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The second part of the question was on the faculty’s submission. There were concerns about the delay in getting to secondary legislation in order to make the change that is required in social care at the moment, and there are issues with staffing and improving outcomes. Do you have a comment on that?

The committee has heard that women over 50 make up 80 per cent of the social care workforce, and colleagues have touched on the point that informal caring and support is often a responsibility that people have outside their work. On a wider point about carers, I know that a framework bill is obviously not going to say anything about how we support carers with regard to, say, rights to paid leave, but do you think that it is important that there be at least a statement of intent on that? Frank Jarvis might want to comment on that from the human rights space.

Thank you. More detail will be helpful, as I think that we will come back to the matter as we make progress.

On a more technical point, the bill does not outline exactly how the transfer of staff will happen and for whom transferred staff will work. We know that NHS staff will remain NHS staff, but we are less clear about, for example, social care staff, who are in the employ of local authorities. Is there a sense that, without that detail, it is harder to look at how fair work practices can be implemented, particularly given the differing pay scales and terms and conditions?

We are trying to consider the bill with regard to the detail that is outlined in the framework. However, on the point that you have made, Councillor Kelly, about viability, and in relation to the amendments that you have mentioned, are your concerns based around, for example, the fact that there is no definition of the geographic spread of a care board—that care boards would not necessarily reflect what we have currently in the integration joint boards, which would have a potential impact on the geography of people’s local authority, as they understand it, and on what their local authority would be responsible for?

My other question is more for Councillor Kelly. This morning, we have heard you, as COSLA’s representative, express concern about a wholesale transfer of services from local government to the national care service. I have heard it described by people as councils essentially becoming providers in a larger framework. Do you think that there is a principle at stake here for local government?

In its written submission, the Law Society of Scotland said that it is concerned about a lack of evidence for a national care service, which raises the

“question whether the centralisation of what”

is currently delivered locally

“can be justified in terms of the European Charter of Local Self-Government”.

I bring that up, because of the shared commitment by the Government and COSLA to incorporate that charter. Do you think that principle is at stake, too?

Eddie, will you give your view? You speak from the officer level. Does SOLACE recognise much of what the politicians and leaders of COSLA have said? Will you share your concerns?

Thanks, convener. I appreciate that we are dipping into different themes, but that is the nature of the discussion.

Following on from Gillian Mackay’s point about trying to achieve fair work principles and improve terms and conditions, I have a question about recruitment. We know that there is a huge challenge in social care recruitment. I think that there is a suggestion that, through the bill and the national care service, action can be taken to look at recruitment on a more national basis, or through a national campaign.

Councillor Kelly, do you sense that we need a national care service to do that, or would you rather see interaction between COSLA and the Government on national work on recruitment? Has anything happened between the Government and COSLA on that? What has the Government done?

I will return briefly to co-production. For some people, it seems to be new, but my sense is that it has existed for a long time. We were talking about how integration has worked. Integration is still young—it is not yet 10 years old. Given that Eddie Fraser was responsible for delivering services through a health and social care partnership and that he is now a council chief executive, I ask for his view on what co-production has done in that space. When I sat on an IJB—which was not yesterday—it had carer and patient representatives and people from the staff side; co-production ran throughout how things were discussed. I also ask Jackie Buchanan to give her sense of how the structure works and to comment on any other bits.

Thank you.

I have a couple of questions for Isla Davie that follow on from that point. First, just for clarification, do you have concerns about the powers that are transferred to ministers as outlined in schedule 4, in terms of what ministers will be able to do under secondary legislation? Secondly, is there also an issue with the delay in getting to the secondary legislation, which might mean that we do not achieve the stated aims?