Pressure to scrap ‘reckless’ care plan

THE SNP should abandon or pause its ‘reckless and unaffordable’ national care service plan, opposition parties have claimed.

It comes as the spending watchdog urged the Scottish Government to be more transparent about the cost of a centralised care system, demanding: ‘What’s the price tag?’

SNP ministers want to strip councils of responsibility for social care and replace it with a nationwide system in an apparent bid to raise standards and remove a ‘postcode lottery’.

But there has been growing criticism, with even the party’s own MSPs warning apparent demands for a ‘blank cheque’ from taxpayers were a ‘monumental risk’.

The Tories, Labour and Lib Dems have urged the Scottish Government not to proceed with the plan.

Ahead of a Holyrood debate today, Tory social care spokesman Craig Hoy called the scheme an ‘accident waiting to happen’. He said: ‘It’s time for them to see sense and drop their reckless and unaffordable plans.’ Labour said the reforms are ‘plagued by a litany of glaring problems’. Its care spokesman Paul O’Kane said: ‘The SNP cannot keep burying their heads in the sand.’

Scottish Lib Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said: ‘Rather than set up a billion-pound bureaucracy, the Government should channel that money into boosting pay and conditions on the front line and improving services for those who need them.’

Holyrood’s finance committee was told yesterday there were vast ‘gaps’ in the government costings.

This followed Audit Scotland warning that the cost will far exceed the current estimates of between £6 0million and £1. 5billion over the next five years.

The watchdog’s audit director, Mark Taylor, said the Scottish Government needs ‘to be able to be much clearer at a much earlier stage about its financial plans’.