£1.3 billion reform plan to social care could make service worse, MSPS told

MSPS have been told Nicola Sturgeon’s £1.3 billion plan to overhaul Scotland’s care system could make service provision in the vital sector worse.

Trade union chiefs called for the proposals to be withdrawn when they appeared before two separate Holyrood committees yesterday morning.

Along with officials from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (Cosla), they raised concerns whether restructuring the service was needed and called for more investment in the current service,

The Scottish Government’s National Care Service Bill is designed to set up a new service intended to “oversee local delivery of community health and social care”, end the “postcode lottery” in standards, and improve conditions for care workers.

Under the planned reforms social care services would come under a new national body, which would then be divided into regional boards in a set-up similar to the NHS.

But much of the detail of the new system is not included in the bill, and will instead be developed using secondary legislation, which should see staff, care users and others involved in “co-designing” the service.

Tracey Dalling, regional secretary of Unison Scotland, told MSPS yesterday the bill’s priorities were wrong.

“The priorities are all wrong. Spending upwards of half a billion on set-up costs for new quangos is, I don’t think, the right time when we have so many vulnerable people waiting to receive a service.

“The biggest issue we’ve got with the bill is what it doesn’t say,” she told the local government committee. “We have been very clear in our submissions to you that we think the bill should be withdrawn.”

Simon Cameron, workforce and corporate policy team at Cosla raised fears improvements made under recent reforms of social care could be undone.

He said: “We understand there is a need to advance our services.

“But there is a lot of good and well embedded practice now happening that we risk unravelling.”

Social care Minister Kevin Stewart told MSPS that many of those raising concerns had a “vested interest in terms of where power, accountability and resource lie at this moment”.