Chamber and committees

Our third item is consideration of the Community Care (Personal Care and Nursing Care) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2023. The purpose of the regulations is to increase the value of payments for free personal care and nursing care by 9.5 per cent. This is an annual increase. The policy note states that emerging evidence in recent years shows that the cost of providing personal and nursing care has increased significantly and the payment made to providers by local authorities for self-funding residents has not kept pace with it.

The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee considered the regulations at its meeting on 24 January 2023 and made no recommendations in relation to the regulations.

We are now going to have an evidence session with the Minister for Mental Wellbeing and Social Care and supporting officials on the regulations. Once we have had all our questions answered, we will proceed to a formal debate on the motion.

I welcome Kevin Stewart, who is the Minister for Mental Wellbeing and Social Care. Accompanying the minister are Scottish Government officials Marianne Barker, who is the unit head of adult social care charging, and Clare Thomas, who is the policy manager of adult social care charging. Thank you for joining us today.?I invite the minister to make a statement.

My colleagues will ask questions later about the difference between what is happening in the English NHS with regards to the remit of the Patient Safety Commissioner and what is proposed for the Scottish patient safety commissioner.

During your deliberations when deciding on whether to have a patient safety commissioner, were there discussions about alternatives? Was anything discounted or put in the mix that you thought might be a way forward that would not go down the route of creating a patient safety commissioner?

Thank you. That is a helpful starting point. The independence of the commissioner seems to be the paramount reason for taking them out of the system, so that they can be, I suppose, the watchdog of the system, on behalf of patients. It is helpful to know the process and why you came to that conclusion.

Good morning, and welcome to the third meeting in 2023 of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee. I have received apologies from Tess White.

Before we commence this morning’s meeting, we have a change of membership to inform everyone about. Carol Mochan has left the committee and will be replaced by Paul Sweeney. I thank Carol Mochan for all the work that she has done on the committee in the past couple of years and wish her all the best in whatever is next for her committee-wise.

Our first item today is to welcome Paul Sweeney to the committee and to invite the new member to declare any interests that are relevant to the committee’s remit.

The second item on our agenda is to decide whether to take items 5 and 6 in private. Are members agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Does Evelyn Tweed want to come back in?

The whole idea of corporate social responsibility is really important, particularly given what you have said about the price rises being lower for certain foods and higher for others. That almost seems counterintuitive, given the processes that there might be for high-fat and high-sugar items. I get that fresh food does not last long on the shelves, but that is having an impact on consumers. In particular, it will have an impact on more vulnerable groups, such as children, older people and people in socially deprived areas. Thank you for highlighting that.

The next item on our agenda is an oral evidence session with Cricket Scotland and sportscotland. This is an opportunity to receive an update on those organisations’ progress towards implementing the recommendations of the independent review into racism in Scottish cricket, and it is the second such meeting that we have had. I think that the last one was around October last year.

I welcome Kaukab Stewart, who is not a committee member. She is attending for this item, and I hope that we will be able to give Kaukab the opportunity to ask some questions after members have asked questions of the panel.

I welcome to the committee Gordon Arthur, the chief executive officer of Cricket Scotland, and Anjan Luthra, the chair of Cricket Scotland. We also have with us Forbes Dunlop, the chief executive officer of sportscotland. Welcome to you all, and thank you for making the time to come back. Anjan Luthra will make a brief opening statement.

Thank you very much, Heather. A lot of our members want to speak to you about EU exit in detail and how that is impacting on the standards of, and access to, food.

I want to take us to other events of the past year. There have been some significant global events, including the conflict in Ukraine, which is a major supplier of food to Europe, the UK and beyond. The cost of living has increased dramatically, and inflation is 9 per cent and was 10 per cent; it has come down slightly—not that you would know from the price of food in the supermarkets. How are the supply chain issues that are being caused by the conflict in Ukraine, by EU exit and by the cost of living impacting on families who are finding it difficult to access good-quality food? How are you reprioritising your work around those issues? What impact is that having? How are you responding?

I thank Anjan Luthra, Gordon Arthur and Forbes Dunlop for attending and providing that update. As I said, it was our second update on the work that you are doing.

We will now suspend the meeting and have a short break to allow for a change of panel.