Chamber and committees

I press amendment 54.

The member makes an incredibly important point. The challenges of Covid demonstrated the importance of having an enforceable right to information. During Covid we saw that providers in the care sector, which care for some of our most vulnerable people, followed very different rules depending on whether ownership was in the public sector or elsewhere. We found that the families of those who were in care homes run by local authorities were able to access information but that it simply was not possible to get information from homes owned by private sector companies.

That is one reason why there is such a body of opinion in favour of extending freedom of information to cover the care sector. However, ministers have thus far refused to use their section 5 powers under the act.

I thank the minister for her time in discussions since stage 2 so that the drafting of amendments could be agreed on to improve transparency on tax and ownership. I am very grateful to her officials for their work on the drafting of the amendments.

Amendment 74 will require Scottish ministers to make publicly available a report on the state of the social care market in Scotland every three years. The report could contain information about

“the composition of the market by reference to such factors such as the scale of the economic operators in the market and their status as for-profit bodies, public bodies or third sector bodies”.

The report could also include information on

“the level of profit being made by operators in the market”

or the tax status of operators.

There are significant amounts of money in the Scottish care home sector. However, the sector also faces significant challenges with the quality of care, staffing resources and worker pay, which the Scottish Trades Union Congress indicates now lags behind that in the rest of the UK.

There has been a change in the nature of the sector, and on-going funding pressures are leading to the closure of a growing number of care homes, particularly in rural areas, with almost half of all care homes nationwide reporting a decrease in the number of placements.

As I said, there are significant amounts of money in the sector. Under amendment 75, Scottish ministers will be able to

“require a person to supply them with information that ... is in the person’s control, and ... may be relevant to the Scottish Ministers’ function of reporting”

on social care markets.

Amendment 85 will subject regulations to the affirmative procedure. All the amendments are about transparency, information and accountability to the taxpayer.

The focus has been to consider issues that are associated with the changing nature of ownership in the sector. I will speak a little about that and perhaps come back to Alex Cole-Hamilton’s point.

Earlier in the debate, I spoke about issues that relate to offshore ownership in the sector, which is, increasingly, a problem. I will say a little bit about one particular situation.

According to work that was done in 2016, across the UK in general, five large chains accounted for almost 20 per cent of beds. I suspect that the figures would now show more of a concentration of ownership.

One example that members might be aware of or might have been involved in as constituency representatives was the 2011 collapse of Southern Cross Healthcare, which was owned by the Blackstone Group. The consequences of that collapse affected 31,000 care home residents across the UK. Many of those care homes were in Scotland, including in the constituency that I represented at the time.

Many Southern Cross care homes were sold to Four Seasons Health Care, which was owned by the Jersey-based equity firm Terra Firma. In April 2017, 220 care homes and 17,000 residents were affected when that organisation also became bankrupt. Four Seasons, like many private equity operations, had a complex corporate structure. The Financial Times reported that it consisted of 200 companies arranged in 12 layers across at least five jurisdictions, including several offshore territories, and that tax avoidance and profit shifting were central to its operations in a model that is known as financialisation. There are clearly significant issues in the sector, although Alex Cole-Hamilton may be thinking of a slightly different example.

The report that would come to the Parliament would be about improving transparency and scrutiny and would look at issues such as who owns the sector, how it is being operated and whether it is being operated in the public interest. We know that any failure in the sector affects our constituents. Southern Cross is a good example of the distress that is caused when a care home goes bust or ceases to operate, and the difficulties that that causes those who rely on that service and their families.

The amendments in this group are geared towards transparency, scrutiny and bringing to the fore some of the issues that Alex Cole Hamilton has brought to the chamber today. We know that there is a range of providers within the sector, from small family-owned businesses and third sector organisations to the multinationals and offshore trusts that I have spoken about.

As Paul Sweeney knows, it is our money that is being spent on paying for those services, and the Parliament must take an interest in that.

The purpose of my amendments in the group and of the discussions that I have had with the minister is to ensure that accurate information is regularly provided to the Parliament so that we can understand what is happening in the sector, debate the issues and make public policy decisions on that basis. I hope that Parliament will feel able to support the amendments today.

I move amendment 74.

Indeed. The intention of the 2002 act was to provide transparency about public services—that is, services that are paid for by the taxpayer. My proposals relate to the activities of private companies only in so far as they provide public services. The intention of the 2002 act was always that it would be possible to designate care providers in the private and non-profit-making sectors. However, we have seen a failure by Governments over more than 20 years to extend into those areas. It was always envisaged that such services that are provided and paid for by the state would be covered by freedom of information, but in recent years we have seen the outsourcing of services and, increasingly, services being provided by organisations that are not public authorities such as local authorities.

Independent polling that the Scottish Information Commissioner undertook in 2024 confirmed that there is overwhelming public support for legal change, with 93 per cent believing that freedom of information should cover publicly funded services such as care homes. The essential point is that services that were originally provided in the private sector are now being provided by multinationals and care homes that are owned by offshore trusts.

Is the minister aware that Stagecoach drivers in West Scotland are the worst paid in the United Kingdom? The latest Stagecoach offer of a 4 per cent pay rise was rejected by 98 per cent of Unite bus drivers, on an 81 per cent turnout. The unions say that, even if that offer had been accepted, West Scotland drivers would still be the poorest paid across the UK. Does the minister agree that that is completely unacceptable, that Stagecoach is a very profitable company and that we need to ensure that it makes a better offer so that our constituents are able to use that service?

I press amendment 74.

We have had quite a number of fatal accident inquiries. Do you think that fatal accident inquiries following death in custody have improved, particularly for families, since the independent review of the response to deaths in prison custody? Are we learning lessons from the fatal accident inquiries that have taken place?

Are the witnesses saying that that has not been given enough priority?