Chamber and committees

I have a couple of points to finish. I want to follow up on what John Mason said on the IT front. The new financial memorandum says that from

“2023-24 through to 2025-26 costs are significantly lower than previously estimated”.

It also says:

“The internal staff skillset will be utilised in favour of externally contracted services.”

I am not really sure what that means. I would have thought that it would say “rather than” instead of “in favour of”—there seems to be a contradiction there.

The memorandum goes on to say:

“It is expected a portion of the staff costs will be in the data and digital space, some of which will be shorter term contractors with specific skills for set periods of time.”

Whenever I see the word “contractors”, I always see pound signs ratcheting up pretty quickly, so I am wondering where the parameters are for that.

Thank you—we will certainly return to that on Thursday. I thank Donna Bell, Lee Flannigan and Richard McCallum for their contributions.

The committee will continue to take evidence on the updated financial memorandum at our next meeting, which will be on Thursday 25 January, when we will hear from the Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport. That concludes the public part of today’s meeting—we will now move into private session to discuss our work programme.

We are comparing apples with oranges with regard to the rest of the Scottish budget. It seems to be really odd that one particular aspect of the Scottish budget should be different from the rest. We all agree that the GDP deflator is not necessarily a realistic assessment, and that it has not been for the past couple of years, although the Scottish Fiscal Commission hopes that we might be more aligned with it in the next two or three years. However, the reality is that that is what we are using.

Yes, that would be helpful for us.

In our report on the original financial memorandum, we highlighted that

“The Fraser of Allander Institute noted particular uncertainties in relation to the costings provided for rights to breaks from caring, due to a lack of data at local authority level and no specific allocation for carer respite in the local government settlement.”

That is an issue of concern, because, proportionally, in the new financial memorandum, annual costs will increase and are estimated at between £155 million and £225 million. Given that caveat that was made by the Fraser of Allander Institute, can you explain how you came to those figures?

Good morning, and welcome to the fourth meeting of the Finance and Public Administration Committee in 2024.

The only item on our public agenda today is an evidence session with Scottish Government officials to discuss the Government’s response to the committee’s report on the original financial memorandum for the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill and the information that is presented in the updated financial memorandum, which was provided to the committee on 11 December last year.

We are joined today, from the Scottish Government, by Donna Bell, who is the director of social care and national care service development; Lee Flannigan, who is the national care service senior finance manager; and Richard McCallum, who is the director of health and social care finance, digital and governance. I welcome you all to the committee; I understand that Ms Bell will make a brief opening statement.

Ross Greer, one of our members, is struggling to get here in time due to transport difficulties, but hopes to join us before too long.

Over to you, Donna.

That is the point that I am making.

Thank you for that.

The Scottish Government and COSLA are operating a partnership approach to provide legal accountability—accountability is one of the issues that you touched on in your opening remarks, Donna. In an update, the minister stated that that was to

“improve the experience of people accessing services by introducing a new structure of national oversight to drive consistency of outcomes while maximising the benefits of reformed local service delivery”,

which would

“provide Scottish Ministers, local authorities and NHS boards with overarching shared accountability for the care system.”

Is that not a recipe for confusion? How will the partnership with local authorities, national health service boards and Scottish ministers relate to the new national board, the exact format of which is still to be decided?

Do you see the national board as being a fairly small but perfectly formed board, such as that of Community Justice Scotland, with perhaps 45 staff members, or as a much more encompassing organisation? We need to have more clarity on costs and staff numbers. Can you share any information on that?

I will let others ask further questions on that.

Table 2 of the new financial memorandum shows costs to the Scottish Administration of between £128 million and £193 million, but it is unclear whether those costs are associated with the establishment of the board.

The new financial memorandum is only nine pages long, whereas the previous one was 28 pages long. It feels as though a wee bit more detail could have been provided.

I appreciate that there is no point in talking about the transfer of local authority workers if that is not going to happen. However, we are keen to get a bit further under the skin of the financial memorandum, because of the bill’s importance from a financial perspective.

I open up the session to committee members, the first of whom to ask questions will be John Mason.