Chamber and committees

Welcome back. We now move to our second evidence session on the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill. I am delighted that everyone is here in person—it is a treat not to have to look at both the screen and the faces of people in the room. I welcome Alison Leitch and Cathie Russell, from care home relatives Scotland; Dr Kainde Manji, head of dementia for Age Scotland’s “About Dementia” project; Henry Simmons, who is the chief executive of Alzheimer Scotland; and Adam Stachura, who is head of policy and communications for Age Scotland.

It has become my tradition in our scrutiny sessions to ask witnesses for their views on the bill as it stands and about their hopes for how the national care service might address the unmet need that people have experienced. I will go round everyone. As always, I note that although I have a round-robin question for everyone, other members will not have that luxury or we would quickly run out of time. Members will direct their questions to specific witnesses.

I turn first to Alison Leitch.

Paul O’Kane, can I bring Emma Harper in before I come back to you?

Well, do what you will with your five minutes. [Laughter.]

I thank all of you for your time this morning. It will be very helpful and valuable to us as we move on to thinking about the questions that we want to put to the minister next week.

Agenda item 3 is consideration of a notification from the Scottish ministers for consent to a statutory instrument. The purpose of the statutory instrument is to make provisions for minor technical amendments to units and forms of nutrients in various pieces of nutrition legislation in order to ensure uniform and coherent interpretation of regulations, as well as alignment with the European Union, of which Northern Ireland remains a part.

Under the protocol between the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government, the consent notification has been categorised as type 1, which means that the Scottish Parliament’s agreement is sought before the Scottish Government gives consent to the United Kingdom Government to make secondary legislation in an area of devolved competence.

Do members have any comments on the instrument?

As members have no further comments, is the committee content that the provisions that are set out in the notification should be included in the proposed UK SI?

Members indicated agreement.

I will go to the witnesses who are in the room before we go to Karen.

Paul O’Kane, will you re-emphasise what your point was? You wanted to ask Karen Sheridan a question but she might not have caught it all.

I know—sometimes, I have to remember that I am meant to be asking questions. Mhairi Wylie wants to say something.

That might be because a lot of the detail that you are looking for will come after the co-design process. Do you recognise that that is the vehicle? Because it was successful with the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018, the co-design will inform the secondary legislation. Do you feel that there must be more detail ahead of that co-design?