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I am more than happy to work on the detail of that. Within the NHS, general practitioners are private contractors and run profit-making businesses, but they do so in a way that upholds the standards and ethos of the national health service, and they deliver a high-quality service to patients. Most people do not realise that GPs are private businesses.

Private business can work really well in healthcare, and I am sure that they can do so in social care. We need the contract to be absolutely focused on the areas that are important to us, including quality standards, governance and the fair work ethos. There may well be room for building in something about ethical investments and financial regulations, so that people are not using public money to play the stock market.

Absolutely. I am always keen to hear the perspective of young carers. You are absolutely right: we need the voices of unpaid carers to be at the core of the development. I say time and again that the voice of lived experience helps us. It is key to the way that we develop policy in Scotland. It helps us to get the policy right in the first place, and then those people hold our feet to the fire with regard to delivery, because they are still involved. It is a really good way of doing things. It is better to get it right first time.

Good morning, and thank you for inviting me to speak about the Powers of Attorney Bill and the associated legislative consent memorandum.

Powers of attorney appointments are incredibly powerful and useful. They allow people to retain control over aspects of their lives in circumstances in which they might not otherwise be able to make decisions or take actions. They ensure that people have the opportunity to make provision for a future in which they might no longer have the mental capacity to understand what is happening to them and therefore to make decisions about the things that they care about.

The Powers of Attorney Bill is intended to modernise the process for making and registering English and Welsh lasting powers of attorney. The bill also adds chartered legal executives to the list of individuals who can certify a copy of a power of attorney.

The bill is a private member’s bill. It was introduced by Stephen Metcalfe MP in the House of Commons on 15 June 2022. The bill passed the committee stage in the House of Commons on 1 March 2023 with broad cross-party support. It has now completed its passage through the House of Commons, and it is awaiting a second reading in the House of Lords.

Clause 1 introduces the schedule, which contains various provisions that will allow for a simpler process for making and registering a lasting power of attorney. That will increase access by allowing lasting powers of attorney to be made and registered electronically in England and Wales.

Most of the provisions of the schedule extend only to England and Wales, but one provision of the schedule extends to Scotland and requires the consent of the Scottish Parliament. That is paragraph 8, which concerns proving the content and registration of an electronically registered lasting power of attorney throughout the United Kingdom.

Clause 2 amends section 3 of the Powers of Attorney Act 1971 to enable chartered legal executives to certify a copy of a power of attorney. That extends throughout the United Kingdom. That provision also requires the consent of the Scottish Parliament. The provision will increase the channels through which consumers can certify a copy of a power of attorney and promote consumer choice. That is why we are asking Parliament to provide its consent to those amendments to Scots law.

It is right that we support a bill that increases the accessibility of powers of attorney. We know from the work that Scottish Mental Health Law Review has undertaken that using powers of attorney can encourage people to think through how they might want their health, welfare and financial affairs to be managed in the future. That means that adults who use powers of attorney are better placed to be as involved as possible in decisions about their lives, even if their circumstances change.

I am pleased to recommend supporting the bill, because it aligns with the key Scottish Government priorities of increasing accessibility of powers of attorney and ensuring that the most vulnerable people in society are protected.

With the prevalence of dementia increasing and our population ageing, power of attorney documents will become ever more important in ensuring that people can continue to live the lives that they want to live. That is why I have recommended that Parliament consent to the relevant provisions of the bill.

We will certainly try to do that. As I said, one of the reasons for pausing and re-engaging is that Parliament, as well as all our stakeholders, expressed some concerns.

We need to be able to better articulate the advantages of the national care service and to put more meat on the bones in relation to how it will work and what it will cost, so we will work together with stakeholders in order to reassure them and Parliament. I am keen that we provide sufficient reassurance so that we are able to make progress.

You are absolutely right that we do not need to wait for a national care service to make improvements, some of which are needed urgently. However, in the medium to long term, we have to consider the sustainability of our services.

I am in the same position in the constituency that I serve, in that three care homes there have closed in the past couple of months, although none of those was a social enterprise—they were all private enterprises. A vast number of beds have gone from quite a rural area. Therefore, there has been a huge impact on the availability for local people, which has a real impact on where they can be cared for at the end of their lives. When a care home in the west Highlands closes, it means that a person is likely to have to take a six-hour round trip to visit their mum in the next-nearest care home. It is a really challenging situation. The real challenge that we face in the Highlands is with staff and labour shortages.

There is no doubt that social care faces massive challenges at the moment. We need to support and nurture our service, and we need to try to make some improvements right now. That is why I say that improving the pay and conditions for social care staff must be a high priority for all of us. How we achieve that improvement will probably involve us making difficult decisions over the next few months.

Ethical commissioning and ethical procurement—the ability to have an impact on the care that we obtain through the money that we spend centrally—is the way to ensure that we continue to get that social benefit, that pay and conditions are of a certain standard for everybody who is employed in social care, and that we have an impact in local communities. As you know, and as you have said, no third sector organisations currently provide that. We want everyone in social care to use that public money for public good.

We expect to engage with all our key partners. We have already had a brief informal discussion with some of our local authority partners and unions, but we expect to have more formal and regular engagement with all of them in the summer.

We are also looking to set up regional opportunities for people who have an interest in the care service to gather together so that we capture the experience of the entirety of the country. As members might imagine, being a Highland MSP, I am keen to hear about the experience of social care in every part of the country as well as from each of our individual valued stakeholders.

Anna Kynaston or Donna Bell, do you want to say a little bit more about the regional engagement that is planned for the summer?

Yes, although we expect to capture the learning as we go, and we will be happy to give you an update on where we are and what the plans are before the close of Parliament and the summer recess. We want to make sure that you are aware of the work that is going on and can plan your work, because I know that the committee has a great deal of legislation going through. The bill is one of the most important things in the suite of work that I am doing, and I think that it is one of the most important priorities for the Government and Parliament, but it has to be balanced with a host of other work. We are therefore keen to keep the committee informed so that you can balance your workload.

Absolutely. Donna Bell will probably want to say a bit more about this, but we are very keen to hear from people who are employed in the care system about what works for them and what does not work for them. Over the past few years, the Scottish Government has done a lot of work on ensuring that everyone working in social care is in a regulated profession. Everybody is registered with the Scottish Social Services Council and there are continuous professional development requirements, but we could do more to support individuals to fulfil their potential in their role and more to make it clear what career paths are available for people to progress to other roles in the national care service, which is a really important aspect of it.

As someone who worked as a health professional in the national health service, I know that the level of variation across the country in the social work profession—in terms of the postgraduate qualifications that are required to do different roles, and the different types of training—definitely raises concerns about governance, quality and standards, and the lack of clarity for the people who are pursuing those professions. People might become qualified in a certain area in one local authority but find that those skills are not transferable to others and that they do not have the right qualifications to work in the next-door local authority. We need to maximise the opportunities for people and reward them for the extra efforts that they are putting into postgraduate qualifications, and we need to make sure that things are clear in terms of governance and what standards we expect everybody to meet across the country. That is something that we can definitely do, nationally.

We are keen to hear from people who are working in social care because we know that, although there is an awful lot of political focus on pay and conditions—rightly so; that is a really high priority—there is also concern about the differences in what is expected in terms of training, what the minimum standards of training are and what potential there is for people to do extra all over the country. It would be good to give some clarity around that.

They certainly raised concerns, yes. This is how we develop legislation in this country, is it not?

Pausing and re-engaging is part of the process of addressing COSLA’s concerns. We hear those concerns loud and clear, and we are keen to work with COSLA to see where we can achieve consensus and agreement.

I understand the point about the national health service having variation. However, the NHS has been trying to tackle the question of unnecessary variation for many years. I think that I have said already to the committee that there are times when variation is necessary, perhaps because of geography, the estate or what is available in the local area, but there are other times when variation is simply down to historical practice. Such variation can present a barrier to people trying to access care.

One example that is often cited to me is that of younger people who have a social care package and who want to move around the country. Perhaps the person lives in Ullapool in the north-west Highlands, where I live, and they want to go to university in Edinburgh. The systems are so completely different that it is almost impossible for them to move—they are almost limited to remaining in their own geography because the systems are so difficult to navigate. I think that we can improve on that.

That is not what it is like in the NHS. There are not those barriers. There are some barriers, but it is not quite such an impossible task and, for the user, it does not feel as though they have to learn to navigate an entirely new system. There is enough commonality between the ways in which healthcare is delivered in each area for the system to appear navigable and coherent to the people who are trying to access the care.

There are things that we can improve on. The people who access social care are very clear that things need to change and improve. We hear them, and I am sure that COSLA hears them, too. We will find a way to work together to ensure that those improvements happen.