Chamber and committees

I have one further point, to sum up. Minister, you will have gathered that the committee has some concerns. I appreciate the position in which you find yourself with regard to what you are able to control, and I empathise with you in that respect. However, are you able to commit, off the back of this discussion today, to set out specifically, based on your discussions with the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, the basis on which the committee can, as individual members, go forward to stage 3?

I cannot speak for every member, but I sense that it is not enough for us to go on to stage 3 knowing only that the matter might be looked at in a further bill or that there will be a round table at some point, given the scale of the concern over the challenge of conflicting rights. Will the minister be able to write back to the committee once she has had a chance to affirm the specifics of the next steps, including dates and so on?

Following up on that point, I accept what the minister is saying about amendment 206, and it might well be that it is a probing amendment and there is still further work to do. However, the principle has been established in terms of the current provisioning in the criminal justice system compared with the new provisioning in very serious cases, where we recognise that there could be an uptick, particularly around rape and serious sexual assault.

Is the minister willing to give further thought to how the voice of victims can be heard in the process, even if she does not accept the amendment? Clearly, there will be a marked difference in the opportunity for people to make their voice heard, which is important. It is even more important, I would argue, than providing a written statement, because, for a victim, it allows their voice to actually be heard. Will the minister give further consideration to that, even though I fully accept that the amendment might not be perfect in relation to the legislation?

Good morning, minister, and hello again to the panel.

I want to ask about two areas. As it stands, because this is a framework bill, we do not know what the final running costs will be, we do not know what the economic benefits will be and, critically, we do not know whether we can afford to run the service itself.

My first question is on the economic benefits. I appreciate what you said about having a business case for this, but I would argue that the business case relates not only to the costs, which we have talked about a great deal, but also to the economic benefits, which are primarily what we as the finance committee are interested in. Are you concerned that evaluating the potential economic benefits will bring out an even clearer understanding of further costs? You have made some very good points, and I completely agree with you about the hidden work that women, in particular, do, but there is a cost associated with evaluating the economic benefit of getting those women back into the workplace.

There is a very good comment in the letter from Social Work Scotland that the convener talked about earlier. It says that it is very difficult to get staff, even when offering £12 an hour, and that there are significant challenges with recruitment and retention. That leads me on to my question: can we afford to run the national care service, if we get to that point? I would like to hear your reflections on that.

If you have not done any economic modelling, how do you know that that statement is true?

And that is a cost.

That leads me on to the second question that I mentioned in my opening remarks, which is whether we can afford the running costs of a national care service. I have already highlighted the example of staff availability and, arguably, skills availability in the staff to run it. I would like to hear your reflections on that.

The other point that that raises relates to the prevention strategy. It would be interesting to work out how you arrived at your 1 per cent basis and what that will mean in terms of savings. I am still quite uncertain about that, because you are going to have to make efficiencies over what we are currently delivering. That is the whole point of this—I get that—but can you help me to understand the prevention strategy a bit more and how it pertains to costs and benefits?

I think that you have made my point for me. I suspect that the committee will continue to be interested in the relationship between cost and economic benefit. The wider macroeconomy frames whether we can afford this, so the economic benefit is utterly vital. Because of how the process operates, it is somewhat removed from the committee, which is an issue that has been brought up before. Notwithstanding the moral benefit, which you make a good case for, I am on the basis of the figures—which I thank you for reminding me of—less convinced that the economic benefit will be sufficient, given all the cost uncertainties. That said, you have done a lot of good work on that.

The point that I am trying to make is that—

Well, this is a fundamental issue.

The committee has spent a lot of time evaluating costs. I have conceded to your staff that I recognise the work that has been done on costs, and I concede that point to you, too. The nature of a framework bill means that such work is needed—and we have had lots of discussions about that—but I am probing the economic benefit. If you have done lots and lots of work, why have we not seen lots and lots of work? The committee’s confidence is underpinned by this, so given that you have said that lots and lots of work has been done on the economic benefit, I think that seeing that work might have given us further confidence.

Thank you for pointing out that detail in the business case, but the obvious point is that any normal assessment would look at the extent to which economic benefit outweighs the cost. Given the numbers in the business case, I accept the rationale and the caution that you have applied—and I agree with that; I think that it is the right approach—but, even from just talking through those numbers, I think that it is abundantly clear that the margin between cost and benefit is significant.