Chamber and committees

I do not see that at all, but, again, we are going through a co-design process. I do not see there being more. The national aspect of this is not about national commissioning. What has been made very clear to us by the public at large, and by many stakeholders in the third sector and elsewhere, is that there should be national accountability. That came out very clearly in the recommendations from Derek Feeley’s independent review. People feel that that accountability is sadly lacking, so this is about strengthening local accountability and having national accountability for the first time.

Many colleagues around the committee table and in the Parliament as a whole do not quite understand that we, as ministers, are not already accountable for some of the services that we are discussing. A huge amount of the correspondence that I get concerns the delivery of care services. We try to resolve those concerns for members, but I have no national accountability, and ministers have no accountability, which the public and many members find difficult to understand. The public want that to change, and that is the reason for our direction of travel.

The financial memorandum provides the estimated cost of establishing the NCS. It should be noted that that does not represent a budgetary commitment; instead, it is 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 Parliament’s standing orders are clear that the financial memorandum should cover only what is in the bill.

We are doing other refining work and will continue, as always, to report to Parliament—including committees such as yours, convener—on the expected costs coming from some of the co-design work. If we were to make assumptions on some of those issues at this moment, we would be accused—perhaps rightly so—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. The co-design approach is not lip service. We want stakeholders—the voices of lived experience, local authorities, public bodies, the third sector, carers and others—to be involved in that process.

The Fraser of Allander Institute, which you mentioned, said that it could not fully understand the financial memorandum until it got more information from the Government. The financial memorandum supports the detail provided in the bill, as I have said, and further detail will be available in future business cases. There were discussions between officials and the Fraser of Allander Institute to explain the financial memorandum more, but that was not new information, as some folk have said it was. As the co-design work has still to take place, it would be wrong of us to make lots of assumptions about the outcomes of it.

Let us take the last example that you gave, about the transfer of assets and staffing from local government, which is one of the things that some folk have cottoned on to. We have taken no decisions about the transfer of assets or the transfer of staffing. That will all form part of the co-design. I have gone on record on a number of occasions saying that there is already good delivery of high-quality care in many places by local government, so why would we need the transfer of those staff to take place? That is part of the co-design process.

Among the other areas that you touched on, VAT is an area that we are exploring in great depth. We have sought independent professional advice on the VAT implications of the options that are available for the structural set-up 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 chuff me to bits if we could get a prompt response from the Treasury on those kinds of issues. However, as the committee is aware, the Treasury sometimes takes some time to come to decisions about such things.

Decisions on funding are still to be determined. However, the intention is for there to be no detriment to local government finances. Any funding that is transferred would be directly associated with a similar transfer of costs to ensure an overall neutral impact.

We recognise that, in establishing a national care service, including any transfer of accountabilities and associated financial resources from local authorities, we must take into consideration the impact on those local authorities and on their ability to resource and deliver other public services.

As you rightly point out, convener, those scenarios might be more challenging for smaller authorities, such as Clackmannanshire, and for island authorities, so we will continue to engage and have those discussions. However, we want the impact to be neutral overall. As I said at the very beginning, decisions about funding have yet to be made.

I will go first and then bring in Ms Bennett.

I think that you will understand that there are various unknowns that could result in large cost differentials, including the transfer of staff and their associated pay terms and conditions and other things such as the digital improvements that we might need. At all times we have tried to be as transparent as we can in our approach and to highlight the potential costs that might be incurred if the bill were to be passed, so as not to either underestimate or overestimate the reality of the situation.

As I have stated throughout, these estimates will have to be refined, because times have changed since the financial memorandum was written. We will provide updates on all of that as soon as we can, and will do so again if there is any other material change.

There are some assumptions that I do not think 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 should move forward. I do not want that to be the case, because I need everybody at the table with open minds, and, obviously, there will be parameters around the co-design. In those circumstances, I again pledge to the committee and to Parliament that, as we develop all of that, we will be open and transparent about the expected financial costs of all of that work.

Ms Bennett is the expert on the financial memorandum. She wrote it, and she is probably sick of and fed up with my questioning on all of this. However, I ask her to cover some of the other aspects around this, some of which is in the FM itself.

You have understood the situation correctly. For me, one of the main frustrations has been collecting data to ensure that we can design services correctly not only for today but for tomorrow. It can be frustrating just to get even basic information, and we need to turn that situation around dramatically to ensure that we have services that are fit for the future. The length of time that it takes to get certain basic information in order to make key decisions is frustrating, too.

Those frustrations are felt not only by Government but by stakeholders. For those folks whom Mr Gibson mentioned and who feel that it might take them a little bit more time to do some of this data collection work, it might be better if we were able to get all of that data, as that would prevent them from having to do their own research.

Donna Bell might want to add to that.

Often, some of the third sector partners that work across local authorities offer very specialised services that have very few clients, but some of the bureaucracy involved causes them a lot of grief and costs them a lot of time and resource. That is money that the partners would rather spend on helping folks. A refinement is without a doubt required there.

Absolutely.

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. There are concerns. We will talk to and listen to folk about their concerns and will work our way through those with them.

I come back to a point that I made before. You have heard it in evidence here and other committees have heard the same. Folks want answers to some of the questions on aspects that we have said will be subject to co-design. I cannot, at the moment, make assumptions about that or we will lose the confidence of those folks who want to help us to co-design services as we move forward.

I come back to the point that we want to ensure that we have good law and good implementation, and that we bridge the implementation gap. The only way that we can do that well is by having the voices of lived experience—and of other stakeholders who have not previously been involved to this degree in the shaping of services—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 as possible in this whole process, but I am not able to answer questions now about certain aspects of it, because if I did that, the co-design would be said by many to be a sham.

The rephasing that Ms Bell has outlined is to ensure that we have the right skills in place as we move forward. We will continue to ensure that we have the resource to allow for meaningful engagement with people with lived and living experience and other stakeholders. However, we will give the committee more detail on that issue, too.