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Following a report from disability charity Scope that found that disabled people often face regular extra expenditure of a whopping £975 per month, does the minister agree that further action must be taken to ensure that disabled young people have access to the highest-quality support services in schools to help equip them with essential life skills in their post-education lives?

I declare that I am in receipt of social care.

In many ways, politics should be about prudence. One philosopher famously said that he prefers

“the actual to the possible”.

That is a much better philosophy for conducting our politics than aiming for something that may seem good in principle but would crumble in practice. We owe it to individuals, carers and taxpayers to be prudent when making policy, which is why I am in favour of reforming our current social care system rather than building something completely new. We must acknowledge that the respondents to the consultation on the bill have real concerns about social care, and we must listen to their lived experience. To diminish their experiences would be very wrong. However, that does not mean that the only way forward is wholesale change.

We all want a more efficient social care system in Scotland, but the underlying issues will not be addressed by structural change alone. Consultation responses show that the main difficulties in social care are challenges such as finding sustainable funding and hanging on to good staff. Those kinds of problems will remain, regardless of whether a national care service is implemented. Until we address the root issues, it would be much better to target those problems and reform what we have, rather than undergoing a complete overhaul.

The bill does not honour either those who receive social care or those who work in social care. It lacks essential detail, which makes our jobs very hard, as the policies are impossible to scrutinise properly. Key specifics of the bill rest on secondary legislation. We cannot know what the bill will mean for people living their lives, today and in the future. For example, there is no explanation of how the bill will affect relationships with existing local social care structures, or for how a national care service could be equipped to respond to local concerns. In addition, areas such as data, employment implications and individual rights and responsibilities are all left completely to secondary legislation. Those are hugely important areas that should be addressed in primary legislation in order to guarantee full parliamentary scrutiny. Securing those details in primary legislation would not diminish the ability to be responsive and flexible during secondary legislation. However, it would give us as parliamentarians and those who we represent confidence that the bill has the appropriate, required powers.

Social care cannot wait for the national care service; decisions need to be made now—it is too important. The bill as it is presented is distracting us from solving the real problems that we have that people such as myself and others across Scotland live with, day in and day out.

Nor does the bill guarantee meaningful accountability from Government ministers. There is no provision on how the principles underlying the national care service will be monitored, evaluated or enforced. Section 2(2) of the bill says:

“Everything that the Scottish Ministers do in discharging that duty is to be done in the way that seems to them”—

I emphasise the words “to them”—

“to best reflect the National Care Service principles.”

Ministers will therefore become judge and jury.

It is even more important that there be effective metrics for success. I am not convinced that a centralised service will provide better care than is currently offered locally. A centralised body cannot know the exact situation of every community in Scotland. We live in a diverse country, with diverse needs. The concerns of care workers and people who need care will be very different depending on where they live in the country. The situation cannot be the same up in the north of Scotland as it is here in the central belt. The issues for those of us with rural constituencies will be different from those for members who represent urban constituents.

There is no value for money for the taxpayer in the bill. The effect of centralising social care is that organisational and administration costs will balloon and become much more unwieldy than they are currently. The result will be a dramatic increase in bureaucracy, which will do nothing for efficiency and, crucially, will do nothing for those who need or who provide care. Those funds would be better off going to social care workers on the front line instead of going into a bottomless pit of bureaucracy.

I will not support the bill at stage 1. It does not tackle the current challenges in social care effectively. It is an enabling bill, but it does not provide the level of detail that is required to stand up to parliamentary scrutiny. There is no provision in it for accountability; matters are left to the subjective judgment of Government ministers. Finally, the bill will not give taxpayers value for money.

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to provide access to life skills programmes for disabled young people. (S6O-03134)

We all want people with lived experience to be involved in the whole process—there is no disagreement about that—but why could that process not have taken place before the bill was introduced? Would it not have been better to work out the scheme with people with lived experience, so that Parliament could have scrutinised actual proposals, rather than doing it after the bill has been considered, when Parliament will not be able to be involved in the process?

What one difference will the bill make to somebody who is in receipt of social care today or tomorrow? What one difference will it make to their life?

I am sure that the minister will be aware that the Edinburgh Deaf Festival provides an accessible celebration of deaf culture, language and heritage alongside the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Unfortunately, the organisation has lost its funding from Creative Scotland, which is putting the whole festival at risk. Will the minister intervene to save a festival that works so hard towards the goals of equality, opportunity and community?

I am pleased to speak in the debate.

Several decades ago, I was a member of the Law Society of Scotland and, in fact, my late father was a fiscal for the society’s disciplinary tribunal for many years. It is interesting to hear the various comments that have been made. I also thank all the organisations that have provided submissions over the past number of days.

I will focus my brief remarks on my reflections as a member of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee. I am grateful for the evidence that the minister gave us, and for that of others who gave written and oral evidence. There is no doubt that we all agree that there needs to be change from what is happening at the moment.

It is not clear, however, whether the change that we will be making will make things any better. One of the criticisms—my remark is not aimed at the minister, because this was before she was appointed—is that there was, perhaps, a lack of consultation of some key stakeholders before the bill was published and brought to Parliament. The committee heard in evidence that some of the pitfalls that we are facing could have been avoided if the Government had engaged more constructively with the Law Society of Scotland, the Faculty of Advocates and the judiciary.

We have ended up in an interesting place. Senior judges, advocates, lawyers and consumer groups are all critical of the bill. It is interesting that, in her evidence to the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee, Esther Roberton felt very let down that the Government had not listened about her work. She felt that that was a missed opportunity.

With regard to the more controversial areas, the minister will be aware that many of those will be covered in the delegated powers that will come after the bill is passed, if it is passed. I am grateful that the minister wrote on three occasions to the lead committee to at least acknowledge that there were problems, and to say that she and the Government would address them. However, we still have not seen amendments, and we do not know the detail of how they will work.

I welcome Karen Adam to her new role. I am interested in her comment that the lead committee might take evidence on some amendments before it decides to vote on them. My concern is that the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee will not have the opportunity to take evidence on amendments that the minister lodges. Perhaps she, along with others who are above my pay grade, can give some thought to whether the DPLR Committee should have an opportunity to take evidence once amendments have been lodged, so that some of the concerns that the whole committee holds could be addressed before the lead committee comes to vote on the amendments.

I hear what Mr Swinney and others have said with regard to the judiciary, but I think that it is important that the Lord President and the whole judiciary are independent. Yes—we have to work together, and I absolutely accept what Mr Swinney and others have said, but it is nonetheless important that, whatever we hear today, we future proof the bill not for the current Government but for future Governments, so that no Government can overreach into the judiciary.

Absolutely—for once, I agree with Mr Swinney. My slight concern, however, is that we are not doing either: we might reach in and take power from the judiciary while not strengthening consumer rights. That is why we need to see what amendments the Government will lodge at stage 2, and why the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee should—I appreciate that this does not happen often—take more evidence after the amendments have been lodged.

I would have preferred the Government to have stopped the bill process, then gone away and developed a bill that would have had far more support—not only from members, but from people outside Parliament. That is not the case, however, so if the motion on the bill is passed today, I hope that scrutiny by the lead committee and other committees will continue so that we can get this area of law right for every consumer in Scotland.

Yes.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I am not sure whether my vote was counted; I would have voted no.