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There has been a significant increase in front-line investment in the current parliamentary session. Our ambition was to increase investment by a quarter, and we achieved that earlier than expected. I expect, given our ageing demographic, that our front-line costs will increase in the next five years.

The financial memorandum is about the cost of the bill, not the cost of social care. At the moment, we spend £5.75 billion per year on social care.

The £345 million does cover some front-line services.

Absolutely. Part of the reason for having this discussion is that we make sure that members of the committee understand that there are things that we can do by different means. There are subtle differences in how we can achieve things.

Take Anne’s law, for example. Relatives of care home residents were initially very keen on the idea of that being achieved through primary legislation. One reason for wishing to use primary legislation is that it cannot be changed so easily. Were we to face another pandemic, changing primary legislation would require a level of scrutiny from Parliament that changing secondary regulations would not require: the latter do not attract the same level of scrutiny.

There are definitely different ways to achieve the same thing. I need to spend time listening to stakeholders and to political parties in Parliament, then I will need to navigate a way forward. It is really important that I work closely with stakeholders. I am content to come back to you with a clearer idea and a proposal. In my letter, when I asked for a pause, I said that I would like to set out in the new year what I think the next steps are likely to be.

The Government thought that the legislative proposals that we brought forward would deliver the change that is needed.

On how integration joint boards operate, there are clearly challenges with regard to the different cohorts that are represented on the IJBs. We need to provide support and training to ensure that IJBs are able to act as a whole as well as representing their individual constituency. For example, when a local councillor sits on an IJB, they are not simply representing the council’s view; they are also representing citizens. We could provide more support to enable that representation.

I am absolutely determined that an equal seat at the table for people with lived experience would bring better focus, grip, assurance and scrutiny to the local system. People with lived experience need representation at local and national levels, and the Feeley review was clear that one of the main ways in which we would deliver a human rights-based approach to social care would be by ensuring that people with lived experience had a seat and a voice at the table at local and national levels.

There are challenges. I hear clearly from carers’ and service users’ representatives that there is a power imbalance round the table, but there are things that we could do to support people to ensure that they are able to represent users and lived experience effectively. We could put supports in place to ensure that that process works really well, which would deliver a level of grip and assurance that is not there at the moment.

You are absolutely correct—there are real challenges. There are some structural reasons why the social care workforce is disempowered compared to other workforces. First, caring is not generally valued in society. That is not my view, but care is regarded as a drain on society rather than as an investment in society globally. We need to shift that narrative.

It is a largely female workforce; I think that more than 80 per cent of the workforce is female, and we know that, even 50 years or so after the equal pay legislation came in, women are not paid equally in society.

The workforce is also largely non-unionised. Less than 20 per cent of the workforce is unionised—I think that the figure is just about 19 per cent. The workers who are unionised are largely those who work for local authorities. Social care workers in the private sector tend not to be unionised. I think that many of us around the table would have concerns about that and would recognise that unionisation would be a way of strengthening the workforce’s hand and ensuring that they were empowered and recognised within the system.

I regularly talk to unions about that—I say, “I’m not sure if you think I’m an unusual sort of Government minister, but I would be far more comfortable if this workforce were more unionised”. I cannot introduce unionisation to the workforce; in lieu of that, I can work with the unions to take away some of the barriers. We are working carefully on sectoral bargaining. We think that that is very close to being ready and that it will deliver an improvement in pay and conditions for the sector. Sectoral bargaining has been really challenging to deliver, and the unions were very helpful to us in recommending academics who could help us to unlock some of the barriers. The challenge is that there are more than 1,000 different employers and we in Government are not part of the negotiations, but I think that we have managed to make really substantial progress, so I am pleased about that.

We need to try and give effective voice to the workers in the sector. I should make it clear that when I talk about lived experience, I am talking about the lived experience of people who access social care—people who use social care, their carers, the people whose loved ones use social care, and the people who work in social care. To me, those are the voices of lived experience, and they need to have representation. My idea for the national care service board was that people working in social care would have representation on the board as well.

There are things that we can do. We will work with the UK legislation that is being introduced. Many of the barriers to progressing fair work in Scotland are because employment law is reserved, so we do not have the power to tackle many of the issues. We try to get around that through procurement and commissioning.

We now have a different Government in the UK and the legislation that it has introduced is interesting. We are significantly further ahead in Scotland in delivering fair work in social care, and I am keen to work with the UK Government on the issue. Of course, I want it to devolve powers to the Scottish Government because we are much further on, and the social care situation in Scotland is sufficiently different from that of England to warrant it. We will work together however we can to ensure that we make a difference to the people who work in social care.

The other thing that we do regularly is talk up social care. I am not sure how much difference that makes, but I do that because I see social care as a massive investment in society. I think that I have spoken to the committee previously about attending a national forum at the Glasgow Science Centre and seeing on the wall there a quote from Stephen Hawking, who made an incredible global contribution to our understanding of the world and the universe that we live in. He would not have been able to make that contribution if he did not have social care. Social care is absolutely vital to the individuals who access it and their families, and it is vital to our communities and our society. It makes a profound difference to our society, and we must all say that loudly and clearly as often as possible.

I will bring in Donna Bell, who was very close to the ELAG. The ELAG was brought into being largely because Parliament suggested, during stage 1, that we needed to put together such a group. We were already in the process of hearing from and listening to stakeholders a great deal. I will check with Donna, but I think that more than 70 organisations were involved in the group.

Absolutely, and I will be looking for allies who will work with me on the things that we agree on—and we agree on a great deal. I will be looking for allies across Parliament who will help me to progress the changes that we all want to see. I rarely hear from parliamentarians here that they want things to stay the same. I think that everybody acknowledges that the system needs fundamental change, so we need to work together on what that change will be.

Given the complexity of social care and the number of stakeholders involved, it was very likely that no single stakeholder view would be reflected in the bill. However, each of them was heard and the bill was developed with their collaboration. We worked hard to bring to life what people were telling us.

Do you want to say more, Donna?

Anne’s law will be implemented as soon as is practically possible. I think that the care home relatives know and understand the challenges that we are facing. Anne’s law will engage the European convention on human rights, and when we are balancing human rights, it is always tricky to get the legislation correct. They understand the complexity, the sensitivity and the challenges that are involved, and we are working very closely with them to get the balance right on those rights. I assure them that we will deliver Anne’s law. We need to take time to get it correct. As I said in my letter to the committee, I will come back with a new timetable for the new year, so I do not think that they are going to be waiting terribly long. I do not think that there will be a long delay.

There has been lots of discussion about how long it will take for the national care service to come into being once the legislation has been passed. There have been quite a lot of headlines in the newspapers about how many years it will take for that to happen. Anne’s law could be implemented immediately, as soon as the bill is given royal assent. As soon as the bill becomes an act, we could see rapid implementation from that point on, and we would be working to deliver it as soon as was reasonably practicable. I am remembering my Government jargon: as soon as is reasonably practicable and as soon as the bill becomes an act, we will be working hard to deliver it for them. There is no reason to wait.

As I said, we meet weekly with local systems—every one—across the country. The Cabinet visited Ayrshire recently to meet system leaders and had detailed discussions about some of the challenges that they face.

We very regularly meet people in some of the areas that face particularly difficult challenges, in order to drill down to find the explanation for local variation. For example, as part of my ministerial role I have regular meetings with Highland systems to look at why their delayed discharge rate is so high compared with rates in the rest of the country. There are some reasons for that—for example, rurality and poverty have an impact. However there is undoubtedly a level of variation that is not explainable only by those factors. The challenges that are faced in Highland in delivery of social care—the geography, topography, sparse population, labour market shortages and competition with hospitality in the labour market—also apply in Argyll and Bute, for example, which does not face the same challenge in respect of delayed discharges.