78.Section 28(1) requires the Scottish Ministers to make regulations about the provision of independent advocacy in relation to public social care services. Regulations under section 28(1) will be subject to the affirmative procedure and may modify other enactments (see section 38).
79.For this purpose:
	a public social care service is any service provided in pursuance of the social care functions of local authorities listed in the schedule of the Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act 2014.
	an advocacy service is independent if it is not provided by any person listed in subsection (6). That subsection confers a power on the Scottish Ministers to specify by regulations other persons who cannot provide advocacy services that qualify as “independent” for the purposes of the section. Regulations doing so are subject to the negative procedure (see section 38).
80.The power under subsection (1) to make provision about independent advocacy services is broad. Subsections (2) to (4) direct particular purposes for which it must be used.
81.Subsection (4) requires the Scottish Ministers to use the regulation-making power:
	to impose on providers of independent information, advice and advocacy services a duty to provide the Scottish Ministers with anonymised data about the persons accessing those services, and
	to impose on themselves a duty to report on a 5 yearly basis on the data provided. There is also a duty on the Scottish Ministers to report periodically on independent advocacy services in section 35.
82.Subsection (4) refers to “providers of “such independent information, advice and independent advocacy services”. There is no prior reference in the section, as enacted, to independent information and advice services. There was, however, a reference to those services in the section of the Bill, as amended at Stage 2, that would go on to be enacted as section 28. At Stage 3 of the Bill process (which is also the stage at which subsection (4) was added), the allusion to those services was moved by amendment into the provision enacted as section 29.
Overview of the Act Overview of Part 2 Independent advocacy