SNP should drop indy to focus on new care service

I AM currently in the position of securing elderly care for my 93-year-old mother, and like Frances Mckie (Letters, September 9), I welcome the intentions of the Scottish Government to improve the provision and delivery of such care in Scotland. To achieve this would be exactly what a devolved administration should be doing to lead the UK in public services.

However, I would also point out the difficulties involved, not least in unravelling the issues of ownership, management, employment status and regulation that are currently to be found in the current model of the “mixed economy of care”. Nor is this just a matter of the devil in the detail – huge fundamental issues need to be addressed. Will all private care be nationalised? With or without compensation? What about the third sector? How will muchneeded improvements in pay and conditions for staff be set and (crucially) paid for? How will local authority provision be assumed by Holyrood?

These issues are all fraught with difficulty and the pitfalls are easy to see: for example the transfer of services from local councils needs to be planned and resourced far better than in the local government reorganisation of 1996. Likewise, the co-operation of third sector and private providers will be needed to ensure a transfer of services which is orderly and safe for users.

In approaching these hurdles, we also need to look at several other current stories. For example, the failure of Holyrood to provide basic emergency services in the case of a road traffic accident shows that centralisation sometimes means worse not better services. And grand promises by the SNP – like that of setting up a low-cost, green alternative power provider – are admirable in themselves but are worthless unless they actually come to fruition.

Finally, the task of setting up a national care service is a massive undertaking. Nicola Sturgeon rightly describes it in terms comparable to founding the NHS itself. Can anybody seriously expect any government to undertake it at the same time as negotiating the terms and establishing the institutions required for independence? Especially as those responsible have no great record in office for setting up anything whatsoever? (By contrast, the people who set up the NHS had just helped win the Second World War.)

Most sensible people would conclude not, and would prefer that the noble and humane objective of a National Care Service should be pursued as a priority – and that independence should be dropped for the foreseeable future to make it possible.

Peter A Russell,

Glasgow.

PEOPLE are complaining about the rise in National Insurance to pay for social care.

If you earn £10k you’ll pay £52 a year more. That’s two John Player Special fags a week. Those earning £20k will pay £130 (two bottles of wine a month) extra and £30k earners £255 (five Subways a month).

Surely, that’s worth it to ensure your granny, aunt or elderly neighbour get better looked after? And cutting down might improve your health and save your children the future expense.

Allan Sutherland,

Stonehaven.