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As Ms Clark knows, the bill is a framework bill, which includes provision to move criminal justice social work and children’s services into the national care service if the Parliament agrees to that.

I expect there to be scrutiny all the way through the process. I have said to numerous committees, and I say to this committee, that we want to be open and transparent about all this. If a decision is taken to move criminal justice social work or children’s services into the national care service, of course there will be scrutiny—there will be scrutiny of the secondary legislation.

As we move forward, we will convey our decisions to the Parliament and to committees for full scrutiny. As I have said to this committee and others, my door is open on all this, because I want to ensure that we get the national care service right for the people of Scotland.

Absolutely. I and my officials have spent a fair amount of time looking at the linkages and listening to the voices of lived experience and stakeholders. I am in regular discussion with Shona Robison on housing and homelessness, and I have had a number of meetings to listen to housing and homelessness stakeholders, as members can imagine. As the former chair of the homelessness prevention and strategy group, that is incumbent on me.

We need to build on some of the good work that we have done in the past on the linkages. As the committee is aware, I introduced the housing first approach, which is a person-centred approach to ensuring that people are housed appropriately and that all the other services come into play around about them. As I said yesterday, I do not have the most up-to-date figures—I should have looked them up last night, but we were busy with other things—but I know that the tenancy retainment rate under the housing first approach has been around 90 per cent, which nobody expected. Why is that? It is because we ensure that housing, social work, health, social care, addiction services and other services work together so that a person-centred approach is taken. If we can do it for housing, we can do it in other areas and ensure that the linkages are right.

Beyond that, legislation is proposed that will cover the public duty to prevent homelessness and get it right for people, which will also be beneficial in ensuring that the linkages become the norm.

It might be helpful if I quote from the policy memorandum. The bill comes with a suite of other documents, and I am not sure that everyone has looked at those. It says:

“Section 30 of the Bill requires the Scottish Ministers to consult publicly about any proposed transfer relating to justice services using the enabling power before regulations are brought forward. When laying draft regulations to transfer JSW functions, the Scottish Ministers must also lay before Parliament a summary of the process by which they consulted in relation to the function transfer and the responses they received to that consultation.”

As I have said, we will consult. I reiterate the point that I just made about consultation and what I read from paragraph 142 of the policy memorandum. Section 30 of the bill requires us to consult publicly about transferring any services, including justice services, using the enabling power. We will consult. We have set that out quite clearly.

It would be wrong of me to sit here and say that we are doing all the research and options appraisals and listening to stakeholders and voices of lived experience, and then say what I think at this moment. What I will do, as I have done with all the work that we have done, is listen to people and look at the evidence. That will guide our decision making.

I will bring in Ms Dalrymple.

That is what I have just said to the committee.

You would be voting for the framework bill and the general principles of the bill. As I have said to other committees, the framework bill scenario was the way in which the national health service was established. Other aspects were then slotted into that to fulfil its creation.

You would be voting for the general principles of the framework bill, but that is not the end of all this, as I have said. We will continue to speak to and listen to stakeholders and the voices of lived experience, and of course to committees and the Parliament, as we move forward in our decision making around those moves and possible secondary legislation.

A number of things are going on at the moment. We have, of course, listened to folk all the way through the process, and there has been a huge amount of engagement across the board by not only me but officials. For example, the national care service forum brought a huge number of people in person to Perth concert hall as well as a lot of folk online, including for a lot of stuff before the event.

We are now at the stage of recruiting for lived experience panels—lived experience expert panels, I should say. More than 450 folk have applied, and we are encouraging folk from throughout the country with different experiences to play a part in that.

Beyond that, we recognise that that is not for everyone. We are also involved in targeted engagement, supported by the third sector, and that will continue. People with lived experience will also be able to participate in the options appraisal that I talked about. Options appraisal workshops will be led by the Scottish Government specifically for people with lived experience of justice social work.

I am absolutely adamant that we will continue to listen to the voices of lived experience all the way through our journey. Earlier, I talked about the implementation gaps that we all know exist in service delivery. I truly believe that the only way that we can plug those implementation gaps is by having folk with lived experience help us to shape those services, along with front-line staff.