Chamber and committees

Thanks very much.

My main question is for Mr Cameron. In your submission, you have suggested that there has been a lower turnover of social lets or lets from RSLs. Can you give us a bit more on that? Why do you think that that is the case? Presumably, people are dying at much the same rate as they always did.

But whether people move or stay does not affect the total number of houses available, does it?

I accept that things are changing at the moment and that you are taking on new stuff, so it is quite hard, but should there not be some kind of target? Otherwise is there not a danger that costs will run away with themselves? We look at charities and say that, if they are spending 10 per cent on admin, there is something wrong.

Briefly, if you would. We have a lot of questions.

I understand that the Government has an assumption against the creation of new bodies unless there is a very good reason for it.

Right, so you have not decided that—that is fine.

On Tuesday, as your colleagues will remember, I asked about integration authorities and will touch on that again. I asked about the relationship between integration authorities and what sits around them: councils, the NHS and the new national care board. My feeling is that, in the past, because councils and the NHS viewed budgets in slightly different ways, that caused a bit of a challenge for the integration authorities, and I wonder whether that will become more complex once we have the national care board as well.

How quickly would even the one that we know about be met? I should probably say that I used to work in the care sector. However, to take a personal example, my mother was falling regularly and we as a family decided that she needed to be in a care home. It took quite some time for the local authority to confirm that she needed to be in a care home, although it eventually did. During that gap period, my mother was able to afford the fees. The council made its contribution eventually. Will that change at all?

Are they happy with where we are going?

Is that unmet need that we have to meet included in the budget, or will that be additional, further down the line?

So the bill will make the system better, but it will not produce more money. One reason why South Lanarkshire Council could not put my mother in a care home was that it did not have enough money. The bill will not put more money into the number of people in care.