Audit Committee,

Meeting date: Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Official Report 227KB pdf

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Community Care

Item 4 is consideration of a response from the Executive to the committee's second report of 2005, on community care. Members have had an opportunity to consider the response, which is quite lengthy because it contains substantial annexes.

In annex A, the Executive responses to paragraphs 10 and 16 of our report reflect a measure of disagreement about costs and expenditure. According to the Executive response,

"the original cost evaluation exercise produced a robust estimate of costs".

That was certainly not my impression. Again, the response to paragraphs 27 and 30 does not address the seriousness of the committee's concern about the lack of

"systematic risk assessment on the consequences of inaccurate estimates".

I am not sure that the response addresses the serious matters that we raised about the need for accurate and robust figures on which to base policy.

A difficulty with the response is the degree to which the Executive agrees with us without saying that it has accepted our recommendations. The response suggests that the Health Department is undertaking a number of initiatives that will respond to our recommendations, but it does not give the committee the credit for that activity. The response is somewhat vague about the catalyst for action in relation to a number of matters.

The response highlights the problem that arises when Scottish Executive policy is delivered through local government. Many difficulties to do with identifying spend and tracing its progress and effectiveness arise because there is a lack of information from councils. The response to paragraph 16, on the committee's concerns about expenditure projections, says:

"The allocation announced in 2002 provides additional funds to extend the delivery of personal care services to those people who would previously have had to pay for them."

However, the response continues:

"The expenditure returns from local authorities represent total expenditure on this service and include expenditure incurred for those people who previously have received the services for free."

That is an assertion, rather than a statement based on evidence of exactly what was spent in years gone by. Our problem is how we drill down and ascertain whether the assertion is correct. The only comfort that I take from the response is in the fact that the Executive will take action to ensure that a proper reporting system is put in place. The response says:

"The Executive is arranging for cost information now to be provided through the Local Government Finance returns, with immediate effect (from 2004/05)."

Will the Auditor General for Scotland comment on whether that mechanism will be effective in gathering the information that is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of the policy and to ascertain whether money has been distributed appropriately to deliver the policy? I do not know what is meant by "Local Government Finance returns".

How long have you got to talk about local authority financial returns, which remind me all too well of my past life in local government? Local authorities make a complex set of returns to Government for all sorts of purposes through the local financial returns system. They are not returns that we audit. There is always a problem with those returns in assessing what exactly they are measuring and making like-for-like assessments. Given the complications that the committee and I recognise in the whole area, we have to acknowledge that it will be a considerable challenge to get robust data. The move to incorporate this major cost area into local financial returns is to be welcomed, but my immediate thought is that a lot of work would require to be done to get the LFR system to provide robust information that would inform how well the policy is being implemented.

As the convener identified, the Executive's response concurs, whether explicitly or implicitly, with a number of the concerns raised by the committee. While we continue to be concerned that it has taken a number of years for some of the questions to be asked and data to be gathered, we can only welcome the fact that there is at least an indication that it will happen now. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating, but for now I am happy to take the commitments at face value.

I have three points on the wider report. The first is that annex B on pages 10, 11 and 12 summarises the background to the policy and gives edited—and rather sanitised—highlights of the sequence of events that led to certain decisions being taken. As somebody who, perhaps more than most, still bears the scars, I do not want to replay those decisions, but I note that one of the things that the committee confirmed and recorded was that the original costing did not emanate simply from the care development group. Rather, that figure pre-dated the establishment of that group and was an identified envelope of resource for the policy. That point is missing in the historical account.

Secondly, I welcome the emphasis that is put on local improvement targets as a way of developing successful joint working, but I seek clarification. I am interested to know more about how the Executive plans to take that forward. I hope that they genuinely are what I would describe as local improvement targets, in the sense of having grown from the bottom up. I still worry that an awful lot of the narrative and the action around this is top-down guidance, as distinct from supporting and enabling local service deliverers to come together and improve matters at the front end. I am keen to know more about what local improvement targets will look like. I do not know if we can request more information on that in writing.

Thirdly, there is considerable emphasis on evaluating the free personal care policy and other areas through the eyes of service users and carers, much more so than has been the case in the past. That is to be welcomed, but it would be useful as the process evolves—maybe it is too early to ask the question—to know how the Executive or those who are carrying out the research on its behalf plan to do that.

Our paragraphs 19, 20 and 25 related to councils providing only estimates, or no information. I am absolutely astounded by the Executive's admission that councils were required to submit the information only on a voluntary basis. That certainly never came out in any of the evidence that we took and to see it just shoved in is extremely surprising. The response to paragraphs 19, 20 and 25 and to paragraphs 21, 22 and 23 totally misses the point about our requirement that the Executive has demonstrated to it what is being delivered in each local authority area in relation to the policy. The information that we have gives me no comfort that in a year's time we will be able to say that every single penny is being spent in the appropriate area.

The response does not consider the fact that it is not just local authorities that have to provide the care; it needs to be provided in a partnership. I note that in the response to paragraphs 21, 22 and 23 the Executive talks about a "wider care package". Again, that is paid for from the public purse. It might be provided from the health service, through the voluntary sector and the local authority. I do not think that it is beyond the wit of the Executive to be able to track that. I have real concerns that the answers that the Executive has provided totally miss the point.

As a committee we need to decide how we wish to respond to the Executive's response to our report. The most appropriate way to raise the points that members have outlined might be for us to write directly to the Health Department, pointing out our concerns and seeking clarification. As well as setting out the points that Margaret Jamieson and others have made, the letter should also, more usefully, refer to the "Scottish Public Finance Manual", which outlines how responses should be framed, so that we can get a better idea of whether a number of the Executive's actions relate to our recommendations. It is not so much that we need to show that the committee has an impact, because that is clear from the previous agenda item; we want an audit trail of the recommendations so that we know exactly how the Executive has decided on what action to take and whether our recommendations were a catalyst. Do members agree to send a letter to the Executive seeking clarification of a number of points?

Members indicated agreement.

We will draft a letter and circulate it in the normal fashion. That ends agenda item 4. We are a little bit ahead of schedule—shock, horror—so I suggest that we take a comfort break and reconvene at 11 o'clock.

Meeting suspended.

On resuming—