Seòmar agus comataidhean

We will call a halt there. I thank the minister and her officials for their evidence this morning.

The next item on our agenda, which we will take in private, is consideration of our work programme.

I did not think for a minute that it was. I think that Mr Flannigan made that quite clear on Tuesday. It has obviously been picked up incorrectly.

Let us start where we finished last time. On Tuesday, I asked Donna Bell about the fact that the bill is much less complex than the one that we started off with, in that we will not need to transfer assets and staff or to think about the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations or about having 31 or 32 potential care boards, et cetera. The variance in the costs is much reduced. Previously, the variance between the minimum and the maximum cost was up to 150 per cent. It is now about 45 per cent, so the parameters have reduced.

However, the delay in the legislation’s being implemented has almost doubled. Instead of waiting a couple of years for implementation, the process will now take in the order of four years. I recognise that Donna Bell said that you were looking at things pessimistically, but you have emphasised how important it is that the bill works for the people who will benefit from it. Surely that is an inordinate delay.

I did not feel that the responses that I got on Tuesday were great. Basically, the officials said that it will potentially still be quite a complex process and that, if the Government could do the work more quickly, it would be happy to do so. If it is a resource issue, is it not best to say, “The reality is that we don’t have the resources to implement what we want to do in the time period that we envisaged”? Is that, in fact, the case?

What about carers’ breaks? What is the position there, in comparison to where it would have been under the previous iteration of the bill?

In your opening statement, you talked about the economy of greater wellbeing. Earlier this week, Donna Bell said:

“The Scottish Government remains committed to responding to the need for reform, with significant changes being needed at local level to realise the intended quality and consistency that will be required. By providing timely support when it is needed, we can reduce overall service costs in the long term and empower people to maintain their physical and mental health, which will, in turn, create a healthier overall economy.”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 23 January 2024; c 3.]

You have reiterated that. Do you have any examples of what that would mean financially? It is a bold statement and it sounds logical, but in the financial memorandum we see only the implementation costs and not the economic benefits or, indeed, anything on the implications and how it will reduce costs in other parts of the Scottish budget, such as in the NHS.

It is in cash terms. In real terms, what will that mean, using, if possible, the gross domestic product deflator, given that that is what we will have to work with?

Social Work Scotland says in its letter:

“Through correspondence with Scottish Government officials we have also received some helpful supplementary information. However, overall the information provided still lacks the transparency and sufficient detail needed to provide legitimate challenge from parliamentarians, stakeholders, other interested parties, users of services or the public.”

There are still concerns about the cost of the bill.

Social Work Scotland goes on to quote your letter of 11 December and raises one or two other issues, for example

“the numbers, costs and roles of the civil servants”.

Colleagues might go into that in greater depth. Have you had sight of that letter from Social Work Scotland?

Do you have any general comments about the letter?

I will move on, because there are plenty of other things to talk about, in the meantime.

There has been a huge reduction in the costs over 10 years, but if the legislation will not be implemented for three or four years, we will automatically see a reduction in costs. If we look year by year from implementation, what is the differential? The legislation will be implemented three years later than was expected, so no one would expect the costs, annualised from 2025 to 2028, to be the same, if it is three years late. We are not really comparing like with like, if you know what I mean, because we are not actually comparing what would be delivered in those years under the previous timetable and what is now being considered, because of the three-year slippage.

Thank you for that opening statement.

Over the 10-year period, total costs under the revised proposals will now amount to between £631 million and £916 million, which is a variance of around 45 per cent. The estimated costs over the equivalent 10-year period were between £880 million and £2,192 million, which is a variance of around 150 per cent, so there has been a huge improvement in terms of variance and in what costs have been assessed as.

As you said in your opening statement, that means that the revised proposals represent substantially lower overall costs, which are estimated to be between £249 million and £1,276 million. If the committee had accepted the previous financial memorandum, over 10 years the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament would have been between £249 million and £1,276 million worse off, and we would have had all the issues of transfer of staff and so on, which will now not be included in the bill.

However, the central issue that we are dealing with is that, given the dramatic changes that have been made to costings and the reassessment by the Scottish Government over the past year or so, how can we have faith in the figures that are being presented for that 10-year period?

Thank you for that. I note that in the financial memorandum, in every area of cost, from financial year 2023-24—the current year—until 2031-32, which is an eight-year period, it looks as though there will be a 41.5 per cent estimated increase in costs. That appears to be assessed by assuming a 2 per cent inflation rate plus a 3 per cent increase in real terms. Therefore, we are talking about a 25 per cent increase in real terms. Given the fact that the Scottish budget is not growing at 3 per cent a year in real terms and is—it seems to me—unlikely to do so, how can you be confident that those figures are sustainable and deliverable?