to get this right. Absolutely. Just now, I think that we are writing a blank cheque, because we do not actually know what is going to be coming further down the line. You have mentioned organisations that want answers to questions, some of which are questions that cannot be answered because the matters are subject to the co-design. Some of the folks that you have mentioned want no change whatsoever, and that is not an option at all because we have to ensure, no matter what, that social care is sustainable for the future. Beyond that, what I would say is that many of the stakeholders that you have heard from are folks who obviously have power and influence and maybe do not want to see that change. What you also need to do as a committee and other committees of this Parliament need to do, too, is listen to the voices of lived experience and the change that they want. Listen to some of the third sector organisations who feel that the system at the moment does not work for them. Listen to those folks that want change. We made a commitment, the Government made a commitment in its manifesto to introduce a legislation to establish a national care service. That is what we are embarking on. I am quite sure that there would be arguments galore, no matter which way around we had chosen to do that. However, we need to get on with that. We need to have faith and trust in that co-design process and ensure that people who have not had voices thus far are actually at the table making the decisions about the things that affect them on a day-to-day basis in terms of their care and support. Minister, none of those groups actually came to us and said that there should be no change at all. I cannot remember that at all. They all said that they accepted change, but what they were protesting against is that the bill that has been brought forward has no detail for them to get behind or not. If we look at what Unite the Union said about the bill, it said that the Scottish Government could not have drafted a more incomprehensible, incoherent and dreadful bill. The plans to transfer services, people and property from local authorities to the Scottish Government are a recipe for disaster and represent an all-out assault on local democracy. Do you not accept, minister, that the lack of detail is causing these concerns from many organisations right across Scotland? What I would say from that particular statement there, we have made no decisions whatsoever around about moving staff or assets from local government to the national care service. I have made that quite clear today. What we want to do is to make sure that folks are involved in that co-design process so that we make the right decisions as we move forward. Now, there will be some folk without any doubt who would want to see those transfers of staff and assets, and there will be others who do not. However, we need to have that co-design together to discuss those particular issues. The other aspect of that, from a trade union point of view—I should probably declare interest as a member of unison, convener—is that what we are embarking on here provides a huge opportunity in terms of national bargaining, paying conditions and ensuring that we have the right career pathways for the future. There are huge opportunities there, but that statement that there will be wholesale transfer, we have not made any decisions around that. Do you not admit that the process that you followed has caused all this uncertainty to take place? If you had done it the other way around, for the co-design first and then the bill, there would be less uncertainty for groups like the union. I think that if we had moved in another direction, then some folk in Parliament would have said, now you have to do the primary legislation first. Move on to the next point then. You mentioned standing orders earlier, but according to the Parliament standing orders, 9.3, a financial memorandum should set out the best estimates of the cost savings and changes to revenues to which the provisions of the bill would rise. We have heard earlier that the financial memorandum seems to have more financial holes than a sieve. Is there a possibility that you will break in the Parliament's own rules? No, I do not think that there is. As the committee will be well aware, I take my responsibilities in that very seriously. It is a question to instigri the officials who put together financial memorandum in other documents. As I have said throughout, that financial memorandum covers the aspects that the bill covers. There are things such as IT that Daniel Johnson mentioned earlier. There is no provision at all in the bill. He said that he did not want to pluck figures out of the air for an IT system, but figures have been plucked out of the air for every other aspect of the bill. Why could there have been an estimate—a best estimate—in for an IT system? I have never known Parliament to legislate for an IT system. I am sure that FM covers what is covered in the bill. That is covered by the financial memorandum. Are there going to be IT costs related to the bill? Surely there should have been some provision for that cost to be in the financial memorandum. I cannot make myself any clearer on that, because IT is not in the bill. The financial memorandum covers the bill. I have said quite clearly here today again and again in terms of the aspects of the other work that needs to be done in terms of co-design and service delivery. We will bring back to Parliament the business cases for all of that work as soon as that work is completed and folk will have the opportunity to scrutinise, as they will have the opportunity to scrutinise every aspect of secondary legislation as we move forward to. The standing orders are very clear in terms of a financial memorandum covering the aspects that are covered in the bill, and we have done that. I will move on, because I think that we will get frustrated on that point. In terms of the assets, we are still not clear whether they will transfer from a local authority, for example, to a new national care service. That is correct. You said that that will be part of the co-design process. No decision has been made on those things. That is on the table for the co-design process, but I reiterate what I said earlier to Mr Mason and all of that. We also have to take cognisance of where there is good service delivery and why we would necessarily make change for change's sake if there is good service delivery. What would you say to those local authorities that their budget will be coming up soon and they will be looking at their capital plan and they may have new care homes within that capital plan? Why on earth would they keep that in the capital plan when there is so much uncertainty that has been caused by this bill? Because it is still their statutory responsibility to deliver social care and social work at this moment in time. I am quite sure that in all of this folk will look to the future in terms of delivery for members of the public and not necessarily around about their asset base. I agree, but it is potentially not going to be the statutory duty going forward. When there are difficult decisions to be made by local government, I am struggling. I think that you could actually make the situation and care worse by this uncertainty that has been caused because local authorities, why would they invest? That is my question. We will keep an eye on that as we move forward, convener, but I can reiterate enough that the statutory responsibility still rests with local government. There has been no decision taken in moving. This Parliament has taken no decision in making any changes. While this goes through its course, local government is still statutory responsible. I hope that, in terms of good governance, good stewardship and ensuring that people get things right for their citizens, they will continue to recognise that they have the statutory duty and will continue to do their best in service delivery for their constituents and their citizens. They have the statutory duty today, but they may not have next year or the year after. Of course, they may be burdened by the capital costs for years to come, because they do not know what is going to be happening. I will go on to my next point. You mentioned COSLA figures. I think that it was £1.5 billion that they have estimated. Do you agree with those figures, minister? We do not recognise those figures. As I said, we are more than happy to talk through the numbers with COSLA around about that, but that is not a number that is attached to this bill, without a doubt it is not. However, we will have those conversations if they want to speak to us around how they arrived at that. We will listen to what they have to say, and we will ask them how they have arrived at that, and hopefully we will get some co-operation from that. Of course, they are providing the care just now, so it is a few weeks since they have submitted those figures, so should you not have had those conversations before or now, before coming to committee? We have had constant conversations around data and money, but we have got no explanation for that £1.5 billion. Have you asked for clarification yet? We have engaged with COSLA on their figures. The background information has not been forthcoming. Would you expect to see that soon, minister? I would have expected to see it before now, Mr Lumsden. I think that if anybody is submitting a number like that, you have to have the working behind it, but we do not have that working, but I do not recognise that £1.5 billion. I hope that now that there has been this questioning here that we can maybe all see the working of that £1.5 billion. For me, that highlights the process that is wrong again, but that discussion should have been had with COSLA before this has even got to this stage, but we would obviously disagree. Discussions with COSLA on a constant basis, Mr Lumsden? Yes, but not around those figures of how much cost the stuff. We have discussions with COSLA on a constant basis, Mr Lumsden. Last question is about the VAT implications. Last time when we were here, we discussed a figure of maybe £32 million that might have been a number of uncertainty, but SIPFA seemed to dispute that. New estimate on that, or is it still £32 million that might be at risk around that figure? I gave the number of £32 million, as what was estimated in 2014 for IJB setup. I did not give the number of £32 million as an estimate for the VAT implications for this. I noted that that was a number that we used in 2014, but we have not given an estimate yet in terms of the VAT implications as of today's rates. As I said, convener, we will provide as much information as we can on that issue to the committee as soon as possible. The very last point that I had, SIPFA, when they were given evidence, said that mechanisms are in place to look at the quality of services and drive that up. The question is how we build on that existing arrangement. They are talking about IJB boards. I have been up and running for seven years. It is not a long time, but there has been a lot of legislation that has been held and reserved that could be brought to take the boards on to the next step. However, it seems that we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater and starting again. I presume that you would disagree with that statement, or maybe explain why extra powers cannot be given to the IJBs around social care. I disagree that we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and we want to ensure that where service delivery is good, that we are exporting that right across the board. The national high-quality standards will ensure that we are able to do so. In all of that, I would again come back to the accountability. People out there, people who are cared for and supported on a day-to-day basis, do not feel that accountability is right in many places. They do not feel that that is right at a local level, and they want accountability at a national level. We need to listen to that. I am somebody who always looks for the very best in everything in order that we can replicate that where necessary. I think that we have got the ability with national care standards to do that across the board. I should also say that all of that also allows for local flexibilities in terms of delivery at a local level. Many of the things that we have discussed today, I am sure, will also come into play during the course of the co-design process. If nothing else, I hope that many members of the public and stakeholders will play a part in helping us to get that right as we move forward. A point of clarification. Earlier on, the minister said that there is transparency here because people could contact you or your officials. A slight point of clarification. We have to go on what is a matter of public record. While I accept that that is a valuable element of scrutiny for us, a critical element of all of that is public scrutiny and public accountability. If you need to be able to make direct contact with the public, I am assuming, do you accept that we have to go on what is a matter of public record and what is being publicly published? We cannot really rely on private conversations such as the ones that Fraser Van Der have had to rely on. I am quite happy if folk write to us about particular things. We respond to that matter in the public domain. I want all channels open, but I also want to be open and transparent about all of that as we move forward. We will put as much in the public domain as we possibly can. The reality, as we move forward anyway, is that we will have so much folk involved in all of that anyway. It is public in terms of co-designs and other things. In terms of the formulation of the business cases and all the other work that we do as we move forward, we will put that out there as soon as we possibly can. I want a situation. I was a campel community here in Edinburgh the other week, and a woman there said to me that she will not like that, because I am going to be very challenging. That is what I want in all of that. We need to be challenged in order to get that right, but we need to be challenged not only by some of the folks who come into play and committee on a regular basis, but we need to be able to give the public the opportunity to challenge and to help to shape those services as we move forward, which has not happened to the degree that it should have in the past. In time-ordered fashion, I will finish up by asking a couple of more questions. I have many questions. I have one up here, but I will just ask a couple. The word clarification is about clarification. Co-design has been mentioned on my rare occasions throughout. If we go back to what Donna Bell said in giving evidence, she said that the approach has been almost universally welcomed by people who want to be involved in shaping the national care service and the delivery of services that they use now are likely to use in the future. That was reinforced at the national care service forum a few weeks ago. Donna also said that the bill sets out a framework for change. The detail relies very much on co-design, co-design with people with lived experience of and people who deliver community health and care support. Our partners and stakeholders will also play a vital role in that co-design. The issue for me is twofold. One is what is the timescale for delivery of that co-design? We are talking about, it seems to me—you have touched on this—a whole plethora of individuals and partners who will be involved. The unions and organisations, such as COSACC, claim that engagement in their view has not been what they would have anticipated. How do we ensure that co-design is not—we do not end up with a situation whereby they say that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. We end up with something that does actually work. However, how do we put weight on what stakeholders say? For example, if someone is a care user, how do you balance the weight of their experience with, for example, the institutional experience of an organisation such as COSACC to get this right? I do realise that this approach has been used in developing Social Security Scotland and was done so successfully. However, it is really timescale and how do we balance the competing engagements that we have discussed? You are right to point out that this is not new. We have done this previously with Social Security Scotland with some success. We have now launched the co-design panels and are looking for partners to promote sign-up of front-line staff to the lived experience partner panel to support that. The NCS programme will shortly advertise introductory seminars which will be able to sign up to online. There will be co-design training that will be associated with specific themes. We have a number of themes that we will send you more detail about. In terms of timelines, convener, again we will write to you but this is going to be on-going as we move forward. We have got to get this right and we have got to continue to consult and co-design as we move forward. In terms of balancing the views of competing interests, we managed to do that fairly well in terms of Social Security Scotland. Again, some of the folks that we had involved in co-design of Social Security Scotland are at the forefront of helping us with that co-design. However, we will put some more of that in depth to the committee in writing because I have got pages of notes here, convener, which I am quite sure you do not want to sit and listen to me for another hour. I am sure you have. I mean, I understand stage 1 of the bill's 70th of March, so I think we would be keen to see what progress we have made up to them. Sure, absolutely. Now, the last question really is a 64,000 to all question, I suppose, from some of the people who have given evidence to us and it is regarding the financial memorandum directly. For example, Solace said that a lot of the Scottish Government's response to their concerns has been, and I quote, "...will cross that bridge when we come to it, or that's the decision that can be taken locally." They go on to say that the proposal is well-intentioned, but it does not give us certainty. We are going to get something that will deliver consistent care services across Scotland. Of course, COSLA said that, in their view, the financial memorandum delivers an unacceptable lack of clarity. When I asked COSLA, SEPFUN, Solace, whether they thought that the financial memorandum should be revisited, each of them said yes. What is your response to that? My response to that, convener, is that, as I have said today, we will continue to update forecasts, business cases, everything as we move forward. I would reiterate the point that I have made again and again today. The financial memorandum covers what is in the bill. What is SEPFA, COSLA, Solace and others want answers to things that are not contained in the bill. They will have those answers after the co-design and when the business cases are built up. I think that there is a big difference between what they want to see in a financial memorandum to what is actually in the bill and the financial memorandum covers what is in the bill. Are there any final points, minister, before we end up? No. I am very happy, convener, to continue to engage with the committee as always. You can be assured that, as our work continues, we will update you as and when. Thank you very much for coming today and also to thank your colleagues Fiona Bennett and Donna Bell. The next item on our agenda, having covered the public part of today's meeting, will be discussed in private, in which we will consider the evidence that we received today. I will now call a break until 11.55 to allow witnesses and the official vote to leave.