Chamber and committees

When you made the decision not to progress with the 2,000 that you mentioned, on what criteria did you make that judgment? Was it something that you decided, or was it something that was open to discussion between the First Minister, yourself and Mr McKee?

I will finish on another point. Parliament has seen a considerable increase in the number of what we call framework bills. The final decisions on what things will look like as a result of those bills are often away in the future and the picture is not very clear during our scrutiny process. That has led to some tensions within the public sector workforce. Do you think that the number of framework bills that go through Parliament is an issue? Should we be trying to reduce that number so that we have better scope for scrutiny and can keep a firm hand on it?

We have had a lot of framework bills, particularly in the past three years, and alongside that there have been difficulties with their financial memorandums. The more framework bills that there are, the more likely it is that it will be difficult for us to consider the detail that should go in the financial memorandum. Do you think that that is a worry for the Parliament?

In that discussion, do you think that providers are aware of the cost to themselves? If they do not get the right result on the telephone, they spend a lot of time mailing out a letter at great cost and there seems to be an awful lot of inefficiency in that. My concern is that, although you are all doing excellent work, I am not sure that providers accept that part of the responsibility for the problem is theirs. How can you negotiate that?

Thank you for the evidence that you have provided this morning, which is extremely helpful, particularly with regard to what your agencies are doing to try to address some of the problems.

I have two questions, which I am asking on behalf of several constituents who have contacted me over the years. The first is about telephones. Even people who are relatively digitally aware are so frustrated about some of the telephone calls that they have to make to energy companies, for example; Louise Coupland mentioned issues with contacting medical professionals, too.

When people make the call, they are referred on several times through various options, and each time they get another referral. Sometimes that requires a password, and sometimes it requires them to answer all kinds of personal questions. That goes on and on—in fact, there is a real frustration not just for older people, but for some of us who are not quite so old. As a result of having to be referred on for everything, they get less confident about whether they are providing the right information and getting the right person to answer their question.

A constituent came to my surgery with an energy bill issue. I was alongside them on the phone call. There were seven options, and I have to say that what my constituent should be doing was not at all clear. Worse still, once we got the problem sorted, they then got a letter as though it had not been sorted.

Is there anything that we can do to flag up to the energy companies and those who use these digital formats an awful lot on the phone just how difficult the problem is?

I will pick up on that point, because it is relevant to my second question. I want to pick up what Louise Coupland said about GP surgeries, particularly in rural areas. When a note comes through with a vaccination appointment, the patient has to find a bus service to get to that appointment and, in some cases, the service does not exist. My worry is about the number of people who, for the reasons that Mr Scott and Ms Coupland described earlier, get so disillusioned and demoralised that they drop out and do not get the healthcare or various bits of assistance that they could get. What do we do with the elderly people—it is not just the elderly, but the majority are elderly—who drop out of the system altogether? How do we spot where those people are and help them to get the benefits and the assistance that they need? What do we do there?

But people who feel disillusioned and a bit isolated want a personal touch. If they are referred on several times for a piece of assistance, they want one person to deal with that; they do not want to be pushed from pillar to post, with different people coming back to them. That is an increasing problem. I worry about the lack of a personal touch, which I think has been exacerbated post-Covid. You can see that in other services as well—we are losing the personal touch.

Thank you. That was helpful.

Convener, that might be something that we want to scrutinise.

Would it be possible to break that down into savings in justice and in health, or is there just an overall figure?

My final question is on collaboration. We have had good collaboration from the Scottish Government and other political parties, as far as I can make out. Although the people who have written to the committee are raising various challenges and saying that the costs have been underestimated—that is fairly common for a financial memorandum, but it has to be said—do you feel that there is good-quality collaboration across the sectors that would need to address the provisions?