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Good morning, and welcome to the fourth meeting of the Finance and Public Administration Committee in 2024.

The only item on our public agenda today is an evidence session with Scottish Government officials to discuss the Government’s response to the committee’s report on the original financial memorandum for the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill and the information that is presented in the updated financial memorandum, which was provided to the committee on 11 December last year.

We are joined today, from the Scottish Government, by Donna Bell, who is the director of social care and national care service development; Lee Flannigan, who is the national care service senior finance manager; and Richard McCallum, who is the director of health and social care finance, digital and governance. I welcome you all to the committee; I understand that Ms Bell will make a brief opening statement.

Ross Greer, one of our members, is struggling to get here in time due to transport difficulties, but hopes to join us before too long.

Over to you, Donna.

That is the point that I am making.

Thank you for that.

The Scottish Government and COSLA are operating a partnership approach to provide legal accountability—accountability is one of the issues that you touched on in your opening remarks, Donna. In an update, the minister stated that that was to

“improve the experience of people accessing services by introducing a new structure of national oversight to drive consistency of outcomes while maximising the benefits of reformed local service delivery”,

which would

“provide Scottish Ministers, local authorities and NHS boards with overarching shared accountability for the care system.”

Is that not a recipe for confusion? How will the partnership with local authorities, national health service boards and Scottish ministers relate to the new national board, the exact format of which is still to be decided?

Do you see the national board as being a fairly small but perfectly formed board, such as that of Community Justice Scotland, with perhaps 45 staff members, or as a much more encompassing organisation? We need to have more clarity on costs and staff numbers. Can you share any information on that?

I will let others ask further questions on that.

Table 2 of the new financial memorandum shows costs to the Scottish Administration of between £128 million and £193 million, but it is unclear whether those costs are associated with the establishment of the board.

The new financial memorandum is only nine pages long, whereas the previous one was 28 pages long. It feels as though a wee bit more detail could have been provided.

I appreciate that there is no point in talking about the transfer of local authority workers if that is not going to happen. However, we are keen to get a bit further under the skin of the financial memorandum, because of the bill’s importance from a financial perspective.

I open up the session to committee members, the first of whom to ask questions will be John Mason.

Thank you. I should have said that it is Michelle next, not Michael; so, it is Michelle Thomson to be followed by Michael Marra.

My final question is about timescale. We have seen a one-year delay in the stage 1 process; however, we also see that there is a three-year delay in full implementation of the bill, to 2028-29. That is more than four years away. We will have a stage 1 debate in a few weeks, and then we are gonnae have more than four years before the bill is fully implemented.

It is hard to see why that is the case, given that there has, in fact, been a reduction in what the bill is trying to achieve. We will not see the transfer of 75,000 staff, assets and so on, and we are not going to have 31—or potentially 32—care boards: we will have one national care board.

It almost seems as if there is a lack of a sense of urgency in all this. Is it because there is a lack of resources for delivery? Can you advise us as to why we are seeing such a huge delay in the actual delivery of the bill?

I am struggling to have confidence in the process, given how far on we are. It is 15 months since we last discussed and deliberated on the previous financial memorandum. One would have thought that some of this would have been pinned down a bit more by now. However, I will move on, as colleagues will want to come in with further questions on that area.

One issue that has concerned the committee from the start has been co-design. As a committee, we are much more in favour of having primary legislation, for scrutiny reasons and because it helps to pin down costs. The problem with the framework and co-design approach is that there are increased uncertainties around the cost estimates and the timing of those costs.

Given that it has been around 15 months since we last deliberated on the financial memorandum, how have we moved forward in terms of co-design? How much of that co-design will now be incorporated into the primary legislation, perhaps through amendments at stage 2?

Given the length and detail of your answer, it sounds as though we are in a situation whereby we still do not really know where we are with the national care board. The stage 1 debate will take place in only a few weeks. I know for certain that parliamentarians will want answers and will demand them of the minister in that stage 1 debate. When will the hatch be battened down in that regard? Will we have that information before the stage 1 debate?