Health, Social Care and Sport Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, January 31, 2023

Official Report 524KB pdf

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Subordinate Legislation

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Community Care (Personal Care and Nursing Care) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2023 [Draft]

Our third item is consideration of the Community Care (Personal Care and Nursing Care) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2023. The purpose of the regulations is to increase the value of payments for free personal care and nursing care by 9.5 per cent. This is an annual increase. The policy note states that emerging evidence in recent years shows that the cost of providing personal and nursing care has increased significantly and the payment made to providers by local authorities for self-funding residents has not kept pace with it.

The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee considered the regulations at its meeting on 24 January 2023 and made no recommendations in relation to the regulations.

We are now going to have an evidence session with the Minister for Mental Wellbeing and Social Care and supporting officials on the regulations. Once we have had all our questions answered, we will proceed to a formal debate on the motion.

I welcome Kevin Stewart, who is the Minister for Mental Wellbeing and Social Care. Accompanying the minister are Scottish Government officials Marianne Barker, who is the unit head of adult social care charging, and Clare Thomas, who is the policy manager of adult social care charging. Thank you for joining us today.?I invite the minister to make a statement.

Good morning, convener, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to the committee today about a proposed amendment to the Community Care (Personal Care and Nursing Care) (Scotland) Regulations 2002.

The draft regulations before the committee today make routine annual increases to the rates for free personal and nursing care. Those payments help to cover the costs of services for self-funding adults in residential care.

Historically, those payments have increased in line with inflation using the gross domestic product deflator. However, emerging evidence, including from the Scottish care homes census, shows that the cost of providing care has increased. To help to redress that, in the past two years we have made above-GDP-deflator increases to the rates of payment of 7.5 per cent and 10 per cent respectively, which is a significant increase on the inflation rate that was previously used.

We feel that it is appropriate to make an above-GDP-deflator increase to the rates this year, and the regulations before the committee propose to make a 9.5 per cent uplift for 2023-24. That will mean that the weekly payment rates for personal care for self-funders will rise from £212.85 a week to £233.10 a week, and the nursing component will rise from £95.80 to £104.90. It is estimated that that will cost approximately £15 million in the next financial year. That will be fully funded by additional provisions within the local government settlement as outlined in the recent Scottish budget 2023-24.

The most recent official statistics show that more than 10,000 self-funders receive free personal and nursing care payments. They should all benefit from these changes.

Convener, I am happy to take any questions from the committee.

Are there any questions for the minister?

Minister, given that this is an annual manual exercise, have you given any consideration to whether a formula could be introduced that would make it more of an automatic stabiliser and would mean an immediate increase?

The same system has been used since the inception of free personal care in 2002. As I indicated, we made adjustments in the past three years, taking cognisance of the pressures out there to ensure that we do not ask people to pay too much for their care.

Some things could be improved in all this, one of which would be the United Kingdom Government reintroducing the attendance allowance payments that were given to Scotland prior to the inception of free personal and nursing care here. If that money were restored—assuming an average of £80 for the roughly 10,000 people who receive free personal and nursing care, which is not the highest rate for attendance allowance—we would have £41.6 million extra to play with.

Has the Government undertaken any analysis of the extent to which profit is extracted from the care system? Obviously, it is important to undertake expenditure to ensure that care is provided, but there might well be instances in which profits are being generated as a result. Does the Government maintain oversight of the profit that is being generated to ensure that it is not excessive?

As the committee is well aware, we are undertaking a huge number of exercises in our work for the formation of the national care service. Obviously, ethical procurement is at the heart of all of that. We will, of course, look at all aspects of the care system, including profit.

There are no more questions, so we will move on to agenda item 4, which is the formal debate on the affirmative instrument on which we have just taken evidence. I remind the committee that members should not put questions to the minister during the formal debate and that officials may not speak in it.

Minister, is there anything that you wish to say in relation to motion S6M-07494?

No thank you, convener.

I ask you to move the motion.

Motion moved,

That the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee recommends that the Community Care (Personal Care and Nursing Care) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2023 be approved.—[Kevin Stewart]

Motion agreed to.

That concludes consideration of the instrument. I thank the minister and his officials for their time this morning.

In our next meeting, we will continue our scrutiny of the Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill and take evidence from patient representatives and patient safety organisations.

That concludes the public part of the meeting.

11:12 Meeting continued in private until 11:31.