Hansard

I have five minutes. I will not be taking interventions.

People across the country deserve better, and that is what the bill will bring. Most important, it will put the people who access social care services right at the heart of our system. We are already working hard to make the changes that are needed in the social care system in Scotland, but the reality is that we need longer-term, widespread reform to fix some of the issues that are ingrained in the system.

I do not intend today to set out fully the Government’s approach to the national care service and the bill. The stage 1 debate, which is already scheduled for tomorrow, will provide the right opportunity for that. That debate has been a long time coming.

I have welcomed the scrutiny that the Scottish Parliament has given to the bill. Seven committees have reviewed the bill in the 20 months since it was introduced, and my officials and I have met thousands of people to discuss the national care service. It is surely one of the most extensively scrutinised bills ever to go through the Scottish Parliament.

We have worked hard to ensure that all the committees have been provided with everything that they have asked for to help their considerations, often at short notice. I will continue to do everything that I can to ensure that the important business of parliamentary scrutiny continues to be respected.

I am grateful to the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee for the substantial stage 1 report that it published last week. That report makes more than 100 recommendations, and my officials and I are currently considering them. Although it is important to take due time to consider all those recommendations fully, I have already written to the convener of the committee to welcome the report and signal my agreement to provide further information to the committee.

I previously committed to providing to the committee a summary target operating model for the national care service, and I have shared that today. This week, I have also shared with all members a fact sheet that provides an overview of our plans for the national care service. That summarises the material that was previously provided to the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee and the Finance and Public Administration Committee. In brief, it describes our intention to create a national care service board to oversee social work, social care support and community health services, to drive transparency and consistency, and to reform local integration joint boards. Officials have already arranged to discuss stage 2 arrangements with the committee clerks to ensure that sufficient time is built into the timetable to allow for thorough scrutiny and, if necessary, for more evidence to be taken. That is a key priority, should the general principles of the bill be agreed to after the stage 1 debate tomorrow.

We need to listen to the different views that I have heard from so many stakeholders, to the perspectives that seven committees of the Parliament have already heard in evidence, to the voices of thousands of people who rely on social care provision and who have taken part in our co-design work, and to carers, who provide essential support.

People need change, and they are telling us that they need it now. Of the many thousands of people to whom we have spoken who are trying to access social care in Scotland now, none of them are telling me to slow down—everyone is telling me to speed up.

We will ensure that the parliamentary process is robust, but we will let people down if we spend our time in Parliament getting tangled up in procedural delay instead of talking about the substantive issues that impact on people’s lives. Focusing on the parliamentary process is not helping those people who really need it. Delaying this vital work means that hugely significant policies, such as our rights to breaks for carers and Anne’s law, will be delayed in their introduction.

There is an important debate to be had about how we demonstrate the value of social care in Scotland, how we ensure that people who require social care get access to the help that they need wherever they live, and how we embed human rights in social care provision. I look forward to that debate tomorrow.