Chamber and committees

Thank you very much, convener. I appreciate that we are tight for time.

We are still living through the pandemic, and last winter was unprecedented. I am keen to understand how you feel about the lessons learned from last winter. Has the Government learned what worked and what did not work so well, and have those lessons been factored into the winter preparedness plan?

Thank you for presenting your statement of reasons. I serve as convener of the cross-party group on learning disability, where the previous iteration of the bill, under Johann Lamont, and the current version have been discussed at length. Many of the stories that colleagues have alluded to about the lived experience and the struggle and battle around transitions have been aired thoroughly in the cross-party group. Similarly to Fulton MacGregor and other members, constituents have been keen to get in touch with me to share their lived experience. Therefore, there is a compelling argument that we have done a lot of talking about the proposal and that we are perhaps now coming to the point where we need to act.

Your statement of reasons refers to the 91 responses to the previous consultation, which were broadly supportive of the bill. It is fair to say that, as I referred to, other people have fed in through correspondence and the CPG. Are you content that the bill has been shaped by those responses and experiences? In essence, we all want to know that the bill has been influenced strongly by that consultation and that people have been listened to in the process.

I draw attention to my entry in the register of members’ interests, which shows that I am a serving councillor in East Renfrewshire Council and a member and former employee of Enable Scotland.

Analysis of the financial memorandum so far suggests that there are known unknowns. We do not have clarity on how many women might come forward to use the scheme, so the finances are somewhat estimated at this stage. I am keen to understand what contingencies there are in the financial memorandum to account for any unanticipated increase in the number of women coming forward.

Good morning, cabinet secretary. In your opening remarks, you touched on the conversation that you will have with your counterpart tomorrow, but what dialogue has been going on so far and what response have you had from the UK Government on the issues that you have raised directly with it, as highlighted in your statement?

What should the memorandum of understanding that the Scottish Government has requested include, and how broad and wide-ranging should it be?

We have moved from the recommendations in Mr Feeley’s review to what the Government has consulted on. The Feeley review gave a figure of £0.66 billion as an adequate investment for its proposals. However, we now have an expanded remit, and there has been commentary from Audit Scotland on the growing requirement for care, particularly with an ageing population. How realistic is the £0.66 billion figure, and what further work needs to be done to understand it?

Given that I named Mr Feeley, I had better let him respond first.

Professor Bell spoke about the elephant in the room, which is finance. Pay is part of that, and trade unions such as the GMB are advocating for £15 an hour for care workers. I am trying to get a sense of whether procuring better and more sustainable rates of pay is the first step, and the other aspects that we have discussed—training, qualifications and social care being a longer-term career—will follow from that. Derek, do you want to comment on that?

The discussion help us begin to think about the context of coming out of the pandemic and what will happen as we move forward. I am interested in service redesign, which has been touched on in previous answers. I am interested in what we can learn from the pandemic about doing things differently and in ways that bring savings. I am thinking about digital technology in particular. With regard to social care, the use of technology-enabled care is interesting. I want to get a sense of where the opportunities are for some of that.