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—but to spare you and the committee, I will just ask a couple for clarification.

Co-design has been mentioned on many occasions. In her evidence, Donna Bell said:

“The approach has been almost universally welcomed by people who want to be involved in shaping the national care service and the delivery of services that they use now or are likely to use in the future. That was reinforced at the national care service forum a few weeks ago.”

She also said:

“The bill sets out a framework for change. The detail relies very much on co-design—co-design with people with lived experience of, and people who deliver, community health and care support. Our partners and stakeholders will also play a vital role in that co-design.”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 25 October 2022; c 2, 6.]

I have two questions in relation to that. First, what is the timescale for the delivery of co-design?

Secondly, as you have mentioned, a plethora of individuals and partners will be involved in this work. However, the unions and organisations such as COSLA have already claimed that engagement has not been what they would have anticipated it to be. How do we ensure that we do end up not with something to which the saying “A camel is a horse designed by a committee” would apply but with something that works? How do you weigh up what stakeholders say? How do you balance the experience of a care user and the institutional experience of an organisation such as COSLA in order to get this right? I realise that such an approach was used successfully in the development of Social Security Scotland.

In short, what is the timescale for delivery, and how do we balance the competing interests that we have discussed?

I am sure that you have, minister. I understand that the stage 1 debate on the bill will be on 17 March 2023, so we will be keen to see what progress you have made before then.

Thank you very much for your evidence today. I also thank your colleagues Fiona Bennett and Donna Bell.

That ends the public part of our meeting. Under the next item on our agenda, we will consider in private the evidence that we have received today, and I suspend the meeting until 11:55 to allow the witnesses to leave.

Good morning, and welcome to the 27th meeting in 2022 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. The first item on our agenda is an evidence session on the financial memorandum to the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill.

I welcome to the meeting Mark Taylor, audit director at Audit Scotland; Emma Congreve, knowledge exchange fellow at the Fraser of Allander Institute; Hannah Tweed, senior policy officer at the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland, which will be referred to throughout this morning’s session as the alliance; and Ralph Roberts, chief executive of NHS Borders, NHS Scotland. I thank all the witnesses for joining us and for their written submissions, which we obviously have questions about.

We will move straight to questions. I will kick off with a question for Mark Taylor. I would like an explanation of what you mean by the word “significant”. In your submission, you say:

“there is likely to be a significant degree of variation in the treatment of central support service costs and other ‘overheads’.”

You talk about “significant” this and “significant” that. I would like to better gauge what you are talking about. For example, you refer to

“the significant amount of uncertainty set out in the financial memorandum”.

Can you give a bit more information about what you mean by that?

My only concern is about the range of numbers. Obviously, “significant” means different things to different people, so I just wanted to see whether I could pin you down a bit more on that.

Hannah Tweed, in your submission, you suggest that

“the financial memorandum does not provide sufficient detail on funding plans to assure the sector of sufficient investment to see the proposals implemented—particularly given the significant impact of the cost of living crisis on the third and independent sectors, as evidenced by recent work by SCVO.”

Obviously, you, too, have significant concerns. If there is a shortfall in relation to what the financial memorandum hopes to deliver, do you have any idea of what that shortfall might be?

I have been very neglectful this morning. I have not given the apologies from my colleagues John Mason and Ross Greer. They are coming to the meeting, but they have, unfortunately, been held up by train difficulties on their way through from Glasgow. I apologise for not saying that earlier on.

Emma Congreve mentioned a gap. NHS Scotland said in its submission:

“There is no detail about which community and mental health services were included within the financial memorandum.”

Therefore, that is a gap that concerns it.

Your response to question 7 talks about the volatility of inflation and about costs that have not yet been assessed. You also say that the

“variability of cost of staff harmonisation/rationalisation highlighted in paragraph 54 is not reflected in the range quoted.”

You use the word “significant” in saying:

“In our view there is likely to be significant uncertainty about the cost of harmonisation that goes beyond the extent of services and staff groups involved.”

What range would be more realistic than the range that has been quoted?

Hannah Tweed was nodding while Mark Taylor spoke. Your submission quotes paragraph 56 of the financial memorandum, which says:

“It is not anticipated that the establishment of the NCS and care boards, and the transfer of functions to those bodies, will have any financial implications for any other public bodies, businesses or third sector organisations, or for individuals.”

You disagree with that.

We are not looking for specific pounds, shillings and pence costs at this stage, but we are looking to see whether the parameters are correct and whether the best estimates have been delivered in the financial memorandum.

Cost underpinnings are important, because we are looking at structural changes and there seem to be colossal sums involved. We are not talking about building new headquarters for each of the boards or anything like that, but we are talking about hundreds of millions of pounds, and it is important to know how the figures have been arrived at, how accurate they are and so on. Do we have the best estimates?

Thank you very much.

I will now open up the session to members. The deputy convener, Daniel Johnson, will be first.