Chamber and committees

Cabinet secretary, although you are quite correct to say that a person does not currently have to undergo a medical or surgical transition in order to obtain a GRC, and although I note that the bill is looking just at the process, it will—or should—have the practical effect of increasing the number of people in possession of a certificate. A situation or circumstance that is currently rare will become far more likely. It might well be a matter for the NHS, but if the bill is explicitly or implicitly about expanding the number of people in possession of a GRC, there must surely be greater consideration of how that will operate in practice and in the situations that Mr Choudhury and Ms Gosal have set out.

The member has highlighted a really critical point. Just as it would be wrong to place a prisoner in one estate rather than in another purely on the basis of self-declaration, it would be wrong never to consider which estate they should be in. It is very easy to understand that trans people will be particularly vulnerable in either estate, and the critical point is, as Jamie Greene has pointed out, that prisons have to make what is a nuanced, balanced and individualised assessment in that regard. What we should be seeking to do through this legislation is to ensure that the Prison Service is enabled and empowered to continue to make such balanced decisions and risk assessments, prisoner by prisoner. Does the member agree with the emphasis that needs to be made in that respect?

That is a bit of a mischaracterisation. This is a small Parliament and every political party in it comes to positions through discussion and agreement. I assure Rachael Hamilton that, in a political group the size of ours, we arrived at our position in that way. It is therefore slightly unhelpful to characterise the position of the Labour Party as having been whipped.

You said national standards, right at the beginning.

The point that I took from the Feeley report about commissioning—even just reading the executive summary—is that it needs to be more personalised. You are saying that there are likely to be fewer boards in the care service. To my mind, that means that things will be done further away from the person. Considering all the different points that were made in the Feeley report, which covers commissioning and standards, why have you pursued a model that involves creating national bodies that will oversee commissioning? To my mind, the Feeley report alludes to the possibility of reforming the inspection and quality regimes. Was that option explored, and was a financial comparison made of what the difference might be in pursuing that model, which would provide you with national accountability for standards? I am interested in what options were examined.

I believe that you did, minister. We will consult the Official Report but, if I misunderstood or misheard that, I offer many apologies. I was simply making an inference based on what I thought that you had said.

I imagine that a computer system will be pretty key to the delivery of the bill. Such systems are key to the delivery of any public service. Recently, Social Security Scotland’s computer system was estimated to cost around £250 million. Police Scotland did not get the funding for the new information technology records system that it needs, but it was estimated to cost £300 million. Disclosure Scotland’s IT system, which was delivered a few years ago, cost £80 million.

Although we do not know the precise detail of the IT requirements, it is fair to say that, in broad terms—in terms of range—we must be looking at a sum in the hundreds of millions of pounds, even in the lower range. Are those examples fair comparators when we think about the sorts of costs that might be incurred by the creation of an IT system for the national care service?

That is not what I asked. I asked whether, in broad terms, the money that is used to set up the NCS will be recouped through savings or whether it will simply be additional cost. As we sit here this morning—unless you correct me, minister—even as regards the current scope of the bill, which covers the setting up of the national apparatus, what you are saying is that the financial memorandum does not include the full costs of that, because it does not include things such as the cost of the IT, which, as you have recognised, is an important element of public service delivery. We do not know what the cost of that will be.

The convener set out the costs that the Fraser of Allander Institute said are missing, which include the costs of the national care boards; the cost of transition; the cost of the impact of VAT, which you have acknowledged that we do not have; the cost of the impact of any change to the pension schemes; the cost of potential changes to capital investment in maintenance costs, the extent of which we do not know; and the cost of the health and social care information scheme. Some of those things are about service delivery, but many of them are about the national apparatus itself.

Likewise, NHS Scotland has said that we do not know what the cost of the phasing of the functions will be and has pointed out that we do not know what the size of the wider savings and benefits will be. We do not know whether the transfer will include children’s and criminal justice social care as well as adult social care, we do not have a list of the health functions that will be transferred and we do not have clarity about future demand.

There are quite a lot of unanswered questions about the specifics of running the national apparatus and about whether—even just in broad terms—having the NCS is likely to make service delivery more or less expensive. Am I wrong?

In the interests of time, I was really just asking for brief confirmations of my assumptions. I understand the different words, but I do not think that I was suggesting anything different. If it is not about centralised commissioning, can you conceive of a situation in which there will be more commissioning boards than the current number of IJBs, or are you clear that there will be fewer?

That brings us back to the process. Answer this for me, minister, because I really do not understand it. I can understand why you might not want to legislate for service delivery prior to having the framework in place. That bit makes sense.

However, what would have prevented you from doing the co-design work and bringing forward a white paper, and then bringing forward the framework bill, with that white paper clearly in mind? That would have enabled you to do the co-design and answered many of the questions that we have in front of us, and it would have given us certainty about the scope. Right now, we do not even know—because the co-design work has not been done—what functions the national apparatus will need to facilitate. Why not do it the other way round? Why not do the co-design work and bring forward a white paper, and use that as the basis, and the context, for the framework bill? I do not understand why you did not do it that way round.

I will leave it there, convener.