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I am certainly more than happy to speak about that. I had some brief discussions with representatives from Unison at the parliamentary event that happened a couple of weeks ago. I am very keen to hear from it and other unions that operate in the sector and represent staff who work in the sector about their concerns, and I want us to understand each other’s perspectives on what advantages or disadvantages a national care service and the approach that we propose could bring.

Most of the concern on pensions appears to be around the possibility that people who are employed by local authorities would have their employment transferred to the national care service. There is no plan for that to happen wholesale or automatically or anything like that. Those will be individual decisions for local care boards to make, if they feel that employment needs to transfer. There would then be a process of ensuring that pay and conditions are transferred over.

The landscape is complex. The biggest employers in social care in Scotland, by quite a long chalk, are private care companies; then we have the local authorities and direct employees, and the third sector is the smallest. Is that the order? Yes. Less than 20 per cent of the staff are unionised, and it is largely local authority employees who are unionised.

In general, there is a concern that the social care workforce is disempowered and does not have a clear voice in negotiations on pay and conditions. There is definitely agreement across the board—even across the board politically—that pay and conditions need to be better. There is a real opportunity for us all, including the unions, to work together to try to improve that situation.

I do not have strong feelings about the ideology of who should be allowed to be contracted to deliver care. I want that contract to deliver a high quality and high standard of care to the individual who is receiving it. I know that there are private businesses out there who are delivering excellent quality care, and I want to make sure that everyone who is delivering social care that has been contracted with public money is providing a high standard and that their staff have reasonable pay and conditions.

That built-in standardisation of the contract, the procurement and the ethical commissioning is part of the advantage of a national care service. There is an opportunity to talk about profiteering. There is an opportunity to build into those contracts constraints around how businesses operate, to ensure that they operate to a financial standard and with financial ethics that we would want to put public money into.

Many key stakeholders expressed concerns. I think that you missed my opening statement, but—

There is a tension there. We need to have clarity on who is responsible and we need to have clear lines of governance. However, we need to capture local delivery as well as providing accountability. We will engage in those conversations over the course of the next few months and beyond. We will be making decisions about the exact composition of care boards a little later.

You can see some of the challenge, but it is one that we are up for and we need to have that conversation about how best to make it work and how best we can reflect those different needs and different communities while still achieving a certain standard of care and a clarity over governance arrangements. Those are the things that we are really keen to do.

Anna, are you able to say where that is in the timetable?

Do you want to come in on that, Donna?

Yes, we have taken on board the concerns of Parliament. What we are doing differently is engaging again with stakeholders to see where we can achieve consensus, to see where we can put a little bit more detail into what the way forward is expected to be and to provide reassurance to colleagues within Parliament and stakeholders and partners outside Parliament so that everybody is clear on what is going to happen over the next few years, as we develop and bring into being a national care service.

I am keen that we clearly articulate what the advantages might be because I think that, among all the concerns that have been raised, some of the advantages have been lost. I recognise that it is my job to make sure that I clearly articulate those advantages both to parliamentarians and to the wider citizenship.

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.