Chamber and committees

Good morning. The document makes reference to the savings that carers currently provide to Scotland. The estimate that the Scottish Government has come up with is £13.9 billion per year, which totals £14.3 billion when healthcare costs are taken into account. Where does that figure come from and what confidence do you have that that is the net saving at the moment?

I go back to the role of the legal sector in relation to cost control, mission creep and so on. In his submission to us, Roger Mullin says:

“The unintended consequence of this is that individuals and legal firms, paid on the basis of their time involved in an inquiry, have no incentive to be as efficient as possible and indeed will get rewarded from the public purse by maximising their time involved.”

Based on your experience, Lord Hardie, is there a risk that, given that the whole mechanism has been built up and people are paid on a daily basis, there is some incentive for things to slide?

What is it projected to be by the end of 2025-26?

I want to go back to a point that Michael Marra raised. Minister, you said that the costs of preparing for the national care service were £1.6 million in 2021-22 and £12.3 million in 2022-23. A written answer that I got from the Government on 1 October last year said that the total cost to that point was £28.7 million—that is, effectively, £30 million for a project that, in large part, is not going to happen. Can you provide the committee with an update today on what that figure stands at?

My question is about cost control, Lord Hardie. You have set out your concerns that imposing cost controls or a timeframe threatens an inquiry’s independence. Setting that to one side, given that the funding comes from the public purse, what spending controls would be necessary to uphold public confidence while maintaining the independence of the chair? In practical terms, what could be done to control costs?

In his written evidence, John Sturrock KC suggested that

“some sort of oversight and support”

for public inquiries might be necessary. He continued:

“The balance between chair independence from external interference and value for public money is a delicate one.”

There is potential to have an oversight function. Could that be carried out by an independent organisation, such as Audit Scotland, or by somebody who is independent of Government but maintains reference to the public purse?

In her submission, Dr Ireton states that one of the core elements of cost effectiveness is

“Transparent cost and timetable management”.

If you will forgive me for asking a question that relates to you personally, Lord Hardie, Transport Scotland was very resistant to the figure of the fee that you were paid for chairing your inquiry going into the public domain. Did it consult you on the issue, and do you think that that meets the requirement of transparent cost management that Dr Ireton mentioned? The matter should not have needed to be taken to the Scottish Information Commissioner before that information about money being used from the public purse entered the public domain.

Would that have been good enough reason not to have put that important information into the public domain?

I think that you are making the point that it is unnecessary. Let us look at one element that will happen, which is the creation of the national social work agency. There are quite significant costs in relation to building the organisation and creating dedicated human resources, finance and business management functions. On a point of clarification, the financial memorandum notes:

“The costs will be met by repurposing the existing budget allocated to the Office of the Chief Social Work Adviser”.

Are you saying that all the costs will be met by making a saving from the office of the chief social work adviser, or do you anticipate the creation of the new body incurring additional administrative costs?

Footnote 11 says that the estimate is based on a

“Scottish government calculation of replacement care and hospital days avoided”

that used data from between April 2022 and March 2025. However, it then says that the estimate also used results from 2014 that are set out in “Weaver et al”. A lot rests on that modelling, but, if you look up the Weaver study, you see that it involves data that was gathered in Switzerland between 2004 and 2007. Therefore, effectively, the savings estimate is based on census data from Switzerland in those years. From talking to people in the care sector, I know that, since that time, there have been significant changes in, for example, models of care, treatments, the need for hospitalisation and technology in relation to care. Going back to an earlier point, that does not give us much confidence in the estimate. The central element of the proposals is that, presently, unpaid care in Scotland saves £14.3 billion, but that estimate rests on data from Switzerland in 2004, so we should not have a huge amount of confidence in that number.