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We have said that we are on a trajectory of increasing funding for social care. I have been clear that I agree with Feeley that, if we do this right, there will undoubtedly be efficiency savings. The obvious example is that early intervention and prevention is not only significantly better for the individual but saves a great deal of money and means that we can help more people.

We absolutely recognise that there is unmet need out there and that, if we make the system easier to access and navigate and we take a rights-based approach, there will be an increase in access.

I do not envisage any additional unfunded costs. We are working hard to establish the costs, just as we do with the introduction of any new system. As Richard McCallum said, there is a budget process every year and, as part of that process, we sit down with our local authority partners and look at what requires to go into the funding.

What happens every year is that we do our costings, they do their costings, we come together and there is a negotiation.

In general, councils let COSLA negotiate on their behalf. That is the mechanism that is in place for us to interact with councils. However, in the course of my work and my efforts on the bill, I meet individual councils, which sometimes raise concerns with me.

As I said, that is not the main concern that people come to me with.

I think that local planning and delivery are key. With regard to national representation, COSLA has its own democratic functions and structures. I interact with Paul Kelly—given how regularly we meet these days, we are tired of seeing each other. We are the poster girl and boy for the Verity house agreement. He is a North Lanarkshire councillor, but his work is very closely linked to that of the COSLA leaders, who represent every part of Scotland.

Therefore, I have no concern that COSLA is unable to represent rural and island views. I think that there are sufficient democratic structures in COSLA to ensure that the voice and the concerns of rural and island council areas can be heard and represented.

We have done a great deal of economic modelling, but I have pointed to the areas where there is still uncertainty and where more robust modelling is required. There is still some uncertainty in quantifying the unmet need that the system currently does not capture.

We will see whether we can bring you back a little bit more detail on the workforce that is out there, the number of people who are employed in social care at the moment, and how we expect that to change should we have a fully functioning social care system. I think that that is what you are asking for.

At the moment, there are clear areas in which agency spend, for example, is really high because of the lack of workforce. With the improvement that we intend to bring to the system with a functioning social care system, having the workforce in place need not cost more in every case—it may actually cost less to deliver if we have an appropriate workforce and we are not spending phenomenal sums of money on agency staff. I will see whether I can get the committee more detail on that.

Good morning, and thank you for inviting me to speak today on the financial information that I provided to the committee on 11 December 2023 in response to the committee’s stage 1 report on the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill. My officials updated you on Tuesday on the details of the finances and our thinking behind them, so I want to take the opportunity to update you on the work that we have been doing since I gave evidence to the committee in September last year.

Since summer 2023, we have worked with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the national health service to agree on a statement of shared accountability. There has been weekly engagement between the Scottish Government, COSLA and the NHS. Those weekly talks have built on the shared accountability consensus that was reached on 30 June 2023, and have created a revised version of the national care service. I will set out the impact of that agreement on our plans for the bill in a moment. We have also been working hard in discussion with stakeholders, through numerous regional events and meetings during the second half of 2023.

I believe that the proposals for reform to the existing system are highly reasonable and balanced, and they accommodate as far as possible COSLA’s position, while ensuring that we can still effect the real change and improvements that people who are using the services today require and deserve. The proposals will also cost far less to implement than the initial plan. Indeed, our forecast over a 10-year period is for a drop in costs of between £249 million and £1.276 billion.

I note that, on Tuesday, my officials provided some comparative costs to clarify the scale of the changes for the bill as introduced, as well as for the proposed amendments at stage 2. Those have, unfortunately, been misreported to the media. The revised financial memorandum now contains the anticipated costs of the bill as introduced, and they are substantially less than the figures that were misquoted.

The case for change has been made unequivocally through the independent review of adult social care, through our on-going co-design discussions with people with lived experience, and through almost every exchange that I have had with people who work in and receive services from the social work and social care sector. We already spend more than £5.2 billion per year on social care, as per the 2021-22 local finance returns data, but that spend is not transparent and it is not clear to people who need social care who is accountable for the service that they receive.

We cannot just think about the financial costs in isolation. The establishment of the national care service will deliver many plausible benefits. For example, improving care and support services could help to reduce barriers to an individual’s ability or opportunity to work, to increase their working hours or even to take up a new job, thus enabling more people to contribute to the economy.

Looking ahead from the shared accountability discussions, the three main changes that we want to make to the NCS bill are that local authorities will retain responsibility for all current functions and delivery of social work and social care services, with no transfer of staff or assets; reform of integration authorities, rather than the creation of new care boards; and the establishment of a national care service board to oversee delivery across Scotland.

Subject to the will of the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Government proposes to make amendments to the bill at stage 2 in response to evidence that was taken at stage 1 and on-going feedback from stakeholders. Although those are the main changes that I intend to make at stage 2, they and any others will, of course, be influenced by the consideration of this and other committees at stage 1.

My letter of 11 December 2023 set out the changes that will reduce the cost of the bill substantially by removing the need to set up care boards and to transfer staff and assets. It is a £249 million to £1.276 billion saving. There will be some new costs associated with reforming integration authorities and establishing a national board, but the overall costs are greatly reduced. Costs are also reduced because the new proposal phases in reforms over a much longer timeframe than was originally intended.

However, over the next 10 years, we must spend a certain amount on setting up the national care service in order to save in the long-term future. If we get the national care service right, we will, potentially, save a great deal by empowering people to live their best life, and to remain active in society and the economy. That is perhaps the best saving that any of us in Government can make, because it means having an economy of greater wellbeing as well as one of greater resources.

We have worked enormously hard to reach a consensus with stakeholders, and I am confident that we have reached the best position from which to go forward. We continue to discuss and co-design the NCS with stakeholders. In some ways, that process, in one form or other, will never stop, because the NCS will inevitably evolve to meet the needs of people who need it, and we will continue to involve the voice of lived experience in that evolution. Financially speaking, our revised proposals reflect the challenges of a new fiscal environment in which we must demonstrate value for money.

I hope that I have given you an overview of where we are with the NCS now, and I am very happy to take any questions that you might have.

Donna Bell wants to come in on that. I suppose that the thing to emphasise is the cost of the national care service relative to the cost of social care spend. The cost of the national care service, from 2031-32, would represent between 0.54 and 0.82 per cent—less than 1 per cent—of spend on social care. It represents between 0.2 and 0.31 per cent of the entire spend on health and social care, so the cost of the bill is relatively small compared with the enormous amount that is being spent on social care. It is important that everyone understands that.