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I will let colleagues come in in a minute or two. Although I have given you quite a barrage of questions, there are huge areas that we have not touched on. I will ask one more question to Ralph Roberts, Mark Taylor and Emma Congreve, and then I will open up the session. Ralph, the potential for efficiency savings has been spoken about but, in your written submission, you said that

“it would be difficult to find additional efficiency savings”.

If those cannot be found, must the Scottish Government make a commitment to meet the cost, or should the cost be shared? Do you hope that efficiency savings can somehow be found? If so, where could they possibly be found?

It does—thank you.

Mark, you commented that paragraph 51 of the financial memorandum

“provides details of the components of core management costs assessed, but the subsequent analysis does not provide any information against these headings.”

What level of cost could we be talking about?

Emma, you say in your submission:

“The creation of an electronic integrated health and social care record is in the legislation, but no costing has been produced. The reason given is that the work is at a too early stage to estimate costs, but it will be provided in the Programme business case due in Autumn 2022.”

We are now in the autumn. Have you been advised as to when those figures will be provided, if they have not been provided already?

Ralph, you state in your submission:

“The purpose of creating the NCS is to improve the delivery of community health and social care together. The clear definition of community health is not evident within the Bill and therefore it is significantly more challenging to understand the financial implications on services and costs.”

What impact might that have?

Good morning, and welcome to the 27th meeting in 2022 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. The first item on our agenda is an evidence session on the financial memorandum to the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill.

I welcome to the meeting Mark Taylor, audit director at Audit Scotland; Emma Congreve, knowledge exchange fellow at the Fraser of Allander Institute; Hannah Tweed, senior policy officer at the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland, which will be referred to throughout this morning’s session as the alliance; and Ralph Roberts, chief executive of NHS Borders, NHS Scotland. I thank all the witnesses for joining us and for their written submissions, which we obviously have questions about.

We will move straight to questions. I will kick off with a question for Mark Taylor. I would like an explanation of what you mean by the word “significant”. In your submission, you say:

“there is likely to be a significant degree of variation in the treatment of central support service costs and other ‘overheads’.”

You talk about “significant” this and “significant” that. I would like to better gauge what you are talking about. For example, you refer to

“the significant amount of uncertainty set out in the financial memorandum”.

Can you give a bit more information about what you mean by that?

My only concern is about the range of numbers. Obviously, “significant” means different things to different people, so I just wanted to see whether I could pin you down a bit more on that.

Hannah Tweed, in your submission, you suggest that

“the financial memorandum does not provide sufficient detail on funding plans to assure the sector of sufficient investment to see the proposals implemented—particularly given the significant impact of the cost of living crisis on the third and independent sectors, as evidenced by recent work by SCVO.”

Obviously, you, too, have significant concerns. If there is a shortfall in relation to what the financial memorandum hopes to deliver, do you have any idea of what that shortfall might be?

I have been very neglectful this morning. I have not given the apologies from my colleagues John Mason and Ross Greer. They are coming to the meeting, but they have, unfortunately, been held up by train difficulties on their way through from Glasgow. I apologise for not saying that earlier on.

Emma Congreve mentioned a gap. NHS Scotland said in its submission:

“There is no detail about which community and mental health services were included within the financial memorandum.”

Therefore, that is a gap that concerns it.

Your response to question 7 talks about the volatility of inflation and about costs that have not yet been assessed. You also say that the

“variability of cost of staff harmonisation/rationalisation highlighted in paragraph 54 is not reflected in the range quoted.”

You use the word “significant” in saying:

“In our view there is likely to be significant uncertainty about the cost of harmonisation that goes beyond the extent of services and staff groups involved.”

What range would be more realistic than the range that has been quoted?

Hannah Tweed was nodding while Mark Taylor spoke. Your submission quotes paragraph 56 of the financial memorandum, which says:

“It is not anticipated that the establishment of the NCS and care boards, and the transfer of functions to those bodies, will have any financial implications for any other public bodies, businesses or third sector organisations, or for individuals.”

You disagree with that.

We are not looking for specific pounds, shillings and pence costs at this stage, but we are looking to see whether the parameters are correct and whether the best estimates have been delivered in the financial memorandum.

Cost underpinnings are important, because we are looking at structural changes and there seem to be colossal sums involved. We are not talking about building new headquarters for each of the boards or anything like that, but we are talking about hundreds of millions of pounds, and it is important to know how the figures have been arrived at, how accurate they are and so on. Do we have the best estimates?