The Scottish government has revealed that it is spending approaching £1 million a month on the civil service team taking forward plans for a new national care service.

In a parliamentary written answer to a question from the Scottish Conservatives, social care minister Maree Todd says 170 civil servants are involved in the national care service delivery programme, 154 of them working full-time. However, she says: "due to the matrix style approach to delivery of the social care business area, staff may not be working on the national care service programme objectives 100% of their time".

In the year to the end of March, £7,542,000 was spent on the NCS civil service team. The previous financial year as the plans were beginning to be developed, it had been £1,230,000.

In the months from January to April of this year, the average monthly cost was just over £881,000.

The development phase of the programme will continue through the summer with MSPs expected to take part in the first full parliamentary debate on Stage I of the proposed National Care Service (Scotland) Bill in the autumn.

It follows a decision by Ms Todd shortly after being appointed by First Minister Humza Yousaf to the post of Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport, to pause the legislative process to allow further consultation to take place through the summer.

Ms Todd last month told Hollywood's Health and Social Care and Sport Committee that the pause would create an opportunity "to put a little bit more meat on the bones and for people to understand better what the ambition is and what the detail around that ambition is and how it's going to look".

The Scottish government has turned down a request from a different group of MSPs, the Finance and Public Administration Committee to provide updated financial information on the cost of implementing the legislation.

In response, the Deputy Convener of the Committee wrote to Ms Todd expressing disappointment at the lack of detail in the costings given so far and saying it is “entirely necessary” for MSPs to get updated financial projections and questioning the minister’s assertion that “it is not possible to separate costs relating to the provisions of the Bill and those which result from the wider NCS programme”.

Read More: Ministers refuse to update NCS costings; Ad campaign can’t shift negative view of care jobs; FM commits to £12 an hour for care staff.

Sign up to our bulletin for key health & social care updates straight to your inbox and you can follow healthandcare.scot on Google News.