Chamber and committees

Members of the finance committee, including members of your party, have criticised you for not having the finances. You quoted a figure of £1.5 billion, but that is not the cost of restructuring the system to include children’s services; I presume that it would be the cost of providing the children’s services themselves. I am asking what the additional cost would be of including children’s services in the national care service’s structure.

The minister has just talked about being presented with risk. Has the risk not been caused by moving ahead with a national care service without having thought about where children’s services will go? Is it not the case that the Government has caused the risk that you have talked about, minister?

Mr Stewart, you will have seen Daren Fitzhenry’s contribution to the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee yesterday, in which he expressed concerns that the proposed changes would potentially give ministers sweeping powers to limit the scope of his investigations into social care complaints. What is your response to that?

Irrespective of the conclusion on children’s services?

Well, that is clearly not the case.

Can you tell me how much this will cost? What will the additional cost be for restructuring the service to include children’s services? What will be the cost of including children’s services?

So what is the figure?

I just want the cost of the restructure.

You are not looking at the whole system, though, are you? You have already decided that you are creating a national care service, which will have ramifications for children’s services. You are not considering services in the round. You have decided that you will take one part out of the system, and you will then decide, as an afterthought, what children’s services are going to do in response to that disruption.

So, you are not looking at things in the round. You have talked an awful lot this morning about co-design. If, in the co-design process—which will presumably include the recipients of services as well as those who provide them—it is decided that it would be better to leave the structure as it is, are you going to undo all this?

Not this.

That makes my point for me—I am sorry to interrupt, Mr Stewart. You are making this up as you go along.