Chamber and committees

We will move on to finances, in more detail.

I will stop you there, because my colleagues will ask about the details. I was asking about the co-design process. You have made it clear that you feel that you should be actively involved in the co-design process, and you alluded to being involved in the formation of the care boards.

I will bring in my colleagues. There will be ample opportunity for witnesses to come back to those issues.

The next agenda item is further consideration of the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill, with two evidence sessions. Both panels will focus on the bill as it relates to the workforce, employment, training and development and contractual arrangements. The first panel is comprised of representatives from several professional bodies and regulators representing sections of the health, social care and social work workforce.

I welcome those who are attending in person. We have Maree Allison, acting chief executive, Scottish Social Services Council; Alison Bavidge, national director, Scottish Association of Social Work; Kay McVeigh, head of personnel services, South Lanarkshire Council, and Society of Personnel and Development Scotland portfolio lead for workforce planning; and Colin Poolman, director, Royal College of Nursing for Scotland. Joining us online, we have Sharon Wiener-Ogilvie, deputy chair, Allied Health Professions Federation Scotland.

Good morning to you all and welcome. I will go around all of you initially to get your views. My colleagues will probably direct their questions to a specific person, but if you have something to add and want to chime in, just catch my eye and I will come to you. It would be lovely to think that we could go round the whole panel with every question, but we would run out of time very quickly if we did that. Sharon, as you are online, you can use the chat box to let me know when you want to come in.

I will ask you all about the co-design idea and process. As we have been scrutinising this bill and speaking to various stakeholders, we have been finding that there are questions about the idea of having a framework bill that sets out that there will be a national care service, with some quite high-level things to be put in statute about that. However, the co-design process will happen after that and inform secondary legislation, which is quite different from how legislation normally works. I suppose that the nearest example would be the Social Security (Scotland) Bill. There is an expectation that a lot of the detail will be created through that process of collaboration and co-design. Do you support that approach or do you have any concerns about it?

Therefore, in effect, that co-design has already started. Legislators such as the members of this committee are looking at the framework bill, but a lot of that co-design is well under way.

I will bring in Sharon Wiener-Ogilvie. We must then move on to a question from Sandesh Gulhane. We have to pick up the pace a little, colleagues. We have only an hour and a half.

Okay. I will bring in Sharon Wiener-Ogilvie, who joins us online.

We move on to training and research.

Does anyone want to respond?

Stephanie Callaghan has a question on that issue.

Do you not agree with the idea of having a co-design process to inform the secondary legislation that will then provide that detail? Would you rather the bill be completely prescriptive about everything and do away with the co-design process, or do you agree that this way of doing things might mean a bottom-up rather than a top-down approach?