Meeting of the Parliament 28 February 2024
The minister said that focus on the parliamentary process was not needed, but this is not obtuse process—this is scrutiny. It is clear that this secretive Scottish National Party Government does not want scrutiny. The convener of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee was right to say that extensive scrutiny was performed, but, when secret fundamental changes happened, we were unable to perform proper scrutiny—for example, we took no evidence from COSLA regarding the consensus agreement. Does the minister not think that that might be important?
What are the facts? The National Care Service (Scotland) Bill was introduced on 20 June 2022, and the health committee started taking public evidence in October that year. Humza Yousaf realised that the bill was not going to work and pulled it. We had four delays that were instigated by the Government. With all that dither and delay, why are we rushing through stage 1, when we have no idea what the Government is doing?
Simply put, are the amendments ready, and, if they are, why the secrecy? If they are not, the Government simply needs to stop making it up as it goes along. The lead committee could not take appropriate evidence or ask appropriate questions, because we had not seen the bill due to massive and fundamental changes being made.
Our job is to scrutinise bills, and we cannot allow this precedent to be set or the role of committees will be undermined.
15:46