SNP Government scraps National Care Service plan after councils and trade unions withdraw support

The SNP Government has finally ditched its plan for a national care service after a humiliating u-turn by John Swinney. Ministers will not push ahead with the controversial proposals on November 26th and have not produced a new timescale.

Nearly £30m has been wasted so far and STUC general secretary Roz Foyer declared the rethink as a "victory for workers".

The Government’s NCS proposal involves a huge shake up of the sector in a bid to drive up standards and wages. Covid exposed the huge disparity in wages and huge dissatisfaction with the quality of service provided.

But the plan, which involves creating a new national care board, has been seen as a power grab from councils and NHS boards.

Local authorities and trade unions have walked away and the Government does not appear to have the votes at Holyrood to push the legislation through.

The Bill was supposed to start its next stage later this month, but Social Care Minister Maree Todd has pulled the plug. In a letter to a Holyrood committee, she said the Government would “reflect” on opposition to the plan.

She said “for those reasons” she would work on a “revised” timetable but provided no details. A Holyrood source said the Government would dump the critical part of the Bill that creates new care boards, effectively gutting the NCS.

First Minister John Swinney said at Holyrood: “The Government will take its time to ensure that we get proposals right and bring forward proposals that can command parliamentary support. I have made it very clear that my Government is a listening government.

"We are listening to the views of members of the public, we are listening to the fact that people from disabled people’s organisations, carers, service users, are urging us to implement a National Care Service because they are dissatisfied, as I am, with the variation in care around the country, the postcode lottery.”

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said: “John Swinney has wasted millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. He has broken promise after promise to families across Scotland and he has failed all those that are desperate for a functioning care system.

“It is time he accepted that this SNP government can deliver nothing but more failure, waste, and incompetence.”

Foyer said: “This is a deeply welcome move from the Scottish Government and one that the STUC and our social care sector have long demanded. It is correct that they have, albeit belatedly, listened to the voices around the table who urged them to see sense. The Bill, as it stands, was deeply flawed and had lost the confidence of workers and other sector partners. It does nothing to address the key weaknesses within the current system – low pay, insecure conditions, chronic staff retention and a complete overdependence on highly financialised, profit-driven providers.

“We can wipe the slate clean. Whilst we await full confirmation the Bill is dead for the foreseeable, that doesn’t mean we can’t implement the reforms our social care needs for the here and now. The vision for a national system of care can be realised. We aspire to it. To do so, the Scottish Government must meet us on that pathway, which includes paying our social care workers fairly and delivering a national care service designed for people, not for profit.

Scottish Lib Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said: “If this is the death knell of this centralising ministerial takeover of social care, I am glad. Scottish Liberal Democrats are the only party to have opposed it from day one. For four years, the SNP has wasted £30 million on a bureaucratic power grab that attracted clear opposition from every quarter. That money is the equivalent of the annual salary of 1,200 care workers. It is money that should have been spent on care staff and service users, on fixing community care so that people can leave hospital on time.”

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