Chamber and committees

I am running short of time, as I am into my final minute. I am sure that the minister will be able to raise his point in his concluding remarks.

The Scottish Government needs to go back to the beginning of this process to substantively and meaningfully engage with the key stakeholders in co-designing legislation. In the meantime, let us get to work on improving social care right now. As a first step, the Scottish Government should immediately act on the key recommendations of the Feeley report, including by removing non-residential care charges and tackling poverty pay in the social care sector. It is clear that we do not need to wait for a national care service to begin to address these problems. Indeed, we have been making that argument from the Labour Party benches for many months. The Government could take action here and now to improve the social care sector if it had the political will to do so.

What the Scottish Government is proposing is, in its current form, a national care service in name only. The Scottish Labour Party aspires to see a properly funded and well-planned national care service. That means local delivery while maximising standards, making it a race to the top by forcing bad actors who do not deliver high levels of service out of the system. The Scottish Government must listen and reflect on the growing worry of stakeholders, including trade unions, front-line staff and local authorities, and it must show some humility. It is time for the Government to pause and to meaningfully listen and properly engage, so that we can create the national care service that Scotland deserves.

I move amendment S6M-06523.2, in the name of Jackie Baillie, as an amendment to motion S6M-06523, in the name of Craig Hoy, to leave out from “raises concern” to end and insert:

“; recognises that Scottish Labour first proposed a National Care Service over a decade ago with the aim of improving national standards for social care, while also supporting local delivery and accountability; regrets that, instead, the Scottish Ministers have published a bill that is completely lacking in a vision for a National Care Service; acknowledges the serious concerns from local government, trades unions and other stakeholders about the potential negative impacts of centralisation; considers that meaningful reform should focus on changing culture and not structures, so that care users are treated with dignity and staff are valued as skilled professionals; believes that the immediate priority must be to address the current challenges in social care, and calls on the Scottish Government to pause the bill and take stock, and urgently deliver on the recommendations in the Feeley Review, including ending non-residential care charges, and to tackle poverty pay in the sector, in the midst of the cost of living crisis.”

What I recognise is that the Government has been talking about this and consulting on it for months. I recognise that the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, in its evidence, said that it found out about the Government’s framework legislation proposals on the night before they were published. I do not think that that is acceptable, and I think that there are growing calls from across all sectors to take a pause and reflect.

I say again to the minister that, if he will not learn from me and does not want to listen to me, perhaps he should learn from John Swinney. In 2018, the Deputy First Minister listened, reflected and took the sensible decision to pause the Education (Scotland) Bill when he recognised that stakeholders had serious concerns about the move to legislation. The process that flowed from that was co-designed with councils, teachers, parents and staff, and it is the reason that we have the improvement collaboratives that we recognise today.

The second part of the question was on the faculty’s submission. There were concerns about the delay in getting to secondary legislation in order to make the change that is required in social care at the moment, and there are issues with staffing and improving outcomes. Do you have a comment on that?

The committee has heard that women over 50 make up 80 per cent of the social care workforce, and colleagues have touched on the point that informal caring and support is often a responsibility that people have outside their work. On a wider point about carers, I know that a framework bill is obviously not going to say anything about how we support carers with regard to, say, rights to paid leave, but do you think that it is important that there be at least a statement of intent on that? Frank Jarvis might want to comment on that from the human rights space.

Thank you. More detail will be helpful, as I think that we will come back to the matter as we make progress.

On a more technical point, the bill does not outline exactly how the transfer of staff will happen and for whom transferred staff will work. We know that NHS staff will remain NHS staff, but we are less clear about, for example, social care staff, who are in the employ of local authorities. Is there a sense that, without that detail, it is harder to look at how fair work practices can be implemented, particularly given the differing pay scales and terms and conditions?

We are trying to consider the bill with regard to the detail that is outlined in the framework. However, on the point that you have made, Councillor Kelly, about viability, and in relation to the amendments that you have mentioned, are your concerns based around, for example, the fact that there is no definition of the geographic spread of a care board—that care boards would not necessarily reflect what we have currently in the integration joint boards, which would have a potential impact on the geography of people’s local authority, as they understand it, and on what their local authority would be responsible for?

I will return briefly to co-production. For some people, it seems to be new, but my sense is that it has existed for a long time. We were talking about how integration has worked. Integration is still young—it is not yet 10 years old. Given that Eddie Fraser was responsible for delivering services through a health and social care partnership and that he is now a council chief executive, I ask for his view on what co-production has done in that space. When I sat on an IJB—which was not yesterday—it had carer and patient representatives and people from the staff side; co-production ran throughout how things were discussed. I also ask Jackie Buchanan to give her sense of how the structure works and to comment on any other bits.

Thank you.

I have a couple of questions for Isla Davie that follow on from that point. First, just for clarification, do you have concerns about the powers that are transferred to ministers as outlined in schedule 4, in terms of what ministers will be able to do under secondary legislation? Secondly, is there also an issue with the delay in getting to the secondary legislation, which might mean that we do not achieve the stated aims?

Eddie, will you give your view? You speak from the officer level. Does SOLACE recognise much of what the politicians and leaders of COSLA have said? Will you share your concerns?