Local Government and Communities Committee, 07 Oct 2009

Meeting date: Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Official Report 223KB pdf

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Public Services Reform (Scotland) Bill

Agenda item 3 is consideration of the committee's response to the Finance Committee's consultation on the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Bill. I remind members that, in our discussion on the Scottish Government's response to the committee's correspondence on home care services for the elderly, we raised concerns that there were no plans in the bill to give the new body—social care and social work improvement Scotland—powers to take enforcement action against local authorities that ultimately contract out care services.

I wrote to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth to express our concern, and a reply has now been received, a copy of which has been circulated to members today. The reply confirms that there are no plans for the bill to give the new body the powers that we seek for it. As a consequence, I ask members whether we agree to write to the Finance Committee to express our concern.

Members indicated agreement.

It was me who initially raised the issue of compliance by local authorities. Although I agree with what you suggest, convener, I am also concerned that the cabinet secretary's response states that

"it is the responsibility of the elected members of the local authority to ensure that the authority responds appropriately to these recommendations."

I am not sure how we can get this over to the cabinet secretary, but my difficulty is this: if we do not have any way to ensure that appropriate action can be taken against the local authority, how can we ensure that the local authority will respond appropriately to the recommendations that are made to it? If issues arise, we can take appropriate enforcement action against the deliverers of the service by presenting the local authority with a recommendation, but it will then be for elected members to make the decision.

I am not happy with that situation. It is local authority officials who are entrusted to put the contracts out and to carry out the monitoring and enforcement of the contracts; yet, we are told that the decision to take action will rest with elected members. I would be interested in finding out how many elected members are involved in letting the contracts out, with the exception of their rubber-stamping an official's recommendation at a committee meeting that may be held once a year or once every four months. I leave it to the convener's discretion as to how can we can get that message over to the cabinet secretary.

I understand your concern, but the letter from Mike Martin says that draft guidance will be issued in November, which is not too far away. It would be worth while for committee members to apprise themselves of that guidance and, if necessary, comment on it. It may reassure; it may not. However, that may suffice at this point.

It seems slightly odd that central Government is busy issuing guidance on how all these things should be done but then shies away from giving SCSWIS the responsibility for ensuring that that guidance is followed in practice. If it is a matter not for the Government but for the concordat and local councils, why is the Government issuing the guidance to the councils in the first place? There is no logic to that. Why does the Government not just say that there is a general duty to run the services, full stop, and tell councils to do it themselves?

I am open to suggestions, but we have agreed to notify the appropriate committee of our concerns. I presume that there will be opportunities to make those points when we have the guidance, which will be soon. I think that we are all a bit sceptical about how we are going to get a resolution to the situation, but if the guidance is as strong as we want it to be we may be more relaxed about it. We still may have some comments to make about it, but we should perhaps wait to see what the guidance says. We can take our opportunities, as committee members, to pursue any concerns that we have as they come up.