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I represent a rural area, and I absolutely recognise that, in my part of the country, it is not about money; it is about a lack of people. The ageing demographic in some parts of rural Scotland means that it is very hard to find young people of working age to take on those roles. I do not have a quantification of that, but I point to the on-going work across the board. It is not just about improving pay; it is also about improving terms and conditions as well as ethical commissioning.

There is work on fair work outside the bill, and there is very close working with the sector on improving recruitment, advertising, marketing, firming up pipelines, and making sure that it is simple for people to get qualifications and registration when they come into the sector, that they are supported when they come into it, and that there are pathways to qualification for professions for people who work in the sector who might like to study for the regulated professions that require degree-level education, such as nursing and social work. We recognise that there is a lot to be done to support the workforce. Much of that work is happening outside the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill.

On what the bill will deliver for the workforce, ethical commissioning is a real step forward. From that ethical commissioning, we will deliver better pay and conditions for the workforce, and there will undoubtedly be an increase in status for the workforce.

We are very fixated on the costs and economic benefits. The question that I put back to the committee is whether we can afford not to do it. We are spending a great—

That is a clear economic saving. As I said, we can literally support twice as many people if we provide an early intervention and prevention package, rather than providing a full package of care after a crisis has been reached. That means that we can support twice as many people with half as many staff.

There are some councils—certainly the local authority in the area that I represent—that have large underspends in that area because they cannot recruit the workforce. They have the money, but they cannot spend it.

At the core of what we are talking about is what the bill is going to deliver. We have discussed in great detail some aspects of the bill. One aspect is ethical commissioning. Bringing in ethical commissioning and procurement will undoubtedly improve pay, and it will improve terms and conditions. That will make a difference to people working on the ground.

The national board, which we have discussed in great detail, will provide better oversight and governance, as well as a system of escalating support that will be welcome to the many people I meet day in, day out who work in the system and who are distressed by the situations that they are exposed to in which the system is failing to function at the moment, because they really care.

We have the national and regional work on complex care. The national social work agency will undoubtedly improve things for the social work profession—I have absolutely no doubt about that. At the moment, social workers are employed under 32 different sets of pay and conditions around the country, and there is very little in the way of workforce planning and support for newly qualified practitioners and for practitioners who are following an advanced pathway, which is also patchy. The national social work agency will undoubtedly improve that.

Do I believe that the bill will improve things for workers collectively? Yes, I do. Alongside the bill, the Scottish Government is committed to improving workers’ pay. We have demonstrated that by increasing the pay of social care workers in Scotland to £12 an hour from next April. That is a 14.9 per cent increase over the past two years. Although I agree that we need to go further, that means that social care workers in Scotland are the best paid in the United Kingdom and are paid substantially more than their equivalents in England and Wales.

A number of factors have come into the revised timeline, one of which is resource. Everybody is aware that we are in a different financial situation from the one that we were in when we introduced the idea of a national care service, and that we must work within our means. Therefore, our ambition has not dimmed, but the fact that we are slowing the pace of change means that the cost will be spread out over a number of years.

There are other issues. It is helpful that you highlighted the situation of the people who depend on social care and who expect to benefit from the bill.

Social care in Scotland is a really complex system and we need to manage carefully the changeover from where we are to where are going in order to ensure that we maintain services at all times, and that there is no system failure. We have to be much clearer about the steps that are required to navigate that changeover safely, both from a financial perspective and in relation to service delivery failure for people who access care.

Of course, we are not going to delay absolutely everything. As with any law, some parts of the legislation will commence sooner than others. For example, we have done a great deal of work on Anne’s law and I meet regularly with Care Home Relatives Scotland. We have, largely, put in a place a solution to the problem as framed by Anne’s law; the legislation in the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill will catch up with that and make it law. That will be implemented as soon as possible, once the bill is passed. We will not be waiting years for everything to happen.

The cost is £134 million, but it could be significantly higher. If we could reduce delayed discharges, there would obviously be a benefit.

Young carers tell us that their ability to attend school—never mind to concentrate at school and achieve their potential—is impacted by their caring responsibilities. If the care system works and we can remove some of the burden from young carers, I expect a huge impact, not just on the lives of those young carers now, but on their future prospects, because they will be able to achieve more at school. It is really hard to quantify that.

In Scotland, one in four people is economically inactive. That is due in part to inability to access social care and to the amount of unpaid carers. We hear directly that caring for people in the community is largely invisible and unquantified women’s work. If we had an impact on that, the people who are being cared for could contribute to the economy, as could people who are having to cut their working hours to provide care. We have heard very clearly from unpaid carers that they have had to cut their hours or stop working in order to fulfil caring duties. There will undoubtedly be economic benefits and impacts from the investment; we are working hard to quantify them.

As you would expect, I passionately believe in the national care service. I am absolutely certain that it is morally and ethically the right thing to do. I recognise that there is unmet need out there. Feeley spoke in his independent review about the fact that there is unmet need and that we have to increase our investment in social care.

We are currently increasing our investment in social care. We have committed to increasing our investment by a quarter in this session of Parliament and we are ahead of trajectory on that. I am certain that it is economically the right thing to do and that there will be economic returns from the investment, as well as it being the right thing to do. I will work hard to ensure that I can provide the committee with back-up information on that.

The local delivery plan being overseen and scrutinised by the national care board will help to ensure that the outcomes that are outlined in the local delivery plan are achieved. At the moment, there is not that level of external scrutiny of whether what local areas say will happen happens, or that strategic thinking about commissioning—it works well in some areas and less well in other areas. The oversight from the national care board and its ability to step in and support if there is service delivery failure will improve the situation.

You asked about the money getting to where it should be. Everybody agrees with this: the local authorities and the NHS have agreed to share accountability, much of which is, at the moment, entirely in local authorities’ hands. They have agreed to shared accountability in order to improve the situation and that will go some way towards doing so.

The evidence for early intervention and prevention is relatively strong. More than 10 years ago, the Christie commission made a strong case for early spend—in other words, for preventing people from falling into the river rather than having to pick them out of the river.

There is robust detail about the economic benefit of early intervention and prevention—we have fairly robust calculations on that. I am not sure where the 1 per cent assumption that you have talked about came from, but the fact is that we are running a very costly system. Social care costs Scotland enormous sums of money every year, and everyone accepts that what we are delivering is not of the standard that we want.

The national care service provides an opportunity for us to improve social care delivery. I absolutely agree that there might well be costs. Feeley calculated that, as the business case says, social care would be beneficial for 36,000 people in Scotland who do not currently have access to it. I agree that there might be costs that we are uncertain about, but I am certain that, if we can deliver better care—which we will do through the national care service—we will save money and bring money back into the public purse.

We can calculate the wellbeing impact on the 36,000 people. If just 10 per cent of them—3,600 people—experienced a 0.1 point improvement in their wellbeing on the life satisfaction scale, the annual benefit could be worth about £5 million.

We are still working hard to establish the costs of carers’ breaks. As you will see in the revised financial information, there remains quite a level of variance on that. We are seeing improvements in carers’ rights to have a break: we are putting funding into that, without the legislation having to make that change. We will consider very carefully the costs and how quickly we can implement carers’ breaks after the bill is passed.

I would need to read the letter and get back to Social Work Scotland on the detail of it. Unfortunately, I have not seen the letter. Lee Flannigan saw it last night, but it was not addressed to us.