Chamber and committees

Would the minister consider increasing the grade of the national social work adviser to that of director?

I will go back to my second question. Why is the Government using the GDP deflator as opposed to any other economic measure?

It is very important that we create a complaints system. The Care Inspectorate seems to be a good route for that to happen and to improve local standards. However, I heard what the minister said, and I seek to withdraw amendment 142.

Amendment 142, by agreement, withdrawn.

The minister speaks of her commitment, and the Government’s commitment, to Anne’s law. Where was that commitment three and a half years ago, when Anne’s law could have been brought in and would have sailed through Parliament? Where was the minister’s commitment to the right to breaks for carers three and a half years ago?

Those measures are in amendments that the minister has lodged. Quite simply, they are being introduced on the back of a failed NCS bill, instead of being front and centre in the original bill. They could have been front and centre standing on their own in a bill that, again, would have sailed through, because the measures command the full support of Parliament. This is not the way to do it.

It is important that we look at what the situation is like right now across our country. It is clear that local authorities up and down our country are slashing care for people who need it. It is clear that, across our country, people who are desperately in need of care—when they want to leave hospital, when they want to live in their own home and when their care needs to be changed—are not receiving the urgent care that they need. Amendment 128 looks to ensure that we are able to give people a reassuring timeline. Six weeks is a very long time, and we would not want it to be that long, but at least there would be a timeframe within which people would have to get their care. That is not an unreasonable thing to ask for.

On amendments 129 and 130, we agree with Paul Sweeney and we are keen to see those provisions in the bill.

I move amendment 128.

The data is not ours. The data is not the NHS’s. The data that is held belongs to the individual—the patient, the person—and it is important that full access to that data is available to that individual. It is very important that we do not lose sight of that and that we do as much as we can to provide that reassurance.

The minister said that Gillian Mackay’s amendments 119 and 118 might hinder emergency care, but it is clear that people who are participating in a scheme would be told that the full data will be accessible in emergencies and when they see their GP, as that is absolutely vital. However, I do not think that the care worker who comes to someone’s door to help them needs to see that person’s full care or health records, so under the amendments, an individual would be able to choose whether such a person would see them.

We are in full support of all the amendments in the group. The minister said that Brian Whittle’s amendment is not necessary and that a single platform is not required. From the perspective of someone on the front line, who sees patients and who, a month later, as a GP, is unable to see what the hospital has said, I cannot tell you how important that single data platform is. When I was working in psychiatry, cross-covering paediatric psychiatry, I was unable to see or write in the patient notes. That is not safe and it is not acceptable in 2025. It is simply not a position that we should be in.

Lastly, the minister spoke about my amendment 121, which looks at portability—that is, allowing an individual to move with their data and local authorities to be able to see it. However, I do not think that it would be the worst thing for local authorities to be able to see anyone’s data as long as they were given permission to do so by the individual.

The minister spoke about people being allowed self-directed support following “collaborative discussion”. People are told, “You can employ somebody and take on all the difficulties that come with that. That is your choice—it is up to you—and here is some money to do that. Good luck.” That is not collaborative and does not allow self-directed support to be provided in an appropriate way. If that is happening, we are leaving people who require care to simply fend for themselves—we have heard that time and again from people with lived experience. The minister talks a lot about ensuring that we take account of lived experience and says that she speaks to people with lived experience, but that point does not seem to have been picked up, which I find concerning. It is clear that six weeks seems to be a decent amount of time to arrange for people to be given care, and we can define “critical need” in secondary legislation, as required.

I support Paul Sweeney’s amendments, because we should do everything that we can to ensure that people with a terminal illness are looked after as quickly as possible.

I press amendment 128.

I declare an interest as a practising NHS general practitioner.

We need to be absolutely clear about the bill’s timeline. We are three and a half to four years on from when the bill was introduced by Humza Yousaf. We are £30 million worse off than we were at the start of the process, and we have lost the bill’s principles. After the Government lodged amendments—we should remember that the bill was introduced four years ago—we had 48 hours to digest the amendments and make a decision about what to do. That is not a particularly acceptable timeline, given the amount of time and money that have been spent on the bill. Let us not forget that the bill’s second iteration involves 200-odd amendments and that the proposal for a national care service has been completely scrapped—we are not even talking about it any more. Describing the bill as a farce would be generous.

The minister has spoken about the bill representing reform, but reform in the social care sector would involve doing things that actually led to changes, so the bill does not represent reform to the sector. The Scottish National Party Government and the minister are simply trying to save face. That is why we are in this position. They have realised—as we have said all along—that a lot of the reforms, including Anne’s law and Frank’s law, could have been made straight away. If they had been made four years ago, people would not be waiting right now. The position that we are in is completely unacceptable, and the people of Scotland should rightly be very upset about how we have found ourselves in it.

I urge members to vote for Brian Whittle’s amendment 158, because we need to take real evidence on the bill, which is now totally different from what was originally set out. We need to go back, take proper evidence and ensure that we do the right thing. We should not legislate just for the sake of legislating.

I turn to death certification and how a health professional would go about filling in the relevant forms. We do not want to skew the death statistics. If someone has terminal lung cancer, for example, it is very important that that is captured in the data. What is the thought process on the way that you would like a health professional to fill in the forms?

We are short of time, given the number of questions that we have, but I have a final question. We heard from disabled people’s groups, who were very clear that nobody who is disabled supports assisted dying. That is the evidence that we heard from those groups. How can the bill ensure that, as we heard from disabled people, we do not allow vulnerable groups to be pressured into using it rather than accessing other forms of treatment?