Criminal Justice Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, November 23, 2022

Official Report 719KB pdf

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National Care Service (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Our next item of business is to take evidence as part of our scrutiny of the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill, specifically on the provisions that relate to criminal justice social work and community justice. I refer members to papers 4 and 5.

We have apologies from Claire Wilson, who is, unfortunately, unable to join us. I welcome Lynsey Smith, chair of the justice standing committee, Social Work Scotland, and joining us online we have Anil Gupta, chief officer, communities, Convention of Scottish Local Authorities; and Kate Ramsden, national executive member, Unison Scotland.

We would like to ask the witnesses a number of questions. Given that two members are joining online, I ask members to indicate who they would like to direct their questions to, and I ask the witnesses who are joining us online to indicate accordingly in the chat function if they would like to come in.

We move straight to questions, and I will start with a general opening question. I will come to Lynsey Smith first and then bring in Kate Ramsden and Anil Gupta. What are your general views on the possibility of criminal justice social work being included in the planned national care service? How might that affect criminal justice social work and the services that are currently provided, and how do you see those changing?

Hello, everyone. That feels like quite an abstract question, because the detail is not in front of us. If we work on some assumptions, there is potential for services to improve. Some things need to be looked at, but we need further evidence to make those calls.

We work on the assumption that justice social work would move from 32 local authorities to one joint point of accountability rather than the multiple arrangements that are in place at the moment. We have identified that that structure has been cumbersome in the past. There is an assumption that streamlining it and having one point of contact, with one set of governance arrangements, would lower some of the barriers to developing and scaling up improvements and services. There is also an assumption that, if justice social work were to be included in the NCS, we would be doing so alongside our colleagues, which is ultimately a positive thing, as there is strength in the profession remaining together for the good of the profession itself and for the benefit of those people in Scotland who use social work services.

The committee will be well aware that people who are involved in the justice system will often have multiple and complex needs. Social workers work across adult services, addictions and children and families to co-ordinate services around that person. One of the proposals for the NCS that seems to be taking shape is the creation of a national social work agency. If we make some assumptions about that, the impact of the agency could be positive for dealing with some issues around recruitment and training for staff. It often feels as if we are a national profession without a national structure, which impacts on our ability to workforce plan. There are some positives, but there are also some concerns or negative aspects at this point.

From a Unison perspective, it would be fair to say that we are deeply concerned about the bill and the impact that it will have on social work—both criminal justice social work and social work more widely. The trouble for us is that there is no detail about what social work would look like if the proposals went ahead. The bill, if passed, will leave it open to ministers in making secondary legislation, and it will leave our social work and social care members hostages to fortune as to what their service will look like, who their employer will be and how services will be managed and funded.

We are concerned that that impedes proper scrutiny and risks weakening parliamentary democracy. There are promises in the bill that the Government will consult before transfer, but that consultation is entirely non-binding on the Government, which can completely ignore it, as the Government has done with the many criticisms that have been voiced about the bill, not just by us but by other agencies, too.

We think that things have been done the wrong way round. We fully believe that the Government should have started off by engaging with all the people involved—social workers, social work clients and communities—and by building a national care service from the bottom up. The bill creates massive uncertainty for our social work members in criminal justice, because they have no idea what the arrangements will look like as things move forward. The social work service is already in crisis, so the upheaval and uncertainty can only make matters worse.

I think that it was Social Work Scotland that said that one in four of our social work students who graduate will not last more than six years in the job. We know from our own surveys that more and more social workers are looking to take early retirement, and we think that that will only make things worse. We would ask you to put pressure on the Scottish Government to go back to the drawing board, to look at the proposals again and to co-design properly.

Much of what my colleagues have just said is broadly supported by COSLA, as the representative body of Scottish local government. Perhaps it is worth saying that justice social work and community justice face huge challenges at the moment. The investment in the costs of delivering the services is extremely problematic. For instance, the flat cash settlement is likely to result in a cut of around 7 per cent in that area of activity. Given the theoretical nature of what has been presented to us, the issues with the finance of the sector are not covered in any way.

We have been through considerable changes in the past few years. In 2005, we saw the creation of community justice authorities. In 2015, the legislation was passed that convened community justice partnerships and Community Justice Scotland. If the bill is to go ahead, we will see another significant change within a shortish period, but we are looking for a degree of stability and innovation in community justice as well as looking to get into the real detail about what it costs for the service to be delivered properly.

The bill does not cover in any satisfactory way the multi-agency work for which local government is responsible in community justice and where that would end up. We will still have matters around housing, employability, education and skills to bring to the table, but we will probably not have the services that help to complete the picture should they be taken out of local government.

The lack of definition means that we have an unclear proposition and it is difficult to do the work. In the papers that you have, the Scottish Government has listed the research work that it is considering, which is about how best to examine what would be appropriate for justice social work in the future. Unfortunately, we do not know enough about what the proposition is to be able to do that work properly. The work is probably being done the wrong way round. We should consider the strengths and weaknesses of the current systems and what is needed to make them deliver in the future and then, perhaps, discuss where they are positioned and what is needed.

Clearly, there is no opposition whatever to the idea of developing standards across the country, but being able to deliver on standards requires an element of local diversity to meet the local circumstances. Without that, you might end up hobbling the system not only because disruption and elements of planning blight could be introduced in the policy area but because you would also probably dampen the innovation that already exists.

Our other obvious concern is one that the Unison witness referenced about parliamentary scrutiny. Pushing the important issues, including the finances and the detail, into secondary legislation would not give you a huge amount of opportunity to question what is presented to you in the longer term. Although we have perfectly good relationships with the Scottish Government over community and criminal justice, it feels undemocratic to leave to a minister the decisions on how to go forward on what are shared competences at the moment.

Thank you, Anil.

You all mentioned that there is a big piece of work to be done on co-design and understanding what the proposal will look like. The proposed plan is for there to be a consultation on criminal justice social work. What would you like that consultation process to focus on? What would you like to come out of it around priorities for how criminal justice social work continues to deliver the best possible service?

11:30  

We welcome the opportunity to have that type of conversation. From a Social Work Scotland point of view, if I can speak for the members of the committee, there is a recognition that the status quo cannot continue and that we welcome the opportunity to review justice social work’s position, its current model and what might be improved.

There is an appetite for change and reform. I absolutely take on board the points that have been made by colleagues about having a weary staff group and the fact that there is a question about whether this scale of change is appropriate at this time, given what folk have been through and have been dealing with.

I hope that the research would set out the strengths and weaknesses of the current system. We want to work out what the benefits might be to justice social work being included in the NCS in relation to leadership. We have touched on the fact that structures in themselves will not achieve the change that we are looking for; there is a collective that needs to be looked at, and leadership and professional development lead into those kinds of opportunities for the staff group as a whole. Unison touched on pay and conditions, and most important is the outcome for service users.

The Feeley review did not consider justice social work, which was the right thing to do. It listened to people who use services, and their voices were really prominent in the report, but there were no justice voices in there. Part of the research needs to include those voices.

We consulted our members across social work on the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill. There is real unhappiness that they were not consulted before the bill was introduced. There is a sense that there has been no opportunity to look at the role of social work and the important role of criminal justice social work, or to look at the professional values that underpin that role. All that needs to be looked at, but it should not be looked at after the bill has been passed; it should be looked at before the bill goes through Parliament, because if we do not do that, we can have no confidence that those voices and the voices of service users will be listened to and heard.

Even issues such as pensions have not been considered. We have a group of social work members who do not know what will happen to their pensions if the proposals go ahead. A lot of work still needs to be done that has not been done, and it needs to be done before the bill is passed, so that we can have confidence that all that will be taken account of in the bill.

I will add a small point on funding. There is absolutely nothing in the bill that addresses the current underfunding of social work, including criminal justice social work. In fact, it is sorely lacking in financial information, and what information is there has been roundly rubbished by a number of people who have responded to the bill and by the Parliament’s Finance and Public Administration Committee, which has been very critical about the lack of detail. Again, those things need to be looked at and addressed before the bill is passed, in our opinion and that of many others, because if they are not, we will be left as hostages to fortune.

One response could be that the consultation might be about the wrong subject at this time. We really need to have a broad discussion about the future of community and criminal justice. At this stage, the issue of structural change is probably not the most important matter. Instead, we need to discuss longer-term investment and the lack of confidence that we are regularly told that sentencers have in community disposals, and what needs to be done to improve the situation.

Certainly, local government is very keen to address issues around workforce, finances, experimentation and learning from elsewhere. Those will probably be touched on in the consultation in any case, but we need to look more at what is required in order to achieve sustainable change, rather than to hobble ourselves with a complete change in structures at the moment.

The other thing that would probably be important for us is how we interpret the consultation. As far as we were concerned, the last one was done simply as a numerical exercise about the number of views and which way those went on different subjects, with little weighting being attached to the views of the people who were responsible for leading, working in and financing the areas of work. The consultation needs to be a bit more sophisticated, so that the voices of local elected members are given their due weighting, as representatives of local communities, rather than being counted only as ordinary, simple participants who are representing individual views.

Thank you. I open the questioning to members, starting with Fulton MacGregor.

Good morning. For the purposes of this particular evidence session, I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests—I am registered as a social worker with the Scottish Social Services Council.

The issue of integration in some form or other is nothing new, as committee members and witnesses know. It is probably fair to say that the workforce as a whole would not be overly happy about it, but that is beside the point of whether it is a good thing or a bad thing.

I agree with the comments that have been made so far—I think that we need more information. I can probably guarantee that this is not the Government’s intention but, in a bill of this size, it feels a bit like the issue has been added on in a “We’ll deal with that later” way, which is not a great place to be, because we do not have enough information.

What more can be done at this and future stages of the consultation to make sure that people who work in the sector and use the services can have their say on what the positives and the negatives might be? In your respective organisations, how can you make sure that you get that information out to the people who work in the sector, so that we can get that feedback and see how we can move forward collaboratively?

As Lynsey Smith pointed out, there probably are advantages to the inclusion of justice social work. We do not want to fragment the social work workforce if other aspects of social work are moving over, and there is also a lot of health overlap. However, the same argument could be made that, if we were to take the responsibility out of local authorities and lose the link with, for example, housing, which is also very important, it would almost be a case of taking with one hand and losing with another. The joined-up working needs to work anyway, regardless of where justice social work is situated, whether that is with local authorities or with the new national care service. How do we get the workforce to be involved and engaged in the process?

It is difficult. As well as my role within Social Work Scotland, I am head of service for justice social work at Glasgow City Council. We have been engaging with staff on that topic, which has been tough, because we do not have the detail. Again, I am repeating the point, but what is proposed feels quite abstract at the moment. When we ask staff to think through the pros and cons, it is difficult for them to do so, because they do not have a lot of detail.

We would want to consult the staff on the ground and to hear from people who have lived and living experience in the justice system, and that takes time. With regard to what we are trying to achieve in relation to the research, we do not have a lot of time to play with in order to properly consult service users, staff and key stakeholders, such as the third sector. Anil Gupta touched on the issue of the wider community. Therefore, if you are asking what would make this a really meaningful piece of work, proper consultation with the key stakeholders, including staff, would be key to that.

Thank you.

I turn to Kate Ramsden and Anil Gupta. On the basis of what has been said, what could the committee ask of the Government in that regard? Would it be helpful for the Government to provide more information on what is proposed or are you, as organisations, happy for it to be more of an abstract concept just now and to have a full consultation at a later date? Does the justice social work aspect need to be taken out of the bill and dealt with completely separately? Those are devil’s advocate questions, but I want to put them out there.

The Scottish Government has a really good model for consultation. It carried out the independent care review that resulted in the Promise. That review took a bit of time to speak to every stakeholder, including the people who use the service, in order to come up with the kind of changes that were needed. That is what is needed for social work—the process needs to be pulled right back and we need to get the views of everybody about what is good about criminal justice social work and other social work, what works well, what does not work so well and what needs to be changed.

You are absolutely right that there is no such thing as a seamless service—the issue is how we manage the seams—and there are so many important local relationships that would be lost if justice social work was taken out of communities. So much local knowledge would be lost. That knowledge is not just about how social workers best provide the service to service users; it is also about public protection.

All those things need to be taken into account and we need to allow social workers to talk about the purpose of their profession, the values that they want to work with and how best they can be supported to do that in a way that genuinely offers the people they work with the opportunity for change. That is in everybody’s best interests. At the moment, we have the worst of all possible worlds, because we do not know enough, yet if the bill goes through, people know that there will be change but do not know what the change will look like. It needs to be pulled right back to allow all stakeholders to be properly engaged from the bottom up in what the service should look like, how it should be delivered and managed, and where the funding for that will come from. Funding is a key issue that is not being addressed at all.

I will ask about one of the points that Kate Ramsden made, and perhaps Anil Gupta could refer to it when he responds to the question.

Kate, you said that folk will know that change is coming if the bill is passed, but is that the case? Is that the feeling that people have? My understanding is that the bill simply allows the Scottish Government to consult, with the possibility of change. Therefore, does some work need to be done with the workforce and people who use the services to say that change is only a possibility? You were quite definite in saying that folk believe that, once the bill is passed, change will come, rather than that change is a possibility.

I think that that is absolutely right. People are really anxious about it, because it would put all the power in the hands of the Scottish ministers. Although they say that they will consult, and I think that they believe that they will consult, what they do with that consultation is in the lap of the gods. I do not think that anybody among our members looks at the bill and believes that change will not happen. However, they feel that they do not know what that change will look like or how they can engage with it.

That is why we are saying strongly, “Withdraw the bill. Start again.” The Government needs to do proper consultation—particularly around social work’s involvement, because there has not been any kind of consultation process with social work services—so that we can find out what is the best way to deliver the services in order to meet the aspirations of our members, the Scottish Government and service users.

11:45  

We need to recognise that the consultation is going to happen after the research has been done. One thing that we have been pushing for is a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats approach to the situation that we will be looking at in a few years’ time, once the changes have been formally and properly proposed. At the moment, it is a bit of a moving target, but it feels to me that three options should be placed before people to deliberate over.

The first option is, in effect, not too different from what we currently have, with the community criminal justice arrangements that are in place. The second option would completely integrate justice social work and would provide clarity about where the responsibility for leading community justice lies. The third option would probably be somewhere in between the first two options.

Those are really important issues. COSLA spent around two years in consultations over community engagement in order to deliver a significant element of legislation. We are not putting in as much effort in this area, which has to carry with it the approval—or, at least, the consent to develop further—of the major stakeholders and partners who are currently there. At the moment, we are far away from that and we need to be pretty inclusive along the lines that the Unison representative, Kate Ramsden, mentioned.

Rather than just having a blank piece of paper, I am keen for a workshop approach to be adopted and facilitated. It should involve not only elected members but communities that face the front end of the disruption that is caused by criminal activities and offending, so that they, too, have an active role, rather than the consultation taking place in a theoretical ether, which is very difficult to engage with at the moment.

It has come through clearly from all the witnesses that you feel that there is a lack of detail in the proposals. Obviously, the bill is an enabling piece of legislation, so there is not a huge amount of detail in it in general, but it gives ministers significant powers to create a new way of providing a service. It has been said that the inclusion of the sectors that we are discussing is overreach, given that they were not included in the Feeley report. Do you agree with that assessment?

From a Social Work Scotland point of view, yes—that was what we said as part of our consultation response. We firmly believe that, alongside our colleagues in children and families services, justice social work should have been afforded the same consultation opportunity that was given elsewhere. I would use the word “afterthought”. If you are starting to think about how the proposals are landing with staff and what the temperature is among social work offices, that is certainly the strength of feeling that is out there.

I have another question for Lynsey Smith. In your contribution, you said that your view was that the status quo could not continue. Our understanding of how the national care service will work is that, unlike the national health service, it will not actually provide a service or employ any staff. A lot of us who campaigned for a national care service were campaigning for a body that would provide a service, which would employ staff directly and provide a high quality of service. Our understanding of how the national care service will work is that it will commission services and, effectively, put out tenders.

I will ask COSLA about this in a minute, but I have been told by people in local government that it is unlikely that many councils will participate in the process, because of their own financial situations. When you say that the status quo cannot continue, what are your reasons for saying that? Is the top reason the funding?

If we put the funding to the side—

But is that the top problem at the moment—a lack of funding or resource?

From my perspective, it is consistency in service delivery, although that is probably on an equal footing to resourcing and funding. Consistency in service delivery is key, however. The 32 local authorities currently operate with variances across the service, and there is very good reason for that. We are dealing with some justice social work offices that are trying to offer a service across islands, for instance. There will absolutely be variances in what service provision looks like across the country.

From a leadership point of view and a Social Work Scotland point of view, we are very much aligned to the justice vision for Scotland. We would align ourselves with a lot of the principles around prevention and early help for those who are on the periphery of the justice system but who are trying to exit from it.

I will give you an example. We have rolled out electronic monitoring of bail across the country. That has been quite difficult to facilitate, because we have very much acted as a single point of contact within justice social work, working with the 32 local authorities to introduce the change. As a chair, I do not have authority over local authority decisions, but we have used various methods of leadership to try and get local authorities to a place where they are able to introduce it.

Naively, we might assume that, if we had one central point of contract that could potentially deliver and set the direction in a clearer way, that might offer something, but that is where my main frustration lies.

That is helpful.

I ask COSLA to comment on what is being said about consistency. What does COSLA view as the major challenges? Are they resources and funding, or are there other issues? To what extent are there discussions in councils about how to proceed if the proposals, as we understand they are likely to operate, go ahead? What does that mean for the future of local government involvement in such services?

There is quite a lot of detail in those multiple questions; I am not sure that I am in a position to answer them all.

I will try to deal with the first point, about consistency. Councils are certainly keen to ensure consistency in outcomes—not necessarily in services per se. As Lynsey Smith has already said, that depends on geography, to some extent, when it comes to how to meet the various challenges of providing services locally. Our view is that managing the local challenges is best done locally. We will find some difficulties in cookie-cutting services and applying them in local areas. We contend that the principle of keeping things as local as possible is not just about efficiency and the best way of dealing with things; it is also about community ownership of the issues and ensuring that accountability is maintained.

That is one point. Linked to that—as you have already highlighted—the lack of resources across the piece happens to be an issue. Partly because we are told this by chief social workers, we are more than aware that there are difficulties with workforce recruitment and retention. I am not at all clear that those difficulties would necessarily disappear once there is a national arrangement. It is equally possible to argue that having a single employer—if that is the way that things are going to go, although it is all very theoretical—would create the possibility of moving people around significantly, changing their terms and conditions, so that holes could be plugged across the country. However, that might itself act as a disincentive to people to work in the area.

Please excuse me, but I do not know the answers about commissioning or where local authorities would wish to go. Part of the reason for that is that we have not had firm enough proposals to consult with those who lead on community justice and criminal justice in local government. The last meeting that we had to discuss some of the basic issues was facilitated back in November 2021. We have been taken a little bit by surprise by the last-minute insertion of social work overall into the consultation documents, and particularly community justice and criminal justice.

I know that elected members are interested in engaging. As a representative body, we would obviously wish to bring members together, and that is one of the reasons why I was talking about workshops being an important way of getting to the sort of detail that you are talking about on allied services and multi-agency crime prevention community justice approaches, which should be brought to the table and chewed over properly.

Within this broad area, we have highlighted housing and employability as remaining with local government, but we also have significant powers with the award of contracts to ensure that they are inclusive and that they help to recruit people who are in danger of reoffending. We also have welfare benefits roles and access to resources—and there is the education area on top of that. There are complexities here.

Going back to the principles, we are actively involved in the national strategy for community justice: we want to see it delivered, and we want to concentrate on what people are trying to do by way of a change, so we can start to deal with the original observations from the McLeish commission that we overimprison people, rather than concentrate on structural reform.

I appreciate that you are speaking for COSLA and that, because we do not have any detail, it is very difficult for you to respond. If the model was a commissioning model and if responsibility was taken away from local government, such that local authorities would have to enter into a tendering exercise, could there be a risk that local government, or at least some councils, might not get involved in that?

I do not know—

I gently ask witnesses to keep their answers as succinct as possible. That will allow us to ask as many questions as we can.

We would need to ask. On employability, I am aware that, when councils were able to put in tenders for the delivery of services, some chose not to, while some were successful. The diversity will be there. We would need to consult.

Reflecting on the comments made by other witnesses, what does Unison feel are the major problems in this sector at the moment?

The major problems in the sector that our members are telling us about involve a lack of funding. There is no doubt about that. Workers are talking about having to work huge amounts of overtime just to deliver a service, which never gets repaid. It is not like that everywhere, but there are real, major pressures on the system.

Morale is very low. As I have already touched on, it is very difficult to recruit and—more importantly—to retain social work staff. That is the kind of issue that we think needs to be addressed before we try anything else.

In relation to what you are saying about the potential for the bill, there is no doubt that it paves the way for extensive outsourcing and privatisation—it enables that to go ahead. If that happens, criminal justice social workers, and other social workers for that matter, could have a change of employer every three years, when services are tendered for. Although there are already huge pressures on the system, creating that additional uncertainty and upheaval is not helpful at all for the people who are trying to deliver the service now.

I want to touch on the fact that social work was invited late to this party. It has made our members feel very demoralised and devalued that they were suddenly popped into the process without any discussion about what they actually do, which leaves them feeling that that is not properly recognised. The lack of detail is really concerning, but the bill’s potential for leaving services open to privatisation and outsourcing is even more worrying.

12:00  

I appreciate your points about tendering, and Unison has a huge amount of experience of outsourcing and tendering processes that have not been positive with regard to terms and conditions.

Lynsey Smith made a point about consistency of service. Do you have any thoughts on whether there is an inconsistent service across Scotland? Is that a major concern? If so, how that might be addressed?

There is a lot of talk about there being a postcode lottery, but actually, because services are currently able to meet local need, that will create differences. Anil Gupta said that the differences are in the input rather than the output. Obviously, we would want to look at that area as part of the consultation, but, as I have said many times and as I will say again, that consultation should happen before the bill is passed. We need a clean sheet. Therefore, although that obviously needs to be looked at, we should not throw babies out with the bath water, because meeting local need is essential to social work—that is what we are about.

Good afternoon to our guests. This was not going to be the question that I was going to ask, but, after listening to that last exchange, I think that it should be.

Given that local authorities have statutory duties to perform these functions, in another model where a centralised nationalised service provides that service either directly by employing people—and becomes an employer of choice—or through some form of tendering, outsourcing or even direct awarding to preferred suppliers through a national contract or otherwise, it sounds as though the end scenario might be some form of privatisation of services that are currently delivered by the public sector. That sounds great if you are just about to buy shares in a private company that profits from that type of service, but not so great for those who currently work in it. My first question, therefore, is whether that is a genuine risk or just a perceived one. Secondly, what representations will you be making next to the Scottish Government, given all the concerns that you have voiced today and previously? I will start with Unison and then ask COSLA and Social Work Scotland to respond briefly.

As a social worker as well as a Unison representative who works in children and families services and in children’s rights, I think that you have just raised a very good question about how statutory duties and responsibilities will be managed under a new system. I have to tell you that it is yet another thing that we just do not know, and it is another thing that is creating quite a lot of stress and anxiety for our members, because we do not know how it will be managed. We do not even know how our pensions will be managed, if we are taken out of local government. There are so many unknowns, and that is just another one. My colleagues might be able to say a bit more about that.

As for representation, Unison engages with the Scottish Government at every opportunity to make the points that we have made here today on behalf of our members, because we see this as such a fundamental change and such a threat to social work. It is a threat, because it is being implemented without the ground work having been done and without proper engagement with stakeholders, as I have said before. Therefore, we will continue to make those arguments, and I hope that the committee will do so, too.

Does that answer your question?

It certainly does—it was a very honest answer. Anil, do you have any comments?

I have an observation more than anything else. A commissioning approach locks in all of your current service provision, including your strengths and weaknesses, whereas if you manage something locally, you can be much more responsive to what is going on. To my mind, commissioning solidifies things; it prevents you from revisiting your contracts until they come up for retendering, and it creates a degree of stasis in the whole system at a point when we are trying to make fairly significant changes to services and public attitudes.

Another question that will come up is who will represent the workers and deal with the issues that they face in delivering these policies. You will get the trade unions’ side, but we in local government also work with the Scottish Government and the UK Government on matters such as the violent sex offenders register, access to information, data sharing and so forth. From where I stand at the moment, I find it difficult to understand how all those significant service matters would work in practice.

The other bit that still needs elucidation is the notion of the national social work agency. We do not necessarily oppose something that tries to develop training, standards, registration and the like but, because of the lack of detail in the bill, we just cannot see how it all fits in.

Taking the convener’s cue, I will not say too much, but we are continually raising these issues with the Scottish Government. It has set up a group and is procuring research at the moment, and we will be part of the panel that will assure the research and evidence as it comes through; Anil Gupta is part of that group, too, as are a number of justice stakeholders. All the issues that we have raised today continue to be raised with the Scottish Government.

My direct question to you, though, is: does this feel like we are using a sledgehammer to crack a nut? You have talked about weaknesses and strengths in the system, but would it not be better to address those weaknesses directly and get to the roots of some of the problems that social work and criminal justice social work face before introducing into the process a new tier of management that will inevitably take work from local authorities and then just give it back to them? It just seems like an unnecessary and cumbersome step in the process.

There is a huge argument to be made for working with the system, the structure and the set of governance arrangements that are in place now. As the research and evidence come in and evolve, we will probably be better placed to decide whether that is the preferred option instead of justice being included in the national care service.

Finally, I have what you might call a simple A, B or C question. Would it be your preference to pause the bill in its entirety in order to go back and perform that much-needed consultation that you spoke of; scrap it completely because you think that the whole idea is completely bonkers; or remove the criminal justice elements from the bill and let the rest of it proceed? I guess that all those options are open to Government.

Unison supports a national care service, but we have a very clear idea of what that should be. It should be about social care, providing status and better pay for social care workers through sectoral bargaining and so on. I do not think that the bill does any of the things that we want it to do. Unison’s preference would be to withdraw the bill, start from scratch and build on the good work that is already being done on fair work, which we are very involved with and are very positive about, and on social care. We should start from scratch on our engagement with our social work members and other stakeholders. I cannot remember which option that was, but that is Unison’s position.

I think that it falls somewhere between A and B. Thank you very much for that. Does COSLA have a view?

We would be in favour of a fairly radical return to what Feeley was talking about rather than this slightly less coherent approach, which pulls significant elements of social work into it. We are in favour of some of the Feeley recommendations overall, but I do not think that we would go much further than that.

How the Scottish Government wishes to respond to the evidence sessions that have taken place is up to it, but it would help us if we knew more about its positions by the end of stage 1. We would probably then be in a better position to say whether we are for this or agin it. At the moment, it is all too theoretical to be able to say either way.

I agree—what we have just now is a framework bill. We would argue that the co-design needs to happen first, so it can inform any future legislative process. As a result, we would not be in favour of the bill continuing at the moment.

Thank you. That was very helpful.

I call Russell Findlay.

Good afternoon to you all. From what we have heard today, it sounds as though the Scottish Government has not asked some pretty big questions, has sometimes asked the wrong questions and has provided answers that can best be described as questionable to other questions.

I find it perplexing that justice social work was not properly consulted on this. Given the fundamental and pretty serious concerns that you have all articulated in response to Jamie Greene’s questions, we are pretty clear about what you want to happen.

I just want to take a step back. Do we know why the Scottish Government chose not to listen to those who know best? Do you have confidence, given what you have said today, that it will do so now?

I have confidence in the process that has now been put in place. We are being meaningfully engaged on the research and we have helped shape the proposal that has been procured by setting the questions that we want answered. However, we are at the start of the process; I could probably answer that question with more confidence six or 12 months hence. Certainly, we cannot get away from the points that were made earlier: this just feels like an afterthought.

We can absolutely see what happened with the Feeley review and the thinking behind that, and it is right that we consider social work in its totality, including children and families social work and justice social work. We are where we are; we have felt engaged up to a point. We have challenged what has happened, we have questioned why we were not included and we have made it very clear that we feel as though this is an afterthought.

I will leave it at that.

We think that the evidential base is not perfect. Going back to the points that were made earlier about the consultation, I will just say that what Lynsey Smith said is absolutely true. We think that the research that we are participating in is helpful and useful, but it is the wrong time to be doing it. It should have happened the other way round; this work should have been contemporaneous with the Feeley review and the work going on around the Promise, and then the restructuring issues would have followed. It should not have happened this way round.

Obviously I cannot speak for the Scottish Government, so I do not know why this was done this way. I suspect that, as Lynsey Smith says, social work was suddenly included at the last minute. I do not know whether you have had the opportunity to look at the responses that have been made to the bill, but I think that the Scottish Government has to start listening now, because all the issues that we have raised about the bill today have already been raised by many of the respondents.

I really think that the Government has done things back to front. It needs to pull the proposals back and do things the right way round, with proper consultation now—with social workers, service users and communities at the centre of things. It should hold the bill until that has been done, because it might well look completely different after that.

12:15  

That was very helpful. Thank you.

I call Rona Mackay.

We have heard some very valid points from all of our witnesses today. The one thing that we would probably agree on is that there is a consensus for change and that everybody agrees that there are huge issues with the current system.

It is a mistake to think that the Government is not listening to your concerns—I think that it is. From what you are saying, the issue is one of timing. I get that, but I do not think that there is any value in trying to backtrack; we just are where we are now. I do not think that there is any possibility of the bill being rushed through and your concerns being ignored. We should always bear in mind that the bill itself is a framework bill to allow the Government to start the process of change. The co-design part of it is where you come in. That said, I get your point about timing, and I am not disputing it.

You have answered questions on a lot of things. My question now is: if more consultation and engagement were offered to you at this stage, would that allay some of your concerns? Would it allay some of the concerns of your members, Kate and Lynsey, and those of COSLA? It is a matter of being realistic, given the point that we are at.

Yes, it would allay concerns, because more consultation and engagement would give folk time to start thinking through the implications, both positive and negative, and the opportunities. It would offer a degree of comfort, and folk would feel that their voices were being heard and that they were part of a process. The answer to your question, therefore, is yes.

I am not sure that it would offer our members any comfort at all. The trouble with an enabling bill is that it is totally in the hands of ministers to determine what they do next. Consultation and co-design are good words, but there is no obligation on Scottish ministers to take them into account or to listen to and act on concerns. They will be able to do whatever they think is best for them. That is my problem if the bill goes through: we will not have enough of a say on how it will look, or ministers will not need to give us enough of a say. At the end of the day, Scottish ministers will have all the power over what happens.

Obviously Unison will want to engage, but we would prefer to do so without the bill going through, because we would then feel that the consultation was genuine, that the Government was genuinely listening to our voices and that all of that would be included in the final outcome, just as the independent care review took all of that into account.

I am just struggling to understand why it would be in the Government’s interests to do its own thing and not listen to you. I do not think that that is what is intended. It does not make sense that the Government would not take into account what you are saying. I come back to the issue of timing, which is something that we cannot really do anything about just now.

Anyway, thank you. You have made good points.

The Government could pause the bill. Even if it did not withdraw it, it could pause it. That is what people are calling for, but the Government is not listening to them and that does not give us a lot of confidence that it will listen to other things.

We are not sceptical about the willingness of those in the Scottish Government to listen to our concerns about criminal justice and community justice, and the research work and the consultation that will follow will, we hope, provide useful material for us. However, the Scottish Government and local government have shared competency in this area and the bill does not acknowledge that. Instead, it leaves it to ministers to decide where justice will go. The best that we have been able to get—which is still useful—is for the research findings to be presented jointly to the Scottish Government and local government.

However, the real issue for the committee is whether you will be satisfied with the degree of scrutiny that will be available to you, should the bill as framed be passed, given that there will be only secondary legislation and no financial memorandum. The committee’s commitment to, and interest in, improving and transforming community justice is, I assume, the same as ours. However, a major factor in that will not be subject to the degree of scrutiny that the committee would probably wish for.

For what it is worth, I think that your idea of holding workshops is a good one.

I asked earlier whether the Minister for Mental Wellbeing and Social Care could give evidence to the committee so that we could scrutinise him on the review of adult social care. I know that he has attended other committees, but the committee could scrutinise him on this particular area of criminal justice social work and community justice. Given what you have told us today, what key questions should the committee ask of the minister? That question is for Lynsey Smith first.

It is a good question, but again, it is difficult to answer, because it feels as though it is something abstract. I would ask the minister about his vision for the delivery of justice services and what opportunities he sees in an NCS structure that do not currently exist in local authorities. We cannot get away from the finance and resource issues that we face, so I want him to consider what opportunities he might see in relation to the resourcing and funding of justice social work in a national care service. Those are the two big areas that I would ask him about.

I am not very au fait with the area of mental health, but COSLA would reflect some of the other questions that have been raised, such as whether it is best to spend resources on restructuring or on services.

Do you want to bring Kate Ramsden in, too, Collette?

Yes. I am sorry—she had disappeared from the screen and I was not sure whether she was still there.

Kate, did you want to come in briefly?

Yes. I agree with what was suggested in the question. We know that mental health is a big issue and that lack of mental health services is endemic across the country. Therefore, again, we would probably want to ask whether it would be better to put resources into front-line services and developing them instead of putting money into what will potentially be a huge restructuring process. In that respect, I echo the comments of the other two witnesses.

We have run slightly over time. However, Fulton MacGregor wants to come in very briefly, and I must ask for succinct responses.

I hope that I can help you out with that, convener, because instead of seeking a response to a particular question, I want to make a point on the back of my colleague Collette Stevenson’s question.

I chair the Parliament’s cross-party group on social work. About a month ago, the minister Kevin Stewart was in front of us for what was, I have to say, a very good session on the national care service, and he took a range of questions from people across the social work sector who were excited or were anxious about the proposals. It is up to you, convener, but if it would be helpful, I can make the minutes of that meeting available—they are available anyway—to committee members and witnesses today.

Thanks very much, Fulton. We would welcome the opportunity to hear more about what was discussed.

I must bring the evidence session to a close, because we are running over time. I thank all our witnesses for joining us today. We will summarise the views that have been shared this morning and send them in a letter to the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, which is the lead committee for the bill.

Our next meeting is on Wednesday 7 December, when we will hear from the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Veterans on the UK Government’s Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill.

As previously agreed, we will now move into private session.

12:25 Meeting continued in private until 13:05.